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The Brexit Novel and Ali Smith Harald Pittel (University of Potsdam)

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The Brexit Novel and Ali Smith Harald Pittel (University of Potsdam) Fiction in Dark Times: the Brexit Novel and Ali Smith Harald Pittel (University of Potsdam) he 2016 vote to leave the European Does Brexlit mean Brexlit? TUnion has incited many tormenting questions regarding the present state and o begin with, there have been future development of British society. Tboth broader and more narrow Contemporary novelists are reacting assessments of what qualifies as Brexlit in differently to this situation, giving rise the first place. Overviews include books to what some reviewers have labelled that appeared before and after the vote, “the post-referendum novel”, “Brexit and which were written in various cultural fiction” or simply “Brexlit”. It seems well and political contexts. For example, in worth investigating what constitutes his detailed account of the new literary this emergent strand of literature in landscape published in Financial Times, terms of common themes and shared Jon Day also includes Howard Jacobson’s prospects. How do authors with different anti-Trump satire Pussy (2015).1 A backgrounds approach the referendum reviewer for the Guardian, Danuta and its implications? To what extent Kean, draws attention, among others, can such fiction be understood as a new to Heinz Helle’s Eigentlich müssten wir phenomenon, or even genre in its own tanzen (2015, translated into English right? And which are the strategies chosen as Euphoria)2, an apocalyptic vision of to make literature function as political (German-yet-generalisable) consumer engagement? After a general survey of the society. However, what most approaches field, this article will have a closer look to Brexit fiction have in common is that at Ali Smith’s Autumn and Winter, often they are indeed centred on contemporary hailed as the landmarks of Brexit fiction. Britain, and while some of these books take issue with its political elites and governmental system, such as Andrew Page 58 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Harald Pittel Marr’s farcical thriller Head of State back cover of Jon McGregor’s Reservoir (2015) and Douglas Board’s dystopian 13; see below). It should be stressed satire Time of Lies (2017), the more that in most Brexlit not only “Europe typical pre- and post-referendum novels – as a geographical reality and political © Image by Matt Brown via Flickr (source) focus on the larger society as such. idea – is largely absent from its pages”3 t is here that a somewhat problematic (save an EU-funded flowerbed here and Itendency becomes manifest. Most there), but so are the inhabitants from Brexit novels are more specifically Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, written from an English perspective; not to speak of the larger history of they are concerned, like Paul Kingfield’s immigration entailed by Britain’s historical novel The Wake (a 2013 colonial past that would fundamentally Joyce-inspired experiment in pseudo- complicate the idea of indigenous archaic language to probe into the Englishness. In all these books, there past levels of collective consciousness), can be no doubt, this is England in with “English identity”, and their times of crisis, “England divided” (as proceedings are located geographically in Benjamin Myers’ The Gallows Pole somewhere between London and “the (2017), which envisions the precursors heart of England” (as indicated on the of that division in history). Brexit Page 59 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Fiction in Dark Times: the Brexit Novel and Ali Smith fiction thus privileges England in order publisher. Advertised to offer “a fictional to expose it in fractured state, typically response to a complex issue” on the back centred around a more or less complex, cover, The Cut is centred around the and more or less fictionalized, though chasm of understanding between Grace always threateningly deep, social conflict. Trevithick, a successful London-based documentary film-maker, and Cairo n some cases, as in McGregor’s Reservoir Jukes, an ex-boxer from Dudley (at the I13 or Adam Thorpe’s Missing Fay (both centre of the formerly industrial Black 2017), Brexit fiction shows similarities Country) who is down to collecting with the crime novel. Both stories, as metal from defunct factories on zero- Jon Day adequately summarizes, revolve hours contracts. Grace meets Cairo for around a missing girl which functions an interview; their mutual attraction as “a void at the heart of a novel that leads up to an affair in which the social is really about our prejudices and how and cultural distance is for a short time we fail to communicate them to one overcome, but when Cairo is unable to another”4. However, whereas the most bear the difference, he feels driven to a recent instalment of Mark Billingham’s most melodramatic (self-)destructive successful Tom Thorne novels, Love Like response. The gendered and class-marked Blood (2017), immerses the detective