Part 2 (1/2)

To this evidence, Freudians add exhibit number one: fantasies of self-slaughter (”Between throat and chin would seem to be the most rewarding place to stab”), shadowing Kafka's lineage (grandson of the butcher of Wossek) and those tales of Jewish ritual murder that are as old as anti-Semitism itself.53 For Begley, though, the accusation of auto-anti-Semitism is ”unfair and, in the end, beside the point.” He sees rather the conflicted drama of a.s.similation: ”The fear was of a crack in the veneer . . . through which might enter the miasma of the shtetl or the medieval ghetto.” In this version, affection and repulsion are sides of the same coin: For Begley, though, the accusation of auto-anti-Semitism is ”unfair and, in the end, beside the point.” He sees rather the conflicted drama of a.s.similation: ”The fear was of a crack in the veneer . . . through which might enter the miasma of the shtetl or the medieval ghetto.” In this version, affection and repulsion are sides of the same coin: It would have been surprising if he, who was so repelled by his own father's vulgarity at table and in speech, had not been similarly repelled by the oddities of dress, habits, gestures and speech of the very Jews of whom he made a fetish, because of the community spirit, cohesiveness, and genuine emotional warmth he was convinced they possessed.

It's an awkward argument that struggles to recast repulsion as ”the c.u.mulative effect on Kafka of the ubiquitous anti-Semitism” all around him, which in turn caused a kind of ”profound fatigue,” compelling him to ”transcend his Jewish experience and his Jewish ident.i.ty” so that he might write ” about the human condition”-a conclusion that misses the point entirely, for Kafka found the brotherhood of man quite as incomprehensible as the brotherhood of Jews. For Kafka, the impossible thing was collectivity itself: What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself, and should stand very quietly in a corner, content than I can breathe.

Kafka's horror is not Jewishness per se, because it is not a horror only only of Jewishness: it is a horror of all shared experience, all shared being, all of Jewishness: it is a horror of all shared experience, all shared being, all genus genus. In a time and place in which national, linguistic and racial groups were defined with ever more absurd precision, how could the very idea of commonness not turn equally absurd? In his Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, fellow Austro-Hungarian Gregor von Rezzori presented the disquieting idea that the philo-Semite and the anti-Semite have something essential in common (the narrator is both): a belief in a fellow Austro-Hungarian Gregor von Rezzori presented the disquieting idea that the philo-Semite and the anti-Semite have something essential in common (the narrator is both): a belief in a collective Jewish nature, a Semiteness collective Jewish nature, a Semiteness. Kafka, by contrast, had stopped believing. The choice of belonging to a people, of partaking of a shared nature, was no longer available to him. He often wished it was not so (hence his sentimental affection for shtetl life), but it was was so. On this point, Begley quotes Hannah Arendt approvingly, though he does not pursue her brilliant conclusion: so. On this point, Begley quotes Hannah Arendt approvingly, though he does not pursue her brilliant conclusion: . . . These men [a.s.similated German Jews] did not wish to ”return” either to the ranks of the Jewish people or to Judaism, and could not desire to do so . . . not because they were too ”a.s.similated” and too alienated from their Jewish heritage, but because all traditions and cultures as well as all ”belonging” had become equally questionable to them.54 Jewishness itself had become the question. It is a mark of how disconcerting this genuinely Kafkaesque concept is that it should provoke conflict in Begley himself.

”My people,” wrote Kafka, ”provided that I have one.” What does it mean, to have a people? On no subject are we more sentimental and less able to articulate what we mean. In what, for example, does the continuity of ”Blackness” exist? Or ”Irishness”? Or ”Arabness”? Blood, culture, history, genes? Judaism, with its matrilineal line, has been historically fortunate to have at its root a beautiful answer, elegant in its circularity: Jewishness is the gift of a Jewish mother. But what is a Jewish mother? Kafka found her so unstable a thing, a mistranslation might undo her: Yesterday it occurred to me that I did not always love my mother as she deserved and as I could, only because the German language prevented it. The Jewish mother is no ”Mutter,” to call her ”Mutter” makes her a little comical. . . . ”Mutter” is peculiarly German for the Jew, it unconsciously contains, together with the Christian splendor, Christian coldness also, the Jewish woman who is called ”Mutter” therefore becomes not only comical but strange. . . . I believe it is only the memories of the ghetto that still preserve the Jewish family, for the word ”Vater” too is far from meaning the Jewish father. Yesterday it occurred to me that I did not always love my mother as she deserved and as I could, only because the German language prevented it. The Jewish mother is no ”Mutter,” to call her ”Mutter” makes her a little comical. . . . ”Mutter” is peculiarly German for the Jew, it unconsciously contains, together with the Christian splendor, Christian coldness also, the Jewish woman who is called ”Mutter” therefore becomes not only comical but strange. . . . I believe it is only the memories of the ghetto that still preserve the Jewish family, for the word ”Vater” too is far from meaning the Jewish father.

