Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene was a great choice of book to read whilst travelling around Cuba although it was also a little bizarre.
In some ways nothing had changed since Greene wrote this in 1958 but on the other hand, everything had.

The other rather eerie side to this story, is that three months after publication, Fidel and his supporters stormed the city and ousted the very corrupt Batista regime. Although Our Man in Havana is not a revolutionary story there's something about the timing of this book that gives one the shivers. There are plenty of comments and observations that the future reader can see as signs of what is about to happen in Cuba.

The primary subject for ridicule in Greene's story was the ineptly bureaucratic British intelligence network - in other words, a spy spoof. Of course, this was all made possible thanks to the fact that Havana, under Batista's dictatorship, was a place 'where every vice was permissible and every trade possible.*'

Batista's corrupt regime and the Americans role in it do come in for their fair share of Greene's ridicule, but his focus was clearly on the whole spying caper.

With a cast of crazy characters - from the accidental agent cum vacuum cleaner salesman to the slightly sinister German drunk and the very sinister head police officer at Vedado who has designs on the ingenue horse-loving daughter - they all act to confuse, confound and deceive each other at every turn. The story lurches from one miscommunication to the next.

I prefer my satire and irony to be on the subtle side (think Jane Austen, Charles Dickens & Mark Twain - when he's not being very obvious!)
This is not subtle.

There are some moments that produce wry chuckles, but unfortunately I never felt engaged with the characters. I enjoyed the mention of Cuban places and the descriptions of cities and venues that I had also seen for myself.

Tim Parks in the New York Review of Books said,

satire alludes to recognizable contemporary circumstances in a skewed and comic way so as to draw attention to their absurdity. There is mockery but with a noble motive: the desire to bring shame on some person or party behaving wrongly or ignorantly. Its raison d’ȇtre over the long term is to bring about change through ridicule; or if change is too grand an aspiration, we might say that it seeks to give us a fresh perspective on the absurdities and evils we live among, such that we are eager for change. 

Since satire has this practical and pragmatic purpose, the criteria for assessing it are fairly simple: if it doesn’t point toward positive change, or encourage people to think in a more enlightened way, it has failed.

Reading OMIH in Jose Marti Domestic Airport, Havana

Was Greene successful in bring about change through this farce? Does one feel enlightened after reading Our Man in Havana?

I was amused and entertained, but sadly, I also felt that nothing about the secret services of the world had really changed. Just like Cuba, the raison d'etre behind all secret government agencies still feels stuck in 1958.

I'm not sure I would have enjoyed reading Our Man in Havana as much as I did, if I hadn't actually been in Cuba at the time.

As the drunk in the Santiago hotel may have said on pg 65, Cuba is Cuba is Cuba. For me that was enough. I suspect it was enough for Greene too.

*Graham Greene, Ways of Escape 1980

Brona's Salon: Satire

This year's Booker has been awarded to satire - again! I was dreading The Sellout winning the Booker because I really don't want to tackle another satire. No matter how worthy it may be.

Satire is used to highlight the foolishness or vices within a society of group. It can be categorised further into irony, sarcasm, exaggeration, ridicule and parody.

I don't mind some satire - some of my favourite books are satire - Pride and Prejudice, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Fraction of the Whole, The World According to Garp and Northanger Abbey for instance.

I enjoyed studying The Loved One, The Importance of Being Ernest and Animal Farm at school.
I have also appreciated the message/warning that is behind books like A Brave New World, Lord of the Flies and 1984.

But I often just get tired of the joke (I'm thinking of you Catch-22 and Jasper Fforde, Terry Pratchett and dare I say Douglas Adams - I adored Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy but I got very tired by the fifth book).

Or they just leave me cold (Cold Comfort Farm, Solar, The Finkler Question, American Psycho, A Clockwork Orange).

Garry Trudeau stated in an article in The Atlantic recently that,

Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful.

Tim Parks in the New York Review of Books said,

satire alludes to recognizable contemporary circumstances in a skewed and comic way so as to draw attention to their absurdity. There is mockery but with a noble motive: the desire to bring shame on some person or party behaving wrongly or ignorantly. Its raison d’ȇtre over the long term is to bring about change through ridicule; or if change is too grand an aspiration, we might say that it seeks to give us a fresh perspective on the absurdities and evils we live among, such that we are eager for change.

Since satire has this practical and pragmatic purpose, the criteria for assessing it are fairly simple: if it doesn’t point toward positive change, or encourage people to think in a more enlightened way, it has failed. 

I think the reason I often struggle with satire is that I have trouble seeing the 'noble motive', all I see is the 'mockery'. So I decided to circumvent the noble worthy motive and go straight to the heart of black comedy with this month's featured book for Brona's Salon.

