“Some Trick” by Helen DeWitt

This is a collection of short stories. DeWitt’s stories are ostensibly unrelated, but many focus on the themes of writing, artistic creation and integrity, and the business side of art. Being DeWitt, she throws in more than a few references to philosophy, mathematics, and the classics, as well as inserting her biting wit often. She comments of one character, “he wore a suit because hacks must dig for dirt in a suit.” Philosophizing on death, she has another character pontificate, “Nobody thinks God actually died: they think it was never alive in the first place.” Another character comments on the Japanese aesthetic, “haiku- it is an art of subtraction, an art with a horror of the extraneous, but it’s not so much that it has a horror of the extraneous as that it avoids histrionics, Western art gives the impression by contrast of being saturated with sincerity.” Not many characters in this collection are likable. Many seem to be trying too hard. Most are pompous, pedantic, and/or money grubbing. A few are memorable in their outrageousness. The depictions of the creative world DeWitt chose to display in this collection are of a most unflattering light.

“Your Name Here” by Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff

This novel is weird, very weird. There are autobiographical elements, it references its own creation often, there is a novel within the novel (that involves Orthodox Jewish charity and a futuristic luck-lottery machine), a large cache of “real” email correspondence, a primer on how to learn Arabic, and DeWitt is both a character in her own right and thinly disguised as the pseudonym, Rachel Zozanian. There are also many narrative voices that alternate between the chapters, including sections narrated by “you” the reader. It is all very odd. And brilliant. “It’s not that I think children should be seen and not heard. Why stop at children? How many adults generate utterances equivalent to the paragraph of Spinoza one could have read in the time taken up by the utterance? Chances are the utterances of Spinoza himself would not have achieved equivalence, because I can read 900 words a minute and it is unlikely Spinoza could speak at that speed, let alone speak at that speed while maintaining the level of excellence of his writing.”

Suicide is a reoccurring theme. “I have a large handsome apartment in Berlin, 450 euros a month. I came to Berlin partly because someone once recommended KaDeWe as a suicide spot and partly because I thought I should not be at large with a gun. There are 38 states where one can buy a gun without a license and where the police are not allowed to keep records of sales. A voice in the head had said Let’s buy a gun for purposes of research…. The body wandered the streets of New York. No one died. It got on a train and got off a train. No one died. It got on a train and got off a train. No one died. The gun and its bullets were buried behind the tennis court of a thirty-room Victorian frolic in Newport, Rhode Island. The body got on a plane and got off a plane.”

The stresses throughout the process of creating a novel is also a recurrent theme. “Stare at the screen. Tough it out. Don’t drink. Philip Pullman writes Three pages a day. Philip Pullman doesn’t drink. There’s a lesson to be learnt. It’s arsenic hour. I have a Bushmill’s on the rocks. I then have a brilliant idea. What if the book becomes Kaufmanesque in its self-absorption (and so destined to be a cult classic), what if it’s a book about a character who, unable to endure the influx of sounds, negotiates a contract permitting him to avoid speech by typesetting his book in TeX? Foiled by the sort of contractual minutiae seldom seen in fiction, he finds himself writing a book about a character who is unable to endure the influx of sounds, who in turn finds himself writing a book about a character who is unable to endure the influx of sounds, who in turn finds himself writing a book about a character…. A brilliant idea that will decrease the likelihood that the betazoid is my agent to, at an educated guess, 3.17 percent…. Philip Pullman doesn’t write this kind of agent-divesting drivel. Philip Pullman doesn’t drink. There’s a lesson to be learnt…. Will there be Munchkins? Will there be Flying Monkeys? What if. What if. What if. Forget the readers, forget the betazoid. What if I have no idea what happens next?”

DeWitt literally gets into the reader’s head. “You’re on page 475 and you still have no idea what’s going on. Zozanian has embarked on a book with your character, so now we have a book-within-a-book-within-a-book-within-a and you seem to be the minimost perestroikist in a nest of Gorbidolls. A cast of extraneous characters seems to be multiplying like rabbits. Rabbits in a Viagra trial. Rabbits in a Viagra trial designed to tackle the freak four-hour erection problem. Who are these people? What are they doing here? It’s like the finale of Blazing fucking Saddles…. Exakt. DeWitt has lost the plot.”

