C10| Saturday/Sunday, February 22 - 23, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Apeirogon
By Colum McCann
Random House, 463 pages, $28BYTOBYLICHTIGA
10-YEAR-OLDPales-
tinian girl is killed
by the rubber bullet
of an Israeli border
guard as she returns
from a trip to the candy store. A
13-year-old Israeli girl is blown
apart by a Palestinian suicide
bomber as she strolls down Jerusa-
lem’s Ben Yehuda Street. Inmates
in Theresienstadt are forced to
stand in the freezing November
cold during morning reveille: The
camp commandant wants to test
out a little theory he’s developed
about the effects of hypothermia.
More happily: Two bereaved
fathers on opposing sides of a
conflict are united in their grief.
An artist creates an installation
from hollowed-out bullets, which
double as tiny bird feeders. Some
ancient scrolls are unearthed from
a jar in a cave, miraculously intact.
Colum McCann’s new novel,
“Apeirogon,” is a mosaic of 1,001
(note the number) narrative shards
and curios, mostly relating to Israel-
Palestine. These entries—which
count up to 500 and back down
again, as if to suggest a two-way
reading—consist of historical gob-
bets and pieces of pure fiction, song
lyrics and TV transcripts, news-
paper articles and school report
cards, meditations on art, math and
music. It takes some gumption to
wade into this most storied and
storeyed of conflicts, and to do so
with such sweep, but Mr. McCann
has always reveled in the whorls
and quirks of history, in the clash
of the personal and the political.
The author’s previous subjects
have included the ballet dancerRudolf Nureyev, the tightrope
walker Philippe Petit and the abo-
litionist Frederick Douglass. As in
“Apeirogon,” he has set vignettes
of these lives against a wider
backdrop of change and turmoil,
peopling his canvas with other,
more marginal figures, real and
invented.
Mr. McCann favors multiple plot
lines and perspectives, a patchwork
approach to storytelling. He is
attentive to rhythm and likes to
employ certain recurring rhetorical
techniques: verbless clauses; rhap-
sodic metaphors; long, rousing sen-
tences followed by short, punchy
ones. He’s good at blarney.
The heart and guiding structure
of “Apeirogon” follows an unre-
markable day in the life of Bassam
(a Palestinian) and Rami (an Is-
raeli), each of whom has violently
lost a daughter (see above). The
two first met in 2005, through the
charity Combatants for Peace; the
novel is set in 2016. Bassam and
Rami are real people, and their
tales and friendship have already
been well-documented. Rami is a
67-year-old graphic designer who
experienced horror as a soldier in
the Yom Kippur War. After finish-
ing his service, as Mr. McCann
tells us, he just wanted a normal
life, “anIsraelilife...thespectac-
ularly banal”—until that suicide
bomber intervened.
Bassam was jailed as a teenager
for throwing a (defunct) grenade
at an Israeli jeep. During seven
years in prison he was brutalized;
but he also came of age, renounced
violence and hatred. He watched a
documentary about the Shoah and
was deeply affected. (Jews too, it
seemed, had “families, histories,
shadows.”) He started a family
of his own, met Rami and cam-
paigned for peace. Then that
rubber bullet intervened.Now 48, he tours around with
Rami, giving speeches about rec-
onciliation, “a song of songs...
remembering, while listening.”
This “became their jobs: to tell the
story of what had happened to
their girls.” And as the two men
drive to meet each other for yet
another speech, the author tells
their story too—and the story of
the wider world around it.
There is, then, a vast banquet
of precooked pathos for Mr.
McCann to serve up, and serve it
up he does, often to sumptuous
effect. He is particularly adept at
scene-setting, at offbeat obser-
vation and humanizing detail:
Cigarettes in a prison are shared
between cells, swung on strips of
dental floss. Israeli soldiers in a
Palestinian village play a game of
Shoot the Water Tank: “The lower
the bullet on the tank, the finer
the marksman.” An onion is car-
ried at a demonstration to lessen
“the scorch of tear gas” in the
lungs.
