Sunday 11 January 2009

Year of the Boot

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O’Brien was lying on something that felt like a camp bed, except that it was higher off the ground and that he was fixed down in some way so that he could not move. Light that seemed stronger than usual was falling on his face. A moustached man was standing at his side, looking down at him intently. At the other side of him stood a man in a white coat, holding a hypodermic syringe.
“Do you remember who I am, Richard?” said the first man.
“Yes.” replied O’Brien.
“What is my name?”
He started to reply, but before he could finish a single word blue stars flashed across his field of vision as the little finger on his right hand was swiftly snapped back and broken. Blinded by pain, he barely noticed that his restraints were being released until he felt a sensation of falling, and his nose connected sickeningly with the floor. He felt the rough sole of a boot press hard against his cheek.
“Remember this feeling, Richard,” said the moustached man “a boot stamping on a human face. This is the future – forever. The sooner you accept the truth of it, the easier your life will become.”
O’Brien’s eyes flickered open to the harsh light in time to see the second man kneeling at his side, brandishing the syringe. Moments later the cold steel tip pierced his arm.
“After all, power is not a means; it is an end. We are that end. We are like this syringe; cold and bright, and if you let us, we’ll put an end to your suffering. Will you let us, Richard?”
O’Brien merely sighed and closed his eyes as the blissful drugs flowed through his veins, numbing the pain that wracked his body. Heavy footsteps approached and two hands gripped his arms. The unseen figures began to drag him away, and moments later he passed out.

He awoke on his back in what he assumed was the same cell he had inhabited for – how long was it now? Time was hard to measure in this place, devoid as it was of darkness or natural light, as was everything else. Every block, every corridor, every cell the same. He might be hundreds of feet in the air or buried deep underground – there was just no way to tell.
He swung his legs off the bench on which he lay and sat upright. He put his face in his hands, and immediately wished he hadn’t as a searing jolt from his right hand served as a reminder of his injury.
He looked around. The room was not as he remembered it, if it was indeed the same room. The bloody handprints on the walls were gone, and the vomit and faecal matter that had stained the floor were no more. For how long had he been out of his cell? Again, there was no way of knowing. The dominating presence of the sixty-four inch telescreen was no different at any rate. These brand new devices had been rolled out at an alarming rate across all of London of late. Dissident whispers had suggested that the party planned for there to be no corner of London that was not under surveillance.
As he sat there he became aware of a dull humming sound. It did not start upper se, as that would insinuate that it had not been there all along, which O’Brien had a feeling that it had. No, instead he had merely become aware of its presence, like the humming of an insect buzzing reaching your ears from the far side of a room. The noise did not appear to come from anywhere, and did not sound like anything that he had ever heard before. Over time it grew in volume, making him feel uneasy, until it began to hurt. He winced and put his hands up to his ears to cover them
“O’Brien!” came a commanding voice from the telescreen. “Uncover your face.”
O’Brien snapped his hands away from his face. Almost instantaneously the noise rose to fever pitch. The blood began to pound in his ears, drumming a heady tattoo against through his skull. Before long he could take it no more, and clamped his hands over his ears once more, ignoring the pain from his little finger as he squeezed as hard as he could.
“139 O’Brien R!” screamed the telescreen, “Uncover your face! No faces covered in the cells!”
But still O’Brien clung onto his head. He felt as if his body could take no more, yet he remained awake – oh how he longed for the sweet embrace of unconsciousness. Over the excruciating din he could just make out the sound of boots hurrying in the corridor outside before the door was thrown and three guards barrelled in brandishing truncheons. He felt the trickle of blood crest his lip and tasted its metallic bouquet before any of them even connected with his nose.

