Helen Dewitt:The Last Samurai
- Taschenbuch 2008, ISBN: 9780701169787
Gebundene Ausgabe
Vintage Books. Good. 5.1 x 0.9 x 8 inches. Paperback. 2008. 358 pages. text buckled<br>Sebastian Faulks's new novel is a bol t from the blue: contemporary, demotic, angry, hear… Mehr…
Vintage Books. Good. 5.1 x 0.9 x 8 inches. Paperback. 2008. 358 pages. text buckled<br>Sebastian Faulks's new novel is a bol t from the blue: contemporary, demotic, angry, heart-wrenching, a nd funny, in the deepest shade of black. Mike Engleby says thing s that others dare not even think. A man devoid of scruple or sel f-pity, he rises without trace in Thatcher's England and scorches through the blandscape of New Labour. In the course of his brie f, incandescent career, he and the reader encounter many famous p eople - actors, writers, politicians, household names - but by fa r the most memorable is Engleby himself. Sebastian Faulks's new novel can be read as a lament for a generation and the country it failed. It is also a meditation on the limits of science, the cu rse of human consciousness and on the lyrics of 1970s' rock music . And beneath this highly disturbing surface lies an unfolding my stery of gripping narrative power. For when one of Mike's contemp oraries unaccountably disappears, the reader has to ask: is even the shameless Engleby capable of telling the whole truth? From t he Hardcover edition. Editorial Reviews Review One of the most impressive novelists of his generation. -Sunday Telegraph The be st novelist of his generation. -Scotsman Faulks is beyond doubt a master. -Financial Times From the Hardcover edition. About th e Author Sebastian Faulks is the author of seven previous novels, including Birdsong (1993), The Girl at the Lion d'Or (1989), Cha rlotte Gray (1998), On Green Dolphin Street (2001) and Human Trac es (2005). He is also the author of a biographical study, The Fat al Englishman (1996). From the Hardcover edition. Excerpt. ® Re printed by permission. All rights reserved. One My name is Mike Engleby, and I'm in my second year at an ancient university. My c ollege was founded in 1662, which means it's viewed here as moder n. Its chapel was designed by Hawksmoor, or possibly Wren; its ga rdens were laid out by someone else whose name is familiar. The c hoir stalls were carved by the only woodcarver you've ever heard of. The captain of the Boat Club won a gold medal at an internati onal games last year. (I think he 's studying physical education. ) The captain of cricket has played for Pakistan, though he talks like the Prince of Wales. The teachers, or 'dons', include three university professors, one of whom was on the radio recently tal king about lizards. He's known as the Iguanodon. Tonight I won't study in my room because there's the weekly meeting of the Folk Club. Almost all the boys in my college go to this, not for the m usic, though it's normally quite good, but because lots of girl s tudents come here for the evening. The only boys who don't go are those with a work compulsion, or the ones who think folk music d ied when Bob Dylan went electric. There's someone I've seen a fe w times, called Jennifer Arkland. I discovered her name because s he stood for election to the committee of a society. On the poste rs, the candidates had small pictures of themselves and, under th eir names and colleges, a few personal details. Hers said: 'Secon d-year History exhibitioner. Previously educated at Lymington Hig h School and Sorbonne. Hobbies: music, dance, film-making, cookin g. Would like to make the society more democratic with more women members and have more outings.' I'd seen her in the tea room of the University Library, where she was usually with two other gir ls from her college, a fat one called Molly and a severe dark one , whose name I hadn't caught. There was often Steve from Christ's or Dave from Jesus sniffing round them. I think I'll join this society of hers. It doesn't matter what it's for because they're all the same. They're all called something Soc, short for Society . Lab Soc, Lit Soc, Geog Soc. There 's probably a knitting group called Sock Soc. I'll find out about Jen Soc, then go along so I can get to know her better. I won a prize to come to my college and it pays my fees; my family's poor. I took a train from schoo l one day after I'd sat the exams and had been called for intervi ew. I must have stayed in London on the way, but I have no memory of it. My memory's odd like that. I'm big on detail, but there a re holes in the fabric. I do remember that I took a bus from the station, though I didn't know then what my college looked like. I went round the whole city and ended up back at the station, havi ng made the round trip. Then I took a taxi and had to borrow some money from the porter to pay for it. I still had a pound note in my wallet for emergencies. They gave me a key to a bedroom; it was in a courtyard that I reached by a tunnel under the road. I i magined what kind of student lived there normally. I pictured som eone called Tony with a beard and a duffel coat. I tried really h ard to like the room and the college that was going to be mine. I imagined bicycling off to lectures in the early morning with my books balanced on a rack over the back wheel. I'd be shouting out to the other guys, 'See you there!' I'd probably smoke a pipe. I 'd also probably have a girlfriend - some quite stern grammar sch ool girl with glasses, who wouldn't be to everyone's taste. In f act, I didn't like the room I was in that night. It was damp, it was small and it felt as though too many people had been through it. It didn't seem old enough; it didn't seem 17th century, or mo dern: it was more like 1955. Also, there was no bathroom. I found one up the stairs. It was very cold and I had to stay dressed un til the bath was run. The water itself was very hot. Everything i n the room and on the stairs smelled slightly of gas, and lino. I slept fine, but I didn't want to have breakfast in the dining h all because of having to talk to the other candidates. I went alo ng the street and found a café and had weak coffee and a sausage roll, which I paid for from my spare pound. I re-entered the coll ege by the main gate. The porter was sullen in his damp lodge wit h a paraffin heater. 