Tom McCarthy Interview

Tom McCarthy has gone from being a writer who endured rejection from the major publishers (but then found a cult readership through the publication of his debut novel, Remainder, by a Parisian art outfit) to one given something like mainstream acceptance after being included on last year's Booker Prize short list. As someone with a particular interest in one of his major themes I was very pleased to have the opportunity to ask him about his work and the idea of authenticity.

My reading of Remainder couldn't help but be hugely influenced by the fact I'm an actor. I was fascinated by the ideas of authenticity and repetition, especially as repetition can be the very enemy of authenticity when performing a long run onstage. What attracted you to those themes and what were you hoping to say in writing about them? 

Repetition is the enemy of authenticity indeed. Authenticity is a pernicious meme that needs to be dismantled brick by brick, and repetition has always been a battering ram well-suited to the task. Repetition is beautiful, lyrical and seductive. It's the basis of all poetry.

I have to ask, have you seen 'Synechdoche, New York' and what did you make of it (and its similarities to Remainder)? 

I haven't seen it I'm afraid.

(Another film I wonder whether you have seen or not is Certified Copy which deals with notions of originality, copying, authenticity and fakery. I think you might like it)

I haven't seen that either... But Dennis Hopper's 'The Last Movie' is great in this respect. And so is Tarkovsky's 'Solaris'.

The theme of authenticity runs through your work; the art forgery of Men in Space, the parodic work of the International Necronautical Society and even the sale of 'genuine copies' of their documents. Is it likely to remain a recurring motif in your work?

I'm interested in doubles, forgeries, mediations and displacements of all kinds. I imagine they'll continue to feature, although hopefully mutating as the books progress.

You have said in previous interviews that you are influenced by writers such as Blanchot, Derrida, Beckett.... With such strong influences I might ask another writer if they have ever worried about escaping those influences to assert the authenticity of their own voice but I don't think you're that kind of writer. How would you describe the authenticity of your work?

I'd never use that term. Literature is about modes of inauthenticity, and always has been - look at Hamlet or Don Quixote if you doubt this. I'm influenced by lots of other writers, as were all those other writers themselves. My voice was never mine in the first place, and I'd never want to make that claim.. I'd like to think I'd built some good echo-chambers though.

You haven't much time for the 'sentimental humanism' prevalent in a lot of fiction. Could you explain what you mean by that?

I mean a cultural ideology that posits the self as the origin and source of all experience, and language as a tool for self-expression. It's a reactionary dead-end. It's the default ideology of almost the entire cultural industry (visual art being a notable enclave of exception), but all good work subverts this in some way or other.

There tends to be a fair bit of it on fiction prize shortlists. C was nominated for the Booker last year. What was your experience of being part of that bandwagon?

The ice-cream desert at the dinner was very good.

Do you have any thoughts on this year's recently announced longlist?

You're asking the wrong person: I've never read a novel on the Booker list in my life.

What are you working on at the moment and how does it fit in with the rest of your work?

I'm working on a book about pollution and mutation. It will end in a zombie parade. I'm interested in the insistent return of the material, and the dead.

Is there an underappreciated book that you would like to recommend to readers of this blog?

'The Adventures of Mao on the Long March' by Frederic Tuten.

I always ask my interviewees to 'do a Hemingway' and write a story in just 6 words. Would you have a go?

'For sale: shotgun, one previous owner.'



'C' is now available in paperback.

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'everything returns'

C 
by Tom McCarthy

Right, deep breath. I have been looking forward to this novel for about a year. In fact you could say three years as it was almost that long ago, when reviewing his previous novel, Men In Space, that I proffered that it would be his next novel that gave us an idea of 'what he's capable of'. It was about a year ago that I read an interview where he dropped some hints about what his new novel was about that I started to get excited. I am an unashamed fan of Tom McCarthy, you see, Remainder is one of my favourite novels and I can't help but be impressed by the clear intelligence of a man who argued so persuasively the literary merits of Hergé in Tintin and the Secret of Literature. So there was a lot riding on this one, too much perhaps, my impatience at not being able to grab a proof finally allayed when the finished copy came through the door and I marvelled at the lovely hardback with its see-through dust jacket. (In a quick side note there's a fascinating article about the process of designing the cover for the American edition of the book here which touches on many of the book's themes).

