“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee “This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 “The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent “Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Mais Oui, MONSIEUR: Some Lawrence Durrell-related Flummery

I mentioned in passing last week that I’d started Lawrence Durrell’s MONSIEUR as something of a non-reviewing, non-crime fiction, non-pressing-reason-to-read-it extravagance. Durrell was at one point regarded as the second coming of Joyce, and he’s a wonderful stylist, a writer of rare elegance – in his obituary, the New York Times selected this passage from CLEA as an example of the ‘quality of his descriptive gift’:
The whole quarter lay drowsing in the umbrageous violet of approaching nightfall. A sky of palpitating velours which was cut into by the stark flare of a thousand electric light bulbs. It lay over Tatwig Street, that night, like a velvet rind. Only the lighted tips of the minarets rose above it on their slender invisible stalks – appeared hanging suspended in the sky; trembling slightly with the haze as if about to expand their hoods like cobras. Drifting idly down those remembered streets once more I drank in (forever keepsakes of the Arab town) the smell of crushed chrysanthemums, ordure, scents, strawberries, human sweat and roasting pigeons.
  Nice. I try to treat myself to a new Durrell at least once a year, mainly because you need that kind of break to allow yourself to forget how agonizingly ambiguous and self-consciously post-modern Durrell was in his fiction (his travel-writing-cum-memoirs are delivered with a far straighter bat). MONSIEUR is delivered in a glancing, elliptical, self-deprecating way and becomes something of a literary version of the Russian doll, in which succeeding sections are revealed as the thoughts of the author who has written the previous section, until you get the point where what’s fact and fiction are so blurred as to be indistinguishable. It’s an interesting idea, in that the author is very loudly calling attention to the writer abnegating his authorship. A portrait of the artist as a self-effacing narcissist, if you will. The effect means that you get three or four different perspectives on the characters you’ve met in the early stages, whom you presumed were first-person narrators, so that even as you penetrate to the heart of the story you feel like you’re being drawn back out, the better to see the big picture. It’s a terrific technique.
  Anyway, intoxicated by the prevailing spirit of meta-narrative japery, I decided to pack the book in with ten pages to go, so I’ve no idea who – if any – of the ‘authors’ was the real author of the various sections.
  “But wasn’t Lawrence Durrell the real author?” I hear you cry.
  Erm, probably. But only in a glancing, elliptical, self-deprecating way.
  Funnily enough, the only other book I’ve been tempted to put away before finishing right to the end was the biography / memoir MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS, by Lawrence Durrell’s brother, Gerald. Mind you, that was because I was enjoying the book so much that I preferred to leave off before the inevitable moment when the Durrell family would have to leave idyllic, sunny Corfu and return to dreary, damp London, leaving them there (in my imagination at least) forever happy and ridiculously post-Edwardian beneath the azure Corfian skies.
  Happily, Durrell G went on to publish another two volumes of his Corfu memoirs, of which I have one left to read. Durrell L, who features in Durrell G’s books, went on to publish (among other things) the dazzlingly brilliant PROSPERO’S CELL, a memoir of his own time on Corfu, a quartet of novels set in Alexandria, and a quintet – or ‘quincunx’ – of novels set in Avignon, of which latter series I have four left to read. I imagine I’ll enjoy the Durrell G more than all the Durrell Ls combined, but that’s the hell of getting hooked on a writer – you have to see it out to the bitter end.
  Ah, reading. Do you think they’ll have books in heaven?

4 comments:

Deborah Lawrenson said...

I love Lawrence Durrell's books too - you're right, Propspero's Cell is dazzling - so much so that I've just published a novel inspired by his work and almost-desperate quest for a life in the sun, the four wives and endless complexities. If you're interested it's called Songs of Blue and Gold but you won't find any mention of Durrell on the cover, or even the Amazon blurb because my publishers are convinced no-one knows or cares about Durrell now. Funnily enough I found quite the opposite during my researches. I've never been part of an underground minority before - it's really quite exciting. All the best.

Declan Burke said...

Hi Deborah - Sounds terrific. If you fancy expanding your comment and giving us the full whack of what SONGS OF BLUE AND GOLD is about, I'll gladly hoist it up on the blog ... Also, I review for a variety of outlets here in Ireland, so if you want to get your publishers to send me a copy, I'd love to read it. Drop me a line at dbrodb(a)gmail.com if you're interested ... Cheers, Dec

Naomi Eve said...

I'm reading all my long-left-dormant novels, and deciding which to keep and which to give to charity. Monsieur - I don't know if I even finished it when I first read it as a teenager, so it's with some trepidation I've started on it. But I agree - so beautifully descriptive, definitely the post-modern about him, and I recalled while reading why I loved him so much as a teenager - his vocabulary is ASTOUNDING. damascene - mmmmm! His younger brother is always going to be more dear to my heart, though - and I have to get hold of the sequels to MFAOA!

mikidkolan said...

I left 5-in one 'Quintet' in my house in far-away Adriatic island, as it was too heavy to pack it into luggage for Taiwan. But since I restarted reading it there, I was searching for at least Monsieur here, and I can not find it in library or book store. Sigh. "Quintet" is so appropriate for a 5-dimensional story, when you think of it, compared to conscious relativity timespace structure of 'Quartet'. I had impression that LD really introduced the 'ghost' dimension with these interrelations you mention.