Vault: An Anti Novel

by David Rose

A pre-war amateur cycling career is cut short by call-up. Trained as a sniper, the man, whose name we never know for sure, embarks for war-torn Europe. Undecided how to resume his life at the war's close, and disturbed by what he has left behind on the Continent, he is compelled to return, dispensing first medical aid, then something quite different. A further attempt to take up his cycling career is thwarted when he is inveigled into playing his minor part in a new - Cold - war. Finally settling for a retreat into peaceful obscurity, he discovers even this is not to be. His story, he learns, has been turned into a novel. without his knowledge or approval. As he now reads, comments on and corrects the novel, he begins to struggle to distance himself from the false heroics, and above all, to reclaim his own death.

Genres: Fiction

168 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2011

Reviews

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, he’s researched the cycling, the fictionalization I expect, reality is mostly humdrum, but emotion, motivation . . . If you’re going to tamper with a man’s life, at least provide some insight. Not this absurd existential anti-hero.

[edited as the author kindly answered by big question - below - on Twitter]

My reading this year is focused on the UK's thriving - in quality if not in financial prosperity - independent publishing scene, and this is one from Salt Publishing's back catalogue.

It tells the story of a man called McKuen: pre-war a racing cyclist, but who serves as a sniper in the second world war, then returns on his own account to France after the war as a sort of mysterious enforcer in the post-conflict chaos, before becoming involved in counter-intelligence, working unofficially for the security services, first using his cover as a cyclist to pass on messages, then in an operation against an IRA sniper and finally, and fatally, against the radical anti-nuclear movement.

A life worthy of a Len Deighton thriller, and that is what we get in half of Vault.

But the other half, set out in alternating chapters, reveals this to be a fictionalised account of a real-life man (real-life within the pages of Vault, a fictional character to the reader of Vault) whose life, with the same basic elements, had featured in a radio documentary. The real-life McKuen (if that is indeed his name) provides his own first-person counter commentary on his life and, particularly, highlights the exaggerations and excesses of the fictional treatment.

Rose explained his inspiration in an interview in 3am Magazine

I am a big fan of W.G. Sebald, and loved Austerlitz. I was thus intrigued by the later controversy surrounding it, which you will probably remember: the woman claiming that Sebald had stolen her life story, which she’d given in a documentary; Sebald’s admission of that; his agreement to acknowledge it in later editions; his death before he could do so.

I was struck by her need for that acknowledgement. I began to wonder how I might feel confronted with a fictional version of my own life. Even more: to have my death stolen.

The fictional version is written in overwrought heroic prose, such as this description of snipers concealing themselves:

They eased down into the ditch, the ochreous water seeping osmotically up into the hessian, adding its stain to the camouflage. They each scooped mud by the handful from the bottom, smeared it over their faces, the water tickling down their necks, adding to the shiver. But the fragrance of the saturated sedge calmed him with a wave of warm nostalgia.

The fictional writer borrows from Greek mythology, and McKuen (I will call him that, although he is never named in his own account) rapidly loses patience. The opening chapter has him cycling:

As the road twists we see it side on, just make out in the slanted sun the spokes, their sparkle dulled by dust carefully smoothed onto axle grease. The hump doubles, separates, as we distinguish haversack from spine. Drop handlebars like down-turned horns.

He retorts:

Chiron, for Christ's sake. Look, alright, yes, the bike becomes a part of you, if you’re a natural, even if you’re not, providing you’re professional. But Chiron? For God’s sake.
[...]
Look, all of this matters. I can’t explain why, but it does. I mentioned it in the radio interview. He could have checked. Novelists are supposed to research the background, aren’t they? An ordinary pre-war childhood, like thousands of others. I didn’t come from nowhere. I’m certainly not a bloody centaur.

In one pithy retort he remarks Incidentally, the term for the main bunch is peloton, not pantheon.

As a sniper, returning to base after a successful mission, the fictional account has the other soldiers greet him, but with reserve, grudged respect, downplaying his difference but acknowledging it in doing so.

