5 - Anthem

As I was passing through my edgy modernist phase during the course of my A-levels, for some reason Ayn Rand was never an author that was particularly on my radar. I'm not sure why this was - the English course itself provided me with a pretty extensive reading list in terms of dystopian fiction, from the obvious (1984, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange) to the slightly less so (Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, Margaret Atwood's visceral The Handmaid's Tale). Nor was my personal reading limited - I ran the gauntlet from Knut Hamsun's Hunger to Don DeLillo's White Noise, both unsettling books in their own right from opposite ends of the 20th Century. Yet the works of Rand, despite being considered parallel to all of these, remained unread.

But I was not unaware of her existence, so decided now was the time to give one of her books a try. The two generally cited as her best, Atlas Shrugged  and The Fountainhead, are not particularly conducive to a year of reading more than one book, so instead I opted for the lesser-known 1938 novella Anthem.

Anthem portrays a future society under supreme control - citizens devoid of all individualism to the point where the narrator refers to himself exclusively in the third person, and each character is assigned a number rather than a name. Technology and cultural activities are also strictly limited, and it is alluded that both of these played a part in the destruction of the society that preceded the current one. The whole is presided over by a council of elites; the similarities with the Soviet Union are clear, although the extent to which that is true borders on prescient considering the date of writing.

Our hero, the snappily named Equality-2521, stands alone as an individual seeking to escape from this system. Having been identified as a potential troublemaker at an early age, he is consigned to a life of sweeping the streets of his city. But this cannot crush his spirit, as he studies science in secret and dreams of escaping from the city with a peasant girl he has seen working in the fields.

Political connotations aside, Anthem is a brilliantly written book. While 1984 portrays a truly viable vision of a future police state but is hampered by Orwell's appallingly ham-fisted prose style, and Brave New World is well written but has dated somewhat, Anthem suffers from neither of those issues, and it must be borne in mind that it is from broadly the same period as both. Rand's writing is perfectly concise, revealing just enough about the world of her novella for the reader to understand the context, but still building up to the reveal of the mystery at the end.

The ending is certainly the main source of contention. While the "forbidden word" that has been hinted at up to this point is somewhat predictable, it still serves as a relevant reminder of the dangers of a society where individualism is suppressed to too great an extent. However, the new direction followed by Equality-2521 and the girl, Liberty 5-3000 - living at one with nature outside society - seems somewhat trite, and really isn't a million miles from the Völkisch ideology that the Nazis were pushing in Germany at the time. It's easy to see why Rand's works are so beloved by the libertarian right, but in the case of Anthem I think they've actually missed the point. As the novella concludes, there are hints that the new, rather isolationist, commune built by Equality-2521 will eventually head down the same route that led to the self-destruction of the society of the "Unmentionable Times". A cycle in which there is no real winner, perpetuated by the tendency of human nature to scramble to extremes in both directions. Sobering stuff.

5/5

Pretty much everything is banned in Anthem; L'Orange and Mr. Lif's The Life and Death of Scenery imagines a world in which that extends merely to all forms of culture. It was probably the second best sci-fi rap album of 2016.

4 - Catch-22

"They're not going to send a crazy man out to be killed are they?"

"Who else will go?"

The above quote is perhaps the most succinct representation of the titular, much misused, catch that permeates Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Barely a paragraph goes by in which the characters are not confronted with another form of the famous logical paradox. The perfect contradiction of it comes to define practically every character's story arc, their interactions, their conversations and their very existence. All of this and more is why I have come to consider it my favourite book.

However, the novel's first line - "It was love at first sight" - doesn't quite reflect my relationship with it. On the first reading, the plot is so brutally complex and non-linear that it isn't until beyond the halfway point that the reader can begin to piece together what actually happens, and when. Indeed, to attempt to explain it here would require more words than the book itself, so here's a drawing by Heller himself:

Much better.

In fact, this was my fourth time taking this particular ride, and I was surprised at how much of the plot was just second nature to me. This allowed me to appreciate the little allusions and connections throughout the book that link the episodic chapters to one another, ensuring it is so much more than just a collection of short stories.

