Pond Scum: Sex for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
By Steve Finbow
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So, let’s talk about sex… The train – packed with businesspeople squawking into their mobile phones as if they were pant-hooting their fellow homo habilis across miles of false-sabre-tooth-cat infested savannah – pulls out of Kings Cross station and I settle down with my coffee and start to read the book I chose for the journey. This is supposed to be the ‘quiet’ carriage but does not stop would-be Donald Trumps informing colleagues of their whereabouts. What is it with this need for narrative? ‘I am on the train’ and ‘We are just pulling in to Peterborough’ and ‘We are just pulling out of York’ – poor Michael. And what is with the language? ‘I believe that is an affirmative and ongoing assumption’ and ‘We will endeavour to arrive at a qualitative assessment of your ceramic requirements and fast-track your refurbishment requests.’ Say what? I look around, shake my head and tsk-tsk. I will leave it 20 minutes and then complain. I am already getting strange looks from my fellow travellers. Not only am I not reading Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling, I am reading J. Eric Miller’s Animal Rights & Pornography and under my seat, for purely practical and scientific research, I have secreted a small goat (not really).
By Nicholas Allanach
Before we get to the sex...I have just finished reading T.C. Boyle’s The Inner Circle. I am a big Boyle fan and have read everything he has written except Riven Rock (that’s next) and Budding Prospects – I am not sure about this one: novels about weed are as irksome and somnific as people on the stuff. Let us look at Boyle’s oeuvre. His writing falls into three vague categories: the short stories: Descent of Man, Greasy Lake, If the River Was Whiskey (all collected in one edition as T.C. Boyle Stories), Without a Hero, After the Plague, and Tooth and Claw; then there are the post-historical novels: Water Music, World’s End, The Road to Wellville, Riven Rock, and The Inner Circle; and then the – what I will call – paradigm/paradox novels: Budding Prospects, East is East, The Tortilla Curtain, A Friend of the Earth, and Drop City (although Drop City could be post-historical). Hmmm…
So, almost to the sex part now… Boyle is a consummate short-story writer. Read them. Go on. You can tell he studied under John Cheever and Raymond Carver and is a big fan of Robert Coover. There are no fat sentences, no obese paragraphs. His sentences are lean and mean and his paragraphs twist and gristle with wit and precision. The first piece of writing I ever read by Boyle was the short story ‘Greasy Lake’ which appeared in Granta 9 (Autumn 1983). I bought the edition because it contained the short story Boris by John Berger. This volume also introduced me to the so-called magical realists: Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa. And looking back through Granta’s archives, I realise I also discovered Patrick Marnham – The Man Who Wasn't Maigret: A Portrait of Georges Simenon, Graham Swift, James Wolcott, and the incomparable Russell Hoban – check out Riddley Walker. But amongst this treasure chest of textual topaz, prose peridots, and literary lapis lazuli, ‘Greasy Lake’ shone like a glob of animal fat on my new black Levi’s. At that time, I wrote bad pretentious poetry – some say I still do – influenced heavily by the ‘Martian’ poets Craig Raine and Christopher Reid, mixed with a smattering of Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and a soupcon of Stéphane Mallarmé; but it was ‘Greasy Lake’ which made me want to write prose. Yes, I can hear you all bemoaning the day I opened that copy of Granta.
So, to the main point of the column – sex… For all you Boyle-less readers, here is a schoolroom-like graded breakdown of T.C.’s novels and short stories:
Title
Descent of Man
Water Music
Budding Prospects
Greasy Lake
World’s End
If the River Was Whiskey
East is East
The Road to Wellville
Without a Hero
The Tortilla Curtain
Riven Rock
A Friend of the Earth
After the Plague
Drop City
The Inner Circle
Tooth and ClawGrade
A
A-
?
A+
A
A-
A
A-
A
A
?
A
A
A+
A+
A
That is a whacking ‘A’ average over 14 books. Not bad. I cannot think of many of Boyle’s (born 1948) contemporaries who would rate such a score: Martin Amis (born 1949), although Success, Money, London Fields, and The Information match and sometimes surpass Boyle for style, humour and satire, Amis is let down by his short stories. Ian McEwan (born 1948): it is only with Atonement and Saturday that McEwan has begun to broaden his subject matter, although his short stories are nearly as good as Boyle’s. Paul Auster (born 1947): Auster comes close but I would give Oracle Nights a C and In the Country of Last Things a C-. I would argue that the only contemporary writer who gives T.C. a run for his money is Denis Johnson (born 1949): check out Angels, The Stars at Noon, and the brilliant non-fiction Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond. To conclude, here is Boyle on writing:
First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can't see or hear or smell or taste, you have something. Something new. Something of value. Something to hold up and admire. And then? Well, you've got a jones, haven't you? And you start all over again, with nothing.
So, finally, and it’s about time, we get to discuss sex… Darn! I have run out of space. But writing is a bit like Tantric sex – or karezza, if you so desire, for both male and female – the writer delays closure – orgasm – as long as possible. Writing this column is a lot like Tantric sex: it allows me to – and I paraphrase – experience my cellular memory and clear up the physical remnants of my past. I will write about sex. I will. I promise. However, for now, like that money-shot blowjob all men wait for at the end of a session, I will save it fellator.
Click here to read previous Pond Scum columns.
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Click here for Steve Finbow's bio and a list of works published.
© 2005 Me Three