in divide thus evoked brings up several key a post-referendum setting, Thorpe’s and issues in which, dramatized and distorted McGregor’s books feature yet another as they are under the fatal influence of void as they also leave empty the detective’s the populist right, one can see the extent place. Unlike the traditional trajectory of social alienation, financial hardship that is arranged around the detective and lack of solidarity that has marked as an agent restoring a certain sense of pre- as well as post-referendum England. order to a world otherwise out of joint, in But to analyse social division in this Missing Fay and Reservoir 13 it is mainly clear-cut way has arguably little to offer for the reader to bridge the clash of widely for a more profound understanding why diverging perspectives, thus encouraging so many voted for Leave, which was by the reading subject, as it were, to no means just a provincial or lower-class overcome society’s communicative gaps. phenomenon.5 While there seems to be considerable interest in holding up a his bridging approach is most mirror to contemporary society, only a Tconspicuously conducted in handful of Brexit novels make a serious Anthony Cartwright’s The Cut (2017), effort at exploring the wider cultural the one book that was explicitly dimensions of the present crisis, and there commissioned as a “Brexit novel” by its are only few examples suggesting that a Page 60 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Harald Pittel more complex approach to social critique, owever, these social pathologies beyond the reduction in terms of country Hare also evident in the absurdity vs city or the like, might be in order. of rather harmless everyday situations. Thus when Elisabeth Demand, a 32 From Autumn … year-old art history lecturer, goes to the downsized post office to renew her li Smith’s Autumn (2016), highly passport using the practicable Check & Acelebrated by the press and Send service, she is told that her head is shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker the wrong size and that her eyes are too Prize, should be considered as an small (on the photograph she intends to exception in this respect, one that also submit, that is). That uneasy impression resists any facile categorization in terms about her is very much in tune with the of existing genre markers such as satire or reservations shown by her mother who dystopia. The first to appear in a planned has been thinking that something is quartet that follows the seasonal cycle, wrong with her daughter since childhood Autumn is out to exhibit a vibrant ideal, days, when Elisabeth became friends with the rich potential of love as inspirational Daniel Gluck, their aging neighbour. connectedness, provocatively pinned Elisabeth’s friendship with the thin and against the reality of present-day British cultivated man of unclear (German- society that has lost all its belief and French-English) descent intensifies over hope save narrow-minded framing, the years, much to her mother’s disdain, compartmentalization and privatization, who finds such a relationship “unnatural” in short: the drawing of lines and borders and “unhealthy”8, suspecting that Daniel for its own sake, amounting to “a new must be a pervert or gay (or both). kind of detachment”.6 While there is However, Daniel’s desire is really much little resistance against this predicament, more sublime. While it remains unclear the commodified culture of meaningless what exactly he did during his life – aside delimiting and measuring exerts a from once having written the song lyrics severely alienating effect on individuals. for a one-hit wonder – he is certainly Such ‘unculture’, the novel suggests, is an artist of sorts, highly receptive and what’s behind the aggressive mentality expressive of what art has to offer, of distrust and hostility that sometimes always intensely engaged in inspirational leads to outbursts of hatred, such as relations. It is this friendship in creative habitual racism, anti-immigration dialogue and joint story-making that campaigns or the murder of Jo Cox.7 gives Elisabeth an idea of who she actually is, as Daniel reveals to her what is really relevant about art, truth and Page 61 Hard Times 101 (1/2018) Fiction in Dark Times: the Brexit Novel and Ali Smith life itself. Her congenial friend is always stifling traditionalism in academia. But on her mind as Elisabeth gradually unlikely as it might seem, her mother, discovers a voice, sexuality and love-life too, is eventually able to go beyond of her own, and arrives at an aesthetic the conventional frames of thinking in ideal animated by a sense of feminism which she was stuck for so many years. © Image by Polyrus via Flickr (source) (centred around the female 1960s She discovers a new way of loving when pop artist Pauline Boty, whose artistic she meets Zoe, a former child-star, now vision Daniel once fell in love with and a psychologist and generally an open- which he manages to communicate as minded and understanding woman (such an original experience to Elisabeth).
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