THE GREATEST EUROPEAN NOVELS

I don’t suppose you’ve ever had the privilege of my relating to you the weird and wonderful story of the day on which I drank too much punch at a reception in the prestigious sculpture hall of one of Europe’s finest art galleries? Yes? No? Sadly, I’ve not enough space to go through all the superbly depraved details here. Nevertheless, I shall skip onto - and merrily through - a telling episode that occurred at the end of the evening, about five minutes after I unintentionally threw champagne over Jave de Lasse’s aunt. This moderately inadvertent act had, unsurprisingly, forced me to wander, alone, far away from the increasingly irate crowd. I say wander, though really I was lurching, in a sort of early-summer-bee kind of way. It was thus I found myself at the far end of the hall, where very few party goers had ventured. I was not all too aware of this, mind you, since I was by then mistaking most of the sculptures for people (it’s happened before and it’ll happen again: some of the best conversations I’ve ever had have at gallery drinks receptions have been with statues). Looking to gracefully lurch into an inappropriate conversation (by far my favourite type of talk) I’d taken a fancy to one figure; a semi-naked Apollo, I think, whose hand seemed (to me) to be stretching out to shake mine. ‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,’ I mumbled, grabbing the fingers eagerly. ‘But what cold hands you have!’ It was true. His hands were both cold and firm. Like stone, you could say. Well, naturally...
 
    Of course, I never trust a man with cold hands, which is one reason (though there are others) why Monsieur semi-naked Apollo and I never quite clicked. I must say, however, that this long-practised maxim of mine does cast an undesirably strong shadow across the rest of this review, at the centre of which we find another man with cold, firm hands. In this case, a real man - so no excuse. Oh dear. How I wish that Thomas Stippel didn’t have such cold hands!


    Going back to the reception, briefly, I forget whether or not Donna Devoni was there that night. Possibly she was. I think it was at this time she was dating Saul Effenberg, the photographer from Chicago. Or maybe she was still with Stephan Gorilet, the performance artist from Angouleme. Whoever was hanging on her arm (she favours men who hang on her, like clothes on a line) one can be sure that Devoni was otherwise clad in a costume of an impeccably eccentric kind. A costume in a class of its own. Donna Devoni class. When I try to recall her best outfits, I am invariably seized by a storm of indecision and jealousy. A part of me would never be seen dead in any of them; another part wants nothing more than to arrive at parties dressed as a Hoopoe or (as she described one outfit) a 'snowman, re-imagined by a Martian'. Some would (and indeed, do) call it quirky, but it’s more than that. There’s nothing whimsical about it. It’s a case of well-thought out, thoroughly earnest capriciousness. Thank God that Devoni’s prose is as frighteningly delightful as her dress sense.

    Back to Thomas Stippel. Having been boring friends, family and colleagues with his exploits for some time now, I have long been meaning to introduce this young German critic to Underneath the Bunker readers. Some of you may have read his first book, (P)ending pleasure: Freya Buzzheart and the Anticlimatic Climax. If you have, you will understand my enthusiasm. Stippel is one of those critics who forces you to take a breath. He is audacious, ingenious and preposterous in equal measure. His writing causes your fingers to shake, your nose to twitch and your ears to quiver. Once (just once) a sentence of his provoked involuntary spasms from the big toe on my left foot.

    Since this brave debut, however, Stippel has gone on to explore what some might call the more ‘experimental’ regions of criticism. He has moved on to make what one of my colleagues calls ‘the difficult second album’. Some people think it’s just a phase. I, for one, do not. Nor do I think it simply ‘experimental’ (a dirty word in many people's minds). On the contrary, I think that Stippel’s recent ‘image essays’ are never less than exciting. Why else would I have invited him to write one for Underneath the Bunker?  It is not the case - as Georgy has suggested more than once - that I am 'passing on my responsibility’. No, it is entirely in your interest, my dear readers, that I have stepped down from my task of writing a review of Donna Devoni’s excellent novel Hotwiring Honolulu and given it to Thomas Stippel. If it were laziness, after all, I would not have taken the trouble to supply this introduction.