'G12, Dr Woodrow's rooms,' he said. I found it all right, and there was another boy waiting outside. He looke d clever. Eventually, the door opened and it was my turn. There were two of them in there: a big schoolmasterly man who showed me to a chair, then sat down at a desk; and a younger, thin man wit h a beard who didn't get up from his armchair. Teachers at my sch ool didn't have beards. 'You wrote well on Shakespeare. Do you v isit the theatre a good deal?' This was the big one talking. It s ounded too much like an ordinary conversation to be an interview. I suspected a trap. I told him there wasn't a theatre where we l ived, in Reading. I was watching him all the time. How grand, to be a Doctor of whatever and to weigh up and decide people 's fut ure. I'd once seen a set of table mats in a shop which had pictur es of men in different academic gowns: Doctor of Divinity, Master of Arts and so on. But this was the first real one I'd seen. He asked me a few more things, none of them interesting. '. . . the poetry of Eliot. Would you care to make a comparison between Eli ot and Lawrence?' This was the younger one, and it was his first contribution. I thought he must be joking. An American banker in terested in the rhythms of the Anglican liturgy and a pitman's so n who wanted to escape from Nottingham, maybe via sex, or by his crude paintings. Compare them? I looked at him carefully, but he showed no sign of humour so I gave an answer about their use of v erse forms, trying to make it sound as though it had been a reaso nable question. He nodded a few times and looked relieved. He did n't follow it up. The big one leafed through my papers again. 'Y our personal report,' he said at last, 'from your teacher . . . D id you have difficulties with him?' I hadn't been aware of any, I said. 'Is there anything that you'd like to ask us about life in college? We try to make everyone feel welcome.' It seemed wro ng not to ask something; it might look as though I didn't care. B ut I couldn't ask any of the things I really wanted to know. In t he silence we heard the college clock chime the halfhour. I felt them both looking at me. Then I felt a trickle of sweat on my spi ne. I hardly ever sweat normally, and it gave me an idea. 'What' s the thing with laundry?' 'What?' said the big one, gruffly. ' Do you have . . . Well, like, washing machines? Is it done centra lly or do I take it somewhere or what?' 'Gerald?' 'I'm not quit e sure,' said the younger one. 'Each undergraduate is assigned a moral tutor,' said the schoolmasterly one. 'A Fellow of the coll ege who can help you with all your personal and health questions. ' 'So he 'd be the one to ask?' 'Yes. Yes, I imagine so.' I th ought that now I'd broken the ice, it might be good to ask anothe r question. 'What about money?' I said. 'What?' 'How much money will I need?' 'I imagine your local authority will provide a gr ant. It's up to you how you spend it. Do you have questions about the work?' 'No. I read the prospectus.' 'Do you find the idea of Chaucer daunting?' 'No, I like Chaucer.' 'Yes, yes, I can se e that from your paper. Well, Mr Engle . . . er . . .' 'Engleby. ' 'Englebury. You can go now, unless . . . Gerald?' 'No, no.' 'Good. So we'll look forward to seeing you next autumn.' I didn' t see how they could let me go without telling me how it had gone . 'Have I won a prize?' I said. 'We shall be writing to your sch ool in due course. When we've completed the interview process. It 's an exceptional year.' I shook his offered hand, waved at the seated one and went out, down the oak stairs. What a pair of frau ds. In the evening I tear a ticket from a book and take it to th e college dining hall, which was designed by Robert Adam. You hav e to buy a book of thirty-five every term; you don't actually hav e to use them, but the cash you pay in advance keeps the kitchen going. I'm wearing a long black gown over my jeans and sweater an d there are candles in sconces on the painted plaster walls. We s tand up when a door behind the top table opens and the Fellows of the college come in to dine. The Master is an oceanographer, who once drew maps of undersea mountain ranges. He knows how Austral ia was once attached to China or how Ghana sweated in the foothil ls of the Andes. I think he imagines that New Zealand once broke free from Germany. The crystal glasses glitter in the candleligh t. They drink wine. We drink water, though you are allowed to ask for beer if you like. Stellings is the only man to do this. 'A pint of ale, please, Robinson,' he says to the stooping butler. ' Beer for you, Mike?' I shake my head. Stellings brews his own be er in a plastic barrel. He calls it SG (short for student's gin: drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence) and once forced me to drink it, even though it made me sick, with its powerful taste o f malt and raw alcohol, which he achieves by doubling the sugar i nput recommended on the side of the kit. There is no bathroom nea r his room, so I had to vomit into a plastic watering can on the landing. I sometimes don't take dinner in the dining hall. I've found some places I like better. One of them is a pub, a walk of ten or fifteen minutes away, over a green (there are a lot of gre ens or 'pieces' as they call them here), down a side street, up a back street. The beer there tastes much better than Stellings's homebrew. It's made by a brewery called Greene King. One of the K ing family, they say, is a famous