Cleanness

For a book that is so praised for the writer's skill and craft this was a disappointment. Much of the responsibility may rest at the door of the editor, if there was one. Part of the 'tools of the trade' should be basic grammar. The understanding of inverted commas and the use of paragraphs are in the beginner's class. How could an author's ideas be successfully conveyed when the reader is distracted by errors like wasps at a picnic? Please, leave lengthy sentences and paragraphs to Hemmingway.

Garth Greenwell is clearly a good writer, but the prose and subject matter here just felt like an attempt to cash in on the success of his [in my view far superior] debut novel. It felt more like what it arguably was - a compendium of short stories centred around the same theme and character - rather than a solid, standalone story. I also had less time for the narrator, perhaps because he's constantly revealed to us through the same prism, obsessing about the same things. As with What Belongs to You, the depiction of Bulgaria as a country in transition is absorbing and accurate, and was my favourite aspect of this follow-up. In the end though I found the prose style distracting and was underwhelmed by how bitty and similarly insular the various strands felt. I'm hoping the author next applies his talents to something very different.

Cleanness by Garth Greenwell is the sort of “novel” that makes me wonder why “literary fiction” almost always seems to be nothing more than pseudo-intellectual navel gazing narcissism. When did it become such an absolute chore to read? I picked Cleanness randomly from online recommended reading shelves, the recommendations coming from someone who is supposedly smart about such things, an NPR or New Yorker pick. Probably the New Yorker since excerpts were previously published there, before being crammed together with other pieces published in other “literary” magazines, and it appears an attempt to capitalize on his early success on his first novel, which I’ve not read. While I understand the financial need to do so, something which has been probably true for writers ever since they began writing, it also helps clarify why many second novels flop. But perhaps there’s something deeper going on. Maybe it’s another example of writers with some talent pushing literature into creative new directions. Or maybe it shows just how out of touch the literati are with most readers and the majority of middle class readers. Cleanness shows a mastery of the language, and moments are worth reading. I suspect those moments are different for each reader, depending on what you’re into. For example, the overly lengthy BDSM scene might be your thing. (All scenes are overly lengthy, so much so that you might feel beaten to death with the words.) For me, it was the initial scene when the narcissistic narrator engages in a coffee shop discussion with a student who is lamenting the loss of his lover. The gayness in this opening scene is beside the point. You can feel the hard edge, the open hurt, deeply felt by those of us fortunate to have been in love. The other scene was the first street protest, which surges along with the writing style well suited to imitate the surge of the crowd. The narrator is a literature teacher in Bulgaria where attitudes toward gay relationships are, as you might imagine, repressive. The protests are for or against something nebulous, but gay rights is an overriding theme in the book. All secondary characters are identified with a letter, R. or N. or whatever, which seems to serve little purpose except perhaps to emphasize anonymity in the face of oppression, but mostly only emphasizes the already oppressive attention to the narrator, and to allow me to characterize it as an alphabet soup of characters swimming around in weak broth, which I very much appreciate. Basically, I’ve become a reading masochist, able to wade my way through pages and pages of no paragraph steam of consciousness descriptions of the narrator’s feelings. And no, I’m not unsympathetic because it’s all about gay love. I even tried substituting “she” for he and reading it, discovering that the so-called story felt the same, a 200-plus page one-not...

In this book of interconnected stories, a young man is in Sophia, Bulgaria where he is a teacher in a high school. He has come from the United States as a transfer teacher to experience another culture and to expose his students to English. His time in Bulgaria is coming to a close and he looks back on the relationships he has formed there. The teacher is gay and many of his relationships are short term lovers. In some, he is the submissive partner while in others he is dominant. In two related stories, he talks about his most important relationship. He falls in love with a graduate student who is also in Bulgaria although from Portugal. They have a long-term relationship and hope to build a life together but in the end, the other man cannot find work in Bulgaria and the teacher isn't successful finding work in Portugal and the relationship falls apart. This book isn't for everyone. It won many prizes, including a New York Times Notable Book Award, a best book of the year award from NPR, the New Yorker, Time and the Washington Post as well as being longlisted for prizes such as the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the Prix Sade. The sex scenes between the man and his lovers are quite graphic and some readers might not appreciate that. But it explores the loneliness of those who are trying to make a home away from what they have known and the different types of relationships that might exist for those looking for a love to sustain them. This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.