Monday Guest Blog by Lisa

Two Ravens Press author Alex Pheby has written an article inviting us to “Buy Difficult Books!”

He says:

What I mean by difficult writing is writing that challenges us as readers, writing that exceeds what we feel comfortable with. It’s puzzling writing that takes us somewhere we haven’t been and perhaps would not choose to go, but where, once we’ve made the effort, we discover something we never imagined we could know. It’s writing that makes our mental, spiritual and emotional muscles burn.

Writing that makes our mental, spiritual and emotional muscles burn? I immediately thought of Senseless, by Stona Fitch.

As you might remember from last week, it was my mission to step out of my comfort zone, stay awake all night (bottle of rum at my side) and read Senseless. Well, it didn’t exactly go to plan. I bought the rum, I drank a glass of the rum and I was out like a light. Nine hours of sleep later I picked up the novel and flew through it.

It’s not often that a novel makes me mutter the words “Jesus Christ!” but Senseless did engender that response on several occasions. However, reading Senseless wasn’t just a visceral experience – the book had my mental muscles flaming too. It’s rare for me to read something that makes me ask so many questions of the text, of the world, of myself.

I’ll review Senseless more fully on Vulpes, but my general impression is that the book has the feel of a modern parable. To begin with I was optimistically expecting a counter-terrorist operative like Jack Bauer from 24 to sweep in and save the day, but as I read on there was a feeling of inevitability in the writing that led me to think that Eliott must experience his ordeal.

As I mentioned last week, Eliott Gast is an economist taken hostage by an anti-globalization terrorist group, who are intent on removing Eliott’s senses one by one, while footage of his torture is broadcast live on the internet to another group of captives: the vast audience glued to their computer screens.

I kept asking myself how Eliott could choose to live, when he knew that hideous torture lay ahead. Hope? Defiance, more like. Eliott lives for each day, and if his captors want him dead, they’ll have to kill him, otherwise he’ll keep on keeping on. Shortly after I finished reading Senseless, I saw in the news that Ingrid Betancourt had been freed after spending six years as a terrorist hostage. Six years. She was a high-value hostage, just as in the novel Eliott is a high-value hostage. This placing a price on people according to how much joy/success/money you can bleed from them plays into another aspect of globalization: consumerism. Eliott is a possession of the terrorist group, and they consume him, bit by bit, without thinking of the consequences for him – they’re only concerned with their own pleasure and success. In his life Eliott too has been a thoughtless consumer: he is an epicure and has spent years consuming whatever has taken his fancy, including ortolans.

Wikipedia quotes The Wine Spectator and The Connoisseur’s Series, The Global Gourmet respectively, and says of the ortolan bunting:

For centuries, a rite of passage for French gourmets has been the eating of the Ortolan. These tiny birds-captured alive, force-fed, then drowned in Armagnac-were roasted whole and eaten that way, bones and all, while the diner draped his head with a linen napkin to preserve the precious aromas and, some believe, to hide from God.

The eating of the ortolan has ethical eating groups baying for blood. First, it is caught with a net in the forest. Taken alive, its eyes are poked out and the bird is put in a small cage. It’s then force-fed oats, millet and figs until it has swollen to four times its normal size. Then the bird is drowned alive in fine cognac. Then, it’s roasted whole, in an oven at high heat, for six to eight minutes. Once it reaches the table, a napkin is placed over the eater’s head. The technique of eating the ortolan is to put the whole bird into the mouth, with only the beak protruding. Here sadism mingles with masochism. The first taste as you crunch on the bird is the brandied flesh and fat. Then, the bitterness of the guts follow and finally, as the tiny, delicate bones are being chewed on, they will lacerate the diner’s gums, with the salty taste of the bleeding gums mingling with the richness of the fat and the bitterness of the organs. Chewing the ortolan takes approximately 15 minutes.

The consumption of the ortolan is symbolic of the terrorists’ consumption of Eliott: he is placed in a room as white as any linen napkin, and the faces of his torturers are hidden from him. Eliott is offered up as a delicacy to the watching masses that happily pay a fortune to continue consuming Eliott’s ordeal.

Senseless says a lot of things about voyeurism, about the age of reality TV and about terrorism, but it is not an easy novel to read. I would say it is an example of difficult fiction at its best. I’ve already recommended it to Alex Pheby…

Lisa Glass blogs as part of the Vulpes Libris (Book Fox) collective. Her novel, Prince Rupert’s Teardrop, is out in paperback now.