The Digested Twenty-first Century
Page 7
Des was less sure if he would send this letter to the Morning Lark’s Page 3 Stunna Agony Aunt than he was about whether he needed help from Mart with his apostrophes. ‘The thing is,’ said Mart, ‘I know – or care – nothing for the lower orders, so my attitude towards you is a mixture of contempt and patrician sentimentality. But I’ve always said that punctuation is the key to social mobility.’ Des looked up guiltily as Uncle Lionel entered the room. ‘I’ve just changed me fuckin name to Lionel Asbo,’ he snarled, ‘to celebrate the fact I was the youngest kid to get an Asbo at the age of three. Now wheres they fucking pitbulls? I need them to rip out the throat of your nonce friend Rory who’s been taking liberties by knockin off me Mum.’
2008: Nothing had happened to the literati of west London in the intervening years, but in Diston where Lionel and Des lived, the mayhem that invariably accompanies the criminal underclasses had proceeded with gratifying regularity. Rory had gone awol, Lionel had discovered his bird Gina was getting one from his best mate Marlon and had gone berserk at their wedding, and half the residents of Diston had ended up in Wormwood Scrubs in the ensuing fracas.
‘I have to inform you, Asbo,’ the governor said, ‘that you have just won £140,000,000 on the lottery.’
‘Fuck me,’ Lionel replied, ‘I suppose that means Mart is going to make me owt ter be even more of a caricature of a chav van before.’
‘Well that just shows what a moronic oik you are,’ Mart drawled, ‘because you have no concept of Swiftian satire.’
Des had long since absorbed Mart’s tips on punctuation and had gone to university, so he was in a position to wonder if it was Mart who had no concept of Swiftian satire, but he kept that thought to himself as he now had a respectable girlfriend and was still worried Lionel might discover he had once shagged his Gran.
2010: ‘Your Gran’s so fuckin old now she’s got demencha,’ said Lionel. ‘I’ve packed her off to a care home.’ Des knew that even in Diston the average life expectancy was more than 43, but he had a job working for the Daily Mirror and Dawnie was pregnant, so he had other things to think about other than being patronised by Mart. ‘You’re a fuckin’ disappointin’ nonce to me, Des,’ Lionel continued, ‘but you’re me flesh’n’blood so I’ll give you a fiver.’ If he hadn’t shaved his head he’d have pulled his hair out at the things he was doing for Mart. Buying a mansion, calling it Wormwood Scrubs, goin out with Threnody the silicon-titted glamour model, making Marlon watch him fuck Gina ... It was like Mart had only just discovered reality TV.
2012: Des loved his baby, really loved her. Everything was going to be different now. Gran was dead, his secret was safe and he could escape his past ... ‘I know you shagged your Gran,’ said Lionel.
2013: Lionel hadn’t topped him, the baby was safe from the pitbulls and his uncle was back inside: Des would settle for this feeble affectation of parental poignancy if it got Mart off his back. ‘Tell you the troof,’ said Mart from the comfort of his Brooklyn brownstone, ‘Lionel is happier inside. That’s the state of England for you.’
Digested read, digested: Martin Asbeen.
Umbrella by Will Self (2012)
I’m an ape man, I’m an ape-ape man … Along comes Zachary, in the cold Friern Barnet morning Busner … keep up, keep up, you’ve met him before and if you haven’t then you’ve no place at the high table of Modernism … heard the echoes of Rihanna as the bus passed a young man, clearly hebephrenic. The faecal smell hung heavy as Busner commenced his ward rounds with Mboya, the schizoids, the depressives, the manic depressives … hadn’t his diagnoses always been whims of his own psychiatric state? Or not his, he reflected, for was he not merely a fictive trope of a supreme narcissist, the self-proclaimed saviour of the novel, a creation to which Stephen Dedalus and Mrs Dalloway could only aspire?
The enkies … they shouldn’t be dosed with chlorpromazine or largactil … – , –, , –, – , he wasn’t sure what the dashes were for but they looked good on the page and no reviewers would admit they hadn’t a clue either … Ah there’s his favourite, old Miss Audrey Dearth, all vermiculated quoins and oculogyric crisis … Ordree, Ordree, she remembered her father shouting at her as they took the tram to Parsons Green … Brarms Intermetzo if only it ‘ad been Rihanna ven everyfink might have been OK … She ‘ad left er umbrella back at the munitions factory, she was sure she ‘ad … Ding-a ding-a-ding dong, Old Mother Hubbard … Had it been necessary to lapse into the colloquial? … I am the walrus, coo-coo-ca-choo, isn’t that what Mrs Pankhurst had said? … Her brother Stanley living like a troglodyte somewhere under the Messines Ridge and her other brother Albert … changed his name from Death to De’ath, ‘e wuz dead to ‘er … the puffed-up popinjay.