The reason I mention all this fan-aticism is not because I'm about to gush all over C but because I'm going to give it a slightly harder time. This novel is outwardly conventional whilst being ingeniously clever and experimental, filled with ideas, theories and historical detail, with enough to keep a reader satisfied and surprised for several re-readings afterwards. But all that cannot take away from the fact that it is also a difficult book to enjoy and even to read in places. It may be that McCarthy is deliberately refusing to satisfy the reader with what might be expected from a novel (he has precedent for this), but for all the moments that that invigorates the mind there are others where it brings it grinding to a halt. All of which makes it sound like I don't like it, but I do. A lot. Contradictory little fellow, aren't I?

To begin at the beginning. You wait years for a book with an explosive opening involving a birth and then two come along at once. Serge Carrefax, surges into the world in the opening chapter and we follow his progress into the twentieth century in what looks at first to be a classic bildungsroman. Born into an emigre family, living on an estate called Versoie in the English countryside that doubles as both school for deaf children and silk factory, Serge is born on the cusp of momentous change, a home and time that literally buzzes with anticipation. His father is an inventor as well as principal of the school, coils of wire are delivered by the doctor on the same day that he brings Serge into the world and he certainly seems more excited about the wire than anything else. His wife, a former pupil, runs the silk operation and her deafness is counterpointed by the cacophony of sound that Serge soon becomes a part of. For all of the technical detail McCarthy is what I can only describe as a very sensuous writer. In Remainder it was snatches of smell or sight that helped its protagonist piece together a shattered memory. Here sound is the most dominant; the buzzing of bees or machines, humming wires, singing canaries, even the sound of moths coupling, Serge encounters sound as something he can almost visualise and his connection to the the telegraphic developments of his father's and the machinery that begins to surround them is closely felt.

But every night they get to watch Kinetoscope projections. It becomes a ritual; as soon as supper's over the bedsheet's hauled up, chairs laid out and reel after reel fed into the mechanism. Serge carries the sounds of the celluloid strip running through its gate to bed with him, clicking and shuffling in his ears long after the machine's been put to sleep, more real and present than the trickling of the stream or chirping grasshoppers. each time Wisdun racks up a new spool and starts running it, Serge feels a rush of anticipation run through the cogs and sprockets of his body; his mind merges with the bright bedsheet, lit up with the possibilities of what might dance across it in the next few seconds, its outrageous metamorphoses as moth's and mosquito's shadows on the screen turn into jumping hairs and speckles, then the first unsteady pictures, empty linen springing into artificial life.

McCarthy wastes no time, the opening chapters acting like time lapse photographs as we see first Serge's birth, then his near-drowning at two and a half, and then suddenly he is seven. It compliments the pace of change in the world as Serge grows up to encounter the development of technologies as diverse as wireless communication, cinema and powered flight. Serge is inextricably linked to these as well, he sees the world in terms of spatial relations and seems to be tuned in to the growing numbers of radio waves emitted. His own catalysts for change are far more personal though and it is his sister's death that sees our focus shift from Versoie to a spa in central Europe. Conventionally you might expect an emotional response from your protagonist here but from Serge there is almost the opposite. If grieving is a central theme of the book then this is not a traditional treatment of it. Whilst undergoing treatment for 'black bile', some kind of psychosomatic 'blockage' that is halting his 'transformation', he becomes fascinated radio and the hunch-backed woman who metes out his daily massage. His treatment and movement towards change harks back to the silk worm factory of his childhood.

Still lying on the segmented table, Serge sees in his mind's eye cocooned men, trapped in escritoires or trussed up in sweat-filled blankets, pulsing in figures of eight as they mutate into resin-oozing, black silk-larvae that will never become moths. From the recesses of his stomach, as though from a box, he hears again a child's or woman's scream."Out now," says Dr. Filip. "Go and start transforming."