But McKuen himself retorts in his account:

It wasn't respect, grudging or otherwise, they felt. It was uneasiness. The feeling was that there was something sneaky about shooting a man you could see, that it wasn’t quite cricket. We were pariahs, reminders of the job we all had to do, in its barest terms.

His vocation as a sniper, in his own account, is linked to his preference for time-trials over road races

No, glory is not right. It’s a more private achievement, a measuring of oneself, but not against others. I can’t explain, but it’s significant that I performed better in time trials than on the track. Yourself against the clock. No distractions. Comparison with others’ times comes later, after the event, when it no longer matters.

And when massed road-racing resumes he initially isn't keen, only coming into his own in hilly races when he can break away from the pantheon peleton:

In 1942, I think, Percy Stallard initiated the return of massed-start road races. Most of our depleted club decided to try it. I wasn’t keen. It meant learning new skills, new thinking: riding in a bunch, holding a wheel, taking turns at the head of a break. Simply being among others instead of out on my own against the watch. Only on a race with a series of hills did I come into my own, breaking away on the first climb.

When the war ends he returns to France on his own account, initially to see how he can help:

I still felt some need to be among those who did, who shared the assumptions of suffering. It was one of the reasons I returned to the Continent, in addition to my original idea of being of help. I’m not sure that atonement was a concept I would have understood at the time, but in retrospect, that too was an element.

but he gets drawn into disputes as people fight over scarce food, and the victors take revenge on the defeated Germans, and starts to intervene actively, even resuming his sniping in a particularly bad case where a woman is being abused:

In her hometown, as in others, rumours will circulate of a hooded protector, an avenging angel in belted robes. Sightings are reported, many of them simultaneous and miles apart. Tussles over food or squatters’ rights are broken off as protagonists and antagonists alike look round in fear.

His activities eventually comes to the attention of the authorities and on his enforced return to England he resumes his cycling career. The fictional account has him becoming a dominant climber, with a trick of nonchalantly combing his hair mid-climb before surging away, missing out on the Milk Race due to an affair with a married woman, but riding the Peace Race, where he is recruited by the same authorities to smuggle messages into the Communist countries in which the races take place.

The truth is his own account is more prosaic and he points out that the Milk Race incident is taken not from his life but a version of Fausto Coppi's Woman in White, and the comb trick from Hugo Koblet:

The comb trick, for example, belonged to a Swiss rider called Koblet — a natural mountains man, obviously, who rode the Tour in the early Fifties. It was not a stroke I would have thought of or been capable of pulling. I wish I had been.

In both accounts, however, he does gets sucked into the world of the security services.

It’s difficult now to remember what a strange mixture the Fifties were of cream-and-brown cosiness and febrile speculation; how quickly after the war the country relapsed into parochial nostalgia, while facing unprecedented possibilities, most of them tied to atomic energy. Periodic scares, and relentlessly positive propaganda in editorials, from Fleet Street to parish magazines. For myself, having tried to settle.

This end part of the novel was perhaps the weakest for me as he gets himself deliberately kidnapped by some radical anti-nuclear power activists, then engages in a lengthy debate with them. I felt I was perhaps missing the point Rose was trying to make, although one key element is McKuen's anger - as Rose's interview suggests - at not just his life but also his death (in the fictional account) being appropriated:

Look, I don't so much mind my life being borrowed. It's what novelists do. They have to make a living. I understand that. And besides, I can correct it, put the record straight.

What I do mind is my death being stolen. It hasn't happened yet! How else could I have given that bloody interview? Unsung Lives, Unsung Heroes, some stupid bloody series title. I couldn't bring myself to listen to the broadcast.

One intriguing element I have not seen mentioned in any review, and which leaves me pondering, is that each of the real-life McKuen's chapters has at one point a random word or phrase inserted mid-sentence, out of context, and in italics. So for example in the last chapter:

Maybe not so much a new life as the chance to regain the life I would have led had the war not distorted it, buckled the contours, as it did for all absorbed by the dark my generation.

