Something New

  We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

“OBLIGATE CARNIVORE and other stories” by Stephanie Johnson (Published by Quentin Wilson, $NZ35) ;  “THE ELEVENTH HOUR”  ” by Salman Rushdie (Published by Jonathan Cape, London; in New Zealand marketed by Penguin, $NZ38)

 

            Reviewing a collection of short stories is very like reviewing a collection of poetry. Some of the stories [or poems] will be outstanding, some will be amusing, some will be frightening, some will be forgettable and a very few will be profound. Stephanie Johnson has so far published 16 novels  (two of them published under a pseudonym), two works of non-fiction, two collections of poetry and three collections of  short stories. Obligate Carnivore and other stories is her fourth collection of short stories. It contains 27 stories and of course it is impossible for me to give an account of all of them. So first let me state the obvious: Stephanie Johnson’s writing is still in top form. She gives us us a variety of genres, ideas and a well-used wit when it is needed. She can be scathing sometimes, but only when she really has to. In short, she knows what she is doing. I will not attempt to make comments on all the stories in this collection. In fact, while I read with pleasure all of Obligate Carnivore and other stories, I have decided to deal here with only the first half of this collection.

            So here are some things you will find.

There are some tales set in Australia, a country with which Stephanie Johnson is well acquainted.  Set in  Australia are “Blue Zone” which shows wealthy Kiwis and others in Australia showing their complacence about their country and their own crassness. “Is She Where” is a sad story of a man who can’t deal with courtesy.  “Bear” concerns an Aussie academic, getting old and losing the taste for chasing women at academic gatherings

Away from Oz, Johnson often makes use of ambiguity, the best example being “Eruera und Ich” in which we are forced to question the value of a sort-off hippy-ish life. And there is a similar ambiguity in the way she deals with “My Lady’s View, 1972”,  a tale about pot-smoking women when they were younger.

There are sad tales of old age and dying in “Ground Bones” and in “Institutional Memory” which has a foolish old man still trying to be a rake when he’s really past it.

And of course there are the serious things – the profound things in fact. Without giving away all the details, “Paternity” it is a very persuasive tale of “soft” racism which can seep into the minds of people who believe they are upright and honest. “Shell Piano” is a fantasy about Katherine Mansfield attempting to write a full-length novel as tuberculous meningitis gnaws at her. The sad fact is that she never wrote a full novel, and that is the sorrow of it. There is deep irony in “The Sensitive Reader” – suggesting that, in literature, being too sensitive can destroy the colour of writing. Then there is “The New Zealand Experience”, written in the first person, longer than most stories in this collection. It begins as a rollicking  story of two young cocksure men (one Australian, one American) who buy a crappy van and try to explore New Zealand while doping themselves up. All good fun until it turns to something very sinister. Once again, there is much hard irony here, especially when these two travellers make all sorts of flippant and  condescending comments about the country they chose to explore.  And just to put the cream on the cake, let me tell you about the protagonist – the main character as shown on the cover of this book  - the Obligate Carnivore. It is at once funny and horrifying – in fact its outcome is sheer grand guignol, which will appal some readers and make others laugh. Dare I say that I am always on the side of the cat.

And that, I repeat, is only half of this collection.

Foot Note: For the record you can find on this blog reviews of Stephanie Johnson’s novels “The Open World” , “The WritingClass” , “The Writers Festival”  and the non-fiction “West Island”  a very interesting account of New Zealand writers, poets and other artistic people who emigrated to Australia. One of my favourite books.

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Why is Salman Rushdie’s latest collection of stories called The Eleventh Hour?  It is because “the eleventh hour” in our life is when we become aware that life is short. After all, when the twelfth chime strikes, we die. So here there are stories featuring old age. The Eleventh Hour is made of two short stories and three novelle.

A short story called “In the South” opens the book. In the southern part of India, two old men live next door to each other and often quarrel with each other, but only gradually do they understand that they really need each other…or at least one of them does.  Of  course you wouldn’t expect an acerbic writer like Salman Rushdie to present all this as sweetness and light, but it is a realistic image of what old life can be. And concluding the book, there is the short story  “The Old Man in the Piazza”, this time set in Italy. An old man, who enjoys sitting in the piazza, begins to be seen as a sort of wise man who can answer every question and give people advice… not that he himself believes that he is really all that wise. We come to understand that words are very limited things. At least, that is what I think Salman Rushdie was suggesting.

And between these two short stories, there are the three novelle one set in India, one set in England, and one set in America – in other words, the three countries Rushdie knows best.

“The Musician of Kahani”, set in India, is the real highlight of the book – very readable and, in its own ironic way, very funny. India has been decolonised and is no longer part of the British Empire… but some conservative Indians still pine for the older days and still insist on using the Anglo street-names that are now supposed to be defunct. Meena has married an old academic, Raheen. But it takes a long time before they give birth to their one-and-only child, Chandni. Chandni turns out to be a musical prodigy – in childhood she can play perfectly on the piano works by Beethoven, Mozart and all the classics; as well as becoming an expert in playing the Sitar. She becomes a phenomenon. She is known world-wide… and of course people want to exploit her. I will go no further in this synopsis for fear of spoiling the jokes that come. Suffice it to say that a popular sportsman wants to marry Chandni, and the planned wedding allows Rushdie to satirise the crassness of Bollywood-style wedding; and in the character of Raheen he chortles at all the gullible people [academics included] who fall for money-making gurus. And even Chandni’s final revenge in really a great joke. Rushdie is not ridiculing the Indian nation, but like all the real satirists, he is ridiculing what is extreme or foolish.

“Late” is set in England – specifically in the university of Cambridge. It is a ghost story but, as it develops, it is ultimately a very didactic one. A young Indian scholar, Rosa. has been given the task of going through the papers of the late S. M. Arthur, who was best known for a novel he had written set in India. I thought this novella would deal with the clash between the values of a young Indian woman and the values of a deceased old English man. But that is not where it goes. S. M. Arthur appears [as a ghost] to Rosa, and tells of how he had been misused because he was homosexual, not only at Cambridge but when he was working at Bletchley Park during the Second World War… by which time, you will understand that Rushdie has created an amalgam of E. M. Forster and Alan Turing. So the sorrow was that he was never given freedom and honours when homosexuality was still a crime. Only when he was long dead did he get given, late, the honours he deserved. Hence the title “Late”. Okay, all in a good cause, but apart from some amusing tales about snobbery at the college, “Late” is too much like a lecture, but it is an interesting read..

And so to “Oklahoma” which is [obviously] set in the U.S.A. Some Europeans settle in  America. They make themselves erudite and like talking about Kafka and James Joyce and other worthies. The story is supposed written by a man called Mamouli Ajeeb… and there is a manuscript about a man fearing madness… and there is a lost uncle who might have gone to Oklahoma. Dear reader, though there are some interesting flashes in this novella, I think that in this one Rushdie overreaches himself, getting into the land of cryptic.

Footnote: Some comments. I’ve noticed that Salman Rushdie often refers to films he likes and remembers, and this happens in different parts of The Eleventh Hour. I have very mixed feeling about his works. You can’t help admiring a man who was hounded by fanatics who called fatwa on him and set out to murder him.  He had to go in hiding for over a year… and when he was able to come out again, he was almost murdered and knifed, losing one of his eyes. I aways admired his greatest book Midnight’s Children and I still do. But even while reading his memoirs of his time in hiding, Joseph Anton,  I saw an awful lot of egotism in his writing… and in his Fury , he does seem to be settling scores with people.