This is an example of how McCarthy has his images and themes absolutely sewn up. There's nothing loose or flabby in that paragraph, every image directly relates to something else in the book and even beyond that to similar themes established in other books. This is the reason why McCarthy should be taken very seriously as a writer I think, he's building a body of work that is intricately linked and it's no surprise that recurring themes include codes and cryptography, one gets the impression that his art-influenced writing is as full of coded meaning as the paintings that hang in the National Gallery.

Serge is steered towards the sky's above the battlefields of the Great War by his godfather Widsun, an influential presence in the novel, where he operates as an observer in the new planes that fly over the front lines. It's no surprise that this section has a much greater energy than the rest of the book and I'll confess to having a week spot for the heroics of fly boys. Even here McCarthy doesn't give what you might expect, a seat-of-the-pants thrill ride, but distances Serge from the turmoil, his senses slowed and altered by his predilection for heroin. There's some welcome humour too, of a very British kind, when Serge asks his pilot to land, desperate for the toilet.

They bounce across the village cricket pitch. Serge slides down off the wing, lowers his trousers and relieves himself above the wicket, just short of a length on middle and off.
"What village is this anyway?" he asks as he strolls back towards Stedman, who's stretching his legs beside the machine as he consults a map.
"Tenterden, I think," Stedman answers. "Population six hundred and twenty-nine."
"Six hundred and thirty now," Serge tells him. "Let's go."

There are some well managed set-pieces here too and always a wish to thread the complex technical terms and philosophical thoughts of the early twentieth century into the text. Your appetite for those may well decide how excited you get whilst reading the book, below is an excerpt which gives a flavour of both an arresting image and a raft of technicality, but there's no doubt that the book contains much that would reward further readings. In fact it is a book which virtually demands it.

They have to fly lower to see where shells are landing, or even to get their own bearings. At one point a howitzer shell appears right beside them, travelling in the same direction - one of their own, surfacing above the smoke-bank like a porpoise swimming alongside a ship, slowly rotating in the air to show it's underbelly as it hovers at its peak before beginning its descent. It's so close that its wind-stream gently lifts and lowers the machine, making it bob. Serge knows that planes get hit by their own shells, but this one seems so placid, so companionable - and besides, if they're travelling at the same speed then both it and they are just still bodies in space, harmless blocks of matter. In the instant before their paths diverge, it seems to Serge that the shell and the pane are interchangeable - and that the shell and he are interchangeable, just like the radians and secants on his clock-code chart, the smoke-and-vapour-marked points and trajectories around him, the angles of his holding pattern's quadrant and the Popham strips' abrupt cloth lines. Within the reaches of this space become pure geometry, the shell's a pencil drawing a perfect arc across a sheet of graph paper; he's the clamp that holds the pencil to the compass, moving as one with the lead; he is the lead, smearing across the surface to become geometry himself...

After a spell in post-war London where he joins an army of narcotics users and encounters the fad of spiritualism Serge finally finds himself in Egypt, the perfect location to pick up those themes of cryptology (pun fully intended) and for McCarthy to begin to tie up some of those silken threads that have run through each page of the novel. I know I'm not close to appreciating the real achievements of this book, writing this review has taught me that at least, but I do know the curious feeling of being enthused and disappointed at the same time. I'm perfectly willing to see that as a failure of mine and I realise that other readers won't have made enough of an investment in McCarthy to be as generous but I'm sure that despite the flaws and the difficulty this is a novel worthy of its place on the Booker list and even of the prize. The judges will have to read it at least twice more if that's to be the case. I envy them the opportunity to do that for a job, as I think each time they might get closer to cracking just how good McCarthy really can be.

