Book Review: Wes Brown's 'Shark'

New edition out Shark is out soon. Here's one of the first reviews of the new version by Kate Wilson:

Here we have a book quite unlike anything I have read before... Reading Wes Brown's debut novel is a little like getting punched in the stomach (in a good way)...

Set in Leeds, the protagonist John Usher is a soldier of the Iraq war returning to the humdrum rhythms of civilian life. Rather than appreciating the peace his return offers, John misses the violence and heat of his life as a soldier, seeking solace in aggressive games of pool at the failing local bar, and intense sexual encounters.

There were several things that surprised me about this book, not least of which is Brown's dedication to writing in a Leeds dialect. Initially I thought this might be distracting for me, as I haven't spent any time in Leeds and can't hear the accent, but I found I fell into the speech patterns. This was a daring move, and one which works extremely well in firmly placing the novel, and in giving an impression of that working class (for want of a better term) environment with its racism, misogynism and general struggle to adapt to the times. We are introduced to the tensions between Pakistani men and right-wing nationalist groups, and there is a real sense of a society on the point of collapse.

The dialect is made all the more interesting as it is balanced with a kind of rough poetic prose, which often uses expletives and alliterative, sexually explicit language with great results. While the characters themselves are limited in what they can articulate, Brown is a competent narrator with a distinctive style. He moves smoothly between the sections set in Leeds to those few scenes in the blistering heat of Basra. These transitions are not done too often though; this is not a novel comprised of flashbacks (which is what I had expected). Rather, these sections are used to emphasise the mundane cycles of John's life. He wakes up. He watches TV. He goes to the bar. He drinks beer. He has sex.

As he considers his prospects, the reader is left feeling as though there is nothing he can do that won't undermine his experiences at war. Sex is the closest he can get to the immediacy of experience that he craves, yet even that comes with the complication of attachment. The initial thrill, even John's proclamations of love, fade with time. Driven by an underlying desire for 'something more', the characters fail time and again to find any kind of real fulfillment.

For more reviews by Kate Wilson

Christopher Hitchens: Enlightenment Fundamentalist

If ever anybody lived for outraging new forms of correctness, it was Christopher Hitchens.

Anybody would think a man who’s targets ranged from Mother Teresa to Henry Kissinger, Noam Chomsky to Sarah Silverman, actively sought attention. Or so detractors have said. Though why should this be a sleight on the accuracy of his convictions is debatable. For when Hitchens is right, he is very right. Yet there is a lurking suspicion of controversialists: that what they miss in accuracy they make up for in shock value, and, ultimately, lack sincerity. While this may contain a grain of truth, it can be too easy, too safe to deny the liberating impulses of a contrarian. In an earlier book of missives exploring radical, dissenting positions, Letters to a Young Contrarian, Hitchens wrote: “The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”

And it was the independence of Christopher Hitchens mind that was shocking. Not the bombast – the performance, and the bravado – the sensitive and broad-ranging erudition that made counter-intuitive points sound right. Beyond the Wildean character was a brilliant literary critic who habitually stormed the world stage to outrage, delight and inform.

Hitchens had two basic modes: the commentary and the polemic. The former brought out his female qualities of intuition, gossip, sympathy; the latter, were either attacks on anything he didn’t like (generally some form of dogma, illiberalism or stupidity) or defenses of ideas or people he did liked. Or loved. These are macho, loud, and scolding. In She’s No Fundamentalist, Hitchens takes up the task of defending Ayan Hirsi Ali and happily names and shames his former acquaintances Timothy Garton Ash and Ian Baruma for incorrectly slurring Hirsi Ali as an “Enlightenment Fundementalist.”: But who dares to say [that belief in free speech is] the same as the belief that criticism of religion should be censored or the belief that faith should be imposed? To flirt with this equivalence is to give in to the demagogues and to hear, underneath their yells of triumph, the dismal moan of the trahison des clercs and “the enlightenment driven away.”

