The Book of Other People

It’s tricky levelling criticism at a project that devotes all its profits to charity, in this case Dave Egger’s 826NY centre for child literacy. But content-wise, The Book of Other People is one of the most disappointing compendiums of recent years. Maybe that’s because it promises so much, or the brief given to writers is so vague, or Zadie Smith’s editorship comes across as non-interventionist, backing down when heavyweight writers ignore what they’ve been commissioned to do. Her short introduction begins with a weak attempt to explain where it all has gone wrong then moves quickly on to discuss other matters, dwelling strangely on the various fonts stories were submitted to her in, that she bemoans the loss of in the book being presented to us. It’s an annoying ‘yah-boo’ moment, which she terminates cruelly with the statement, ‘Anyway: I hope what remains will satisfy.’ Not really, Zadie. It’s as if the best thing about many of the stories was the font they were written in, or at least the aspect of them she found most fascinating, and does not bode well for the pages that follow.

The brief was apparently simple – make somebody up. The hope was to create ‘a lively demonstration of the fact that there are as many ways to create character as there are writers’. It’s a little weak-kneed and despite the contributor list reading as a veritable who’s who of contemporary fiction, hardly anyone really runs with it. The preference instead seems to be for unsatisfying, often tentative attempts to describe a person instead of turning in a story that’s actually about someone, that features a character to whom something happens. Without context, unfortunately a lot of the attempts here seem ghost-like and perhaps that indicates how the project was hamstrung from the beginning by an uninspired brief that left the writers little room to manoeuvre.

The most successful stories are in fact those that defy the cloying theme. It was not until the 15^th story in (out of 23 total) that I finally breathed a sigh of relief. In that tale, ‘Puppy’, George Saunders ignores the simplistic ‘make someone up’ mantra and produces a rounded, complete story of a mother taking her kids to buy a dog from a white trash family who keep their boy chained to a tree in the back yard. With a perspective that shifts between the two mothers, this is a blatant disregard for the rules but thank God someone was brave enough to do it, although the mighty Aleksandar Hemon and Toby Litt had already rolled their eyes by turning in strange stories about, respectively, Jesus carrying his cross to Gethsemane and a large, turd-obsessed monster.

The obligatory comic strips are ably fleshed out by Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware, creating two of the best characters in the collection by virtue of having to really think about what they were doing. This speaks volumes about the importance of characterisation in graphic novels and the oft-underestimated skill of those who write and draw them. Matters do perk up towards the end though, with the double whammy of Vendela Vida and Miranda July, who show the rest how it should be done. Eggers himself puts in a nice turn, with the story of a sad giant. It is however Jonathan Lethem who triumphs in the end with ‘Perkus Tooth’, which blows everything else out of the water in terms of rich characterisation. But then this collection was released in early 2007 and as it turns out his story of an actor becoming friends with a very eccentric ex-critic was an early excerpt from his since-released novel, Chronic City.

Lethem can be quickly forgiven for trying out what would be subsequently published material, since it’s so damned rich and it’s all in a good cause, but there are a number of other stories included here that had already appeared elsewhere (or were going to appear that year), most notably in the holy grail of short fiction, the New Yorker. It’s an odd list too. I was not surprised to see Saunders and July’s stories appearing in those hallowed pages, but average efforts from Colm Tóibín, Hari Kunzru and editor Smith tell a sad story of a newspaper that has a worrying tendency to publish the same writers all the time, perhaps irrespective of the individual story’s merit.

The Book of Other People may have a superb Charles Burns cover and an impressive list of contributors, but there’s something utterly chaotic going on here and I think it’s the absence of strong editorship. Smith belies her lack of experience in such matters in her introduction – ‘As Editor, I have tried to retain the individuality of each piece by leaving them, by and large, little changed.’ Ah. I know everyone worked for free (she goes to great pains to point it out) but if the project is meant to help fund literacy programs for underprivileged children isn’t there a strong argument for making the collection as amazing as possible in order to sell some copies and get some money in the kitty? Instead we have a stunning list of writers dying for a better brief, a better editor and a book that is sadly found all too often on the sale table in bookstores. I bought it for $8, one quarter of its cover price. I can’t see much of that going to 826NY. Better to hit their website and donate directly.