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Books of the decade

Everyone else seems to be doing it, from newspapers to bloggers, so why shouldn't I? Well, because I have a terrible memory for one thing! What was my favourite book of 2001? I don't know, that was years ago now, I've got married and had two kids since then, I'm lucky I can remember everyone's birthdays and our anniversary. This of course is what the Internet is made for, so with the help of that search box and various references I have assembled my picks of the last decade. I decided to restrict myself to picking a single book for each year, and had to have been published that year, which immediately became problematic as 2000 saw the publication of several standout novels for me and I found it very hard to pick one amongst them. This problem repeated itself a couple of times and I also experienced the opposite effect when I struggled to pick anything as truly brilliant in 2003 (please feel free to point out your own) A special mention therefore goes to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay(2000) by Michael Chabon which is one of the reasons why I began this blog in the first place. A favourite book, I gave it to my wife to read and asked her one evening how it was going, where she'd got to. 'He's just walking across the Arctic with his dog.' My inability to recall something even as obvious as that told me that I may have been reading plenty of books at the time, and enjoying them, but I certainly wasn't retaining enough of what I read. By committing myself to writing a review afterwards, and therefore having to make the odd note along the way, I felt I could train myself to be a better reader. I hope it's working. I don't claim to be in any kind of position to pronounce what books were the 'best', but what follows might be more accurately described as a list of the ones that stood out for me then and still do now: The books that say something about my journey through fiction and my maturation as a reader.

2000 - House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski

The only book I can think of that has actually terrified me whilst reading it, Danielewski's extraordinary début is notable for several reasons. First as an object: the beautiful patterned boards and excellent quality of the US edition make it a joy to hold and read and the various versions of the first edition as listed on the copyright page mean that colour makes its way into the text of a book which is as inventive typographically as it is stylistically. We begin by reading the account of Johnny Truant who moves into the apartment of the recently deceased Zampano and discovers a manuscript written by him about a film called The Navisdson Record. Will Navidson, a photojournalist, had discovered, whilst making a simple survey of his house, that the inside measurements seem to be just slightly larger than the outside. This leads to a journey as epic and terrifying as you can imagine happening within four walls and the book is made up of description of the film footage, interviews, interjections, footnotes, letters, the text changing font and construction so that the reader is left disorientated and hopefully scared shitless. I've read a couple of books since which have attempted to do something similar but neither of them came close to this, a true original.

2001 - Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth by Chris Ware

I recently re-read this graphic novel to see if it was still as good as I though it was in memory. It was, and then some. You can read that review here but the reason why this book is on the list is because it showed me what graphic fiction could be capable of. Taking his inspiration from his own life and his own non-existent relationship with his father Ware's book is a beautiful, decorative, inventive and moving account of the struggles of one family to relate to each other through the generations. The artwork is visually satisfying with many hidden wonders along the way and it is one of the few books that has a dust jacket which can hold your attention for a good period of time before you get on with the book itself. A gem.

2002 - If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor

I read this book in something close to a single sitting, becoming completely hypnotised by the rhythm of McGregor's writing and utterly mesmerized by its distinctive style style. Several hours later, as I tearily closed the final pages, I knew this was a book that I wanted other people to read so that we could enthuse about it together. I was a little disappointed when some that I had gifted a copy weren't quite as a sold on it as me, put off by the 'tricksiness' of the writing, but it hasn't dimmed my own enthusiasm. It is true that McGregor's debut has a distinctive style, characters are never referred to by name, only as 'the man with burned hands', or 'the boy with the pierced eyebrow' but after a while it seems no stranger than them being called Bob or Kevin and there often feels as though there is something totemic about their distinctions. The action of a single day assumes huge significance for these characters who all have a past, whose present moment is our focus for the duration of the book and whose future I still wonder about.

