BOOK REVIEW: Night Without End by Alistair Maclean (1958)

**1/2 Stars

Alistair MacLean is not a good writer but he's OK at genre concept. This story is a survivalist murder-mystery. He is also a writer I have had a love affair with for years. He’s a guy who was commercially successful in his time only to have an unimpressive life in the reprints circuit. To be fair MacLean is not a terrible writer but the fact that there was never one Great Novel by him also tells you something. While his prose are frequently tight and engrossing they are also prone to inconsistent execution and repetition. And on top of all that he was egregiously unoriginal. Hitchcock promoted self-mimicry to support his own body of work but for MacLean the notion won’t float; he simply lacked the finessing. 

And MacLean didn’t only copy himself either. To get away from the maritime theme prevalent in his previous works Night Without End presents a cast straight out of an Agatha Christie novel and utilizes a cold, snow affected environment to further echo her style. There is a boxer, a pompous aristocrat, an actor, a self-effacing nurse, a priest, a trusty sidekick and a hyper-instinctual dog called Balto. OK, that last character is more like something out of boys adventure than a Christie plot but the ensemble cast and “not-everyone is what they seem to be” approach surely is.

Nonetheless, it should also be acknowledged that Maclean had no ambition to be a literary giant and I have always been happy to look past his hackneyed storylines. Especially in the ones written in the first person. His antagonists are frequently cartoonish and the protagonists always amusing, hyper-masculine, stoic and quick to express how insensitive they are at every turn. But there is also plenty of evocative description, too. For instance this line, “Tonight its desolate threnody boomed and faded, boomed and faded in the lower registers of sound with an intensity which I had seldom heard, while its fingers plucked at the tightly strung guy ropes of the radio antenna […] to provide its own whistling obbligato of unearthly music.” Pretty lyrical, especially since this is supposed to be the thoughts of a grizzled man’s-man.

The first person approach used in Night Without End also helps soften the silliness of the situations arrived at. For instance the coldness of the environment and its effect on the cast is employed throughout the story. We begin with descriptions of inhuman levels of coldness and it quickly becomes difficult for MacLean ratchet this threat up. Not that this stops him from trying. This is where the trick of a first person narrative works its magic. We don’t need the protagonist to be reliable, we just need him to be human. And what is more human than a bit of hyperbole and a lack of perspective?

In the end that was MacLean’s problem as a writer. He was far too human. Who knows what led MacLean to be so inconsistent. Maybe it was his drinking? I do wonder. There are many great moments in his books that hint that he could have been an exceptional genre-author. It is these moments - and his pulp approach to writing - that allow me to ignore his choice of characters, over-the-top-masculinity and ludicrous plot complications. Night Without End finishes with a perfect example of him being almost brilliant but ultimately delivering a terrible choice as a writer. We are momentarily given a 'what would you do?' passage that the reader should have been left hanging with. Instead he opts for a heavy handed Old Testament finale. A shame.

BOOK REVIEW: Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis (1985)

*** 1/2 Stars

Fiction dubbed transgressional has been around for a while. Jean Genet got started back in the 1940s and then there is Henry Miller and of course Hubert Selby Junior, to name a few. So shocking people and challenging what we might call morals is nothing new. Brett Easton Ellis started his foray into this genre when he was only 21 with Less Than Zero. And it is this issue of maturity that colours many readers view of the book.

Personally, I have a bifurcated view on that issue. In this book there is clear evidence that he was working from a well-considered set of rules when he began writing. For instance, his sentences are short and clean and he avoids the use of adjectives to describe anything. Given that this is a book that is written in the first person this is an impressive feat. More importantly, this austere approach accentuates the protagonist’s soulless view of the world. In terms of well-considered prose I give him credit where credit is due. It's also very readable. How many people have started this book and not finished it? I'll bet dollars to donuts the ratio is exceptional.

On the other hand you cannot look past the content which is, simply put, confronting. I believe that readers end up disliking the book because of the hollowness of the characters that fill this world and I tend to agree myself. For me it is a contradiction in terms to create a work of fiction that so single minded in its vision. There is no sense of wonder here, just a description of feckless people who are prisoners to wealth, a small world view, instant gratification and its corollary addictions. There is not a single moment when the author asks us to feel sorry for these people. On the contrary the characters become increasingly profligate as the story unfolds. It is all one-way traffic.

Bottom line, I take this book as an inevitable and therefore an acceptable entry into popular culture. One of the charms of the 1980s, the period in which Less Than Zero is set, is that we embrace it for its garish fashion and unrestrained materialism. This combined with our affinity for the music of the era means there is a cartoon sensibility to everything related to the 1980s. In amongst all this someone was going to write at least one (if not a hundred) book of transgressional fiction about such an era. In my my mind it may as well have been an angry 21 year old who had a passion for concept and writing. Add to this that Ellis is clearly drawing on his own life experience to some degree or another I feel that Less Than Zero is a solid entry.