Kafka's Jewishness was a kind of dream, whose authentic moment was located always in the nostalgic past. His survey of the insectile situation of young Jews in Inner Bohemia can hardly be improved upon: ”With their posterior legs they were still glued to their father's Jewishness, and with their waving anterior legs they found no new ground.”

Alienation from oneself, the conflicted a.s.similation of migrants, losing one place without gaining another . . . This feels like Kafka in the genuine clothes of an existential prophet, Kafka in his twenty-first-century aspect (if we are to a.s.sume, as with Shakespeare, that every new century will bring a Kafka close to our own concerns). For there is a sense in which Kafka's Jewish question (”What have I in common with Jews?”) has become everybody's question, Jewish alienation the template for all our doubts.55 What is Muslimness? What is femaleness? What is Polishness? What is Englishness? These days we all find our anterior legs flailing before us. We're all insects, all What is Muslimness? What is femaleness? What is Polishness? What is Englishness? These days we all find our anterior legs flailing before us. We're all insects, all Ungeziefer Ungeziefer,56 now. now.

Six.

TWO DIRECTIONS FO R TH E NOVEL.

Those who knew what was going on here must give way to those who know little.

And less than little.

And finally as little as nothing.

-WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA, ”The End and the Beginning”

1.

From two recent novels, a story emerges about the future for the Anglo-phone Novel. Both are the result of long journeys. Netherland, Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill, took seven years to write; by Joseph O'Neill, took seven years to write; Remainder, Remainder, by Tom McCarthy, took seven years to find a mainstream publisher. The two novels are antipodal-indeed, one is the strong refusal of the other. The violence of the rejection by Tom McCarthy, took seven years to find a mainstream publisher. The two novels are antipodal-indeed, one is the strong refusal of the other. The violence of the rejection Remainder Remainder represents to a novel like represents to a novel like Netherland Netherland is, in part, a function of our ailing literary culture. All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us down is, in part, a function of our ailing literary culture. All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us down this this road the true future of the Novel lies. In healthy times, we cut multiple roads, allowing for the possibility of a Jean Genet as surely as a Graham Greene. These aren't particularly healthy times. A breed of lyrical realism has had the freedom of the highway for some time now, with most other exits blocked. For road the true future of the Novel lies. In healthy times, we cut multiple roads, allowing for the possibility of a Jean Genet as surely as a Graham Greene. These aren't particularly healthy times. A breed of lyrical realism has had the freedom of the highway for some time now, with most other exits blocked. For Netherland, Netherland, our receptive pathways are so solidly established that to read this novel is to feel a powerful, somewhat dispiriting sense of recognition. It is perfectly done-in a sense, that's the problem. It's so precisely the image of what we have been taught to value in fiction that it throws that image into a kind of existential crisis, as the photograph gifts a nervous breakdown to the painted portrait. our receptive pathways are so solidly established that to read this novel is to feel a powerful, somewhat dispiriting sense of recognition. It is perfectly done-in a sense, that's the problem. It's so precisely the image of what we have been taught to value in fiction that it throws that image into a kind of existential crisis, as the photograph gifts a nervous breakdown to the painted portrait.

