Spineless Reviews

Mann is an island

Little Herr Friedemann and Other Stories, by Thomas Mann

OOP, Penguin (1976)

Does she love me? Could she love me? Am I fool to think that I might ever have had the chance…? Uncertainty plagues the lead characters in Mann’s short stories, condemned as they are by their physical deformities (Little Herr Friedemann) or by their undesirability among the very people they court (The Blood of the Walsungs). It dogs them and promotes them, turning their inner lives into a roller-coaster of emotions of which the outside world rarely, if ever, has any knowledge.

As is clear from this collection, the world of Thomas Mann is cold and lonely. Relationships between individuals are really distant orbits around each other in otherwise empty space. Where contact is apparently made, it turns out to be unreciprocated, twisted, or otherwise missing the mark (Tobias Mindernickel or The Blood of the Walsungs). Large crowds, on the other hand, offer a safe if banal alternative to painful solitude or the hopelessness of trying to interact with one other human being (The Dilettante and The Infant Prodigy). Crowds have their own lack of meaning, or perhaps lost meaning, but characters can sit in a crowd either with no delusions or utterly delusional; this is at least preferable to the constant neurotic questioning of the couple.

Such tensions and misery can leave Mann’s work relentless, were it not for his sympathetic portrayal of the apparently extreme individuals who occupy the borders of society. This people over-analyse their condition obsessively, and pick apart minutiae before tweezering through the remains. But it’s this that drives the individuals, and that makes us understand them and even empathise with them. Anyone can recognize the outrage of the main character in The Way to the Churchyard or Gladius Dei: recognize it, pity it, and feel it in their bones. A Weary Hour is the portrait of the artist as a nail-biting lunatic, but we could all be that crazy composer, and many of us would consider the trade worthwhile. Catch a glimpse of your worst faults in these individuals, and you cannot help but love them for it.

posted at: 21:30 | path: / m / mann_thomas | permanent link to this entry

From laughable, comic to graphic, novel

“What happened to them? Where are they? Where are our heroes?” cries Jimmy Olsen, now veteran reporter at the Daily Planet, at the start of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again. What has happened to them? All of the ones in these three books are suffering mid-life crises. Alan Moore’s own creations, the ageing remnants of the vigilante group Watchmen, are combing their widow’s peaks and obsessing about their parentage, their paunches, their erectile dysfunction and occasionally the odd crime or two. Meanwhile, Miller turns the golden years of the legendary Batman inside out, as all of Bruce’s old certainties come crashing down and the world begins slowly, hectoringly, to reject its onetime saviour. And when the Dark Knight finally returns from a self-imposed exile, Lex Luthor and Brainiac are in charge of everything, and the Justice League are in their thrall. “We must not remind them,” Superman says of mere humans, “that giants walk the earth.” But what if the giants are their only hope?

The comic was arguably raised to the art form of “graphic novel” by a whole pantheon of contributors, including Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison, and Neil Gaiman who, with his Sandman series, showed that comics could be beautiful, have complications, contain multitudes. But Gaiman’s work was still arguably a comprehensive cleaning-up of comics, rather than a stretching of the medium beyond any of its existing limits. Although Sandman was ingenious in the way it metatextualized any and every mythology you could think of, it still told remarkably straight fairy stories, however well. In the mean time, though, Moore’s 1987 classic Watchmen had already pointed the graphic novel in a whole new direction: tortuous self-doubt, both within the story and the genre itself.

While others were asking whether the comic could be something so much more reputable (a question that he had already answered to himself in the affirmative) Moore instead took as his starting point: what if the world is sick of comic-book heroes? How can the comic tell the story of when the muscles start to sag, the spandex tights are no longer tight, and everyone’s fed up with crypto-rightwing molly-coddlers masquerading as freedom-loving ultra-libertarians and saving the day all the damn time? Dare it even tell such a story? Boldly, Watchmen began from this premise, and blossomed miraculously in all directions.

Where one might think comics could never really take root—beyond the reach of the zap, the biff and the pow—they actually found their most fertile soil yet. When a Watchman-turned-gun-for-hire is thrown out of a tall building, the remaining (and long-since outlawed) Watchman tries to round up the team he once felt he could rely upon. But time is running out: who is pulling the strings? Who is killing the masked men? Even Doctor Manhattan—immortal, blue, freak of accident and the only genuine superhuman in the book—is powerless in the face of… something, that not even he can foresee.

This seminal work has aged reasonably well; yet it’s clear that, its subtlety is a largely unsubtle subtlety. The same leitmotive are played again and again—look out for the “besmirched circle”, appearing as a smiley face with a drop of blood, a goggle lens covered in dust or the sunrise through a smeared window—and the plot, while complex, has a jet-black irony at the core of it rather than any moral ambiguity. The only questions remaining are not “was such an act good or evil?” but rather “did you agree with it? did it do the global trick?”: in effect, politics rather than ethics.