“Do you remember when I asked you what my name was?”
He was back on the table. The bright light in his face felt like it was trying to burn holes into his retinas. He hesitated, remembering the repercussions of his attempt to respond last time. The moustached man smiled.
“Do not fear to speak the truth, Richard. What is my name?”
O’Brien went to open his mouth again when he felt the ring finger on his right hand snap, causing him to howl in pain once more.
“But you said…!”
“Wrong!” bellowed the moustached man. “I told you to tell me the truth! How can you expect to tell me my name if you don’t even know it?”
O’Brien didn’t understand. Every man, woman and child in the country knew his name; how could they not?
“Then who are you?” he blurted out in confusion.
“My name is of no concern to you. In truth I may as well not even have a name. When you were young, did call your mother by her given name? Your father? No, family does not need names; only love. I am more like a big brother, to you and to everyone! So I ask you again, little brother – what is my name?”
“Big Brother?” he guessed, wincing.
The moustached man smiled again. There was a warmth to it, beneath that imposing thatch of bristles that O’Brien could not help but take heart from. The thick end of a truncheon impacted into the bridge of his already broken nose, which only compounded the excruciating pain.
“Right first time, little brother. There’s hope for you yet.”

Days – or what he assumed were days – went by, each one mirroring the one before it. Big Brother would ask him questions. Every answer O’Brien gave was met by brutal force. Broken bones, electrocution, beatings; it all merged into one constant, crushing ache, like the paper cut that would not stop bleeding no matter what you did.
“I don’t understand!” cried O’Brien, cradling his stomach. The table had been dispensed with, and he was now curled in a ball on the floor – he was no longer a threat. “I give you the wrong answer and you hurt me. I give you the correct answer and you hurt me. Whatever I say is wrong!”
“Precisely. And that’s what I’m trying to teach you. You know what the correct answer to the question is, but you don’t know why it is the correct answer.”
“Then tell me!” he sobbed. Big Brother paused for a moment, as if considering O’Brien’s worthiness.
“Very well. It is the correct answer because that is what we say the correct answer is. Whatever you think to be fact at any given time is only fact until we decide that it isn’t anymore. From that moment on, it is, has always been, and will always be an untruth. Do you understand that?”
“I…”
This time it was his thumb.
“You do not know whether you understand until I tell you that you understand!”
“You can’t do this!”
“Why not? We have the power to do anything we want. Moreover we have been given that power. Fear is a powerful motivator. It motivated the people of Britain to turn to a demon they didn’t fully understand when the wolves of Europe and Asia were at their door. It motivates the citizens of London to hurry home before ten o’clock every night. It motivates you to tell me what I want you to tell me. They wanted freedom: well, freedom is slavery little brother. And I am more than happy to give it to them.”
O’Brien fell silent. He had no words to express his abject horror at what Big Brother was saying – the worst part was that it was absolutely true.
“You know the war’s been over for a long time?” he continued.
“What?”
“The war. With Europe and Asia. They actually destroyed each other a long time ago. We had very little to do with the whole affair. We merely chose not to inform the general populace.”
He felt like being sick. The war had meant severe food shortages and heavy rationing. Famine, even. ‘The cost of transporting supplies to the north of the country,’ the newsfeeds had said, right before his capture, ‘is not cost effective or beneficial to the ongoing war effort.’ O’Brien felt the muscles in his stomach convulse beneath his left hand and he heaved, falling forward with the effort, but only a pathetic string of saliva dribbled to the floor.
“Why not?” he spat.
“Why do you think? Power. How can you expect to control a large group of people if you have no way to motivate them? It was by taking advantage of the country’s fear of foreign invasion that we gained control. To retain that control we needed to unite the people against a common enemy. If there is no war, where are they to direct their hate?”
“But I have seen the traitors hung in front of me; the spies shot before my very eyes. How could they have been falsified?”
“Why would they have been falsified? Those men and women were indeed killed, and they believed they had committed and confessed to every last one of the accusations held against before they died, even though they were all of them innocent, because I told them that they had.”
“Am I to die, then?”
“Not yet. I have my uses for you.”
“I’ll never help you.”
“You will help me, Richard, and when you do it will be of your own free will. I promise you that.”
The feeling of despair washed over him anew. It raised the hairs on the back of his, sending a visible shiver down his spine. His ears began to ring, not because of some unbidden sound, but from the gargantuan weight of what he was hearing.
“Tell me what you think of me.” said Big Brother after a while.
O’Brien started to cry. He wasn’t even sure if there were sufficient fluids in his tear ducts for actual tears, but he sobbed and sobbed as if he were ten years old again. His head was bowed, but he could feel Big Brother’s stare boring into the top of his skull into his brain.
“I don’t know,” he said eventually. “I don’t know what to think.”
Big Brother smiled again.
“Good dog.”