Netherland is nominally the tale of Hans van den Broek, a Dutch stock a.n.a.lyst, transplanted from London to downtown New York with his wife and young son. When the towers fall, the family relocates to the Chelsea Hotel; soon after, a trial separation occurs. Wife and son depart once more for London, leaving Hans stranded in a world turned immaterial, phantasmagoric: ”Life itself had become disembodied. My family, the spine of my days, had crumbled. I was lost in invertebrate time.” Every other weekend he visits his family, hoping ”that flying high into the atmosphere, over boundless ma.s.sifs of vapor or small clouds dispersed like the droppings of Pegasus on an unseen platform of air, might also lift me above my personal haze”-the first of many baroque descriptions of clouds, light and water. On the alternative weekends, he plays cricket in Staten Island, the sole white man in a cricket club that includes Chuck Ramkissoon, a Trinidadian wiseacre, whose outsize dreams of building a cricket stadium in the city represent a Gatsbyesque commitment to the American Dream/human possibility/narrative with which Hans himself is struggling to keep faith. The stage is set, then, for a ”meditation” on ident.i.ties both personal and national, immigrant relations, terror, anxiety, the attack of futility on the human consciousness and the defense against same: meaning. In other words, it's the post-9/11 novel we hoped for. (Were there calls, in 1915, for the Lusitania novel? In 1985, was the Bhopal novel keenly antic.i.p.ated?) It's as if, by an act of collective prayer, we have willed it into existence. But is nominally the tale of Hans van den Broek, a Dutch stock a.n.a.lyst, transplanted from London to downtown New York with his wife and young son. When the towers fall, the family relocates to the Chelsea Hotel; soon after, a trial separation occurs. Wife and son depart once more for London, leaving Hans stranded in a world turned immaterial, phantasmagoric: ”Life itself had become disembodied. My family, the spine of my days, had crumbled. I was lost in invertebrate time.” Every other weekend he visits his family, hoping ”that flying high into the atmosphere, over boundless ma.s.sifs of vapor or small clouds dispersed like the droppings of Pegasus on an unseen platform of air, might also lift me above my personal haze”-the first of many baroque descriptions of clouds, light and water. On the alternative weekends, he plays cricket in Staten Island, the sole white man in a cricket club that includes Chuck Ramkissoon, a Trinidadian wiseacre, whose outsize dreams of building a cricket stadium in the city represent a Gatsbyesque commitment to the American Dream/human possibility/narrative with which Hans himself is struggling to keep faith. The stage is set, then, for a ”meditation” on ident.i.ties both personal and national, immigrant relations, terror, anxiety, the attack of futility on the human consciousness and the defense against same: meaning. In other words, it's the post-9/11 novel we hoped for. (Were there calls, in 1915, for the Lusitania novel? In 1985, was the Bhopal novel keenly antic.i.p.ated?) It's as if, by an act of collective prayer, we have willed it into existence. But Netherland Netherland is only superficially about 9/11 or immigrants or cricket as a symbol of good citizens.h.i.+p. It certainly is only superficially about 9/11 or immigrants or cricket as a symbol of good citizens.h.i.+p. It certainly is is about anxiety, but its worries are formal and revolve obsessively around the question of authenticity. about anxiety, but its worries are formal and revolve obsessively around the question of authenticity. Netherland Netherland sits at an anxiety crossroads where a community in recent crisis-the Anglo-American liberal middle cla.s.s-meets a literary form in long-term crisis, the nineteenth-century lyrical realism of Balzac and Flaubert. Critiques of this form by now amount to a long tradition in and of themselves. Beginning with what Robbe-Grillet called ”the dest.i.tution of the old myths of 'depth,' ” they blossomed into a phenomenology skeptical of realism's metaphysical tendencies; they peaked in that radical deconstructive doubt that questions the capacity of language itself to describe the world in any accuracy. They all of them note the (often unexamined) credos upon which realism is built: the transcendent importance of form, the incantatory power of language to reveal truth, the essential fullness and continuity of the self. Yet despite these theoretical a.s.saults, the American metafiction that stood in opposition to realism has been relegated to a safe corner of literary history, to be studied in postmodernity modules, and dismissed, by our most prominent public critics, as a fascinating failure, intellectual brinkmans.h.i.+p that lacked heart. Barth, Barthelme, Pynchon, Gaddis, David Foster Wallace-all misguided ideologists, the novelist equivalent of the socialists in Francis f.u.kuyama's sits at an anxiety crossroads where a community in recent crisis-the Anglo-American liberal middle cla.s.s-meets a literary form in long-term crisis, the nineteenth-century lyrical realism of Balzac and Flaubert. Critiques of this form by now amount to a long tradition in and of themselves. Beginning with what Robbe-Grillet called ”the dest.i.tution of the old myths of 'depth,' ” they blossomed into a phenomenology skeptical of realism's metaphysical tendencies; they peaked in that radical deconstructive doubt that questions the capacity of language itself to describe the world in any accuracy. They all of them note the (often unexamined) credos upon which realism is built: the transcendent importance of form, the incantatory power of language to reveal truth, the essential fullness and continuity of the self. Yet despite these theoretical a.s.saults, the American metafiction that stood in opposition to realism has been relegated to a safe corner of literary history, to be studied in postmodernity modules, and dismissed, by our most prominent public critics, as a fascinating failure, intellectual brinkmans.h.i.+p that lacked heart. Barth, Barthelme, Pynchon, Gaddis, David Foster Wallace-all misguided ideologists, the novelist equivalent of the socialists in Francis f.u.kuyama's The End of History and the Last Man. The End of History and the Last Man. In this version of our literary history the last man standing is the Balzac-Flaubert model, on the evidence of its extraordinary persistence. But the critiques persist, too. Is it really the closest model we have to our condition? Or simply the bedtime story that comforts us most? In this version of our literary history the last man standing is the Balzac-Flaubert model, on the evidence of its extraordinary persistence. But the critiques persist, too. Is it really the closest model we have to our condition? Or simply the bedtime story that comforts us most?

