This Is the Ritual by Rob Doyle

Published in the UK in 2016; published by Bloomsbury USA on January 24, 2017

This Is the Ritual is a collection of stories that might be classified as experimental. As is the tendency in experimental fiction, some of the experiments work and others don’t. Doyle also tosses a bit of nonfiction into the collection. This is what you get:

“John-Paul Finnegan, Paltry Realist” is a rant by John-Paul Finnegan during a ferry ride, who explains to Rob Doyle that the Irish are afraid of literature and too stupid to read it. He defends Paltry Realism, a literary school of his own invention, in which writers eschew style or quality and produce as many never-to-be-published words as they can fit on a page each day. Paltry Realism contrasts with Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness style by presenting “a machinegun of consciousness, or a self-bludgeoning of consciousness, … a kind of insane vomiting of language.” The story (it’s really more of an existential rant than a story) is quite funny, despite the serious themes it raises, although readers who dislike foul language will want to stay far away from it. The story points to, and continues, the tradition of Irish writers having a love/hate relationship with Ireland.

In “No-Man’s Land,” a young man with mental health issues chats with an unemployed alcoholic while taking a walk through a largely abandoned industrial estate on the outskirts of Dublin. Listening to the older man, the younger man gets a glimpse of his future self.

“Exiled in the Infinite” is an essay about Killian Turner, an Irish avant garde writer who, like Beckett and Joyce, wished to be considered European rather than Irish (a comment upon Beckett and Joyce that Rob Doyle also makes in “John-Paul Finnegan, Paltry Realist”). The essay didn’t convince me to read Turner, although he seems to have lived an interesting life.

“Paris Story” describes a writer who is jealous of the success of another writer and gives her story collection a spiteful pseudonymous review, about which he feels guilty after they marry. Apart from the bare bones in that one-sentence synopsis, the story didn’t make a lick of sense to me.

“Outposts” is a collection of half-formed thoughts, existential observations made in various locations around the world. Whether the thoughts are produced by healthy minds isn’t at all clear. In his Acknowledgements, Doyle explains that the story consists of phrases snatched from a variety of sources. Some of the story seems self-referential — the struggling artist tiring of the struggle to make art, relationships torn apart by honesty or dishonesty — and a lot of it seems to be about the fear of life, but I can’t say that this collection of well-crafted half sentences resonated with me.

“Barcelona” is the city to which Alicia moved when she escaped from a bad relationship. With just a few observations of a few months in her new life, the story develops Alicia in surprising depth.

The aging youngsters in “Mexico Drift” explore nihilism and violent sex, having adopted attitudes of “world-hating defeatism.” There is barely enough content in this story to qualify it as a character sketch of dreary characters.

The narrator of “Anus — Black Sun” discovers the meditative benefits of watching a porn clip that shows nothing but an immobile anus. I’m just not sure what to make of that.

The narrator of “On Nietzsche” wants to write a book about Nietzsche but is so intimidated by the scope of the project, and so obsessed with the fear that he will die before he completes it, that he does nothing. This leads him to develop a philosophy of his own, centered around boredom (after he abandons a line of philosophical inquiry centered around a stinking toilet). Doyle’s observation that the best literature is fundamentally boring might apply to this story. It’s dull, but it is one of the better stories in the collection.

“Three Writers” purports to be a collection of essays exploring the work of three writers, two of whom never published. Since I can find no evidence that the writers actually existed, I assume this is a work of fiction, perhaps a place for Doyle to set down ideas for books that he didn’t bother to write himself.

The narrator of “The Turk” feels sexually inadequate (a common theme in these stories) in light of his competition with a Turk for a woman’s affection. I can’t say I found much value in this one.

“Final Email from P. Cranley” purports to be the reproduction of an actual email Doyle received, written in the abbreviated form that is common to text messages. The sender is in San Francisco and clearly struggling with mental health issues, including religious delusions that are exacerbated by his consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms. It is what it is, and what it is isn’t terribly interesting.

“Jean Pierre-Passolet, a Reminiscence” purports to be a discussion of a writer the narrator interviewed. I think Doyle used this story to show off his own knowledge of literature and philosophy which, while impressive, does not make for compelling fiction.

There are moments of truth and clarity in these stories, but there are also moments of drudgery and insignificance. Since the former outweigh the latter, and because I like writers who take chances, I’m recommending this collection, but only for a few of the stories.

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Merry Christmas!

Faller by Will McIntosh

Published by Tor Books on October 25, 2016

I suppose a writer who plays with singularities can make up his own rules of physics because where singularities are concerned, nobody knows what the rules are, if any exist. Still, I’ve seen Roadrunner cartoons that are easier to believe than the events that transpire in Faller. I liked the novel, but it isn’t a story that can be taken seriously.

Initially, two storylines, past and present, keep the reader guessing about what’s going on. At about the novel’s midway point, enough clues have been planted to give the reader a sense of how the stories connect.

The story begins at some point after Day One, the day everyone found themselves without a memory. People know only that they are near the edge of the world. The world has a rather small footprint, several thousand paces in each direction. A man who eventually calls himself Faller finds a toy soldier with a parachute in his pocket, something he must have placed there as a clue before the event. Faller turns out to be a prophetic name when he finds himself falling off the edge of the world. In fact, falling is what he does for a few chapters.