He had left Miriam like he had left them all, as if they were discarded umbrellas … when did an umbrella become something to be forgotten rather than remembered? Who was it? Bernard Levin? No, Oliver Sacks … The man who mistook his novel for an umbrella … Awakenings … He hadn’t really believed the L-DOPA was going to work, had he? … The hospital had complained about the cost, but the enkies had briefly come back to life. P-p-pop, d’doo-doo the engorged Looby Loos filled with two grammes of eldoughpa … A Mars a day helps you work rest and play … the tank to break the attrition of the spontaneous jactitations. I am-I am-I am, one equals one equals one equals one. A shprat had shpat on the shutter, Kensitas, Capstan, Peter Stuyvesant. What did you expect, Jew boy? Weren’t all psychiatrists in and of themselves mental pathologies, an umbrella metaphor for war, with Miss Dearth just another of his casualties.
It’s Death. It’s not that uncommon. Ordree? Ordree? Are you here? … WOULD SOME CAPITAL LETTERS HELP? Probably not, especially if they were italicised. How about some more dashes then? –. –. –. –. –. It had been the blanks that had been to blame, the dud shells that Albert’s factory had made that had flashed like flechettes into the Hun trenches flopping like Feydeau’s manatee, if Feydeau had had a manatee. Had they exploded then Stanley might still be alive, though he might be losing his hair.
The young girl stared at him pityingly. I used to work here when it was a psychiatric hospital. A lot of patients say that. No, I did work here … the omniscient God separated from the world by Plexiglass, Tidddly-iddl-ighty. Of course you did and I expect you left your umbrella heren’all. Come and have a look at the new flats. Sir Albert … Palaeolithic Mekon … hadn’t wanted to know his sister was still alive. I told you he wouldn’t, and now she wasn’t. Returned to oculogyric crisis. Nothing, stasis … Nothing will come of nothing … The tiger’s free, the kangaroo, I’m an ape man ... War, psychiatry, a nihilistic, autodidactic mess of rotting corpses … He’d said that already, but sometimes it bore repeating just to defray the onanism. You’ll never guess what, Guv? I ‘ad that Rihanna in the back of me cab. Left ‘er umbrella.
Digested read, digested: Psy-Fi.
NW by Zadie Smith (2012)
Four gardens. North London estate. Redheaded. I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
I am the sole
I am the
Deep. Doorbell! She pushes her way in.
– It’s Shar. Remember me? Gimmethirty quid for me bredren.
Leah thinks she does remember her. Back from Brayton days in Willesden. She knows it’s probs a scam but she gives her the money. It’s what sistas do, innit?
Michel gives her hell.
– You’re Irish, not a sista. She ripped you off.
No matter. Paperworkpaperworkpaperwork. Looks pretty on the page, is it? Almost as if it meant something.
Maybe she could
get away with writing a
whole
sentence that
looked
a
bit
like a tree.
There had been an attraction between Michel – Meshell – and Leah from the start. Anal before vaginal. Now they lived together. Near but not on the estate. There was a difference. Big difference. A long way apart.
– Does that mean we’re going to have to talk a lot about multi-culturalism and neo-modernism?
– ’Fraid so. But as long as you remember to name-drop Kierkegaard and Barthes you’ll be fine.
Leah does this and then she does that and sometimes she thinks this and sometimes she thinks that but what she really knows is that she is on Zadie’s home patch so she’d better go along with any old bollocks – shame about the dog dying – and let’s just hope that Michel doesn’t notice she’s still taking the pill.
Felix dropped in on his old man, Lloyd.
‘Wassup, blud. You long, or what, is it?’
‘Your father is asking how you are and why you are late,’ said Lloyd’s neighbour Tom, who had lived on the estate since the 1970s and whose sole purpose was to supply simultaneous translation.
Felix barely noticed his section had proper quotation marks as he was on his way to Soho to meet Grace, his trustafarian junkie ex.
‘Do you want some coke, babes?’ she asked.
