Michael Rosen, Diane Roberts, Emran Mian, Miranda France and Anthony Cummins on How Novelists Are Taking on the World 2 PROSPECT

Home , Michael Rosen, Michel Houellebecq, Paul Beatty, The Sellout (novel), Zia Haider Rahman

Writing with punch

Michael Rosen, Diane Roberts, Emran Mian, Miranda France and Anthony Cummins on how novelists are taking on the world 2 PROSPECT

Foreword by Sameer Rahim

oetry makes noth- nects with profoundly is the rediscovery of and her country and finding no comfort. ing happen.” That insitutionalised racism in the US that feels What about those targeted by line in WH Auden’s more relevant than ever.” populists—such as migrants? I argue that poem dedicated to the For US writers, the elephant in the the UK has seen an upswing in great writ- memory of WB Yeats, room (or bull in the china shop) is Presi- ing about its ethnic minority communities. “Pis often taken to endorse the idea of an dent Donald Trump. But how should they This is only likely to increase as demo- apolitical approach to literature. Auden, approach such an outlandish personal- graphics change. “Mixed-race” is now the once a committed Marxist, had by 1940 ity? Miranda France argues they could fastest-growing ethnic category in the UK, given up trying to change the world. (Who do worse than turn to their Latin Ameri- which means more of the older generation can blame him?) But that didn’t mean he can counterparts, who have had to deal than ever have grandchildren with a differ- thought the world was now off-limits; just with “preening strongmen” for decades. ent racial background. that we should expect something different The Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa and the Politics begins at home, says Anthony from that form of communication. The Dominican-American Junot Díaz tack- Cummins, in his essay on how chang- line continues, poetry “survives in the val- led the dictator Rafael Trujillo with con- ing gender relations are being reflected ley of its making.” Auden’s lines, read this trasting styles: one realist, one fantastical; in modern novels. And rounding things way, are defiant, not meek. but both used satire to expose his lies. Bad off, Michael Rosen, the children’s writer All the modern writers discussed leaders often reflect the flaws in their soci- and political campaigner, tells us that ine- in these pages engage with the biggest eties. In her essay on Harper Lee’s Go Set quality is the biggest problem of all. And issues of our day. Last year’s Man Booker a Watchman, the early draft of To Kill a also, because politics isn’t everything, that winner, Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, was a Mockingbird, originally published before he’s changed his mind about going to the wicked satire on US race relations. As Lee’s death in 2016, Diane Roberts says beach. Emran Mian argues, “what the book con- that we see Lee struggling with her people Sameer Rahim is Prospect’s Arts and Books Editor

Contents

03 Can fiction lead the fight back? 08 The year of the migrants 11 Brief encounter emran mian sameer rahim michael rosen

05 When fiction trumps El Supremo 09 What does it mean to be a man? 12 The war’s not over yet miranda france anthony cummins diane roberts

Listen to Prospect Follow Prospect Hear all about the biggest issues in this edition by @prospect_uk facebook.com/prospect.mag downloading Prospect’s free podcast Headspace from iTunes or soundcloud.com/prospect-magazine prospect_magazine PROSPECT 3 Can fiction lead the fight back? American novelists are doing a brilliant job engaging with politics. Their British counterparts need to catch up fast, argues Emran Mian

t has been a year of extraordinary polit- fiction); or the challenge of hacking through mean that it has to dismiss politics, but it will ical events. In June, the United King- clichés learned from political thrillers, or news- focus on its failures and follies. dom decided to leave the European papers, of how power is exercised in Washing- One way to disguise that feature of the genre Union and in November the United ton or Westminster. Notice how Beatty sets his is to retreat into the past. Garth Risk Hallberg’s States elected Donald Trump as its political novel a long way from the seat of gov- novel City on Fire (Vintage), published at the Ifirst reality-television president. Our instant ernment, closer to what the philosopher Iris end of 2015, ends in 1977. The city in question storytellers—columnists, news anchors, other Marion Young has catalogued as the social is New York and the fire includes homophobia, politicians—are still reeling from the shock. movements outside formal politics. Young sug- racism, status anxiety and inequality. The polit- But what can real writers do to respond to pol- gests that such movements have three main pur- ical movement in the novel initially expresses itics—if anything? Fiction, by its nature, can- poses: to challenge decision-making structures itself through music and situationist stunts and not move at the speed of current events. But directly; to organise autonomous services; and gradually pivots towards the use of terror. But those novelists who are willing to engage with evolve cultural identity. the folly we observe isn’t merely in the choice of the world can bring a unique set of insights into Benjamin Markovits’s novel You Don’t Have tactics; it’s in how the egoism of Nicky Chaos, the state of a nation. to Live Like This (Faber), which won the James the leader of the movement, supplants the sol- Fittingly, in the year of Trump’s racially- Tait Black Memorial Prize in August, also idarity the movement supposedly believes in. charged triumph, both the UK’s Man Booker acutely observes the intersection of all three Chaos comes to a sticky end—as does his mirror Prize and the US’s National Book Critics’ Cir- of these. Markovits, a US writer living in Eng- image Amory, the scion of a massively wealthy cle Award were scooped by Paul Beatty’s The land, has his narrator, Marney, along with family. What we’re observing is the lose-lose Sellout (Oneworld). Beatty is an African-Amer- others help to take over a left-behind neigh- politics of domination and resentment, the ican writer born in Los Angeles in 1962, and bourhood in Detroit. Marney is white and the master-slave dialectic with a punk-rock beat. The Sellout imagines a world in which Amer- city he is now living in mainly black, and the Forty years later, Hallberg might be asking, can ica unwinds 40 years of political progress. The novel tackles issues of gentrification, racial pol- we avoid the same mistakes? high-jinks, low-concept idea at the heart of the itics, poverty and the way in which outsiders Can we? The progressive view in poli- book is the re-segregation of a Los Angeles sub- can help—or not help—struggling communi- tics usually claims that we can. But one strik- urb called Dickens—the catch being that it is ties. This is the stuff of politics, but politicians ing characteristic of politics in 2016 is that the black narrator who wants to divide the races play little part in it. President Barack Obama “the shipwrecked mind,” as the historian of once again. “Me,” as he is known, develops his makes a fleeting appearance in the book—play- ideas Mark Lilla calls it in the title of his new stunt into a political programme with the aim ing basketball rather than making speeches or book on reactionary politics, has fixed its eye of creating public spaces in which black people negotiating amendments. Even the money to on us. Whether there’s a shock of orange hair can feel more confident by living only with their redevelop Detroit does not come from govern- above that eye and a roaming mouth below own kind. “I’m not advocating segregation,” ment but instead from tech entrepreneurs and it, or it takes some other form, the impera- Beatty has explained, “I’m having fun ponder- hedge fund managers. The mission is inevita- tives of “bring back…” and “things were better ing it.” bly economic as well as social—though for Mar- when…” are now incredibly powerful. The trou- On Beatty’s telling, the plan works: the ney it is as much about proving himself as it ble for writers of fiction is that faced with such restriction is a form of liberation that improves, is about helping others. In a melodiously frus- an outlandish phenomenon as Trump, they for example, the school results of black chil- trated tone, signalled by the book’s title, he generally respond with superficial satire. dren. (The book starts with “Me” on trial at the remarks: “There should be a better test of who On Trump himself, the US-based Nige- Supreme Court, the elite taking its revenge.) I am than middle-class American life.” rian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has What the book connects with profoundly is the This is politics, not as the Trumpian art had a go, in a short story published this sum- rediscovery of institutionalised racism in the US of the deal, but as the dilemma of how to live mer in the New York Times Book Review. Writ- that feels more relevant than ever. a good life with others. That said the politi- ten from the perspective of the presumptive Beatty’s success in writing about poli- cal schemes in both Beatty’s and Markovits’s First Lady Melania Trump, in the second par- tics is unusual in modern novelists. We might books are riddled with problems. The difficulty agraph, we are told that “taste, for him, was hope that writers of fiction would catch some- of re-segregation as a basis for political utopia something to be determined by somebody else, thing that pollsters, commentators and politi- is obvious enough. The soft-hippy community and then flaunted.” It’s an observation that any cal incumbents have been unable to. But many envisaged by Markovits is more appealing. But creative writing teacher would strike out: is are not. Some of the reasons for this are long- the philanthropists behind it aren’t the ragged- Trump likely to defer to experts? Later, there is standing: professional rivalry between novelists trousered type. We can tell that something is a laboured passage about how Trump’s tweets and politicians, who usually studied together in awry and indeed much of the novel’s interest are indistinct from his text messages to his wife. Ivy League schools or Oxbridge, which brims is the conflict between naive idealism and the Adichie hasn’t done any of the work required to over into writers’ contempt and condescension messy real world. In addition, literary fiction imagine the couple’s private life. So we’re bereft for political leaders (rarely the stuff of good rarely provides a happy ending. This doesn’t of a reaction to what she tells us. It might or 4 PROSPECT