2003 - Things You Should Know by A.M. Homes

So the bogey year I mentioned and I know that there were plenty of fine books published this year (Richard Power's The Time Of Our Singing and John Gray's Straw Dogs for example) but with books like Curious Incident... and Vernon God Little making the headlines were there any that really compared to some of the others on this list. One book that really made an impact on me and sent me trawling after her entire back catalogue was this collection of stories from A M Homes. Up until reading this collection I had never really got on with shorter fiction, I didn't really get it, but something about Homes' humour, darkness and inventiveness chimed nicely and it has since opened up a little door in my mind that begins to appreciate the possibilities of the short story. From the twisted logic of the woman who waits among the sand dunes to collect the discarded condoms from the local lifeguards' sexual conquests in order to impregnate herself to the touching portrait of Nancy Reagan coping with her husband's deteriorating mental state this is a collection as odd as the composite creature on its front cover. That examination of her previous books showed more dark delights the most controversial of which was The End Of Alice, in which a young woman who plans to seduce a 12 year old boy conducts a correspondence with a jailed paedophile and murderer. If you want a challenging read then this might be the book for you.

2004 - I’ll Go To Bed At Noon by Gerard Woodward

This is easily the best of Woodward's trilogy of books featuring the Jones family in the part of north London I lived in for over a decade. There is something very personal and direct about reading a book which features locations that you know like the back of your own hand and to meet characters so skilfully created by their author that they seem as real as the people you see yourself in the street makes the achievement of this book even more astonishing. This book stands on its own but is obviously enhanced by the two that stand either side of it, the time spent with the Joneses through their tumultuous family history was both funny, sad, painful and heart-warming in a way that only a brilliantly observed and detailed novel could be. Never have I wanted to spend so much time with such a dysfunctional family.

2005 - A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry

As I have mentioned here before I wept like a child when I reached the final pages of this stunning novel. My review of it is here but in short this is a book that could have (should have?) won the Booker that year, a book which follows a young Irishman as he makes his way to the battlefields of Europe, to make something of himself whilst back at home the nation he is supposedly fighting for is tearing itself apart. Barry's prose is never less than easy to enjoy, often achieving a lyricism and beauty that is in contrast to the devastation and horror of what is being described. Having now read some more of his novels, which use the same strands of characters, I feel that I know even more about the few families he has chosen to focus on and as a a result, a much clearer view of the wider picture. His mastery of plotting and structure mean that an emotional punch to the gut is always delivered with the force that is hard to counter. If you don't weep at the end of this too then, well, I'm sorry.

2006 - The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A friend of mine bought this recently as their third pick in a 3 for 2 on the advice of someone else. Knowing that I was a reader they asked me whether it was any good. Without thinking about what I was saying I assured him that it was quite simply one of the best books ever written, and once I had given voice to that sentence I realised that that was exactly what I thought (my original review is here). My original review is here and its title is one of the reasons why this book is so powerful. Living in a modern world we seldom have to deal with any of the machinations that make our lives so comfortable. Take away society, civilisation and progress, throw mankind back into a situation where it's survival of the fittest and you engage with what it really means to be human. Our current grapple with the topic of climate change only makes the book more relevant today but its universal themes mean that the nature of the apocalypse isn't important. I read this book in a single sitting, it's very hard not to, so compelling and primal is it, and I am convinced that it will still be being read by our descendants hundreds of years into the future. If we make it that far.

2007 - Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

The Great American Novel is a phrase, an idea, an emblem, that is so overused as to be virtually worthless. So many different types of book have been given the appellation, often all encompassing tomes that supposedly encapsulate the 'American' experience neatly and totally. It seems to me that the great American novel should really be a messy and catastrophic affair in order to truthfully reflect that experience and Denis Johnson's magnum opus deals with the Vietnam War in a way that seems entirely appropriate for a conflict so damaging to those American ideals, a conflict which they have arguably never recovered from. My father, a fellow Jonhnson fan, which in this country particularly, makes us part of a very small club, created an extraordinary 'map' to aid his reading of this vast novel, to help him keep track of characters and themes (as mentioned in the blogosphere). That's how bonkers this book is. It isn't easy, it isn't neat, but it is extraordinary. My original review is here.


