THE GREATEST EUROPEAN NOVELS

When Georgy Riecke asked his friends, colleagues and miscellaneous others to help him compile a list of the greatest contemporary European novels, it was in the knowledge (possibly the hope) that there would be little agreement. The classics of one’s own time are always hard to spot - and on the rare occasion that you proclaim with confidence your discovery of the new Joyce or Kolniyatsch, rest assured there will be someone waiting in the wings to rip it away from you. Like the best of us, Riecke revels in critical fist fights. It is to him what mud is to a hippopotamus, what cheese is to a mouse, what convoluted metaphors or needlessly long sentences are to those who like that sort of thing. Literary discourse, they call it. To those in the know, however, it's simply a superior form of the playground punch-up. And long may it last. This is the way it goes - and if it didn’t go this way, we would worry. Our noble palms would sweat. Our furrowed brows would shift with the tectonic plates of mistrust.

    Take the case of C P Pedrik. Almost everyone involved in Riecke's gloriously pointless list put forward his 1985 work The Ignoble Trilogy. Agreement disturbed the peace. It was disagreeable. Like guilty businessmen searching for just the right amount of loose change to placate a friendly tramp, everyone scrambled for the most reasonable of unreasonable excuses for withdrawing their praise. A dozen messages reached Riecke on one day, each starting: ‘on second thoughts, I wonder whether Pedrik’s novel is so good after all. I fell for a good first impression, was seduced by the second and threw myself into the third. Now I have reached the seventh impression, the sensation is wearing off. With this, I withdraw..’. And so it was. Luckily, there’s every chance Riecke had come across this situation before. He had the wisdom, at any rate, to ignore these protestations, for Pedrik retained his place (whilst the critics, sort of, saved face).

    As it happens, I was one of the few who didn’t support Pedrik, which means that I’m one of the few who can still openly profess to like him. I knew he’d garner enough votes from elsewhere, and used my influence to encourage Alma Pedrova’s Another Form of Laughter instead (it says a lot for the nature of my influence that this book never made it to the list, though it did make the shortlist for a Spanish literary prize the following year, for which I did receive some of the authorial favours I had been, ahem, fishing for all along). I might yet qualify the quality of my respect for Pedrik. I would not go so far, I must state, as the ever effusive Lucien Ropes, who described The Ignoble Trilogy as ‘the first inanimate object I made love to’. Far be from me to try and water down the famously irregular passions of Mr Ropes, but I can’t help thinking that his comment is faintly flavoured with a small spoonful of jest. For is not The Ignoble Trilogy, as it goes, a thoroughly un-sensual book? All things considered, it’s about as sexy as seeing one’s grandparents in the nude. An honest exploration of all that is not fanciful. Realism, you could call it. But perfectly realised realism, I hasten to add: not your run-of-the-mill frozen-headed middle-of-the-road drivel-packed nonsense. Goodness knows how he does it, but this stuff sparkles. Never have so many detailed descriptions of a middle-aged man’s fingernails been quite so compelling as this.

    ‘One character’ said Pedrik, ‘is all I need’. And one character he found. Meet Thomas Ignoble. Extraordinary surname, incredibly ordinary person. What is ordinary? Leave the debate on the doorstep. Ignoble is a one-off - aren’t we all? But he simply isn’t remarkable in any obvious way. He is made remarkable only through the talents of his chronicler. Let me put it this way. The Ignoble Trilogy represents both the lowest and the highest ambitions that any writer has ever had rolled into one big project. Pedrik has, in theory, never asked for much. He set out to create a memorable character - that was all. One memorable character. There was no call for grand plots, for what - as a certain Mr Huxley once put it - ‘fabulous characters’ that ‘shoot across pages like gaily dressed performers on the trapeze’. If such things were to occur, they would be a by-product of a simpler, paradoxically trickier, ambition. As this same Huxley bird wrote (in some other tome of his) Pedrik had his eye on the great ‘omissions’ of the ‘best imaginative literature’: ‘mere tics and trophisms, lunatic and unavowable cravings’. The passing sensations, the minor gripes, the ‘small distractions’. Things so obvious that no one ever notices them. The state of one’s fingernails, for instance. How often does one spend fiddling about with one’s fingernails? In the case of Thomas Ignoble, some time indeed. But Pedrik is not one of those authors who pushes these things under the rug. No - he lays them out on the table, like surgical instruments. 'Here it is', he says: 'the very stuff of life'. There isn’t time to think it dull. Instead, you are overwhelmed. His confidence sells it. The honesty is irresistible; the dreariness awkwardly alluring. There’s something for everyone. It’s big and difficult. But it’s also good fun.

    And it’s all about Thomas Ignoble. A man whose life, on the surface, seems relatively straightforward. Nevertheless, once you delve into it,  things start to get increasingly complex. The web of contacts forged by this generally unsociable fellow turns out to be a fascinating one. Well, naturally - it would, wouldn't it?