The novel is hilarious, even more so if you are familiar with DeWitt’s unique style of humor. “You’re reading Your Name Here, the new novel by Helen DeWitt. You’re not a typical reader. Sometimes you wonder if you’re a robot. Not only do you wonder if you’re a robot, you hope you’re a robot (and what force do “wonder” and “hope” have if you are?) because if you’re the kind of robot that’s capable of wondering whether it’s a robot and hoping that it is a robot you’re an exceptionally sophisticated robot, the triumph of an unknown Frankenstein, a creation that raises profound philosophical questions about the nature of consciousness, the self, persons, rights, language, if you watch pornography, play with kittens, explore philosophical questions this shows that you are a miracle of cybernetic art. If you’re not a robot, wondering if you’re a robot shows you’re the kind of person who sits around wondering if he’s a robot. If you’re a robot, it’s even more impressive that someone came up with a robot that could worry about whether it was the kind of self-obsessed geek who sits around wondering whether he’s a robot, your creator is a genius, you’d like to meet him, even though he’s probably the kind of person who sits around wondering if he’s a robot…. Maybe this is not the best book to be reading. A self-referential book that raises metaphysical questions as a pretext for talking about itself, doesn’t the book simply replicate the very neurosis that makes it so hard for you to be spontaneous except in the calculating, premeditated way that made you wonder whether you were a robot in the first place?”

“The English Understand Wool” by Helen DeWitt

This novella has all of the wry sense of humor one can expect from DeWitt. The narrator, a seventeen-year-old girl named Marguerite, is delightfully biting. Much of the story revolves around tailoring—thus the book’s title. Speaking of her Maman, Marguerite reveals, “Linen she did not have made up in London; she took it to a Thai seamstress in Paris. She had in fact accommodated the woman’s desire to move to Paris from Bangkok; it is, after all, quite simple to make brief visits to Paris from Marrakech, whereas one cannot always go to Bangkok when one has had an idea for a frock, a redingote, a smoking.”

As to Marguerite’s home life with Maman, “It was her practice to spend Ramadan abroad…. The servants remained on full pay. They might stay in the riad in Marrakech or visit their families, as they pleased. It would be mauvais ton to be waited upon by persons who were fasting. It would be mauvais ton to make the exigencies of religion an excuse to curtail their salaries.” And her upbringing, “One must not expose adults to childish prattle. She insisted that I should learn bridge at the age of seven because one cannot always assume that a child can be kept out of sight.”

During the course of the novella it does not give too much away to reveal, “At the age of 20 months I had disappeared from the house of Bernard and Marie-Therese Dessanges, the guardians appointed in my parents’ wills should both parents die while I was a minor, and a great deal of money left for me, some 80 million euros… had disappeared.” Marguerite takes it all in stride, “It seemed to me that it would be mauvais ton to unleash the forces of the law on the Thai seamstress, or a young man working his way up through the ranks of a hotel in Geneva…. I was conscious, above all, of extreme anxiety not to be guilty of mauvais ton…. I was conscious of a slighter anxiety. It would not be possible for quite some time, perhaps years, to go to the Thai seamstress—I would inevitably be followed, and whether or not this led to the apprehension of the fugitives it would certainly cause chagrins. Where was I to find a seamstress?”

After her kidnapping has become world news, it seems to surprise Marguerite that others do not comprehend her relationship to her Maman, “I accept that the woman in the early photographs with the infant was my biological mother. At the time of her death, I am told, I was 18 months old. It goes without saying, I could not have made an intelligent choice of guardian at 18 months. Maman gave me the chance, many chances to show I was not a mediocrity, and in this way I earned the right to participate in the life bought with this money by a person of distinction. If I had not done so, she would not have been ungenerous; she would have made provision in accordance with my capacity.” Finally, Marguerite comes to an epiphany, “I had hesitated to approach the Thai seamstress, but I now saw that I had been foolish…. Those who understand clothes might understand the importance of the relationship, but the investigators had shown themselves to be wholly oblivious to matters of taste.”

“Recovery” by Helen DeWitt

This novella by DeWitt packs a lot into every line. It is serious, funny, and just a little bit strange. DeWitt takes the everyday and turns it on its head to reveal the inner weirdness inside all of us. With lines like, “when you pass a strip mall, what you’re seeing is people who imagined a whole market out there in the world of people just as pathetic as they were. Enough pathetic people so that a store catering to the needs of pathetic people could cover its overheads and turn a profit,” she invokes biting criticism of modern society, capitalist culture, and fellow humanity, all with wit. One of her characters has a cheese-fetish, along with his alcohol addiction, “of course, you could say, it’s not in the spirit of one day at a time. But see, I might be able to handle ordering $3,722 worth of cheese on one day but not be able to handle buying, you know, an 8 oz stick of Monterrey Jack on an as-needed basis daily or bi-daily or weekly for years. Maybe that single day is the only day I can count on being able to get through, you know, the shit associated with cheese acquisition.” DeWitt has the gift of making something so bizarre seem so rational. It is this taut blend between the fantastic and the mundane that makes “Recovery” such a perfect story.

