Review: Speedboat by Renata Adler

First published:- 1976

Republished:- March 19th, 2013 by NYRB

Read in:- June, 2014

Star rating:-

Much of life does not make a lot of sense in the moment it is occuring. Only in posterity, when we dwell on memories, are we able to see past happenings in a clearer light. The passage of time helps us tame the inveterate romanticism of first perceptions and lets the realization sink in that some things are just what they appear to be and further efforts at figuring out some deeper significance are going to remain futile forevermore. Scattered fragments of time spent with people in places glow like fireflies in the dark but the dots never connect. No hidden, congruous patterns emerge. Some moments stand out in the multitude and bring us pleasure, sorrow, mirth, intrigue or some other keenly felt emotion while the rest merge with the void and perish.

Renata Adler's writing is thoroughly deserving of all the accolades because of her earnestness at remaining faithful to dull realities, everyday mundane things that we eagerly discard in favor of the exaggerated glamour of tragedy or romance. Her fictional love interests are ordinary and unexciting, her protagonist is just another city girl in the endless sea of anonymous faces, and her sardonically narrated observations utterly devoid of the artistic grandeur found in the trademark melancholic novel on urban alienation. 

Just as the traditional narrative of the novel is subverted without any pretensions in 'Speedboat' which, true to life, refuses to stitch together ephemeral moments into a much bigger collage of the human consciousness, the short story format is also ingeniously shunned. Adler's aphoristic 'stories' (for lack of a more apposite term) are just what they are - anecdotes on events and conversations recounted somewhat dispassionately and left unexplained, minor departures from the cyclical nature of routine-bound life laid bare for the readers to dissect and derive their quota of 'reading between the lines'from. The random handsome, young man encountered on the subway on your way to work who monopolized your attention for the length of the journey, the quarter found in the backseat of a cab that you surreptitiously picked up after wrestling with your conscience for a while, the ailing woman on the verge of certain death in the hospital ward who said she was doing fine on being asked how she was - these are but some of the many discrete snapshots of our collective lackadaisical existence in the backdrop of any nameless metropolitan city of the world and not just Adler's New York.

"The idea of hostages is very deep. Becoming pregnant is taking a hostage-as is running a pawnshop, being a bank, receiving a letter, taking a photograph, or listening to a confidence. Every love story, every commercial trade, every secret, every matter in which trust is involved, is a gentle transaction of hostages. Everything is, to a degree, in the custody of every other thing."

Her depiction of idiosyncratic urban life as she knew it is one of the most life-like I have ever come across and, possibly, ever will.


 

Review : A Schoolboy's Diary and Other Stories by Robert Walser

Faced with the prospect of reviewing a collection of short stories, which is probably my least favorite writing chore ever, I am choosing the easy way out. I am so taken with the quiet, restrained beauty of Walser's writing that I am most unwilling to disassemble his short stories into separate assessing criteria like style, essence, prose, plot, imagery and so on.

So what I'll do is convince you, dear random uninitiated reader, to pick up this little gem, flip through its pages and discover for yourself the treasures embedded within without trying your patience by going into excruciating details. And by letting Walser speak on my behalf.

The initial few short stories are written from the point of view of a school boy in the format of essays on various topics ranging from school, poverty, careers to friendship, politeness, nature and so on.
It is astonishing to note that despite the glaringly trite nature of these subjects, Walser manages to bring something new to the stories by adding a distinct touch of his own. His tone fluctuates between mildly sardonic and wistful to complacent and observant but unassuming.

Sample what he has to say about "school" -

"School is the unavoidable choker around the neck of youth, and I confess that it is a valuable piece of jewelery indeed. What a burden we would be to our parents, workers, passersby, shop owners, if we didn't have to go to school!"

And this is what he says about 'Politeness'-

"The more big and important a polite person is, the more benevolence his civility has."

His thoughts on anger and conflict -

"Not only boys can bear grudges against other boys in such a way, so too just as well can grownups against grownups, mature adults against mature adults, and I would venture to say, nations against nations. A vengeance or revenge can collect in the heart of a nation due to self-regard that has been injured in various ways, and it grows and grows, without end, becomes more and more pressing, more and more painful rises up like a high mountain no longer to be cleared away, obstructs any mutual understanding, inhibits warm, healthy, reasonable reciprocal communication, turns into twitching nervous fury, and is so tyrannical and degrading that it can one day no longer be reined in and cries out wildly for bloody conflict."

There are references to nature, changing seasons and vivid descriptions of lush, green landscapes in the Swiss countryside aplenty.

"Autumn was beautiful, with its brownish melancholy that seemed attractive and happily right to me, while in May the blossoming trees and all the singing and wonderful smells plunged into sadness."

The short stories included in the latter half of the book seem to be written from different perspectives like that modest young men about to enlist in the army or confused, lost writers trying to seek validation in a life fraught with failures and rejections. (This is vaguely autobiographical I believe.)

"Restlessness, uncertainty, and a premonition of a singular fate may have been what led me, in my sequestered isolation, to pick up my quill and attempt to create a reflection of myself."

Here are a few of his excellent ruminations on reading -

"A book bewitches and dominates us, it holds us spellbound, in other words it exerts a power over us, and we are happy to let such tyranny occur, for it is a blessing. Anyone captivated and gripped by a book for a given time does not use that time to initiate gossip about his dear fellow man, which is always a great and crude mistake."

And ahem, book snobs please do take note of this -

"I have sometimes heard people talk about so-called harmful reading, e.g., infamous Gothic novels. That's another story we shall avoid getting into but we can say this much: the worst book in the world is not as bad as the complete indifference of never picking up a book at all. A trashy book is not nearly as dangerous as people sometimes think, and the so-called really good books are under certain conditions by no means as free of danger as people generally like to believe. Intellectual things are never as harmless as eating chocolate or enjoying an apple tart or the like. In principle, the reader just has to know how to cleanly separate reading from life."

Walser's short sentences gave me the impression of beads of morning dew collecting on blades of grass, the evanescent beauty of which evaporates away before we even have time enough to bask in its resplendence. But for as long as the novelty lasts, it is the most exquisite thing in the world. He is not overly pedantic yet his writing exudes immense charm and clarity.

"But soon enough he was cheerful again. Love of humanity and the sorrows thereof, a lust for life and the pain therefrom, rose exquisitely up like tall ghostly shapes in the pale, golden air of the summer evening. Softly the figures seemed to wave to him."

To conclude, this is a thoroughly delightful collection but I'll hold out on that 5-star rating until I read a full-fledged novel of his.

4 out of 5 stars (more of a 4.5)

**special thanks to Netgalley for a copy of the e-edition**