"Amsterdam" and "1914"

Image credit.

Two very short novels whose perusal I have managed to slip in between my various activities and obligations: "Amsterdam" by Ian McEwan, and "1914" by Jean Echenoz.

Amsterdam won the Booker Prize, much to my surprise. There can be no doubt that McEwan is a capable conjurer of scenes and thoughts, and he cares to develop a fast moving and suspenseful plot. Still the book does not rank with me among the more satisfying reads. The story is reminiscent of a cheap American TV drama, and is more conveniently consumed in that format than by the more arduous activity of reading a book.

Two friends, a composer and a chief-editor, come into conflict over two moral issues, eventually poisoning each other lethally at the occasion of a putative reconciliatory reunion in Amsterdam. The journalist tries to return his newspaper to former success by running a tasteless exposé on the kinky sexual preferences of a top politician, to which the composer objects, considering the matter one of private rather than public concern. The composer becomes witness to a rape but prefers to ignore the crime so as to get on with his artistic work, to which the journalist friend objects, setting the police on him. In the end both fail, the editor gets fired as his exposé damages the papers reputation more than furthering it. And the composer, prestigiously commissioned to compose a Millennial hymn, manages to produce only a poor copycat piece. In the end, the moral disagreements of the two former friends turn them into mortal enemies and they become their mutual killers.  

Frankly, there was nothing in the story that seemed to require the literary medium for exposition. The story is more suited to being delivered in form of a TV drama. 

Unlike McEwan's tiny novel, I do not regard "1914" as a disappointment or a (mild) literary failure:

1914 is a very short French novel, composed of nicely chiselled vignettes of life during the First World War. Wondering why the book, though well written, did not leave a particularly strong impression with me, I see two reasons: in the first place, stories, images, and scenes from the First World War have come to form an arsenal of associations that are part and parcel of the educated person of my time: you come to expect drastic material, and when it is delivered you look at the flash and move on. In the second place, the author fails to make the reader attach his empathy to a protagonist. The slim book is propelled by scenes and images, not by persons. In fact, the cast figure almost like literary canon fodder. In spite of all the atrocities and crimes experienced, the main character, Anthime, having lost his arm, suffering social derailment and serving as a conveniently maimed apologist-witness defending a criminal army supplier, in the last paragraph seems to be driven by thoughtless lust to expand his family by another member. 

I am not trying to say that because a person has been through hell in your life, it would be immoral for him to have offspring. To me, however, the characters of the book, including the protagonist, appear to lead the mechanical lives of people that have nothing to go by than the conventions of their time. There is a ratty smell in the air when you close the book.

This is the last paragraph:

At the hotel [they were shown] to their rooms, which were across the corridor from each other. Leaving their luggage there, Blanche and Anthime freshened up, then went out for a walk before going to dinner. Later, after each had retired to bed, there was every indication that they would both sleep in their separate rooms except that in the middle of the night Anthime woke up. He rose, crossed the corridor, pushed open Blanche's door, and went in the darkness toward the bed where she wasn't sleeping either. He lay down beside her, took her in his arm, then entered and impregnated her. And the following autumn, during the very battle at Mons that turned out to be the last one, a male infant was borne [...]