Brona's Salon is a new meme which aims to gather a group of like-minded bookish people 'under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation.'

(wikipedia)

I will provide a bookish prompt or two to inspire our conversation.
However please feel free to discuss your current read or join in the conversation in any way that you see fit.

Amusement, refinement and knowledge will surely follow!

What are you currently reading?

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

How did you find out about this book?

I was researching books set in Cuba to read in preparation for our trip to Cuba.
This was first on every list I found.

Yes *squeal* we're going to Cuba!

Why are you reading it now? 

Because our trip to Cuba is very, very soon!

First impressions? 

"Mr. Wormold, vacuum cleaner salesman in a city of powercuts, is, as always, short of money. His daughter, sixteen, followed everywhere by wolf whistles, is spending his money with a skill that amazes him, so when a mysterious Englishman offers him an extra income he's tempted. All he has to do is run agents, file reports: spy. But his fake reports have an alarming tendency to come true, and the web of lies he weaves around him starts to get more and more tangled."

Which character do you relate to so far?

I'm not sure you're meant to relate to any of these characters?
(which is another problem I often have with satire & it's related sub-genres)

Are you happy to continue?

Yes

Where do you think the story will go? 

I suspect they will get busted, but that it will all be covered up or glossed over.

The typical colonial experience when the British come to stay!

What has your experience with satire and black comedy been?

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

I picked up Amsterdam unexpectedly just as I finished Do Not Say We Have Nothing thanks to spotting a readalong with JoAnn @Lakeside Musing, Care's Books & Pies and Althira @Reading on a Rainy Day.

I adored DNSWHN to pieces and strongly wish, hope and desire that it wins this years Booker Prize (my review is here). But judging by previous Booker winners and shortlists, there is absolutely no guarantee that my favourite will also impress the judges.

Not having read any of the other shortlisted books for 1998, I cannot say whether Amsterdam was deserving of it's win or not but to my mind, choosing satire and black humour is always going to be a tough call. (I didn't enjoy The Finkler Question either which was categorised as comic or farcical - one person's funny is another's 'meh'.

Amsterdam and DNSWHN have many points of connect. But the strengths in DNSWHN show up the faults in Amsterdam; whereas the strengths (there are a few) in Amsterdam only add to the significance and the pleasure I received in reading DNSWHN.

I believed that Amsterdam was an unread book on my TBR shelf. At the beginning I was convinced that I was on new territory, but when I reached pg 66 I suddenly came across an underlined phrase. I had been here before!

The phrase was

unknowingly bending and colouring the past through the prism of his unhappiness.

Exactly the kind of phrase I would underline, and which I would have done so again with this read!

Why was this book so unmemorable to me?

The date of purchase gave me my first clue. 2005.

(I write my name, date and place of purchase in all of my books.)

2005 was the year when Mr Books and I rekindled our old love. It was a year of high emotional ferment and change for me. I struggled to read or settle to anything constructive that year. Amsterdam didn't stand a chance.

In fact the only section of the book that struck a familiar chord during this reread was Clive's walk in the Lakes District. The rest was like reading a completely new-to-me story. (Interestingly, McEwan himself likes to hike through the Lakes District & it was during a walk along the very same route that Clive took in the book, that he had the inspiration for this story - The Paris Review: The Art of Fiction 173).

McEwan can write wonderfully precise, thrilling, moving sentences. The hiking scene in the Lakes District is one of those times.

Amsterdam feels like it could be a Shakespearean tragedy - a dead woman, four men, a pact, the absurd comic relief of middle-aged men behaving badly as the big issues of fate, morality and civility play out. All it needs is Venice!

(Ha! I just got that Amsterdam is another European city with canals! Maybe there is more going on here than I first thought?)

No-one comes out unscathed. All the characters reveal their dark sides - their private tussles with civic duty, personal responsibility and getting the job done. The wife who lies to protect her family, the police who collude to catch/frame a criminal, the husband who lures his wife's lovers to their doom. Even the lovely Molly, who we only ever see through her lovers eyes, was in reality, an adulteress who had affairs with married men.

But the ending is disappointing. Too neat, too contrived, too implausible.
The black humour did provide a wry smile or two but there were no trademark McEwan twists or shocks to carry us through or to drive his point home.

I was left with a slightly unpleasant taste in my mouth and the conviction that McEwan despises everyone.

In the Paris Review interview linked above, McEwan mentioned that Amsterdam was one of those 'turning points' in his writing career and that

I could not have written Atonement without first writing Amsterdam.

For all it's curiosities and flaws, I will now always be grateful to Amsterdam for this fact alone.

Thank you to JoAnn, Althira & Care for having me along on their #damalong. It was #dam good fun!

My post on McEwan's previous books (that I have read) is here.