Fight Club

By Chuck Palahniuk
I did a bit of research on Wiki after I finished this book, because I wondered if it had ever been banned anywhere – it does read like a bit of a primer for civil disobedience, after all, and that usually gets the book-banners’ blood boiling. Waiters spitting (and worse) into restaurant food, selling soap made from liposuction fat to the ladies who had the liposuction (at outrageous prices), bare knuckle fist-fight clubs, blowing things up…this book had it all. I can also easily imagine the society depicted in Fight Club appealing greatly to the disenfranchised, angry, despairing, bored and/or lonely – the type of person who can often end up in a cult. As Hercule Poirot would say, the psychology of the book was right.

Well Wikipedia didn’t mention any attempts to ban the book (or the subsequent film), although Fight Club has attracted some criticism for its violent nature, suggestions of misogyny etc. (Incidentally, my own inbuilt misogyny detector was not activated while reading this book). The Wiki entry on Fight Club did indicate, however, that it has generated rather a lot of deep and meaningful essays and critiques. (Arrrgh). To quote Wiki, “[Fight Club] is now widely considered to be a defining work and an uncompromising critique of humanity's loss of identity through mass consumerism.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_club). Oo-er.

Interestingly, the fight club society that evolves in the book is made up entirely of men. I’m not sure if this makes me prey to gender stereotypes, but I don’t think I would have found it believable if there were lots of women joining up to bash each other’s faces in and obey ridiculous rules unquestioningly. Tell me if I’m falling prey to gender stereotypes, won’t you? I'd hate to fall prey to gender stereotypes...

Fight Club is a curious book – definitely worth reading – it feels like it’s being written by someone with ADD (or possibly extreme sleep deprivation, which is what our unnamed hero suffers from), but as you get towards the end and it all comes together…geez! I mean, I didn’t see that coming! I think Chuck Palahniuk is a bit clever.

Also Fight Club has the rare commendation of being a book that invites comment by total strangers on public transport. I was only on about page 5 when a bloke on the train started telling me what an awesome book it was; I can only recall two other books inviting comment from strangers, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 and one of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels.

I think I’m going to give this book a 10, even though I didn’t quite like it as much as my other favourites, but it was just so well done. A dangerous book!!

Rating: 10 out of 10

The Outsider (2006)

By Albert Camus
A nice little shortie of a novel, I do like it when you can read classic fiction and it doesn’t take very long – such a sense of virtuous achievement! Also, another piece of classic fiction that is remarkably easy to read. Take note Thomas Pynchon: Great Literature Does Not Have To Hurt Your Brain. Some, in fact, would argue that the easier a book is to read (i.e. smooth, seamless and concise writing), the better the writer…this theory may fall over when considering the adventures of Spot the dog, however.

The Outsider tells the story of Meursault, a fairly normal young Algerian clerk who is undone through is inability to empathise with other people. Today he might be diagnosed with Asperger’s, or if he had been a lot more buff and also a genius he could have been another Jack Reacher – i.e. no remorse gene. Meursault somehow manages to kill an Arab man at the beach (yes this was the inspiration for The Cure’s song “Killing an Arab”) and during his subsequent trial his lack of remorse is used against him. Also, his Mum died a few days before and the prosecutors make much of the fact that he did not cry at her funeral – a.k.a. Lindy Chamberlain. Heartless bastard!!!

It is a very interesting novel – as we read from Meursault’s perspective, all his responses seem perfectly logical, and therefore other people’s responses to him equally surprising. (At least up until he murders someone). It reminded me a little of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, a book I found quite disturbing – because we were inside Ripley’s head, we can understand perfectly where Ripley is coming from and think, perhaps, “there for the grace of God go I…”. I suppose you have to have empathy to think that, though, so Meursault and Ripley might not have liked each other’s books very much.

NB: Reading tip: Do not read copies of books that have parts underlined, especially if you have seen the film Heathers. It is very distracting.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Breakfast of Champions (2006)

By Kurt Vonnegut
You know, I’m starting to think I should develop a more complicated rating system than the good old “score out of ten” method. There are some books that are good in so many ways, yet strangely unmoving. I’m afraid I found this book to be one of them - The Master and Margarita was another.

Vonnegut tells the story of the not-so-gradual disintegration of the mind of Pontiac salesman Dwayne Hoover, intertwined with the semi-adventures of one Kilgore Trout, science fiction author, and a number of other characters. (Many of these characters appear in other novels by Vonnegut). From the books I’ve read, the disintegration of the human mind appears to be a recurrent theme of Vonnegut’s – and there is always a suggestion that it mirrors Vonnegut’s own experiences quite closely. But who can tell – authors are paid to make things up, after all.

One interesting thing Vonnegut describes in this novel is how he wishes to make all the facts and people presented in this book equal in weight, with none more important than the other – the structure and style of the book made a lot more sense after I read this bit, not unlike how you need commentary to fully appreciate an abstract painting. (NB: Another Vonnegut creation, the modernist painter Rabo Karabekian, also makes an appearance in this novel). Vonnegut feels that everyone expects their life to resemble the structure of a novel, with major players, bit players, beginnings, middles and ends (and so on) and thinks instead that we should all just get used to chaos and our unalterable insignificantness in the universe.

