Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

With David Foster Wallace’s last, unfinished, novel hitting book stores on April 15th, what better time would there be for me to review another of his books? Actually, I’m kind of misleading you. I read this book purely for the joy of it, and didn’t realise The Pale King (the new one) was coming out soon. What I found was a collection of short stories as brilliant as any of his other works, but with a newfound sense of anxiety underpinning many of the pieces.

If there’s one theme that ties all of the short stores together, it’s probably that many of them attempt to understand in very clear detail what’s happening in a large range of peoples minds. The title short story is split across the book, and simply consists of hideous men discussing their lives. These sections are often hilarious, with obscene twists, and frequently play on your expectations as a reader. This is the first book I’ve read by Foster Wallace written after Infinite Jest, and so there is a level of playfulness and inventiveness familiar to his readers, but here there is a brevity to the stories that really mark them out.

As I mentioned earlier, there is also a sense of anxiety. I first noticed this through ‘Octet’, which consists of a series of short stories which are immediately followed by a question, kind of like something from an English exam. There are two things that go wrong with this (and not go wrong as in don’t work). The second question ends with him realising that the set-up for the question has failed, and apologising for the inherent vagueness of the set up. There is a follow up question featuring the same characters, which luckily works. The final question, however, is the fifth (not the eighth), and is question nine. In this, you are asked to imagine that you’re a writer, who is attempting to write eight questions. The problem is, most of them don’t work. What follows is a bizarre insight into the writing process. Foster Wallace puts you into his position, talks you through what he’s been trying to do, and explains why he’s included 'octet' in the book. He then takes it a step further, and discusses his reasons for writing what you’re reading, explaining how much time he’s put into making it clear that the tone of what you’re currently reading has to be just right, and completely nakedly honest.

There are other examples of this kind of writing through the book, but I don’t want to ruin the whole thing. I admit I’m a huge fan of this guy, but I really feel his writing is simply better than anything else written in recent times. After reading this though, I was left with a big question. Is this anxiety real or imagined? Is his explanation of his thoughts into the writing process real, or is it entirely fictional, and playing with me? I suspect this is the real question at the heart of brief interviews.

The Corner

Regular book clubbers will be aware of my intense love affair with anything written by David Foster Wallace (If you're not aware of this, come back next week...). A little over a year ago, when I finished Infinite Jest, I was at a bit of a loss for how to follow it up. I ended up reading Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon, the creator of the Wire. Homicide, a non-fiction title which saw Simon follow detectives in the Baltimore police department for a year, was completely different in approach to Infinite Jest, but far more readable, and intensely gripping.

Let’s skip forward to last month when I bought the follow up, The Corner. The premise is similar, although this time co-authored by Ed Burns, a former BPD detective. Together they spent over a year following around life on the street, choosing the corner of West Fayette and Monroe Streets to centre their investigation. The resulting novel follows a broken family, the McCulloughs, who consist of Gary and Fran - separated but both dependant on drugs, and their son DeAndre, who has recently taken to slinging drugs from the corner.

If I’m being really honest, the book is consistently harrowing, At frequent points I had to stop, put it down, and recover from what I was reading. Overdoses are common amongst background players in the book, characters regularly steal, even from close family, and many of the addicts spend a lot of time lying to themselves in order to escape from the reality of their lives. One scene in particular, recounting how the daughter of Ella Thompson, who runs the local rec center, went missing only for her beaten, violated corpse to be found a few days later is particularly moving. Ella channels her grief into a personal mission to try and keep as many of the kids off the corner as possible. She knows she is fighting a losing battle, but her self determination is nothing short of inspirational.

The arguments made in the book will be familiar to anyone who has watched the Wire. That so many kids go on to lead the corner life is explained in very simple terms. The failure of the government, in both their strategies with law enforcement and the school system is disected. In a recently added afterward, the authors describe how a few years after the book, a guy who was running for city mayor held a copy of the Corner up at a press conference to show he understood how to deal with drugs. When a local reporter pointed out the book argues that the criminalisation of drugs has failed, the politician admitted to having not read the book. He was elected for two terms.

The Corner is an incredibly powerful and well written argument. It humanises a set of people that can seem alien to the majority of its readers. At the same time, the effects a lifetime of drug addiction can have are made very clear. While I think the book addresses very clearly what has gone wrong with areas such as West Baltimore, it also attempts to show a path for a better system. That they don’t claim to show an easy path is a credit to the authors. Ultimately only hard work can help get kids off the corners and their parents off drugs.

Sherlock Holmes: His Last Bow (and also a retrospective)

When I was about 10 I got a giant book containing all of the Sherlock Holmes tales for Christmas. It’s pretty hefty, with 4 novels and 56 short stories. I made several attempts to and try to read the lot in one go as a teenager, but usually dropped off around the time Conan Doyle killed him off, and then 10 years later brought him back from the dead. I guess I was always disappointed when I remembered that Moriarty, the guy who is supposed to be the ultimate nemesis of Holmes, never directly appears in the books. However, about 4 years ago I gave it another go, only this time I didn’t stop short, and I’ve been slowly working my way through the collection one book at a time…

Recently I came to His Last Bow, which starts of by letting me know that Holmes is still alive and well, although retired and suffering from the occasional bout of rheumatism. What follows is a collection of his adventures mostly taken from the early years with Watson, although the continuity in these books is so strained I haven’t got the slightest clue whether this sentence holds up to any form of scrutiny. If I’m being completely honest, this particular collection of stories aren’t the strongest, although they do have all the hallmarks familiar to the Sherlock Holmes cannon. These are some of my favourite recurring happenings:

1. Watson starts off a short story by alluding to a case involving a European Royal family, a lot of money, and Holmes saving the day, before immediately declaring that it can’t be told in public so we have to settle for something much more mundane.

2. Watson does something really stupid, which puts him in a lot of danger. Suddenly the tramp/street performer/lady across the street jumps forward and saves him, and then turns out to be Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock then admonishes Watson for being an idiot.

3. For some reason, Holmes can’t solve the case without creating an illusion of fallibility to Watson. It then turns out that he’s been in charge of the whole thing all along. This is best exemplified by a story in His Last Bow, in which Holmes pretends to be dying from a tropical disease for 3 days, in order to get Watson to go fetch a doctor who he knows is trying to kill him. Guess what? He’s not dying!

Even though these things happen repeatedly, I love these books. There is a wit about them, and an eye for the bizarre which provide a great hook to the mystery. I think my favourite short story (of all the ones I’ve read) is the league of red headed gentlemen. In it, a guy gets a job to write the dictionary on the basis of his perfectly red hair. After a few months of writing the dictionary, one day he can’t get in to the office. It all turns out to be an excuse to get this guy out of the house every day to help dig a tunnel for a bank robbery. Preposterous, but highly entertaining.

Although the book I just read is called ’His Last Bow’ there is still one more to go before I complete the set. I will read it one day, although I don’t hold much hope the standard will be very high. Still, when I do finish it, then I’ll be able to look back upon the stories with many great memories. A unique mixture of excitement, mystery and comedy keeps Sherlock Holmes very much alive in peoples minds today, as evidenced by all the screen adaptations. Sherlock Holmes also has a guiding catchphrase which I’d like to round this piece out with, for no reason other than my own satisfaction:

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”