The telescreen in O’Brien’s cell flickered once and came on. He looked up, bemused. At first there was just static, but after a few moments a moving image came into view. He recognised it as Trafalgar Square – yes, the remains of Nelson’s Column were just visible in the centre of the picture, obscured as they were by a throng of people. The crowd was facing the enormous telescreen that hung from the front of the building that used to be the National Gallery. A lean, ten-foot Jewish face was blazoned across it. He had neat white hair and a goatee. It was an intelligent face, but one that was contorted into rage. O’Brien recognised it as Emmanuel Goldstein, second in command of the party, beneath – beneath Big Brother himself.
He could hear faint chanting, which grew louder as someone turned up the volume on his telescreen. They were cheering and crying as Goldstein delivered his speech, which rang clear above the assembled voices.
“…these vile swine continue to attack helpless civilians. This week alone half a million in the Midlands have succumbed to their relentless crusade.”
Goldstein’s face was replaced by images of foreign planes, falling bombs and explosions. A never-ending column of soldiers in battle fatigues marched across the screen as Goldstein’s voice continued, unabated.
“…depraved leaders of Eurasia...”
‘Wait, that wasn’t right, was it?’ thought O’Brien. ‘Europe and Asia have always been separate continents. They fought each other in the war, were they now one? No, more of Big Brother’s lies’ he consoled himself. Goldstein was still going, calling for the country to unite behind their leader. There was no mention of winning the war – only hatred of the enemy and loyalty to the party.
Another new word cropped up: ‘Eastasia’. O’Brien was startled again at its mention. The people were buying it. Everyone believed it. Was he really remembering it correctly? It had been so long since he had tasted fresh air that he’d forgotten what it felt like on his skin. If he couldn’t even remember that, how could he be sure he remembered something as physically disconnected from him as the war? Was Big Brother right – did true power really mean the ability to make everyone believe whatever you wanted them to believe?
O’Brien looked away. He saw that the cell door was open, and Big Brother was standing there.
“Do you see? We tell them anything we like, and they believe it, so unified in their hatred are they. As far as they are concerned, Eurasia and Eastasia have always existed, and we have always been at war with them.”
O’Brien did not respond immediately. He sat there, looking at the floor, then opened his mouth.
“Why?”
“Why not? Power is intoxicating; either you have it or you don’t. Wouldn’t you rather control the pieces than be one of them, being made to dance at somebody else’s will? Of course you would. You will never have that luxury, but then again you never had it in the first place, so you will not miss it. The party is power. I am the party. I am power.”
O’Brien felt a faint breeze from the direction of the open door brush his cheek. The sensation caused a single tear to roll down it. Big Brother breathed deeply and got up.
“On your feet little brother. I’m taking you somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere you’ve never been before. We call it Room 101. You have learned. You understand. Now it is time for you to accept.”
“I am ready.”