might not be sad (sad!) that his text messages must not intervene in Iraq. “I can only go one There is another effect that fiction com- are impersonal. Trump’s tweets might be the way,” Blair said later, “I’ve not got a reverse monly extrudes from politics: the House of best of him. gear.” That’s the problem from the writer’s per- Cards-style thrill of skulduggery. Robert Harris, This is not to say that writers can only spective: politics is all about remaking the world Andrew Marr, Richard T Kelly—these authors write about reactionary politics by seeing the and unilateral presumption. Or, as the title of use the theatre of politics. They often do seri- best in them—empathising with pro-Brexit one of Rosen’s latest letters has it, “Dear Justine ous work at the same time. Harris’s Cicero tril- or Trump voters, as liberals have been repeat- Greening, It’s time to stop hounding teachers ogy, completed in 2015 with the publication edly instructed to do in this revolutionary year. and harness their wisdom.” of Dictator, is superb on the perils of politics: But what 52 per cent of UK voters have opted Not all writers will feel the same. Many how the monopoly of violence that the state for, and tens of millions of Americans, is not might follow Norman Mailer instead, who assumes becomes a threat to liberty, how a suc- beneath observation in literary fiction. Young ran to be the Democratic nominee for New cessful polity becomes wealthy and then that describes the social movements of the left as York City mayor in 1969. He said: “The dif- wealth corrupts it. But Harris knows all too well “focusing on broad issues of decision-making ference between me and the other candidates what we end up calling this kind of work. As he power and political participation. Often they is that I’m no good and I can prove it.” In the puts it, “because any work of fiction that seeks seek less to expand the scope of the state’s wel- US, the divide is perhaps less pronounced. But to describe the public sphere—its miscarriages fare services than to respond to the invasion of in England it is glaring. Saturday is one of the of justice, coups, conspiracies, elections, assas- nearly every area of social life by both public and few books written in England in recent years to sinations, spies and swindles—is automatically private bureaucracies.” We can recognise the come close to politics. Though even it spends no labelled a thriller, a thriller-writer is what I have purposes of the Occupy movement in that state- time itself on the march against the war. Poli- become.” Perhaps some writers steer clear of ment, or those of Momentum. The World Trans- tics is background, the real action is personal politics because they don’t want to be labelled formed, as Momentum called its alternative to and domestic. The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss, in the same way. the Labour Party conference in September, may published earlier this year, gives politics the Another challenge for English novelists as well be a literary slogan. But turning back the same status. The characters overhear political writing about politics is our focus on the con- hordes of bureaucrats and taking back control news, they comment on the effects of auster- ventional sites of power. The movements that is a familiar theme on the right too. “Here I am, ity, but the drama is about how adults respond joined under the banner of “Leave” had to Ishmael,” Daniel Hannan, one of the found- to a sick child. Invoking politics in a novel in appeal to parliament for a referendum first. ers of the Brexit movement, told the Guardian this way does the same work as mentioning the Momentum has broader purposes but those recently. “Every man’s hand is against me.” brands the characters use or the music play- are viewed with suspicion. Certainly the scope British writers are especially bad at cap- ing on a radio. It’s part of a broader overture to for local politics is narrower in England than in turing the stuff of politics. There are some low realism—in other words, it’s not aesthetically the US. The kind of community-making that reasons for this. “His intellectual CV gives an unimportant, though there’s no conviction that Beatty and Markovits write about is harder to impression of slow-minded rigidity; and he politics might be informing the choices people pull off in our centralised political system. Per- seems essentially incurious about anything make, either driving them to despair or inspir- haps the new wave of mayoral elections and the beyond his immediate sphere.” So writes Mar- ing them. enhanced powers that (some) mayors will have tin Amis of the “undereducated” Jeremy Cor- might prompt new municipal fiction. In the byn. Writers commonly believe that politicians meantime, though, writing about politics seems are not as clever as they are, and not as broad to drive writers to Westminster, and to be rude either: rigid ideologues, rather than dashing about your university friends who became poli- flâneurs. ticians or towards genre fiction. This might be true. (Though Trump does Even the new novel by Ali Smith, Autumn, speak in a prose style that it would take any billed as an instant reaction to the Brexit vote writer a decade or two to master.) Or it might has more to say about the 1960s—one of the merely be intra-elite rivalry. While Corbyn characters collects art from that decade—than only got two Es at A Level, other leading pol- 2016. The state of the nation merits no more iticians made it through Oxford or Harvard. than a few paragraphs of the kind of prose that On the face of it, they’re in the same intellec- kicks off the longer opinion pieces in a Sunday tual league as Amis and Co. So they have to be newspaper supplement. The sadness is that pol- put in their place. The poet Michael Rosen for itics is teeming with life right now, mainly low example (who holds a degree in English from life perhaps, but writers shouldn’t decline to Oxford) has written open letters to scold suc- observe the very worst in us. Alternatively, per- cessive Education Secretaries. haps some citizens have already set off on the But, smarts aside, the deeper tension road to political progress, or they are trying out between the two tribes is due to their different ways to be more just to the weak and vulnerable frames of mind. Politicians presume to make far away from the corridors of power. Couldn’t decisions to improve lives. Whereas writers writers watch them and observe for us the perils reject both that instinct for perfecting human and possibilities? It is what Beatty and Marko- affairs and that claim to authority. In Ian McE- vits have done, though they are rare among wan’s 2005 novel Saturday, the pretensions of American writers, and the scene is sparser still the protagonist—as a surgeon and father—are among the English. dissected in slow motion. All the while, anti-war Emran Mian is Director of the Social Market

Over to you Ivanka: Donald Trump’s nepotism echoes the South American leaders of the past © MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES IMAGES © MARK WILSON/GETTY When fiction trumps El Supremo Novelists searching for clues on tackling Donald Trump would do well to revisit the preening strongmen of Latin American literature, argues Miranda France

