| You
got to wait to get to theme park
Booker Nominee The trials of a tycoon who embarks on a 'world-boggling' project could do away with the cumbersome details FICTION ENGLAND, ENGLAND
By ONG SOR FERN ENGLAND, ENGLAND, the title, could, on the one hand, be taken for a rallying cry, along the lines of "For King and country". On the other, as readers find out three quarters of the way into Julian Barnes' latest Booker-nominated novel, it could just be an address. A banal realisation that adds ironic resonance to the title. The droll joke captures quite aptly this author's preoccupation with one of his favourite themes -- the elusive nature of memory, which is all tied up with confusions about individual and national identity. Unfortunately, the joke comes too late for all but the most patient of readers. But that is getting ahead of the story. The setting is some time in the next millennium and the man who sets things rolling is Sir Jack Pitman, a megalomaniac tycoon and something of a cross between Hitler and Rupert Murdoch. Having clawed his way into the Fortune 500 list, Sir Jack decides that for his piece de resistance, the crowning achievement of his career, he will build a theme park. Not just any theme park: "We are not talking Disneyland, World's Fair, Festival of Britain, Legoland or Parc Asterix... We are not seeking twopenny tourists. It is world-boggling time." What results is a theme park par excellence, located on the Isle of Wight, which seeks to recreate no less than a better, cleaner, more tourist-friendly, and therefore money-making, miniature version of ye olde England. To realise his ambition, Sir Jack assembles a motley team which includes "resident cynic" Martha Cochrane, mousy "Ideas catcher" Paul Harrison and stuffy academic Dr Max. The result is a hyper-real England, where all the major tourist attractions -- Hampton Court, Stonehenge, even the white cliffs of Dover -- are located within a convenient pony-and-carriage ride of one another. Barnes' thematic preoccupations -- identity, expressed externally as "Englishness" and internally as love(r) -- will be familiar to fans of hisearlier works like Cross Channel and Flaubert's Parrot. But Barnes is, has always been, an infuriatingly uneven writer. He is indubitably brilliant, sparkling with an excess of dry wit and clever ideas. But he is also an insecure writer who often lets his own cleverness get in the way of his stories. England, England is a good example of the best and worst of Barnes. A big hunk of the book is an intellectual gabfest as the creative team brainstorms and argues its way through the nitty-gritty details of Sir Jack's idea. Thus, the reader is treated to long chunks of expository dialogue as characters take turns to expound on the author's favourite bugbears. All this bogs down the pace. Not to say that Barnes is boring. There are flashes of humour, some of it engagingly prurient. But one cannot help wishing that he would just get on with the story, and avoid all the extra fireworks, however nifty they are. The idea of a theme-park version overtaking the real thing is audacious, throwing up questions of veracity, identity and ethics, which is dealt with only cursorily by Barnes. This reviewer could not help wondering what Terry Pratchett, satirist extraordinaire who has spoofed everything from Hollywood to totalitarianism in his Discworld series, might have done with the idea. Pratchett would have taken it to its most ludicrous extremes and brought the reader on a fun ride in the process, no doubt. Barnes, on the other hand, prefers to tell rather than to show, which becomes trying on the reader's patience. Instead of an exhilarating Magic Mountain ride, what you get is a slow boat through the tunnel vision of Barnes' dry intellect. Engaging scenery, but not as challenging as you thought it would be.
Página creada y actualizada
por grupo "mmm".
|
||