The complete list, at least those I found reads as follows:

piston
dry rustle
quivering
teeth
shadow
clock
flint
larkspur
spiralling up
burrow
fidgeting
absorbed by the dark

I would love to hear from anyone who has read the novel and has any idea what this signifies?

UpdateThe best person to answer is clearly the author - so I asked him on Twitter and answer their came ....

They function (if at all) subliminally. Each word (selected randomly) appeared in the previous chapter.

Outside of book reading, watching cycling is another of my loves, and I read this novel as the 2017 Tour de France was reaching its conclusion. Rose clearly knows his stuff and the cycling elements were a joy to read. This paragraph in particular reminded me of the pre-internet days when, even in the 1980s, even the Tour de France was hard to follow from the UK let alone the Spring Classics, and I would listen on a scratchy set to Dutch language commentary on NOS Radio Een.

Several of the younger members had learnt French, enough to read the sports reports in the French papers. We would gather in the clubhouse and listen as Bob Ashton or Ken Beesley falteringly translated aloud from the latest, week-old copy of L’Equipe.

And one of the best reviews of the novel can be found on the excellent Podium Cafe cycling website: https://www.podiumcafe.com/book-corne...

Highly recommended.

[Edmond · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll admit, I first bought VAULT for its subtitle – "An Anti-Novel." I thought it took some gumption for the author, David Rose, to give his novel a tag like that in our current publishing climate, and I hoped that the book would make good on its promise. The splendid cover made an additional temptation; on the Acknowledgments page Rose himself offers a disarming remark about hoping his book lives up to it. On both counts – subtitle and cover – it does.

VAULT is structured in alternating chapters that give two different versions of the protagonist’s life. One set of chapters tells the story of McKuen, a cycling enthusiast from the Southeast of England who becomes a sniper in WW2 and a freelance operative for the intelligence services in the Cold War. This might sound like the well-trod territory of espionage novels such as those of Frederick Forsyth or Len Deighton, which functioned in their day as fantasy compensations for the real decline of England’s status in the world. But these chapters are intercut with their revisionist counterparts, first-person chapters in which the hero’s “real-life” prototype comments on and criticizes the “legend nonsense” and “novelism” in the alternate sequence. He protests that the author’s appropriations of his biography distort it in the service of false heroism and spurious glamour, and against these he offers the corrective of his own more prosaic account.

Rose’s anti-novel goes beyond merely questioning conventional literary heroism, however, finally implicating both versions of its protagonist in a condition of moral ambiguity. The key might be found in the “real” main character’s description of his relationship with his racing cycle, the “sensation of control” and “exhilaration of being one with a mechanically-perfect machine,” so fused with it that he “no longer had to think.” It is the same relationship that he has with his sniper rifle. But bicycle races can be rigged, lovers can turn into double agents, and the figure of the lone existential hero, seen from another angle, might turn out to be just a pawn – as much a mere instrument as the rifle and bicycle are to the hero. The intelligence service’s deployment of McKuen against the antinuclear movement broadens the frame dizzyingly, raising the possibility that the same commitment to instrumental expertise is behind the construction of the H-bomb and the specter of nuclear annihilation.

If VAULT is therefore also something of a historical novel, it has the advantage of never reading like one. It’s not upholstered with boring period detail and barely-digested chunks of research; rather, it convincingly distills an atmosphere appropriate to the era in which it is set. An earlier, more convivial way of life is hinted at only by its absence; cycling as a genuine people’s pastime and the “Great War” as a popular, mass mobilization have been chiseled down into grim existential choices made in the cold and dark. I’ve seldom read a first novel written with such economy, in which so much is suggested in such spare and unsparing prose. And while VAULT refuses many of the easy consolations of more mainstream fiction, it shouldn’t scare away anyone who might mistakenly believe that “anti-novel” equals willful obscurity. It’s a novel about cycling, guns, and novels that suggests with great clarity that what is obscure is our fates.

[Bri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was enjoyable and the anti-novel concept was so unique! The running contrast between the fictionalisation of his life and his real commentary was unlike anything I’ve read before. I loved it! Overall, the book provides interesting commentary on the inevitable fictionalisation and sensationalism of our heros. The ending was perfect too.