It is still a point of pride among some clever enough: it can’t jump into the future or go On this side of the Atlantic, Howard people never to read novels, as if they were behind the scenes. In fiction every perspec- Jacobson has already opted for the first an indulgence for soft minds. But if we ever tive can be considered, and every conse- approach. His novella, Pussy, was writ- needed proof that fiction has a place in quence explored. ten in two months after the November public discourse, it’s in the current rush to So what will fiction be like in the Trump election, in a “fury of disbelief,” and has read novels about authoritarianism. In the era? The new regime demands interpreta- just been published. “I wanted to get over week after Kellyanne Conway, a counsel- tion. Never in living memory has a US pres- Trump’s moral bankruptcy but also the lor to President Donald Trump, coined the ident lied so brazenly or declared war on sheer bankruptcy of a culture that could phrase “alternative facts,” George Orwell’s the media so openly. Never has one boasted produce him,” Jacobson told the Guard- Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s of assaulting women or bragged about the ian. Salman Rushdie’s novel The Golden Brave New World were back in the bestseller size of his penis. Not for a long time has one House, due in September and set during lists. Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America felt no need to disguise his racism. Satirists the Obama administration, charts the rise (2004) and Margaret Atwood’s The Hand- complain that Trump is not an easy target: of the ultra-Conservative Tea Party and maid’s Tale (1985), both of which imagine you can’t lampoon a guy who already seems “the insurgence of a ruthlessly ambitious, a fascist America, are also selling briskly. to be making a joke of himself. So how will narcissistic, media-savvy villain sporting The window of Waterstone’s flagship store novelists tackle him? Huxley and Lewis makeup and coloured hair.” in Piccadilly has been given over to a dis- were writing in the 1930s and Orwell in This is just the start: more novels are in play of Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here 1948. Roth has promised us he won’t write the works. Will they be Orwellian? Rothian? (1935), which follows a right-wing populist any more novels. We need something cur- Atwoodian? Anglo-American dystopias, taking charge of the US in the 1930s. In a rent—but novels take a long time to write especially when informed by Soviet com- world where images threaten to eclipse and events are moving so fast that keeping munism, somehow don’t capture the col- print as the dominant medium, the thirst up means either writing very quickly or tak- ourful excesses of a man whose power for novels is heartening. News alone is not ing a longer view. comes married to a fragile ego, a love 6 PROSPECT of beauty queens and a clutch of pecu- Facundo is both a manifesto and an inves- of an army of teenage thugs. liar phobias. We might do better to look tigation into the conditions that allow cau- García Márquez had been planning his for influences south of Trump’s proposed dillos to thrive. Sarmiento discerned a novel for 20 years but couldn’t find a way into border wall, to Latin America and the dangerous divide between populists and it until the solution came to him in a flash, on touchy despots created by Miguel Ángel intellectuals. That same mistrust, now visible a family outing: the trick was to use his native Asturias, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario in the United States, has long been a feature Colombian styles of speech. The author’s Vargas Llosa and other writers, in a genre of Latin American political life. In his essay model was his grandmother, whose conver- so established that it has its own name: dic- “Against the Heroes,” Carlos Franz describes sation moved between mundane, extraordi- tator fiction. Latin Americans’ longing for a strong leader nary and even impossible events and treated Trump isn’t a dictator, of course, but he as a sentimental trap: “Distrust of democ- them all the same. (In more sinister fashion, certainly calls to mind the caudillo, or strong- racy and of individual responsibility pro- dictators were also adept at mingling fiction man, who features so regularly in Latin duces an irrational desire for a leader, a hero and reality.) “When I finally discovered the American fiction that for a time it felt as who can make all the difficult decisions.” tone I had to use, I sat down for 18 months though every writer had to have a go at one, When the populists gain—or grab— and worked every day,” García Márquez said. much as British actors try their hand at power, intellectuals are expected to oppose Language was key to this new litera- Hamlet. From Juan and Eva Perón in Argen- them, entering into a game of wits that ture, quickly dubbed “magical realism.” tina to Porfirio Díaz in Mexico, there have they often win, but only on paper, and at a Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa read been plenty of despots to choose from. price. For much of the 20th century, Latin One Hundred Years at his home in Crick- Your typical Latin American caudillo America’s best writers lived in exile, many lewood, North London (yes, really) and tends to be vain, paying a lot of attention declared it a work of “literary genius.” The to his hair and looks. (Argentina’s Carlos “When populists grab novel opened the door to him and a genera- Menem was said to get up at 4am for beauty power, intellectuals tion of Latin American writers whose explo- treatments and hair weaves). Caudillos like sion on to the world scene earned them the naming things after themselves, and put- enter a game of wits moniker, “Boom Generation.” ting up statues. (Eva Perón was going to that they often win on It was apparently on a pub crawl through be honoured with a memorial taller than paper, but at a price” 1960s London that Carlos Fuentes proposed the Statue of Liberty, before her husband to Mario Vargas Llosa that they collabo- Juan got deposed). They divert attention in neighbouring countries; others were rate on a book of dictators. They and fel- from their flagging potency by surround- murdered, imprisoned or humiliated like low “Boomers” would take a chapter each to ing themselves with beauty queens—dat- Jorge Luis Borges, who was demoted by write about their favourite despots. Julio Cor- ing or marrying them whenever possible Perón from municipal librarian to poul- tázar, for example, would profile Evita. (in the Dominican Republic, Rafael Tru- try inspector. It can be dangerous to be too That book never materialised, but more jillo even crowned his own daughter a clever, or too critical. Writers have to stay novels did. The year 1974 saw “dictator nov- beauty queen). Even when democratically on their toes, inventing new ways to take on els” from Alejandro Carpentier, Augusto elected, they show a reluctance to relin- the tyrants. Roa Bastos and García Márquez himself. quish power—then become paranoid about The novel that would reinvent modern Later offerings came from Luisa Valenzuela their opponents, calling them “enemies.” South American literature was published and Tomás Eloy Martínez. After Alberto Fujimori was elected presi- half a century ago. In May 1967, 8,000 cop- I, The Supreme (1974), by Roa Bastos, was dent of Peru in 1990—beating Mario Var- ies of One Hundred Years of Solitude came inspired by José Gaspar Rodríguez de Fran- gas Llosa—he shut down the Congress and off the presses in Buenos Aires. Its Colom- cia, dictator of Paraguay (1814-1840) and self- sacked judges. He’s in prison now, serving bian author, Gabriel García Márquez, had styled “Supremo,” though the suspicion that 25 years for corruption and crimes against written four novels, none of which had sold it was also about General Alfredo Stroess- humanity. Caudillos often have strange fears more than a few hundred copies. The fami- ner, ruler for 35 years until 1989, was enough and phobias: François Duvalier (“Papa ly’s fridge had to be pawned before he could to send the author into exile. El Supremo is Doc”), suspecting that his opponent had afford postage for this hefty manuscript. But obsessed with communication as a tool of been transformed into a black dog by voo- the publisher was optimistic. He thought the power and paranoid about having it used doo, had every black dog in Haiti put down. run could sell in six months. In fact all 8,000 against him. He would surely have been a fan Such macabre eccentricities have been copies sold in one week in Buenos Aires. of early morning tweeting. “I don’t write his- grist to the novelist’s mill. The “father of the More than 30m have been sold since then. tory,” he says. “I make it. I can remake it as dictator novel” was the Argentine Domingo A literary star was born, with an accom- I please, adjusting, stressing, enriching its Sarmiento. In 1845 he wrote Facundo, not a panying clamour that has been compared to meaning and truth.” It isn’t hard to imag- novel in fact, but a novelistic portrait of a Beatlemania. One Hundred Years of Solitude ine Conway or White House Press Secretary local strongman, and an excoriating indict- charted the experience, through one fam- Sean Spicer talking about “enriched truth.” ment of the brutal regime of President Juan ily, of a region dogged by bad politics. Soon The general in García Márquez’s The Manuel de Rosas during which thousands after its foundation by José Arcadio Buendía, Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) also takes a died. Facundo had an urgent purpose: to the peaceful town of Macondo is drawn into relaxed approach to facts: “It doesn’t matter argue for a more enlightened, (preferably a cycle of violence and dictatorship that cor- if something’s not true now, because at some European) style of government. Argentines rupts every generation. When Buendía’s point in the future it will be true.” Based on must choose Civilisation over Barbarism, grandson becomes ruler of Macondo we see no particular historical figure, this arche- said Sarmiento, who became president him transformed from an intelligent school- typal tyrant has held onto power so long himself in 1868. teacher into a tyrannical despot, at the head that he is rumoured to be more than 200 PROSPECT 7 © BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES © BETTMANN/GETTY Dictators are victims as well: Rafael Trujillo was fictionalised by Mario Vargas Llosa years old. In one scene he has the Minister of holed up in his palace, paranoid and raging Trump-era novel. By now all of us are famil- Defence served up at a banquet, stuffed with after discovering that the US has dropped iar with his Twitterese: the indignant state- pine nuts and aromatic herbs. its backing because of his human rights ment followed by a one-word exclamation, Sometimes compared to James Joyce’s violations. Trujillo ruled the Dominican usually “Sad!” or “Unfair!” Ulysses for its linguistic difficulty, The Autumn Republic for 31 years until his assassination A whole narrative built on this staccato of the Patriarch includes stream-of-conscious- in 1961. style might be indigestible, but Jacobson, ness sections and sentences that go on for Vargas Llosa’s novel was hugely acclaimed for one, takes aim at Twitter. “Social media pages. This syntactical chaos reflects the gen- and that reception, as well as Trujillo’s tyr- thrives on the assertive single point of view,” eral’s chaotic rule; just as people have been anny, was the inspiration for Junot Díaz’s The he says, “which is what he is able to do. If you violated, so language is violated. Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, winner of have Twitter, you don’t need tanks.” Yet, for García Márquez, “dictators are the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. Díaz, born in Santo Future novels might show Trump from victims” too, because all are lonely. “The Domingo but mostly brought up in the US, the point of view of a beauty queen, or the more power you have, the harder it is to know makes no secret of his contempt for The Feast White House staffer charged with bringing who is lying to you and who is not. When you of the Goat, which he sees as legitimising Tru- him fast food. The president’s attacks on reach absolute power, there is no contact with jillo by using realist language to describe Latinos and Mexicans could also make him a reality, and that’s the worst kind of solitude his abuses. literary target south of the border. For Latin there can be. A very powerful person, a dic- Realism is the wrong mode, Díaz says, American novelists, railing against tyranni- tator, is surrounded by interests and people because the dictator was “so outlandish, so cal leaders was not only a political impera- whose final aim is to isolate him from reality; perverse, so dreadful that not even a sci-fi tive but the spur to invent new literary forms. everything is in concert to isolate him.” writer could have made his ass up.” His own American journalists are already discovering It’s a compelling image, the figure of approach is to mix Spanglish, street slang, how galvanising it can be to spar with a fig- the leader walking alone through his pal- sci-fi and comic book language in a concoc- ure who is not merely evasive or dishonest, ace, perhaps recalling Trump alone at the tion so heady that his publishers at one time but actively wishes you ill. Novelists cannot White House while his wife and son stay insisted on including a glossary. be far behind. in New York. In Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Given the US president’s unique and sur- Miranda France is a writer and translator whose Feast of the Goat (2000) the dictator, a fic- real style of communication, perhaps we can most recent book is “The Day Before the Fire” tionalised version of Rafael Trujillo, is also expect similar language innovations in the (Chatto & Windus) 8 PROSPECT The year of the migrants Sameer Rahim