It took Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns to provide us with shades of grey and, with its beautiful, quiet, relatively photorealistic artwork, yield the apotheosis of the self-deconstructing comic-hero myth. This was the high water-mark, where the genre finally adopted ambiguity, irony and self-pastiche in its very core, as badges of pride, both in the legacy of material that (for better or worse) supports the modern-day comic and in the way that comics must henceforth treat their stories.

Bruce Wayne is in his fifties and effectively retired: a smart, wise, well-built middle-aged man. But the city he once protected is in slow collapse, and cries out for the Batman in high-pitched screams that only he can hear. And so he dons the cape once more, fighting all the old villains and finally putting demon after demon to rest, in one way or another. But the president—an ageing, Ronald Reagan lookalike—is wary of this old buck from Gotham, and decides to send in his most crack of troops, a somewhat older buck from Metropolis, who has made a deal with the establishment in order to keep saving lives on the quiet. Now, if only the Soviets can be prevented from launching missile attacks at the USA for long enough, then the problem of Batman can soon be dealt with.

From the very beginning of The Dark Knight Returns we are subjected to a kaleidoscope of conflicting opinions, news reports, sound bites. Is Batman fighting crime or encouraging it, as the Joker kills knowing full well that Batman is keeping a body-count? The psychological clap-trap (and its clap-trappers) who free first Two-Face and then the Joker are parodied, yes: but so, in a quiet way, is Commissioner Gordon, taking the expected lock-em-up stance of the ageing policeman. While he’s eventually vindicated by both of their actions, it’s not clear whether such empirical justification is sufficient moral justification. Indeed, it’s never made clear. Nothing is clear in this novel, not even the art work: dusty, cloudy, semi-darkness pervades all but the brightest explosions, in a stark contrast to Watchmen’s use of primary colours. Ambiguity of form and ambiguity of content have come together, and have fused into this smoky, multifaceted gem.

So it’s all the more surprising that, five years on, The Dark Knight Strikes Back marks in so many ways a return to the more obvious irony of Watchmen, and the straighter storytelling of even earlier comics. Although Miller is still employing all his techniques of blending the action with (now) more modern media and sources of commentary, and there are still at least half a dozen plot lines at work, with the climactic scenes barely anticipated ten pages beforehand, this novel has all its stops pulled out, and screams along from start to finish with the reader breathlessly in tow. No time to dwell on good and evil: Batman, and a number of other superheroes including The Flash and The Atom, have only time to act.

Whereas The Dark Knight Returns portrays superheroes as more well-sculpted versions of ordinary men, in the sequel all but the heroes are portrayed as, well, sub-human, squat, comic-strip beings, with large heads and manga eyes. Outside the ranks of this novel’s stars and celebrities, we are truly in The Boondocks, or even the backyard of Calvin & Hobbes. Granted, a darker, nastier version of either of those; but the nods and winks to traditional styles of drawing are implemented more often than just in passing. The untermensch matter little in this novel except as spectators and agents; the news feeds advance the plot; Superman gets the shit kicked out of him a number of times but we understand that particular emotional trick now. The Dark Knight Returns is bombastic and strong. It belongs to a new generation that has seen the lyrical, tangled work of its predecessors, and learnt from it, even if that only means learning what’s been done so that it isn’t repeated.

More than anything else, The Dark Knight Strikes Back shows us the resilience of the graphic novel to the fashions that beset it, however energising and ultimately healthy those trends might be. The medium has nurtured Miller’s earlier style, shaped it, polished it, released it into the world… and then happily absorbed it; understood it, studied it, but ultimately moved on, returned in part to its roots but never completing the circle; rather, transcribing an awkward, ungainly helix towards somewhere entirely different and unpredictable. This is is the rollicking blockbuster sequel to the art-house classic—Miller originally called it DK2 as a pastiche of the then rash of such sequels—but with its increased musculature and an enhanced proprioception the genre can now walk tall once again, safe in the knowledge that anything the written word can do, it can do just as well. Between them, Miller and Moore have reminded us that a giant indeed walks the earth.

posted at: 09:51 | path: / m / miller_frank | permanent link to this entry

The knight is darkest in this new dawn

Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again, by Frank Miller

£14.99, Titan (2003)

(This review appeared in the ReadReverb newsletter, Nov 11, 2005, and on the ReadReverb website)

“What happened to them? Where are they? Where are our heroes?” cries Jimmy Olsen, now veteran reporter at the Daily Planet, at the start of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again. What has happened to them? While the eponymous knight has been in exile, presumed dead, Lex Luthor and Brainiac have wrested control of the planet from its democratic governments, and the Freedom From Information Act and a hologrammatic president support their every move. Even the Justice League—the sorry, remaining superhuman trio—are in their thrall. Who dares to free mankind?

