Ten Years in the Tub (70 page)

My favorite character, one who comes to symbolize the logic of Naples, is Lattarullo, one of the four thousand or so lawyers in Naples unable to make a living. Much of his income before the war came from acting as an “uncle from Rome,” a job which involved turning up at Neapolitan funerals and acting as a dignified and sober out-of-towner, in direct contrast to the frenzied and griefstricken native relatives. Paying for an uncle from Rome to turn up showed a touch of class. During the war, however, Lattarullo was denied even this modest supplement because Rome was occupied, and travel was impossible. So even though everyone knew Roman uncles came from Naples, the appearance of a Roman uncle at a Neapolitan funeral before the liberation of Rome would have punctured the illusion, like a boom mic visible in a movie. This is Orwell via
Lewis Carroll, and if I read a better couple of hundred pages of nonfiction this year, I'll be a happy man.

If, at the moment, you happen to be looking for a book that makes you feel good about sex, though, then I should warn you that this isn't the one. There are too many devout Catholic wives selling themselves for a tin of fruit, and way too many sexual diseases. William Kennedy's
Ironweed
is beautiful—haunted and haunting, thoughtful and visceral. But, like
Naples '44
, it is entirely without aphrodisiacal qualities. The people are too sick, and drunk, and cold, but they try it on anyway, sometimes just so they can get to sleep the night in a deserted car full of other bums. None of this matters so much to me anymore. By the time you read this I will have turned fifty, so I can't reasonably expect very much more in that department anyway. But you—you're young, some of you. I don't want you to feel bad about your bodies. Yes, you will die, and your bodies will decay and rot way before then anyway. But you shouldn't feel bad about that just yet. Actually, on second thought, the truth is that
Ironweed
is exactly the sort of book you should be reading when you're young, and still robust enough to slough it off. And it's a truly terrible book to be reading in the last few months of your forties. Is this really all that's left?

June / July 2007

BOOKS BOUGHT
:

     
  
On Chesil Beach
—Ian McEwan

     
  
My Life with Nye
—Jennie Lee

BOOKS READ
:

     
  
Novel (abandoned)—A. Non

     
  
On Chesil Beach
—Ian McEwan

     
  
In My Father's House
—Miranda Seymour

     
  
The Blind Side
—Michael Lewis

T
his morning, while shaving, I listened to a reading from Anna Politkovskaya's
A Russian Diary
on BBC Radio 4. It was pretty extraordinary—brutal and brave (Politkovskaya, as I'm sure you know, was murdered, presumably because of her determination to bring some of her country's darkest wrongdoings into the light). And its depiction of a country where the state is so brazenly lawless is so bizarre that I couldn't help but think of fiction—specifically, a novel I had just abandoned by a senior, highly regarded literary figure. Politkovskaya's words reminded me that the reason I gave up on the novel was partly because I became frustrated with the deliberate imprecision of its language, its obfuscation, its unwillingness to give up its meaning quickly and easily. This, of course, is precisely what some people prize in a certain kind of fiction, and good luck to them. I can't say that this kind of ambiguity is my favorite thing, and it's certainly not what I look for first in a novel, but I know that I would have missed out on an awful lot of good stuff if I wasn't prepared to tolerate a little incomprehension and attendant exasperation every now and again. In this novel, however, I found myself feeling particularly impatient. “A perfect day begins in death, in the semblance of death, in deep surrender,” the novelist (or his omniscient narrator) tells us. Does it? Not for me it doesn't, pal. Unless, of course, death here means “a good night's sleep.” Or “a strong cup of
coffee.” Maybe that's it? “Death” = “a strong cup of coffee” and “the semblance of death” = some kind of coffee substitute, like a Frappuccino? Then why doesn't he say so? There is no mistaking what the word
death
means in Politkovskaya's diaries, and once again I found myself wondering whether the complication of language is in inverse proportion to the size of the subject under discussion. Politkovskaya is writing about the agonies of a nation plagued by corruption, terrorism, and despotism; the highly regarded literary figure is writing about some middle-class people who are bored of their marriage. My case rests.