Richard Flanagan: The Unknown Terrorist

[Mirabell]

Persons and actions of this story are invented. If the description of certain journalistic practices shows ressemblances to the practices of the Bild newspaper, that's because these ressemblances are not intended nor accidental, they are inescapable

The Unknown Terrorist, Richard Flanagan's novel, is, as he himself says at the back of his forgettable new book, a modern take on Böll's Verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum. And it is basically the same story. Woman fucks stranger, stranger is suspected of terrible crime, woman is suspected of being an accomplice. And I really like the Böll novel. Must be my favorite novel of his. So why was The Unknown Terrorist such a mess of a novel?

Can't be the writing. Heinrich Böll is not a great stylist. What success his novels and stories have, style has nothing to do with that. Flanagan is, if anything, a better stylist. Much of the novel drags and much is functional at best, but there are outstanding passages as well. Can't be the writing? Characters, maybe. That, actually, is the first problem. Although Böll's characters are cliché characters, they need to be for the story to work in the little space that is allotted to them and Böll is a master in making even cliché come alive. Not so Flanagan. For one thing, he overdoes the cliché, adds many more layers of schlocky details. And then he just lets his characters get away with this. He doesn't even try to make the characters believable. No Sir. When he slips his characters into the pockets of the story, he adds just the most necessary characterization. He sticks to the dolls (ironic, eh?) he constructed. Interaction between characters is unbelievable, as a rule.

But that is not his main error. The main problem with the novel is the old show-don't-tell idea. He lets us know what people are thinking. Not just the protagonist, but also the journalist, the cops, and others. Every aspect of the story is examined and explained. It's as if he was expecting his readers to be less smart than fourth graders. No guesswork for us. And this is where the novel goes terribly wrong. Yes, that's tedious to read. But the political aspect of it is softened to an extent that is almost criminal. The hard criticism of mass media of Böll's novel is softened to bad individuals who do know better but decide, greedily, to go ahead with the "story". Whereas the only dedication of Flanagan is to David Hicks, a victim of misguided governmental policy, Böll's reads like this:

Personen und Handlung dieser Erzählung sind frei erfunden. Sollten sich bei der Schilderung gewisser journalistischer Praktiken Ähnlichkeiten mit den Praktiken der Bild-Zeitung ergeben haben, so sind diese Ähnlichkeiten weder beabsichtigt noch zufällig, sondern unvermeidlich.

(Persons and actions of this story are invented. If the description of certain journalistic practices shows ressemblances to the practices of the Bild newspaper, that's because these ressemblances are not intended nor accidental, they are inescapable). Lots of misguided governmental policies in his time, too. However, that's plainly not his point. It's about how the mass media distorts something if it conforms with certain bourgeois stereotypes.

This would have worked fine with The Unknown Terrorist, too. Slutty woman? Check. Arab terrorist? Check. Etc. And these stereotypes are seen to be at the basis of the journalist's doing the story the way he does. However, it stops at this point. Richard Cody. And he does know better, but his greed for money and fame blinds him. Böll exposed the stereotypes that govern the press. Maybe a 'real' Richard Cody would not need the incentive of greed. The stereotypes alone are more than enough. This would have made an incisive commentary on the state of our nations. Look at the inane and inherently racist coverage of the remarks of Archbishop Williams, or check out the coverage in Danish newspapers of the alleged plot to kill the damn cartoonist. Or German newspapers covering that. Hell, mainstream coverage of muslims by privately owned media. Daily Express, anyone? Henryk M. Broder? Broder writes the stories Cody would write had he Broder's erudition or style. Or check out how much of a deal it is that a photograph was published with Barack Hussein Obama wearing a turban.

No, The Unknown Terrorist is not tidy nor subtle. It doesn't have to. It's an angry book, wearing its moral indignation on its sleeve. But it is on this account, the political sphere, that it fails first and foremost. It attacks a government who uses a Patriot Act-like legislation to exert pressure on people. But the main protagonist's life is not destroyed by that. It's destroyed the hateful discourse taken up and whipped up by the press. Böll's novel got him into a pickle with the press which launched a spite-and hateful campaign against the little indignant writer, a campaign that lasted years. No such chance with Flanagan, I presume. The boring little antepodean shit.

[Funhouse]

Don't let this (admittedly very bad) novel put you off Flanagan, who is a wonderful writer. Read Gould's Book of Fish instead. One of the finest Australian novels of the past twenty years.

[Cocko]

Interesting thoughts... I too was let down by the book. I keep a reading log blog (ABOUT THE LOG | the reading log (book review) blog: the novel and novella, fiction and non-fiction.) and these were my thoughts on The Unknown Terrorist, below it were my thoughts on the far far far better Gould's Book of Fish.

