Ann Quin (1936–1973)

Kind of pop-arty, kind of cut-uppy, kind of spacey, kind of speedy, kind of Nog or Motorman or even Atrocity Exhibition style road trip thru the psyche of America and the middle-class American male circa end-of-the-60's. A real highwire act this, lots of potential for it to slew off the side of the hiway and expire in a haze of its own effluvia, but Quin never lets the pot of crazy overboil or simmer down too much. Funny as fuck in its skewering of 70's woo, encounter therapy, throupledom, show more the suburban dream, consumerism, driftless masculinity, and actually touching and tender deep under all the screwiness as our hero pursues/is pursued by his "X wife number 1" and her new beau thru a desert west of his own unacknowledged existential despair. I'll be reading her other three books. show less

Hair-tonic salesman Aly Berg, alias Greb, comes to a South Coast resort in the depths of winter to murder the father who abandoned him and his mother twenty-eight years earlier. The result is a strange, dark farce, obviously strongly inspired by Beckett, but with more than a hint of the Tony Hancock/Monty Python tradition (making copious use of props like a ventriloquist's dummy and a number of dead pets). There's so much confusion with the dummy that we — and Berg — lose track of show more whether the father is actually dead yet or whether it's the dummy that Berg has murdered yet again; when the actual murder does take place, it hardly seems significant any more.

Berg/Greb is clearly deep in Oedipus country, attracted to his father's repulsive girlfriend Judy and in love with his possessive offstage mother, but there's also a bizarre episode where he dresses up in Judy's clothes for no obvious reason and his father tries to make love to him, and various same-sex episodes hinted at in his past.

All very odd, but with a bouncy kind of energy that doesn't feel Beckettish at all, and full of unexpected language.
A good argument for not visiting Brighton (or wherever it is), perhaps, but also a good argument for reading more Quin. show less

Like reading absurdist theatre. Berg changes his name to become Greb, goes to a seaside town to find his father and kill him. So, the theatrical staple of identity and deception is played out in an Oedipal subject.

Berg-Greb is a screwed-up guy. Depraved thoughts dovetail seamlessly with dialogue and endlessly shifting action. You really move along between fantasy and reality here.

Why does Berg want to kill his father? He’s a loser, his father is a bounder-loser who abandoned him as a show more baby. He’s shacked up with Judith, a divorcee, Berg as Greb becomes aroused by Judith, too. Why? He’s just kind of depraved, or craving love, or angry at his father.

There’s a ventriloquist dummy too that we identify with the father for a long time, too. It’s weird, circus-like, panto-like, absurd.

Mostly I sensed the menacing Harold Pinter like motivations of characters who act on impulses have understood and never fully explained to the audience. We know Berg is pissed at his father, and yet he craves his love too. But you can’t say that, which leads to theatrical action.

The language is terrific, never dull, always dynamic, vivid, thrilling. Ann Quin sadly was another tragic death of a writer too young from booze and being screwed up by someone once upon a time. Great to see enough people cared enough to bring her back on the stage. show less

Finishing [b:Three|55961007|Three|Ann Quin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1605872202l/55961007._SY75_.jpg|1429373] gave me a sense of accomplishment. [a:Ann Quin|54420|Ann Quin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1232068725p2/54420.jpg]wrote this dense experimental novel of a ménage a trois often using no distinguishing orthographies or paragraphs for the three different speakers (a British middle-class couple plus their missing tenant/visitor) as show more well as no such breaks in their journals, diaries, etc. Just endless unpunctuated sentences, thoughts and movement so it is never clear who is speaking: "verbiage bumping up against verbiage in a dim, junk-cluttered hall" described by Joshua Cohen in the introduction. Although confused by the lack of plot, I was at the same time, swept along trying to build a story and propulsively attuned to Quin's fine writing. I intend to read another of her works, [b:Berg|44296812|Berg|Ann Quin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1605974116l/44296812._SY75_.jpg|897695].
"...Days become shorter. Hours lengthen. Wind rises
out of the sea
carries mist
to the house. Buries itself
into stonework. The possibility of what might have been sinks
away. Into what is left." show less