Book Review: A Naked Singularity

A Naked Singularity

By Sergio De La Pava

Amante Press

Recently, The Quarterly Conversation, a U.S. literary magazine, ran a review of Sergio De La Pava’s A Naked Singularity calling it one of the best and most original novels of the last decade. While there is perhaps nothing unusual in a reviewer heaping praise on a book, De La Pava’s novel presents an interesting case: it was actually self-published via the company Xlibris in 2008. Even more impressively, there is no hyperbole in The Quarterly Conversation’s claim: A Naked Singularity is, without a doubt, one of the best and most original novels of the last decade, and the fact that it was self-published is simply astounding, given the complexity, formal inventiveness, and the brilliant writing in this novel.

            The book follows the story of a public-defense attorney named Casi (which is Spanish for ‘as if’), and opens by following him during a standard day as he negotiates a series of clients through the inhuman order of the New York criminal justice system. This opening section not only suggests an intimate knowledge of these processes, but also offers a blistering critique of the U.S. justice system and the disastrous consequences that result from calls to implement stronger notions of law and order; De La Pava renders the violence produced by state systems of control in all of its naked reality. But these grim insights are also alleviated by a dark comedy that delineates the absurdities of legal, bureaucratic processes.

            The first 200 pages or so of the book continue following Casi through his day as we are also introduced to his neighbours, including a Columbia psychology student who is watching every episode of The Honeymooners on repeat in an attempt to make Ralph Kramden into a person that feels psychologically real to him. We are also introduced to Casi’s family (who come from the other Colombia), through a hysterically funny party scene.

            But despite these wonderful digressions, at the heart of this book is a complicated and thrilling crime novel depicting a dangerous caper that involves international drug dealers. As this moment slowly approaches, the novel becomes increasingly compulsive reading, and the climax is a tense affair that is sure to set your pulse racing. And this is what is so impressive about De La Pava’s achievement: his book is both an innovative novel of ideas and a plot-driven thriller all at the same time, as both genres are thrown together (which is a sort of naked singularity of its own).

            This book has everything and then some: reflections on Descartes’ radical scepticism, The Jetsons, a discussion of Hume’s doubt that cause and effect exists, contemporary physics, a human embodiment of Hobbes’ Leviathan, a comprehensive history of middleweight boxing, an eight-page poem translated into broken English, a developmentally disabled inmate sentenced to death in Alabama, and a hotel that bears a strange resemblance to the Garden of Eden. This is a truly encyclopaedic novel, which is full of clever, punning prose. Consider this debate between two characters over the greatest man (with the gender specificity of said discussion noted in the novel) to have ever lived:

‘We have Homer . . . um . . . Simpson, Virgil. Aeneid. Who else did we say? Milton . . . Bradley. Bach, all the three B’s in fact, Bach, Leonard Bernstein and the other B. Hume, Kant, all the guys in that book, Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley, anybody who went to Berkeley. In fact anybody who went to any institution named after a dead philosopher including naturally Georgetown and Stanford, which are of course named after Phyllis George and Stanford Marsalis respectively. Gutenberg who conducted the Gutenberg trial. Nureyev Rudolph. Rudolph Valentino. Engelbert Humperdink for that matter. The guy who invented the Gouldberg variations, T.S. Eliot Gould. Oppenheimer and Manhattan, you know, of the Oppenheimer project [. . .] Hannibal. American Vespucci. Verdi. Vendredi. Veni, Vidi, Vici, all three of them. The Marx Brothers, Karl and Groucho. The guys they worked with, Engels and Harpo. Socrates and the guy who poisoned him then put him in a hemlock. Darwin and the first guy who coined the term Darwinism. Don Quixote and his sidekick . . . Tonto . . . Villa I think. The guy who discovered the nap. The guy who founded the Freudian slip. Pasteur, the inventor of milk. The guy who unearthed the tango, the guy who discovered cash. Tango and Cash. Locke along with Stock . . . even Barrel.’

            A Naked Singularity is raucous, wild writing that will appeal to readers who already enjoy writers like Thomas Pynchon, Don Dellilo, Evan Dara and, especially, David Foster Wallace (indeed, fans of Infinite Jest need to run—not walk—to their nearest computer and buy A Naked Singularity immediately). But while it shares some surface similarities with these writers, A Naked Singularity isn’t imitation either. And more impressively, for all of its cleverness and artifice, this is a book that also contains moments that are truly moving as well; De La Pava seems able to master every genre and every possible register of prose.

A Naked Singularity announces the presence of one of the most interesting and important voices in contemporary American literature. This novel isn’t good, and it isn’t great—it’s phenomenal. Go buy it now.

