A certain literary prize announced earlier this week received a lot of flak because the shortlist was deemed too readable. I want to know what books they were reading. The Barnes was as cold as a washed up kipper; the Kelman featured a pigeon as a narrator and most of the praise heaped on deWitt said it would make a good Coen brothers film. I’d rather just wait for the film.
Speaking of which, the film adaptation of We Need to Talk About Kevin is belatedly out today; its original release date delayed after events in Norway. The 2005 Orange Prize winner is perfect example of a page-turner by a mediocre writer which thoroughly deserved said gong. And that’s not intended as a back-handed compliment. It may have had the subtlety of an AK47 let off at nap time when it came to the nature/nurture chestnut, and it may have been custom made for discussion on Woman’s Hour, but at least it did what it said on the tin: it got everyone talking. And they weren’t talking about whether it fitted the criteria for a sales-driven, publicity-seeking shortlist but about the story. About what happens. About what it means. While managing to stir up a nice bit of controversy at the same time. In 2005, We Need to Talk About Kevin caught on like virulent gastro-enteritis; you passed it on to your friends, watched it spread through tube carriages and felt it lodge itself deep into your guts. The film, starring Tilda Swinton, John C Reilly and a hypnotic Ezra Miller as Kevin, is guaranteed to be equally catching.
When it comes to killer kids, the big daddy of all complexes apparently still reigns supreme: Oedipus. Sophocles and Freud — or ‘Golden Siggie’ as his mother used to call him — are back centre stage with the release of David Guterson’s modern reworking of Oedipus and Darian Leader’s latest book, which tells us to stop popping pills and scanning brains and to start taking note of another foreign fruitcake, Lacan. Quite apart from medicine, and regardless of whether you’d want to be on their couch or not, Freud and Lacan sure knew how to spin some good stories. They also knew how to put a fresh spin on the old. It’s a welcome foil to what recently has been in vogue: Stephen Fry on depression and the neuroscientist scribes, Oliver Sachs and David Eagleman. Electrodes, synapses and endless versions of heaven — whether they’re narrated by Jarvis Cocker or not — are deathly dull compared to Freud and Vienna which, at the turn of the last century, was crazier than a cuckoo nest. In fact, Freud’s sang-froid in relating such cases — whether it’s little Hans and his horses with moustaches or young Arpad; his penis’ misadventure in the fowl house and subsequent chick complex — is given an extra ich weiss es nicht on librivox, where you can listen to a fembot in a David Sedaris-style monotone read out Totem and Taboo. Now that’s heaven.
Fleur Macdonald is editor of The Omnivore.
Comments