O’Brien strode purposefully along one of the many completely indistinguishable corridors of the Ministry of Love, a sturdy jack-booted guard at his side. Today was going to be an interesting day, he could tell. They rounded the corner and approached the second cell on the right. O’Brien opened the door and went in. The man inside started to his feet.
“They’ve got you too!” he cried, recognising O’Brien.
“They got me a long time ago,” O’Brien replied. He stepped aside to allow the broad-chested guard access to the room, who entered with a gleeful grin on his face, clutching his long black truncheon tightly.
“You knew this, Winston, don’t deceive yourself. You did know it – you have always known it.”
Winston appeared to consider this for a second, before the guard was upon him. The truncheon fell on his elbow, causing him to writhe around in pain on the floor feebly, as O’Brien once had in the very same position. The guard laughed mercilessly as Winston clutched at his arm. He considered for a moment how very much like him this man was – there was more than just a little of O’Brien in the dishevelled shape rolling on the floor in front of him. Yes, he would enjoy the time he was going to spend with Winston Smith.

Thursday 8 January 2009

A E I Owe You

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I was going to write this review entirely in the style of its subject: the eccentrically offbeat Eunoia; but in all honestly it would be more trouble than it’s worth. You’d probably lose your concentration and stop reading half way through. Here’s why:
The word from which this book takes its title is the shortest word in the English language to contain all five vowels. From the Greek word for ‘beautiful thinking’, it’s an apt title, because it is indeed a beautiful thought. But that’s just the problem – as a concept it’s every writer’s wet dream, but in reality there’s something about it that just doesn’t quite work.
The main body of the book is divided into five chapters, in each of which author Christian Bök uses words that contain only one of the five vowels. It’s ambitious, and it works to a certain extent. Each of these chapters describes a banquet, some kind of lustful act, a pastoral scene and a nautical voyage in some way, and does not repeat any word bar connectives. It’s certainly an impressive feat, and took him seven years to write, which is in no small part why I dropped the idea of imitating him in this review – it’s not really the kind of spare time I have on my hands!
Of course, using as many words as possible that contain only one of the five vowels is limiting at best, so it’s no surprise that it doesn’t always flow too well. I’m undecided as to whether it should be read as poetry or as narrative fiction, because although the language is beautifully constructed and displays certain rhythmic qualities, four characters inhabit the scenes, and each have a story: Hassan hatches a dark plan; Helen enters Hell’s deepest recesses; ‘I’ sighs, his writing stifling; and Ubu humps Ruth.
As a narrative piece, however, it has obstacles. Had I mimicked the mode of Eunoia and used only one vowel at a time, you would most likely have given up reading this review by now. It’s not so much because the flow is particularly jarring as a result, but more because you have to read it side-by-side with a dictionary. “Casbah”, “senescent”, “colophons” – whilst you can get the gist of what each word means from the context in which it is used, I found my enjoyment hampered somewhat in Bök’s work.
And when there is simply no word in English for what he wants to say, Bök resorts to alternative languages, which was aggravating no end. Perhaps I’m just bitter that my grasp of French and Latin is substandard at best, I don’t know. Admittedly it is clever, and appeals to the pretentious, fancy-word-loving poet in me, but as a rule I subscribe to the George Orwell, ‘if people won’t understand what the word means, use a different one’ school of thought – if no-one understands a word you’re saying, then what are you going to achieve?
The second half of the book is a collection of interesting little titbits along the same restrictive lines as the first five chapters, but less exhausting. ‘Vowels’, which uses only the letters of its title, beautifully sums up the rise and fall of love, ending on the fantastic image “so we love less well, so low, so level. Wolves evolve”. Various other pieces include a homophonic translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s Voyelle, an elegy to the letter ‘w’, and the excess trimmed from Chapter E, which is a take on the Iliad.
Summarising the collection is an afterword by the author, which explains the concepts behind each piece – and which I think sums up my main problem with Eunoia as a whole. Reading is fun, and aside from learning, why else do people do it? That everything needs a sort of footnote is like the joke that needs explaining – you understand, but it isn’t really funny. Once he’s explained that each chapter uses only one vowel (okay, so this is obvious), and that he only uses each word once, and that he’s used ninety-eight percent of the words that use only one vowel available, and that each chapter describes the same things and so on and so forth, the book has lost its fun. I enjoyed the stories, and I applaud the concept, but needing to be shown its genius, and as such why it took seven years to write, kind of killed it for me. Sorry Christian...

