Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

‘Why should you care what Wombat Willy thinks?’ I cajole. ‘This is just one person, who we know nothing about. He could be a fanatical racist, or a chronic masturbator — or maybe he is a she, and enormously fat, and for years she has not left her house, which she shares with her eight cats, also enormously fat.’

‘Pretty sure it’s a he,’ Paul says morosely. ‘I looked up his other reviews. He gave a lightning bolt and a Buckingham Palace to the Phillips For Him BodyShave. He called it the gold standard of ball-hair removal.’

‘That just proves my point,’ I say. ‘You’re an artist. You can’t be dictated to by the market. Do you think, if he were writing today, Shakespeare would care if he got only one and a half pineapples for Hamlet , or three smiley faces for Romeo and Juliet ? Do you think James Joyce would rewrite Ulysses because some Internet wombat said there’s not enough story? All of these books’ — gesturing at the volumes that now litter the floor — ‘how many do you think would never have been written if the authors gave up because of one man who spends his time writing anonymous essays about ball hair?’

‘That’s easy for you to say. I need readers, Claude. I need those scumballs to feed my wife and child. Now everybody who comes to the website to look at my book is going to end up buying a stupid multi-head razor instead!’ He rights the chair and flumps down in it. Behind him, in the half-light cast by a fallen lamp, I can see a long dagger of damp blackening the flowery wallpaper.

‘How is the proposal going?’

‘Terribly,’ he says.

I feel a surge of frustration. ‘I thought we worked everything out. We have a hero, a heroine, a good idea of the plot. What’s the problem?’

‘The problem is writing , Claude. The problem is writing, and writing is the problem. Coming up with an idea is just like the entrance ticket into this enormous fucking labyrinth of — oh, what now?’

The door opens and Remington marches in, holding out his sheet, to which he has added ERMIINGTREM in blue crayon. ‘Dad, my story has a new bit.’

‘That’s great, buddy, I’ll read it later.’

‘Read it now.’

‘I’ll read it when it’s finished.’

‘Now!’ Remington says.

‘Fuck!’ his father exclaims. He jumps up, goes to the door. ‘Clizia!’

‘I’m on the phone!’ the voice comes back.

‘For Christ’s sake !’ Paul says, stamping out to find her.

‘I’d like to hear your story,’ I say to Remington.

The boy turns to me seriously. ‘It’s about a boy called Remington,’ he says.

‘And what happens to him?’

‘He goes away with his mama.’

I start. ‘Where does he go?’ I say — but before the boy can answer, Clizia comes into the room. She appears shaken, as though after some tumultuous passage.

‘Who keeps calling you?’ Paul demands, following after her.

‘The captain of the volleyball team,’ she says.

‘Can’t she take no for an answer?’

Clizia affixes a bleached, perfunctory smile. ‘Now, little one,’ she says to Remington, and she picks him up and carries him out of the room.

Paul sinks back in his chair, drapes his wrist over his eyes. ‘God, I’m so tired,’ he says.

‘Let’s get moving with this,’ I say, rousing him. Clearly there is more riding on this proposal than money, even if he can’t see it. ‘Where exactly are you stuck?’

‘I’m stuck where I’ve always been stuck, with this damn unintelligible banker! I can’t make sense of a single thing he does!’

‘Forget about his job for now. You were right, it’s too complicated and will only bore people. Stick with the love story. The girl who rescues him from the bank.’

‘But that’s just it!’ Paul pounds his palm on the armchair. ‘Why does he get the girl? What does she see in him?’

She sees the person he could be, I begin to say — but that notion, so perfect on the sixth floor of Transaction House, here seems hollow, pallid, woefully naïve.

‘It’s one thing trying to get you a date with a waitress in real life.’ Paul is pacing back and forth now over the shoals of books. ‘But in a novel there needs to be some kind of logic. There needs to be some kind of justice. He can’t just buy her.’

‘He is not buying her. He is in love with her.’

‘So what? There could be umpteen people in love with her. There could be some sweet, idealistic, totally broke young painter that completely adores her. Why should the banker get her?’

‘Why shouldn’t he?’ I say, feeling a glow of anger rise from my stomach. ‘She redeems him.’

‘How is he redeemed? What does he sacrifice?’

‘Maybe he quits his job.’

‘That’s it? He waltzes off into the sunset with his pockets full of money and we’re all supposed to cheer? That’s fucking lame, Claude. He’s never done a good thing for anyone, give me one reason why he should get the girl too.’

‘Because that’s how life is,’ I snap.

‘Well, no one wants to read that story, believe me.’

‘You’re the expert on what people don’t want to read,’ I return, but he doesn’t hear. He’s storming back and forth, berating himself in the same deranged manner I heard when I came in.

‘Banerjee was right,’ he is saying. ‘It just can’t be done. It just doesn’t work any more.’

My anger fades, and I feel a pang of guilt: have I done this to him? Have I infected him, and his wife, with my own misplaced hopes? Or is there some way forward?

‘Didn’t you tell me once’ — I am embarrassed at the desperation evident in my voice — ‘that at some point in his life everyone finds himself at a crossroads? Where the clock strikes thirteen, and he must make a choice who he will be, good or bad? Can’t we find that moment for the banker?’

Paul looks down at his hands; I have a strange sense of impending dissolution, like an actor at an audition who has delivered his lines and now stares into the darkness, waiting for his invisible judges to dismiss him.

‘What were you saying a minute ago, about listening to the market,’ he says, with his head bowed.

‘I said you shouldn’t do it.’

‘No, I think you were on to something. Maybe that’s the angle we need to take. Work out what people want, and go from there.’

‘Work out what Wombat Willy wants?’

‘He buys books, doesn’t he? I’ve got to make some money from this, Claude. I’m on the fucking ropes here. The whole industry’s on the ropes. It isn’t the time to be precious.’ He kneads his scalp distractedly. ‘So what is it they want? Strong narratives, right? Exciting stories, characters you remember. Drama, violence, murdered prostitutes. A serial killer is on the loose, that kind of thing.’

‘That sounds like the kind of stupid scénario the world is already full of.’

‘Well, we can spin it, right? Tweak the formula. The murderer’s the detective, the murderer’s the narrator, something like that. The first thing we need to do is think of a fresh angle.’ He brings his fingertips to his temple, as if he were trying to tune in a radio. ‘You said something interesting there about Ulysses not having enough plot. So how about … how about we give it a plot? We use the characters and the basic set-up — but with a high-octane, twenty-first-century story!’

‘Are you talking about … ?’

‘A sequel to Ulysses !’ A feverish light dances in his eyes, sickly sweat burnishing his forehead. ‘ Think about it! It’s the most literary book there is! And yet it ends on this completely inconclusive note. That’s why for generations readers have been crying out for a follow-up. And now here it is!’ He seizes his pen, writes with such vigour that he tears the page. ‘It’s ten years after the last book ended. Leopold Bloom is divorced from Molly. He’s hit the bottle, he’s bitter, he’s jaded, he’s working as a cop in New York City. A rash of murders has broken out across the city. The killer’s leaving obscure literary references written on their bodies …’