Zadie Smith's NW: Classic Modernism for the 21st Century

Almost 90 years ago, T.S. Eliot reviewed James Joyce's newest novel Ulysses with a huge amount of praise for its experimental style, noting that it's challenging structure acted as “a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.” For those of you unsure of the exact impetus of the movement that came to be known as Modernism (which is all of us - even, I suspect, people who hold Phd's on the subject, as it is so determinedly slippery and elusive), a rough approximation is that its practitioners wrote as a backlash to what came before: challenging representation at a time, following the First World War, that the world was reeling from a global conflict so totally devastating and insidious, that all felt that the world had fundamentally changed for the worse. A classic, and to my mind insurmountable piece of work reflecting this was Eliot's own poem 'The Wasteland': possibly the bleakest piece of poetry engaging with the state of the world ever written. 

Another face of Modernism, which I feel Zadie Smith allies herself more closely to in NW came in the form of writers such as Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield and E.M. Forster, whose main projects focused on the representation of the psyche; more self-aware and seemingly fragmented than before. In NW, she probes the psyches of interconnected NW residents, exploring the transition from adolescence to terrifying adult life with its pressures and complexity. What I really liked about NW, as in Zadie's previous novels, were the pithy aphorisms about life lived in the 21st century. Where it's different to her previous works is the determined change of register between narratives: for philosophy graduate Leah, the narrative is meandering, ponderous, measured: for sharp yet confused lawyer turned urbane yummy-mummy Natalie, her observations are organised into note-form - titled and brief, to help compile the case later. The allusions may be to our everyday; the slightly stereotypical characters drawn from cultural currency, but the form and the spirit is purely, classically Modernist. She's observing the world through the same prism as the Bloomsbury set; which could be an unbearable and alienating exercise, but, come on, it's Zadie. It's good. And a lot more fun that Mrs Dalloway. 

'Sea of Ink' - Review

An independent London-based publisher specialising in beautifully crafted translation novellas, Peirene Press's tagline reads 'Truly big stories in small packages.' Their newest offering, Sea of Ink by Swiss writer Richard Weihe more than delivers on this promise.

Detailing the artistic life of the celebrated Chinese painter and calligropher Bada Shanren in 106 pages and 10 of his most beautiful works, the novella opens with the political turmoil that accompanied the fall of the Ming Dynasty in the 17th century. The artist was born Zhu Da, Prince of the central-eastern city Yiyang. Following the invasion of rebel forces, he chose to seek the safety of life as a Taoist monk. During his time in the monastery, he honed his skill with ink and brush: and although he left that life behind, he remained rigorously devoted to the craft.

This story of royalty turned wandering artist is compelling in itself, but what makes this work so special and so lingering past the moment when you close it, is the way in which Weihe used his words to reflect Shanren's works. Both share qualities of ostensible simplicity; the starkness and conciseness of Weihe's prose cuts through the page like Shanren's strokes of ink: and yet similarly, the words like the paintings resonate with a wisdom and understanding of beauty that is utterly mesmeric. Shanren's work invites the viewer to 'colour' the images in its absence; much of the artist's power is in his ability to evoke what is visibly missing, and this novella is the perfect companion to its aesthetic. Unsurprisingly Weihe has a background in philosophy.

Bada Shanren, 'Catfish'

What struck me most about the novella, although it is a novel about art, is it equally a study of identity. Bada Shanren appears to shift and metamorphosize through every chapter, and not only in the various aliases he develops for himself. He is a consummate artist at core, but his other layers are complex and conflicting: a master of inner peace, an aesthete, a widower, a man who abandons his wife, a celebrity, a recluse.

I can't recommend this stunningly presented book enough. I read it in a very swift sitting, but got more pleasure and food for thought out of it than from many books four times its length.
Peirene approaches their literary findings as a curator of a gallery or museum exhibition, by publishing books in series according to specific themes. I'll be sure to pick up the related titles of the 'Small Epic: Unravelling Secrets' series to which Sea of Ink belongs.

If you'd like to know more about Peirene press, visit their website. They do a year's subscription offer which entitles you to three handpicked titles from their back catalogue. Guess where I'm doing my xmas gift shopping...

Small update: find out what's next to be published by Peirene here.