Review: The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (Man Booker Prize 2004)

[jawnbc]

In general I’m loathe to jump on the pop culture bandwagon. Often “buzz” for me is like the perennial set of clippers: it’s buzzed short, it’s become inconsequential. I tend to enjoy things when any expectations are wholly self-constructed. Like a new Zhang Yimou film, or Mary Chapin Carpenter CD. When it comes to books, I’m even less inclined to expect things from the word. Very few authors write uniformly excellent books, or even progressively better books over time. I tend to support queer literature, but am no less scrutinous. I won’t offer praise of a book because another pervert wrote it.

So take me at my word when I say Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty is an outstanding book. It’s wholly readable and tells a great tale. It offer insight into a particularly compelling time in (English) history: the ascendancy of Thatcher and the spectre of HIV/AIDS. The characters and dialogue are deftly crafted. This is a believable story.

To tease you a bit: there’s lots of sex, drugs and politics. Infused througout the book are discussions about knowledge, beauty, culture, power, values and carnality. Fans of Bourdieu’s work might see this as a novel about cultural and social capital; I certainly did. Or a brilliant treatise on social climbers; I thought that as well. But it’s a lot more.

Like any literary prize, the Booker can be awarded based on whose turn it is. Atwood’s win for the Blind Assasin arguably is for her entire body of work; I don’t anyone who’s read Amsterdam that thinks McEwan deserved any prize for that. Still Roy’s The God of Small Things, Swift’s Last Orders are among winners that clearly were based on the book’s merits. I would put The Line of Beauty in the latter camp. Hollinghurst is too young (50) and not prolific enough (this is his 4th novel) to be getting a gong for his life’s work.

When it comes to buying queer lit I try (whenever plausible) to buy from queer or queer friendly booksellers. They often carry titles the mainstream stores won’t--and we need that. In Canada, Little Sisters hasn’t just sold lots of stuff no one else will: they fought all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada against censorship at the Canada Customs agent level (they won on principle, but systemic issues mean the substantive changes haven’t happened yet).

Comments

[beastbriskett.livejournal.com]

Little Sisters is currently in another litigation regarding two volumes of Meatmen comic anthologies to which I contributed. I've been asked to testify, but haven't been called at this point. I look forward to the time when the tight-sphinctered prudes of Customs get slapped down HARD!

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Mr Hollinghurst's protagonists, and dare we say Mr Hollinghurst himself, have this thing for dark meat, don't they? And would someone please explain to me why gay authors have a thing for Henry James this season? Is James the new Wilde, suddenly rediscovered as an icon and therefore the subject of deification? When does Stephen Frye announce his next film?

The omniscient poor houseguest as narrator does have its precedence in Jane Austen, but I think Holli's truer roots lie somewhere between Edith Wharton and F. Scott Fitzgerald - can't you see cousin Nick doing lines of cocaine with Daisy?

I know what you mean when you accuse his earlier work of being precious, but I'm not sure it's entirely so. For instance The Swimming Pool Library could be redeemed by having a slightly older hero: 25 is simply too young for his louche and world weary Weltanschauung: were he 30 the character and the events which happen around him would be far more convincing.

As to the Booker itself, I'm always impressed by the retrenchant provincialism which led to the prize's creation. Those ghastly Americans, you know, are writing everything, everywhere, and no one is paying attention to London as a world publishing centre anymore! &c &c &c. That the prize is opened to the entire Commonwealth, and in fact to nations which are part of the Anglosphere but not part of the Commonwealth, just as long as they're not, not, not American, suggests the nativist fear of imperial collapse to a greater extent than the rise of the skinhead subculture.

Having done my bit to sound pompous about the modern queer novel in England, I really did enjoy the book, goshdarnit. Just please drop the frigging Henry James!

[jawnbc]

Didn't Cher (pronounced, strangely, Shur here in Oz) sing a song about him? Just like Henry James?

Listen there's an English language book prize Americans can't win. Tant pis. Non-Americans aren't eligible for the Pulitzer in fiction--so what's the diff? Dual/multinationals are eligible, and my gal Carol Shields got shortlisted twice (shoulda won for Unless and now she's dead! Dead! DEAD!).

I'd rather get a Booker than a Pulitzer: you get shortlisted, then you have to pretend to not go insane at dinner whilst the jury deliberates upstairs. That's totally evil and makes the prize so much cooler.

I'm skipping the Toíbin because of the James thing.

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Oh I don't have any problem with their being a national prize. The UK may have one for UK writers, Oz for Ozzies, Canada for Canadians - no problem. It's this silly everybody-but-Americans-because-you're-so-big-and-are-going-to-run-away-with-the ball nonsense that I find so...parochial.

The Pulitzer doesn't impress me much; I prefer the National Book Awards, and they do the dinner-while-the-judges-deliberate thing too (where do you think Booker copied it from?).

I love Toibin's other fiction - it's this semi-biographical recreation of James's life that leaves me uninspired.

[jawnbc]

Well the field of Commonwealth literature existed before the Booker. And the Oirish have remained in that classification, even if Ireland left the Commonwealth in the mid-50s.

And I think it's more the "all-too-often-you-folks-overly-commidify-and-banalize-things" more than fear of domination based on quality. Cultural industries blah blah blah. The Nobel and IMPAC are, ostensibly, a global game.

But I promise: when I win the Booker I'll blow you kisses . . .

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Ireland left in '48, didn't they? After the Taiseaoch got huffy in Canada in fact. And certainly the idea of Commonwealth literature existed before the prize did (Mulk Raj Anand in Bloomsburty etc etc), but then the same can be said of American literature with regard to its attendant prizes.

We don't discuss the Nobel: the literature prize becomes sillier and sillier with each passing year.