Netherland, unlike much lyrical realism, has some consciousness of these arguments, and so it is an anxious novel, unusually so. It is absolutely a post-catastrophe novel, but the catastrophe isn't terror, it's realism. In its opening pages, we get the first hint of this. Hans, packing up his London office in preparation to move to New York, finds himself b.u.t.tonholed by a senior vice president ”who reminisced for several minutes about his loft on Wooster Street and his outings to the 'original' Dean & DeLuca.” Hans finds this nostalgia irritating: ”Princ.i.p.ally he was pitiable-like one of those Petersburgians of yesteryear whose duties have washed him up on the wrong side of the Urals.” But then: unlike much lyrical realism, has some consciousness of these arguments, and so it is an anxious novel, unusually so. It is absolutely a post-catastrophe novel, but the catastrophe isn't terror, it's realism. In its opening pages, we get the first hint of this. Hans, packing up his London office in preparation to move to New York, finds himself b.u.t.tonholed by a senior vice president ”who reminisced for several minutes about his loft on Wooster Street and his outings to the 'original' Dean & DeLuca.” Hans finds this nostalgia irritating: ”Princ.i.p.ally he was pitiable-like one of those Petersburgians of yesteryear whose duties have washed him up on the wrong side of the Urals.” But then: It turns out he was right, in a way. Now that I, too, have left that city, I find it hard to rid myself of the feeling that life carries a taint of aftermath. This last-mentioned word, somebody once told me, refers literally to a second mowing of gra.s.s in the same season. You might say, if you're the type p.r.o.ne to general observations, that New York City insists on memory's repet.i.tive mower-on the sort of purposeful postmortem that has the effect, so one is told and forlornly hopes, of cutting the gra.s.sy past to manageable proportions. For it keeps growing back, of course. None of this means that I wish I were back there now; and naturally I'd like to believe that my own retrospection is in some way more important than the old S.V.P's, which, when I was exposed to it, seemed to amount to not much more than a cheap longing. But there's no such thing as a cheap longing, I'm tempted to conclude these days, not even if you're sobbing over a cracked fingernail. Who knows what happened to that fellow over there? Who knows what lay behind his story about shopping for balsamic vinegar? He made it sound like an elixir, the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