This, the sequel to Frank Miller’s earlier work Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, is both a departure from the graphic novel’s current trend and a return to its roots. Bombastic, technicolor, graphic in more ways than one, it was originally subtitled DK2 as a wry nod to the trend of art-house classics spawning explosive if shallower sequels, packed with special effects and a star-studded cast: DK2 can boast such one-time news-stand regulars as The Atom, The Flash, Green Arrow. While the heroes look like heroes, the humans look, well, sub-human: cartoony, big-headed and less realistic than those wearing the tights. But none of this should be considered disparaging: the Dark Knight is still intelligent, thoughtful, multilayered and complex; only now there’s no more time to analyse and consider, only time to act. And we are happily dragged along on the roller-coaster, through page after page after page.

Indeed, in The Dark Knight Strikes Back we see the completion of a journey begun in part with the seminal 1987 Watchmen by Alan Moore. The first Dark Knight novel succeeded in blurring the traditional boundaries like never before: human, everyday stories interspersing the action; grim plotlines and realizations, and no easy answers to the questions it posed. In the final step, this sequel, we actually see the resilience of the graphic novel, even to the intellectual fashions that Moore and Miller impose upon it. The medium has nurtured Moore’s irony, ambiguity, self-reflexivity and self-pastiche, and then happily absorbed it: understood it, studied it, but ultimately moved on. With its increased musculature and an enhanced self-knowledge, the genre can now walk tall once again, safe in the knowledge that anything the written word can do, it can do just as well. Between them, Miller and Moore have reminded us that a giant indeed walks the earth.

posted at: 20:12 | path: / m / miller_frank | permanent link to this entry

As a man thinketh in his heart

Under the Net, by Iris Murdoch

£6.99, Vintage (2002)

(This review appeared in the ReadReverb newsletter, Nov 27, 2005, and on the ReadReverb website)

Can a debut novel be any more self-consciously intellectual? Murdoch burst onto the literary scene with Under The Net over fifty years ago, a book whose primary inspiration was philosophy, both as a taught subject and as a wellspring for ethical exploration, discussion and action. Is it possible to fashion an enjoyable novel out of the (at first sight) heavy, unyielding materials of existentialism and Platonic realism? Murdoch answers this question with a resounding yes, in the form of a cross between an Ealing comedy, a Chesterton mystery and a Wodehouse farce which far surpasses the sum of its genre parts.

The protagonist, Jake Donaghue, is a not-quite-failed hack, translator and author, who meanders rather than hurtles from one pecuniary crisis to the next. Turfed out of Magda’s apartment with his foil, Finn, he plans to move in chez philosophy lecturer Dave, but instead finds himself embroiled in a bizarre mixture of plot and counterplot, all revolving around his old flame Anna, onetime mentor (and innate philosopher) Hugo Belfounder, and Jake’s translation of a work by a little-known French writer. Just when the plot seems as complicated as it can get—when he’s stolen the canine filmstar Mister Mars and prompted Hugo to blow a hole in the side of his own film studio to escape from a Communist meeting raided by the police—a telegram arrives from Paris, and the reader must begin to be confused all over again.

Given the premise implies dense, unreadable wordiness, it’s a surprise to find this book refreshing, exciting, humorous and even, occasionally, thrilling. Interestingly, although Donaghue often ponders a little too deeply—almost onanistically, especially during a particularly affected scene which actually turns out to be the early stage of a drunken bender, and thus largely excuses itself in retrospect—into the great theories of existence, he almost invariably acts and makes decisions with surgical, instinctive precision.

Indeed, much of Donaghue’s internal monologues are presented with tongue in cheek at his natural chatterati leanings, while the book itself only ever wakes up in the presence of his Sartrean actions. With this shift of emphasis, Under the Net demonstrates the importance of moral constancy, during such emotional crises as might have unseated our rational appreciation of what it is to be good. That it manages to achieve such a high-minded goal while being a bright, robust, powerful read shows that a pill of any bitterness can in principle be sweetened, depending on the talents of the one who dispenses it.

posted at: 14:32 | path: / m / murdoch_iris | permanent link to this entry

In the midst of death, we are in life

Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami (transl. Jay Rubin)

£7.99, Vintage (2003)

Three friends, Toru, Naoko and Kizuki, have all reached seventeen years of age; Kizuki will never grow older. He commits suicide, inexplicably, after a companionable evening playing pool with Toru. Naoko, Kizuki’s girlfriend, appears normal but harbours an inconsolable inertia, dragging her towards death and Kizuki. Toru and Naoko find themselves drawn together as survivors of the tragedy, but after consummating their relationship they head off to different universities in 1960s Japan.

