Lit Chat

I have to say this. I am so disappointed by Jenny Diski's first effort (Nothing Natural), I feel like I could cry.

Trawling the Oxfam bookstore on St. John's Wood High Street the other day, after I'd told Adonis he could go and post whatever it is he needs to post, I decided maybe I could find a bargain book or two and get that sense of elation one usually has after finding a treasure for nothing. I was in my element. Amongst all those hideous crime thrillers that are the preferred choice of many forty-somethings on the tube, I found a couple of books for under three quid which made me squeal.

Now Jenny Diski had always been a favourite. I'd read Only Human a zillion times, intrigued by the relationship (love triangle?) between Abraham, Sarah and God. The concept blew me away at the tender age of early 20-something and I was at a total loss at the woman's imagination. To conceive of a story where God is jealous, competing with Sarah over Abraham's affections? Jesus on a Nazareth what kind of heresy was this? Attempting to explain my fascination to Muncle (my uncle) he shrugged it off as sensationalist literature combined with bad taste in books. But I know this isn't so.

So back to the bookstore, I saw Diski's name and immediately remembered the biblical rewrites of Only Human and After These Things. However, Nothing Natural seemed to me like a shallow amble into sado-masochism, much of it not really as shocking, taboo or controversial as it is made out to be. The character annoyed me. Her depression felt fake and contrived and in direct contrast with her excessive, unfamiliar sense of self-assurance. She was not as intelligent as the writer proclaimed her to be, rather sheltered with her shocked, outraged fascination with S&M*. I appreciate that it was written in the 80s. Still. Spankings? Sodomy? Beatings with a leather strap? Humiliation, pain and rape fantasies? They are all so yawningly passe, non?

But anyway, what do I know? I'm no literary critic. I don't proclaim myself to be above any form of literature.

On to the next book. I'm about to start Philip Roth's Zuckerman novels. I'm so excited about it, I can't bring myself to focus on property law for two seconds.

*S&M always reminds me of Slaughter & May, a leading UK law firm whose methods are not unlike a little mental S&M themselves. Rumour has it that a trainee missed a comma after pulling an all-nighter drafting an important document and promptly got fired when it fell into the hands of the powers that be. Ouchies.