‘I don do dat stuff nah more. I’m inta films n’ shit more.’
‘Then just go down on me as I’m having my period.’
Felix didn’t quite know why he had done that. Out of his comfort zone. Far too Islington. Or Queens. If he knew where New York was. Back to Willesden. Home. Carnival. Whoops. Ironic that Nathan mugged and killed him when he wasn’t loaded or nuffink.
1. Keisha and Leah had been friends on the estate. 2. Then they weren’t. 3. Then they were again. 4. Keisha didn’t know why she had to have everything listed in numbers. 5. On reflection, perhaps she did. 6. Sometimestimegoesveryfast. 7. S ome tim esitgo esver yslowly. 8. IS IT TIME FOR SOME CAPITALS? 9. What would James Joyce think about a black girl becoming middle-class? 10. Leah gave Keisha a vibrator and then Keisha went out with Rodney who was a nice boy. 11. Not a baaad boy. 12. Keisha changed her name to Natalie when she became a lawyer and married Frank and had two kids. 13. People were unseen. 14. People were not people but merely an effect of language. 15. Some people do come up with some real crap. 16. Natalie couldn’t cope with messing with her roots and smoked spliff and shagged a load of rude boys. 17. Frank was bare pissed.
Natalie went off to Archway with Nathan to top herself.
–You doan wann be doin tha sista.
Later, Leah and Natalie were talking.
–I’m not going to apologise for my choices, said Natalie, unaware that no one was asking her to.
–You know what? If it was Nathan that topped Felix, we ought to grass him up.
Digested read, digested: NO.
Back to Blood
by Tom Wolfe (2013)
Smack. Thadaboom. SMACK. Thahadaboom. The Safe Boat thadathunks its foam-filled fuckery across Miami–MEEE-AH-MEE – bay. ‘Dere’s a fuckin’ Wetfoot at da top a dat fuckin’ mast a dat boat,’ yelled Sergeant Kite. Officer Nestor Camacho rolled up his sleeves. His biceps were ripped. Taut. :::: What the fuck was he doing thinking like this inside this crazy, mashed-up punctuation? :::: Tappetytaptappetytaptaptap. KER-CHING! Tom couldn’t believe his luck. $10,000 per page to write on steroids. :::: Like taking candy from babies. That’s America, baby ::::
‘¡Madre de Dios!’ yelled Nestor’s father. ‘You’re no national hero. You traidor. You betray your blood. The guy was 17 feet from freedom, and you send him back to Fidel?’ Nestor reeled backwards out of the room :::: At least I have my Malena. Mia preciosa Magdalena con los grandes bazookas ::::
‘Thass wat you think, Nestor,’ said Magdalena, adjusting her skirt to make sure her bootycrack – HER BUM-BUM-BUM – made it into this paragraph. ‘The thing is, I’ve just met this new man.’ :::: Not quite true. She’d been dating her boss, Norman the porn shrink, for a while now ::::
Slurparlurparlurp, lubberly lubberly pussy. It felt good to be able to write dirty, as Norman’s priapic pimped purple car pushed its velvet rims towards the orgy, while his billionaire patient beat on his festering, ulcerous dick for the 14th time that morning. ‘Buy yourself some modern art, Maurice,’ said Norman, as Magdalena bobbobbobbed on his slithery slipperiness.
‘What’s wrong with you, Tom?’ Maurice screamed. :::: Jesus, my rancid cock aches. Can’t you give your obsession with the pointlessness of modern art a break? You’ve been going on about it for decades, and we all get the point ::::’
‘Fuck the lot of you,’ Tom stompstomphuffed. ‘It’s my book. My advance. And I’ll do what I want. WHOOP. WHOOP. WHOOOP. And leave that extra O on there, right? So I tell you what happens next. There’s going to be a new sub-plot about how Sergei the Russian oligarch donated $70m of forged modern art to the Miiiiiiiiammm-oooow Gallery.’
:::: Zanks fer nuzzink :::: ‘So I am anuzzer lazeee stereotype like everywon zelse,’ said Sergei. ‘WOW WOW WOW a rich RUSHAN with Art’ said Magadelena :::: Art who? No KANDINSKY? NO KANDONTSKY! Better get my sucketysucketysuck hypnopompic lips in gear ::::
Whoosh. Bash. Bish. Kapow. The black police chief had switched Nestor away from the Cubanas to keep him out of trouble, and now he’d only gone and taken down some black beefcake cracking crack king in a headheadheadlock, only his partner had been filmed calling the guy a nigger :::: Dios, I swear I no racist :::: ‘I know that. But round here bloodisbloodisblood. You’re suspended, Camacho.’