Mr. McCann can tell a tale in a
few brushstrokes—which is just as
well, as many of the sections that
make up this 450-page novel are
no more than that: a single image,
a wry aside, a brief, bald statement
of fact; sometimes a photograph
or a drawing.
His archive sends us scurrying
in all sorts of nonlinear directions:
to the old wars that created the
current one, to the myths that lie
behind them all; to conversations
between philosophers, to medieval
battering rams, to the flight pat-
terns of birds. Mordechai Vanunu
reveals Israel’s nuclear secrets;
John Cage composes “4’33””;
Jesus is laid out on the cross;
Philippe Petit appears once more,
crossing Gehenna on his tightrope.
It is cleverly structured and
seductively told, and it is easy—and tempting—to be swept away
by its flow. But there is an inherent
cheapness to the act. Frequently
the author strains for connections,
tricking us with false sequiturs.
During his time in England,
Bassam mows the lawn; Israeli
bombing raids are often referred
to as “mowing the lawn.” François
Mitterrand feasts on a tiny song-
bird; Bassam’s daughter has her
head crushed like one.
Mr. McCann is boundlessly
inventive (see the image of an
ejected Israeli pilot “dreideling
through the air”) but too often
falls back on dime-store rhetoric,
his musicality drowning out mean-
ing. He can be sentimental, and
airily portentous: “The days hard-
ened like loaves: he ate them with-
out appetite.” We never get under
the skin of his characters.
When it comes to the wider
conflict, Mr. McCann is in trouble.
He is admirably even-handed, but
his method has left him confecting
a historical omelet: a dash of Holo-
caust leavened by a sprinkling of
Nakba; an outrage at a checkpoint
salted with the tears of an Israeli
mother. The Rami he presents
is alive to the “nostalgia” and “in-
dustry” of traumatic remembrance.
But the novel as a whole gains
its traction too readily from the
frisson of warmed-over tragedy.
An apeirogon, we are told on
more than one occasion, is a poly-
gon with “a countably infinite
number of sides.” It’s an apposite
metaphor for this impressive
project. But an apeirogon is also
two-dimensional. For all his metic-
ulous research and laudable inten-
tions, Mr. McCann has produced
a shimmering, illusive surface.Mr. Lichtig is the fiction and
politics editor of the Times
Literary Supplement.AGNES BAIN,the unforgettable
human train wreck at the center
of Douglas Stuart’s novel“Shug-
gie Bain” (Grove, 430 pages,
$27), has a method for restock-
ing booze when her supply runs
low. Dressed in her Sunday
finest, she fills a bag of groceries
at the local market and at the
last moment, as though it had
slipped her mind, adds a 12-pack
of lager. Then, feigning surprise
that she can’t afford the bill,
she puts all the food back on the
shelves. It doesn’t matter that
the shopkeeper has seen the
charade dozens of times, or that
Agnes’s benders are notorious
throughout her Glasgow neigh-
borhood. “Every day with the
make-up on and her hair done,
she climbed out of her grave and
held her head high,” Mr. Stuart
writes. “When she had disgraced
herself with drink, she got up
the next day, put on her best
coat, and faced the world.”
That world is Glasgow in the
1980s, a city “losing its purpose”
amid the shuttering of its
manufacturing industries.
Agnes’s worthless tomcatting
husband has run off and she
lives with her three kids on the
crumbs of weekly disability
checks in a rundown housing
scheme in the city’s northern
mining district. The older
children escape when they can,
leaving behind Shuggie, whom
Agnes has molded from infancy
into a companion, apologist and
enabler, the sole person who willendure her alcoholism forever.
Titling the novel after
Shuggie rather than the woman
who dominates him seems like
small gesture of defiance on
Mr. Stuart’s part. Shuggie is a
pariah twice over, both because
of his allegiance to his mother
and because of the effeminate
tendencies that single him out
to bullies and sexual predators.