n 2015 Europe’s refugee crisis caster, is surprised when Avtar turns up on Zephyr. Where are you from?’” That grin became impossible to ignore as his doorstep. Avtar had made friends with hides his humiliation. 430,000 people arrived, fleeing Michael while working in a call centre in Similar themes are handled in a humor- war or poverty. But mainly absent India. Now, looking to escape his gangmas- ous way in Amit Chaudhuri’s Odysseus from the political debate have been ter in Sheffield, Avtar asks Michael whether Abroad (Oneworld). Through his six novels Imigrant voices. What does it feel like to be he can rent a room. The old man seems ame- Chaudhuri, an Indian-born long-time res- an illegal immigrant or to be British-born nable but his suspicious son sends him pack- ident in Britain, has become the master of but culturally alienated? Four novels pub- ing. This sequence enacts an urgent political wry observation. Odysseus Abroad is set in lished in the last year describe how newcom- argument. Ageing Europeans need immi- the early 1980s. It follows 22-year-old Ben- ers to Britain negotiate with the host culture grants to look after them while their chil- gali Ananda and his uncle Radesh, an eccen- a dozen times a day. The picture they collec- dren work longer hours; but that requires an tric who has lived in a Hampstead bedsit for tively draw is not of a happy multicultural accommodating trust from the hosts, some- 30 years. Chaudhuri describes the catch all nation; they all echo worries about the diffi- thing Michael’s son is not prepared to give. description “Asian” as “an equivocal cate- culty of building a diverse and cohesive soci- For those who do make it the past can still gory, neither British nor Indian, for people ety. They also explore how those migrants cast a long shadow. Zia Haider Rahman was who had essentially nowhere to go.” Still, keen to work and integrate into Britain, born in rural Bangladesh and brought up in equivocal categories have their uses. The experience a country very different from the London. A gift for maths took him to Oxford Sylheti owners of a Bangladeshi restaurant one they imagined. There is opportunity, University and then Wall Street. His intelli- welcome Ananda and his uncle. As Hindus yes, but also isolation, poverty and racism. gent novel In the Light of What We Know from the other side of the border, they might Sunjeev Sahota’s Booker-shortlisted The (Picador), which won this year’s James Tait well have been rivals back home, but in Lon- Year of the Runaways (Picador) delves Black Memorial Prize, follows a character don those old conflicts can be put aside: into the grimy world of illegal immigration. with a similar background. Zafar feels that the chicken jalfrezi is on the house. Though Sahota, of Punjabi descent, was born in no matter how much money he makes or how Ananda feels alienated, he also has a calm Derby in 1981. He has an eye for newsworthy English he becomes, his adopted country determination to make the best of things. issues: his first novel,Ours Are the Streets, was will never accept him. A Pakistani-American Echoing the famous opening of VS Naipaul’s about a would-be suicide bomber. His new friend tells him America is different. When A Bend in the River, he reflects that: “The work follows three Indian “illegals” working he arrives at John F Kennedy Airport the weather was what it was; Empire had hap- on a Sheffield building site. immigration official always says: “Welcome pened; Ananda was here.” The story of one character, an auto rick- home.” Zafar responds: “If an immigration The legacy of empire is a dominant shaw driver from Patna, examines an asy- officer at Heathrow had ever said ‘Welcome theme in the fiction of black British writer lum seeker who is also an economic migrant. home’ to me, I would have given my life for Caryl Phillips. His tenth novel, The Lost Tochi and his family are attacked by Hindu England, for my country, there and then. I Child, (Oneworld) skilfully weaves together extremists for moving beyond their caste; his could kill for an England like that.” a postcolonial retelling of Emily Bronte’s parents are killed and he is badly burned. Rahman said something very similar in an Wuthering Heights and the story of Monica, Disillusioned with India, Tochi pays people interview with the American journalist Claire a white woman in 1960s England who has smugglers to take him to Britain. Tochi’s dep- Berlinski in 2006. He also disclosed a con- two children with an Afro-Caribbean man. rivation is inseparable from his caste status, nection with Zadie Smith’s bestselling novel Neither wholly in one place or another, something he believes he can slough off in his White Teeth (2000). Smith knew Rahman and children like Monica’s are prone to cul- new country through working hard. “Work partly based a character called Majid on him. tural confusion. But they can also act as an on day one. This was good. Maybe it was true Majid grew up in Bangladesh but is a fastidi- emotional bridge. “Mixed-race” is now the what they said about England. That this is ous “pukka” Englishman with a BBC accent fastest-growing ethnic category in the UK, where you could make something.” he has learnt from the radio. Her portrayal which means more of the older generation This summer some people offered to wel- is gleefully funny but, Rahman said, “con- than ever have grandchildren with a differ- come those fleeing persecution into their spicuously absent from White Teeth is the ent racial background. own homes. What might motivate someone anger… Immigration is a very bitter experi- The current debate about teaching Brit- to make such a generous gesture? Sahota’s ence for many people.” Rahman pours that ish values offers the chance to argue about most intriguing character is Narinder, a Brit- anger into his own novel. At a party, a man what these values might be in 2015. And ish-born Sikh woman, who agrees to a visa named Hugh asks Zafar the perennial ques- while all these writers seem to have a pessi- marriage with another migrant. Her reason tion: “Where are you from, if you don’t mind mistic or fatalistic take on the chances of a isn’t money, but religious guilt: she wants to me asking?” Zafar replies he lives in Brixton. multicultural society succeeding, their exist- help fellow Indians make a better life. Hugh “let out a guffaw, gently nudging me ence shows how English literature at least is Narinder has a cultural connection on the shoulder, relishing what his drunken being renewed by their vital new voices. with the person she is helping. In contrast, imagination took for mutual amusement. I Sameer Rahim is Prospect’s Arts and Books Editor Michael, an elderly white man from Don- acquiesced with a grin. ‘No, I mean really, PROSPECT 9 © SALLY ANSCOMBE/GETTY IMAGES ANSCOMBE/GETTY © SALLY