P.S. I made Jacob get a library card to borrow this book for me. Trip book #2

[Nick Sweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a suberbly-written novel, telling several stories on several levels, with themes incorporating bike racing, sniping (of the deadly military kind) and a dual role of first-aider and avenger. McKuen has been injured in the leg during his time in France and the Low Countries in the Second World War, as part of the Allied tide sweeping the Nazis back. After the war, in an adventure that brings him back to post-war Europe, and brings him (his anonymity intact) out of the footnotes of history books, he sees that cycling does no harm to his injured leg. He is able to return to his pre-war love of competitive cycling. I love the notion that a novel can expand on the footnotes of history books, that what is dismissed as legend in a dry study of something can truly have a life of its own in a book. In this one, the characters occasionally rebel against the author, dismiss his romanticising, set the facts right; normally I’m not mad about this kind of post-modern intrusion, mainly, I think, because it’s done so smugly and in such a look-how-clever-I-am way, but David Rose avoids this trap. Of his cycling, McKuen states: “In part, it was a vocation, perhaps. In part it was a link with my past, a way of converting the war into a hiatus, a way to stop it destroying me, as it destroyed others, sunk into a restless apathy.” I like that idea, that a character can be strong enough to treat something like the war as part of his development. The cycling sequences are very well done – and it’s clear to me that David Rose has been a part of this minority sport, and knows it well – but not, I think, overdone. Mind you, I am a fan of cycling, anyway. McKuen goes on to another career with its own perils, goes on arguing with the author who dogs him, goes on to conclusion that the reader can probably guess at. Though low-key, the book is full of humour, and full of surprises, and I enjoyed it very much.

[Marc Nash · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book as it advertised itself as an anti-novel. The definition of such, as made popular by Jean-Paul Sartre, includes elements of fragmentary prose that rejects presenting a unified character. Here Rose presents us not an anti-hero but a non-hero, a non-team playing military sniper and then a driven competitive cyclist who displays an act of great teamplay, but rejects any accolade of 'hero' for both. But the depictions of these aspects of his life are surprisingly non-fragmentary and reasonable conventional story-telling. The study of a sniper at work was gripping, that of a road cyclist less so. This idea of a non-hero is not only part of the character's personality, but also the whole fictional notion of having a hero at the heart of any novel - here the character is treated in 3rd and then 1st person in alternating chapters as we realise he is challenging the novelist's portrayal of his story and picking the author up on errors of fact. I felt this was underplayed really, even to the point of contesting his death as conceived by the novelist.

A brave stab perhaps, but ultimately a tad unsatisfying. It deconstructs the concept of a fictional hero, but less so of a fictional character.

[Jan Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting. You can see why Bill Broady liked it; there’s that similar sparseness in the writing, and the places in between are very quiet.

A short little book. Not sure if it fits the bill of an anti-novel. But it does have a ‘House Of Leaves’ ring about it; spotted throughout the text are random italicised words. I’m sure they mean something when taken and constructed elsewhere, or maybe they’re just another existence poking through and unifying both versions of the life exposed.

It makes you think. Which is what books are good for.

[Brandon Gryder · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a strange and fun book. Truly an anti-novel. Told in alternating chapters from a novelists point of view and from the point of view of the actual subject of the novel. War, professional cycling, snipers, violence.

