A Postmodern Belch by M.J. NichollsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
What Would Happen If I Tried to Enter Someone Else’s Novel?
Earlier this year, this triplasian 333 page volume was delivered to my modest residence by a vehicle whose only identifying marks were a muted trumpet logo and the acronym W.A.S.T.E. (I think that's an acronym? MJ, help me).
My wife, FM Sushi, was typically suspicious that I had received a parcel from somebody called "Lulu", well "Lulu.com", to be precise.
Knowing my private affairs as she does (she manages my Gmail account for both remuneration and entertainment), she enquired, "Doesn't W.A.S.T.E. normally deliver the books you get from that vamp, Oedipa Maas?"
My explanation that Lulu was a vanity publishing outfit was less than persuasive. Or so it seemed.
Then she turned the book in her hands, ran her delicate fingers along its spine and laughed, revealing that she had been pulling my leg all along.
"M.J. Nicholls? I've read some of his reviews." Her smile reminded me of a shark about to attack. "He has a lot of qualities a man could be vain about."
I couldn't work out whether there was an element of admiration in her remark.
She has never complimented one of my literary efforts like that. Well, to be honest, any of my efforts. (She is the inspiration for my well-honed sense of modesty.)
Some time afterwards, I noticed that the book had gone missing.
I looked in our recycling bin, to see if she'd accidentally thrown it out with the packaging. No. She had spared it the fate of most of my metafiction.
Then as the temperature plummeted with a mid-morning storm and I realised I needed something warmer than my Big Lebowski t-shirt, I went into our bedroom and noticed that she had put MJ's Meisterwerk (I learned this very useful word from Scribble, or was it Nathan, or MJ himself?) on her bedside table.
Not only that, she had removed half a dozen "you must read this" books I had recommended to the library downstairs.
When I quizzed her about the pile of literary tips, including one on "corporate personality' that Bird Brian had rated five stars, she replied, "I don't need to read them." I waited for the shark again..."I've already read your reviews...and they were quite enough, thank you."
Again, I wasn't sure whether this constituted flattery, but she soon cleared that up.
"In fact, in some cases, I think your review was longer than the book."
"Bullshit," I declared, defiantly. "That was only 'Infinite Jest', no others. And that was the whole point!"
Determined to further injure my pride, she added, "Then, I suppose, you have to count the footnotes, too."
It was clear that FM Sushi was getting ready to settle in with MJ.
I await the outcome of her
Strictly on the QT, I also await the imminent arrival of my black vinyl summer pyjamas.
I must keep an eye out for the postman's scooter. Or should that be an "ear out"?
Who knows what FM Sushi would think about a package from "Victoria&LolitasSecret.com"?
Its logo is a muted strumpet. Or two, if I recall correctly.
In the meantime, I'm giving this novel one star.
I'm not increasing it, until MJ gives me my wife back.
A Straight Swap
"I’ve come to return your thistle," Horrold (AKA M.J. Nicholls) said, finally, this morning.
"Thistle? No no no, Horrold. When she left me, she was a full woman thing. With woman things."
"Nice ones, eh?"
"I want her back. In the state she left me. She belongs to me."
"I propose a straight swap. You give me a good review, I’ll give you your wife back."
"I can’t guarantee a good review. I haven’t read the book yet."
"What about a good review from your wife then?"
We both turned to FM Sushi. She nodded.
FM Sushi’s Review
This book reminded me of a man’s penis. Could it have been any better if it was longer? Would I have missed anything if it was shorter? In both cases, the answer is no.
These views might come as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with my husband and who will therefore know me as someone who is content with the merely adequate.
DJ Ian Interviews Postmodernist Author MJ Nicholls
This is an edited version of an "interview" DJ Ian did with the "author".
As much as he loves MJ Nicholls, DJ Ian's job was to stay out of the way as much as possible and let him riff in his own words (all, well, most, of which derive from his book and not a "real" interview between a "real" DJ and a "real" author).
DJ Ian: Today in the studio I have "author", MJ Nicholls, whose novel sees Man, not to mention Woman, rise from the Primordial Slime to the Postmodern Belch. Welcome, MJ.
MJ Nicholls: Thank you.
DJ Ian: You say this is a postmodern novel, but the word on GoodReads is that it is a self-indulgent exercise in distracting postmodern bullshit. It is vapid and pointless. None of the invention, playfulness, wit or erudition of postmodernism are present here. In short, it’s boring.
MJ Nicholls: That’s bullshite, obviously. I’m here to bulldoze the boredom. To pile-drive the prose. To bedeck the slow indulgent bits of the novel in a regalia of quirks and lunatic tendencies. I'm here to irritate, invigorate, to confront.
DJ Ian: So your agenda isn’t just some undergraduate pisstake? It’s more ambitious?
MJ Nicholls: You could almost say, postgraduate. The initial conceit was that it be would be the book to end all books, to debook the book so to speak. I wanted to create a new superstructure of literature and pave the way for future generations of artists and thinkers...an uberbook.
DJ Ian: Marvin Amiss wasn't particularly impressed...
MJ Nicholls: We come from different schools of writing – he the highly disciplined Oxford school of stylistic obsession (an endlessly searching desire to achieve a state of beyond Nabokovian eloquence) – while I am content to be a playful satirist/humorist, lounging on the sidelines poking fun at literary styles and idioms.
