June 18, 2009
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
HARD PRINT |
|
Nether Netherland
Surely not the most exciting of sports to watch unfold, especially when it’s some glum chum doing the unfolding. So it was with some surprise that I found myself riveted to the pages of Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland (Vintage, $14.95), a book that recounts five long years in this cricket-loving lap dog’s life. I mean, I’m generally none too keen on keeping up with some boring near-old Jones, even if he does happen to have a couple million bucks in the bank. And that’s another thing that pisses me off. How can this ho-hum Harry make millions, especially in cut-throat cities like London and New York? Guess being a successful equities analyst doesn’t require much in the way of a gung-ho spirit — let alone a spine. But, as I implied: I fell for Netherland, and I fell rather hard, from the opening page, when Hans discusses moving to Watts Street in Manhattan, to the book’s close, where an essential promise permeates the air. And yes, I was probably the last person on Earth to do so. If you’ve read or heard anything at all about books over the last year, then you know that O’Neill has created a certified blockbuster. Long-listed for Britain’s prestigious Man Booker Prize, winner of America’s PEN/Faulkner Award, rave reviews from just about every book critic with a byline, and — most astoundingly — hardcover sales approaching 100,000, Netherland has gone where few literary titles have gone before — through the proverbial roof. That the book has done so despite it being voiced by a dull fella like Hans, only makes its tremendous success even more inexplicable. Hell, even Obama said he’d had a copy resting on his bedside table. And when the world’s hippest president is reading you, well, you’ve gotta consider yourself pretty well read. My own dig with what O’Neill has wrought rests largely in its setting. As I mentioned above, Hans (and his wife and son) move from London to New York’s Watts Street, a six-block long stretch of lower Manhattan where I just so happened to have lived way back when. Even better, after 9/11, Hans packs up his family and moves into the infamous Chelsea Hotel, another place I dwelled when I was a New Yorker. And an edifice that’s very close to my heart. Another reason Netherland kept me keening was the delightfully shady Chuck Ramkissoon, a Trinidadian transplant with his mitts in more than a few unsavory pies. Chuck’s my kinda guy: a go-getter from first breath to last light. He dreams big, plays for keeps and always seems to be scheming. That this charcoal Gatsby has hustled his way through doors pretty much kept shut to the immigrant is not so much a wonder as it is a testament to his relentless guile, as well as his wiles. Yeah, Chuck’s a hustler, baby. And he brings Hans if not to life, at least to half-life. Inspiring in him an affection he doesn’t even show for himself, let alone his wife, which is probably why she’s taken his child and shuffled back off to Blimey Ol’ England. But Hans is Hans, and like everything else, he takes it. Commuting ‘cross the pond twice a month to see his son and spending the rest of his time either face-first on his Chelsea Hotel room floor or mechanically moving through the corporate world of Wall Street. Except on Saturdays, when Hans gets together with a motley array of West Indians and Near East Asians and hits the cricket pitch. See, Hans spent many of his formative years back in Holland engaged in the colonial sport. And it still has a hold on him. But like I said, this is cricket we’re talking about. Something very few Americans ever cared about, least of all me. But when O’Neill unsheathes the poetry of the sport, from the way of its play to its post-colonial implications, one is so charmed he forgets that prior to this the game had absolutely no meaning to him whatsoever. In other words, O’Neill is so damn masterful a storyteller, he could probably make me believe in badminton. John Hood: I know you’re a ChelseaHotel resident. Have you seen Abel Ferrara’s flick “Chelsea on the Rocks?” Joseph O’Neill: I have not seen it, no. But I certainly noticed Abel Ferrara when he was around making that film. JH: Yeah, that cat’s hard to miss! Abel actually flew in (former long-time Chelsea manager) Stanley (Bard) for the screening. It was quite nice to see him again. JO: How long did you live in the hotel? JH: Two years or so. Right after I left school. JO: Do you remember which floor you were on? JH: I was on three different floors — first, second and fourth. We kept trying to get a little bigger room and a little better deal. I loved the place. How long have you been living here? JO: Since ’98. JH: Oh, really? That’s great. I knew it was some time. JO: I don’t know if you know but Stanley’s no longer in charge. JH: Right, right. Yeah, they took it over and changed the management. But has the feel of the place really changed all that much since Stanley was booted out? JO: I don’t think it’s changed dramatically. If you live there you know that the Chelsea Hotel is a Bard creation; without the Bards in charge it certainly loses a dimension of authenticity. There’s no space between the Bards and the Chelsea Hotel — they are the Chelsea Hotel. I completely understand how someone can try to come in and run the place, but you don’t run the Chelsea Hotel really, it’s supposed to kind of just be itself. And unfortunately without the Bards I don’t think it’s quite the same. You never know though, they may come back. And it’s a resilient sort of community. JH: It’s funny that you said it’s a creation of Stanley’s, because that’s really what it is — his life’s art work; a living, breathing entity all its own. JO: I mean, no one else could do it. You can’t go to the hotel school and learn how to run the Chelsea Hotel. JH: You’re right about that. Stanley is one of a kind. And Ferrara’s film is actually quite good, and a dynamite homage to the Bards, especially Stanley. But about the book… Were you hesitant at first to have cricket play such a central role in your story, especially considering that in America people may have at best only heard of the sport? JO: Yes, I was. In fact I was very worried that a novel about cricket would be marginal because of its subject matter. Unfortunately, it was the only idea I had [laughs], so I had no option but to write it. And once you devote a certain amount of time to a project, you sort