Irvine Welsh - Filth (seven)

Stuff yourself with Racism Vindaloo ‘til your intestines burn and you can’t feel your gums. Wash it down with a pint of Perversion’s lager and a 12-year old Scotch misogyny. Snort a few grams of white power up your nose and rub the remains into your already numb gums. Let nature have it’s course, then go to the bogs and shite out the fermented and degraded contents, mingled with your own personal flora of bacterial disorders, out of your system and watch the worm-ridden sludge up close. This, is FILTH.
For the last week I’ve had voices in my head. Or rather A voice. A superior, aggressive, Scottish voice, badgering me to utter obscenities at the world I observe around me. I see a good-looking girl and my mind snarls “that’s some quality fanny”. Annoying, slow, middle-aged cashiers are branded “daft cunts”. Anyone else is a “spastic”. FILTH seeps into your consciousness and reading it could be bordering on mental self-abuse. But in all this it still is a compelling, fascinating and high-class novel, that I recommend, but only to those who are strong at heart and stomach.

David Sedaris – Me talk pretty one day (six)

This week’s book was written before last week’s, and the bleakness of Dress your family in corduroy and denim might be explained by the fact that in writing Me talk pretty one day Sedaris had picked the juiciest, tastiest raisins out of his autobiographical bun. The two books span the same period, that is Sedaris’ life from birth to present, but this book was cleverer and funnier than the following. There is still something missing, an edge, but perhaps this is more a question of personal taste.
I laughed at several of the timidly delivered metaphors and found the descriptions of Sedaris’ family to be achieved with more love and light, something that inspires a genuine affection.
In short, that’s all. This time around it is funny, more than ok. It’s actually good.

Quotes:
“If you’re not cute, you might as well be clever”
“When asked ‘What do we need to learn this for?’ any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness.”

David Sedaris – Dress your family in corduroy and denim (five)

If Dress your family had been written in it’s entirety with the clarity and rhythm of the last chapter, it would have been good. Not great, but good. And the fact is the bulk of the book isn’t. Not great, not good. It’s just ok. The cover of the book states it is extremely funny. I had expected something hilarious but in the end it was disappointingly amusing. You see, the most important clue to the book is written in small print, on the back, just above the bar code. One word. Autobiography. Autobiography is great when it’s larger than life, when fiction is ficked in the ass by reality. Sedaris writes about reality as it is in your own world. Funny, quirky, tedious. It should be anecdotal but often lacks the punch-lines of anecdote. The confusing humour is undeniably autobiographical and suffers from the lack of definition that purely fictional humour possesses. Reality is full of holes and loose ends. It’s a leaking glass that, once it reaches your lips, is half empty.

I am glad to have read it, because I get to use one of my favourite words. Fragmentary. His chronology is out of joint. It becomes first confusing, next distancing. He’s eight, he’s 12, he’s 10, he’s 22, he’s 17. It’s the nineties, it’s the present, it’s the seventies. Fine, if you can’t even put your own life in sequence, maybe keep to writing witty columns. Sorry David.

Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer (four)

I just finished Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.
Henry Miller writes an autobiographical work about a writer roaming the streets of Paris, constantly struggling, working to stay afloat as a bum. His life is comprised of conning his next meal out of friends and strangers alike, sleeping with prostitutes and somewhere in-between these the floorboards of his life the writing slips in.
I found the book to be dense, rich and naturalistic in its descriptions of an artist’s life, crawling up the muddy banks of a sewage canal. Occasionally the writing became truly inspired and great but mostly it was of a quality that had me waiting to strike gold, not entirely satisfied with driving a pick-axe through the pages.
I guess most literature needs to be set against its cultural and historical background for the greatness to emerge, a notion I actually refute as a casual, albeit interested, reader. Tropic of Cancer is renowned and praised but did not shift me significantly.

Julian Gough - Juno & Juliet (three)

After I first read Juno & Juliet in 2002 I went out and bought 13 copies of it and gave to all my friends for Christmas. It was the single greatest and most enjoyable novel I had ever read, an experience that was fuelled by my falling in love with Ireland and passing through Galway the preceding spring. Reading J&J took me back to this beautiful country, to good times spent and the sense of freedom experienced by the narrator echoed my the memory of my own.
Partly to do some lighter reading and partly because a friend recently reacted with less than complete enthusiasm to the book I decided to reread it last week. I had a nagging fear that my love for the book had not been fuelled by circumstance, but rather conjured by it. Critically I furrowed my brow and tried my best to dislike the text, to set myself above it and ridicule the ludicrous events and situations. I failed miserably.
The tale of the twin sisters arriving as first-year students to Galway, to a stage where life is a carousel of new freedoms and new duties, populated by a cast of unexpected people with undisclosed agendas, was a terribly enjoyable experience even as a reread. I do not deny however that my appreciation is inextricably to my persona, and that the main character Juliet is caught in the emotional currents of life, pulled down at times, in just the way I have myself been. Many will recognise themselves also in the student life, not only in the hunger for experience and the intoxicated dance, but in the weight of exams, the push of papers and the pull of economic difficulties. The novel is in a way trivial and carefree, but not for someone who is caught in the middle of it. Junos relationship between her and her sister will be familiar to anyone who has struggled with the strange weight of adolescent existence while close ones seem to float, weightless, on top of it, freely enjoying the scenery. Slowly Juno grows out of her heart and into her body, with its limitations, imperfections and fluids, through which we all in the end must live out our lives. For it is through this vessel we can experience the world and staying stuck inside would give you a lonely ride.
Julian writes with such mischievous joy and I absolutely love the language he uses, an intensely poetic prose in which he reinvents old metaphors as easily as he paints fresh new ones. Like a mad cook, mixing the new with the old and maintaining simplicity and flavour. Mixed in between the almost painful beauty is mixed a generous portion of humour, like life at its best. The book describes love – no, more than love, living – with a truer voice than any I can say I have read. Words like pearls on a string, passing with the grace of sand in a time glass, make the book a very easy and light reading experience.
Warmly recommended.

Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club (two)

The second book I read for my self-imposed 52books in 52weeks program was Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.
I am a big fan of the movie that was made from this debut novel, and I must say that reading the book I was cursing the fact that I had already seen the film. Without a doubt it took some of the air out of the story.
However, the nuance that the book is to the film, or the film to the book, was enough for me to thoroughly enjoy the conspicuously unnamed narrator at a closer distance and a calmer pace through his experiences with the mysterious and charismatic Tyler Durden and the suicidal Marla Singer as they explore the creases in society’s shower curtain. There is enough difference in the story for the book to be both interesting and intriguing, even if you already know the score. If you don’t, well I can only imagine that it will be great.
What is great is of course the writing. Palahniuk writes the way I want to write. Uncomplicated, smart, beautiful and evenly, expertly spread through the length of the book. It weighs just right in your hand.
I warmly recommend this book