Arrgh, the Hunger!

Wow, it’s been three weeks. Looks like I’m really taking to this blogging thing. I guess Will Leitch was right; it is hard work. Especially, when you’re working on something else. But excuses, excuses. I’m still reading Sacred Hunger. Just starting to get in the flow. I wanted to finish it by June but it’s not looking good. I’m only 200 pages into a 630-page book. It was a little slow to begin with, the ship didn’t sail until around a 100 pages in. Now, I’ve got to look up all the nautical terms in order to correctly place each character in my mind. Scuppers, the punt, the forecastle, all that stuff. Reminds me on my wallpaper as a kid which had ships on it and my headboard which was a “real” ship’s wheel.

I’m starting to see why it won the Booker. It’s a well-written book and some of language is beautiful. There are times when I wish Unsworth would step out and take a few more chances. The book lends itself to points of magic realism but he pretty much plays it straight. There’s the beginning of Part 4 which I particularly liked: “There are moments in anyone’s life when some blend of circumstances, some consonance of surroundings and situation and character, show him in light of a peculiarly characteristic, make him seem more intensely himself–to the observer, that is: the subject will not be aware of it. He seems to us then to be immobilized, taken out of time – or he steps, rather, into some much older story.” And later in the same graph: “He is there imperishably, wild with his jealousy, vague with the peace of the day. He is always, always to be found there.”

Unsworth seems to be saying, look, notice this character here, this is his essence. And yet there is something vague about it. For you think of your own moment where you are “intensely yourself”. Occasionally, those moments reveal themselves then and there, but usually that occurs later. Maybe this will unravel a bit later in the book for he brings up the blind mulatto here who he cites in the prologue as sitting at the entrance to the labyrinth of his story.

So that’s where I’m at. I’m going to keep going but I’m thinking of adding a non-fiction book, possibly Interesting Times. All of this while the Lakers march into the Finals and my birthday, and more books no doubt, approach.