2008 - Our Story Begins - Tobias Wolff

This was a bit of a toughy as I had picked Darkmans by Nicola Barker before I realised that it had actually been published the year before. Picking from the other books eligible was no mean feat. My reason for picking Wolff's collected stories is because having been tempted by the short form by AM Homes I then read stories by some of its masters: Chekhov, Cheever, Carver and more. Wolff is another of those and this book shows how it can really be done. Twenty one previously published stories are joined by ten new pieces, all of which show his amazing way with dialogue, the straight course he steers through his work by incorporating morality and his surprising inventiveness. What's particularly impressive is the variety. He doesn't have a fixed technique or style, he doesn't focus on a particular type of person or environment and he never, ever makes you feel like he's playing a trick or being quirky. Original review here.

2009 - Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips

Picking a book of the decade from this year is tough simply because of the inability to use hindsight, it seems too soon to take one of my recent reads and slap a rosette on its cover. Perhaps it is because of this that the book that still sticks in my mind is one that I read much earlier in the year, or perhaps it is in spite of the passage of that time that I can't get it out of my head. With a nod to Faulkner Phillips' multi-stranded novel follows a US soldier in Korea in 1950, holed up in a tunnel after coming under friendly fire (this real incident has been well researched and, even better, well presented - the research worn lightly). Then in 1959 back in the US we meet the eponymous half-siblings, Termite a mute, his sections allowing Phillips to flex her stylistic muscles. She goes beyond that though, audaciously connecting the various threads of her story so that they transcend time or location coming together in writing that reaches something close to rapture. Original review here.

I can't just leave it there because one of my favourite books ever isn't on the list. This is because Cormac McCarthy had the nerve to write a genuine masterpiece in the same year that his namesake Tom McCarthy wrote the quite brilliant Remainder. A book so concerned with the notion of authenticity is tailor made for a professional faker like me but it is a book which should appeal to a broad readership for all sorts of reasons. Clever without being a smart-arsey, arty without being wanky, it is the kind of book that makes your head feel like someone's got in there and done some spring-cleaning. The prose manages to be clinical and sensual at the same time, each of the five senses becomes hugely important as the hero attempts to piece together what he can remember of his life before 'the accident'. It has the pace of a thriller, the intelligence of something altogether more philosophical and an artistic sentiment that made me feel as if the book in my hand was the coolest thing in the world. When was the last time a book felt cool? Despite it not being on the list above, if I had to pick a book which not only made an impact on me but in some way defined the past decade, this would be the one. Let one McCarthy take that honour and the other something a little grander.

And now, over to you...

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Shhhh

Tintin and the Secret of Literature
by Tom McCarthy

I have not read a lot of Tintin, in fact I would be surprised if I have read any of them cover to cover. Along with Asterix they were the kind of book I was likely to find in a friend's house or lying around the library somewhere, things were all a bit more classical and British in my house. Nor have I studied literary theory. So what on earth was I doing reading this book then? Well, a good question. It's all down to Tom McCarthy really, as I have said here before, his novel Remainder is probably my favourite book of recent years and I also found lots to admire in his latest, Men in Space (see review here). So I had to have a look at this non-fiction book which was his first published work.

The basic question is whether Hergé's adventures of Tintin can be considered literature. McCarthy argues that contained within the comic strips of Georges Remi are all of the 'keys' that we would expect to find in a novel. He argues with an energy and enthusiasm which means that even when he is stretching the boundaries of credibility you can't help but go along for the ride. I can't pretend to have understood all of it, due to the gaps in my knowledge I pointed out earlier but it is book filled with persuasive ideas and above all written with a genuine love of the subject matter. There are fantastic sections where McCarthy explores the ancestry of Captain Haddock, the comedy of pratfalls, and the shifting politics of Hergé himself.

What is really interesting is to see how many of the themes contained in McCarthy's fiction are prefigured in the panels of Tintin. The idea of authenticity so rigorously tested by the protagonist in Remainder is a recurring theme in Tintin. And just as we follow the attempts to crack the visual codes and signs contained within the icon painting in Men in Space, McCarthy in this book is using the same tools to find the hidden meaning of Hergé's work. We even have an artist making two copies of the painting he has been asked to forge, just as Manásek does in Men In Space.

