Elliot's Reading February 2022:Danish, Zambian, The Hague, and a case of plagiarism

Read the first volume - Childhood - of Tove Ditlevsen’s three-vol memoir - The Copenhagen Trilogy; it’s still the age of the memoir (and of autofiction), the tail-end perhaps - this work closer to memoir than to fiction as I suppose it’s a work of memory rather than invention. It would mean a lot more to me if I were familiar w/ TDs work as a writer and poet, but, like most American readers I’d guess, I knew little about her. This first volume opens a window on life in the working -class neighborhoods of Copenhagen in the 1920s or so; TD, like so many writers, was an early misfit, and the volume presents sketches of her struggles with a restrictive mother, tempestuous relationship with her politically radical father, a sense of the extreme poverty and hardship of the working-class lives - reminds me a little of recently read Breadgivers, similar topics in setting of NYC. Unfortunately, though, despite some insightful episodes - notably TD’s being drawn into a life of minor crime in order to save face and keep up with the tougher, rougher kids in the neighborhood, kids she would later grow away from (cf. My Brilliant Friend?) but these episodes tend to be sketched in rather than examined, probed, developed (cf Knausgaard, ditto Proust). 

Katie Kitamura’s new novel, Intimacies, is in a sense 2 novels in one. The narrator (name??) is a translator at the World Court in the Hague, and to me the best part of this novel were the accounts of her work, in particular, her (i.e., KK’s) discussion of the art and the act of translation and the need for the translator to be objective and impersonal, almost like a machine. This attitude is particularly stressful and even unattainable in the World Court, as the narrator shows when she is assigned to translate into French for a man - the former president he’s called - who is charged with brutal crimes; KK gives a great sense of how a translator becomes inured to words and the world around her - and that’s worth pondering as a condition for all of us, every day. KK interweaves this story w/ the narrator’s loves/sex life, as she falls in love with a handsome Dutch man who leaves town for what he says will be a week - turns out to be much longer - and lets the narrator live in his apartment; it was hard for me to get up any interest in this story line - the stakes were so much lower than in the other narrative - my god, they knew each other only for a week, it was not in my view a deeply invested relationship. This part of the narrative was also skewed by some highly improbable encounters and revelations, and it just didn’t fly the way it should; I kept expecting the 2 plot lines to converge, but that never really happened. Still, the writing is excellent (except someone ought to teach KK about the comma splice - see Elements of Style); there aren’t that many contemporary novels thatI can bear to finish, but this one moved along easily and thoughtfully. 

I’ve read about half of current Nobel literature winner Abdulrazak Gurnah’s 2017 novel, Gravel Heart, and have found it to this point - as far as I’ll go - an intelligent, detailed account of the life of a young man born in Zanzibar, where his grandfather was killed for participation in some kind of unsuccessful insurrection and whose father has become a recluse with mental illness of some unknown sort or cause and whose mother has shamed him by having a relationship with a local TV news star - the first chapter, which details this, is pretty good; then the narrator moves to London for school and spends several years moving from place to place and trying to find himself as a student of literature and carrying on a few inconsequential relationships and friendships and managing a difficult relationship with his overbearing uncle who tries to control his life. All told, pretty good, if familiar ground - especially familiar to those who’ve read Naipal - with the difference that AG’s novel lacks the humor and the tension of Naipal, or of most immigrant novels. The narrator just drifts from one locale to another and there’s never any great tension or dramatic build-up, and I’m 230 small-print pp in; this book, which seems closely autobiographical, might be better if presented as “auto-fiction,” but without that claim on reality - portrait of the artist as a young immigrant man - there’s little to hold my interest despite the obvious professionalism of the prose. If I’d known or cared much about AG’s work, this novel would have had more to hold me, but it doesn’t seem to me a good starting point for reading this Nobelist’s work. 

Jean Hanff Korelitz’s novel The Plot (2021) is above all else a page-turner, this one about a writer of literary fiction, frustrated with his work - first book received nice notices but has slipped into obscurity and getting by via teaching summer residency workshops, who writes a 4th book that becomes a mega-best-seller - following which he finds himself anonymously accused of plagiarism; he sets off on a course of amateur detective work to find out who’s accusing him and why (this summary passes o ver several key plot points so as not to lead to any unintended reveals). All readers will be caught up in the author’s plight - and especially readers (and writers) of literary fiction, as JHK has that world down pat. As with most whodunits, unfortunately, far too much hinges on unlikely coincidence and on the protagonist - Jake - have an enormous # of lucky breaks: the lawyer who fills him in, the house=-cleaner who just happens to remember the woman Jake is seeking, and so on: He encounters no dead ends, and life is full of those. I would guess most astute readers will figure out who dun it before the big reveal. Most of all, I have to say, this novel doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny in the end - so much that’s put forth makes little or no sense when you look back on the story line, but, hey, it was fun to read - I actually read it straight through to the end, which is rare for me when I delve into contemporary fiction. (Weirdly, there seems to be another novel out now - Last Resort - also on the theme of an author accused of plagiarism; maybe these two novels ought to meet up?)