Last year, I was talking with a friend who's written and published a novel, and has since embarked on a non-fiction work.
We were talking about what it was that publishers might be wanting at the moment, and she told me that the days of the quiet novel were largely over.
Publishers were looking for something new, she suggested -- or maybe something old-new, like novels by another Tim Winton, bubbling over with likable, saleable, farting, folksy Australian characters.
I am interested here in the idea of a new noisy novel, as opposed to the quiet novel, and what it might look like in an Australian context. I take the quiet novel to mean a beautifully written, often short-ish narrative in which not much happens. Stylism is the quiet novel's main event: plotting is barely perceptible, characterisation is but a ripple on the surface on the writer's prose. The focus is often on transactions of a personal, intimate nature between a small group of people living within a softly-spoken coo-ee of each other. (Possibly in Northcote? -- Ed.)
Actually, that's probably all a bit harsh, but I'm hoping you'll get the general drift. I'm not going to give any examples, for fear of causing possible offence. And I'm not bringing Tim Winton any further into this, either. I think the 'noisy' versus 'quiet' novel axis should also be distinguished from another much chewn-over cud, the need for more 'political "now"' novels as opposed to the surfeit of supposedly 'apolitical "back then"' (i.e. historical) novels.
In looking for possible eruptions of noisy narratives, I'd like to suggest that Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram provides a new take on the Australian novel. Shantaram is a noisy, baggy monster of a creation: tho linked to a central protagonist's quest, it spans multiple characters and continents over a large time period, and juggles long, unwieldy plotlines. While written in novel-form, it draws apparently on Roberts' life experiences: a convicted prisoner, he escaped from a maximum-security facility in Victoria to New Zealand, and then to India, where most of the novel is set. Whilst on this odyssey, he established a free-medical clinic in a Bombay slum, worked as a counterfeiter, a smuggler, a gunrunner, and a foot-soldier for the Bombay mafia. Not surprisingly, Shantaram is also very long: in the tradition of the Victorian and some pulp fiction novels, it is a book that goes thump on the desk. My first thought on seeing its bulk was: who can have had the time to write such a tome? My second was: aha, someone in a prison CW program.
That said, while Shantaram can be read as a form of pulp fiction, an action thriller in the order of Wilbur Smith or Tom Clancy,* it can also be placed as a form of contemporary hyper-realism and has antecedents in the Victorian novel.
Hyper-realism has been characterised as a heightened form of realism, symptomatic of postmodern culture in which the distinction between the real and the non-real is no longer clear (if it ever was). It focuses on the processes of consciousness. I like Salman Rushdie's definition in an interview here:
...it's a kind of hyperrealism. There's painting like this where so much is put in so exactly. Too much information, you know, too much detail: every dog, every hair on every dog, and every nail on the dog's toes. Hyperrealism can create an atmosphere of surrealism because nobody sees the world in such detail.
Hyper-realism been identified with contemporary, British and American writers, such as Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections) and Zadie Smith (White Teeth). Their novels are largely character-driven, but in being so, they spawn multi-stories of narrative consciousness. (Speaking of populism, Franzen, of course, had his own cross-over moment with popular culture when Oprah nominated The Corrections for her Book Club list.)
Shantaram arguably suggests a populist form of hyper-realism with its manic, yet well-managed cast of characters and subplots, and its overabundance of descriptive detail -- particularly in servicing the main character's consciousness. It's unafraid of exposing its heteroglossia, and what more perfect heteroglossic subject could there be than India?
Which brings me to another subject. Like some post-colonial writers (Seth and Smith come to mind), Roberts draws on the tradition of the C19th comedic novel, specifically Dickens. The central protagonist's journey through the slums of Bombay to the getting of a certain life wisdom is particularly suggestive of the narrative of Dickens' Great Expectations. Like Pip, the protagonist Lin is in love with his mentor-antagonist, Carla (=Estella), who has reached a level of knowledge and facility in a social-strata which he wants to attain. Carla's own initiation into this culture is blackened by her own experience with Madame Zhou (= Miss Havisham), a highly-manipulative brothel owner whom no one is allowed to view directly. Lin must rescue Karla -- and other proxy damsels -- from her influence, etc. The mode of characterisation in Shantaram is also highly detailed in a Dickensian way: while particular attention is given to its delineating main characters (often in elaborate), there are many, idiosyncratic 'flat' characters in its highways and byways.
Okay -- some minor major quibbles about Shantaram: in my discussions with others, there are two main areas of objections to this book. The first is that Gregory David Roberts, or his swashbuckling narratorial persona at least, seems like a raving egomaniac: oh well, probably only an egotist could handle such a complex, lengthy narrative. The second is that Shantaram is full of purple prose: only too true, alas. An editor is mentioned somewhere in the acknowledgements: it seems a shame she didn't delete every second page, every second sentence, every second word, etc.
Here's a sample, from where Lin, the main character, first meets his emerald-eyed femme fatale:
My eyes were lost, swimming , floating free in the shimmering lagoon of her steady, even stare. Her eyes were large and spectacularly green. It was the green that trees are, in vivid dreams. It was the green that the sea would be, if the sea were perfect. (23)
Roberts is at his worst when his main character's in love but there are other passages like this. It's like the old conundrum: often the more aware you are of Trying to Write, the worse your writing becomes. And it's maybe not exactly what I was hoping for in a new tradition of Australian hyperrealism.
Otherwise -- characters are sometimes flat and pasteboard-y, especially the women, in the manner of some Victorian novels and much pulp fiction. The world of Shantaram is full of goodies and baddies. But there's a lot of action. Things happen.
In some ways, I don't feel well-placed to be commenting Shantaram or the problematic of contemporary Australian writing as (1) I haven't made a comprehensive study of recent Austlit novels and (2) it's almost six months since I read Shantaram, while on a long-haul flight (some might argue this is the only way of possibly getting through Shantaram).
But I'd be interested to know whether others have had similar thoughts on Shantaram or the idea of a quiet versus a noisy novel. Or just on Australian hyper-realism -- do we have a tradition of hyper-realism to speak of? Is it worth jumping on the hyper-realism bandwagon?
And if you're interested reading in Shantaram, pack it for your next long-haul flight.
(Cross-posted at Sars)
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