Character in search of a story
Still by Adam Thorpe, Secker & Warburg, $272 NOVELISTS writing in a stream-of-consciousness style have to be very good or their prose simply becomes incomprehensible to the average reader.
James Joyce carried it off in Ulysses, as did William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury. But few writers since then have matched their genius.
After finishing Adam Thorpe's 580-page tome, I had to admit that his idiosyncratic style got in the way of whatever plot existed. That is, if indeed one ever did exist.
That Still is primarily about the ramblings of an ageing film director Ricky, I was able to work out. But more than that I cannot say.
Throughout the book, he is visited by memories of dead relatives, friends and ex-wives. He often sees scenes from his life-like takes from one of the films he has made.
There are allusions to various directors and their films which become so tedious that they take the form of in-jokes.
Thorpe appears to be trying to show a character who is living on the edge.
And one whose head is a whirlwind of thoughts that go off at tangents and left me thoroughly confused.
There are occasions when Thorpe seems sufficiently in control to make sense and mildly amuse. But they are few and far between.
I could take a paragraph from virtually any page and it would read like a riddle.
The problem is that even when I read the paragraph within the context of the page in which it appears, it still seems to make very little or no sense.
The new stream-of-consciousness novelists led by writers such as James Kelman, do not seem to feel that they have any responsibility to tell a good story.
Or to stick to any of the traditional narrative forms.
Thorpe has clearly decided to follow in Kelman's footsteps. The result is that Still is the most unrewarding reading experience I can remember for many years.