Quote of the Day: William Gaddis

"--When we were sitting here listening to him read, it didn't occur to me, it's funny, it never occurred to me about him, pictures I've seen of him, and his poems, and the things he says in his poems . . . and I'd wanted to meet him. Esther's eyes had come to rest on the floor, and the shadow there from the chair meaningless until it moved.
    --And you're surprised . . . upset over this?
    --I'd wanted to meet him, she commenced, following the shadow's length back to its roots.
    --Meet him? And now a thing like this . . . I don't understand, you Esther, you're the one who always knows these things about people, these personal things about writers and painters and all the . . .
    --Yes, but . . .
    --Analyzing, dissecting, finding answers, and now . . . What did you want of him that you didn't get from his work? [. . .] this passion for wanting to meet the latest poet, shake hands with the latest novelist, get hold of the latest painter, devour . . . what is it? What is it they want from a man that they didn't get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he's done his work? What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? The human shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology.
    --Wyatt, these romantic . . .
    --Yes, romantic, listen . . . Romantics! they marry cows and all kinds of comfort, soon enough their antics betray them to what would have been fatal in the work, I mean being obvious. No, here, it's competence right here in the world that's rewarded with romantic ends, and the romantics battling for competence, something to eat and carfare home . . . Look at the dentist's wife, she's a beauty. Who's the intimate of a saint, it's her Jesuit confessor, and the romantics end up anchorites in the desert."

-- William Gaddis, The Recognitions (pp.94-6)

Literary Links: Special Link Edition, Now with Extra Links!

• Do you want to read the first chapter of Evan Dara's The Lost Scrapbook? Of course, you do! So here it is.

• Just say yes to NaNoWriMo.

• Check out J. Safran Foer's new book Tree of Codes, which is a book made of die-cut pages that stack on top of each other and whatnot in a way that I can't explain so just look at the thing already. There's more good news: Foer didn't "write" the book, but rather cut up text from Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles, which means that this could well be the least annoying book that Foer has ever written.  Huzzah! [Added: there's an even better link to info on the book here.]

• Joshua Cohen, author of an 800-page Jewish novel, reviews Adam Levin's The Instructions, a 1000-page Jewish novel. Did he like it? Survey says no.

• The LRB on old Tommy Bernhard. Yup, he's still great.

• Tried and failed to buy an ebook in our lovely, little convict colony? Register yer frustration at Lost Book Sales.

• It's been 150 years and poor Emma Bovary is still misunderstood. Oddly, it seems that Amanda Lohrey (author of the recent Reading Madame Bovary) falls prey to the exact same misreading of Emma (at least based on the interview she gave to the ABC Book Show): "Flaubert is very, very condescending towards [Emma], he says that she reads too many books from the public library, too many romances that corrupt her mind and her loyalty to her husband." Is she Misreading Madame Bovary? (N.B. I haven't finished Lohrey's book yet, so I'm probably totally wrong about this...)

• The Guardian asks the following question: will there ever be a great European novel? Answer: Yes, which The Guardian would know if its staff writers ever read any books from that area just across the Channel over there...what's it called? Switzerfrance? Or something.

Rejecting Wittgenstein's Mistress

Above is David Markson's handwritten list covering the 54 rejections his classic novel Wittgenstein's Mistress received.

Book Review: The Philanthropist

The Philanthropist

By John Tesarsch

Sleepers Publishing

John Tesarsch’s debut novel, The Philanthropist, centres around Charles Bradshaw, an Australian industrialist in charge of a corporation worth nearly a billion dollars, who is also a prominent philanthropist. Charles, now in his 50s, is a wealthy and powerful man, but in the book’s opening pages he suffers a heart attack. While he narrowly survives, Charles is left in a physically debilitated state thereafter, and must step down from his corporate position. While he has plenty of money, Charles is left with nothing to fill his days, and is both forced to confront the grim realities of his family life and haunted by his own past actions.

            For all of his ‘generous’ acts of philanthropy (which, in many cases, were also convenient tax write-offs), Charles, himself, has been anything but kind in his personal life. Struggling with his ill-health, he quickly realises that he has ignored both his wife and his children, who have little interest in supporting him during his time of need. As a result, Charles tries to reach out to Anna, a woman he loved in his youth, in an attempt to come to terms with his unpleasant past.

            The book is populated by people who have intense emotions but are completely incapable of expressing them, and the the tone is generally melancholic. This combination is effective in a way that might recall novels like Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter. The tone is aided by Tesarsch ’s writing, which is simple and sure, almost as if he were compiling the facts of a case for a legal brief (indeed, Tesarsch is a lawyer); this technique conveys an effective subtlety to character relationships and descriptions. There’s a good deal of legal knowledge in the book (usually delivered through the character of Anna, who is a judge), but it never becomes too heavy, and Tesarsch himself ironises such material by noting that ‘it is said that to study law is to allow the left brain to encircle the right and finally eat it.’

Tesarch also does an excellent job of re-describing important events through the eyes of different characters, forcing the reader to acknowledge that our understanding of events is dependent on our point of view. Indeed, this is a book that attempts to investigate the notion of morality and what constitutes a ‘good’ act (as the title The Philanthropist suggests), but finds that, in the complex muddle of life, defining our own actions according to a rigid moral schema is extremely difficult, if not impossible. This is reflected in the character of Charles, who in so many ways desires to make amends for his past actions, but, due to his many character flaws, finds that all of his attempts at restitution only result in creating further problems.

