 |
| Sunday, December 21, 2003 |
|
| Sunday, December 21, 2003 |
|
Vernon God Little
The Booker for 2003 — sorry, Man Booker — goes to an unknown hybrid DBC Pierre: a British national, who was born in Australia, lived in Mexico from the age of seven to 23, writes about Texas, and has now moved to Ireland. Not only has he a hyphenated existence, he boasts of a history more colorful than the usual. Born Peter Finlay in 1961, he was nicknamed Dirty Pierre by his friends, so he decided to adopt the nom de plume DBC Pierre, DBC for Dirty But Clean! Unusual name, huh? Wait, there’s more unusual stuff to come. Finlay’s was a well-to-do family in Mexico but when he was 16 his father fell terminally ill. The young Peter, left to manage the family estate, embarked upon a bohemian life in the company of equally reckless youngsters. This is how he describes himself: "freak, ... dumb, farting machine, awkward and bumbling." Addicted to cocaine, he ran into debts to the tune of `A330,000, told lies, took drugs, and indulged in every conceivable vice. The Guardian tells us that in his 42 years Peter Finlay managed to get himself shot at by a neighbour in Mexico City, run up massive debts, cultivate drug and gambling addictions, leave behind a trail of wronged women, and have his face reconstructed by surgeons after a horrific car crash. These are the impressive credentials of this year’s Booker Prize winner! But let us put aside the biography and examine his debut, Vernon God Little. Possibly — and why not? — it could be another of those unexpected, unprecedented offerings like Arundhati Roy’s, a whiff of fresh air to clear the dull, stale odours of literary tradition. Set in Martirio, Texas, where "it is hot as hell" in more ways than one, the action revolves around a school massacre reminiscent of the Columbine massacre of 1999. Instead of a conventional hero, we have a teenage anti-hero (shades of the author?), Vernon Little, whose best friend, Jesus Navarro, has shot 16 of his classmates and then turned the gun on himself. It is an open and shut case, but the town needs a ''skate-goat'' so it corners Vernon who unfortunately cannot explain his whereabouts at the time of the crime (he was, er, defecating at precisely that very moment!). Complementing the banality of the storyline is a narrative style replete with profanity and a coarse, ribald, black humour. Vernon Little gives a no-holds-barred account of how he is picked up, interrogated, and accused. Surrounded by crude caricatures, clich`E9d ugly-American stereotypes, he is pronounced guilty, not only of the school massacre but also of being a serial killer. What strikes the reader is the sheer crudity of Vernon's narration. While one may have nothing against slang or colloquialism, one would predictably be uncomfortable with vulgarity or obscenity. And Vernon God Little is anything but elegant in its language. Every page, yes, without exaggeration, every page has a free sprinkling of the f— word, of ass and shit and other forms of verbal coarseness — teenage slang, the kind that dropouts, losers and junkies use. It is all offensive, very offensive! Mystifying is the number of rave reviews this book has received. Barring a handful, like Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times who objects to Pierre’s insulting American stereotypes and his unimaginative compendium of clich`E9s, critics and reviewers have gone overboard in their praise for the "youthful exuberance" of the "simply terrific writing," and the brilliant rendering of adolescent life. For the Booker judges this, apparently, is high-class creativity! Perhaps there was a dearth of good entries this time. We are told that Margaret Atwood was the only well-known author in the shortlist. The other established writers were probably on sabbatical. This unfortunate reviewer, after spending almost an eternity turning the pages in the futile hunt for some redeeming features, was left with a number of question marks at the end of the day. If, as the website says, the Booker — okay, Man Booker — has changed its rules to add "greater sanity" to them, where and how does Vernon God Little fit into any scheme that can even remotely be labelled sane? Or, if this is the level of sanity, why not keep the Booker prize exclusively for drug-addicts, junkies, dropouts, delinquents and the like? Why not leave the Coetzees and Rushdies and Atwoods, et. al., out of this race? For there is nothing in common between their works and that of this Dirty But Clean (sic!) writer. Take a look at a random passage from the novel: "A learning grows in me like a tumor. It’s about the way different needy people find the quickest route to get some attention in their miserable fucken lives. The f... oozing nakedness, the despair of being such a vulnerable egg-sac of a critter, like, a so-called human being, just sickens me sometimes, especially right now. The Human Condition, Mom calls it." Or another: "I’m studying this whole tragedy routine, in back of my jellified brain. The Lechugas have to send themselves teddy bears, for instance. Know why? Because Max was an a.... Saw-teeth of damnation I feel just thinking it, waiting for fiery hounds to unleash mastications and puke my f... soul to hell. But at the same time, here’s me with water in my eyes, for Max, for all my classmates. The truth is a corrosive thing. It’s like everybody who used to cuss the dead is now lining up to say what perfect angels of God they were. What I’m learning is the world laughs through its ass every day, then just lies double-time when sh.. goes down. It’s like we’re on a Pritkin diet of f... lies. I mean – what kind of f... life is this?" Call this literature, would you? C’mon, give me a break! |
THE
Booker home page says that the coveted prize is now "correctly
known as the Man Booker Prize." No reasons are put forward for the
changed nomenclature but the website claims that the rules have been
modified, "bringing a form of sanity to the prize-giving exercise
which previously appeared to be getting completely out of hand."
What, one wonders, could this new "sanity" be? More rigorous
standards of evaluation, perhaps? In which case expectations are
predictably high when one turns to this year’s prize-winning novel.