This enlightenment is not uncontroversial. The Greatest Think Tank in History, its promise of what Saul Bellow calls, ‘the universal eligibility to be noble’ is self-defeatingly seen as a cover for Western hegemony. Hitchens railed against cultural relativism and sacred cows, his pet hate being the idea of ‘moral equivalence’. And, in the intellect of Hitchens, we had a living specimen of the paradoxes of our politics. Had Hitchens classically moved Left to Right? Had he become a megaphone for Western Imperialism? Was he an advocate of universal freedom? Had the Left, as Nick Cohen contends, moved Rightward by implicitly supporting reactionaries in the name of multiculturalism? Hitchens saw a schism he thought transcended the traditional Left / Right divide: and it was this: “Briefly stated, this ongoing polemic takes place between the anti-imperialist Left, and the anti-totalitarian Left. In one shape or another, I have been involved – on both sides of it – all my life. And, in the case of any conflict, I have increasingly resolved it on the anti-totalitarian side.”

For the anti-imperialist, loyal to popular Marxist critique, the West is still the great superpower and the enemy of an enemy can so often be a friend. Islamists are resisting American hegemony. For the anti-totalitarian, Islamism and theocracy are barbaric, reactionary, oppressors of freedom. In Saul Bellow: The Great Assimilator Hitchens writes of Bellow’s political evolution: “His life as public intellectual is sometimes held to have followed art or trajectory: that from quasi-Trotskyist to full-blown ‘neocon’.” And, yet, like so many so-called neocons, like Hitchens himself, Bellow was hesitant to embrace the term. Further complicating the Left / Right diagnosis is the fact that many conservatives oppose liberal interventionism on the grounds that it is Leftwing Utopianism. Others, like Michael Gove, vehemently advocate interventionism as essential to defending the West. There are other Marxist critiques: no less the accelerationists who argue that capitalism, a revolutionary force, must be ‘speeded up’ in order to collapse itself, before moving onto a new stage of materialism. America, therefore, embodies the ideals of former Leftist movements and is the perfect agent of revolutionary change.

Left or Right, evidenced in these essays is a garrulous, individualist, raconteur glinting with contradictions: eloquent, literary, moral, boyish, patriotic, and charismatic in the way only a sort of upper-class Englishman can be. Essays range from the female humour deficit, to food and drink, to a cultural history of fellatio, the experience of torture and the oppression of the burka. Again, with the eclecticism of subject matter and forceful clarity of prose, parallels with his, Leftwing-patriot hero are easily drawn. Revealingly, in Hitchens’ view, George Orwell: “Decided to write as if people could be addressed as if they were humane and intelligent and democratic.” When we write about our heroes, we are really writing about the aspirations of our higher selves.

At its best, Arguably is Hitchens being Hitchens. George Orwell was novelist as well as journalist and committed himself to fighting earthly totalitarianism. Hitchens, by extension, no less courageous, no less anti-totalitarian, possibly stretched the definition of fascism to include Bin-Ladenism. Though what matters most is not whether Hitchens was Orwell, for, he was, unfailingly himself. Playing by the rules, keeping your head down, not speaking out for fearing the condemnation of peers may be safe, even lucrative, but it is not necessarily the path to truth. Arguably, true or untrue, Left or Right, reminds us of the sacred freedom of an unchained mind.

How would you shape the future of writing?

On the 15th of September NAWE, Arvon and NALD members came together for a day of discussion and debate about how to ensure that the next generation of young writers and literature activists can flourish. The event focussed on the needs of young people outside formal education and explored ways in which they can be supported.

To provoke and inform the discussion, NALD commissioned a number of leading young writers and activists to share their thoughts on how we can help the next generation to flourish. What do they want to see happen? What needs to change? What would flourishing mean? What’s working well?

Helen Mort a poet and five-time winner of the Foyle Young Poet Award, argues for, ‘a more low-key, constant set up support opportunities for young writers who are still experimenting with different ways of writing’. This is a powerful point. While there are many eye-catching and brilliant schemes – many brilliantly funded – long-term, low-key support can be equally, if not more valuable. Helen reminds us that while young poets have plenty of opportunities, for something “to flourish and maintain its bloom, it needs to be nurtured and sustained as well”.

