The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Transit, by Rachel Cusk



2016
272 pp

In the wake of family collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions—personal, moral, artistic, practical—as she endeavors to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city she is made to confront aspects of living she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life.

Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed Outline, and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility, and the mystery of change. In this precise, short, and yet epic cycle of novels, Cusk manages to describe the most elemental experiences, the liminal qualities of life, through a narrative near-silence that draws language toward it. She captures with unsettling restraint and honesty the longing to both inhabit and flee one's life and the wrenching ambivalence animating our desire to feel real.

This is a sequel of sorts, indeed the 2nd of a trilogy, to Cusk's Outline that was on last year's Goldsmith's list (and several other prizes as well).

My review of that novel
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

and an excellent one from our host:
http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/20...

That review, on my site, is by Lee! Thanks for linking to it here, Paul!

My initial reaction to this one was that, by essentially following the same "annihilated perspective" technique, it was, by definition, not as strikingly original as Outline.

But the book grew on me very strong on a second reading, and considering the two novels together, I really feel Cusk deserves an award for what is potentially an exciting new departure in form and an interesting counterpoint to the Knausgaardian approach.

Outline of course was shortlisted for almost everything - Folio Prize, Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, Goldsmiths Prize in UK and in Canada the Giller Prize and Governor General’s Literary Award - and won nothing.

The fact that Outline and Transit both missed out on the Booker says rather a lot about what that award has now become.

So, so far, with 5 of the 6 read, my favourite for the award.

Paul, should I read Outline first?

I don't think you have to, no.

Not as if there is much detail about the narrator in book 1 - her name is only mentioned once. So you're certainly not missing and plot, background information etc. If I tell you she is called Faye, an author, creative writing teacher and divorced mother of two boys, then that tells you everything.

Of course, you should read it, but that's just because it's a very good book and you may just as well start with Transit.

Great. Thanks. I do want to read Outline but the fizzle is for Transit now.

I read Outline a few months back on suggestion from my wife, and I liked it well enough. I didn't find it to be any better than 4 of the 6 books I read for this year's Booker prize though. And certainly not as good as 2015's winner, A Brief History of Seven Killings (I think Outline was eligible for that years prize, yes?). To each their own, but I think you may be experiencing some pretty hefty Booker bias. That said, this is the first year I've purposely read anything off the Booker list, so I may not be as fatigued as you other vets.

Well on Outline all I can say is that the Folio, Baileys, Goldsmiths, Giller and Governor General Award all had it as one of the top books of the year, ie pretty much every other major award for which it was eligible.

Issue I have with Booker, every year recently, is that I really struggle that any other group of people would come up with anything like the same list of books. It seems so random and every year about half the list shouldn't even be close to a major award shortlist (3 on this year plus 1 that is technically ineligible).

Whereas this year's Goldsmith has almost entirely extremely good books, and this group of relatively well read and informed readers picked the same 5 within our own guess of 13 candidates. And when Goldsmiths books do fall short it is usually as a result of their overambition rather than lack of quality.

And yes I know awards should exist in part to draw attention to books people wouldn't otherwise expect, but the surprises on each years Booker list tend to be duds at least as often as they are welcome discoveries.

Very interesting live readers' Q&A with Karl Ove Knausgård in the Guardian today which has just finished. https://www.theguardian.com/books/liv...?

Worth a read generally, but why post it here? One quote0

"I'm reading Rachel Cusk, Outline. I read Life's Work by her, which is brilliant, and Outline is outstanding. She's one of the best writers at the moment, what I've read of her. I've got a feeling there's something new in there."

I read Outline last week, my first Rachel Cusk, as a precursor to Transit, and as my introduction to the Goldsmiths Prize, a literary competition "designed to reward fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form".
I am not convinced by either Rachel Cusk’s writing in general, nor that Transit could claim to meet the Goldsmiths criteria for inclusion.
Cusk’s books are a series of short, self contained, stories that hang together because of the presence of the same narrator, through whose eyes and conversations we meet the other participants in the book.
For my money this just about makes for a coherent, single, novel in a way that David Szalays "All That Man Is" does not.

