A WHYDUNNIT published by Cadmus Press 2022
My previous reviews of Tamar Yellin: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/tamar-yellin/
When I read this book, my thoughts will appear in the comment stream below…
www.nemonymous.com
Des Lewis - GESTALT REAL-TIME BOOK REVIEWS
A FEARLESS FAITH IN FICTION — THE PASSION OF THE READING MOMENT CRYSTALLISED — Empirical literary critiques from 2008 as based on purchased books.
I – III
“His parodies might be in prose or poetry, of authors alive or dead, household names or merely fashionable.”
An engaging and witty start by an ostensibly reliable narrator about the nature of Ralph Gladwell, including the mystery of his death, the nature, too, of his parodies, the blog and twitter world of authors, and the countless numbers who might have had it in for him. Unless it was suicide? I have already gathered much about the narrator Jim Tate, too, things perhaps unbeknownst to him! By the way, unless I am mistaken or have forgotten, this is my own first reading of the novel that I am now real-time reviewing. I hope, too, that I remain wise enough, even inadvertently, not to reveal here any plot spoilers.
IV
Intrigued by the narrator’s ignorance of or prejudice against Katherine Mansfield fiction, when vying as rivals in the past with Gladwell in realms beyond DHL in the exercise of parody’s paring skills! My gestalt real-time review of KM’s fiction would help a casual reader of this Yellin book (a book that deserves more than such casualness, I am already sure) is sited here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2020/03/12/the-collected-stories-katherine-mansfield/
Huh! Well, I just treated one of KM’s stories to the AI ART demon…
In honour of Yellin’s youthful poems. See below.
V, VI
This novel becomes what I always knew it would be: a touching witness to wittiness, with the observational prose and dialogue flow of a new Elizabeth Taylor (the author) when Tate visits Gladwell’s bereaved mother and the house where he lived as a boy and the intrigue of Eley Williams’ The Liar’s Dictionary when we alternate time zones and return to the past vying by Tate and Gladwell over the KM parody, and the paradox or parable of one parody possibly plagiarising another parody of the same preterites and predicates of a single parturition.
VII
Tate enters the Etonesque world to meet Gladwell’s estranged husband, now widower — a suspect for the possible murder? And I was fascinated by literary matters about routine’s premature cocktail called a gloomchaser and parodies being a revenge upon literature itself. Much tied up with my own concerns stemming from GESTALT book reviewing. Who is the true artist, the reviewer, parodist or source writer? A mutual synergy is my tentative answer to this knotty question, a question yet unasked by this wickedly charming book. And Ai art the same answer to a different con drum?
VIII
Tate in the pre-Gladwell-murder timezone manages by adept inferences to harness the coincidence of Gladwell in a pub speaking to his disciples of much significance to do with parodies, in fact an extended mission statement, parodies of parodies, and Dickens-versus-Shakespeare’s respective parodabilities. An alternate world where Gladwell eventually paradies? By murder, if so by whom? Tate follows him and a young male disciple to Gladwell’s posh lair… I’ll leave you hanging there, fully expecting the next chapter to take us back into the post-murder era.
IX
Tate is after the late Gladwell’s own novels, if such should exist, and we follow him into a gay world of gay characters all of which seem adeptly adumbrated. I think! Or is this book itself a parody?
Even a parody of itself!
X
I hope that the author will forgive me quoting a lengthy passage below – which hits home, as if it were parodying me, and as if it knew one day I would review it while paradying in such a place! This is during the scenes where Tate (now back in the pre-murder time zone) visits his parents amid their metaphorical seaside suicide! And he is still collaborating with Gladwell by email. Teasing him mischievously with sexual prospects that did not actually exist on Tate’s part.
XI
The word ‘paradox’ sticks out in this chapter, as Tate, post murder, continues seeking Gladwell novels. A novelist spurned can make the greatest creative parodist of novels? Or a reviewer’s reviews greater, still!? But no-one knows if he wrote any novels, and if so, where they are. And still nobody knows who killed him.
At the mention of Swift, I thought even Gulliver was tangled up by the little people. Just brainstorming.
XII
This is an incredible chapter, in the pre-murder zone, of literary rage and novel-destruction, Kindles kindled, by Gladwell, crossed by love, as Tate (a gay parody of his own naturally ‘straight’ self) watched Gladwell’s diatribe and demeaning. Everyone should read this chapter. It is seminal. It is a self-mockery together with spiritual epiphany for me. And as an aside, Graham Greene is their latest collusive parody, and even later Elizabeth Bowen (among others). The less said about Hemingway the better, I say. My reviews of my Goddess Bowen’s complete fiction can easily be found on this site. Even at least a couple of novellas by GG, too.
XIII
I sense an enticingly bitter-sweet wit pervading this oscillation of fiction regarding the death of Gladwell, his weaknesses, his need for a ‘ghostwriter’, a term I note used in this chapter, as claimed by its narrator, when meeting the supremely observed characters in an ostensible Burke’s Law type of whodunnit become whydunnit in the guise of seeking Gladwell’s supposed lost novels, which may be the narrator’s own fulfilment of a self-doubted destiny as a novelist himself? But I may be on the wrong track, an unreliable reviewer crossing paths with an unreliable narrator as written by a reliable author?
XIV
Tate tells us of his obsessions regarding Gladwell during the pre-the Gladwell murder period, and his surveillance of him during the latter’s gay honeymoon, and Tate’s simultaneous antipathy of an old mate from school when a reunion ensues, with memories of similar parodying duties during those school days tainting Tate’s current ones. I only make those notes about this chapter to prove I’ve read it and to help bolster my even more fading memory about the books I read than that I endured already for most of my prior life! A flabby Yellin chapter — for good reasons, as future hindsight will be sure to prove, I guess.
XV
I’m in a quandary now. A compelling chapter even more compelling by comparison with the previous one. The deliberate inner troughs and peaks of literature. Like this time-oscillated fiction. But why the quandary? Simply because my hands are completely tied by potential spoilers! A parody of a review caused by the very soul of how I try to do reviews. Defeated, but still determined.
XVI
Tate’s first face to face meeting with Gladwell. A masterstroke of subtly insidious ricochet that has as much to say about the process of gestalt real-time reviewing of literature as it does about this novel’s ongoing oscillation of a plot.
XVII
A genuinely great suspenseful clambering-up-to-an attic chapter in the annals of literature. In spite or because of its mention of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
XVIII – XXI
I have today eagerly, but somehow with trepidation, read to the end of this novel for three reasons. First, it is compelling and unputdownable. Second, its is now not bittersweet so much as wickedly collusive, or inter-destructive or something so ingeniously conniving, transcending any yearnings or thoughts the reader once may have had, whatever the permutation of genders, of literary styles, parody or parodied. Paradied for Paradise. I needed to get there as fast as possible beyond any entrapment by Zeno’s Paradox. Third, a real-time review of each chapter has by now outlived its purpose, with plot spoilers overhanging me like crags set to fall.
I shall end with a toast from these last chapters: “To literature”.