What does it mean to be a man? A crop of recent novels tackle changing attitudes to masculinity, finds Anthony Cummins

n 2011 the feminism issue of the lit- of increasing female equality. Journalist late it was, how late (1994) won the Booker erary magazine Granta featured Owen Jones wrote a much-shared piece in Prize in part because its portrayal of a Glas- “Night Thoughts,” a satirical story which he examined how economic insecu- wegian ex-convict appealed to liberal sensi- by Helen Simpson, in which a teacher rity among working-class men especially is bilities. Its protagonist—unrealistically for lies awake fretting about his workload affecting their morale. The statistics are all Mars-Jones—disdained racism and homo- Iat home as well as at school. Reversing the there in Rebecca Asher’s new book Man Up phobia, venting his spleen on the Tories or stereotyped roles, his wife—snoring oblivi- (Harvill Secker). There are too many men big business. ously—leaves mess everywhere and has noth- in boardrooms but there are also too many You don’t have to share Mars-Jones’s view ing to do with child care. She is boorish and men in jail. Men are less likely than women of the working classes to note that literary even violent but if her husband objects, she to change the sheets or look after their kids, fiction shies away from uglier expressions sulks: he has learnt not to threaten her “fem- but they are also less likely to have close of male disenfranchisement. Irvine Welsh inine pride” and to see her behaviour as “nat- friends or go to a GP. They are more likely to built his career on writing about an under- ural.” Simpson engineers the story’s every commit murder but also suicide. class embracing hard drugs after the decline last detail to make the point that in the real How are contemporary fiction writers— of heavy industry. But the countercultural world men’s behaviour harms women and both male and female—responding? Usu- howl of 1993’s Trainspotting has now mel- needs to change, but that it won’t because it’s ally the masculinity represented in fiction is lowed into a hard-luck story: Welsh’s latest in their interests to keep women down. either middle class or viewed through mid- novel, The Blade Artist (Cape), reveals that “Night Thoughts” doesn’t mean to be dle-class eyes. In the hands of Martin Amis the psychopathic Begbie resorted to violence subtle: it’s not Simpson’s priority to ask if or Ian McEwan the working-class male is as a way to cope with dyslexia. The plot turns patriarchy hurts men too. But questions someone to mock or fear. In McEwan’s Sat- on his failures as a father—on the rare occa- of this kind have become more common in urday (2005) the neurosurgeon protagonist sions he looked after his two sons he did more the interim between the story’s first pub- and his family disarm a violent thug by diag- harm than good by teaching them to be hom- lication and its reappearance last year in nosing him with brain disease and reciting a ophobic. In one of those karmic rebukes that Simpson’s collection Cockfosters (Cape). poem—art and science combine to defeat an Welsh often dishes out to his characters, one Artist Grayson Perry recently presented a angry young man. of the sons turns out to be gay. Channel 4 documentary entitled All Man, in Other writers have tended to sanitise Novelists often use male homosexuality which he visited ultra-male worlds reflect- working-class men. The critic Adam Mars- like this—as a plot point or source of pathos. ing on how identity is shifting in the face Jones suggested that James Kelman’s How The candid account of gay life in Garth 10 PROSPECT

