World Famous Comics: Netherland (Vintage Contemporaries)
Netherland (Vintage Contemporaries)
By: Joseph O'Neill Publisher: Vintage Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 272 Publication Date: May 07, 2009 Release Date: May 07, 2009 Studio: Vintage
Product Description: In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, and left alone after his English wife and son return to London, Hans van den Broek stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. As the two men share their vastly different experiences of contemporary immigrant life in America, an unforgettable portrait emerges of an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality.
Amazon.com Review: Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Joseph O'Neill
Joseph O’Neill was born in Ireland and raised in Holland. He received a law degree from Cambridge University and worked as a barrister in London. He writes regularly for The Atlantic Monthly and is the author of two previous novels, This Is the Life and The Breezes, and of a family history, Blood-Dark Track, which was a New York Times Notable Book. O'Neill received the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his third novel, Netherland. He lives with his family in New York City.
Question: President Obama mentioned in a New York Times Magazine profile that he’s reading Netherland. How do you feel about the President reading your book?
Joseph O'Neill: I'm very honored, of course.
Question: How is the world of Netherland particular to the United States after 9/11?
Joseph O'Neill: The story takes place in the aftermath of 9/11. One of the things it does is try to evoke the disorientation and darkness of that time, which we only emerged from with the election of President Obama.
Question: What is the importance of the sport of cricket in this book? Do you play?
Joseph O'Neill: I love sport and play cricket and golf myself. Sport is a wonderful way to bring together people who would otherwise have no connection to each other.
Question: One of your reviewers calls Netherland an answer to The Great Gatsby. Were you influenced by Fitzgerald’s book, and was your book written with that book in mind?
Joseph O'Neill: Halfway through the book I realized with a slightly sinking feeling that the plot of Netherland was eerily reminiscent of the Gatsby plot: dreamer drowns, bystander remembers. But there are only about 5 plots in existence, so I didn't let it bother me too much. Fitzgerald thankfully steered clear of cricket.
Question: Many reviewers have commented on the “voice” of this novel. How it is more a novel of voice than of plot? Do you agree with this?
Joseph O'Neill: Yes, I would agree with that comment. This is not a novel of eventful twists and turns. It is more like a long-form international cricket match (which can last for 5 days without a winner emerging), about nuance and ambiguity and small slippages of insight. And about language, of course.
Saved only by Chuck Ramkissoon ^ The book critics love it. Barack Obama reportedly thinks it's wonderful. Amazon readers however mostly say it's rambling and boring, so what's happening and who's right ? The clue to these sharply divergent views can be found in the interview with Joseph O'Neill at the back of the UK edition of the book. He's more interested in letting the voice hold the narrative than rely on conventional plotting to tell the story. In the interest of his lawyer wife Rachel's career development, equity analyst Hans van den Broek's relocates his family from London to New York but this proves shortlived when 911 happens, his wife freaks out and decides unilaterally their marriage has ended, then proceeds to yank herself and their son Jake back to London on the pretext that a trial separation is what they both need. The shaken and unhappy Hans stays on and wanders into a small community of mostly foreign born cricketers and in the process strikes up a curious friendship with a Gatsby like character from Trinidad named Chuck Ramkissoon who is ostensibly an entrepreneur - hey, what else can an outsider be ? - with a finger in every pie and with more than likely connections to the underworld. He dreams of building a cricket stadium one day and tries to interest Hans in the project. We know from early on that eventually Chuck's body is dredged up from the canal with both hands tied behind his back and if you're thinking this is going to be a murder mystery, then you'll be disappointed cos the cause of Chuck's death is never explained only alluded to in the most incidental way. Besides, it's hardly the point of the story.