The Manhattan Project

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“Who watches the Watchmen?” leers long-faded graffiti from the redbrick of a New York side-alley. An overflowing trashcan nearby adds a faint, sickly odour to the air, as a shadowy figure melts into the night beyond. Replace the word ‘watch’ with the word ‘read’, and for me, the answer should be ‘as many people as possible’.
I came quite late to the comic scene. I’m sure we’re all aware of the of the typical comic book reader stereotypes – spotty, basement-ridden computer nerds with inch-thick glasses, societal rejects who would rather live in ridiculous fantasy worlds, and middle-aged wasters who seem unable to let go of their mothers’ apron strings. Although there’s often no smoke without fire, I find myself scoffing at the notion as a whole. Comic books (or ‘graphic novels’, as those with more adult leanings tend to be called) are an ever more popular medium, no longer so widely regarded as immature crap. As such, I find myself able to dive in headlong without so much as a sarcastic comment from my peers.
This image change is in no small part thanks to Alan Moore. This beardy British weirdo from Northampton created The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the book, not that sub-par film), inspired the current take on the Batman/Joker relationship in his one-shot story The Killing Joke, and, for my money, matches George Orwell’s vision of a dystopian, totalitarian future with V for Vendetta.
But Watchmen. Watchmen, his magnum opus, is a cut above the rest. I’ll admit, the brief doesn’t look too promising; a bunch of middle-aged, retired superheroes; one is a mild-mannered, slightly podgy Batman-esque ornithologist. Another, the only one who is still active (albeit illegally), is an uncompromising right-wing nut-job with his own particularly brutal brand of justice. Another is a rich ponce with a fondness for purple and a God complex – and that’s next to the only one who actually has any superpowers. An odd bunch for sure, but that’s where the appeal lies. How easy is it really to identify with a heroic staple like Superman, with his startling array of superhuman traits, extra-terrestrial heritage and bright red pants (‘Ugh, I can fly at supersonic speed and see through walls, I have so many problems!’)? Moore’s characters are conflicted, self-doubting and stroppy – and all the more human for it.
Set in an alternative 1985 where America won the Vietnam war, Nixon is still president, and nuclear war is on the horizon, the main plot revolves around Rorschach (the mental vigilante) investigating the murder of one of their number from ‘back in the day’. As more of the costumed adventurers are attacked or forced into exile, the more it seems that Rorschach’s assumed paranoia is not so unfounded. It’s much like the usual comic book fare that we all know, but there’s more to the story than that. Watchmen is about the people behind the masks.
When the story was first published it wasn’t in the single volume ‘graphic novel’ format that is readily available today; it was a serial divided into twelve parts, published over the course of about a year by DC Comics. Most of each issue was the standard panel-by-panel visual storytelling method that is comic book staple, but what set them apart from their contemporaries was the supplemental prose piece that sat at the end of each one. These took several formats, including excerpts from the autobiography of one of the first generation of masked vigilantes, an article written by the ornithologist about owls, and a feature on pirate comics. They al, in their own way, add volumes of depth to the narrative.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of nuance. A fictional pirate comic called ‘Tales from the Black Freighter’ actually intertwines with the main plot in several places in a number of issues, the author of which is mentioned in the prose feature, and actually has a hand in the final reckoning of the story.
But I’m getting away from my point. As I said, it’s not just about the masks; it’s about the people behind them – both physically, and emotionally, in those who have some stake invested in their fates. The two Bernies are series favourites; a news vendor with an opinion about everything that he isn’t afraid of voicing, and a young boy who sits at the former’s news stand, occasionally listening to him whilst reading ‘Black Freighter’ (which is itself an intelligent piece of metafiction). They represent the most common demographics: the Watchmen universe’s inhabitants, and the comic’s reader – an important voice indeed.
There really is no one thing that makes Watchmen so special for me; to insinuate there was would be an insult to its other shining gems. The piece as a whole in all its multi-layered, many-faceted glory sits in pride of place on my bookshelf. Whilst not the very first comic I ever read, I shall always consider it to be so. It opened my eyes to what comic books could be, and has set a lofty bar for my future expectations of the genre. Budding writers take note – you could do a lot worse than learn from Alan Moore.