The Unknown Terrorist:

I bought this book the day after I finished Flanagan’s previous novel Gould’s Book of Fish. I devoured it in a matter of days. On one hand this should be seen as a compliment, but at the end of it all I have to say that I wanted to like this book much more than I did. As for the flashes of brilliance so often seen in Book of Fish, Flanagan dazzled me in the first two pages with a powerful opening, from there it was downhill.

After the event, when turning back through the pages of platitudes from reviewers, I thought that I must have misplaced my disappointment. Flanagan has a deft hand a creating believable characters in a story that could have easily strayed from the realms of possibility, but it didn’t. Surely this must be Flanagan’s attempt to write an accessible thriller that could cut this frightening real plot through to the masses. Unfortunately, while this is an important story to tell, I felt it came across as a little heavy handed.

I have read many books which are worse than this one. It has many redeeming features and I did love Flanagan’s attention to detail around the streets of Sydney (the city where I live). Nevertheless, we are often hardest on the ones we love. To be honest, if I didn’t know better I would not have thought this was the same author as the one that delivered Gould’s Book of Fish. In fact, this book has not deterred me from his work, only excited me to chase down his others and see how diverse they are. And quickly.

Gould's Book of Fish:

This book ticks a whole lot of boxes for me. Flanagan’s craft is structuring a story within a story within a story is often daunting and complex but ultimately satisfying, even if you have to re-read a few passages for fear of loosing grasp. But like all good things a level of complexity is welcome. The depths of character and plot is the bedrock from which Flanagan has been able to build his post-modern structure, similar to the likes of Graham Swift, in which he questions history, its authenticity. Fertile ground from which I am always hoping to navigate!

The comparisons don’t stop there. Billy Gould is a self-confessed lier, think Herbert Badgery in Peter Carey’s Illywhacker. Furthermore, Flanagan’s writing for Gould has further similarities to Carey, consider The True History of the Kelly Gang. Or even, Flanagan’s use of Gould’s obsession unfolds in a novel told through 12 fish, think of Holland’s obsession in Murray Bail’s Eucalyptus which unfolds among many trees. But these comparisons don’t do this book justice. I don’t usually quote other reviews in my comments but I feel on this occasion it is warranted. The inside cover of the edition I have has two comments that I honestly believe capture the true essence of this work.

The first is from USA Today:

“Reading Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish is like visiting the backwaters of a strange land, wandering into a dark bar, and drinking all night with its resident storyteller, who is either brilliant or crazed or both. The morning after, safely back in your hotel, you wonder whether it was all a dream, and if it wasn’t, were any of the stories halfway true, and if so, which half?”

The second is from The Times:

“Forgery is the art of our time: because we live with the colourless, the virtual and the inorganic on an everyday basis, we need forgers to recover the dangerous, flawed and colourful entities of the actual world. Richard Flangan is a master forger…”

[Funhouse]

Good thoughts on Flanagan's work there Cocko. I agree with you entirely. The Unknown Terrorist was an unusual book for Flanagan. He consciously set out to write a popular thriller rather than his usual literary novels and he had an overt political point that he wanted to make that arose out of his own persecution by the media for opposing the Gunn's mill in Tasmania. It didn't work for me at all, and I was amazed to see that it got mostly positive reviews overseas.

Flanagan's a really talented and interesting guy. I had a lengthy chat with him after a writer's festival session a few years ago, and he had lots of interesting things to say about Gould's Book of Fish.

[Cocko]

Originally Posted by Funhouse

Flanagan's a really talented and interesting guy...

I agree, he certainly is a fascinating guy... activist, essayist, novelist, filmmaker, Rhodes scholar!

I wanted to take a rest on his work for a month or so but I am very keen to read The Sound of One Hand Clapping soon. I have seen the film version some years back but I would like to also view it again following the novel as it is rare for an author to take up the directors chair and adapt their own work. Sure there are plenty of writer/directors and even authors-cum-scriptwriters, but I can't think of any authors-cum-directors. I'm sure there are, but not in Australia.

In fact I am increasingly being drawn to the muddy world of adaptation. I work in research and statistics for Screen Australia (formerly Australian Film Commission) and I am surprised in this country at the independence of the publishing industry and the film/TV industries, very little sourced work gets adapted in comparison to original scripts. I'm not saying that this is bad, but it certainly breaks a well worn trend that occurs internationally. But really, this is what makes the Flanagan example even more interesting, although I believe he had a bad experience in making, I thought it was suggested that he wouldn't work in film anymore!?!

If he did suggest that, he must have reconsidered it seeing as he is polishing the script for Baz Lurhmann's Australia.