L.i ~ Reviews

Theorists have insisted on taking the finger trap apa rt, some with blades, some with shotguns, either insu lted by the audacity of the nasty little prank or driven to demystify its purportedly si m ple mechanics in order to prove that it is no gre at thing, concealing their eleme nta l ho rror at its momentary, unyielding grip. A few manage to push deeper on and through to find themselves released and unharmed. Fortunately Robin Mookerjee is one of the latte r. THE GENERIC VERONICA TRANSGRESSIVE FICTION: In Transgressive Fiction: The New Satiric THE NEW SATIRIC Tradition (2013) Mookerjee has put a great deal of effort into not domesticatin g the TRADITION affective potential of the transgressive texts, but while he has not dismembered REVIEWED BY MOLLY HOEY the text, attempting to divine meaning from its entrails, there is st ill somethin g of It seems that any discussion of subversive a performance in this ritualistic display of fiction begins with someone dutifully textua I sub m ission. pointing out that there is nothing new about subvers ive fiction ; its content, In an attempt to wrestle the transgressive topics, language and devices are all old paradox (how do you analyse this material hat. Yet since its popularisation in the early without neutralising it) Mookerjee has ' 990S a ran ge of scho larly texts have been opted for allocating transgressive fiction publ ished that attempt to tackle and make into the sat i ric tradition. This is a anew the finger trap that is transgressive reasonable statement, and well evidenced. fiction. But like many other analytical attempts to examine transgressive fiction, it fee ls like The temptation to write on transgressive Mookerj ee has performed a ge neric fiction is understandable; it's still a veronica. relatively under-studied genre and it has the old controve rsy banner to bring in By placing transgressive texts within the interest. Who doesn't want to have the satiric tradition Mookerje e has offered myst er ie s of the human psyche revealed literary immunity to the paralogic content to them in a logical and reasonable voice? of transgressive texts, which their defenders may claim is no bad thing. But I The proclivity for readers to fight against argue that anything that negates the these texts is matched on Iy by the fixation affective and v io l at in g nature of of theo ri sts to try and decipher them. transgressive fiction removes its potency

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and power. This is an issue that covers all secondary epic are composed as an studies of subversive material and assurance of safety and consistency in Mookerjee clearly indicates the way in the face of a hostile, unpredictable which transgressive fiction belongs to the natural world, satire skeptically takes satiric tradition; but I am left wondering on art and language. It therefore has a whether anything as ambiguous, reflexive double consciousness, to borrow the and slippery as transgressive fiction can Emersonian concept and one which really be considered satire. joins the thematic and the formal. It proposes a Kantian (or proto-Kantian) Mookerjee claims that transgressive insistence on the freedom of aesthetic fiction is about examining systems, but he play and employs this freedom to needs to go further and acknowledge that represent the chaos tamed by in its analysis of systems transgressive establishment literature. (19) fiction is always unfolding itself, always presenting a Janus face, because the However, this can be taken further: it is the moment it settles upon a pedagogy it text itself, by its own essential nature, that instantly undermines itself. How, for is the trickster. The trick is on the reader, example, can you make claims of escaping the narrator, the critic and the theorist. overarching systems when you function Perhaps there is no "reason" at all apart within the greatest of all organising from the play of language and an media: language? invitation to pointless and endless journeys of analysis and a slight feeling of The reading of transgressive fiction is Stockholm syndrome? problematic in its very nature; even if one treads very lightly elements will be broken As Mookerjee notes, "the trickster and conceived underfoot. What is so often muddies high gods," but these gods overlooked is that transgressive fiction, include the genre, the reader, the theorist like the finger trap, works by playing on and itself. After all, it is the ultimate assumptions and appearances, and that it trickster that can make you sit through a is a little joke at the reader's expense. visceral yet detached depiction of a prepubescent boy being sodomised in a Anthony Julius has noted in his work cinema whilst he tries to watch Friday the Transgressions: the Offences of Art this 73th, and then tell you it's really all about correlation in regards to visual aesthetics and modern guilt. transgreSSive art: "One risks under­ interpreting the work if one overlooks this The rest of Mookerjee's argument also baiting of the spectator" (Julius, 16). displays some small inconsistencies. In one chapter he makes three reasonable claims: Mookerjee notes the role of the trickster narrator in transgressive texts: Many critics misread Menippean satire precisely because they read it through While oral tradition, myth and the lens of a specific belief system.