The pathways to support are changing. Adam Lowe, a publisher and novelist, cites the difference between the word-of-mouth and arbitrary Google searches he used to rely on to social media and the way the industry opened up as soon as he met key contacts. He makes the case that, “there needs to be greater recognition of the changing face of literature. A written work may now include multimedia and be interactive. There is a continued blurring between writing and performance, writing and art, writing and music.” Might the changing form of the novel lead to new kinds of writers? How well does the sector accommodate them? It’s vital we join up the dots of existing provision without directing it, to offer expertise without rules, without creating arts cartels and infrastructures run by the same people in the same way. The problem of an arts ‘establishment’ and the conventions of poetry are tackled by David Tait, “If we’re to believe what we read, very few operate outside of [the established] framework.”

David makes the case that too many are playing it safe in contemporary poetry. There are too many voices that are sub-Duffy or sub-Armitage. To use Harold Bloom’s figuring, too many are ‘suffering the anxiety of influence’ and for poetry to truly ‘flourish’, poets need to be braver, and take on more “exciting range of subject matter”.

Being braver is the encouragement offered by Nici West. Young writers and activists should, “be provided with support to become independent within the literature development industry, and no longer rely on larger funded organisations.” There’s a balance to be struck between support and setting people free. There is a danger that too much support, and dependence, forever being labeled a ‘young writer’ can act as a stabliser and stop young people taking risks. For Nici, flourishing means, “[making] that step from volunteering and participating in free work, to producing themselves.”

The volunteering approach can be problematic. Free time has its own expenses, leading Alex Pryce to soberly point out: “literature organisations might have to get used to those talents they want to work with passing up opportunities more frequently in other fields.” The underlying assumptions are changing and have to change to suit new developments: the economic downturn, the cost of higher education and the rise of digital mean that the literature landscape is a changed place. Did the value attached to higher education institutionalize the practice and thinking of young writers? Alex argues that, “the Arts need to consider if in some cases formal education isn’t exactly the answer [they’ve] recently become accustomed to it being” and “in response to fees increases, do literature organisations need to rethink their recruitment strategies?”

The challenges for young writers go beyond the personal, they are strategic and economic. These challenges are real. Joe Kriss asks us to evaluate the current infrastructure and warns, “If there are not formal positions or opportunities available in arts organisations, writers and activists must have the skills to find their own income.” His position echoes that of Nici West, “If these new writers and activists are taught how to run their own organisations and market themselves by taking a grassroots and regional approach, they will also create new networks and audiences for literature.”

Tom Chivers, a poet and live literature promoter, has embraced the notion of creating new networks wholeheartedly and says: “Literature activists sometimes have ‘proper jobs’ but just as often they sit outside, or on the peripheries of, the professional arts or publishing industries. This is what entrepreneurship looks like, in early stages at least […] those with responsibilities to guide strategy over the entire sector need to realize this, and offer appropriate support and funding.”

Tom believes, “Activism is about risk. So it shouldn’t be too cozily supported by the ‘industry’.”

How can we support young writers and not be cozily restrictive? What do they want from arts organisations? How do we overcome the economic challenges? Where is the digital shift taking literature? These provocations certainly make for interesting reading and each shed light on a different perspective of life as a young writer and activist. The urgency of an uncertain future means, ‘to know and not to act is not to know’. Perhaps this is the true meaning of activism? If ever there was a time to rethink and evaluate how best to support young writers and activists, it’s now.

For the rest of the provocations

NALD

The great euro swindle

More admissions from the Left. This time it's the BBC admitting they sidelined debate from Eurosceptics and even called them 'mad':

As Rod Liddle, then editor of the Radio 4's Today programme, said: "The whole ethos of the BBC and all the staff was that Eurosceptics were xenophobes." He recalls one meeting with a senior BBC figure over Eurosceptic complaints of bias. "Rod, the thing you have to understand is these people are mad. They are mad."

