Book Review: Max Porter — Grief is the Thing With Feathers
A classic Catch-22. Publishers are desperate to discover the next big thing. Something new, something exciting. But a publisher must deem a book potentially profitable in order to give it the green light. Since the new and the exciting aren’t guaranteed to be successful, they’re generally ignored in favour of Danielle Steel’s 527th novel about a yummy mummy in sunny spain.
And so almost nothing which breaks the molds is ever published. Let alone given widespread press or a place on the prestigious shelves of a high street bookshop.
The way out of the loop, apparently, is to be Max Porter. A man with enough literary talent to knock your socks off, and enough luck that the socks will land on your feet again.
How did something like Grief Is The Thing With Feathers ever get published? A dazzling macabre masterpiece, splashed across the page in a disdainful assault on traditionalist form. An effortless narrative voice, effortless characterisation, effortless tone. A lyrical intensity which makes me embarrassed to write these monotonous, ordered sentences.
It juggles the three elements of a family struck by the sudden death of the mother: One, the widower, timid English Dad; Two, the boys, too young for the trauma but too old not to notice its effects; and Three, the otherworldly crow which arrives on their doorstep, announcing that it will stay until it was no longer needed.
If you were following that quite well until the mention of the sentient, loquacious crow — well, you’re not the only one.
What is Crow? Part poltergeist, part therapist, part vicious defense mechanism, I suppose. I really don’t have a concrete answer. He’s not the spectral embodiment of their grief. He’s not a reincarnation of their lost mother — we are never in any doubt that she’s gone. Crow is something like a product of the Twilight Zone between consciousness and dreams; a slice of psyche come loose from the subconscious; a loud, foulmouthed animal who shits in corners and wrecks the house. There’s something about our primal response to loss which is embodied particularly well in Crow, so perhaps he can be seen as a concentration of the sheer emotive weight which emanates from the grief-stricken, and is at the same time, sapped from them. Perhaps Crow is where Dad’s self goes in the months and years between tragedy and acceptance. Perhaps. But I’m grasping at straws here, I don’t really have a clue and that’s actually part of the fun.
Regardless, this is not (fundamentally) about how to handle Grief. It is made very clear that capital-G Grief is something which never goes away. It is merely absorbed into the psyche. It’s about transcending the sense of futility with which Grief is intertwined. Crow tells Dad that it’s not about Grief, it’s about being Hopeless. Crow waits until Dad is ready to stand up again, through the years in which he is drifting, spectral, until he is out the other side, and ready to have bad sex with a woman he met at a conference, and to say to himself that this is Okay.
Poems and novels have asked these questions before. But the way these questions are asked feels fresh, verdant, new. I might be wrong — my poetry knowledge is holey as George’s ear, and there are probably countless writers who have produced something similar. But none of them are sitting on the shelf in every Waterstones in the country.
So how did this happen? Well, Max Porter had a fortunate run-in with James Daunt, owner of Waterstones and the most embarassing first name ever (Achilles). James read Max’s work and saw its potential. And thus it was something as radical, aformal and deeply, deeply strange is on sale in a place as bland as Waterstones Camberley. That is a minor miracle, in and of itself.
Less miraculous, of course, is the universal acclaim. Of course it was successful; of course it was loved. Give people something exciting and radical to read, and they will read it and beg for more.
They won’t be given more. Or at least, it seems unlikely. Perhaps Porter’s success will justify the publication of a few more formal mavericks, but only ones who stick very closely to his blueprint. Only poets who appeal to the same target audience, who utilise the same aesthetic on the book covers, who can generate reviews saying “this is just like that Max Porter fella — if you liked him, you’ll love this.”
Nope. When the next Max Porter comes along and really tries to shake things up, they will probably be rejected, because their radical experimentalism is Just Not What The Current Market Are Interested In.
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Max Porter has also written Lanny, which is wonderful for a wholly different set of reasons. I’ll get round to some thoughts on that at some point.