The way in which Vonnegut tells his stories is so different from anybody else, which makes his books quite fascinating to read. (E.g. “I had a paper tube in my mouth. It was stuffed with leaves. I set it on fire.”). Normal things become surreal. But the emotional aspects of this one left me a bit cold – strange, because Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 is one of my favourite books ever.

Writing style: 9
Brain food: 8
Emotional drain: 3
Enjoyment factor: 6

The Master and Margarita (2006)

By Mikhail Bulgakov
I wanted this book to be one of my favourite books of all time, but it isn’t – which isn’t to say I didn’t like it; it was enormous fun!! Just look at the rating I gave it!! I did enjoy it, but it didn’t move me, I guess. (So eat a prune…).

The Devil arrives in Moscow (during Stalin’s era) in the guise of a Mr Woland, professor of black magic, with an entourage that includes a kind of rubbery-looking man named Koroviev, a man with a fang named Azazello, a nude witch called Hella (her character is not terribly developed, unfortunately) and a large walking talking living cat, Behemoth. (I became quite fond of Behemoth, but it might have just been because he was a cat). They proceed to cause havoc, especially amongst the local literary elite, many of whom are of course athiests, and pompous to boot, and could be said to get their just desserts.

It’s all a bit like a “Carry on Satan” film until the character of Margarita appears, who decides to see if she can use Woland to find her lost lover, an unnamed man (the “Master”) who has checked himself into the local asylum without telling her. He has written a novel about Pontius Pilate, known of course for having Jesus executed, which Margarita thinks is a work of genious (she might be biased, of course) and Woland finds it of interest because of course he was there at the time. The story of Pontius Pilate is woven throughout the whole story, I think with the aim of showing him redeemed at the end of the novel, but I’m not quite sure about that. I confess I was a bit mystified by the whole Pontius bit, which is perhaps another reasons why this book wasn’t a fave.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Slaughterhouse 5 (2003)

By Kurt Vonnegut
I think I’ll find it difficult to say anything meaningful about this book because although it’s written in an amusing style it is about terrible things – the experiences of members of the American army during the fire-bombing of Dresden in the Second World War. Vonnegut himself was in Dresden at this time, as he says in the first chapter, but writes the story through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim, a chaplain’s assistant who became a successful optometrist after returning from the War but who also became “unstuck in time” – he may be in Dresden during the war one minute, and then 40 years ahead in his life the next, writing letters to the local paper about the planet Tralfamadore and how he was kidnapped by its inhabitants and kept in an intergalactic zoo for over 6 months. It manages to be both light and tragic simultaneously. Hmm I’m not sure what to say next, only that I thought this book was excellent and I will be reading more of Kurt Vonnegut soon. Although it has some science fiction overtones, it is primarily a book about how horrible people are to each other, so I don’t think despisers of science-fiction should worry.

Rating: 10 out of 10

The Poisonwood Bible (2005)

By Barbara Kingsolver
This is one of the best books I have read for some time; I found it quite unputdownable. I nearly chucked at sickie on the Monday after I started reading it so I could stay home and finish it. (Bosses, take note: I did not chuck a sickie).

This book tells the story of a family from southern USA who move to a small village in the Congo (now Zaire) in 1959 to convert the Congolese to Christianity. The family consists of Dad (Nathan Price), Mum (Orleanna Price) and four girls (Rachel, Leah, Adah and Ruth May). On arrival, the family proceeds to slowly unravel. The father is a evangelical Baptist preacher, truly astonishing for his incapacity for empathy or to recognise the strain his choices placed on his wife and children. Ooh, I really didn’t like him – neither did anyone else in the book, much.

The story is told from the perspective of the four girls and occasionally through Orleanna’s eyes. Alternately fascinating and dreadful, the book shows how the Congo slowly begins to shape the girls’ thoughts (adaptability – or the lack of it – is an amazing thing), and how their experiences there make a return to “normal” life impossible. Nathan Price’s original plan was to stay there for a year; some of the characters never return to the US.

Quick soapbox: This book also triggered a chip I have on my shoulder about Europeans – I reckon they get let off really lightly when it comes to colonial crimes against humanity. There is no question that the English committed many crimes in their bid to conquer the world, or whatever they were doing, but so did the French, the Portuguese, the Spanish and (in this case) the Belgians – we never seem to hear about their histories so much. But then, maybe that’s because we live in a country colonised by the English.

Rating: 10 out of 10
This is a book that stays with you for some time.

The Hours (2004)

By Michael Cunningham
The book upon which the recent movie of the same name was based is pretty good. You would hope so, seeing as it won the Pulitzer Prize AND the Pen/Faulkner Award when it was published in 1999.

The novel describes the interlinking lives of Virginia Woolf, who wrote (amongst others) the novel “Mrs Dalloway”, Laura Brown, a 1950s housewife who is reading Mrs Dalloway, and present-day Clarissa, who is called Mrs Dalloway by her friend Richard (a poet dying of AIDS). All three are trying to deal with physical and mental illness – for Woolf and Brown it is their own, for Clarissa it is Richard’s. The author’s portrayal of mental illness (or at least, deep unhappiness) was particularly effective, in describing the small, everyday successes and failures which can change a person’s mood so drastically and make death seem alternately attractive and inconceivable.

I liked this book a lot, although I found the present-tense style a bit annoying (e.g. “Clarissa opens the door and looks outside” etc). Maybe that’s what you have to do to win Pulitzers these days. Anyway, a good holiday read, if you happen to be going on one soon.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10