Naoko soon finds herself in a summer-of-love sanatorium, a half-way house between reality and mental institutions, that eventually proves to be an insufficient substitute for either of those environments. Meanwhile, Toru finds himself on the voyage of largely undisturbed studenthood: coasting past the rocky cliffs of unsuccessful student revolutions; idling on the tantalising, sunkissed beaches of his friend Nagasawa’s hedonistic sex-filled lifestyle; always returning to the safe, regimented harbours of his vaguely sinister dormitory life; and eventually pursuing the treasures of fellow traveller Midori. She, a confusing, confused, lively fellow student, quickens troubled waters much as Naoko seems to calm them down. Toru finds himself pulled between the two conflicting goals of Midori and Naoko, two possible waystations in his young life: but which can really lead him to his final destination, his true self?

In capturing the spirit of the decade, Norwegian Wood finds an authentic voice which nonetheless acts to distance itself from the modern-day reader. While its original release in 1987 might have swept up thirty- to fifty-somethings who could have related almost immediately to its weird atmosphere of free love, spirituality and politics, its English translation in 2003 seems a little too far away to leave so much of its assumptions unexplained. The sheer amount of sex that Toru indulges in, with friends and the friends of his girlfriends, frequently reaches Carry-On proportions. Naoko’s sanatorium is frankly ridiculous in its lack of rules, its self-declared equalization of doctor and patient, the openness of house it operates. It’s the sort of social experiment that, were it to actually have existed, would be famous or infamous, depending on its ultimate fate.

But while these details do occasionally jar—sometimes quite strongly—the central story is nonetheless strong and supple. When Toru is quiet and contemplative, and his contemplations are not specifically detailed in his narration or in somewhat formalized correspondence, then his unspoken inner self commands profound sympathy from the reader. Toru’s suppressed pain, his consternation, and his lack of awareness of the loss and lack of direction he is suffering from, waft intoxicatingly off the pages like the smell of patchouli; or, more appropriately, myrrh.

The novel ironically really comes alive as Toru sits at the bedside of Midori’s dying father: Toru’s own unashamed capacity for action leads him to eat and chat in front of the taciturn, fasting old man. The invalid is in turn encouraged to eat, and begins to talk in the urgent, cryptic monosyllables that are all his recent brain surgery will permit. From here Toru’s life with Midori gathers a speed that contrasts with Naoko’s (which is gradually slowing to a crawl) and Kizuki’s (long since stalled in his fume-filled car). Indeed, Toru is surrounded on all sides by suicides, fatalities and mysterious, permanent disappearances, yet he himself is always flung forward under these pressures like soap squeezed in the hands, cutting across in defiance of the narrative currents that threaten to pull him back to those dangerous seventeen years of age, where Kizuki continues to wait for all this novel’s players, arms extended in a terrible, bleak welcome.

posted at: 22:57 | path: / m / murakami_haruki | permanent link to this entry

A’ we luve ‘s been dung ajee

Stevenson Under the Palm Trees, by Alberto Manguel

£5.99, Canongate (2005)

Robert Louis Stevenson spent the last few years of his life on a Samoan island. Like many literary exiles, during that period he was both prolific and wracked with doubts as to his abilities. But what if he had travelled all those thousands of miles, only to meet a sinister spiritual twin? When Mr Baker, a Scottish Puritan, appears on the beach one evening barking bible verse and eschewing the somewhat indolent lifestyle of the native islanders, Stevenson finds his presence curious if unremarkable to others. But then the violence begins. And the rape. And, ultimately, the killing. Stevenson is implicated—or was it Mr Baker? Does Baker even exist, or is Stevenson much sicker than he thinks? How to solve the mysteries, before the community turns against the author and embarks on a course of retribution that Stevenson might, or might not, deserve?

Stevenson Under the Palm Trees, in the style of the more successful fictionalizing homages to great authors, is a spicy, redolent novella, written with illuminating affection rather than oppressive devotion. It slots very neatly, in fact, into gaps in Stevenson’s oeuvre: those he didn’t have chance to fill, describing Samoa and the colourful background of his own situation; and those he could never fill, consisting of dramatizations of his final days and moments. However, Stevenson himself is very much a prop, far less psychologically developed than his weird doppelgänger or than any of Stevenson’s own fictional characters, and he neither bungles nor strides his way through the criminal investigations that provide a structure for the book, but rather drifts along as the plot demands. This novella gives clues to his influences, his surroundings and his ultimate death: it would be a fitting tribute to his writing—a veritable pastiche—if it had also told us more about the man himself.

posted at: 18:35 | path: / m / manguel_alberto | permanent link to this entry