Click here for the full article in The Telegraph. Perhaps had the BBC honoured its supposed commitment to neutrality, we might have had an electorate better informed about the dangers of the European Union?

Labour conference: why Ed Balls had to apologise

Finally, after years of much mockery and bile from the Left defending the deficit reduction plan and attacking Labour's record on immigration, Ed Balls has admitted Labour got things wrong. It's a startling admission from a political firebrand:

He admitted that Labour had not spent every penny wisely, an admission of waste. He also said he agreed with David Miliband that a Labour government should not have been judge and jury on whether the government is meeting its fiscal rules.

Indeed the centrepiece of Balls's speech is that Labour must embrace the concept of the Office for Budget Responsibility, an independent body set up by the coalition which is responsible for monitoring public finances and setting out growth forecasts.

He also accepted Labour had lost trust on the economy, adding "it's a big task" to turn that around, pointing out that opposition in the UK can last 18 years.

"Opposition is about answering the big question, but I can't answer that question unless people are trusting in our credibility and our ability to make tough decisions and that means acknowledging things which went wrong as well."

In his speech he mentioned failure to control immigration, the 10p tax rate and the 75p pension rise. Collectively those amount to some big admissions.

The Guardian

Cosmopolis review in Politics On Toast

When Francis Fukuyama wrote “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such…” triumphalism was in the air; not only had the United States seen off it’s geopolitical rivals – starting with Nazism and finishing with Communism. It ended history. History in the Hegelian sense. The Utopianism once seen on the Left could now be seen on the Right: free markets and liberal democracy were inseparable. The future was American.

And for some years, these assumptions became cultural orthodoxy. Enter the Masters of the Universe:

“He kept doing this because he knew the yen could not go any higher. He explained that they were levels it could not reach. The market knew this. There were oscillations and shocks that the market tolerated to a certain point but not beyond. The yen itself knew it could not go higher. But it did go higher, time and again.”

In Cosmopolis, Eric Packer, is not the self-styled Master of the Tom Wolf’s Bonfire of the Vanities. He is typically DeLillo-esque. A multi-billionaire, prone to abstraction and numerical mysticism, riding through New York City in a stretch limo on a day heavy with what Saul Bellow called ‘event glamour’. The President is in town, a rapper’s funeral proceeds through the streets and an anti-globalisation protestors demonstrate in Times Square.

Don DeLillo has created a canon of literature as idiosyncratic as it is prescient. Veering away from the compendious Underworld and voodoo histories of Libra, the author’s later works have become slimmer, humbler, abstract, invariably strange. Of these later works Point Omega (2010) is the most successful with the what can only be described as a ‘quantum ghost story’ The Body Artist, the least. What could easily be dismissed as haute couture and self-regard, DeLillo has attempted an audacious novella. Packer is sub-human. An idiot savant. Like Leopold Bloom, setting out on a voyage of the mundane to the butchers’ shop in Ulysses, Packer sets out to get himself a haircut. But he is not on foot. His mode of transport is the distancing limousine in which he spends his morning engaged in bizarre conversations, unfettered lusts and having a rectal examination whilst lusting over a female colleague via telescreen.

It’s not all cyber-capitalist, market mysticism in the world of Eric Packers as he rolls around town when it’s revealed that he is has been the subject of death threats. DeLillo has written at great length about something he calls ‘Assassination Aura’; a sense of how historical event can weave their way into fiction. There are DeLillo’s hallmarks: the power of crowds, the auspices of technology and the threat of terrorism, ulterior modes of knowledge, the vacuity of consumer culture, and outright abstraction:

“Because time is a corporate asset now. It belongs to the free market system. The present is harder to find. It is being sucked out of the world to make way for the future. The future becomes insistent.”

Time has become a preoccupation of DeLillo, who’s interest of late has primarily become the nature of reality. From this everything else follows. It is the only way to understand DeLillo, the strange licks of his language, the every so slightly parallel universe he creates with a quantum awareness.