And yet the chapters, especially the longer among them, serve perfectly well as stories on their own. The story of Milo Minderbinder and his preemptive forays into the post-war globalist world of trading, in particular, would work brilliantly as a film, as would perhaps the earliest moments in the work's timeline in which Yossarian is subjected to the absurdity of basic training, the ever present threat of actual combat hanging over him and concluding in the incident that drives his perspective for most of the book.

Countless words have already been written about the catch-22 concept and its logical and philosophical connotations; about Heller's (decidedly negative) portrayal of war and his use thereof as an analogy for the wider world; about the criticisms that are levelled at the contemporary society of the 1960s under this guise. Still more have been written about the use of language in the book, how it reflects the catch scenario in itself, and how the threads of narrative weave together to form a cohesive whole. I doubt that I will be able to add much to any of this, other than that these are all parts of what make it such a masterpiece in my opinion.

Instead, what struck me most this time around was the work's sensitivity. Hiding among all the absurdity of the dialogue are some outstanding soliloquies on the intransigence of life and the inevitability of death. The scene where Yossarian is made to pose as an airman already killed in battle in order to provide closure to his family who have come to visit him on his deathbed stood out as particularly poignant, but there are several similar moments where the action slows down a touch to provide similar hubris. A number of characters become, even with all the madness that surrounds them and which they seem to willingly perpetuate, tragic figures at the mercy of forces beyond their control.

The final quarter of the narrative in particular becomes almost relentlessly pessimistic, until the final scene which brings together all the hints and allusions at a possible solution that have been building up to that point. It wraps up the book as a whole in a way that is - and I don't use this word lightly - nothing short of genius.

This a book that everyone should read, and then read again. I for one anticipate getting through it many more times in my life, and I genuinely expect to take away something new each time.

5/5, obviously.

It seems fitting that my favourite book should go hand in hand with my (current) favourite song - Outkast's Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. The album by the same name actually has a few things in common with Catch-22, namely the way in which threads of themes mesh together throughout to form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, but at the same time those parts somehow work better on their own. In itself that's a catch-22 scenario...

3 - Bricking It

I mentioned in my introductory post that I used a commute into London for a previous job to get some serious reading done. One, slightly less serious, book that I got through during that period was another Kindle recommendation - Nick Spalding's Fat Chance. I picked it up as something lighter, having been assured by reviewers that it was genuinely funny, and found that in spite of myself I had to agree. But there was also a lot more to it than that - I found it a brilliantly frank portrayal of married life, the rapid onset of middle age and all the shortcomings of the diet "industry". There were some great set pieces, each chapter acting almost as a self-contained story, some moving moments, and, as I have already said, I'd be lying if I tried to claim it didn't make me laugh.

Since I hadn't set any intellectual requirements for this year's endeavour, I decided Spalding's newest work might be worth a look. The similarities between the two are obvious - both are told from two, alternating, points of view, both concern the trials of the main characters in their attempts to reach a goal, and both are ultimately quite British in their scope. While Fat Chance chronicled the attempts of a married couple in losing weight for a competition, Bricking It is the story of a brother and sister attempting to rebuild and then sell a house left to them by their grandmother.

There are also similarities between the flaws of both books. Spalding does not have a particular talent for dialogue, and the result is conversations between characters that come across as stilted or just plain unnatural. And the interior monologues are only slightly better. Conversely, while in Fat Chance the main couple were well developed in spite of a rather vaguely portrayed set of minor characters, the opposite is true in Bricking It - the story arc of the siblings is rather predictable, but the supporting cast is full of memorable figures that add colour to the work.

Where Spalding salvages all of this, to the extent that all of these criticisms become secondary, is in his fantastic ability to construct a set piece. With each chapter serving as an episode within the greater context of the plot, he manages to cram an entire story, from start to finish, twenty times over into the novel. It is in this context that the comedy works best - scenes involving a box in the attic and a bonfire with unexpected consequences stood out as particular highlights. But it also ensures that, while the overall plot of the book may be quite simple and linear, the pace of the book remains consistently fast throughout. I doubt there will be many other books this year that I finish quite so quickly.

And, once again, I have to admit that I laughed out loud at times.

4.5/5

If this book were to be adapted into a film, I feel it would be at least 43% montage scenes. At least one of them deserves to be set to this:

Simple and unassuming, yet amusing and clever.