Greenwell’s acclaimed new novel What as a fiasco after he pre-emptively assaults handling of the Christmas shopping and the Belongs to You (Picador) is eclipsed by a one of her clients. But the emotion the story girls’ dental appointments, and the fact that backstory that describes the narrator’s sham- patiently builds up is all but thrown away your wife does it on top of her paid work with- ing by his intolerant father. In outline the by the conclusion as Balázs, wandering the out you noticing does not make you clever.” setup is similar to Ben Lerner’s 2011 Leav- streets in despair, notices for the first time For Knausgaard, feeling like a woman is ing the Atocha Station: a solitary young liter- the girl behind the till at a chicken shop he’s something to be resisted; for Adam, the expe- ary man abroad, in Lerner’s case in Spain; in been visiting. “Part of the lace edge of her rience gives him a cautious sense of solidar- Greenwell’s Bulgaria. Lerner’s novel is a buf- bra showed in the V-shaped neckline of her ity. Here he is on the awkwardness of having foonish portrait of the artist as a young man, T-shirt... she had a nice face.” to bring his daughters into men’s chang- who lies that his mother has died in order to You get a different view of what men can ing rooms: “I am fairly sure that the moth- seduce a girl. be from two recent books that show them ers of small boys have an easier time in the In literary fiction sex tends to be a bigger doing what society still thinks of as wom- other room, although I know that is partly preoccupation than work and this colours its en’s work. In his series of autobiographical because the difference in social and political portrayal of masculinity. From Amis to the novels, Norwegian phenomenon Karl Ove power between adult women and little boys French provocateur Michel Houellebecq, Knausgaard experiences domesticity as an is much smaller than the difference between the dominant note is of cynical, sometimes existential threat. “Irrespective of the great adult men and little girls. I am not suggest- inept, chasing of women. It’s in this tradition tenderness I felt... my boredom and apathy ing that it is generally, taking any view wider that David Szalay writes in his new novel-in- were greater,” he writes of life with three than that of a provincial leisure centre, better stories All That Man Is (Cape). The direc- young children. In the park, he feels “femi- to be a woman.” tion of travel in the title is ambiguous: do nised” and doubts he’s the only father who Despite being wryly aware of how unu- these nine snapshots of men from 17 to late feels the same way: “I thought I could occa- sual he is, Adam doesn’t view house-hus- age, among them a medieval philologist from bandry as some kind of demotion. The crisis Belgium, a suicidal Russian oligarch and a “From Martin Amis to is more subtle, and has to do with his prick- French double-glazing salesman, represent Michel Houellebecq, the liness regarding his wife’s equal right to care the breadth or the smallness of man? about her children when she’s not the one Almost all the men here are lonely: little is dominant note is of caring for them—a buried grudge that sur- said about their family relations and friend- cynical, sometimes inept, faces when their eldest daughter is admit- ships are insubstantial. But they swagger on. chasing of women” ted to hospital after a mysterious near-fatal “I think you should do her,” an A-level stu- collapse. Adam knows he must keep in check dent tells his mate. When a workaholic tab- sionally discern an uneasy look on some his need for possession of his children: after loid journalist exposes an MP’s affair with a men’s faces in the play area, and the rest- all, his marriage is built on his “not being an married celebrity carrying his child, he justi- lessness in the bodies, which were prone to arsehole”—another way to put what is con- fies the phone-hacking that led to the scoop snatching a couple of pull-ups on the bars ventionally expected of men. by comparing it to war and bullfighting. It is while the children played around them.” If Knausgaard’s My Struggle is the father a rare moment of kindness when one of the Attending a rhyme-time session, “led by a of dad-lit, perhaps The Tidal Zone is its grown- oligarch’s staff notices his employer’s distress woman I would have liked to bed,” he feels up son. In a meeting at the university depart- and invites him to his living quarters to share “without dignity, impotent... I had forfeited ment where he holds an irregular hourly-paid a microwaved curry. everything that was me.” teaching contract, Adam wonders why “this Desire withers as the stories progress. The mode of passing time is considered more first three each show us a young man who nausgaard shows that mascu- manly or noble than cleaning the loo.” Con- at some point masturbates to the thought linity is often a relationship to trast this with Knausgaard deploring the clo- of the woman with whom they’re currently time, or a mastery of it. When sure of his daughter’s nursery: “I have never obsessed. Later we are shown two philan- he complains he’s not able to understood the point of holidays, have never derers, one of whom tells his pregnant lover Kwrite because he has to “clean floors, wash felt the need for them and have always just to have an abortion. Then there’s a married clothes, make dinner, wash up, go shopping, wanted to do more work.” father whose fatigue stops him sleeping with play with the children in the play areas, bring Rebecca Asher reports that in Brit- a colleague on a work trip; and a failed busi- them home, undress them, bath them, look ain only 6 per cent of men with dependent nessman arrested after a mix-up on what he after them until it is bedtime, tuck them in, children are employed part-time; mothers thinks is a date. The oligarch’s wife says he hang some clothes to dry, fold others and (even high-earning ones) spend more than isn’t interested in sex; the book ends with a put them away, tidy up, wipe tables, chairs twice as long as fathers on housework and retired civil servant in lifelong denial about and cupboards,” many mothers must have care. Moss is careful to establish Adam as his attraction to men. thought: welcome to my world. exceptional—he grew up on a commune Szalay is a very fine writer sentence Housework also features heavily in Sarah where domestic duties were shared and by sentence but you feel he has put his Moss’s The Tidal Zone (Granta), narrated his mother died when he was very young. resources in the service of a tired narrative by a GP’s husband, Adam, an architectural But it isn’t only a matter of role models or (surely we are beyond figuring male decline historian who has always been the main carer temperament. Economic forces are at play as repressed homosexuality?) One of the best of their two daughters, now aged eight and 15. too—his sector’s rise in casual labour has and most affecting episodes here concerns a Stung by blokey quips about being a man of made salaried work hard to come by. For Hungarian bodyguard, Balázs, infatuated leisure he thinks: “Mate, it’s a job, the mak- now Adam might be a statistical anomaly with the prostitute he’s been hired to pro- ing of cakes and the washing of sheets, the but his story may be the one we hear more tect during a visit to London. The job ends coordination of laundry with PE lessons, the of in the future. PROSPECT 11 Brief encounter Michael Rosen Children’s writer and poet

First historical event you can recall? The Festival of Britain of 1951, when I was five years old. I can remem- ber going into the Dome of Discovery and standing alongside a beautiful blue diesel-electric railway engine, which towered over me. It all seemed magical and I hoped that I would be alive in 2051 for the next one.

The book you are most embarrassed you never yet read?

Bleak House. I can’t explain why not. I haven’t read all of Dickens by BOWLES/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK © MICHAEL any means but what I have read I’ve enjoyed massively. About 10 years ago, I would have answered this question with some other books, but that year I made a list and worked through such things as the Odys- sey and Jude the Obscure to make up some gaps. I missed out Bleak House, though!

One bit of advice you’d give to your younger self? Read Bleak House. OK—I know that sounds facetious but what I mean The best and worst presents you’ve ever received? is that between, say, the years of 14 and 22, of course it’s great to footle Worst: a butterfly catching kit. My parents suffered from over-inter- about, not doing much apart from wondering why you’re not doing est in my brother and me. If I mentioned something I was half-inter- much, but if you’re halfway interested in doing something to do with ested in, they would leap on it as if it meant that it was something I writing, then the best apprenticeship is reading like crazy. was fascinated by. I once said I liked insects. Following Christmas: the butterfly kit. Never used it. Best: I’m very keen on a mug that my What is your favourite saying or quotation? youngest son (12) gave me which says on it: “Number 1 Dad.” I don’t “I am soft sift/in an hour glass.” This comes from “The Wreck of the care how confected that slogan is, he chose that to give to me. I love Deutschland” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins invented a new drinking out of it. way of writing poetry, which he created out of experiments with Mil- ton, Anglo-Saxon poems, nursery rhymes and Welsh poetry. This line What have you changed your mind about? expresses to me those moments when you are both constrained (“in Beaches. They’re OK. I used to think that beaches were a nightmare: an hour glass”), under compulsion to do something (flow like sand in for a start, they’re sandy. In Britain they’re usually windy and rainy. an hour glass) and yet without a structure. But under duress, I’ve come to appreciate that there are other quali- ties that make them OK: you can’t walk fast on the dry bits, it’s great to If you were given £1m to spend on other people, what would you watch the way the sea flows over the sand. spend it on and why? A Children’s Poetry Centre. I imagine a place that would have a per- What is the biggest problem of all? formance space, a writing space, a library, great internet access, musi- Inequality. This, surely, is at the core of nearly all our problems. We do cal instruments, collections of odd objects, photos, paintings, walls not distribute the results of our work in an equitable way. Unless we where poems and pictures could be pinned, in a place where within a solve this, we will destroy millions of us, if not all of us. mile there are odd, quirky places to visit... The last piece of music/play/novel/film that brought you to tears? The talent you wish you had? I had moments in Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls. I thought it was a Being able to count bars of music without having to count them. powerful way to show how young people struggle to deal with tough I’ve worked with musicians over the last five years and I came to things in their lives. I guess there were moments that revived for realise how bad I am at it. And even when I count myself “in,” I get me the loss of my son, though the film is the reverse: a boy losing the beat wrong. a parent. 12 PROSPECT WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE/TOPFOTO © WORLD HISTORY The war’s not over yet In Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee has told the truth—America is still wrestling with racism diane roberts

arper Lee has broken our hearts. For more than law. He fails; Tom Robinson is killed. Still we love him for fight- half a century, Atticus Finch has been everyone’s ing the good fight. hero, a white man who puts his reputation, even But the Atticus of Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee’s mysteri- his life, on the line, defending a black man and fac- ously recovered, newly published, novel, is not the legal Galahad ing down a lynch mob in the Jim Crow south. The of To Kill a Mockingbird, not a crusader for the downtrodden, not HAtticus we’ve always known valiantly tries to prove Tom Robin- Atticus as we picture him: Gregory Peck, stern and beautiful in son never raped Mayella Ewell, angering the good white people that immaculate linen suit as he speaks out against hatred and of Maycomb, Alabama, risking everything to uphold the rule of prejudice. This Atticus is a racist. In Go Set a Watchman, Scout Finch (these days known by her baptismal name Jean Louise) is now 26 years old and living in New York City. Home for a visit, she begins to realise that