DJ Ian: Another criticism that has been levelled at your work is that it is onanistic.
MJ Nicholls: I think a certain amount of onanism is essential to any postmodern work, perhaps even the author/reader relationship.
DJ Ian: The problem is, once you've started, you have to know when to stop.
MJ Nicholls: I think you're right. The aim is to stop before it gets out of hand. I like to think I've learned the knack.
DJ Ian: How would you describe the sense of humour of the novel?
MJ Nicholls:It’s a dazzling postmodern comedy – a jocose, absurdist riptide of indulgent piffle and boogerdash...
DJ Ian: You seem to take the piss out of your role as the author?
MJ Nicholls: Throughout the course of this book, I spin a continual reel of self-deprecating humour, harping on about how talentless and worthless the author is, and how his novel is a one-joke idea stretched to the last gasping crumb of credibility.
DJ Ian:You also deprecate the three characters in your novel who believe they are the authors of this fiction?
MJ Nicholls: Exactly, their ideas and values seemed to revolve around cheap exploitation and crude humour.
DJ Ian: Some critics attack the novel for what they call its “perverted exuberance”. It seems to be preoccupied with voluminous vaginas and cocks. There are so many gigantic genitals in sight, a la Robert Coover, it becomes banal.
MJ Nicholls: Well, you know when something is so imposing and grand, it becomes banal. Like a skyscraper or a stretch limo. An extended sandwich with five fillings. Leaves you feeling stuffed for months. That’s how I feel about Harold’s penis...If anything, his penis is a metaphor for the supersize mentality cutting a riptide through our occidental culture.
DJ Ian: What about Lydia’s vagina?
MJ Nicholls: I was hoping someone would ask me that question. Initially, I treated her vagina with a certain degree of curious immaturity.Then it switched to adulation...the flipside of this vagodeification was that Harold performed a series of masochistic, phallocentric mating rituals, whereby he slung his schlong around a series of opaque imaginings of Lydia, hoping to woo her vagina into a kind of self-basting translucence, hungrily awaiting the elixir of his cock.
DJ Ian: It sounds narcissistic...
MJ Nicholls: Lydia is just as narcissistic as Harold. The male characters and I were besotted with this combative, self-important narcissistic hostess of narrative discontent. I wanted somehow to become her torrid lover...Unfortunately, I myself personally, M.J. Nicholls, wasn't a character in the novel. Strictly speaking.
DJ Ian: So, would you like to be a character in one of your novels?
MJ Nicholls: Pretending to be a fictional character is much better than pretending to be a "real" human being.
DJ Ian:What does it take to be a character in one of your novels apart from voluminous genitals?
MJ Nicholls:You have to suffer. Harold existed in a dark bedroom of alienation, cut off from all forms of emotional connection with the ‘real’ world. This is because, like me, Harold is a troubled genius; a perfectionist freak with an agoraphobic bent.
DJ Ian:Is "A Postmoderm Belch" autobiographical?
MJ Nicholls: All I can say is, those reading "A Postmodern Belch" aren’t reading fiction, they’re reading what it’s like to live inside a fiction, and to make fiction one’s reality.
DJ Ian: One of the characters describes the novel like this: "No narrative, no characters, no readers. You’re up the creek, honey…completely lost in the wilderness of your own thoughts." What is your response to that?
MJ Nicholls: This novel is an endlessly regenerating entity, driven by a constantly self-updating stream of tychistic possibilities, arcing out into a million directions with merely the tweak of one sentence. Or, as you might say, "if u right it different it cum out different".
DJ Ian: Many readers, including FM Sushi, were delighted to reach the end of your novel.
MJ Nicholls: A theme of the novel is a kind of end-of-the-novel and end-of-the-world rapture. There is a state of unlimited unhappiness derived from the knowledge that the book is finally about to end.
DJ Ian: What does your novel say about you as an author?
MJ Nicholls: I am a prisoner of the postmodern condition.
DJ Ian: What about your characters, who seem to have a mind of their own?
MJ Nicholls:They don’t exist, obviously. They’re all merely a product of my imagination. Their entire world is a complete fabrication.
DJ Ian:They seem reluctant to meet their author?
MJ Nicholls: As we are reluctant to meet our maker.
DJ Ian: What do you mean?
MJ Nicholls: They are refusing to learn the name of their creator. In human terms, it’s like refusing to discover the identity of your God, to unravel the entire mystery of the universe.
DJ Ian: Your writing is highly self-conscious.
MJ Nicholls: I struggle to write a sentence that is not in some way blatantly aware of itself. Can there exist one prized four-word sentence of perfection that defines all that has been committed to paper since words were invented from logs and twigs?
DJ Ian: Is there one sentence that defines the true mission of your book?
MJ Nicholls: Buggered if I know.
DJ Ian:Is that the sentence or is that your answer?
MJ Nicholls: That’s for the author to know and the reader to find out.
DJ Ian:Well as you say in the novel, you’re still a fuckodicious poncificator. Thank you for joining us.
MJ Nicholls: Thank you for having me, though I don't feel like I've been had. You have the gentle hands of a true belletrist.
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