2021 RofC longlist - The Appointment

[Hugh, Active moderator]

The Appointment by Katharina Volckmer (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

[WndyJW]

This is a compulsive read, best read in one sitting, and it’s short so can easily be read in one sitting.

[Neil]

It's an uncomfortable read, too! I had it near the bottom of my 2020 rankings. Interested to see what the discussion here is like.

[Robert]

I throughly enjoyed reading the appointment- thought provoking and with dashes of dark humor.

[Debra]

Just started reading it and already struggling.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

I must admit when you turn to the title page and it says (or the Story of a Cock) its hard to continue with much confidence - then a Hitler joke and sexual references designed to shock on the first page or two?

Is the author really Freddie Starr?

Well at least its short - although come to think of it so was Freddie Starr

[WndyJW]

I would have rather seen Minor Detail nominated from Fitzcarraldo. (For some reason I can’t pull it up in add book/author)

[Hugh, Active moderator]

I would have chosen I is Another...

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Are there hamsters involved?

[Paul]

Hitler doesn't need help from hamsters.

I think this is much more a RoC fit than Minor Detail, and a better book, but I guarantee you will hate it Gumble.

[WndyJW]

It is more of an RofC book. I see it’s value, but for much the same reason Gumble wouldn’t like it, I preferred Minor Detail.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

The author has as far as I can tell a fascinating job - dealing with Russian translation rights for a host of authors including Ishiguro and Boris Johnson (the agency also has on its books last year’s RoC winner and Olga T).

[Paul]

I'd only just seen the judges verdict on each book. Good to see they pick up the Thomas Bernhard influence. Although actually I saw a stronger influence from Ingeborg Bachmann and her novel Malina, who in turn was a mentor of sorts to Bernhard.

My favourite Malina quote: Reading is a vice which can replace all other vices or temporarily take their place in more intensely helping people live, it is a debauchery, a consuming addiction. No, I don’t take any drugs, I take books.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Is Philip Roth not the other more direct and obvious influence on the novel - it’s basically seems in some many elements a deliberately reversed rewrite of Portnoy’s Complaint as far as I can tell (not having ever read Roth!) - eg banana for liver.

In terms of Bernhard (who again I have not read so I may be talking nonsense!!) I think in this case the inspiration makes more sense than in many other authors who think they just have to write a mix of misanthropy and scatology and pretend it’s literature. Here I think the author is very much in Bernhard’s Nestbeschmutzer tradition - albeit here cleverly attacking a German society that considers itself liberal and tolerant rather than a traditional/conservative Austrian one and criticising the country’s attitudes to its Nazi past from a different direction.

Mind you I have only read 30 pages of this!!!

[Paul]

Interesting. And yes the Guardian interview with the author - which was published after I read the book - says both:

Volckmer was inspired by Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, whose narrators’ darkly comic rants were also read as a critique of his national identity. But the most obvious structural parallel is Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth – another monologue delivered in a consulting room that Volckmer admits to finding hysterically funny, for all its contemporary incorrectness.

My 4 star rating is 4 + 2 for Bernhard reference - 2 for Roth reference (I have had the misfortune of reading him - not a mistake I will repeat)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

It’s a reverse of the Roth in lots of ways

[WndyJW]

You don’t like Roth at all, or you don’t like a Portnoy’s Complaint?

[Paul]

I'll defer to Jane Smiley in the Guardian today (https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...)

Q:The book I couldn’t finish
A: As soon as the main character in American Pastoral by Philip Roth asked his daughter to kiss him in an erotic way, I tossed it.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Well I have ended up writing both a 5 star review and a 1 star review so averaged 3 stars

Both are here

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Sam]

Good thing I am reading through these. I was going to link the Smiley article to the Philip Roth discussion for lack of better place but feel no need since it will be seen here. First, after reading comments that comparing the writing of The Appointment to Roth's, you've sold me on reading the book. I seem to be hitting a trend with literature of questionable taste lately so it will fit right in.. As for Smiley's quote it I think it says a lot more about Smiley than it does about Philip Roth, as does her answer of Atonement to the question of most overrated.
"This really doesn't make sense to me. When I got to the end, I could not figure out what happened." At least that quote seems honest and less invented to gain atention. And let us applaud her in "the shameless art of self promotion," for managing to name her own title in answer to the question on books that influenced her most. I apologize for my digression and snark in advance but not only must I throw a little defense to Roth who cannot defend himself, but Jane's answers make it damn hard to resist.

[Ang]

Sam wrote: "As for Smiley's quote it I think it says a lot more about Smiley than it does about Philip Roth..."

That's exactly what I thought when I read her remark, Sam. She is someone whose books I had been intending to read, but now, probably not.

Taking a portion of Paul's quote above:

But the most obvious structural parallel is Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth – another monologue delivered in a consulting room that Volckmer admits to finding hysterically funny, for all its contemporary incorrectness.

The "incorrectness" would have existed when written, not just contemporarty - that's the point of his books, isn't it? I have not read American Pastoral yet, but being in the middle of The Counterlife, written in 1986, the hilarious "incorrectness" in the first section was just as incorrect in 1986 as it is now - he's not providing any sympathy or even empathy with the perpetrators. And it is indeed hilarious.