‘Whoawhoawhoaza,’ screeeeeched Tommmmeeee. ‘I ain’t finished with the badblood, city-divided shit so I’m gonna bring in Creole Ghislaine who got a brudder in pants down to his knees kinda gang stuff. And you, Nestor, are going to sort it in your UNEEEEK idididiot savant style.’
:::: Yesssiryesssirr :::: STADUNG KAPUNG. The forger was whacked. Sergei busted. LE TOUTTOUTTOUT literary monde laughlaughlaughing at the art world. Magadalena plumped her hypnopompic labioplastic lips :::: Madre. Tom. He could no be so stupido to use a word like hypnopompic twice :::: ‘Get away from my white linen suit,’ Tomtomtom Tomed. ‘The money is mine. And I’ll use hypnopompic as often as I like.’
‘OKOKOK,’ Nestornestornestor nestored. ‘So now I’m back in da police, which broad do I get to badaboom?’
Digested read, digested: Back to bollocks.
A Hologram for the King
by Dave Eggers (2012)
Alan Clay arrived in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He added the ‘Saudi Arabia’ because otherwise Americans might not know where he was. He had taken two planes to get there. In Nairobi, Kenya, he had met a woman he would probably have gone to bed with if he had stayed. But he didn’t, so he didn’t.
He tried to sleep, but he couldn’t. Even reading his own sensitively pared-down sentences didn’t help. Put simply, he was a complete failure. He was 54 years old, divorced and broke. He couldn’t even afford the tuition fees for his daughter, Kit, who was at college in Boston, USA. He started writing Kit a letter. ‘Dear Kit, here is another letter I am unlikely to send.’
This was his last chance. An opportunity to make a six-figure commission selling an IT system to the King Abdullah Economic City in the desert. Luckily, he did not stop to wonder why an American IT giant would have employed a complete idiot to sell its most expensive hardware. So the reader did not have to, either.
It was nine o’clock when Alan eventually woke up. ‘Oh dear,’ he said to himself. ‘I’ve missed the bus out to KAEC and I am going to be late for the King. That’s not very good, is it?’ He phoned down to reception for a cab.
‘Hello,’ said Yousef. ‘I’m your driver. Though I’m not really a driver. Tell me a joke.’
‘The company I work for is called Reliant.’
‘That’s not really a joke, Alan. That’s yet more irony about America’s growing global economic dependency.’
Alan touched the lump on the back of his neck. He was sure it was cancer. Fingers crossed, it was. The heat was oppressive when he arrived at his tent in the desert. ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry,’ Karim would have replied if he had bothered to turn up. ‘The King i
sn’t coming today. Or any day soon for that matter.’
Alan touched his lump again and thought he was beginning to get the hang of this metaphor.
‘Hello,’ said a woman called Hanne from Amsterdam, Holland. ‘Seeing as you are going to spend the next 100 pages making pointless trips into the desert, why don’t you have a drink and have sex with me?’
He fumbled a bit but his cock was as limp as the subtext. ‘Never mind,’ Hanne said brusquely. ‘Let me take you to the doctor to have your lump looked at.’
‘It’s definitely a benign cyst,’ said the sultry Dr Hakem, much to everyone’s disappointment. ‘But I can take it out for you.’
Alan found himself with a lot of spare time on his hands, even after writing dozens more letters to Kit that he would never send. So when Yousef offered to take him out into the desert to go wolf-shooting, he eagerly accepted, after making a bad joke about being in the CIA. ‘That’s not funny, either,’ said Yousef.
Alan knew he was going to kill the wolf. But he fired at a shepherd boy by mistake. ‘Whoops,’ he said. ‘It’s OK,’ Yousef said. ‘Luckily you missed. You’d better go back to Jeddah.’
‘I’ve taken out your cyst,’ Dr Hakem purred. ‘Now I want to sleep with you.’
‘All right,’ Alan said, completely unaware of how improbable it was that every attractive younger woman in the book should find him irresistible.
It was still very hot when he went back out to KAEC a fortnight later. ‘I’m glad you’ve arrived,’ said Karim, who had by now bothered to turn up, ‘because the King is finally here.’
‘Do you think he will like my presentation?’