Friday, 26 July 2019

The Wall


It's cold on the Wall. That's the first thing everybody tells you, and the first thing you notice when you're sent there, and it's the thing you think about all the time you're on it, and it's the thing you remember when you're not there anymore. It's cold on the Wall.

The Wall is set in a cli-fi dystopia that extends modern realities to an admittedly believable future – global warming has raised the ocean levels and scorched the lands of developing countries, desperate refugees risk their lives to reach safety, heartless nationalists erect a wall to protect what they have from the greedy hands of others – and while many details of the plot are interesting and compelling, it's not very literary; even “the wall” is just “a wall”, not a metaphor in sight. (Exit West covers the exact same themes but with literary devices that engage the mind and sympathies far better than this narrative hung stiffly on the seven point story structure template.) John Lanchester has certainly captured something of the current political climate, but he hasn't really made art out of it. 
Combat is like that, an undanceable rhythm: Slow, slow, slower, sudden pandemonium.
And so goes the story: slow, slow, slower, sudden pandemonium. In the beginning we are introduced to Joseph Kavanagh, a young man set to begin his mandatory two year stint as a Defender on the Wall (a ten thousand kilometre-long concrete barrier encircling the whole of Great Britain); one of three hundred thousand young people acting as Defenders at any given time. At some point in the recent past the Change occurred (whatever raised the sea levels and obliterated beaches worldwide), and having grown up in this reality, Kavanagh and his generation are resentful of their parents; those who not only allowed the world to collapse on their watch, but who are now too old to take their own turn standing guard up on the cold, cold wall. Rigorous armed defense is imperative because the Others might attack at any time: coming by sea, these homicidal would-be refugees will stop at nothing to get over the Wall, and if they do succeed, they are doomed to be put into service as the Help (little better than slaves) while those Defenders deemed responsible for the breach are fated to be put out to sea; to become “Others” themselves. Plenty of slow, but interesting, world-building, and then: sudden pandemonium. (The seven point story structure is used because it works.)
Betrayal was like tasting a liquid, the bitterest thing you've ever put in your mouth, and holding the taste just long enough to fully understand how repulsive it is, and then forcing yourself to drain the cup to its dregs.
I don't want to give away anything important, so be warned that what follows is full of spoilers (if only I had spoiler tags here): I understand that this is a commentary on the kind of nationalistic thinking that has led to both Trump's southern border wall and Brexit, but I really question the reality of murderous hordes trying to fight their way into this future Great Britain. Between the tribal scarification of the Captain's face and the Swahili used by the Help when Kavanagh asked him if his home country had a different word for “the Change” (and I did like that his answer translated as “the End”), at least some (could it be implied most?) of the Others are Africans, and sailing/rowing in small boats into the North Atlantic seems a long way to go when there is, presumably, safe haven closer and less well defended. Why would a near-certain suicide mission against a plane-boat-and-gun-patrolled concrete wall make more sense than landing somewhere on mainland Europe? I wish Lanchester had made that clear. It's also not clear just how well-provisioned Great Britain is – there's money for the war machine and luxuries for the elites, and people still have holidays and eat at pubs, but while on the one hand Kavanagh's mother laments that she can't afford to acquire Help (which are free but one must be able to afford to feed them), on the other, she's a housewife with a cleanbot and a washbot: not exactly scratching out a knife-edge existence from some dust-choked dirt farm. If we're being led to sympathise with the Others and demonise those who would shoot at would-be refugees, I wish it was more clear what the long-term survival chances were for each side. And I suppose I should acknowledge the literary irony of the main characters not experiencing psychological growth through their journey: how despicable that upon finding safe haven and boundless resources at the oil rig, Kavanagh and Hifa's first thought is to retract the ladder that had so recently been extended to effect their own rescue. While that one plot point does elevate the whole for me (suggesting that greed and selfishness are more indicative of character than experience) it's not enough for me to call the whole artful. I'm not unhappy that The Wall's Man Booker nomination led me to read it, but its inclusion on that list certainly led me to expect more from it.


Man Booker Longlist 2019:




Eventually won by The Testaments and Girl, Woman, Other in a tie, my favourites on the list were Lanny, Night Boat to Tangier, and An Orchestra of Minorities. I fear the Man Booker has become too political for me - favouring identity politics over excellent storytelling - and I don't know how much longer I'll think it a badge of honour to keep reading the longlists.
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