This paragraph is structured like a recognized cliche (i.e., We had come, as they say, to the end of the road We had come, as they say, to the end of the road). It places before us what it fears might be a tired effect: in this case, the nostalgia-fused narrative of one man's retrospection (which is to form the basis of this novel). It recognizes that effect's inauthenticity, its lack of novelty, even its possible dullness-and it employs the effect anyway. By stating its fears Netherland Netherland intends to neutralize them. It's a novel that wants you to know that it knows you know it knows. Hans invites us to sneer lightly at those who are ”p.r.o.ne to general observations,” but only as a prelude to just such an observation, presented in language frankly genteel and faintly archaic (”so one is told and forlornly hopes”). Is it cheap longing? It can't be because-and this is the founding, consoling myth of lyrical realism-the self is a bottomless pool. What you can't find in the heavens (anymore), you'll find in the soul. Yet there remains, in intends to neutralize them. It's a novel that wants you to know that it knows you know it knows. Hans invites us to sneer lightly at those who are ”p.r.o.ne to general observations,” but only as a prelude to just such an observation, presented in language frankly genteel and faintly archaic (”so one is told and forlornly hopes”). Is it cheap longing? It can't be because-and this is the founding, consoling myth of lyrical realism-the self is a bottomless pool. What you can't find in the heavens (anymore), you'll find in the soul. Yet there remains, in Netherland, Netherland, a great anxiety about the depth or otherwise of the soul in question (and thus a great anxiety about the depth or otherwise of the soul in question (and thus Netherland Netherland 's entire narrative project). Balsamic vinegar and Dean & DeLuca in the first two pages are no accident. All the cla.s.s markers are openly displayed, and it's a preemptive strike: is the reader suggesting that white middle-cla.s.s futures traders are less authentic, less interesting, less capable of interiority than anyone else? 's entire narrative project). Balsamic vinegar and Dean & DeLuca in the first two pages are no accident. All the cla.s.s markers are openly displayed, and it's a preemptive strike: is the reader suggesting that white middle-cla.s.s futures traders are less authentic, less interesting, less capable of interiority than anyone else?

Enter Chuck Ramkissoon. Chuck has no such anxieties. He is unselfconscious. He moves through the novel simply being, being, and with abandon, saying those things that the novel-given its late place in the history of the novel-daren't, for fear of seeming naive. It's Chuck who openly states the central metaphor of the novel, that cricket is ”a lesson in civility. We all know this; I do not need to say more about it.” It's left to Chuck to make explicit the a.n.a.logy between good behavior on pitch and immigrant citizens.h.i.+p: ”And if we step out of line, believe me, this indulgence disappears. What this means . . . is we have an extra responsibility to play the game right.” Through Chuck idealisms and enthusiasms can be expressed without anxiety: and with abandon, saying those things that the novel-given its late place in the history of the novel-daren't, for fear of seeming naive. It's Chuck who openly states the central metaphor of the novel, that cricket is ”a lesson in civility. We all know this; I do not need to say more about it.” It's left to Chuck to make explicit the a.n.a.logy between good behavior on pitch and immigrant citizens.h.i.+p: ”And if we step out of line, believe me, this indulgence disappears. What this means . . . is we have an extra responsibility to play the game right.” Through Chuck idealisms and enthusiasms can be expressed without anxiety: ”I love the national bird,” Chuck clarified. ”The n.o.ble bald eagle represents the spirit of freedom, living as it does in the boundless void of the sky.”I turned to see whether he was joking. He wasn't. From time to time, Chuck actually spoke like this.

And again:

”It's an impossible idea, right? But I'm convinced it will work. Totally convinced. You know what my motto is?””I didn't think people had mottoes anymore,” I said.”Think fantastic,” Chuck said. ”My motto is, Think Fantastic.”

Chuck functions here as a kind of authenticity fetish, allowing Hans (and the reader) the nostalgic pleasure of returning to a narrative time when symbols and mottoes were full of meaning and novels weren't neurotic, but could aim themselves simply and purely at transcendent feeling. This culminates in a reverie on the cricket pitch. Chuck instructs Hans to put his old-world fears aside and hit the ball high (”How else are you going to get runs? This is America”), and Hans does this, and the movement is fluid, unexpected, formally perfect, and Hans permits himself an epiphany, expressed, like all epiphanies, in one long, breathless, run-on sentence: All of which may explain why I began to dream in all seriousness of a stadium and black and brown and even a few white faces crowded in bleachers, and Chuck and me laughing over drinks in the members' enclosure and waving to people we know, and stiff flags on the pavilion roof, and fresh white sight-screens, and the captains in blazers looking up at a quarter spinning in the air, and a stadium-wide flutter of expectancy as the two umpires walk onto the turf square and its omelet-colored batting track, whereupon, with clouds scrambling in from the west, there is a roar as the cricket stars trot down the pavilion steps onto this impossible gra.s.s field in America, and everything is suddenly clear, and I am at last naturalized.