The second storyline begins with Faller entering a world that is the same but different from the one he left. It’s a bigger world with more people (a population of maybe 15,000) and conflicts between groups are more complex, but its inhabitants don’t know who they are or how they got there or what the war machines that surround them are supposed to do. Faller isn’t sure what to make of the world and its inhabitants aren’t sure what to make of Faller, although they assume he’s a spy. Like the world from which he fell, this one has an edge.

Alternating with the story of Faller’s predicament are chapters that follow six friends who live in what appears to be a regulation-size Earth. The world is at war. A physicist and a biotech guy have combined to make a quantum cloning machine that duplicates organs without the diseases that afflict them, a potential solution to the bioterrorism epidemics that are ravaging the world. When one of the group gets sick, however, organ replacement won’t help, because brain transplants are beyond medical science. The afflicted woman nevertheless hits upon a “second best” solution that might assure her survival … in a sense.

Faller has significant entertainment value, although it’s the kind of story that demands not just the suspension of disbelief, but the ingestion of mind-altering chemicals to appreciate its daffy nature. Sadly, I didn’t have access to any while I was reading this, but I nevertheless liked the book. Good character development and an unpredictable plot contributed to my enjoyment of a story that I couldn’t even begin to believe.

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Agnes by Peter Stamm

First published in German in 1998; first published in translation in the UK in 2000; published by Other Press on October 25, 2016

Agnes is narrated by a man whose name we never learn. The narrator is in the Chicago Public Library, researching a book about luxury trains, when he meets Agnes. They begin a daily ritual of hanging out together. Later, over dinner, Agnes starts to share her dislikes (eating) and phobias (death). After they begin sleeping together, Agnes shares some details of her antisocial past.

Agnes wants the narrator to write a story about her so that she’ll know what he thinks of her. The narrator complies, at first chronicling their past, but eventually writing about events that have not yet happened. Agnes dutifully fulfills the role that the book ascribes to her.

Of course, life can’t be scripted, which may be Peter Stamm’s point. Life follows a course we can’t predict and things do not always work out the way we plan. Rewriting a life isn’t as easy as rewriting a story.

Eventually, however, the narrator appears to be writing the life he would prefer rather than the life he’s living. I suppose we all do that, in a way, imaging a life that is different from the one we live, even if we don’t write down our imaginings. But again, writing an imagined life rather than living a real one may not be the best route to happiness.

The bleak ending is telegraphed at the novel’s beginning. Readers looking for a warm and fuzzy reading experience should stay far away from Stamm.

The characters in the last Stamm novel I read (Seven Years) were so self-absorbed that I didn’t enjoy reading about them. This novel (Stamm’s first) is better. The two characters are self-absorbed but the story is told in such an interesting way that my detachment from the characters didn’t bother me. The stark novel is a quick read — the story is deceptively simple — but it should be read slowly and with some care to give the mind time to unpeel its layers.

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Selection Day by Aravind Adiga

Published in the UK in 2016; published by Scribner on January 3, 2017

Selection Day seems to be a light comedy about a father, his two sons, and their passion for cricket until it becomes a more serious coming-of-age novel. I didn’t think much of the last Aravind Adiga novel I read, but I’m giving this one full marks.

Radha Krishna Kumar is the finest young batsmen in Mumbai, and his brother Manjunath is nearly as good. That, at least, is the opinion held by Parmod Sawant, the head cricket coach at an international school, although Pramod must defer to Tommy Sir, the best talent scout in India. Plans are afoot, not all of them legitimate, to invest in the two brothers, as Anand Mehta proposes to act as agent for (and owner of) the two cricketeers while pocketing the profit from their success.

The boys attained their lofty status thanks to their father, Mohan Kumar, a seller of chutney who has devoted his life to teaching the boys useless proverbs, correct posture, and the fundamentals of cricket. The boys, of course, resent their controlling father, in part because he caused their mother to flee. Cricket seems to be their only hope of a better life.

A rivalry between young Manju Kumar and his older brother develops as the novel progresses. But when Manju befriends another young cricket player, Javed Ansari, his thoughts turn to poetry and music and college and everything that is not cricket. Is he being led astray, or is being encouraged to find his true destiny? In the coming-of-age tradition, Manju finds himself pulled in several directions at once as he tries to decide how to live his life.

Many of the characters in Selection Day play familiar comedic roles — particularly the father, Tommy Sir, and Anand Mehta — and much the novel is quite funny. Comedy aside, the relationship between Javed (a Muslim) and Manju (a Hindu) explores serious questions involving religion, sexuality, and social status in India.

Adiga uses cricket to open a window into India’s problems, which he sees as corruption, prejudice, resistance to modernization, and a tendency toward self-delusion, among other issues (including literary offenses committed by Indian authors who meet the shallow demands of the reading public). At the same time, the book has universal appeal, revealing character traits (vulnerability, manipulation, self-aggrandizement, empathy) that are recognizable in all cultures.

Whether Manju makes the right choices in his life is, of course, something that only Manju can judge, but the end of the book gives the reader a peek at Manju’s young adulthood. That invites the reader to ponder how Manju’s life might have turned out if he gone in a different direction. The ending isn’t what I might have predicted and it is all the more satisfying for that reason.

I should add that this is not the first novel I’ve read in which cricket plays a dominant role, and I still don’t have the foggiest idea how the game is actually played. Fortunately, a reader doesn’t need to understand cricket to understand Selection Day. And for those who care, Adiga appended an amusing glossary of cricket terms.

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