Both are legion in the novel’s
unvarnished characterization of
Glasgow’s slums, where a brutal,
caveman masculinity has devel-
oped in proportion to how
trapped and useless the men
have become. If the portrayal is
unsparing, it is also familial, be-
cause Mr. Stuart vividly inhabits
the city’s singular “Weegie”
dialect and vocabulary. When
Agnes first moves to the hous-
ing project she assumes that
most of the neighboring women
are tying one on by midday as
well. “No, hen, we’re drinking
piss-cold tea,” one says scold-
ingly. “It’s only ye who’s neckin’
vodka like it was tap water.”
But most of all, “Shuggie
Bain” is a novel of addiction,
and as is the way with addicts,
Agnes belligerently demands the
bulk of the book’s attention.
There is a powerful, if wearying,
consistency in her perpetual
relapses, her outrageous lies and
public spectacles, as well as in
Shuggie’s thwarted attempts to
get out from under her. It’s the
obstinate Bain pride that pre-
vents this novel from becominga wallow in victimhood and
gives it its ruined dignity. Agnes
will suffer any humiliation for a
drink, but she’ll give you an ear-
ful at the first suggestion of pity.
The second volume of Lojze
Kovačič’s absorbing wartime
chronicle“Newcomers” (Archi-
pelago, 384 pages, $22)now
arrives, continuing the remem-
brances of the autobiographical
narrator, Bubi. Book One, pub-
lished in 1984 (and in English in
2016), recounted Bubi’s family’sexpulsion from Switzerland to
the Slovene territory of Yugo-
slavia at the outbreak of World
War II. The second installment,
again translated from the
Slovenian by Michael Biggins,
follows the young man’s adoles-
cence in Ljubljana during the war
years. As before, the piquant
particularities of childhood are
set before a backdrop of global
confrontation. Bubi tells of his
schooldays, his troublemaking
with friends and his sexual
awakening while, all around him,
running battles between Yugo-slav partisans and Nazi occupiers
are waged in the streets.
Book Two deepens one’s
appreciation for Kovačič’s major
stylistic gambit, his prolific use
of the ellipsis. Recalling his first
visit to the opera house, Bubi is
awestruck by “the tiers of
balconies...allthewayupto
the ceiling...thewhite, bulging
loges like cells of a beehive with
gilt ornamentation. And the
gigantic crowns of the chande-
liers suspended in air...But
most of all the silence...”
The punctuation has the twofold
effect of reflecting gaps in
memory while conveying a feel-
ing of constant anticipation for
whatever might appear next.
Ultimately, “Newcomers”
crystallizes into a classic artist’s
coming-of-age story, as Bubi is
drawn to painting and then
writing, where, as in this rich
and fascinating novel, he will
search for a way to synthesize
the enchantments of youth with
the hard realities of the war.
The Harlem Renaissance is
enjoying a renaissance, as recent
years have seen a Pulitzer Prize-
winning biography of Alain
Locke; Zora Neale Hurston’s
little-known ethnographic study
“Barracoon,” as well as a lively
new edition of her short stories;
and two previously unpublished
novels by Claude McKay, the
later of which is the gorgeously
seamy 1933 work“Romance in
Marseille” (Penguin Classics,
165 pages, $16).The story opens when a West
African immigrant named Lafala
loses his legs to frostbite after a
shipping company catches him
stowing away and locks him in
the frigid lavatory for the dura-
tion of the passage. After a New
York lawyer takes up his case,
Lafala is awarded a surprising
windfall in damages. Legless but
with fat pockets, his first move
is to return first-class to the
anarchic sailors’ hub of Marseille
to take his revenge on Aslima,
a celebrity of the city’s “loving
business” who, before his
accident, had stolen his heart
and his cash.
