Netherland

Netherland
Joseph O’Neill
In “One Art,” Elizabeth Bishop wrote that “the art of losing isn’t hard to master”. In Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, released in 2008 and a ubiquitous title on year-end lists, this poetic axiom is challenged—losing is hard, O’Neill suggests, and requires everything you have. The novel, described by James Wood as “a post-colonial retelling of The Great Gatsby” is in fact a fascinating inversion of the context of Fitzgerald’s novel. Where Gatsby rose in affluent East Egg amidst 1920’s high-spirits and optimism, Netherland takes place in a New York rattled by the events of 9/11 and a London politically confused and morally adrift, with its purported Gatsby-analogue, Chuck Ramkissoon, moving in subaltern circles, more Wolfsheim, perhaps, than Gatsby.
Personally, having gone into the book already expecting a Fitzgerald homage, I was surprised and happy to find out that while there are some thematic similarities, O’Neill for the most part tells an original story. This is less a “retelling of Gatsby” than simply an essentially pretty simple story about American identity—why it occasionally seems so familiar is that these are universal sentiments O’Neill is taking on, things entrenched in our national consciousness. By making his most important characters immigrants (Ramkissoon is from Trinidad and Hans van den Boek, the narrator, comes from London by way of Denmark) these traits are thrown into relief. Like every “American story” worthy of the title, Netherland focuses on outsiders attempting to find a way to incorporate themselves into the national jigsaw puzzle, financially, socially, emotionally, and spiritually. O’Neill strolls into the realm of easy clichés and proceeds to wreck up the place, flipping things over and turning them inside out until every familiar trope, the fat black gangster, the emotionally frigid businessman, the estranged marriage, the affair, the murder, the flashback, all the ingredients of a staggeringly mediocre novel, become strange and new. The most useful similarity between this novel and Gatsby is in fact their dissimilarity with the tropes of their time, their transformation of the mundane into the meaningful.
Another frequent claim is that Netherland is “a 9/11 novel,” which is in some ways just as untrue. While the events of 9/11 do play a major part in setting up the plot, most of this takes place before the novel begins, and while the narrative does jump back and forth from London in 2006 to New York in the early years of this century to Holland in the 70’s to Trinidad and back again, 9/11 is mostly dealt with as a catalyst rather than as an event in and of itself. The most poignant treatment of the event is near the end of the novel, when Hans is confronted with the difference between his first-hand experience of 9/11 and how his fellow upper-middle class European bankers it. Its less an act of physical violence in the novel so much as the heart of a chain-reaction upsetting social and cultural comforts and assurances, pitting him against himself, against his social class, and driving his family apart. Similarly, the novel takes more interest in what came out of 9/11—the war in Iraq, rising overseas frustration with the Bush presidency, paranoia in England. It lurks like a sort of sociopolitical big bang at the post-historical heart of the 21st century, a watershed for the new world Hans is forced to navigate. So no, Netherland is not a 9/11 novel, whatever that may be, any more than The Charterhouse of Parma is a Napoleon novel or The Moviegoer is a Mardi Gras novel. These novels take place in an atmosphere shaped and shaded by these events, but they are not tied to them plot-wise and take them as a starting rather than a focal point.
In Netherland, O’Neill, an Irish born, half-Turkish writer raised in the Netherlands, has written what is already being referred to as one of the great novels of the American tradition, one featuring a cast of immigrants, expatriates, aliens legal and otherwise, newcomers and outsiders. As a document of the start of this century it captures the restlessness and the sense of shifting boundaries like no other book I can think of. As a portrait of New York City it ranks with Bright Lights Big City, The Age of Innocence and Fortress of Solitude. It’s also easily the most (the only?) interesting book about cricket I’ve ever read. In a handful of years dominated by overhyped novels and memoirs of intense but fleeting interest, Netherland deserves every ounce of attention it has received.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Fonts

I never thought I'd become that guy who gets all worked up about graphic design and type-face and all, but I've recently fallen in love with the work of a dude named David Pearson, probably most recognizable for his work on the recent Penguin Great Ideas line.


Now on some level I've got mixed feelings about this line. Putting out stuff like Seneca and Montaigne in friendly, pocket-sized editions (not to mention two very cleverly selected little Orwell collections) is a good thing, charging eight or nine dollars for at most around 200 petite pages, maybe not so much. However, part of what you're paying here is the packaging, and the packaging is gorgeous.

I've got Orwell's Why I Write sitting on my desk next to me, and it is basically just a ton of fun to have around. The cover stock is heavyish with a very satisfying and subtle pulpiness, with tasteful embossing, and the interior paper is clean and bright with a little bit of nice grain visible under the right light. The trade dress for each 20-book volume is classy, with uniform spines and covers using black, white, and one of three spot-colors depending on the volume. It's one of those books that makes you feel better just to look at, and the same is true as the other books in the line I've seen.

Pearson's cover designs run the gamut from the minimalism of The Communist Manifesto and Seneca's On the Shortness of Life (which seems to use the same font as Wes Anderson's movies, oddly) to the ornate dress of Montaigne's On Friendship, to the homily florid, almost Beat-looking design of Tolstoy's Confession. The Proust volume has a great looking Art Nouveau while the Tolstoy is rocking a sort of Proletkult, protest poster aesthetic. There are a lot of clever decisions in the line, none more clever than Walter Benjamin's The Work of in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which is a terrific visual pun.

