Bryan Murphy's Blog - Posts Tagged "satire"
4 3 2 1
You’re a writer. Your novel has a protagonist. Let’s call him or her “Chris”. You can’t let Chris die before the end, or your novel ends prematurely. If you write genre fiction, you may not even be able to allow Chris a cosy or bitter retirement. I’ve had fun with this trope here: http://www.thewriteroomblog.com/the-o...
The traditional answer is to invent ghosts, haunting and other flights of fancy. In his latest novel, “4 3 2 1”, Paul Auster, who rejects supernatural slight-of-hand, hits on an effective writerly solution. He has four chronological sections, and one chapter in each section is devoted to a specific protagonist,, in the same order. When Auster bumps off one of his protagonists, he nevertheless keeps his place in the next section, but his chapter consists only of the heading and a blank text – a stark reminder of the character’s death and all the unfulfilled potential that has died with it.
It is a masterful ploy, even when Auster repeats it, though it has less impact the second time. When he kills his third protagonist, he uses a contrasting strategy, letting you imagine him merely falling asleep, until, in the final pages of the novel, the authorial voice tells you the character had died in his sleep. This leaves you just with the fourth, most Austerial protagonist, who is, to me, the stodgiest and least interesting of the quartet.
You can see a brilliant visual way of refusing to forget the dead in Richard Lester’s satirical film “How I Won The War”. You may remember it for featuring John Lennon as a non-singing actor. It shows a bedraggled band of British soldiers on a mission toward the end of WWII. Every time one of them is killed, a wraith-like version of him, not intended as a ghost and not haunting anyone, still appears in the line-up, reminding us of his premature death and its enduring importance.
The traditional answer is to invent ghosts, haunting and other flights of fancy. In his latest novel, “4 3 2 1”, Paul Auster, who rejects supernatural slight-of-hand, hits on an effective writerly solution. He has four chronological sections, and one chapter in each section is devoted to a specific protagonist,, in the same order. When Auster bumps off one of his protagonists, he nevertheless keeps his place in the next section, but his chapter consists only of the heading and a blank text – a stark reminder of the character’s death and all the unfulfilled potential that has died with it.
It is a masterful ploy, even when Auster repeats it, though it has less impact the second time. When he kills his third protagonist, he uses a contrasting strategy, letting you imagine him merely falling asleep, until, in the final pages of the novel, the authorial voice tells you the character had died in his sleep. This leaves you just with the fourth, most Austerial protagonist, who is, to me, the stodgiest and least interesting of the quartet.
You can see a brilliant visual way of refusing to forget the dead in Richard Lester’s satirical film “How I Won The War”. You may remember it for featuring John Lennon as a non-singing actor. It shows a bedraggled band of British soldiers on a mission toward the end of WWII. Every time one of them is killed, a wraith-like version of him, not intended as a ghost and not haunting anyone, still appears in the line-up, reminding us of his premature death and its enduring importance.
The outsider inside
Masks & Other Stories From Colombia by Richard Crosfield
If you study English history of the Renaissance period, one of the most helpful characters you are likely to encounter is the Venetian Ambassador, whose dispatches home contain valuable insights into what was really going on, free of the pride and prejudice of the “official” versions preserved for posterity. To help us understand today's more visceral Colombia, Richard Crosfield gives us another outsider, a British businessman named Printer, whose nose and taste for good stories lead him to intriguing characters and tales by the bucketful. Through Printer, Crosfield coats what he writes about in a velvet glove of detached humour liable to remind the reader of Saki, though like that master's, Crosfield's stories can sometimes pack an iron punch. I think the impact is even greater in the stories in which Crosfield relinquishes his foreign characters and goes straight to the heart of Colombia, where he is clearly at home.
My favourites in the collection are “Guatavita Nueva”, in which a provincial priest puts his faith in the next generation, and “ Landevino's”, in which success makes a peasant painter more equal than others.
5 stars.
If you study English history of the Renaissance period, one of the most helpful characters you are likely to encounter is the Venetian Ambassador, whose dispatches home contain valuable insights into what was really going on, free of the pride and prejudice of the “official” versions preserved for posterity. To help us understand today's more visceral Colombia, Richard Crosfield gives us another outsider, a British businessman named Printer, whose nose and taste for good stories lead him to intriguing characters and tales by the bucketful. Through Printer, Crosfield coats what he writes about in a velvet glove of detached humour liable to remind the reader of Saki, though like that master's, Crosfield's stories can sometimes pack an iron punch. I think the impact is even greater in the stories in which Crosfield relinquishes his foreign characters and goes straight to the heart of Colombia, where he is clearly at home.
My favourites in the collection are “Guatavita Nueva”, in which a provincial priest puts his faith in the next generation, and “ Landevino's”, in which success makes a peasant painter more equal than others.
5 stars.
