JAMES SMYTHE'S EVERYTHING

On Colson Whitehead’s Zone One.

Much has been written about the fact that Colson Whitehead, esteemed author of so-called literary fiction, has written a genre novel. It’s got zombies, all the reviews say, which is interesting. They focus on it: on the gore that Mr Whitehead so wonderfully describes, and the scenes of tragic, dismaying violence that he presents with some of the most beautiful writing I read in all of 2011. It’s curious, because the zombies are the last thing that I want to talk about.

What I’d like to talk about is the sense of compassion that runs through the whole book. A desire to appreciate and commiserate the dead and dying, and to present their stories as something beautiful and powerful. There’s the way that the main characters’ stories seem to be utterly hopeless, even when you’re being told that they’re not - or, when suggestions of said hope appear, however fleetingly. I’m not saying that it’s not worth hanging onto your innate sense of reader’s hope when reading the book, though, simply because hope is a better driver than despair. The novel’s clever, because I think it plays on that. It presents utter beauty in its words even as it describes sheer desolation. It makes you think about the consequences of our actions as brutal, painful atrocities. 

(Some reviewers have described the novel as heavily allegorical, which I get, I really do. I just didn’t read it as that. Rather than it being a novel about the state of America, or about how people are during war, I read it as a novel about people. The desperate and brilliant nature of people, and their will to survive. But that allegory’s there, when you look for it, if you choose to look for it. A more heavy-handed writer might have bludgeoned with it. Mr Whitehead is utter restraint.)

Look, it’s too easy for both sides of the literary fence to write the other off under accusations of whatever it is that they use. Too wordy, too exclusive; too cheap, too graphic, too commercial (as if that’s an insult). Zone One isn’t one or the other. It’s a beautifully written novel about a hard subject and hard people going through hard times. If that appeals to you - a novel about humanity, and how tough it can be to be human - then you should read it, regardless of whether you’d ordinarily read a zombie novel, or whether you don’t really read supposed literary fiction. It’s the first novel that I finished in 2012, and it leaves the rest of the year with a tough act to follow. 

Here are the best things I watched in 2011.

TV and film, in no particular order:

Drive

Warrior

Moneyball

Game of Thrones (season 1)

Breaking Bad (season 4)

Community (season 3)

Parks & Recreation (season 4)

Another Earth

X-Men First Class

Captain America

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Super 8

Here are the best albums that I heard in 2011.

In no particular order:

…Trail of Dead - Tao of the Dead

Blitzen Trapper - American Goldwing

Cliff Martinez (& others) - Drive OST

Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr - It’s A Corporate World

The Decemberists - The King Is Dead

J Mascis - Several Shades of Why

Jim Guthrie - Swords & Sworcery LP

Josh T Pearson - Last Of The Country Gentlemen

The Joy Formidable - The Big Roar

Ryan Adams - Ashes & Fire

Kate Bush - 50 Words For Snow

Laura Marling - A Creature I Don’t Know

Mastodon - The Hunter

Mother Mother - Eureka

Okkervil River - I Am Very Far

St Vincent - Strange Mercy

Summer Camp - Welcome To Condale

Tom Waits - Bad As Me 

Twilight Singers - Dynamite Steps

Wilco - The Whole Love

Here are the best games that I played in 2011.

These are in no particular order:

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Batman: Arkham City

Portal 2

Dead Space 2

Superbrothers: Sword And Sworcery

Bastion

Where’s My Water

Infinity Blade 2

Pullblox

(I haven’t, as of writing, played Super Mario 3D Land or Mario Kart 7. Assume these should probably be in this list.)

Here are the best Books I read in 2011.

In no particular order:

David Vann’s Caribou Island

Julian Barnes’ The Sense Of An Ending

John Harding’s Florence & Giles

Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad

Neal Stephenson’s Reamde

RIchard Gwyn’s Vagabond’s Breakfast

Ross Raisin’s Waterline

Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot

(Special mention, because it’s not out until 2012: Will Wiles’ Care Of Wooden Floors)

On Skyrim

Here’s a story. 

Myself and Uthgerd - she’s my assistant, who I met in a pub when she challenged me to a fist fight which I won - are chasing down a dragon, climbing some very high mountains and going through some pretty precarious conditions. Halfway up the mountain we meet some wolves, and we fight them. Well, I say We. I mean, she runs up to them and forces herself on them. ‘Hiyaaa!’ she yells, and she swipes her sword. I have to save her, because she’s not much of a fighter. She’s eager, but… Well, you know. So, I save her skin, and then we carry on. Only thirty seconds later, I see it. She doesn’t.