Diane Roberts is a professor of English at Florida State her adored father, a man she sees as an exemplar of all that is University and a commentator on America’s National good and decent, actually believes in white supremacy. He lik- Public Radio ens “Negroes” to children and calls them “backward,” unfit PROSPECT 13

to “share fully in the responsibilities of citizenship.” He joins the local White Citizens’ Council to suppress the burgeoning civil rights movement. He despises the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) for giving black people ideas above their station: “The NAACP doesn’t care whether a Negro man owns or rents his land, how well he can farm, or whether or not he tries to learn a trade and stand on his own two feet—oh, no, all the NAACP cares about is that man’s vote.” A vote Atticus Finch doesn’t think “Negroes” are entitled to. How can it be that one of the most cherished characters in one of the most cherished novels of all time, a secular saint of Amer- ican justice cited by the likes of Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty and Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, as their reason for becoming lawyers, could say to his horrified daughter, “Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theatres? Do you want them in our world?” Readers, nearly as appalled as Jean Louise Finch, may well ask if we really need to know this Atticus. To Kill a Mockingbird is the quintessential southern story, decanting all the big southern themes—the legacy of slavery, the

loss of innocence, cruelty, conformity, unexpected grace—into a © RETUERS few years in the life of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, the tomboy- Bree Newsome tears down the Confederate flag from outside the ish despair of every high-toned Christian lady in Maycomb, Ala- South Carolina state capitol on 27th June 2015 bama. Mockingbird isn’t the greatest novel by a southerner. That title surely belongs to Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner’s copies to date. In contrast to Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and spectacular demolition of racial difference, Civil War pieties others of the southern literary pantheon, Lee’s narrator is a child, and the whole edifice of white supremacy that ordered south- but not unreliable; linear time in her novel is not in a state of collapse; characters don’t shift races or genders. Maycomb’s problem is that everyone is stuck in the station to which he or she was born: “When asked in the early gentry, “white trash,” Negro, acting out a narrative which never 1960s if she planned a allows for deviation. Published six years after the US Supreme Court outlawed segregation, five years after Rosa Parks refused ‘Mockingbird 2’ or some other to give up her bus seat to a white man, and the same year as white- only lunch counter sit-ins began and the Student Non-Violent novel, she said ‘hell, no’” Coordinating Committee was founded, Mockingbird refuses to give into either rage or despair. The south is not fundamentally ern society. Mockingbird lacks the Faustian menace of another and irredeemably evil. Boo Radley is misunderstood, not sinis- great southern novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in ter; Tom Robinson is innocent; Atticus is a hero; and most peo- which Huck chooses to violate his culture’s standards of morality ple are decent. Mark Twain’s radically incorruptible Huck vows and see his friend Jim not as a piece of property but as a human to “light out for the Territory,” disappear into the Edenic wilder- being, declaring he’s ready to “go to hell” for it if necessary. Mock- ness where Nature might be red in tooth and claw, but he’ll be ingbird cannot match the moral complexity of Faulkner’s Go free of depraved social institutions such as class, organised reli- Down, Moses, with its pained confrontation of southern history gion and slavery. In Go Down, Moses, Ike McCaslin thinks the only and the “Peculiar Institution” that allows a father to rape his own way to atone for the sins of his white family against his black fam- daughter because she is also his slave. ily is to abjure the realm, renounce his property and retreat to the healing bosom of the wilderness. But in Harper Lee’s slice arper Lee read her southern writers. You can hear of the south, running away isn’t an option. Everyone, even the Huck Finn’s guileless voice in the Finch children, recluse Boo, belongs to society; everyone is responsible for soci- and detect the influence of Faulkner’s crime solving ety, too. Atticus Finch doesn’t fall into a resigned melancholy, lawyer Gavin Stevens in Atticus. The inhabitants of unlike Faulkner’s Quentin Compson in Absalom, Absalom!, whose HMaycomb owe something to the chatty eccentrics of Eudora Wel- response to the horrors of history is to cry vainly about the south, ty’s Morgana, Mississippi, as well, and Carson McCullers didn’t “I don’t hate it! I don’t!” and drown himself. Atticus turns and miss the similarities between Scout and Frankie in The Member of fights. Hope lives on. the Wedding, sniffing to a cousin after Mockingbird became a hit: Since 1964, when she gave her last interview, Lee has been an “Well, honey, one thing we know is that she’s been poaching on American enigma, a one-novel wonder like Ralph Ellison (Invis- my literary preserves.” ible Man) or Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind). She’s not But Mockingbird was never fenced off from ordinary readers, been a recluse like JD Salinger or a ghost like Thomas Pynchon. put out of reach on the “high art” book shelf, unlike the works of In 1961, she happily collected her Pulitzer Prize and in 1962, Faulkner, the über Modernist, or O’Connor and McCullers, the attended the première of the film based on her novel. Later in connoisseurs of the grotesque. Mockingbird sold like crazy when life she accepted a Medal of Freedom from President George W it appeared in 1960 and has never stopped selling: more than 40m Bush, and a National Medal of the Arts from President Barack 14 PROSPECT