The Philanthropist is a tightly plotted novel with strong and interesting characters, written in prose that has an economic, concise beauty. This is a strong and compelling first novel that raises big questions, but refuses to provide us with easy answers.

Literary Links: pollytiks v. fiction

So, um, yes, the debate about Politics and Fiction rages on at Overland's blog. I don't have too much more to say about it than what I've said there. My bone(s) of contention at this point is basically twofold: 1) I don't think authors have a moral/ethical imperative to write about politics and 2) I don't get why this whole argument is so focused on authors anyway; I think there are systemic issues regarding the dissemination of fiction that are much larger than authorial intent, basically.


OK, some links for this week:

• Jeff Sparrow's 'What We Talk about When We Talk about Politics'. Obviously.

• Re: the above, why not read Mayakovsky's 'Order No. 2 to the Army of the Arts' (1921)? I love this poem even though it calls for exactly what I'm arguing against (which, weirdly, kind of supports my argument about literature and potentiality).

• There is, of course, another possibility in the above debate that's been left more or less unexplored: anyone for a spot of désoeuvrement?

• I'm late on this but it's a previously unpublished David Foster Wallace story, so whatever.

• Just say no to NaNoWriMo.

• Joshua Cohen has quickly become one of my favourite reviewers eva. This one on Doc Zhivago doesn't contain his trademark weisenheimerism, but, you know, it's still really good.

Book Review: The Lost Scrapbook

The Lost Scrapbook
By Evan Dara
Aurora Publishers (www.aurora148.com)


Evan Dara’s The Lost Scrapbook was originally published in 1996, after being selected as the winner of the Fiction Collective 2’s innovative fiction contest by William Vollmann. The book received little press coverage at the time, but over the intervening fourteen years, it has gradually built up a rabid cult-following—and with good reason.

            The book is anything but mass-market fiction; this innovative novel is organised by a set of wildly inventive formal principles, which the first scene announces: The Last Scrapbook opens with a young person speaking to a career counsellor and refusing to settle on one occupation, saying ‘I am interested, almost exclusively, in being interested.’ The novel follows this logic: instead of focusing on one straightforward narrative, it offers a multiplicity, constantly jumping between characters, locations and scenes; even more impressively, these switches often occur in midsentence. While these radical transitions can be disorienting at first, readers will quickly adjust to this unusual style.

            These individual vignettes, which range over such topics as Warner Bros. cartoons, Noam Chomsky’s language theory, the music of Phillip Glass, and a pirate radio station that beams directly into Sony Walkman cassette players, are all funny and completely engaging.

            But for those who like more traditional narratives, The Lost Scrapbook isn’t simply clever textual artifice. The links between the different narratives slowly build over several hundred pages; some characters recur, as do occasional references to a lost scrapbook that belonged to one character’s grandfather (although these references are so oblique that you could easily miss them if you aren’t paying attention).

Eventually, however, the narrative shifts again, focusing on a new set of voices in the small (imaginary) town of Isaura, Missouri, who begin to face an environmental disaster caused by a large, local corporation.

            For all of its erudition and formal experimentation, this is a book whose ending is moving and even sentimental (in a good way); even more impressively, the book’s many strands are ingeniously drawn together, as well. Dara’s project is effectively an attempt to imagine the social totality of a small community by representing all of the different voices in a locality—it is a genuine attempt to represent late capitalism in all of its networked complexity.

            I’ll be honest: I only found out about this book a few months ago, and upon reading it, I was blown away. It’s the best book I’ve read in years, and I liked it so much that I almost find it difficult to talk about clearly. Some readers have even called it the best American novel of the 1990s—whether or not this may be hyperbole, there’s certainly no doubt in my mind that it’s one of the best. This is a great book that deserves a wider readership and would certainly appeal to readers who like such authors as William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, Don Dellilo and David Foster Wallace—particularly his novel Infinite Jest (which, interestingly, came out in the same year).

            There is, of course, another possible reason for the book’s obscurity, too. Evan Dara is a pen name, and no-one knows who the real author behind this book is aside from the author’s claim to live in Paris (Paris, Texas?). Although he’s maintained his anonymity, Dara began to have very minor interactions with the public when he started his own publishing house in 2008 to produce his second novel, The Easy Chain (which infamously contains 40 blank pages in the middle of the book), and keep The Lost Scrapbook in print. There is also one possible clue about Dara’s identity here: his publishing house is called Aurora, and The Lost Scrapbook refers to Aurora, Nebraska (‘I found myself on I-80…somewhere between Lincoln and Aurora…’). Could there be a link?

But ultimately, anyone with even a passing interesting in the contemporary novel in English needs to read this book, which is truly a lost classic. Unfortunately, you won’t find The Lost Scrapbook in bookshops, but it can be purchased from Aurora publishers at their website: www.aurora148.com.