Monday 2 September 2019

The Man Who Saw Everything


Walter Müller wore trainers that were not at all trendy. His mousy hair fell to his shoulders. His pale blue eyes were all over me. Surveillance was the air everyone breathed. He watched me all the time for various reasons, but mostly for lust and politics. Jennifer's camera was on me all the time too, even when I slept, especially when I slept, but Walter saw me with his naked eye and he saw everything there was to see in me.

I read The Man Who Saw Everything on an early morning flight nearly two weeks ago, so at this point, I'm recalling more the impression this left me with rather than the specific details, which is good: I didn't know anything about this book before I started it and the intriguing journey of discovery – and this is definitely intriguing – was the most satisfying part of the read. I've read other books by Deborah Levy and found them rich and dense and rewarding. By contrast, The Man Who Saw Everything seems lightweight and crafty, a total departure from what I expect from Levy, but I still found it totally rewarding; appropriate to see on the Man Booker longlist, not exactly surprising that it didn't make the cut for the shortlist. (Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted may not be in their final forms. Slightly spoilery beyond.)
A light breeze blew into the GDR, but I knew it came from America. A wind from another time. It brought with it the salt scent of seaweed and oysters. And wool. A child's knitted blanket. Folded over the back of a chair. Time and place all mixed up. Now. Then. There. Here.
As the novel begins, it is 1988 and we meet Saul Adler – a grad student of history about to travel to East Berlin for research – and he is nearly hit by a car on Abbey Road, where he was about to recreate the Beatles' famous album cover as a gift for his German translator's sister. Saul's girlfriend is a photographer and we learn from her that Saul is achingly beautiful – an androgynous beauty with his blue eyes and carved cheekbones and the pearls he wears everywhere – and we learn from Saul that this beauty has long made him an outcast in his own family, with a dead mother, a strongman Bolshevik father, and an older brother who has long attempted to beat masculinity and Socialism into him. Throughout this first section of the book, there are mysterious hints that Saul has premonitions of the future (he tells his translator, Walter, and Walter's sister, Luna, that the Soviet Union will collapse the following year; he is haunted by the spectre of his girlfriend, Jennifer, older and living in America), and although Saul is fluid in his sexuality, he can't seem to find a strong connection with anyone of either gender. 

Without warning, the narrative jumps ahead in the middle of the book to 2016, and Saul Adler narrowly avoids being hit by a car as he crosses Abbey Road. Brought to hospital, Saul somehow believes he is still twenty-eight (as in the earlier timeline) and as he mentally conflates the two accidents, and as various characters from the first half of the book visit him and reminisce, he is exposed as the unreliablest of narrators, and not quite the man we believed him to be. And as tricky as this might feel, it's also totally organic: probably none of us can perfectly align our self-image with how others see us (but hopefully most of us aren't the narcissistic cad that Saul is revealed to be.) 
I placed the palm of my hand on his chest, leaning into him while I got my breath back from the shock of glimpsing that wooden train. One of its wheels, painted red, poked out of Walter's coat pocket. I had seen that train before, or dreamed it, or even buried it, and here it was, returning like a spectre to torment me.
The Man Who Saw Everything is filled with spectres and being haunted by the past (personally and politically); filled with mirrors and cameras and the different perspective allowed by each; it is fluid with gender and sexuality and explodes masculine and feminine roles. It feels a bit like a romp, a mystery, a trail of breadcrumbs through the Black Forest; and while it may not have been deep, exactly, I was glued to the page for my flight, long bemused afterward. Right up my alley.


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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