My
initial acquaintance with MJ's distinctive way with words occurred when
I was forcefully struck by these lines as part of our singular
Scotsman's incisive review on Théophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin:
"Your
plot antics are bare: a poet looking for his perfect Venus encounters
hurdles in his search, finding no luck in the pink-cheeked Rosette whom
he diddles for five months out of kindness. When he claps eyes on the
girlish man Theodore (who happens to be a woman, but ssshhh) he finds
his Venus par excellence and goes stark raving mad like all melodramatic
romantic poets who want to mainline beauty into their veins."
Double
wow, thinks I, "goes stark raving mad like all melodramatic romantic
poets who want to mainline beauty into their veins" - what a fabulous,
spot-on image, one that I wouldn't come up with if I was given a
thousand cracks.
And after many other occasions to feast my
glazzies on signature MJ linguistic razzle-dazzle here in book review
land, I knew I'd be in for a plethora of phenomenal phonemic pleasures
with The House of Writers.
Since it is now 2021 and House of Writers
published back in 2016, why, you may ask, did it take me so long to get
to this dance of twenty-six squigs? The answer is clear: I needed a
good kick in the arse, a powerful kick-start to get me started - and I
got said kick recently by reading another exuberant writer, actually one
of our greatest living writers, a writer who's on that highly rarefied
Nabakovian linguistic vibe: Rodrigo Fresán from Argentina.
Anyway,
here I am. And I'm here to echo other loves of quality lit, reviewers
like Fionnuala, Arthur, Ted (RIP), Anthony, Lee, Vit, Geoff and Nathan
"N.R." Gaddis, who are over the moon about THOW. Among the many memorable reviewer quotes, take a lasting look as this one by Fionnuala:
"I’m
saying that I found elements in this book that reminded me of aspects
of both Flann O’Brien’s writing and Rabelais’ writing. For example, the
author loves alphabetical lists and wordplay just as Rabelais does, and
he has a way of turning ordinary statements around to show how
ridiculous they are the way O’Brien does..."
And this one from Vit:
"If Bible is the book of books then The House of Writers is the pun of puns… The House of Writers is an ultimate postmodern opus because it boasts a record number of allusions per page of text…"
And yet again, this one from David citing HQLF (High Quality Literary Fiction):
"This
book is world-class. It is one for the ages. So if you give even a
brass farthing for the state of the quality of serious literature to be
read by your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, then take a
lesson from "The House of Writers" and support HQLF wherever you may
find it, like here."
For me, reading MJ's multifaceted, flavorful
fiction brought to mind many of Raymond Queneau's exercises numbering
ninety-nine - Nichollish too-rah-rah-ray spinning anagrams,
onomatopoeia, alexandrines, syncope, paragoge and others that I'm sure
went way over my not so linguistically nimble head.
With this in
mind, I'll end by sharing a batch of scrumptious eye-catching quotes
(I'll also include the title of the chapter where they came from) that
might serve as your own kick-start to put your paws MJ's post-Belcher:
THIS LEXICOGRAPHICALLY LIMBER UNIVERSE
"Are
you skilled with words in an age when words are squanderously piddled
down so many unthinking drains? Are you a spinner of yarns, a whirler of
sagas, a rotator of epics? Do you take pride in the sibilant syllable,
the luxuriant noun, the plosively placed preposition, in sentences that
sing like angels in a cosmic opera?"
"Can you fill a blank page
with enough razzle-dazzle, fuzzbox, and too-rah-rah-ray to make the
everyday reader spurn his duncehood?"
MHAIRI
"Several writers
(ex-smackheads) noticed and I had to deal with begging requests from
those hoping to have their pages sprinkled with extra helpings of Big H -
to turn them into instant bestsellers."
"I made a home for
myself on the roof, paying a simpleton named Gerald (more on him later)
to construct a small cottage overlooking the wastelands of Crarsix. If I
tilt my head heavenwards on summer nights, I can glimpse a rogue star
through the carcinogenic layers of toxic silt, and my heart is almost
happy."
A BLAST OF KIRSTY
"As the world reverted back to a
sub-hominid mental state, Scot-Call switchboards were abuzz with
operatives taking on nonsensical and Cro-Magnon queries - behind these
the dominant question: "Can you help me live? Over 98% of inbound
queries we deal with are pointless, and since real enlightenment is a
danger to the Scot-Call profit margins, we encourage operatives to
devise baffling and unhelpful answers to keep people calling."
"Having
said that, I prefer my torment localised. I look forward to many years
torturing workers with the prospect of bonuses, raising their hopes for
months on end, sacking them the day before their bonuses are due. That's
the sort of buzz I crave as I work my way to the upper echelons of this
magnificently evil empire."
PUFF: THE UNLOVED SON
"Satisfied
that this pipe was the fattest of those he'd inserted fingers into,
disappointed he couldn't insert his other hand into the pipe without
going splat on the concrete, Puff shimmied back toward the windows."
"The
other writers sincerely didn't want Puff to plummet and had brought
blood to her tongue and scrunched her toes so tight she strained a
tendon. Puff shimmied along the pipe and dropped back through the window
unscathed."
THIS
"Some books obfuscate their intentions,
drowning their meaning in multiple layers of ambiguities, subtleties,
and intellectual mazes for the reader to unfurl. This is not one of
those books."
"This one has a definite meaning and purpose,
maybe, if I'm not lying, and you will not escape reading this novel
without learning exactly what the author (me) intended exactly, unless I
decide to lie to you, in which case, you won't."
Novelist M.J. Nicholls, born 1986
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