Zoo Time by Howard Jacobson

I really wanted to like the award-winning comic novel Zoo Time by Howard Jacobson. I was to be disappointed.

The narrator, Guy (I have forgotten his last name) is a 43-year-old writer struggling in a world where readers and therefore books and writers have gone by the wayside. Book agents are hiding in lavatories rather than have a manuscript handed to them. Publishers are committing suicide as quickly as bookstores are shutting their doors. Author tweets have taken over for what used to be book promotions by publishing houses. Blogging has become what one fellow calls blagging.

Between making comments on this state of affairs, the narrator is obsessing about having an affair with his mother-in-law. So he decides to write a book about a man - not a writer as that would be too transparent, but a thinly disguised version of his younger self as he was when he worked in the women's clothing boutique owned by his mother - who obsesses about having an affair with his mother-in-law. 

Or something like that. 

I will admit that Mr. Jacobson has made some very funny and telling observations about books, writing, writers, publishing, dining out, fashion, models, and whatever else he can get his hands on. But, after fifteen chapters and one hundred and twenty pages (about one-third of the book) I have put the book down. 

I suppose this is a thoroughly modern novel. I wish I had counted how many times the f-word or its variations were used so that I could report that number to you. Not shocking, not amusing, just tedious. 

I guess when I recently made the statement that I like comic novels, I really meant I like comic novels from the time of Wodehouse and Thirkell. A time when there was romance not the f-word. A time when the dialog was witty and not sprinkled with, well, the f-word. A time when a prize-winning pig, the Empress of Blandings, ruled the world, not a zoo full of masturbating monkeys. 

Three for the Weekend

A nice long weekend ahead and I plan on finishing up two library books - Pomfret Towers by Angela Thirkell and Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell. And, I downloaded Zoo Time by Howard Jacobson from the library's ebook collection which I hope to begin reading. 

Pomfret Towers is the name of the rather huge country home of Lord Pomfret and his semi-invalid wife. Here is how Ms. T describes it:

This pile, for no less a name is worthy of this vast medley of steep roofs, turrets, gables and chimney stacks, crowned by a Victorian clock tower, took four years to build and is said to have cost its owner first and last as many hundred thousand pounds.

It was computed, she writes, that an under footman might walk ten miles a day in the course of his duties.

Like I said, Huge.

The action takes place during a weekend house party (of which I am so fond). There are three sets of brothers and sisters in attendance: Alice and Guy Barton; Phoebe and Julian Rivers; and Sally and Roddy Wicklow. 

Also among the twenty or so guests is Mr. Foster who will eventually inherit the estate from Lord Pomfret, his uncle. 

The mothers of the first sets of siblings, Mrs. Barton and Mrs. Rivers, are both authors which gives Ms. Thirkell a chance to take a stab or two at writers and publishers and the economics of the book business. 

Alice Barton (age unknown but perhaps a young teenager) is terribly shy to the point of actually being a bit annoying. She has already fallen instantly in love with Julian Rivers who is an artist with dark hair, brooding eyes, and many affectations. 

Mrs. Rivers is the guest to be avoided as she is always trying to organize games for 'the young people' even though the young people are perfectly capable of entertaining themselves. Lord Pomfret is not exactly a warm and welcoming host and his only reason for having the party is to please his wife who for most of the time lives in Florence. 

With Ms. Thirkell's ability to mete out the telling detail, I feel as if I am at the house party myself with its well-set dining room table 
"stretching away to infinity, covered with what looked to Alice like six thousand shining knives and forks and spoons, and more carnations in more silver vases than she had ever seen in her life."

Or having tea in its smaller drawing-room "decorated with green brocade and hung with pictures bought by the sixth earl (father of the present earl) from contemporary artists. The furniture was in the highest style of pre-Raphaelite discomfort; sofas apparently hewn from solid blocks of wood and armchairs suited to no known human frame, both with thin velvet cushions of extreme hardness." 

I won't even try to guess which romances will blossom and wither and which ones will bloom for all time. I will leave that puzzle in the very capable hands of the author.

The Comic Novel and A Pig

This may or may not be the actual
Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize

I have been trying to catch up with myself today and ran across the announcement in the May 15 edition of The Guardian that author Howard Jacobson was awarded a pig. The pig is the actual trophy presented to the winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction. I am probably the last to know...not only about the winner but also the prize.

I have not read Mr. Jacobson's Zoo Time for which he won this pig. It is a satire of the publishing industry and I see that mirabile dictu is crazy about the book.

I am a great fan of the comic novel. I am just coming to realize this. (See what gems of self-knowledge come with keeping an online book journal?) I knew that I loved P.G. Wodehouse for all of his characters (including the Empress of Blandings) and Donald Westlake for his hapless Dortmunder capers, but I never gave it a thought that they were "comic novels" per se. I just enjoyed them and didn't think to categorize them.

There were many suggestions of other funny authors made in the comments on the article. I saw the names of Michael Frayn, Bill Bryson, James Thurber, Jerome K. Jerome, and Stella Gibbons to name a few that I have chuckled over.

No one named Angela Thirkell and the comments were closed so I couldn't do it. I can think of others. Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café) comes to mind as does Frank Cottrell Boyce (Millions and Framed). 

I really don't like a novel that claims to be funny but only because the characters are so absolutely bizarre and quirk after quirk is attributed to them. Or sometimes the situations are simply totally ludicrous rather than amusing.

I am adding Zoo Time to my TBR list along with two that caught my eye in the comments: Diary of a Nobody (1892) by George and Weedon Grossmith and The Country Life (2000) by Rachel Cusk.

I am thrilled to learn about the existence of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and will be searching for past nominees and winners to add some of their books to my list.

How about you? Is there an author or book that you find particularly amusing? Leave a suggestion. We could all certainly use a good laugh!