    Why are people so damned suspicious of Stippel? Is it just because he is talented; because he is getting closer than anyone else to breaking the boundaries of critical discourse in the twenty-first century? I was never so suspicious - at least, not until I shook his hand. Now, of course, I have my doubts. Suffice it to say, Stippel does not interview as well as I hoped he might. There’s something in his manner that makes one naturally apprehensive. On the other hand, he does say some interesting things.

    A note on this ‘new approach’ of his. Once upon a time Thomas Stippel used to write like the rest of us. With words, letters, sentences and whatnot. Now, however, he uses images; scraps of colour and ‘various visual detritus’ built up in ‘blocks’, offering a ‘critical reflection’ on the work in hand.  He emphasises the word ‘critical’: for those who think his reviews are simply ‘visual echoes’ he has nothing but scorn. ‘It’s sharper than an echo,’ he says: ‘It’s the first blast of a trumpet, the first cockcrow of the day’. When I talk about ‘capturing a mood’ he gets even more frustrated. His German brow wrinkles with vehemance. The words ‘mood’ and ‘aura’ are, it turns out, pet-hates. His word is ‘essence’. His essays can be read from top to bottom, but not necessarily from ‘right to left’. It depends on the line, apparently - or on the shape of the 'block'. In fact, it seems to depend on a lot of things.

    Exactly how he uses images is, it's fair to say, a tricky question. He is however adamant that there is much more to it than 'mere' representation or 'straight' symbolism. If an image of fish appears it doesn’t imply that there is a fish in the novel, or something remotely ‘fishy’. The fish image (if it exists at all) works only in the context of its fellow images. All in all, it’s a ‘complex concoction’. Colours matter, with even the slightest change in shade being ‘exceedingly vital'. When I ask whether he could elaborate further on this topic, however, he is not forthcoming. ‘If it could be said in words’, he says, ‘I wouldn’t have taken the trouble to say it with images‘. It’s a revolt against words, he claims, and to have to use words to explain it would be ironic. But isn’t it already ironic, I ask? After all, aren’t you reviewing words? I point out that he is meant to be a literary critic, not an art historian.

    ‘Words are fine’, he says, after a long pause: ‘But piling words on words is perilous. Coating a word in an image, on the other hand...’ The sentence tails off. I think of a penguin sliding along a stretch of flat ice, delicately into the ocean. The cold ocean. I shiver. Oh those cold hands... It can’t be right, can it?

    I’ll admit it. I am a little uneasy about Stippel’s new direction, just as I am about the man himself. My old enthusiasm has taken a knock or no. On the other hand, a little bit of uneasiness is always good. Aren’t the new things are always accompanied by uneasiness? And aren’t rules made to be broken? I was a fool to have ever been so suspicious. Interesting men can have cold hands.

    What else can I say? Is this an introduction, a warning or an excuse? Should I be offering a decoding of Stippel’s work? The idea of ‘decoding’ this sort of work is, of course, highly  charged. Despite this, I did think at first that some sort of assistance was going to be essential. I had considered footnotes, representing my own (clearly subjective) thinking on the subject (I have, for instance, a cracking theory on the ‘halving-bird image’) At the last minute, however, I have decided against any such strategy. There are, of course, plently of talking points revolving around the finer points of Stippel’s study - and it’s not as if I lack confidence in my own opinion. Nevertheless, I’d like you (for once) to make up your own minds.

    Before you find yourself face to face with Stippel's review (as will happen any moment now) I’d like to say a word or two more about it. But I won't. It's all up to Stippel now. I must say, of course, that you may discover his review to be, well, not exactly ‘in depth’. It’s short - that must be said - and doesn’t offer up its secrets willingly. Nevertheless, if one persists, one will certainly find that the ‘essence’ of Devoni’s novel is ‘reflected critically’ somewhere within the space in which Stippel’s carefully chosen images reside. Give them your time. Read into them what you will. Push those cold-handed suspicions to one side for a minute or two and you may be pleasantly surprised.

More Greatest Novels


Underneath the Bunker Homepage