Continuing last week's theme of biting the hand that feeds, I have to bring up yet more criticism of the Booker Prize. Alongside the charge of mediocrity, the most frequent criticism that I've heard about the award is that it is a "white upper-middle class conspiracy" and only really concerned with people and authors who fit into strictly limited socio-economic boundaries.
As per last week, I don't entirely agree with this analysis. Firstly, many of the past winners are hardly hautes bourgeoises, let alone white. Secondly, who cares about class issues if the books are good? Thirdly, let's face it; most writers, readers and critics in the Booker orbit (including yours truly) are likely to be white and middle class. This is Britain after all and it's not a crime.
All the same, when presented with books like Self Help it's easy to see why some people get annoyed. Docx's characters are all irritating products of the chattering wing of the middle class. True, Arkady Alexandrovitch, one of the main protagonists, is a taciturn poverty-stricken Russian, but even he gets a pass card into this narrow social stratum thanks to a talent in classical music. What's more, like the rest of the cast he has only two overlapping obsessions: himself; and his place in the greater scheme of things.
The story (like the world as they see it) mainly revolves around Gabriel and Isabella Glover, twins trying to cope with the recent death of their mother in St Petersburg. Their difficulty in coming to terms with their bereavement is augmented by a shared loathing for their estranged and abusive father figure Nicholas and by a general dissatisfaction with their lives and careers. Arkady comes into the picture because he is desperately trying to scrape together the money to get to England in order to persuade the twins to help him pay his way through a music conservatory. He also has some information vital for their journey of self-discovery.
All of the characters, although frequently redeemed by sharp wit, are self-obsessed and essentially nasty. That shouldn't be taken as a condemnation of Docx as a writer - one of his essential points is that his characters are all reflections of each other and that their moral ugliness is carried over the generations. All the same, their angst-ridden self-examinations and their stony hearts provide little warmth for the reader.
Of course, as most of his snobbish cast would scornfully tell us, the purpose of literature isn't mere comfort and amiable pleasure and there are plenty of other rewards in Docx. As an examination of what happens to people intelligent enough to understand sophisticated art forms - but also smart enough to realise that they will never create them with any lasting success, it's effective and damning. The dilettante Nicholas in particular gives eloquent voice to that peculiar form of social parasitism borne of the knowledge that if he did seriously try and contribute something to humanity that thing would be ultimately useless. He's also as funny as he is cruel, the measured eloquence of the insults he reels off to all around him a testament to Docx's skill as a writer. ("Climb down off your cross," he tells Gabriel who has been making a scene about how insensitive his family have been to his 17-year-old and pregnant friend. "It must be agony up there all year... It's fairly obvious that the only person who thinks your friend is a freak, Gabriel, is you. You'd imagine that she was about to give birth to some new child of Zeus the way you are fidgeting about her.")
This clever writing can also be seen in numerous aphorisms (take this contribution to the eternal art vs money debate: "Who would you rather be listening to on your deathbed? Mozart or the chief executive?"), a very funny pastiche of a New Age contract publishing magazine (with putative cover questions like: "If you met yourself where would you suggest for a romantic mini-break?") and, most notably, in a number of ambitious and effective similes ("she sensed that the tattered images of her dreams were still hung high on the masts of her consciousness like the ragged remainders of sails flapping after a storm.")
Less often, however, Docx stumbles. That constant striving for metaphor and simile can seem strained and becomes distracting. A naked body, for instance, is described as having the bewitching effect of "a river god rising in vapours of jasmine and myrrh with a different violin sonata for each of his senses." This over writing goes all the way up to the chapter titles. One, for instance, is headed: A Savage Freedom. What does that mean?
Meanwhile, although the plot successfully winds tighter and tighter towards the end, it needs several clumsy contrivances to get the motion working. A character called Henry seems to exist only to set move things forward and enable Arkady to get to England. We know little more about his humanity than a sketchy biography and the fact that he's a heroin addict - an addiction that is once more mapped out in simile after florid simile.
These problems are generally overshadowed, by the careful craft and skill with which Docx has put together the book. Ultimately, however, after 500-odd pages I still didn't feel like I had taken in much more than the tightly constrained and not particularly interesting story of a small group of selfish over-privileged human beings. Unfair? Over to you.
Read the rest of the Booker Club posts here.
