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A review by boo_radley18
In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
2.0
Dry, humourless and fatally pretentious, Damon Galgut’s triptych of nightmarish travel stories was one of the most unsatisfying reading experiences I’ve had all year.
Originally published as three separate pieces in "The Paris Review", someone (presumably Galgut’s agent) had the bright idea of combining them into a single volume and hawking it as a novel. The strategy paid off: the book was well-reviewed, hailed for its exploration of the murky grey matter between fiction and memoir, and became a surprise nominee for the Booker Prize.
I’m afraid its merits were largely lost on me, which isn’t to say that it’s badly written. Galgut is an intelligent and perceptive writer, and every aspect of this book – the mysteriously undefined narrator, the short, astringent sentences, the pervading atmosphere of melancholy, the decidedly cynical view of white Western tourism in the Third World – has been carefully chosen and exhaustively worked at. Perhaps it’s this "craft" – the overweening self-consciousness of Galgut's writing and the chalk-dust residue of his technique – that got between me and any sense of enjoyment of the work.
Following the original format of the pieces, the book is divided into three sections, each of roughly 60 pages. Each piece is narrated by a man named Damon, a strategy that automatically invites us to read the pieces as memoir. (More on that later). Damon tells us nearly nothing about himself - he is white, South African, apparently gay and seems sufficiently well-off to be able to travel for extended periods without working. Everything else we learn about him is through his observations of other people, whom he regards with caustic disapproval and a sense of repressed longing.
In the first section, "The Follower", Damon meets a German man called Reiner, and the two set off on an ill-advised walking tour through Lesotho. The trip becomes a kind of latter-day "Sheltering Sky", with Reiner as the handsome, feckless, vaguely sadistic object of desire, while Damon follows behind, besotted and puppy-like, and increasingly frustrated by Reiner’s unwillingness to fuck him. After an eleventh hour fight, they part company, apart from a brief and unsatisfying coda. The second section, "The Lover", is set a few years later. Damon is travelling in Zimbabwe and meets a trio of European tourists. Damon follows them to Tanzania and develops a crush on one of the group, Jerome, a friendly but rather colourless Swiss. He follows Jerome to Switzerland and meets his family, which bizarrely no one seems to mind, though it’s unclear whether everyone is just being polite or if Damon has been able to successfully mask his bunny-boiler tendencies. Eventually, his interest fades or he just gives up on another doomed enterprise, and the story falls away. In the third and most interesting story, "The Guardian", Damon goes on holiday to India with his friend Anna, a fellow South African and hot mess, whose suicide attempt lands her in hospital with Damon as her reluctant carer.
The predominant theme of each piece is repression - which perhaps explains its popularity with British readers, for whom inability to express one's feelings is held up as a virtue. Damon is ashamed of his desires, and incapable of naming them, let alone acting on them. Like many self-hating gay men, he pursues unattainable objects of desire - straight men - exerting himself so as to prove himself worthy of their affection. I suppose there are readers out there who find this kind of tortured sexual dynamic interesting, but I found it frustrating and more than a bit retro. (Actually, that’s not fair - even Gore Vidal’s doomed lovers in "The City and the Pillar", written in the 1940s, had more spine than this). Damon’s (and Galgut’s) refusal to confront the penis-shaped elephant in the room means that the cycle of repression reproduces itself in a way that feels deeply dissatisfying, and feeds a complacent type of readerly voyeurism about homosexuality. Through Damon, Galgut's readers can have a transgressive little reading adventure, without ever having to confront the realities of gay desire.
The inhospitable locations Damon travels to become a kind of objective correlative of his alienation and self-pity, putting Galgut in a long tradition of white writers who use Third World countries as exotic backdrops for their First World problems. Galgut seems aware of this dynamic, and attempts to redress it. In "The Lover", he has Damon comment disapprovingly about a group of Western tourists who take little interest in the Zimbabwayan locals who wait on them. But like most of Damon's insights, nothing is followed through – the character's liberal posturing becomes just another footnote to describe his radical alienation from others and his refusal to confront himself.
Just as things are becoming as dry and desiccated as Galgut’s prose, "The Guardian" arrives, providing a welcome jolt of energy. Anna is an appalling character – narcissistic, deeply damaged and oblivious to anyone else’s needs – but she’s a stunning scene stealer, literally walking away with the rest of the narrative. Her actions are selfish and destructive though they are, but there's something thrilling about her compulsive need to act, in stark contrast to Damon's very tiresome passivity. The crisis provoked by Anna’s illness and hospitalisation push the story along like a thriller – even though her trajectory ends badly, at least she’s heading in a clear direction, unlike Damon’s road-to-nowhere erotic wanderings.
Like many works in the auto-fiction genre, Galgut displays a fussy self-consciousness about the act of storytelling. The narrative shifts continuously (and, I’ll admit, skilfully) between first and third person, transforming Damon from the teller of his own story to the distant object of a character in someone else’s. This is presumably meant to undermine the authority of the narrative – another staple of auto-fiction – and arouse our suspicions about the truth of Damon’s first-person version of events. It all sounds very clever, and in some ways it’s an appropriate narrative device for a person so uncomfortable in his skin that he wants to disappear from his own life. But little other insight is offered, leaving us with literary craft in place of compelling storytelling or characterisation.
Galgut is a gifted writer, and I suppose he deserves some congratulation for writing work that’s in a strange room in the house of literary fiction. As a piece of gay fiction, it's unusual in its refusal to play into many gay cliches - there's little if any humour in the book, and nothing that could be considered camp. But to me there’s little point in reading about alienation for its own sake, or presenting characters so passive and unlikeable that they spring to life only in relation to others. Writerly technique is all well and good, but next time I hope Galgut finds a story that’s worthy of his talents.
