I was inspired to post some impressions of Helen DeWitt’s two novels after seeing that The Last Samurai — an all-time favorite I’ve read twice, own in first-edition signed hardcover (see inscription/signature above) and multiple paperbacks (I hoard them to give away after rescuing from used bookstores) — was named the best book of the 21st century (for now) and received top-notch summary/appreciation treatment by Christian Lorentzen.
Especially recommended to cold cerebral dudes with liberal arts degrees in English Lit who rarely read fiction by living women.
Would also recommend it to those who loved The Elegance of the Hedgehog but thought it might have been a bit twee.
Re-read ten years after first reading in 2001, after really enjoying DeWitt’s very different second novel, Lightning Rods (see below), as soon as it came out in 2011.
In the past decade I’ve crammed in a few hundred novels, a few hundred pages of my own writing, and an MFA etc. And it’s still one of my all-time faves, maybe my favorite contemporary novel, up there with Infinite Jest, 2666, and An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter.
It’s 530 pages but it feels more like 325 since there are tons of blank pages and pages without much text in English on them and spare dialogue throughout that flies down the page.
It’s a virtuoso performance about the limits of virtuosity. An explicitly intelligent, skillful novel about the necessity of something more than intelligence and skill.
Structurally, it has two parts, one narrated by the mother and the other narrated by the son. The first part narrated by the mother is joyous as the main characters emerge, especially as the six-year-old genius son goes to school for the first time. Ludo, age six, knows Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and is learning Japanese, etc, etc, but mostly wants to learn who his biological father is. The second half of the book is narrated by Ludo, age 11, who hunts down seven potential fathers, all of them geniuses/ heroes, some more vividly described by the author than others, but all of them making the end sadder and more “poignant” than the opening.
It’s set in London in the mid-’90s, not 16th Century Japan. It has nothing to do with the Tom Cruise movie of the same name, although it’s thematically perfect that this book, which constantly refers to Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai” and is about parrying the blow brought down on the head by worldwide cultural idiocy (“Sesame Street seems about the right level”) is confused with a Tom Cruise movie.
On second read, I thought some of the potential fathers were rushed a little bit, that the last 100 pages got a bit thin at times, but not enough to undermine my love.
On October 27, 2011, I very sheepishly asked Ms. DeWitt to sign my first edition hardback after a New Directions 75th Anniversary reading event thing in NYC. Very awkward to approach someone you know and love who has no clue who you are, of course.
I wanted to give her a hug but she’s sort of birdlike compared to this bearlike reader, plus it could have been misconstrued as assault (very recommended reading: a few years later she posted this diary about a stalker).
Above her signature, she wrote “A good samurai will parry the blow” — and I think that’s why folks love this book.
Not only is it explicitly intelligent and original, with text appearing in Japanese, Greek, and Icelandic, but it has such a heart, is more about how one survives when caught out in the storm of shit (see the last line of By Night in Chile).
Also re-watched all 200 minutes of “The Seven Samurai” after finishing the novel. Really a wonderful afternoon and night, especially on a cold snowy/sleety Saturday in October.
Here’s what I wrote about my first read: One of my fave books. Totally amazing literary fun. Totally underhyped. Watch The 7 Samurai and read this and have a damn fine high-art aesthetic experience. Please, dear friends, read this fucker and help raise Helen Dewitt to her proper status as Queen of England, even if she lives in Connecticut or wherever and was reported missing for a while two years ago. Really a can’t miss, wonderfully fast, intelligent, funny novel.
Also Here’s Something About Helen DeWitt’s Lightning Rods
This novel was maybe a little ahead of its time in 2011 but now seems more plausible.
Written circa 1999, Helen DeWitt’s second novel seems spawned by the stain on Monica Lewinsky’s dress. Should’ve been published years before October 2011 — a shame that those who LOVED DeWitt’s first novel published in 2000 had to wait so long for NYC publishers to get their act together (long live New Directions!).
Readers who like to laugh should read this one: the first hundred pages seemed to have 1+ LOLs per page. Sometimes reminded me of George Saunders, Michel Houllebecq, Amanda Filipacchi, Charlie Kaufman, Torsten Krol. Initial hilarity ensues thanks to the revelation and ridiculously enjoyable, rational unraveling of the title’s significance. In a recent interview, she says this one was inspired by Mel Brooks and the “Springtime for Hiter” bit in “The Producers” rather than the considerably higher art “The Seven Samurai” by Kurosawa that inspired her first one.
With this one, revealing any of its audacious/bawdy turns would reduce its pleasures. Let’s just say it’s about an innovative solution to a workplace challenge and that this innovation is controversial at first but becomes more commonplace in time.
A pleasure I will reveal is that every page is purposefully studded with cliched language, sometimes as many as three cliches/word packages per sentence. At times I was so badly busting a gut I felt like I could eat a horse, which is a whole different kettle of fish that once brought to water is a pea in the satirization pod re: the rise and sustained erection of an American business endeavor. Gotta love good ol’ American get up and go.
The book’s last line is “In America anything is possible” but the story ain’t anything goes. Once it introduces and establishes the plot’s implausible engine, the rest involves its rational defense against all obstacles, particularly politically correct ones but also those faced by any new business, like competition from cheaper services etc. Despite the initial freakishness, such focus is a strength but maybe also one of the book’s weaknesses? A zany, rational, totally enjoyable pageturner, like DeWitt’s first novel a little bit — not as explicitly smart as The Last Samurai but still fundamentally smarter and culturally critical and joyously unhinged (and flat-out funnier, the first third of it at least) than most contemporary American fiction I’ve read.
As in her first book, lots of short chapters, cliffhangers, and white space between chapters so you finish a chapter and turn a few pages and suddenly find you’re five pages deeper into the reading day’s page count. There’s something attractive about that apparently accelerative effect . . .
Anyway, friendly folks at New Directions (or elsewhere), please publish more of her novel manuscripts posthaste! She’s got fans willing to buy her stuff and spread the word.
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To support the publishers who have supported my writing, please acquire a copy of Like It Matters: An Unpublishable Novel, Chaotic Good, Neutral Evil ))), and/or JRZDVLZ (all from Sagging Meniscus). Or my translation of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador. Or Thanks + Sorry + Good Luck: Rejection Letters From the Eyeshot Outbox directly from the publisher. Or even a copy of The Shimmering Go-Between directly from me (the publisher is kaput).