30th Dec 2010
The discussion on 'Lights Out in Wonderland' was somewhat brief. There wasn't a vast degree of dissent from the previously-submitted comments from Richard, Ras, Will and Mark Th - though perhaps not quite as vitriolic and certainly those present didn't concur with Mark Th's view of a zero score with thus no redeeming features at all. Neil did actually quite like the book and Chris thought it interesting in parts. Essentially what they saw in it was a greater degree of what Ras & Richard noted (and Rob concurred with) that contained within a deluge of pretentious bollocks were actually some really quite interesting observations on life, politics, economics and the world in general. Neil even went to the extent of suggesting that he could spot a plot and a storyline that went through the book - but totally failed to persuade the rest of us of that fact. The consensus (such as there was) was that whilst there was a simple plot (person pissed of with life decides to kill himself after last binge with mate - gets into a mess so tries to save mate first, discovers capitalist excess, finds it distasteful and redeems himself) the author's inability to turn it into a cogent novel destroyed any potential for this to be a good book. There was a brief discussion about the difference between books that were about real life and those that were clearly 'fantasy' - and how part of the problem with Lights Out was that it was clearly the latter but that Pierre had failed to write it in a way that made the non-realism seem acceptable. Put another way, in a book like Kafka, the fact that Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame appeared in the story was not a matter that made the reader think it was ludicrous and impossible - because it flowed and was an acceptable part of the unrealistic happenings in the book that added up to a cogent whole. In Lights Out, the whole (for example) dinner at the end just left people musing on the ludicrous impossibility of it all - ergo the author failed in his task of writing a 'fantasy' book that worked. It was, essentially and to use Richard's words 'self-indulgent, narcissistic, verbose crap'.
Steve, who chose it, but couldn't be there to defend it, was a bit surprised at the extremity of the responses. He added: I found Wonderland tough to get into, not least because of the outrageous price charged for a paperback - publishers seem to think that if they stick an extra bit of cardboard on the cover they can add 60% to the cover price. Gabriel didn't endear himself to me (nor was he supposed to), and all that cobblers about nimbuses (nimbii?) wasn't helping.
I did find though that as I persevered, it became more rewarding. I thought the Japanese interlude was interesting and quite amusingly written, though I really didn't care if Smuts was clapped in jail and never seen again. It really came to life in Berlin though - I thought his descriptions of these huge monolithic remnants of Hitler's surge for domination were very powerful, and reading the episode set in the former Gestapo HQ co-incided with seeing a programme on TV about other massive military installations that are still dotted around Berlin. Cue one lost hour on Google Maps... As already pointed out in the notes of the meeting (so sorry I couldn't be there!), there was some possibly quite heavy-handed allegorical stuff going on with capitalist bankers and remnants of totalitarian regimes thrown into stark contrast. But it was vivid, different, quite funny, and becasue of all that, more interesting than some. I wouldn't call it a good book by the standards of, say, Engleby (where the trick of developing a story around an unsympathetic main character was more deftly handled, I think), but I found myself enjoying the journey.
3.17