For the rest of the article

Laurie Penny: Class snobbery about the EDL won't halt the far right

To those on the Left - and to be exact - members of the UAF (Unite Against Facism) who trawl Twitter looking for anything that might inflame their phosphorescent outrage, here's Laurie Penny, a leading Left wing thinker, reminding you that hatred toward the despicable EDL should not pour out into class snobbery, violence and misogyny:

"Never hit a woman, but do kick a dog." Since seeing a video of two young "anti-fascists" apparently crowing over the embarrassing assault of a female member of the English Defence League at their failed demonstration in London last Saturday, those words have been reverberating in my brain. In the clip, a young, excited, middle-class man at the successful Unite Against Fascism counter-demonstration sneers that "the most tattooed, horrible scrote of a woman I've ever seen" fell out of a retreating coach. His friend sniggers as he describes how she was "left bewildered and isolated" before being kicked and punched. "Never hit a woman, but they're not women," he adds. His objection to the victim seems to have more to do with the fact that she was tattooed, and "horrible" than the fact of her attendance at a far-right hate march.

It's not just the incident itself which is shocking, but the attitude the video bears out, a smug, nasty condescension replacing real political analysis. The video was posted on EDLRaw – a pro-EDL YouTube channel – and its source has not yet been verified. However, when I shared it on social media, asking for confirmation, a handful attempted to excuse the jeering with the mantra "a fascist is a fascist".

The implication was that violence, class prejudice and misogyny can be tolerated on the left as long as its targets have attended a terrifying racist intimidation parade. An eye for an eye: the EDL hate us and misunderstand us, so it's alright for us to hate and misunderstand them right back. I marched with 1,500 others to defend the borough of Tower Hamlets, where I used to live, from the racists I saw chanting "you're not English anymore" at young black boys in the street, and I understand the impulse to defend our homes and communities from far-right violence. However, if we truly mean to protect Britain's most deprived areas from the rise of the far right, the threat of violence in return is no sustainable strategy, and nor is sexist sneering over a woman getting a humiliating beating.

That type of unpleasant posturing is not at all representative of organisations like Hope Not Hate, Unite Against Fascism or, indeed, of the majority of European anti-fascists who demonstrate and organise to resist the infection of politics and culture by the type of racist, far-right ideology that led to the massacre of 77 people in Norway recently. There remains, however, a stubborn strain of snobbery on the middle-class left that is all the more important to address because it is uncomfortable.

For the rest of the article

The Independent

Philip Larkin: Poems selected by Martin Amis

In his review of Philip Larkin Poems: Selected by Martin Amis, Sean O'Brien strangely focuses his review on the editor's introduction and segways into an obscure, if bevelling long-running argument in literature:

Ideology, as has been pointed out by Amis's sometime opponent Terry Eagleton, among others, has the useful characteristic of only afflicting other people. Amis states that the attacks on Larkin's reputation following the publication of Andrew Motion's biography and the letters occurred "during the high noon, the manly pomp, of the social ideology we call PC", and he declares: "All ideologies are essentially bovine." There were efforts to "demote" Larkin, but he is still here, still being read, still clearly racist and misogynistic (though not in the poems) and still, neither despite nor because of these flaws, and in the opinion of many people who can't stand his political or sexual attitudes, a great poet. It's no good "our" wanting him to be like "us" – any more than it is for Amis to pretend that his own irascible liberalism is free of ideological constraint.

He goes on to comment that he too "was struck by Larkin's reflexive, stock-response 'racism', and by his peculiarly tightfisted 'misogyny' [Amis's quotation marks]. But I bore in mind the simple truth that writers' private lives don't matter; only the work matters."

Does only the work matter? Can biography inform our reading of the work? Or is this a distraction from the universal enterprise of creation?

If Martin Amis seriously belives, "only the work matters" - he has a funny way of showing it. Rhapsodising for years now about the private predilcitions of Bellow and Nabokov; he even makes signifiant points in his introduction to this particular collection based on biographical detail. Amis has made an art of self-contradiction. Perhaps the simple truth is the only that thing matters.