[Nigel Bird · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a while ago now, but David Rose was one of our favourites at the Rue Bella magazine. His short stories were meticulously written and tended to focus on small details to make much larger points.
We published several pieces by him and he was one of our tips to move on to bigger and better things.
Pleasing, then, that I recently found that David has had a novel published by ‘Salt’. I’d like to congratulate ‘Salt’ for their good taste when deciding to put this out.
I say novel, but I’m not sure I’m entirely correct given the tagline Vault (an anti-novel).
I wasn’t sure when I began what an anti-novel is and I’m still not sure. I’ll leave that one for the scholars to unpick. I do have an inkling though, that rather than being a literary black hole it is something specific to this particular piece of work.
The story of McKuen is told from two points of view. The first is by McKeun himself, the second by a novelist writing an account based on McKuen’s life story. It is possible that it is the man’s dislike of the dramatisation of his own life is where the anti-novel element comes in.
As you might expect, the novelist and the individual concerned have very different takes on the events of the life in question. What is rather surprising is that it is left to the novelist to add any emotion or sense of pride to it.
And it’s a pretty amazing life, at that.
McKuen is born to parents who are fanatical cyclists and he is soon to become one himself.
When the war arrives, he takes advantage of his skills to aid his life as a sniper in the Second World War. It’s something he’s great at, hanging around in trees and playing the waiting game.
It’s something he turns to his advantage after the war, becoming an avenging angel for the survivors who fight over scraps of aid.
Cycling emerges as his main passion when things in Europe settle and the reader follows his journey through races and into a world of espionage as if attached to a side-car.
At each stage, the horrors of war and of life are hammered home with beautifully sharp nails, the isolation of the journey through life emphasised time and time again.
It’s a book I really enjoyed.
The conflicting styles of biographer and novelist are fascinating.
Just like with Rose’s short stories, it’s the minutia that I found myself looking at before my thinking was stretched beyond the page. I very much enjoy it when a book floats around inside me for days after finishing and that’s exactly what Vault has done, haunting will phrases and images that keep presenting me with questions that I’m still trying to answer.
Hopefully there’ll be more from David Rose in the near future. I for one will be taking the saddle when the next book arrives.

[Wayne Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I began reading this book in early January '16 but stopped after 15 pages since I just didn't get it. The story line kept changing rapidly and the author completely lost me.

I picked it up again in early March '16 for one reason: the book was the right size to fit into my backpack for a trip I was taking. I restarted the book from the beginning and, not only did I get it this time, but I blew right past those first 15 pages and kept on going. I have to admit that I enjoyed the book more than I thought I was going to.

I have no idea what an "anti-novel" is, but I assume it has to do with the author critiquing the plot and his own writing style in-line within the story itself. If that is what an anti-novel is all about, then I don't like anti-novels. I am ambivalent about novels at best (I prefer nonfiction), but if I am going to read one then I want to learn something or be touched by deep meaning within the story.

On this last point, there is a poignant discussion in the last chapter of life and especially one's own death. I was touched by it.

[Eugene · Rating 5 out of 5]

convincing and moving portrayals of a kind of quiet, selfless valor told with a great textured, muscular writing:

Towns flattened for miles, those civilians unable to flee living as troglodytes in cellars half-flooded with rain and sewage, making hopscotch forays to find crusts or cabbage leaves in the rubbled gutters (p. 33)

this novel on the surface is occupied primarily with two physical activities: being a sniper (during the second world war) and racing bicycles. but rose's beautifully rendered description of these two (at times sinister) occupations make us touch our animal side -- and by that we're uncannily opened up to profound moral and philosophical quandaries.

_______________

here's an interview revealing, among other interesting bits, a sebald-related origin story: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/one-ca...

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vault is a novel like no other I've read before featuring alternating chapters about a fictionalized war hero and his antics and the real life man he's inspired by commenting on everything the "author" got wrong.

The book transcends "meta" in the best possible way, producing a truly unique work featuring snipers, the sport of cycling (which I now have a far greater appreciation of) and, most importantly, the nature of identity. Do we have control over our identity? And is it possible to live with the choices we've made in life, or to disassociate completely from them? Rose's writing is handsome and effective, painting beautifully stark backdrops alongside the inner turmoil of a man coming to grips with the choices he's made in life.

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thriller about a wartime sniper who has a career as a vigilante helping refugees survive post-War Germany, before getting recruited into espionage and undercover operations. The narrative is told in chapters alternating with commentary from the real-life character who is its original source, who makes acidic observations of how his life-material is being used. Short and sharp, and with a few little puzzles for the reader. The only off moment is when our commentator uses the word "trope" near the end, a clear case where "cliche" is the right word.

[Jan Moens · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10