ANOTHER MAN ON THE STREETby Caryl Phillips
Caryl Phillips’ twelfth characteristic, One other Man on the Avenue, opens with Victor Johnson, the son of a cane cutter from St. Kitts, touring to London by ship at night time. He’s self-contained, bookish, harmless regardless of his cynicism – and as is usually stated in such tales, disappointment and bitterness are prone to await him. The ship’s white captain cajoles him in regards to the immigrants: “It is the 60s and we’re nonetheless letting you in. We’re only a tiny little island and we will not take you all in.’
After I learn a novel that does not belong to an apparent style, I start to anticipate the themes it’d discover and the way its kind will mirror a sure worldview. “One other man on the road” usually will get in the way in which of such an expectation. Within the second chapter, Victor – our important character and anchor of the narrative – disappears and as an alternative now we have a brand new narrator, an unnamed white man. By means of his standpoint, we start to acknowledge a black man referred to as Fortunate, an obscure marginal determine on the bottom rung of the Notting Hill pub the place they each work. We finally be taught that Fortunate is Victor—each names are sadly ironic—although it is 20 pages earlier than we discover out (nearly a tenth of the size of the novel), and the alias isn’t defined. Thus far, different characters have been launched, some essential, some not, and the story is complicated for causes that are not clear.
Phillips’ finest work will be virtually Shakespearean in the way in which he makes use of a type of prosaic monologue to light up the lives of his characters. What follows on this e-book, nevertheless, is tougher to have fun. There is a vary—Caribbean immigrants, working-class whites, a Holocaust survivor—however the e-book’s jumps in time and place are distracting, require loads of generic filler, and the consequence can really feel like a saggy Victorian novel compressed into 200 pages. There isn’t any emotional stress behind the phrases. The story — “It is the Sixties” — is indicated however not explored.
Victor finds work as a lease collector for a Jewish pauper, Peter Feldman, the aforementioned Holocaust survivor. Victor then turns into a journalist whose profession is proscribed and deformed by the racism that reverberates destructively in his thoughts and soul. By means of Feldman, he meets Ruth, a working-class white lady who loves Victor regardless of his smoldering insides and stays with him for the remainder of his life, when he lastly faces the magnitude of what he misplaced when he left St. Kitts for the “motherland”.
That is the “what” within the novel. The “how” is complicated. Phillips’s The Nature of Blood (1997) is among the strongest imaginings of the Holocaust and of Jew-hatred generally that I’ve ever learn. However the portrayal right here of Feldman, one of many three important characters, is mysteriously callous. His mom, Maria (an odd identify for a Jewish lady, although maybe not one), is stereotypically married to a tailor who’s “busy about his enterprise. Single row or double row? Padded shoulders or narrowed waist? … Lately, as an alternative of contemplating Maria’s wants, he would wrestle with the query of whether or not he ought to restore the ribbons, buttons, and lace he was promoting, or first order extra cloth that prospects may purchase to make clothes for themselves you’re “
I attempted to attribute this deadpan prose to the characters, however the tone is simply too distant for that. “In spite of everything, they weren’t spiritual folks,” we’re advised of the household, “and so they did not exit of their option to promote their background or beliefs. Each at residence and at work they spoke the nationwide language.”
The selection to keep away from the phrase “Jew” or not specify what “nationwide language” is being spoken – the place geographically the scene even takes place – puzzled me. I used to be seven pages into the part once I typed within the field, “Wait…that is the Holocaust?”
It could be an excessive amount of, but it surely could possibly be argued that the obscurity of Peter and his story is a approach of not seeing him, simply as Victor, one other immigrant in London, shouldn’t be seen by these round him. Each fade ignominiously on the finish of their lives. On this approach, every of them is simply “one other particular person on the road”.
“You suppose when you’re well mannered and fake one thing is not taking place, it’d simply go away and by no means trouble you once more,” Victor tells Ruth. “Even once I wasn’t positive of what I used to be doing, I at all times tried to maintain some dignity. Possibly it is my fault for making an attempt too laborious to be dignified once I know full properly that each one you see is the colour, not the person.
He appears misplaced within the story he’s telling himself, and in addition on this story being advised about him.
ANOTHER MAN ON THE STREET | By Caryl Phillips | Farrar, Strauss and Giroux | 222 pages | $27