“Lightening Rods” by Helen DeWitt

This novel is humorous and raunchy. Some of the jokes are so sly you don’t quite know whether she really means them to be funny at all. The protagonist, Joe, has had an unsuccessful career as a salesman- both trying to sell Encyclopedia Brittanica’s and Electrolux vacuum cleaners. He fantasizes while he masturbates everyday after work in his trailer. And that’s what leads him to his great innovation. He thinks of all the companies that have had problems with over-eager, go-getter-type salesmen, who inevitably get the firm into trouble with sexual harassment suits. The companies want to keep the sales, while avoiding expensive litigation. Therefore, Joe starts up a company, Lightening Rods, which is a temp firm that hires personal assistants who on the side offer anonymous sex in the handicap bathroom stall. The path is initially rocky, but eventually rewarding. On the way to success, Joe ends up inventing toilets that go up and down to help out dwarfs, as well as toilet seats that expand and contract to help the obese and the skinny. One of his personal assistant hires goes on to become a Supreme Court Justice, while two others have successful careers in business. The book is complete farce, but with a thin veneer of social commentary. The story moves along at a brisk pace and Joe’s side thoughts are worth the read in and of themselves. DeWitt has a knack for portraying characters who should seem ludicrous in a highly realistic light. No matter how farcical, she does not skimp on developing their personalities and quirks to make them human. She says she developed the idea of a lightening rod when she got repeatedly fucked in the ass by the publishing industry during the travails of her first novel. This is revenge at its humorous best. This is no “Last Samurai”, but it is an entertaining read.

“The Last Samurai” by Helen DeWitt

DeWitt had originally intended for the title of this book to be “The Seven Samurai” and interspersed throughout the novel you read excerpted scenes of Kurosawa’s classic, relayed by the characters. The two main characters are an Oxford-educated American single mom, struggling to make it financially, in early 1990’s London and her precocious young son, Ludo. The narrative begins with the mother, but soon rotates between the two. She has unorthodox child-rearing habits, which include teaching the child ancient Greek at age four ala James Mill, riding the Tube around in loops while studying to avoid paying the heating bill at her flat, and sitting in the National Portrait Gallery reading books all day. The child becomes quite the linguist and polymath, but eventually wants to find out who his father is. This is something his mother refuses. She feels that watching and re-watching “The Seven Samurai” will imbue the child with enough of the manly qualities. Without giving away much, the father’s identity turns out to be a disappointment to the boy and he starts a quest to find a better dad from semi-famous literati, academics, and artists in the London scene. The book is at once poignant and hilarious. Not having a kid myself, I imagine it to be a fine child-rearing manual in its own way- with do’s and don’ts aplenty. The quality of writing is superb throughout and the amount of research to include the level of detail in the book is tremendous. DeWitt studied classics at Oxford herself and so the book is littered with references to Homer and Lucretius. There is a short digression into the best way to teach a child ancient Greek, complete with practice exercises in Greek script, and a shorter digression into Japanese Kanji characters that fill up a page of text. She intersperses Arabic, Hebrew, French, and Italian- all without it feeling contrived. The pace is fast, as you journey with the boy and his mother through his adolescence as he tries to find some semblance of normality in a world he doesn’t quite fit into or understand. Typical of the boy’s adventures around London was this, “I could try the hunchbacked midget costume I had to wear when we went to see The Crying Game- but I thought I might have trouble getting into a bar even as a midget sensitive about his height.” More seriously, you can sense the anger and frustration in DeWitt’s prose amidst the humor. It is an anger at the conventional, anger at academia, anger at the publishing industry, and anger at those institutions deemed to be the modern sanctifiers of taste. As DeWitt writes in an afterward, “it’s much harder to imagine what one might have been with better chances, greater challenges. Since there is no age at which the opportunities offered Ludo are the norm, we don’t know whether he was a genius or not- only that he is an oddity in a society with very low expectations.”