So what is the point of the story ? It's about insiders and outsiders and how being an outsider creates space for individuals to build their own identities or lose themselves in, how 911 has shaken the social institution of marriage and the family, causing the loss of one's bearings, etc. Admittedly, Hans doesn't cut a very compelling figure - he comes across rather weak and hapless against his dreadful wife, one of the least likeable characters in modern fiction. She is bullying, selfish and self-righteous and you really wonder what poor Hans has done for her to leave him so suddenly. Sadly, after (we learn from Hans) her new boyfriend dumps her, she decides that she will have Hans back after all and they go on presumably to live happily ever after when Hans returns to London for good. God, what a loathsome woman and what a wimp of a man !
The story is saved only by the enigmatic Chuck - a man defined by his character's outlines and sketches, always standing half in the light and half in the shade. His grey qualities enliven the pages and keeps the story afloat.
O'Neill's writing oscillates between sheer poetry and overwritten prose. Amazon reviewers have rightly cited examples of excesses which tighter editing might have avoided. "Netherland" is hardly the masterpiece hailed by critics but it is certainly readable and enjoyable once you get what the author is trying to achieve. Not sure if the US edition carries the interview but if it does, read the interview first before starting on the novel.
A Great Literary -- I Mean, Really Literary -- Novel ^ [Impertinent question: Why did they make the cover of the paperback edition look like the cover of the paperback edition of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace?]
This is an almost perfect literary novel. The writing is gorgeous, full of poetic insights. It is not a long book, but it took me a long time to read. There are many passages to savor. It was something I'd been seeking for a long time, an old-fashioned reading experience, a leisurely report from another world that moves, delights, instructs. And as beautiful as this prose is, I rarely felt that O'Neill was showing off. Personally - and I'm not being sarcastic here - I enjoy encountering the occasional "pluvial," "solvific," and "morganatic." This is prose you can read out loud and its meaning is immediately apparent even though expressed in phrases you and I could not craft. And it is not limited to exposition. The dialogue at 95-99 (hardcover) is a perfect account of the way ideologues argue. What I'm trying to say (and taking way too long to do it) is that it isn't just musical word assembly - there are numerous moments of real insight that will get your memories vibrating.
So why only four stars? On page 131 of the novel (hardcover), one of the characters says:
"People want a story," she said. "They like a story."
Well, exactly. The reviewers here who complain of no story, or nothing much happening, are not wrong. As much as one might admire O'Neill's immense gift, he remains under some obligation to beguile us. It doesn't have to be a mystery, or a romance, or a potboiler, but the reading mind craves some kind of narrative line, some change in the protagonist. I personally don't demand catharsis - some main characters never figure out a damned thing, and that's a story right there - but after one has internalized the fact that one is going to be reading top-notch prose, the lack of any (for lack of a better word) plot is noticeable, and it detracts from the experience. It was certainly a deliberate choice on O'Neill's part - he informs us of the single most dramatic event in the book (and one that we do not actually experience as part of the narrative) within the first few paragraphs. As I was reading I thought that this might work better as a series of short stories, where the acute observations may stand more comfortably on their own without requiring a story arc to maintain interest.
I agree with the critics who lavished praise on this book, but I do think that there is a strong cultural bias at work with Netherland. This is a very New Yorky book. I didn't mind it a bit, but if you're someone who has a real romance with the city you might tend to overlook some of its weaknesses.
And it has a few. Not debilitating, but clear enough: The protagonist, who is supposed to be a high-powered oil industry analyst for a major investment bank or brokerage house, seems to have a tremendous amount of time to gallivant around the city. He exhibits no normal male reaction to his appalling spouse. Indeed, he is a bit of a stiff, seemingly denatured by - what? Post 9-11 angst? The novel starts out with the thought (reinforced by the cover-flap description) that what we are about to read proceeds in some way from the changes wrought on that day. It doesn't - perhaps O'Neill's artistry is too subtle for me, but I was never able to figure out what motivated this protagonist. Mostly, things happen to him, and he lets them.
Quibbles. I urge you deny your natural craving for drama and resolution and read this brilliant writer. I am hopeful that he will continue to grow into an author.
