Crap Fiction and Tedium
A promising title, I suppose, but the premise of this book - a semi-autobiographical account of an "ageing, dyspeptic rock star's life" - is a sketchy proposition at best. Graham Parker is (apparently) a rock veteran with more than twenty albums under his belt, who has now decided to write a book which will, in the words of his press blurb, "establish him on the literary scene in the same wickedly incisive way he turned rock on its ear."
As the poetry of Paul McCartney proves, the efforts of rock stars (it is perhaps worth briefly noting that Mr Parker is in fact an ageing pub-rock has-been) to apply their writing skills to the more respected forms of literature often end in disaster, and this book unfortunately is no exception.
Reviewing this novel is tricky because it isn't, essentially, a novel at all: Mr Parker has written instead the literary equivalent of a concept album - a disjointed, episodic romp through the life of Parker's alter ego Brian Porker. This of course is not a problem in itself, and indeed, Mr Parker's ideas for the various short stories are full of potential, the waste of which renders the final result even more disappointing.
The book begins with the young Porker embarking on an Arthur Ransome-esque ornithological escapade and contains the book's best line: "Even as a young boy, I hated Northerners on principle." The episode in which his wife, driven to insanity by his snoring, removes his nose with a kitchen knife and throws it into a hedge has the detached absurdity of a good urban myth, and the self-depreciating humour in his description of life as a wannabe Mod is classic suburban Adrian Mole bathos.
His best conceit by far, however, is the imagined death of Mick Jagger and Porker's subsequent audition to replace him - the closest the book ever gets to a truly sublime moment.
Sadly, all of this potential is wasted. Let's not mince words: this novel is shit. It is really quite offensively poor. Even the handful of decent plot ideas mentioned above (the other chapters are rambling accounts of unpleasant day jobs and the like) are ruined by Parker's painfully overwritten prose style.
Parker seems to belong to the "This is truth, this is beauty" school of dilettante writers : those who believe that, while they may not be 'proper' writers, by simply describing their semi-autobiographical character's every thought and impression by use of some hackneyed metaphor, they are automatically engaging in some kind of valid artistic expression. Again, the poetry of Paul McCartney springs unpleasantly to mind.
Beyond the poor quality of the prose lay two deeper flaws in Parker's book. First, Brian Porker is an utterly unlikeable character: violent and misanthropic without any redeeming charm or intelligence. Four chapters in and the reader doesn't care whether the protagonist lives or dies, let alone what exciting scrapes this pisshead musician might get into next. The second flaw is the fact that Graham Parker quite simply doesn't have anything to say.
Even his more promising episodes end up half-baked and anti-climatic because there's nothing driving the plot or characters forward. Stripped of the songwriter's prerogative to fall back on a catchy chorus and a guitar solo when a lyrical tangent dries up, Parker flounders badly.
I can't work out whether this book fails because of Parker's lack of talent, lack of ideas or just sheer laziness; frankly, I don't really care. Don't give up your day job of playing Crème Brulee covers at lunchtime gigs down the Wagon & Horses, Mr Parker.
11th Jan 2001