New Josipovici . . .

News of some new Josipovici via This Space . . .

"The quality of today's literary writing arouses the strongest opinions. For novelist and critic Gabriel Josipovici, the contemporary novel in English is profoundly disappointing — a poor relation of its groundbreaking Modernist forebears. This agile and passionate book asks why.

Modernism, Josipovici suggests, is only superficially a reaction to industrialization or a revolution in diction and form; essentially, it is art coming to consciousness of its own limits and responsibilities. And its origins are to be sought not in 1850 or 1800, but in the early 1500s, with the crisis of society and perception that also led to the rise of Protestantism.

With sophistication and persuasiveness, Josipovici charts some of Modernism's key stages, from Dürer, Rabelais, and Cervantes to the present, bringing together a rich array of artists, musicians, and writers both familiar and unexpected—including Beckett, Borges, Friedrich, Cézanne, Stevens, Robbe-Grillet, Beethoven, and Wordsworth. He concludes with a stinging attack on the current literary scene in Britain and America, which raises questions not only about national taste, but contemporary culture itself." [Yale University Press]

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Influential Novelists . . .

I was thinking the other day about which contemporary, living novelists have influenced my own writing the most. I have compiled the below list, each of these novelists has inspired me greatly, and I hugely admire their writing and artistic practice.

1. Jean-Philippe Toussaint
2. Tom McCarthy
3. Stewart Home
4. Tao Lin
5. Gwendoline Riley
6. Gabriel Josipovici
7. Lydie Salvayre
8. Dumitru Tsepeneag
9. HP Tinker
10. Niven Govinden
11. Tony O'Neill
12. Ben Myers
13. Noah Cicero

I think what I admire in each of the above is their steadfast individuality and approach to their work. All their work stands out alone as original and completely relevant. If you haven't read any of the above I would suggest you do so.

I reckon a future influential novelist will be Steve Finbow. Just finished his debut novel Balzac of the Badlands and I can't wait to read more of his work.

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In Print(9) . . .

After & Making Mistakes, By Gabriel Josipovici

In his 2007 lecture "What ever happened to Modernism?", Gabriel Josipovici argued "the trouble with novels is that the only meaning they can have is that conferred on them by their authors". He added, "but what authority do they have to confer meaning? None, is the answer." He has been addressing this largely ignored Achilles' heel in a career that spans over 30 works of fiction, theatre and critical theory, in which he repeatedly calls for this "bad faith" of the novel to be acknowledged by authors and critics.

Josipovici's two new novellas, published in one beautifully produced book, are fine examples of a mode of fiction that does away with the "bad faith" of "meaning". They are written in the fragmented, action/dialogue-led style he has made his own, though applied this time with a lighter, semi-comic brio. This is a dialogue of action savvy enough to reveal that even a narrative of fragmentation retains its centre. In this case, it's an unnerving quiet despair, meaninglessness and charming politeness that is unmistakably British.

After is a fiction of conversations. Alan, an academic writing a book about François Rabelais, is rattled by the appearance of an ex-lover, Claude, whom he hasn't seen for over 15 years. Claude, who insists on calling him "Alain", is desperate to discuss a pivotal moment from their past, a car accident, that somehow marked the end of their relationship. This shared trauma is explored through the architecture of memory and repetition, where outcomes of the same event blur into a miasma of vacillation. The repetition of pithy exchanges between Claude and Alan/Alain, where the car crash is relived in a series of flirtatious provocations, wheel throughout the narrative as a reminder that it is fiction's possibilities at play and not any concrete actuality. This is a work of fiction after all. Yet the remarkable thing is that meaning is somehow created out of nothing. This lightness of touch, where each fragment of memory seeks its own alternative explanation, begins to show us the psychological complications of each character.

Continuing this lighter touch, Making Mistakes manages to make infidelity and separation strangely amusing through a series of polite and comic tête-à-têtes, mostly about relationships. An insouciant re-working of Mozart's opera Così fan Tutte, the novella centres on a group of middle-aged intellectuals. Charlie is cheating on his partner Bea, whose sister Dorothy is married to Tony, who in turn leaves his fiercely intellectual wife for his plain and "boring" secretary.
While Bea and Charlie project themselves as the classic "open" couple, Dorothy and Tony project a more outwardly harmonious union. The spanner is thrown into the works when Alfonso, a guest at Dorothy and Tony's dinner party, reminds everyone of a "little experiment" while they were all at university 15 years ago. It appears that Alfonso had orchestrated them to swap partners temporarily.

What follows is a comedy of decisions and accidental meetings, relayed in snappy, amusing dialogue which gradually unfolds into a parable for modern living. In both novellas, Josipovici has created a modern fiction that "feels caught between the pointlessness of mere surface and the pointlessness of mere depth", creating a space of endless discovery.

[original source: The Independent, Friday, 16 October 2009]

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New Litro . . .

There's a new issue of Litro out, featuring another short story by Gabriel Josipovici. Here's what the editors have to say:

"Crime does look profitable, these days! Never have we had such a torrential or varied response from would-be Litro contributors.

Valerie O’Riordan’s short ‘The Explosion of Josiah Bounderby’ will knock you for six, while Kevin Brown’s ‘Odds Are’ depicts the sorry triumph of modern fear. Iphgenia Baal’s smart squib is anchored in forensic contemporary observation, in contrast with Larry Lefkowitz’s brave venture into Holmesian rigour, bringing you the story for which Conan Doyle’s readers were famously ‘not yet prepared’.

We are also proud to continue our ‘Gabriel Josipovici mini-series’: if you enjoyed December’s ‘The Two Lönnrots’, skip straight to his latest short, ‘Love Across the Borders’. This and Phil Bennett’s superb ‘Mikel’, an evocation of an autistic child’s experience of civil conflict in Chile, keep faith with Litro’s aim to bring the whole world to you in short stories.

Lastly, we have poetry from two writers who know their crime backwards: one from Paul Lyalls and four from the late great Charles Bukowski. No-one ever said the Post pays…

Sophie Lewis
Editor"

Here's a little snippet from the Josipovici story:

"- Take your coat, Veronica says to her son as the 11.52 express from Milan glides soundlessly into the main line station of Geneva and comes, almost imperceptibly, to a stop. Make sure you haven’t forgotten anything.

On the platform she takes his hand. – Can you see a taxi sign anywhere? she asks him.

- There, Mum! he says, swerving off suddenly to the left. Once again she marvels at how big he has grown in the past few months.

In the taxi she gives the driver an address and sits back, peering short-sightedly at the passing houses.

- Are we going to see Philippe?

- Not now. We’re going to the hotel first.

- And then we’re going to see him?

- No. Tomorrow morning."

[continue reading]

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Modernist Charm . . .

Nice to see an early review of the new Gabriel Josipovici titles [via This Space]:

"Despite his reputation for formidable modernist impenetrability, these are effortlessly readable and charming works. They are written almost exclusively in dialogue, frequently of the frothy, cocktail-party sort. Josipovici is especially good not only when gently satirising the self-regard, banality and indirection of such chit-chat, but also in recognising that this is the only way we have of finding out about those we do not know, and unlocking the secrets of those we do."


I'm currently reviewing After & Making Mistakes for The Independent and I'm sure TLS will be reviewing it. Equally different and the same in a multitude of ways, Gabriel Josipovici is up there with JG Ballard for me; our two most necessary writers.

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