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Alternatively, critics focus on the insult as, "The withdrawal of the author as an suffered by the body-sometimes only identifiable presence places the emphasis suggested-viewing this as a form of on the form of the story itself by draining sensationalism. However, satire is the epic of the authority of testimony" constructed to frustrate attempts to (25). In comparing the narrator to the read through any moral or philosophical author Mookerjee also invites other critics system and to frustrate attempts to to start down the slippery path of identify the author's intent ... (159) responsibility and censorship.

Firstly, Mookerjee makes the succinct Transgressive Fiction: The New Satiric claim that transgressive fictions cannot be Tradition places transgressive fiction in a analysed through "the lens of a specific social/historical framework, rather than a belief system" and then, elsewhere, literary theory one. What Mookerjee has recommends they be read as a form of contributed to the study of transgressive social commentary, which tries to draw fiction is a solid history into its attention to any "systems which unify development and an examination of its experience" and a "truth behind culture." multiple manifestations, though some of the texts selected don't really shelter The second claim about critics focusing on under the transgressive umbrella. the violent or violating elements is shrewd. However, after claiming that transgressive Mookerjee emphasises a "transgressive fiction "attempts to frustrate attempts to legacy" within these books, implying that identify the author's intent" he then a text becomes transgressive simply for proceeds to discuss these authors' beliefs: containing abjection or "transgressive "Menippean and transgressive fiction may elements." For a text to don the be seen as regressive, but its authors view transgressive label it must be transgressive it as revelatory of a truth that emerges in in its very nature. It must play with the the absence of frameworks, theories, expectation of analysis as well as violate ideologies, and formulaic beliefs" (16). and confront. Simply because a text deals with abjection and the grotesque does not He then adds to this confusion by referring make it transgressive; therefore selections to authors and narrators interchangeably. like Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus This becomes almost maddening when he (1993) sit awkwardly. constantly refers to The Don (from Will Self's 1992 work Cock and Bull) and Will Mookerjee has done a service in cooling a Self as though they are interchangeable few myths about the nature of (this thankfully stops when he considers transgressive fiction: that it is not simply the work of Bret Easton Ellis and Irvine about shock value or controversy and that Welsh). He also has a tendency to use an the ambiguous and mocking nature of author's earlier work to fill in gaps and transgressive fiction is essential to its flatten out the ambiguity of these texts. appeal. Mookerjee also provides the reader This sits awkwardly with statements such with an informative and well-considered

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section on American Psycho (1991) and makes some insightful comments on the discrepancy that is shown between transgressive fiction and supposedly romantic work such as Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire (1976). He also takes great effort to show why critics are often so appalled with these texts, and describes methods to get beyond the initial shock factor. ADRIAN J WALKER

But a scholarly ana lysis of transgressive fiction is always going to be a tragic yet THE END OF THE WORLD addictive act. The power of any object is RUNNING CLUB removed when it is demystified: when the monster is shown to be simply disfigured REVIEWED BY KYNAN ISOKANGAS and the subversive texts just words. The End of the World Running Club (2014) I am not claiming I could have done a comes from Scottish author Adrian J. better job. Walker. It is se lf-published, and initially I found it quite hard to gain access to a Abjection brings us back time and again­ copy, but once I started reading the book, with scalpel and shotgun, with politics it was impossible to put down. The novel's and linguistics-in an attempt to take the protagonist is Edgar Hill, a 35-year-o ld beast down, to show the finger trap as father of two who is an overweight woven straw boozehound, bored of the everyday, struggling through life, and in need of a Mookerjee has done a service in trying to change; the end of the world certain ly counteract much of the sensationalist bad shakes things up. press that subversive texts often create. He offers us a history within which Ed and his family are trapped in their cellar subve rsive w riting is given context and he after thousands of devastating asteroid has attempted to look at these texts strikes across the United Kingdom. After a objectively, and at the book's end we have few weeks they are rescued and taken to a well-executed display of competency an army barracks in Edinburgh where the and a decent death, but as we stand, extent of the damage is finally revealed. looking at the beast, we must admit that The world as Ed once knew it is all but we still know nothing of its nature. finished; the countrysid e now consists of cloud and ash, destroyed buildings, The Generic Veronica. Transgressive Fiction: canyons and craters. But, Ed's li fe seems to The New Satiric Tradition by Mookerjee, be working out post-apocalypse; he even Robin. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, has a sa lvaging role looking for food and 2013. ISBN 0230294022. RRP $115· pp. 503.

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