Never Let Me Go v. Home Land
presented by
ROUND TWO
Never Let Me Go
v. Home Land
Judged by Mark Sarvas
When I first received word that my match-up for this year’s Tournament of Books was going to be Sam Lipsyte’s Home Land versus Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, my initial reaction was “You bastards.” Because here are two novelists I admire—two novelists who could not be more different in voice and style. And although I’d read Home Land and touted it as a Recommended Title at my blog, The Elegant Variation, Never Let Me Go was a Booker shortlist that has garnered some of the best reviews of Ishiguro’s career, including a love letter from James Wood in the New Republic. It promised great things. Clearly, I had a Gordian knot ahead of me, and hell if I knew what I was going to do.
As it turned out, the choice was considerably easier than I expected.
Home Land is a profane, hilarious, and wise look at misfired aspirations as seen through the eyes of one Lewis “Teabag” Miner. His declaration on the book’s first page—“I did not pan out”—sets the tone for all that follows. The book consists of Miner’s dispatches to his alumni newsletter—none of which are ever actually published. Miner shares his predilections, including masturbating to internet images of girls in leg warmers, in scabrous detail as he juxtaposes his own dead-end existence against the glossier lives of his more successful classmates. Yet he manages, by the end, to come off with more nobility and grace than the Beautiful People who have left him behind. It’s a wicked, heartfelt delight, and you’ll read it in a sitting if you have an ounce of soul.
Ishiguro once again has pulled the deft trick of fully inhabiting this entirely alien personage and, as he did in Remains, allowing awareness to dawn only gradually.
Never Let Me Go also exhibits a kind of brilliance but it’s the brilliance of a parlor trick. Ishiguro displays his continued fascination with ventriloquism, a talent that finds its apotheosis in the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day, in which he seamlessly—and heartbreakingly—inhabits the voice of a staid English butler. Here the voice is of a young woman, Kathy, and she’s reflecting on her short life, which includes her memories of school, but it’s a school unlike any you or I have ever attended. Hailsham is a training ground for clones, who are raised solely for the purpose of providing replacement organs. (This scarcely constitutes a spoiler, since we learn this within the first 100 pages, and frankly it’s pretty damned obvious to begin with.) To his credit, Ishiguro once again has pulled the deft trick of fully inhabiting this entirely alien personage and, as he did in Remains, allowing awareness to dawn only gradually. But what was heartbreaking there is merely grating here. Kathy’s voice is flat and bland, and so one essentially endures it, along with chapter after chapter of faux-cliffhanger endings, to get to what amounts to little more than Ishiguro’s “gotcha!” Ishiguro has a clear purpose in mind that he executes faultlessly, so in the end it’s a book one can admire—but is unlikely to love.
Home Land is a messy, unpredictable, loose cannon of a book, alive and vital on every page. Never Let Me Go is a virtuoso display of icy control but is finally as flat as the voice that narrates it.
Never Let Me Go has gotten the critical props but Home Land should have gotten the Booker nod (it doesn’t qualify because Lipsyte’s not a Brit, but it was released in the UK two full years prior to its release here when Picador finally had the balls to take it on, so that should give it some kind of honorary status). But if I have anything to say about it, Lewis Miner will pan out at last, and get a much-deserved goddamn Rooster.
Advancing:
Home Land
Match Commentary
with Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner
GUILFOILE: Not to bias these proceedings but Home Land and Never Let Me Go were the best two books I read last year. Actually, that’s not true. The best book I read last year was Operating Instructions for the FD Trinitron Sony WEGA High-Definition TV. But after that, definitely Home Land and Never Let Me Go.
Except for not shooting your friends on a hunting trip, I don’t think there’s anything harder than writing a successful comic novel. In my 20s, I attempted one called Bomb Pop. It was about an adult pair of conjoined twins, one of whom was in a band. It was very bad, but I didn’t know that when I was writing it. About a week after I finished the first draft, I read that the Farrelly brothers were making a movie about an adult pair of conjoined twins, one of whom was an actor. Then I found out that there was a pair of actual conjoined twins in Tennessee, one of whom was a singer in a band. Then I found out that Bomb Pop was already the name of a popular frozen treat. That last one was a real stake through my heart, let me tell you.
WARNER: When I hear the word “clone,” I think of three things: 1. Kevin Guilfoile’s Cast of Shadows, the other book about unsuspecting teenage clones published by Knopf last spring. 2. How I’d like to create a perfect genetic offspring of my dog so we could be together forever and ever. And 3. Scarlett Johansson’s breasts in that white jumpsuit she wore in Michael Bay’s The Island. Unfortunately for Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go doesn’t even make the list, so I have a hard time believing it’s any good, prize-winning novelist or no.
Home Land, on the other hand, is the only one of the 16 TOB selections that I read last year. I read it on a plane and spent the better part of two hours cackling, laughing to the point I was gasping for air. Once I left the plane, I spent the better part of two hours playing “naked detainee” with the Transportation Security Administration, whose employees were convinced I was a security threat based on my odd behavior.
GUILFOILE: It should be noted that among the potential conflicts in his judge’s profile, Mark Sarvas disclosed that he might be involved in a future business venture with Sam Lipsyte. I’m not sure what exactly—I think it’s a Quizno’s—but I wanted to say a few words about that. First, these reviews were written some time ago, and Mark claims his potential relationship with Lipsyte developed just recently. But even if that weren’t the case, a review of the archives at Mark’s web site would reveal a year-long advocacy of Lipsyte’s work. In fact his admiration of Lipsyte was surely the reason he wanted the writer to join him in the fast-casual hoagie business, and not vice-versa. I have no doubt that the opinions Mark has expressed here are sincere and uncompromised.
WARNER: Moral of these stories: Scarlett Johansson has nice breasts and Mark Sarvas made the right call.