Edited by Steve Bamlett, Sunday, 7 Aug 2016, 08:16
I did not know Szalay's writing before reading this. I am pleased to know it now.
It is, of course, all in the title - provided you read it well punctuated with interrogatives: All (?) that Man(?) Is (?). In fact I'm not sure that 'that' ought not to have a question mark too (bit I'm a fan of Ali Smith, of course).
These chapters are connected by the pursuit of nine (there are nine nearly discrete stories) stages of man. And, much in the fashion of the great speech from As You Like It, we follow the ageing process through different characters, although Szalay looks for no other common identity than the word 'man' and 'time':
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. ...
And so he plays his part. ....
............ Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Szalay's 'men' have well defined 'exits' and 'entrances' but defined by the apparently arbitrary shift of the novelist's gaze. This is best illustrated at the end of Part 7 where the braggadocio that has defined Marcus (a version of the worship of self-esteem of modern cod-psychology) departs leaving him literally with little to live for - at least if he continues to want to be the 'man' he is. Momentarily, he looks out to a bay and sees, 'some sort of yacht. More of a fucking ship actually.'
Growing in his perception only to disappear from his view, this same yacht becomes the entrance scene of our next 'man', Aleksandr. He is on a yacht in a bay sailing to Greece where he will find the riches that sustain him melted into the mirage-dust of capitalism's cyclical failures.
These are strangely funny dark stories united by a masculinity ambivalent about the meaning of sex for all kinds of reasons and 'half in love with easeful death'. Yet it is never that 'easeful', even in prospect for the many potential suicides that haunt these pages.
The gorgeously painted picture of Simon, who opens the novel, in a gap-year jaunt with friend Ferdinand seems forever to escape with him into his attempt to read Henry James' The Ambassadors. The crisis in the novel is when Ferdinand takes up the offer of sex (with their temporary landlady in Budapest, her husband being away) made to Simon instead of him. The former neatly 'extricates his hand from the warm hold of her fingers'. Both boy-men depart on a train the next morning stepping over the discarded yellow dressing-gown of the landlady. Simon feels, 'a strange sense of loss, a sense of loss without an obvious object.' What is Simon's 'object'? it is the same question as 'what more is there to a man?'
More beautiful still in its elegy to the 'eternal passing of time' is the final story in which a man contemplates death as it draws palpably near in the light of a loveless marriage and thinks with a 'sense of loss' of the beautiful son of his Italian maid, Claudia, who picks her up in his IKEA delivery van but who is, unfortunately, already married.
The loss of time to explore another potential identity is palpable, as is his discovery of his son's new poem (written during his first year at university) and the probability that his son will identify as proudly and unashamedly gay as time passes. The son's name: Simon. The same Simon as in the Part 1 story? Who knows?
We do know that Simon sees NOW more to a man than a 'man' is supposed to be:
Fratricides, the apt play of power -
All proper activities in his sphere,
And he excelled at them all. So, why the flower?
Why the flower indeed if that is 'All That Man Is!'
Steve's Bookers: David Szalay: ALL THAT MAN IS
I did not know Szalay's writing before reading this. I am pleased to know it now.
It is, of course, all in the title - provided you read it well punctuated with interrogatives: All (?) that Man(?) Is (?). In fact I'm not sure that 'that' ought not to have a question mark too (bit I'm a fan of Ali Smith, of course).
These chapters are connected by the pursuit of nine (there are nine nearly discrete stories) stages of man. And, much in the fashion of the great speech from As You Like It, we follow the ageing process through different characters, although Szalay looks for no other common identity than the word 'man' and 'time':
............ Last scene of all,Szalay's 'men' have well defined 'exits' and 'entrances' but defined by the apparently arbitrary shift of the novelist's gaze. This is best illustrated at the end of Part 7 where the braggadocio that has defined Marcus (a version of the worship of self-esteem of modern cod-psychology) departs leaving him literally with little to live for - at least if he continues to want to be the 'man' he is. Momentarily, he looks out to a bay and sees, 'some sort of yacht. More of a fucking ship actually.'
Growing in his perception only to disappear from his view, this same yacht becomes the entrance scene of our next 'man', Aleksandr. He is on a yacht in a bay sailing to Greece where he will find the riches that sustain him melted into the mirage-dust of capitalism's cyclical failures.
These are strangely funny dark stories united by a masculinity ambivalent about the meaning of sex for all kinds of reasons and 'half in love with easeful death'. Yet it is never that 'easeful', even in prospect for the many potential suicides that haunt these pages.
The gorgeously painted picture of Simon, who opens the novel, in a gap-year jaunt with friend Ferdinand seems forever to escape with him into his attempt to read Henry James' The Ambassadors. The crisis in the novel is when Ferdinand takes up the offer of sex (with their temporary landlady in Budapest, her husband being away) made to Simon instead of him. The former neatly 'extricates his hand from the warm hold of her fingers'. Both boy-men depart on a train the next morning stepping over the discarded yellow dressing-gown of the landlady. Simon feels, 'a strange sense of loss, a sense of loss without an obvious object.' What is Simon's 'object'? it is the same question as 'what more is there to a man?'
More beautiful still in its elegy to the 'eternal passing of time' is the final story in which a man contemplates death as it draws palpably near in the light of a loveless marriage and thinks with a 'sense of loss' of the beautiful son of his Italian maid, Claudia, who picks her up in his IKEA delivery van but who is, unfortunately, already married.
The loss of time to explore another potential identity is palpable, as is his discovery of his son's new poem (written during his first year at university) and the probability that his son will identify as proudly and unashamedly gay as time passes. The son's name: Simon. The same Simon as in the Part 1 story? Who knows?
We do know that Simon sees NOW more to a man than a 'man' is supposed to be:
Fratricides, the apt play of power -
All proper activities in his sphere,
And he excelled at them all. So, why the flower?
Why the flower indeed if that is 'All That Man Is!'
It's a great book - read and luxuriate!