IAN SHADWELL Slush Pile. Reviewed by Linda Funnell
This cautionary tale takes aim at the literary life.
‘I am not a normal person. I am a writer,’ declares Michael Ardenne, the antihero of Ian Shadwell’s takedown of literary narcissism. Michael is a prodigy, having won the Booker Prize for his first novel before he turned 30. The years since, however, have not been fruitful: ‘[a]fter a decade and a half of writer’s block, he was as dry as an old dog turd.’
Financially dependent on his wife Tanya (who has put her own literary ambitions aside in order to provide for them both), Michael passes the time surfing the internet, watching porn, inventing pseudonyms under which to contribute to online discussions about his work, and revelling in past glories (there is a toe-curling scene at the local RSL when his name is the answer to one of the trivia night questions).
Things come to a head for Michael when, having failed to curb his taste for fine wines and whisky, there is no money left to pay the phone bill. In the resulting confrontation, Tanya makes it clear to him that he needs to get a job or they will lose the house. Afterwards Michael reflects:
After all, what did it mean to be a writer? Other writers had struggled with these issues, with character flaws, with money problems. Bukowski! There was one. Though his writing was adolescent and not a patch on Michael’s. Why, in a sense, if anything, this incident proved he was a writer. That he was the type of person who could not cope with the demands of everyday reality simply because his mind was so full of inspiration … He sank onto the couch, too weak to support his body. His head was so heavy; full, no doubt, of inspiration, that he could no longer stand.
There’s a lot not to like about Michael Ardenne, from his narcissism to his habit of perving on the teenage schoolgirl next door and much in between. But he is also intensely vulnerable. It was his vulnerability that originally attracted the capable Tanya, and it’s the very fragility of his self-delusion that keeps the story moving. How far can he go before being forced into some kind of self-realisation?
The answer is: quite a long way. In response to his requests for money, his publisher sends him a box of unsolicited manuscripts (‘the slush pile’ as it is pejoratively known) to assess. One of these is the gripping and bloody story of a serial killer. In desperation to produce a new work, Michael reworks it as his own, even reproducing entire scenes from the original.
It’s a not unfamiliar fear for new authors submitting their manuscripts: that an unscrupulous publisher will steal their work. In reality the risk to a publisher’s reputation would be so great, it simply wouldn’t be worth it. (Decades ago I heard a rumour about a publisher contracting an author who turned out to be none other than the publisher – but submitting to your own slush pile is a different kind of fraud to plagiarism.) Often the high-profile accusations of plagiarism you see in the press have a strong thread of self-interest or opportunism, such as the case against JK Rowling, which was dismissed in 2011.
Nevertheless, it is from this thread that Slush Pile’s story is woven, and after a slow start dwelling on Michael’s ageing-slacker lifestyle and the attractions of young Alanna next door, the action flows. For, of course, the original author discovers that his work has been stolen, and sets out for revenge.
There are wonderful cameos, such as Martin Moorhouse, PR extraordinaire, a beguiling mix of profanity and charm, who comes into Michael’s life at a critical point to finesse his public image; and Woody, the book-loving labourer and would-be science-fiction writer, who responds exactly as you would expect when Michael gives him some ill-considered feedback on his work.
Michael is an unlikely writer in many ways. We don’t see him reading, and there is nothing in his present self-absorption to hint at what might have produced a prize-winning work. Literature, it seems, just comes to him. Until it doesn’t.
What Michael loves most of all is the high life: room service, fans, adoring young women, no money worries …
He vastly preferred the long period of his life just after he won the prize, when he didn’t even need a wallet. Things were just taken care of. After all, why should talented people have to pay for anything? … Without them, society would have no soul. There should be some kind of grant, a living treasure grant which ensured people of his calibre were just looked after …
While it’s easy to laugh at Michael’s unrealistic view of life (and the portrayal of the publishing world – a first class flight to Coolangatta to go to the Byron Bay Writers Festival? Really?), the novel seems to take seriously the theory that great books emerge out of crises and the suffering of the author. (A theory with many exceptions: Tim Winton once refreshingly confessed to only suffering occasional bouts of ‘boutique melancholy’.) Michael’s Booker winner was an outpouring after a disappointed love affair, a desperate attempt to woo his lost love; once he is cosily settled in his suburban home with his loving and supportive wife, nothing he writes is worth completing. By the novel’s end, however, Michael may write successfully again – as the result of a crisis. He certainly gets put through the wringer.
Slush Pile is a romp through the life of a literary desperado and a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of taking a short cut to fame.
Ian Shadwell Slush Pile Puncher & Wattman 2014 PB 246pp $24.95
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