disappointment

One night a month or two ago, I decided to read to the baby while she was imbibing her bedtime bottle and randomly pulled A House for Mr. Biswas from the shelf as we walked into the bedroom.  I read the entire introduction to her, even though it went on for 15 minutes after she’d slurped down the last of the life-giving elixer.  She sat rapt to the sound of my voice as Naipaul revealed the tragedy of Biswas and his minuscule abode.  “That went well”, I thought.  “I should try it again with the book I’m currently reading to get through some of it.”

A few days later when I tried the same thing with the much-heralded Netherland by Joseph O’Neill, the words clotted together in my mouth as if I were speaking through salt-water taffy.  The baby quickly lost interest and crawled away to play among the bric-a-brac sloughed from the shelf in the bedroom’s brooding corner.

If you find the above comparison unfair and overwrought, you’re right.  I shouldn’t expect journeyman novelist Joseph O’Neill to measure up to a Nobel laureate like Naipaul.  And my overheated parody poorly approximates O’Neill’s own portentous style.  The significance of the experiment is simply this: while so many others have praised the language of this book, I found it infelicitous and clumsy because it tries too hard.  And it must try so hard because the story itself is so slight.

The manner in which the story unfolds also annoyed me.  O’Neill dives into the consciousness of his principle character, the Dutch financial analyst Hans van den Broek, following his thoughts from one association to another even when those associations have only marginal relevance to the present time of the narrative.  Perhaps another kind of reader would find these diversions entrancing, but I too frequently asked myself where this story was going and too seldom did a satisfactory answer appear.

Zadie Smith, in her incisive review for the NYRB, compared Netherland unfavorably with Remainder by Tom McCarthy, a decidedly more experimental novel.  She argues that these two novels present quite contrasting views of what the novel is about and what is possible in the form.  Surprisingly, despite its negative tone, her evaluation is what finally spurred me to begin reading Netherland.  I can’t say exactly why, but her description made me think that his novel, while more conventional, was also more richly-written and (possibly) as vaster in scope.

Turns out I misunderstood her (or she lied to me).  Very early on, I noted that none of the critics bothered to mention how boring the book was, with its languid descriptions of insignificant things and meandering reminiscences that lead nowhere.  I almost gave up.  Eventually I returned to finish the book, wondering if it would perhaps end in such a way that the whole enterprise would be redeemed (as some have suggested), but no.  The final scene is as conventional and forced as every other one.  The ending left me not only unmoved but slightly miffed that all this symbolic hullabaloo could culminate in so little, as if the minor, entirely-obvious epiphany so characteristic of a certain species of sterile ”New Yorker“ short story might be enough to sustain and justify an entire novel.

I have no doubt that a certain kind of reader might very well enjoy this book.  But I am not of that sort.