Overall, price aside, these are beautiful, beautiful editions of books ranging from, I'd say, pretty worthwhile to fucking essential to being a human being. Keep an eye out for them-- I've found a number of them for very cheap at thrift stores and on amazon.

Wolfgang

Some decent finds at Wolfgang today: here goes!

Lately I've been hearing some buzz about this Polish author, Witold Gombrowicz. He died in 1969 so I guess all this excitement has been a long time coming. The big thing I've seen him in connection to is this sort of absurdist roman a clef the name of which I can't recall, but I decided to start with Bacacay, a book of short fiction. The inside flap talks about "a balloonist... beset by erotic lepers..." so I'm expecting good things.

I also picked up Down and Out in Paris and London, which I have been wistfully admiring in book stores for the better part of the year. It was 25% off so I figured I might as well get it over with. I'm a big fan of Orwell's memoir work, much more so than his political allegories, and I've heard very good things about this book. I'm considering reading it alongside Kitchen Confidential since they seem to cover eerily similar ground.

Roethke's collected poems was five bucks so there wasn't much waffling around on that one. It is gorgeous. I'll probably post some things from it later. In the check-out line I also nabbed some Edna St. Vincent-Millay. Dunno why, but it was a dollar.

Some things I loved but regrettably did not have the money to buy, really: Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, Motherless Brooklyn, and some Myla Goldberg stories.

Basically I love it all.

Band of Outsiders

Jean-Luc Godard

This Thing: Is the Criterion release of Godard's 1964 ode to shitty American crime novels.

Best Bit: The Madison. Anna Karina's beautiful and ungainly Odile. Sami Frey's bizarre and weirdly slick little gestures and tics. The DVD has some pretty decent extras on it too, particularly a guide to Godard's nods and references throughout the film.

Worst Bit: Band of Outsiders has a pretty wide-spread reputation as a relatively mediocre movie as far as Godard goes-- which to an extent is true, I guess. It is a bit slight, and somewhat unevenly paced.

Couldn't Believe: How imperfectly I'd remembered this movie. I last saw it on VHS a number of years ago, and mainly kept a lot of its playfulness and the coy attitude of its first hour or so. I think this is basically the way it goes, considering the scenes its known for-- the run through the Louvre, the minute of silence. Nobody ever cites Anna Karina getting popped in the mouth. Is the dramatic tonal shift that occurs during the actual robbery an homage to Godard's noir source material, a kind of wry tribute, or is it supposed to be a legitimate narrative development? I'd say the former, considering that the movie ends with a Chaplin reference and the jokey promise of a sequel, but its still somewhat shocking to see the goofy, charming main characters transform into brutal thugs. It works in the context of the movie, I think, but its interesting how this aspect is often glossed over, both in criticism and in the memory.

I Guess: I can't say this is anywhere near Godard's best movie, but as a brisk, funny and good-natured paean to pulp fiction and the aimless thrills of hanging around it works. Criterion of course does a great job with the sound and visuals-- its something there's really isn't a good reason not to see, but definitely don't watch it and decide your Godard-watchin' quota is filled for life. If you like it, which you probably will, take the opportunity to get deeper into his work. Alphaville is a great next step.

Foam of the Daze

Boris Vian

This Thing: Is the newest translation of Vian's 1947 L'Ecume des Jours, a sort of existential Alice in Wonderland by way of Bernie Wooster.

Best Bit: The unbelievably strange and charming turn-table cake. Jean-Sol Partre. Jazz and pretty girls.

Worst Bit: Vian's female characters were a little flat, and, to be bitchy, if you're going to include as many annotations as this translation does, it would be cool to have them as footnotes instead of all clumped together in the back of the book.

Couldn't Believe: How startling and how startlingly effective the shift in tone about halfway through is. How huge this book's reputation is in France in comparison to its relative obscurity over here.

I Guess: I can't understate the complete reversal this book's tone undergoes from the first pages to the last while maintaining a consistent voice. It goes from a totally charming and adorable literary dessert to one of the most wrenching and brutal conclusions I've read in a long, long time, without seeming contrived or obvious. Vian and translator Brian Harper both deserve the hugest of props. Read this.

Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

Chang, Jeff. 2005. Picador.

This Thing: Is less a book about hip-hop so much as it is a history of American urban culture in a post-Civil Rights Movement world. Chang weaves the origins and evolution of hip-hop culture into the story of America's under-privileged idealists and opportunists.

Best Bits: Chang's integration of political science, sociology, music and history. Public Enemy. Civic outrage.

Worst Bits: Late in the book, Chang seems to sort of lose interest in the musical side of things-- as soon as hip-hop becomes a commercial commodity, his investment basically flies out the window. Sure, he has a right to focus on the activist issues that clearly fascinate him, but is it really a complete history of the generation if you skimp out on its growth into a hugely visible discourse?

Couldn't Believe: Many of the incredibly juicy anecdotes he works in throughout the book. Ever wonder about how the cocaine industry turned into the crack industry? What the deal with Flava Flav was? When, exactly, Ice Cube sold out? Wonder no more.

I Guess: As uneven and flawed as this book feels at times, its still a riveting and really fun read. It has the flow and appeal of its source material, and is surprisingly eye-opening in terms of the country's disgraceful urban policies in the past forty years. Check it out, but don't feel bad about skimming once in a while.