    This does or doesn't lead us on to a discussion of the original form that The Ignoble Trilogy takes. If it does, good. If it doesn't, here we are anyway. A warning: if you are surprised to hear that this novel has three parts to it, you are advised to consult a doctor immediately. That much is obvious. You might be excused, though, for struggling to define the nature of those parts. I should add, also, that the book was originally released in three separate parts, published in series, four months apart, in 1985 (to be re-published, in a single edition, the following year). It was first consumed, then, in three distinct parts. Parts which, furthermore, do not need (and I stress the word need) to be read in the order in which they appeared. In fact, a reader need not read all three parts - though I should think three times before advising otherwise. Think of it as the main course at an agreeable restaurant; each ingredient is beautifully cooked and tastes well enough on its own - together, however, they form something else entirely; each flavour complementing the other, enhancing the general effect a hundred fold. You’ve got a square of lightly fried sea bass, perhaps, on a bed of peppery salad, around which a wattle of chopped swedes, sprinkled in cumin and roasted in goose fat, stand guard against the approaching fork (heading a cavalry of cutlery). For dessert you have a fresh mango, carved like a primitive madonna, glazed with fine pine honey, sitting buddha-like on an iceberg of raspberry and grape sorbet. See, in the distance, a cheeseboard arrives..

    Pick your own menu: it’s irrelevant (at least as far as this review goes; otherwise it‘s awfully good fun). The important thing to remember is the three parts; complementary, though not exactly co-existent. Different food, on different shaped dishes. I say different, and yet there’s one ingredient common to all of them. There’s one underlying theme. One essential character. Yes - it’s Thomas Ignoble. This is what it’s all about. Getting to grips with one man, with one character (albeit from three unusual angles).

   
    Angle one. The first part, which takes the form of a dictionary (note this) is primarily concerned with the aforementioned social contacts: with the great sticky web of people to whom we are all connected. Is Ignoble’s web any stickier than anyone elses? Not at all. It is no more or no less sticky. The difference is that Pedrik is one of the few novelists ostensibly alive to the true stickiness of life. What's more, he is one of the few, perhaps the only, writer capable of communicating that stickiness through words. Part One of The Ignoble Trilogy is exemplary in this respect. As I said, it is (strictly speaking) a list.. A list of people whose lives have, at one point or another, come into contact with the life of Thomas Ignoble. But it is more than this - for it also indexes objects to be found at Ignoble’s house, all described in the cold, precise language that we might expect from a dictionary. In anyone else’s hands, this might be offputting. Pedrik, luckily, has clever hands. Oh what clever hands he has! Where others would find only mind-numbing minutiae, Pedrik extracts pathos-soaked particulars. Under ‘Blue nylon shirt’, for instance, we find the following entry: ‘worn only once, on June 6th, 1981. Thought by Ignoble to have complemented brown corduroy trousers’. Pedrik, of course, doesn’t need to tell us that no one thought the same: that this briefly, coldly told episode is stuffed with the seeds of humiliation and regret. The word 'once’ is a harpoon: personal pride is the unlucky fish. And yet neither the harpoon nor the fish are to be seen on the surface. No, they are but implied. And oh what a tragic implication this is! An unrecognised fashion statement: could there be anything worse? To make all that effort for no end...

    Implication, though, is a tricky customer. As, indeed, is the dictionary form that this part of the masterwork takes. In many peoples’ minds, you see, it could be said to leave far too much work for the reader. Implied, they cry? Implied? Why can’t we ever be told? Why do we have to work everything out for ourselves? On top of this, you’ve gone and hidden the narrative. It’d take seven archaeologists four months or more to uncover this plot of yours, Mr Pedrik. Who do you take us for? This is, they might say, not so much a novel as the source material for a novel. Now get on and write it.

    Or not, as the case may be. Lazy readers really are a dreadful breed, aren’t they? Sickening, come to think of it. I’m sorry I even mentioned them. You and me, we ain’t like them. We’re what they call pedigree. We’re the fine wine of the readership. They’re the turps.

    To angle two. Part the second of Pedrik’s nobly Ignoble Trilogy. This part takes the form of a badly-written art historical survey of Ignoble’s watercolours. Ignoble, I should add, is not an ambitious artist and makes no claims about his talent in this department. No claims at all. And well he shouldn’t: he clearly has no real talent. He is barely an amateur. Pedrik knows better, however, than to let this put him off. Nor is he in any way inclined to dig his heels in too far. If there’s a joke, it's on the art historian - though his tone is, to be honest, far too measured to be truly ridiculous (which is to say that there isn't a joke at all). Instead, we see how even the poorest examples of art can be used for biographical purposes. There may not be much to these pictures, but what there is, Pedrik knows the score of it: he knows how to deal with it, up to the point of over-indulgence, but never beyond it. It’s a supremely cunning approach - and a thoroughly worthy alternative (and, indeed, addition) to the first part of the trilogy.