Gone Girl
The bad news is that this book is far too long, and it becomes increasingly unbelievable. The good news is that Gillian Flynn writes superb prose, and her social satire and philosophical asides make the whole volume worth wading through. Now that she has, presumably, made enough money to guarantee her artistic freedom, one can only hope she will use it to produce the work(s) of great contemporary literature of which she is undoubtedly capable.
Virus Flash
The Day Before
The Pope was dead. The luminaries of the Christian world´s largest Church gathered in Rome and were sequestered in the heart of the Eternal City until they would succeed in choosing a new leader.
“I’m getting out of here for a day. Want to come?”
It was natural for Cardinal Healy to have struck up a friendship with Cardinal Varela. Not only were they by far the youngest at the Conclave, they were also both from the New World, Healy being an Irish-American from Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Varela hailing from São Paulo in Brazil.
Cardinal Varela coughed a few times, then drew breath and answered, “I am with you. But how we get away? And back?”
“I know some hidden passages. This place is riddled with them.” Healy’s eyes gleamed with more than the slight fever he had picked up.
“They will miss us, no?”
“No. There’s nothing on today. Just the Chamberlain droning on about procedure.”
And so the two young cardinals went out into the city, unobserved.
The Chamberlain, Cardinal Grugliasco, however, did not drone on about procedure. Instead, he came straight to the point.
“I am joyful to announce my conversion to the one true, true faith, to which I submit, and for which I shall be a martyr. Yes. I have infected myself with a virus that will soon kill me. We are taking this rare opportunity to eliminate the foremost members of our main rival, in numerical terms. Most of you already have the virus, and it will kill you, too. All of you. It dies with its host, so the killer disease will spread no further than this sealed environment; we are not mass murderers. My dear Cardinals, I urge you to convert while you can, to turn your pointless deaths into meaningful martyrdoms. If you do, you too will receive the martyrs’ rewards in Paradise.”
Later, while the few Cardinals who still had the strength were slowly beating Grugliasco to death, Healy and Varela were tucking into rich Italian cuisine in a crowded Roman restaurant.
Healey beamed as he dried his pale face with his napkin. “Sure, it’s good to be alive at a time like this, eh?”
“Indeed.” Varela reached for his blood-stained handkerchief yet again. “Life is wonderful!”
The Pope was dead. The luminaries of the Christian world´s largest Church gathered in Rome and were sequestered in the heart of the Eternal City until they would succeed in choosing a new leader.
“I’m getting out of here for a day. Want to come?”
It was natural for Cardinal Healy to have struck up a friendship with Cardinal Varela. Not only were they by far the youngest at the Conclave, they were also both from the New World, Healy being an Irish-American from Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Varela hailing from São Paulo in Brazil.
Cardinal Varela coughed a few times, then drew breath and answered, “I am with you. But how we get away? And back?”
“I know some hidden passages. This place is riddled with them.” Healy’s eyes gleamed with more than the slight fever he had picked up.
“They will miss us, no?”
“No. There’s nothing on today. Just the Chamberlain droning on about procedure.”
And so the two young cardinals went out into the city, unobserved.
The Chamberlain, Cardinal Grugliasco, however, did not drone on about procedure. Instead, he came straight to the point.
“I am joyful to announce my conversion to the one true, true faith, to which I submit, and for which I shall be a martyr. Yes. I have infected myself with a virus that will soon kill me. We are taking this rare opportunity to eliminate the foremost members of our main rival, in numerical terms. Most of you already have the virus, and it will kill you, too. All of you. It dies with its host, so the killer disease will spread no further than this sealed environment; we are not mass murderers. My dear Cardinals, I urge you to convert while you can, to turn your pointless deaths into meaningful martyrdoms. If you do, you too will receive the martyrs’ rewards in Paradise.”
Later, while the few Cardinals who still had the strength were slowly beating Grugliasco to death, Healy and Varela were tucking into rich Italian cuisine in a crowded Roman restaurant.
Healey beamed as he dried his pale face with his napkin. “Sure, it’s good to be alive at a time like this, eh?”
“Indeed.” Varela reached for his blood-stained handkerchief yet again. “Life is wonderful!”
Witchfinders' Treat
The Witches of Eastwick by John UpdikeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The 21st Century Witchfinders will have a field day with this novel. The identity politics brigade will excoriate Updike for presenting characters who express casual racism without a second thought or apparent disastrous consequences, whereas the Creative Writing graduates will be horrified by his breaking of Mr King's commandments: all those adjectives and adverbs, as though they added meaning, as though they were a valuable part of the English language! Like the witches of old, he will be found guilty where there is no guilt, no witchcraft. In this age of new, improved puritanism, it is the devil's own job to have satire understood, never mind appreciated. If only there were an afterlife, so that we might catch the sound of the author's spirit cackling fiendishly.
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