After all the code-breaking, crypt entering, puzzle solving, boys own adventure, it does make me want to stumble across a copy of Tintin once again and see if I can spot any more of these hidden clues. I wonder if the library's still open...

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ground control to Major Tom

Men In Space by Tom McCarthy

In Tom McCarthy's first novel Remainder everything stems from 'something falling from the sky'. What it is that falls we are not told beyond the fact that it was 'Technology. Parts, bits'. This is because one of the conditions of the compensation package which leaves our protagonist £8.5 million richer is that he doesn't discuss 'the incident' which has left his memory impaired. Bold and atmospheric, packed full of images and ideas Remainder was my favourite book of last year, of many years in fact, it was a book which really excited me. It was also great to see a book initially published by a very small outfit (Metronome Press, Paris) go on to achieve critical success and further publishing deals here and abroad.

McCarthy's next novel thrusts in the other direction with things ascending into the sky. Above a fragmenting Europe a Soviet cosmonaut is stranded in orbit. With the Soviet Union breaking up 'like pool balls separating on the break' there is no state prepared to pay for his journey home. Set in Europe during the fall of Communism and the splitting up of Czechoslovakia the novel is populated by artists, criminals, the police and an Englishman abroad; Nick, who is based loosely around McCarthy himself. All of these rootless characters are floating around Europe like the other man in space. Remainder was narrated with a clear, almost clinical tone but this novel is filled with a myriad of competing voices and the start of the novel is a little like tuning in a radio.

Part of the plot involves a stolen icon painting which is to be copied by an artist, Ivan Manásek. There is something 'wrong' with this particular picture, the signs and symbols so rigidly adhered to by the icon painters of history seem to have been played with and the saint that is ascending into an ellipse serves as another strong visual metaphor. The scene where Manásek actually makes his copies is a fantastic piece of writing, vividly creating the fervour and attention to detail of the artist at work. In fact the novel is filled with good writing. The party scenes are well written by McCarthy who was living in Prague at the time of the creation of the Czech Republic. And elsewhere the prose is again heavy with visual imagery and metaphors, which like the signs and symbols of the icon painting feel loaded with import and meaning.

Deciphering that meaning is the tricky part and the problem with this book is that there are too many strands, too many unfulfilled characters to make a satisfying whole. McCarthy admits that Men In Space 'started as a series of disjointed, semi-autobiographical sketches written in what seems like another era, and grew into one long, disjointed document from which a plot of sorts emerged from time to time to sniff the air before going to ground again'. The book confirms that McCarthy is a writer to watch and to take seriously but it will probably be the next novel proper which gives us an idea of what he is capable of.

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waiting for a bus

You know how it goes: you spend weeks/months not particularly enthused about what you're reading and then suddenly you realise that there's a bumper crop coming up.

I've just ordered a copy of Denis Johnson's new novel Tree of Smoke. His first novel in 9 years, it looks like a hefty tome and I can't wait. Johnson is an intriguing writer. A poet, playwright, journalist and novelist he often writes about those people at the margins, those underneath the surface of American society in particular. His novels aren't all consistent but I would recommend his first Angels, his most recent The Name of The World and his collection of stories Jesus' Son which was made into a good film by Alison Maclean starring Billy Cruddup, Jack Black and Samantha Morton.

Also soon to be published is the latest from Philip Roth. Exit Ghost looks to be the final novel featuring Roth's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman. I have always enjoyed reading Roth's work even if it doesn't all reach the heights of American Pastoral. His writing of late has been very much about the inexorable journey towards death and recent publicity shots have shown him looking, well, miserable as usual so I was cheered to see this interview recently and the picture above in particular.


Last but by no means least is Men In Space the new novel from Tom McCarthy. His first novel Remainder is quite simply the best book I have read this century (I know, it's early days). Brave, challenging and unique I urge you to read it now if you haven't already. This new book sounds very different and I had to stop myself mugging someone who was reading it on the bus yesterday.

Now that would be a headline:

Man mugged on bus for literary fiction

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