    Without further ado (much as I like 'ado') we move onto angle three. The finale. Something more expansive, perhaps? We have had windows into Ignoble’s world, but they were small windows (or large ones with frosted panes). What will the third part offer? Again, Pedrik aims low (or, from another perspective, he aims high). Half a day, he says, will do me. Half a day with Thomas Ignoble. There’s your plot. That’s what you’ve been waiting for. Here at last, he cuts through the source material and gets to the source. We get the character in action.

    Ah, but what sort of action? Pedrik, of course, is up to his usual tricks. When he gives us half a day, he picks his day well. On the surface, it’s a rather dull day. Ignoble stays at home. He lopes about. He cuts his fingernails. He files them. He examines them. He thinks about making lunch. He makes lunch. These are just some of the highlights. The most dramatic moment arrives when Ignoble knocks the side of his head on the doorway. It takes four pages to describe the small bruise which receives. Four scintillating pages. Pedrik truly is the master of the small details. What small details! The very thought of them sweetens the air. Thomas Ignoble is alive. More alive than the reader himself. More alive, indeed, than the author.

    An obvious question emerges, mole-like, to the uneven surface of the debate. Is the author Thomas Ignoble? Are they one and the same person: interchangeable, inextricably linked? ‘Not at all,’ Pedrik has always claimed. ‘We are very different people. I know him well, maybe better than myself, but he is not me. I’m not all that sure he’d like me’. Why might that be? ‘Perhaps he wouldn’t understand my obsession with him,’ is Pedrik’s response: a fair one in the circumstances
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    What more can I say? I’d like to say no more. There is, however, the small matter of the ‘Wilmeldestran controversy’. As Lucien Ropes was kind enough to reveal (damn his wonderful honesty) C P Pedrik was one of the fourteen unfortunate authors to have been involved in the ill-fated group composition that came to be The Fires of Wilmeldestran. No one who was a part of this sad entourage can be said to have emerged from it without their reputation somewhat soiled, and I foresee that I am going to have a hard job making excuses for Pedrik. After all, didn’t he claim that his life’s work was one character? ‘Thomas Ignoble is my creation,’ sayeth the mighty Pedrik: ‘he is my single project’. What, then, of Wilmeldestran? This had nothing to do with Ignoble. Indeed, it sits alongside The Ignoble Trilogy as comfortably as a well-read pancake on the shoulders of a stereotypical fox.

    Is it my ever-wise intuition or my eternal pig-headed stupidity that suggests to me that Pedrik’s part in the Wilmeldestran fracas was very small? In all honesty, I cannot see it any other way. Many of his fellow writers (we don’t know all the names of course) had stronger personalities than he. They had epic ambitions. Surely they led the way, whilst he volunteered simply for the sake of the money? Not that Pedrik would have let himself be trampled over, but I cannot see him fighting his corner in that particular company. It wasn't a project in which he would have taken any natural interest. There is only one incentive for his inclusion: the pay packet. Having said that, the same might be said for everyone else. Who, then, actually wrote the offending work? Should anyone really take the blame? Must the blame be split fourteen ways?

    So many questions waiting for answers that so many people don’t want to hear. Time, I think, to turn away from the incessant queries. Blocking things off is inexcusable: the kind of thing that Pedrik would never do himself. ‘There’s no hiding it,’ said Ropes - and he was right. Hiding it, blocking it off, will never do. So let’s call it 'temporary ignorance' instead. Procrastination, not carelessness. We’ll get to the bottom of Wilmeldestran eventually. It’s in the diary to be dealt with. One day...

    The sands slip through the fateful hourglass. The sun steps down the ladder of the sky. Pedrik’s reputation is at risk. What better time, then, to indulge in enthusiasm for The Ignoble Trilogy? Make hay whilst the sun shines. Eat, drink and be merry. Lick the honey before the bees come home. Take out all those metaphorical credit cards, join hands and sing in praise of Pedrik’s singular achievement.  First they pretend not to like it because everyone else does. Now they’ll be pretending not to like it because the author lied about it a thing or two. Most authors face the problem of readers hating their books. Pedrik’s problem is readers loving it, but feeling they oughtn’t to. Oh, it’s a confusing world.

    If you haven’t read the novel, what can I say? I can only regret that you have read this review. You may already be second guessing yourself. The malignant seed is sown. You march unto the horizon with an impure heart. You must learn to leave your baggage in the cloakroom before it’s too late (try juggling fireballs first - it’s easier). At this rate, you’ll never let yourself enjoy the book.
Still, you could always hide this review and buy the book for a friend. If they don’t read Danish, I recommend Jaymer Veers’ translation. If they do, buy the volume that collects all three parts in one - to be read as a whole. And if they don’t read at all, wait - didn’t you say it was a friend?