Apocalypse, the Reaper, and Cormac McCarthy

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As many of my peers will testify, I’m something of a grammatical perfectionist. I used to have something of a reputation for stopping people mid-sentence to correct their syntax; annoying I know, and I’m a lot less anal about it now, but I just couldn’t help myself – a product of my upbringing I’m certain. Murder the written word, and your fate was even worse. ‘There’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’ were huge points of contention for me, and if ‘your’ writing something for ‘you’re’ assignments, God help you! Don’t even get me started on text-speak...
But as I said, I’m a lot more lenient now. For Cormac McCarthy’s sake, this is probably a good thing. Had I opened The Road two or three years ago, it would have annoyed the hell out of me. Punctuation? Not exactly plentiful. Chapters? Fraid’ not. Half the time it takes the concentrative powers of a brain surgeon to follow who is even speaking, so confusing is the layout of the dialogue. I mean the man hasn’t even bothered to name his characters!
So it makes you wonder why it won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction doesn’t it? Poor layout and abundant simple sentences hardly make for compelling literature…do they? As a rule of thumb I would have said not, but then again I’m hardly infallible. Because The Road is actually pretty damn good.
I say ‘pretty’. This book is very bleak; probably not one for Nan – think facing down a Tyrannosaurus Rex with a water pistol during a hosepipe ban. But if, like me, you’re not averted to a healthy dose of woeful desperation, then you can’t go wrong with this.
A mysterious event has decimated the earth and pretty much everything that lives. Those that have survived exist in one of two roles – the hunter and the hunted. Imagine yourself in the shoes of our principal protagonist: a man (who, along with his young son, remains unnamed throughout), forced to live out of a wonky shopping trolley on various scavenged goods, all the time fearing that the next person you meet will try and gnaw your legs off while you’re still alive. The very boots in which your are imagining yourself are falling apart for the lack of a decent cobbler, your wife – the mother of your child – is dead, and every five seconds said child is asking if everything’s going to be all right! Credit crunch not looking quite so bad now, is it?
McCarthy sends little respite their way, either. If it isn’t the terrifyingly human cannibals dogging their steps, it’s starvation, illness, or the myriad other horrors of this hideous post-apocalyptic world. When a glimmer of hope does shine through, you’re trained to stay on edge, never really allowing yourself to feel any relief – just as the father and son don’t either. Though the days are grim, the nights are grimmer still. The man is dogged by dreams of his former life, a life that is but a fairy tale to the boy (who was born after the earth-shattering event). Each dream drags him a little further down into his malaise, until you wonder why he bothers to carry on at all. Those last two bullets left in his pistol would start looking pretty inviting if I were him – why not end it?
But he can’t. You don’t want him to! Even when he just wants to give up; lay down and die you feel like screaming ‘no!’ at the book. McCarthy is a crafty fellow and no mistake. You need them to succeed, somehow, for you to have any faith left in humanity at all.
So not a happy one then, but as I said this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s terrifying, it’s chilling, and worst of real, it could be real – but by God is it compelling! The lack of visual breaks in the prose are a harsh barrier, not affording you a place to stop even if you need to. All this, and more, will annoy the hell out of the grammatical demon in your life, and the abject bleakness is certainly not for everyone. The Road has drawn criticism for its minimalist style, but ultimately it is a case of preference, and if you can stomach this desolate approach, I would heartily recommend this crushing read.