There are those clouds again. Under them, Hans is rendered authentic, real, natural natural. It's the dream that Plato started, and Hans is still having it.

But Netherland Netherland is anxious. It knows the world has changed and we do not stand in the same relation to it as we did when Balzac was writing. In is anxious. It knows the world has changed and we do not stand in the same relation to it as we did when Balzac was writing. In Pere Goriot, Pere Goriot, Balzac makes the wallpaper of the Pension Vauquer speak of the lives of the guests inside. Hans does not have quite this metaphysical confidence: he can't be Chuck's flawless interpreter. And so Balzac makes the wallpaper of the Pension Vauquer speak of the lives of the guests inside. Hans does not have quite this metaphysical confidence: he can't be Chuck's flawless interpreter. And so Netherland Netherland plants inside itself its own partial critique, in the form of Hans's wife Rachel, whose ”truest self resisted triteness, even of the inventive romantic variety, as a kind of falsehood.” It is she who informs Hans of what the reader has begun to suspect: plants inside itself its own partial critique, in the form of Hans's wife Rachel, whose ”truest self resisted triteness, even of the inventive romantic variety, as a kind of falsehood.” It is she who informs Hans of what the reader has begun to suspect: ”Basically, you didn't take him seriously.”She has accused me of exoticizing Chuck Ramkissoon, of giving him a pa.s.s, of failing to grant him a respectful measure of distrust, of perpetrating a white man's infantilizing elevation of a black man.

Hans denies the charge, but this conversation signals the end of Chuck's privileged position (gifted to him by ident.i.ty politics, the only authenticity to survive the twentieth century). The authenticity of ethnicity is shown to be a fake-Chuck's seeming naturalness is simply an excess of ego, which overflows soon enough into thuggery and fraud. For a while Chuck made Hans feel authentic, but then, later, the submerged anger arrives, as it always does: what makes Chuck more authentic than Hans anyway? It makes sense that Hans's greatest moment of antipathy toward Chuck (he is angry because Chuck has drawn him into his shady, violent business dealings) should come after three pages of monologue, in which Chuck tells a tale of island life, full of authentic Spanish names and local customs and animals and plants, which reads like a Trinidadian novel: Very little was said during the rest of that journey to New York City. Chuck never apologized or explained. It's probable that he felt his presence in the car amounted to an apology and his story to an explanation-or, at the very least, that he'd privileged me with an opportunity to reflect on the stuff of his soul. I wasn't interested in drawing a line from his childhood to the sense of authorization that permitted him, as an American, to do what I had seen him do. He was expecting me me to make the moral adjustment-and here was an adjustment I really couldn't make. to make the moral adjustment-and here was an adjustment I really couldn't make.

Once the possibility of Chuck's cultural authenticity is out of play, a possible subst.i.tute is introduced: world events. Are they they the real thing? During a snowstorm, Hans and Rachel have the argument everyone has (”She said, 'Bush wants to attack Iraq as part of a right-wing plan to destroy international law and order as we know it and replace it with the global rule of American force' ”), which ends for Hans as it ends for many people, though you get the sense Hans believes his confession to be in some way transgressive: the real thing? During a snowstorm, Hans and Rachel have the argument everyone has (”She said, 'Bush wants to attack Iraq as part of a right-wing plan to destroy international law and order as we know it and replace it with the global rule of American force' ”), which ends for Hans as it ends for many people, though you get the sense Hans believes his confession to be in some way transgressive: Did Iraq have weapons of ma.s.s destruction that posed a real threat? I had no idea; and to be truthful, and to touch on my real difficulty, I had little interest. I didn't care.