An unshackled and bitingly
funny melodrama plays out in
the bars of Marseille’s Vieux
Port, where “the thick scum
of life foams and bubbles and
breaks in a syrup of passion and
desire.” McKay revels in this
human glue pot of blacks, Arabs,
whites, straights and gays,
prostitutes, gigolos, dockworkers
and seamen, schemers, dreamers
and political rabble-rousers. The
language he fashions mirrors
the mélange, blending vernacu-
lar (“she’s a darter of a dawg”)
with showy archaisms (Aslima
devises plans for “mulcting”
Lafala) and words of McKay’s
own invention (an angry pimp is
in a “chorean state”). The fusion
is as heady and bewitching as
the scene of a Vieux Port dance
floor, where “everybody was
close together in a thick juice
melted by wine and music.”Mother, Son and Bottle
THIS WEEK
Shuggie Bain
By Douglas StuartNewcomers: Book Two
By Lojze KovačičRomance in Marseille
By Claude McKayFacing
life
with
‘ruined
dignity’
in
1980s
Glasgow.BOOKS
‘It cannot be done all at once. To overpower vertigo—the keeper of the abyss—one must tame it, cautiously.’—PHILIPPE PETIT
SCIENCE FICTION
TOMSHIPPEYOF ALL THEsci-fi writers in the
world, William Gibson has the
biggest reputation for being in
touch with the future. Way back
in 1982 he gave new meaning to
the term “cyberspace.” In 1984
his novel “Neuromancer” created
cyberpunk. Just a month ago,
Boris Johnson’s senior adviser
called for “weirdos from William Gibson novels”
to join the British civil service. His visions have
to be taken seriously. So far, anyway.
Mr. Gibson’s“Agency” (Berkley, 402 pages,
$28)is a sequel to his 2014 “The Peripheral,”
except that since they’re both about alternate
worlds, it’s at once a sequel and a prequel. Time-
hopping is an old idea in sci-fi, but it’s easier to
sell these days. We’ve all gotten used to things
not being what they seem. Everyone knows about
Schrödinger’s cat and butterfly effects. So when
Mr. Gibson tells us “realness is kinda sorta,” we
know what he means.
The two worlds of “Agency” are our timeline
extended to 2136, and an
alternate one where it’s- They bifurcated in
2015, after which they had
two radically different out-
comes. Our timeline led to
disaster: first the “jackpot,”
and then the “klept.” Jackpot? If humanity
suffered disasters leading to an 80% die-off,
who would survive? Not preppers hiding out
in Idaho, Mr. Gibson says, but the really rich
in places like London.
A mass die-off would be a jackpot for them,
an opportunity to create a kleptocracy. London
would be a good place to start, Mr. Gibson reckons,
because there are so many foreign billionaires
there already, and without the buffering influence
of the (famously incorruptible) EU, England and
in particular the City of London, where the money
is, would be easy pickings.
That tells you one of the radically different
events that created disaster: the Brexit referen-
dum of 2016, which to the rage of metrollectuals
yielded the wrong answer. No prizes for guessing
the other cause. His name is never mentioned,
but it seems President Trump was behind the
ecological disasters, the resultant pandemics and
the extermination of the poor that collectively
led to the jackpot and the klept.
London in 2136, however, is the key timeline, the
only one that can reach into the past to influence
the others, and humanitarians there are trying to
save the other timeline from its different dangers.
Mainly, it seems, a flare-up on the Turkish-
Syrian border,which could escalate to a nuclear
exchange. But without Mr. Trump and Brexit, it
won’t be so bad. People are scrubbing off the
“LOCK HER UP” graffiti. Best of all, the unnamed
president, faced with a crisis of Cuba-Kennedy
proportions, looks like “she” is on the case.
“Agency” has all the Gibson trademarks: the
hardware, the knowingness, the acronyms and
brand names, the sense of being right up there
on the cutting edge. But to ride the shockwave
of the future for 40 years, maybe you need to
keep your cool about the present.
THIS WEEK
Agency
ByWilliamGibsonBrexit and
Billionaires
Break Reality
FICTION
SAMSACKSPASSAGEPalestinians lining up at the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem during Ramadan, 2013.
ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
United in Their Grief