By .D.B.C Pierre. Published by Faber and Faber.
I leapt into Vernon God Little with a considerable relish. The 2003 Booker Prize winner has stirred up more than its share of controversy. Accusations of anti-Americanism, by far the horrifying intellectual sin of 2003, were hurled at DBC Pierre’s debut novel. The win was called political and shameless, the book a diatribe. Others claimed it was a fresh new voice; a J.D Salinger for the disaffected You can imagine my surprise, then, when Vernon God Little proved not to be so much a big bang, as a fairly mild sizzle. The book is hardly the godless vitriol detractors would have you believe, but neither is it the razor-sharp satire most of the British press have painted it as.
Vernon Gregory Little is a fifteen year old Texan with a big problem. His best friend Jesus has just gunned down half of his classmates, wearing panties, no less. Deprived of a scapegoat, the community is desperate to find someone to take the rap, and Vernon - friendless, weird, with secrets of his own - seems the perfect candidate. Before you can say “Howdy!” , Vernon is dodging the sheriff, a slimy newsreporter called Eulalio and his naïve, blabber-mouthed mother. Will he make it to Mexico, hooking up with the girl of his dreams along the way? Can the massacre be explained by drugs, rock music or computer games? And can Pierre’s America stop hurtling towards a self-destructive orgy of wish-fulfillment?
Few of the answers to these questions will surprise you. Indeed, the biggest surprise I got from Vernon God Little was the fact it had been nominated for the Booker at all. This is not a bad read, but it’s only marginally more literary than Wilbur Smith, and definitely no more than your average Douglas Coupland. Pierre has written what is clearly a first novel, and despite the rabid reviews, it’s not very controversial. The title is accurate in that this is Vernon’s story, not America’s, or the world’s. The Texas that Pierre has created is a manifestly fictional one, you would have to be an idiot to think otherwise. Certainly, most of the town’s inhabitants are shrill, money-grubbing cretins (particularly the women; Pierre doesn’t seem very comfortable with femininity), but I think this is more a comment on the alienation of adolescence, than the moral bankruptcy of the States.
Much has been made of the book’s hilarity , but I didn’t find it particularly amusing. Humour is incredibly difficult to write, and Pierre’s seemed a little laboured. Coupled with his narrative naiveté it was, frankly, kind of juvenile, and a little bit indulgent. Critics have raved about his florid prose, but any writer under the sun can dig up an unusual scatological metaphor, it takes a great one to integrate that with the prose, and the novel as a whole.
Still, I wasn’t bitterly disappointed when I finished Vernon God Little, just a bit confused. As a first novel, this is a fine effort, and perhaps Pierre might turn out something worthy of the Booker, in a few years. This, however, is not that book. It saddens me that dealing with America has become so political, that something like this can set the literary world on fire. It’s nothing. There are so many intelligent, dynamic writers assessing and interacting with the American discourse that have been overshadowed by Pierre. Sure, they may not swear so much, or leap with such glee into the Controversy Du Jour, but they are putting out subtle, powerful texts that ask penetrating questions - of the reader, not just to them. Vernon God Little, with its small but undeniable charms, is not one of these books. Read it if you want - it’s not bad - but this is a Sixty Minutes kind of controversy, not a lasting one.
Patrick Garson.
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