of feel you have to finish it. But I was worried right to the end. Even when my agent tried to sell the book it got refused by everybody but one publisher. Partly because I think they just thought the cricket thing was too weird. And in fact the weirdness of the sport is the whole point. The important thing about writing about cricket for an American reader is to confront that reader with the other, the new. JH: Yeah, we don’t need another baseball book. JO: [Laughs] Maybe we do. Of course we do. But I think we can handle at least one cricket book. JH: Well, it sure seemed to work out well for you. What did you think when you heard Obama had your book by his bedside? JO: Of course I was thrilled. He’s a special president, and he’s working under extreme pressure. And if the book does provide the president with a little relaxation it would be nice. JH: Are you pals with [barred equity research analyst] Henry Blodget? There seems to be a lot of him in Hans’ story. JO: No, I’m not. I just read about him like everybody else. I never met Henry Blodget. Part of it was just remembering a time when Blodget was a player. JH: Isn’t he some kind of journalist as well, the editor of the Silicon Alley Insider or something? JO: He is now. But I don’t read his journalism. I was only aware of him as this faintly notorious bauble merchant. JH: [Laughs] What do you think of [New Yorker book reviewer] James Wood throwing you in among the post-colonial set — Rushdie, Naipaul, and that lot? JO: Well, I think the book is certainly capable of being read from the perspective of post-colonial theory, if that’s how you want to read it. But I’m always pretty reluctant to start unpacking the book from the context of a certain theoretical angle, because I don’t think that’s not really my job. JH: To me it’s somewhat limiting to see a book in purely one perspective. JO: I don’t object to it at all. I don’t really want to direct a way a person should think about the book. JH: What did you think of Zadie Smith’s crack that Netherland is “too perfectly done?” Did you read that review? JO: Yes, I certainly did. I think it’s kind of flattering to be subject of a long essay by Zadie Smith even if your book is used as a bit of a punching bag. I don’t really have much more to say about it other than it’s a pretty intelligent and interesting essay. JH: Yes, it must be flattering to have the James Woods and the Zadie Smiths come out and tackle your novel. JO: It is flattering, and I’ve reason to believe that in Zadie Smith’s essay my book is part of a conversation she’s having with James Wood. I’m told she’s trying to challenge James Wood’s authority. JH: They do have a little something going on; that’s what I understand as well… Why did you leave nameless the bank that Hans works for in Netherland? JO: I left it like that because it’s a book which plays on highly specific details about actual places and actual institutions — like the Chelsea Hotel, the Staten Island Cricket Club — and I didn’t want to situate him in any actual bank. So I left it blank to start off with, then after a while, I just got used to it. There isn’t anything profound about that. It’s also tradition in 19th century essays to leave those kinds of proper names blank. I don’t really know the short answer. JH: But it wasn’t because you perhaps had some kind of information about, say, Merrill Lynch, and you didn’t want to reveal specifically what you knew? JO: No, I think if you start saying Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs or Credit Suisse then you open a can of worms. JH: It’s funny, I was recently reading [Peter] Handke and he has entire books where he won’t reveal even a place name because it gives people too many preconceived notions about things. JO: Yeah, yeah, exactly, it would kind of stimulate the reader in an erroneous or irrelevant way. If I want to write something about a newspaper in Miami I don’t want to say The Lead Miami Beach because then the reader will think “aha, that must have been Johnny” — it could produce all kinds of false readings. And if I call it The Miami Bugle or something, well, that’s kind of jarring in a book where everything else has been given its proper name. JH: Yeah, it’s sometimes good to let people fill in the blank for themselves. JO: Yes. There’s something about Hans’ inability to take charge of his life that really pissed me off. Did it piss you off writing about this guy? JO: I think there are two thoughts about that. Number one, it’s actually really useful to have a kind of passive narrator because if the narrator says ‘I did this and I did that, and then I did this and then I did that,’ and I’ve got a checklist and I’ve checked everything off, the narrator is too active. And it doesn’t lead to the certain voice I wanted to have. And the second thing is, he is irritating in certain ways, and that’s partly why his wife left him. If he was another type of guy, why would his wife leave him? JH: Good point. But still, Hans is not living his story; it’s more like the story is living him. Thankfully, Chuck is a nice foil. JO: That’s why he likes Chuck. JH: Right. Chuck has all the guts he doesn’t have. JO: Yeah, but Chuck is gonna end up dead. JH: Well, at least he lived while he was around. JO: He sure did. |
1. Shanghai Girls: Lisa See, Random House, $25 HARDCOVER NONFICTION 1. Outliers: Malcolm Gladwell, Little Brown, $27.99 TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION 1. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows, Dial, $14 TRADE PAPERBACK NONFICTION 1. Three Cups of Tea: Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin, Penguin, $15 |
POLITICS // NEWS // ART // BOOKS // FILM: Boxoffice // FILM: Arthouse // MUSIC // FASHION // CALENDAR // THE BEVERAGISTS // CLASSIFIEDS // MAP // PLUM TV // CONTACT |
All contents copyright © 2009 The Paper Miami Beach, LLC. No reproduction in part or in whole permitted without consent. All rights reserved. For more information, e-mail admin@theleadmiamibeach.com. |
Hans van den Broek pisses me off. Really. In fact, he’s everything I hate in a man, and less. As passive as a blade of grass beneath a roaring storm, Hans doesn’t just go with the flow, he let’s the flow go right over him. Willy-nilly, wishy-washy, and wan. And when Hans is not wallowing in his bob of a life, he’s playing cricket for Christ sakes! Cricket! Yes, that’s right, the age-old game that seems to me to be nothing more than a cross between croquet and baseball.