Obama. She said yes to several honorary degrees and until she pect it’s that Hohoff and Lippincott thought perhaps a novel in became frail three or four years ago, she’d appear at the Univer- which every white character, however charming, embodies some sity of Alabama to shake hands with the winner of an annual aspect of racism from paternalism (at best) to an irrational fear high school essay contest in honour of To Kill a Mockingbird. of “mongrelisation” and rails against the Supreme Court’s rul- Nevertheless, as she said to her cousin Dickie Williams, “When ing declaring that separate is never equal, was either an offence you’re at the top, there is only one way to go.” She never wanted to Yankee progressivism or out of date. In the 1930s, Faulkner to talk about her writing. When asked in the early 1960s if she exposed segregation as a vicious crime against humanity; in the planned a “Mockingbird 2” or some other novel, she’d simply say 1940s and 1950s, Richard Wright and James Baldwin gave voice “no.” Sometimes it was “hell, no.” On one occasion she added: “I to the fury and pain of racism in their fiction and essays, while wouldn’t go through the pressure and publicity I went through Ralph Ellison, in Invisible Man, took on America’s myriad race with To Kill a Mockingbird for any amount of money. I have said myths and shot them down one by one, brilliantly, if sardonically, what I wanted to say and I will not say it again.” demanding full humanity for every American of every shade. A Unlike her childhood friend Truman Capote, she had no novel in which the supposedly wise father and the supposedly desire to shine in New York café society—much as she loved New rebellious daughter both seem to feel that states’ rights should York. Capote’s 1948 bestseller Other Voices, Other Rooms, a tale trump the human rights of African-Americans would surely have of southern decadence complete with rotting plantation house, struck many readers, becoming aware of the struggle for civil cross-dressing uncle, mad aunts, guns and dark family secrets, rights in the south, as retrograde. made him a literary star. He encouraged Lee, maintaining a close friendship with her during the 1950s and 1960s. She worked n that last interview 51 years ago, Lee said she wanted to with Capote in late 1959 as his “researcher and bodyguard,” be “the Jane Austen of South Alabama,” chronicler of a helping with his groundbreaking “nonfiction novel” about the way of life in small southern towns she feared was on the murders of a well-off family in Holcomb, Kansas, and the two decline. On the one hand, she loathed publicity and swore ex-convicts eventually executed for the crime. Some, notably Ishe’d never publish anything again; yet she also clearly intended Norman Mailer, wondered if Lee actually wrote parts of In Cold to produce more than Mockingbird. Blood and—perhaps to equalise the unlikeliness—suggested that Writers are no more consistent than anyone else. In the 1970s, Capote was the real author of To Kill a Mockingbird. Everybody Lee seemed to be planning a true-crime novel called “The Rev- loves literary conspiracy theories: Shakespeare didn’t really write erend,” based on a series of sensational homicides in Alexan- Shakespeare, and Branwell Brontë, Emily’s brother, is the “real” der City, Alabama. A self-proclaimed preacher was suspected author of Wuthering Heights. of murdering his first and second wives, his brother, and various other family members. Alice Lee would tell people, “Nelle Lee hich brings us to Go Set a Watchman, controversial is always writing stories”—Nelle being Lee’s actual first name. before it ever hit print. Did Harper Lee’s lawyer The hype for Go Set a Watchman was positively epic. Book- Tonja Carter “find” the typescript in the summer stores from Boston to Los Angeles held celebrations the evening of 2014, as she has said, or was it really unearthed before the novel officially came out on 14th July. Square Books in Win 2011 when an expert from Sotheby’s examined the contents Oxford, Mississippi (home of Faulkner), held a marathon read- of Harper Lee’s safe deposit box? Did Harper Lee truly want ing of To Kill a Mockingbird, while in Monroeville, where Lee still this uneven, often funny, often inartful, first draft of the beloved lives, now in a care home, a local café served “Boo Burgers” and Mockingbird to see the light of day? It’s hard to ignore the stag- “Finch Fries.” Monroeville’s Ole Curiosities and Book Shoppe gering amount of money involved: royalties for To Kill a Mocking- opened at midnight on 13th July to begin selling 10,000 copies bird top $63,000 a week. Conspiracy theories abound: perhaps of Watchman (Monroeville’s population is only 6,300) to people Lee, aged 89, is too infirm to have consented in a meaningful who’d been queueing for hours, some dressed as Atticus or Scout way? Alice Lee, known around Monroeville, Alabama as “Atticus or other characters from the Mockingbird universe. Harper Col- in a skirt,” died in 2014, and could no longer protect her baby sis- lins, the novel’s US publisher, says the novel broke all previous ter from publishers, editors, agents and advisors intent on maxi- records for pre-sales. On publication day, the Guardian’s web- mizing a huge publishing opportunity. A columnist for the New site offered “Live Updates” from New York, the United Kingdom York Times pointed darkly to the “synergy” of the Rupert Mur- and Alabama, as if this were some natural disaster, an election doch-owned Wall Street Journal getting “scoops,” including the or the cup final. first chapter, from the Rupert Murdoch-owned Harper Col- A wily public relations firm could not have designed this lins, which published the book. A reviewer on National Public “publishing event of the year” any better. But now that the noise Radio said she didn’t think Watchman was a first draft of Mock- has settled down, we can think a little harder about the novel. ingbird after all, asserting “this troubling confusion of a novel” And Lee’s legacy. And our shock that Atticus could hold such reads like “a failed sequel.” The New Republic did a three-part racist attitudes. This Atticus, this first characterisation of him, is series called “The Suspicious Story Behind Harper Lee’s Go Set much more of a product of his time than the Atticus of Mocking- a Watchman.” The publisher insists that Lee gave full consent to bird. Consider: he would have been born in the 1880s (he’s 72 in the book’s publication. Watchman), and grew up in an Alabama still traumatised by the Watchman is certainly the first draft of Mockingbird. Records Civil War and Reconstruction. He flirts with the Ku Klux Klan kept by Lee’s agent in the late 1950s corroborate this. It reads as a young man; joins the White Citizens’ Council as an older like a first draft: rough and often angry. Tay Hohoff, Lee’s editor man; and makes a distinction between “good Negroes”—the def- at Lippincott, counselled the young writer to abandon the con- erential domestics, preachers and tenant farmers who call him temporary story set in the 1950s and concentrate on Scout as a “sir”—and “outside agitators,” civil rights activists, the NAACP, child in the south of the 1930s. If there is a “secret” here, I sus- trying to destroy the “Southern Way of Life.” PROSPECT 15

and identity from the rich mix of the two, cautioned black civil rights activists to “go slow, now” and don’t push for integration. He went on to say “if I have to make the same choice as Robert E Lee then I’ll make it,” and added that if the federal government interfered with Mississippi, he’d resist, “even if it meant going out into the street and shooting Negroes.” One hundred and fifty years after the surrender at Appomat- tox, it’s still not over. Some white southerners, terrified of immi- grants, terrified of social change and the astonishing fact that a black man lives in the White House, still talk about secession. The whole country still debates the Confederate battle flag—her- itage or hate? After the massacre of nine worshippers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the state legislature (finally, and not unanimously) voted to remove it from the capitol grounds. Alabama followed suit. But Mississippi continues to cling to the battle flag, incorporating it into their state banner. A new book by David Theo Goldberg, Are We All Postracial Yet? argues that, if anything, race informs American society more than ever. Our attempts at colour-blindness have only made us more aware racialists. Barack Obama did not, after all, usher in the new era when race is finally irrelevant. Race is—as it always has been—life and death. As the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his searing Between the World and Me, says, “race is the child of racism, not the father.” This isn’t about “hue and hair,” it’s about power. America, a nation constantly telling itself the future is what matters, is mired in history. As Faulkner said, “the past is never dead; it’s not even past.”

o should we shun this lesser, this limited, Atticus Finch of Watchman, holding onto his more heroic, later-draft self? On the contrary. Lee’s rough draft brings us closer to the reality of 21st-century America than the hopeful lessons of STo Kill a Mockingbird. Jean Louise’s Uncle Jack, trying to explain how the south got that way, says to her, “Not much more than 5 per cent of the south’s population ever saw a slave, much less owned one.” In 2015, the Texas Board of Education continues to deny that slavery was the main cause of the American Civil War. It was really cotton tariffs. Or states’ rights. Uncle Jack would be proud. In Watchman, Lee coolly dissects the class system Ameri- cans insist doesn’t exist: Hank, Jean Louise’s sometime boyfriend, is white but working class. He can’t afford patrician tolerance for black people, who are, he thinks, primitive and largely ineducable. DDP USA/REX SHUTTERSTOCK

© You can hear the same sentiments, slightly more veiled, in con- To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee in 2011 servative justifications for the killings of Trayvon Martin in San- ford, Michael Brown in Ferguson, and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, “The Southern Way of Life” was white folks’ genteel euphe- unarmed boys who are called “thugs,” boys taunted with “Pants mism for apartheid. Jim Crow. Segregation. The laws that for- up, don’t loot!” mocking the “Hands up, don’t shoot!” of the pro- bade blacks and whites to marry, to use the same entrance to testors. Atticus Finch condemns government intervention in the movie theatres or eat in the same parts of a restaurant, the poll economy and what he sees as the “right” of Alabama to frustrate taxes and “literacy” tests that stopped black people voting, the the dreams of anyone who happens to be a descendant of slaves; laws that made it almost impossible for the children and grand- he castigates the Supreme Court for its “activism” (by which he children of freed slaves to be full citizens of the United States. means its decision to end American apartheid) and wishes that Atticus is similar to historical figures eventually regarded as only certain people—you can guess what kind of people—be civil rights advocates: the Supreme Court justice Hugo Black allowed to vote. He’d be right at home in the Tea Party. of Alabama, and the late Senator Robert Byrd of West Vir- In Go Set a Watchman we see a writer struggling with her peo- ginia. Both joined the Klan as young men; Byrd filibustered the ple and her history and finding no place of comfort. Whether Civil Rights Act of 1964; Black spoke against an anti-lynching 1957 or 2015, slavery haunts us still; the Civil War isn’t quite fin- law in the 1930s. Both later embraced the cause of social jus- ished; and, much as we congratulate ourselves on how far we’ve tice. Faulkner, who in book after book undermined every sacred come, Atticus, speaking from the scared, entitled subconscious tenet of white supremacy and showed how the south, despite 300 of the America that desperately wants to see itself as a “white years of trying to separate black from white, derives its culture man’s country,” shows us how far we have to go.