A bear. A ruddy great bear. I jump backwards - because those buggers are nastier than dragons - and shout at Uthgerd - real world, at the screen - to do the same. She doesn’t. She swipes, and she fails miserably. I watch her stumble backwards and fall off the edge of the mountain. It’s pretty vertical. R.I.P. Uthgerd. You were a good - mediocre - assistant. You weren’t great with a sword, but you were full of effort. So, thanks, but I’ve got a bear to fight.

Bear dead, I carry on. No time to mourn - she’s not the first companion who’s died travelling with me, and she won’t be the last. Higher up the mountain, and through a little pass I go. It’s colder, whiter, and it’s getting dark. I think about sleeping, because I don’t like these places when I can’t see much. Only, I’m told I can’t sleep. Why? There are enemies nearby. It’s dark, so I didn’t see the Frost Trolls. Balls. Balls. I don’t like Frost Trolls. I spray electricity everywhere, trying to see it properly, and I swing my sword (because I’m a Battlemage, suckas). Connect, connect, but he’s hard, and he’s - joy of joys - brought a friend. And some wolves. I’m fighting a battle from all sides, and it’s looking nasty. I take a health potion. I run backwards and use a healing spell. I try, because this is going badly. Another wolf, and another, and then something else.

It’s a bloody goat.

A goat is here, and I would swear that the goat is involved in the fight. The Frost Trolls are gaining on me, as I still rapidly back away, and I think that this is the end - and when did I last save? ages ago, I’d bet - when, suddenly, I see somebody running past me. It’s Uthgerd. She’s not dead, and she’s here to save me. She ploughs into the wolves, fearless, and somehow - gods know how - takes them out. I heal more, and I join her as we take down the first Troll. One left. She’s faster than me, nearer to it. She runs in. It hits her. She disappears. I watch her - or I try to - but she’s a helicopter suddenly, or a small plane. Either way, she’s hundreds of feet in the air. She can see my house from there, I’d bet. R.I.P. Uthgerd. Again. You killed some wolves and a Frost Troll, and you flew in a game that doesn’t support flying. You deserve some sort of prize for that. I dont know what. (Death.)

So, I rest, finally. Two hours sleep, until it’s light, and I’m feeling fit and well. This fight is mine to win. In my experience, dragons are an easier kill than Trolls or bears, somehow. So I plough onwards. Snowing, and cold (but I barely feel it, even though my excellent leg bracers don’t cover much of my calves), but I’m so close. I see it circling. I see a plateau, easily big enough to take the beast down. It lands, and it breathes fire everywhere, and I fanny about, swatting at it ineffectually. I take aim with my electricity, which I’m assuming it won’t like, and I try to bring it down. It seems to shrug it off. I need help, and it’s just as I’m admitting that - thinking about the erstwhile lady in the tavern who I beat up in order to make her respect me (!), who offered me her help if I ever needed it, who I led around the world until her inevitable death - when lo, she appears, deus ex machina. Uthgerd, back from the dead. She’s got her sword still, and her flight doesn’t appear to have harmed her any. She fights alongside me, like it’s meant to be.

We’re invincible; we’re unstoppable. 

It isn’t until the dragon’s dead - body smouldering, then burning up in the snow, leaving nothing but char - that I see Uthgerd. She’s dead, properly this time. No burning up for her body. Instead, it rests on the snow, sad and lonely. R.I.P. Uthgerd; you died a lot.

I wish that I could bury her; I have some pans in my inventory (that I lugged all the way up this mountain, like an idiot), so I place them over and around her body. It’s the best that I can manage. (I’ve read stories of people carrying their dead companions miles, trying to bury them properly. They’re better men than I.) 

I leave. I figure, I’ll head back to Whiterun, try and find another companion. Maybe a dog this time, or one of those cat-like Khajit people. I’m not sure I could get as attached to them. I get to the bottom of the mountain - much faster going down, as I almost surf down the sides of the rockface, devil-may-care - and to a river, which I follow. And then I see it: a leg, sticking out of the ground. I’d know that leg anywhere. I run, away from it, because it’s haunting me. It’s Uthgerd’s leg, and she’s become something else. She’s not dead any more: she’s a bug, a ghost in the machine, tailing me. Always a few feet behind me. I can’t shake her off, only now she won’t fight for me. She won’t do anything; she’s a floating leg, with her body trapped below the soil. I turn my game off: this is too much to take. Uthgerd is my albatross.

When I come back, she’s gone. I think about traveling up the mountain, to see if her body’s still there. To see if I imagined it. But it’s a long walk, and there’s a man to see about a thing (where I killed somebody, and maybe now I’m being hunted by a gang of assassins that I’d love to join up with). 

On the other hand: I did leave an awful lot of (sellable) kitchenware around her body…