I know my review of Jacobson’s The Finkler Question was probably a bit harsh, so I thought I would give him another try. I’ve had Redback on my book shelves, sitting unread and unloved for goodness knows how long, so it seemed an obvious supplemental read to Finkler.
Jacobson isn’t alone amongst novelists for mining his past for material in his early novels. Redback‘s central character, Karl Leon Forelock comes from the northern English town of Partington, the wettest spot in Europe (Jacobson grew up in Prestwich which is in Greater Manchester). Partington is the most depressing, crime ridden and deprived town in the universe – Jacobson obviously didn’t have particularly happy memories of Prestwich! Forelock somehow manages to gain a place at Cambridge, eventually graduating with a double starred first in Moral Decencies from Malapert college. (Jacobson went to Downing College where he studied English, and emerged with the slightly less impressive 2:2). After university Forelock secures funding from the CIA to go to Australia. It’s never clear what he is supposed to be doing for the CIA there – there’s no-one in particular to spy on, and all he seems to do is go to parties. The publisher’s summary of the novel says his role is to “teach the Australians how to live” which is meaningless surely? Anyway, it gives Jacobson a reason to take his character to Australia where Jacobson himself spent three years teaching, and this is where the majority of the events of the novel take place.
The novel’s descriptions of the Australian wildlife and way of life is tired and cliche-ridden – we know Australian abounds with dangerous and poisonous animals. Australians probably wouldn’t mind the novel’s portrayal of themselves as heavy drinkers and uncultured but again no cliche is left on the shelf. As the novel’s publisher puts it: “Leon quickly discovers that there are some natives who believe that they have an education to pass on in return. But it is at the hands of the women in Australia that Leon receives his most painful, and on occasions his most pleasurable, lessons.” Which sounds awful doesn’t it? They are trying to promote the novel as a sex comedy, and while there are element of ‘Carry On Down Under’ about the whole affair (Forelock has a prolonged menage a trois with a pair of enthusiastic Australian synchronised swimmers for example) the comedy has not aged well.
Throughout the novel the narrator (Forelock) refers every few pages to his having received a bite from a Redback spider that drastically changes his character and outlook on life (although sadly not his attitudes towards women):
“in a foul, dilapidated bush privy, way up in the Bogong high plains, the Redback sucks her teeth and waits her turn.“
This bite only comes at the very end of the novel, and it’s not clear why it changes his character, in what way, and why the reader should care. If this is symbolism for a traumatic and transformative experience then I am not sure what it stands for, but by this point I didn’t care either.
The blurb to the Bantam Press hardback edition of Redback claims that “the author is the most devastatingly funny novelist writing in English today” Not “one of the most devastatingly funny writers” but “the most devastating”, and not just of English writers but of those “writing in English”. That was a bold claim given that in 1987 when this novel was first published Douglas Adams was writing the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Terry Pratchett was writing The Colour of Magic, and Stella Gibbons, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller and Sue Townsend to name just a few were still active. Kingsley Amis to whom Jacobson owes the most obvious debt had just won the Booker Prize for The Old Devils. If that hyperbole wasn’t enough, the blurb back page also quotes the Sunday Times as describing Jacobson as “the most dangerously funny writer in the English language”, a quote that is still used on the book’s listing on Amazon and elsewhere to this day, although I wasn’t able to track it down to source. I know ‘quite amusing but not laugh out loud funny’ wouldn’t have sold as many books, but it would have been a lot more honest.
One of the principles of comic writing Jacobson outlined in his speech to the Royal Literary Society I referenced in my previous post was not to give your characters ‘funny’ names, because Dickens had used them all. This was obviously a lesson learnt from experience, because almost all the characters in Redback have unfunny funny names: Montserrat Tomlinsom, Vance Kelpie, Hartley Quibell, Ruddles Carmody, etc, etc. The comedy is also very crude at times, not least in the novel’s opening anecdote when undergraduate Forelock meets “a wholesome young Australian girl with powerful mandibles and an MA in fine art“. They hit it off, but in his rooms later that evening, “after a heavy supper of pasta and fish … the chemistry decides to play up” and the sex misfires. “He falls asleep on his back with a fart and sweats and snores“. He wakes in the morning, “relieved to discover that the girl has gone; but an odd feeling, an unaccustomed tingling of the skin, a sensation of discomfort and unease around the heart, causes him, still on his back, to cast an eye over his person, whereupon he finds that she has left a little memento of herself – a Freudian gift, hard, compact, warm, in its own way perfectly formed, a faecal offering smelling of fish and pasta (of tagliatelle marinara) – nestling amongst the soft hairs of his chest, only inches from his gaping mouth.”
If you find that funny, Redback might be the novel for you. But I found it entirely forgettable – I only finished a few days ago but in the course of writing this review had to go back and check how it ends (did I really finish it?) only to find that it doesn’t really end at all, it just peters out. Like this review.
The Reading Bug 