[Paul]

I've only read American Pastoral but I'm with her on that. I read it in 2004 so I don't remember much but my rating back then, looking back, equates to zero on the Goodreads scale.

I think Roth for me is an author I'm glad others have read - he's clearly very influential, this wonderful novel a case in point - so I don't have to (see also Pynchon, Thomas).

[WndyJW]

One scene in one book is not a fair way to judge an author’s entire body of work, especially given that the one book I read by Smiley is A Thousand Acres, which is based on King Lear, with the notable exception that King Lear did not rape his daughters.

At the risk of being a book snob, I think you’re not missing anything not having read Jane Smiley, Ang.

[Ang]

Thank you, WndyJW!

[Tommi]

This is a rare novel(la) in that it made me laugh out loud several times, and that doesn’t happen often with fiction. I don’t know what it says about me, but I’ve placed it nonetheless at the top of my rankings as of now (with six books to go).

[WndyJW]

It is funny. I liked it, but I’ve realized that for me it was forgettable. I read it a few months ago and already forgot about her Hitler fantasies.

[Neil]

I had the opposite reaction. I didn’t laugh at all and the only but I remember is the Hitler fantasies!

[WndyJW]

I don’t remember laughing out loud, but I remember dark humor. To be I would have to reread it.

[Neil]

Oh no, don’t do that! (Just joking!).

[Paul]

I am in the unusual position of still having a copy of this book despite giving my copy away as I got two (Roc bookclub and Fitzcarraldo subscriber) so a re-read may be in order.

[Neil]

I have 3 copies. And I didn’t even like it!

[Paul]

How did you get three?

[Neil]

I got the RoC one and then Fitzcarraldo had a distribution glitch and sent me two subscriber copies.

If anyone wants one, let me know.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

Gumble's Yard wrote: "Are there hamsters involved?"

I am still in shock that having written this - a reference of course to "Freddie Starr ate my hamster" - it actually turned out to have a section on someone who ate red squirrels

[Adina ( on a short Hiatus)]

I was hooked from the first line. A German who is not afraid to talk about Hitler, I am in. I like this kind of humor although it was a bit too much at times. Some paragraphs felt like they were written for shocking purposes only. I read it on holiday and I am not sure it was the right time.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer]

I think that's exactly right Adina - I was also hooked from the first page and think at times its taboo-busting for the right reasons but its also occasionally shocking for shock sake also … hence why I ended with a 5* review and a 1* review in the same write up

[Sam]

I enjoyed this quite a bit. There is an elephant in the room in the way of a spoiler that I am trying to avoid, but I had a slightly different experience and shall give my thoughts. First, I listened to the audio which was narrated by the author and I think it influenced my perception of the novel. The narration is articulate, soft, somewhat underspoken, and not highly dramatized. The humor is not accented by tone. There is a slightly sarcastic and cutting quality to the voice at times, most evident when she directly addresses Dr. Seligman. (Notice the irony of the doctor's name).
I did not notice the comparison to Roth, but I have mostly forgotten Portnoy's. I did see the comparison to Bernhard. Overall I found the shock humor appropriate rather than gratuitous. Having completed the novel, my main impression was a sense of disguised and repressed trauma and anxiety in the protagonist which fit the situation quite well.

[a_reader]

I quite enjoyed The Appointment when I read it last year. I felt it was the appropriate length as any longer it would become quite tiring. I also believe that some of the shock humor could have been omitted. Funny about the pink elephant in the room (spoiler) as referenced above. Last year I watched a popular Booktuber give a review of this and they completely misinterpreted or missed the reason why she was there in the first place. I wonder if he just skimmed the book because if you pay attention to the questions she kept asking you can figure it out rather quickly. I ended up giving it 4 stars,

[Lee]

Loved this book. I was expecting the transgressive humor focused on Hitler and German guilt and sex and I certainly got all that. I admit to laughing a fair bit. I wasn't expecting the incisive reflections on feeling "other", on dealing with emotional pain. This undersold part of the story really raises its level for me. The key lines to this novel I think appear when Volckmer writes near the end, "you have to believe me when I say that I usually act out of a profound sense of sadness and despair. If we were to wait until the soft darkness of the early morning, somewhere between three and four, you would be able to see it shining through, Dr. Seligman - the face that is buried underneath all the jokes."

[WndyJW]

I really need to reread this book. I enjoyed it and read it too fast.

[Hannah]

This was one of my favourite reads of the year so far, I was sorry to see it miss out on the shortlist. The shocking elements worked really well for me in the way that they were self-consciously performative, both within the text (narrator > shrink) and outside of it (author > reader). There is a deep vulnerability in this book which is drawn out beautifully by the interplay between these deliberately provocative fabrications-as-masks and the narrator's circuitous efforts to reveal the truth. Towards the end she says "maybe all this had to happen so that I would finally understand that I had to come and see you, that the only true comfort we can find in life is to be free from our own lies".

[WndyJW]

Again, I think I need to reread this book! Excellent review, Hannah.