Originally published as three separate pieces in "The Paris Review", someone (presumably Galgut’s agent) had the bright idea of combining them into a single volume and hawking it as a novel. The strategy paid off: the book was well-reviewed, hailed for its exploration of the murky grey matter between fiction and memoir, and became a surprise nominee for the Booker Prize.
I’m afraid its merits were largely lost on me, which isn’t to say that it’s badly written. Galgut is an intelligent and perceptive writer, and every aspect of this book – the mysteriously undefined narrator, the short, astringent sentences, the pervading atmosphere of melancholy, the decidedly cynical view of white Western tourism in the Third World – has been carefully chosen and exhaustively worked at. Perhaps it’s this "craft" – the overweening self-consciousness of Galgut's writing and the chalk-dust residue of his technique – that got between me and any sense of enjoyment of the work.
Following the original format of the pieces, the book is divided into three sections, each of roughly 60 pages. Each piece is narrated by a man named Damon, a strategy that automatically invites us to read the pieces as memoir. (More on that later). Damon tells us nearly nothing about himself - he is white, South African, apparently gay and seems sufficiently well-off to be able to travel for extended periods without working. Everything else we learn about him is through his observations of other people, whom he regards with caustic disapproval and a sense of repressed longing.
In the first section, "The Follower", Damon meets a German man called Reiner, and the two set off on an ill-advised walking tour through Lesotho. The trip becomes a kind of latter-day "Sheltering Sky", with Reiner as the handsome, feckless, vaguely sadistic object of desire, while Damon follows behind, besotted and puppy-like, and increasingly frustrated by Reiner’s unwillingness to fuck him. After an eleventh hour fight, they part company, apart from a brief and unsatisfying coda. The second section, "The Lover", is set a few years later. Damon is travelling in Zimbabwe and meets a trio of European tourists. Damon follows them to Tanzania and develops a crush on one of the group, Jerome, a friendly but rather colourless Swiss. He follows Jerome to Switzerland and meets his family, which bizarrely no one seems to mind, though it’s unclear whether everyone is just being polite or if Damon has been able to successfully mask his bunny-boiler tendencies. Eventually, his interest fades or he just gives up on another doomed enterprise, and the story falls away. In the third and most interesting story, "The Guardian", Damon goes on holiday to India with his friend Anna, a fellow South African and hot mess, whose suicide attempt lands her in hospital with Damon as her reluctant carer.
The predominant theme of each piece is repression - which perhaps explains its popularity with British readers, for whom inability to express one's feelings is held up as a virtue. Damon is ashamed of his desires, and incapable of naming them, let alone acting on them. Like many self-hating gay men, he pursues unattainable objects of desire - straight men - exerting himself so as to prove himself worthy of their affection. I suppose there are readers out there who find this kind of tortured sexual dynamic interesting, but I found it frustrating and more than a bit retro. (Actually, that’s not fair - even Gore Vidal’s doomed lovers in "The City and the Pillar", written in the 1940s, had more spine than this). Damon’s (and Galgut’s) refusal to confront the penis-shaped elephant in the room means that the cycle of repression reproduces itself in a way that feels deeply dissatisfying, and feeds a complacent type of readerly voyeurism about homosexuality. Through Damon, Galgut's readers can have a transgressive little reading adventure, without ever having to confront the realities of gay desire.
The inhospitable locations Damon travels to become a kind of objective correlative of his alienation and self-pity, putting Galgut in a long tradition of white writers who use Third World countries as exotic backdrops for their First World problems. Galgut seems aware of this dynamic, and attempts to redress it. In "The Lover", he has Damon comment disapprovingly about a group of Western tourists who take little interest in the Zimbabwayan locals who wait on them. But like most of Damon's insights, nothing is followed through – the character's liberal posturing becomes just another footnote to describe his radical alienation from others and his refusal to confront himself.
Just as things are becoming as dry and desiccated as Galgut’s prose, "The Guardian" arrives, providing a welcome jolt of energy. Anna is an appalling character – narcissistic, deeply damaged and oblivious to anyone else’s needs – but she’s a stunning scene stealer, literally walking away with the rest of the narrative. Her actions are selfish and destructive though they are, but there's something thrilling about her compulsive need to act, in stark contrast to Damon's very tiresome passivity. The crisis provoked by Anna’s illness and hospitalisation push the story along like a thriller – even though her trajectory ends badly, at least she’s heading in a clear direction, unlike Damon’s road-to-nowhere erotic wanderings.
Like many works in the auto-fiction genre, Galgut displays a fussy self-consciousness about the act of storytelling. The narrative shifts continuously (and, I’ll admit, skilfully) between first and third person, transforming Damon from the teller of his own story to the distant object of a character in someone else’s. This is presumably meant to undermine the authority of the narrative – another staple of auto-fiction – and arouse our suspicions about the truth of Damon’s first-person version of events. It all sounds very clever, and in some ways it’s an appropriate narrative device for a person so uncomfortable in his skin that he wants to disappear from his own life. But little other insight is offered, leaving us with literary craft in place of compelling storytelling or characterisation.
Galgut is a gifted writer, and I suppose he deserves some congratulation for writing work that’s in a strange room in the house of literary fiction. As a piece of gay fiction, it's unusual in its refusal to play into many gay cliches - there's little if any humour in the book, and nothing that could be considered camp. But to me there’s little point in reading about alienation for its own sake, or presenting characters so passive and unlikeable that they spring to life only in relation to others. Writerly technique is all well and good, but next time I hope Galgut finds a story that’s worthy of his talents.