novelist. The lights here are l ow, the floor is made of wooden boards; the other people are not from the university. They are what are called ordinary people, th ough each person is really too specific to be ordinary. It's quit e dark, and people talk softly. Although the barman knows me, he doesn't intrude. I often have a baked potato, or a cheese and ham pie, which is messy to eat because the melted cheese is stringy and there 's so much of it between the layers of filo pastry. I also drink gin and vermouth, mixed. I like red vermouth better th an white. When I've drunk two or three of these, I feel I underst and the world better. At least, I don't mind so much that I don't understand it; I can be tolerant of my ignorance. After three or four, I feel that my ignorance is not only tolerable, but possib ly in some way noble. Other times, I go into the middle of the t own. There's a bright Greek restaurant there, where it's embarras sing to be seen alone - but I like the food: they bring moussaka with rice and with chips and with Greek salad and pitta bread wit h olives and hummus, so if you're hungry it's a good place to go. Sometimes I don't eat for two or three days, so I need to load u p. With this Greek food I drink white wine that tastes of toilet cleaner, and they go together well. I also take drugs. I've trie d most things. My favourite is opium, though I've had it only onc e. It's really hard to get hold of and involves a palaver with a flame and a pipe. I bought it from a boy who got it from a Modern History Fellow in Corpus Christi who had recently been to the Fa r East. The thing about opium is that it makes pain or difficulty unimaginable. If while you were under its influence someone were to tell you about Zyklon B and your parents dying and life in a dementia ward or Passchendaele, you might be able to understand w hat they meant - but only in a hypothetical sense. You might be i nterested by this idea of 'pain', but in a donnish way. I mean, I 'm 'interested' in the special theory of relativity; the idea tha t there 's a dimension in which space rolls up and time distorts and you come back from a journey younger than you left is certain ly intriguing, but it doesn't have an impact on me, day by day. T hat's what opium does to suffering: makes it of hypothetical inte rest only. I mostly smoke marijuana, which I buy from a boy call ed Glynn Powers. I don't know where Glynn buys it, but he has sev eral kilos of it in the built-in bedside locker in his tiny room in the new Queen Elizabeth block, a short walk beyond Fellows' Pi eces (i.e. grass area reserved to dons)., Vintage Books, 2008, 2.5, Penguin Random House. Good. 19.8 x 12.9 x 2.5 centimetres (0. Paperback. 2000. 530 pages. Cover worn <br>Reviews DeWitt's first novel revolves around Sibylla, an American displaced in London, and her young so n Ludo, both geniuses. Sibylla earns a bare living typing for mun dane periodicals like Carpworld and International Cricketer, grud gingly squeezing her assignments between viewings of Kurosawa's c lassic film, Seven Samurai. Ludo, who has been reared on this fil m, decides to use the challenges it presents to find his own myst erious father. When he is disappointed with the real thing, he se arches for a more acceptable candidate. The last half of the book is very readable and beautifully written, as Ludo discovers that perhaps the perfect father is nonexistent. Overall, however, the excessive display of erudition obstructs DeWitt's wonderful use of language and imagination. After spending too much time either trying to understand her rhetoric or skipping pages loaded with a rcane languages or mathematical theories, readers may find it dif ficult to persist.DPatricia Gulian, South Portland, ME Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. DeWitt's ambitious, colossal debut novel tells the story of a young genius, his worldly aliena tion and his eccentric mother, Sibylla Newman, an American living in London after dropping out of Oxford. Her son, Ludovic (Ludo), the product of a one-night stand, could read English, French and Greek by the age of four. His incredible intellectual ability is matched only by his insatiable curiosity, and Sibylla attempts t o guide her son's education while scraping by on typing jobs. To avoid the cold, they ride the Underground on the Circle Line trai n daily, traveling around London as Ludo reads the Odyssey, learn s Japanese and masters mathematics and science. Sybilla uses her favorite film, Akira Kurosawa's classic Seven Samurai, as a makes hift guide for her son's moral development. As Ludo matures and t akes over the story's narration, Sibylla is revealed as less than forthcoming on certain topics, most importantly the identity of Ludo's father. Knowing only that his male parent is a travel writ er, Ludo searches through volumes of adventure stories, but he is unsuccessful until he happens upon a folder containing his fathe r's name hidden in a sealed envelope. He arranges to meet the man , pretending to be a fan. The funny, bittersweet encounter ends w ith a gravely disappointed Ludo, unable to confront his father wi th his identity. Afterward, the sad 11-year-old resumes his searc h for his ideal parent figure. Using a test modeled after a scene in Seven Samurai, he seeks out five different men, claiming he i s the son of each. While energetic and relentlessly unpredictable , the novel often becomes belabored with its own inventiveness, b ut the bizarre relationship between Sibylla and Ludo maintains it s resonant, rich centrality, giving the book true emotional cohes ion. Foreign rights sold in Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Fra nce, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, S pain, Sweden and the U.K. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information. ., Penguin Random House, 2000, 2.5<
