Sipped Ink vol 7 issue 7
Hello fellow readers, nay friends — welcome to the final issue of this summer’s Sipped Ink read-along. How are you feeling? Are you glad to be done with this novel, or are you itching to learn more about a post-Wales Jamaica, and Eubie’s plans for New York? I thought this final section of the novel was actually perhaps the most enjoyable, and I hope you got something out of it too.
This week I’m going to take a look at some of the happenings from the book’s closing chapters, but I also want to give consideration to the novel as a whole. Let’s get on with it.
The shift in this final section to chapters that aren’t headed with the narrator’s name makes for a fun game for the reader, and also works to reveal how well we’ve come to know these characters’ voices and understand their worlds. In this final section of the book Marlon James provides a coda to an unfinished tale, by allowing closure (of sorts) to some of its main actors. There is even, arguably, a stronger sense of justice in some elements of this finale than is otherwise present in the novel: Josey is punished for his numerous atrocities; Alex Pierce suffers the consequences for his killing of Tony Pavarotti (and for not heeding Tristan Phillips’s advice to wait until everyone involved is dead before he publishes); and Nina takes meaningful steps to reconcile her Jamaican roots.
But all is not universally so rose-tinted, of course. One of the novel’s themes, present throughout the close of the text, relates to the cyclical nature of violence. Just as Papa Lo was overhauled by Josey, so Josey himself has been succeeded by his son Benjy. Papa Lo’s death reduces him to the subject of a memorial cricket match; Benjy’s death is the spark for a whole new outburst of violence in Copenhagen City, and by the end of the novel Josey’s death in prison will once again change the landscape of the novel. At a macro level there is little sense of any progress; the reader is merely witness to new names gaining prominence, but the violence and oppression continue unabated. James has to reach down to the micro level of his novel to provide a much needed hint of an optimistic outcome: bringing Nina / Kim / Dorcas / Millicent back into contact with her sister at the book’s close.
I for one never felt as though I had a firm grip on Doctor Love’s role in the novel. Amongst a set of characters whose motivations are largely straightforward (if often disagreeable, or even monstrous), Love is a mercurial presence. He is at times a staunch ally of Josey’s but is also in the employ of the CIA, lingering in the novel after the Agency’s explicit presence is otherwise departed. Further, it is on behalf of the Medellín cartel that he kills Josey, but even as he is preparing to do so Josey accuses him of behaving not out of conviction but simply for payment. For me, the questions that remain around Doctor Love are a good example of the story’s unfinished quality.
In the interview that I linked to and quoted from in last week’s newsletter, Marlon James says that the novel ‘doesn’t end, it stops’. We witness Eubie give his opinion to Alex Pierce that the story is ‘too big’ for a series of New Yorker articles — ’One day somebody going need to write a book ’bout it’ (p678) — but as we reach the culmination of James’s 686 page opus, we likely have more questions than we began with.1
But perhaps that is as it should be. Marlon James’s task with A Brief History of Seven Killings is arguably less to tell a discrete story than it is to paint a picture of a time and place, and to give a sense of its complexity. As the narrative threads proliferated, and the scope of the book expanded, I found myself increasingly impressed at both the courage of a writer who would undertake this task, and at the alacrity with which James accomplishes it. It is not always (indeed, it is not often) a pretty sight to behold, but I found it to be a truly compelling one.
Tristan Phillips warns Alex that the Kingston ghetto is ‘so ugly it shouldn’t produce no pretty sentence, ever’ (p452), and there is no denying that James’s prose throughout is often difficult to read – not because it isn’t artfully composed, but because of its voluminous profanity and unflinching portrayals of violence of all kinds. We are, however, provided a glimpse of an alternative in part 9 of the ‘Sound Boy Killing’ section. Alex Pierce’s prose here, by contrast with James’s, feels strikingly flat; it has none of the raw power present in Marlon James’s telling of the story.
I finish A Brief History of Seven Killings with something of the same feeling that I get when looking at the works of Francisco Goya, or Jake & Dinos Chapman. It is unquestionably a work full of ugliness, but the skill with which it is executed, and the scale of the undertaking are hugely impressive.
Thank you as always for joining me in reading this year’s novel. I know that this one wasn’t as pleasant an experience as something like The Blind Assassin, or linguistically immaculate like The Goldfinch, but I hope you agree that it was a worthwhile experience. I’ve not read anything quite like A Brief History of Seven Killings, and that’s a gift in and of itself.
Thank you also for the notes, messages, and photos many of you have sent throughout the read-along; they are always appreciated. I will leave the (now 20 track strong) playlist2 live for a while should you wish to sonically revisit the world of the novel.
What are you reading next? Let me know by writing to mail@sipped.ink, or tweeting at @sippedink. Please also keep your eye on the website for news on what’s next (it may surprise you).
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