Doesn't live up to the hype ^ O'Neill's Blood Dark Track is one of the most interesting books I've read, so I expected a lot from Netherland - but for me, it didn't really deliver. One of the problems is that for a book structured around the idea that the ritual (rather than the sport) of cricket can be both a social unifier and a sea of calm in the emotional maelstrom of post 9/11 America, the narrator err....isn't very convincing on cricket. Its as though Death in the Afternoon was written by someone who hadn't seen a bullfight. This might be a bit harsh - but it seemed to me like a description of cricket written for the benefit of people of who don't understand it (ie Americans) rather than those who do (everyone else in the former British empire). As someone who does understand cricket, and living in a mainly non cricket playing country, missing its social element, I couldn't really believe in the narrator's voice - and so couldn't really believe in this central principle.
So although other elements of the book - the characters at the Chelsea Hotel, the relationship with the over reaching Ramkissoon, the conflict between cold fish narrator and his politically awakening wife, are interesting, I ultimately couldn't care about them
So a good idea, well written, which ultimately didn't quite work for me, however much I wanted it to. But worth reading
Way Overrated ^ This is not Gatsby, or an interesting book on cricket (I'm Australian and believe me the author says nothing at all revealing about cricket. I'd rather listen to Warney all day and surely that is an indictment). And O'Neill is not John Banville either however much he may want to be. As many readers have noted this is a book about a drearily bourgeois, occasionally mildly insightful character who after a series of tepid 'adventures' manages to hit a couple of sixes and walk out on a dinner party with his wife's awful friends. In the end he remains as Bourgeois as ever. This all might be realistic (no not really, it is actually very contrived) but hardly revelatory. The most painful part I found to be the final section where O'Neill after toying with our expectations in a tediously professional manner attempts to land us via some back and forth (lyrically meaningful?) excursions through his protagonist's soulless past and present. Oh dear, whether it be on the London eye or in India with his wife and child or as a boy lying in a random rowboat we are left wondering where indeed will we find this man's soul, or when will O'Neill capture some real rhythm or music. The overrall effect is of a writer endlessly casting and reeling but unable to land his fish. Check out John Banville or Coetzee instead to see how this might be done way better with even less likable characters. And to me Falling Man was a far more interesting examanation of post 911 angst. This is the most overhyped thing since Oscar Wao. And I've actually seen it on lists of 100 best modern novels already. Unbelievable. O'Neill obviously has plenty of friends in the right places who are either stupid or are willing to lie.
Cricket Means Fair Play ^ Netherland is a bleakly humorous tale of fantastic diversity, fear and alienation in New York City in the years after 9/11. O'Neill again and again contrasts the irrational injustice rigged against immigrants (outsiders) with a civilized game with rules and umpires - Cricket - embraced by those outsiders. After the Department of Motor Vehicles unfairly denies our hero, Hans, a learner's permit, he thinks: "I was seized for the first time by a nauseating sense of America, my gleaming adopted country, under the secret actuation of unjust, indifferent powers. The rinsed taxis, hissing over fresh slush, shone like grapefruits; but if you looked down into the space between the road and the undercarriage, where icy matter stuck to pipes and water streamed down the mud flaps, you saw a foul mechanical dark." As to why his immigrant friends play Cricket: "the communal, contractual phenomenon of New York Cricket is underwritten ... by the same agglomeration of unspeakable human longings ... men imagining an environment of justice."
On a wonderful side-note, he compares the City's stock market industry to newspaper restaurant reviewing: "... it struck me as a masquerade, this endless business of churning out research papers ... the stress of constantly tending to my popularity and competence. I felt like Vinay, cooking up myths from scraps and peels of fact."
Some reviewers compare Netherland to "The Great Gatsby." Hmmm!? Gatsby is an exquisite, poetic, jazz-age elegy to America's infatuation with The Dollar. O'Neill's fine novel is a darkly comic, prose meditation on the need to belong. The music of Netherland is a mashup of Dutch Lullaby, Soca and Reggae - just not Jazz.
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