It also makes Transit (and Outline) an easy book to read. You can leave the book for a few days and not lose track of characters or story-line.
But is Transit really anything more than well written "chick lit"?
I think not.
Cusk's poor reputation on the message boards of Mums net are well documented. I don't understand why Cusk is so reviled - it's just that she writes with a predominantly negative outlook where there are few happy endings.
I like autobiographical fiction. I recognise and have experienced many of the life situations Cusk embeds into her books.
What fails to convince me, increasingly, the more I read of Transit and Cusk in general, are those crafted reflections which stand alone as a summary of an emotion, or as a sign off for a passage of life (and Cusk does like to pepper her work with aphorisms).

Some observations are acute and clever, but there are so many that miss the mark.

A few random examples of Cusk wisdom that I found deeply meaningless:

“The Tube station stood at a junctions where five roads converged like the spokes of a wheel. The traffic sat at the lights, each lane waiting for its turn. Sometimes it seemed that the junction was a place of confluence; at other times, when the traffic thundered constantly over the intersection in a chaotic river of buses and bicycles and cars, it felt like a mere passageway, a place of transit” (p. 161)

“This is about freedom, he said.
Freedom, I said, is a home you leave once and can never go back to" (p210)

“Fate, he said, is only truth in its natural state. When you leave things to fate it can take a long time but its processes are accurate and inexorable” (p256)

There are highlights too. Transit begins strongly with horoscope humour and the kind of dialogue with an estate agent that resonates with many (home) truths.
The house sections involving the builders and imagery of a house under reconstruction as a skeleton with the builders managing an operating table is very well written. There's an amazing section describes the beauty and discipline of Saluki dogs.

So it's not a bad book, it's just I get the feeling Cusk wants to be regarded as a literary life counsellor for the middle classes. I think it’s time for her to move on.

Will this win the Goldsmiths? Not a chance up against Hot Milk.

I think the reason Cusk is reviled on Mumsnet is that she wrote a book about motherhood that included some controversial opinions
A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother, and this has nothing to do with the quality of her writing.

I would disagree with you on Cusk Jonathan (much as it was a pleasure to meet you last night).

I think the "annihilated perspective" idea that is behind Outline and Transit is a genuinely interesting development, the narrator and subject of the novel who is ultimately largely absent from the story.

And it was done as a deliberate reaction to the Ben Lerner/Knausgaard style of masculine self-centred writing, which is itself another interesting development.

To me exactly what the Goldsmiths should be about.

Paul,
You will have to forgive my ignorance, but "annihilated perspective" is not a literary term or genre with which I'm familiar.
One result from a general google search does point to Virginia Woolf and a quote from A Room of One’s Own
"it is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex.” “It is fatal for a woman to lay the least stress on any grievance; to plead even with justice any cause; in any way to speak consciously as a woman. And fatal is no figure of speech; for anything written with that conscious bias is doomed to death"

I don't suppose this directly addresses or contradicts your interpretation of Cusk's writing style as innovative, but Woolf's seemingly anti feminist writing sentiment expressed in this brief extract would not go down well with Rachel Cusk, I suspect.
Cusk does name the narrator (Faye) in both Outline and Transit, but beyond second guessing and discussing how much of Faye is actually Rachel Cusk, I don't see how this literary device adds a great deal to the overall work Cusk produces.
My lukewarm response to Cusk is largely a consequence of, as I see them, too many failed aphorisms scattered through her novels.

I did a more thorough on line search of the generic description "annihilated perspective" Paul has twice used to position Cusk's latest work, and her consideration for literary awards that proclaim their literary innovativeness.

The term comes up a few times on line, always in newspaper interviews with.....Rachel Cusk..... The term itself coined by......Rachel Cusk.

I find the term meaningless; but it's catchy, 'annihilated' is a powerful word, so this must be a (uniquely) powerful work of literature, right?

I can't help being suspicious that this is an author's rather clever way of leading the journalistic community.

I've now had the chance to read Rachel Cusk's A Life's Work.... On Becoming a Mother (2001), to get a perspective, and given the mutual love in between Knausgaard and Cusk.

Life's Work is a well written, perfectly accurate, if slightly less honeyed than average, description of a woman's biggest life change.

As regards Transit's chances of winning the Goldsmiths award, and of selling a few copies, it's ironic that the Mumsnet community that Cusk has somehow alienated are exactly the audience for whom her work is ideally suited.

Ummm ... yes now you come to mention it, I think that may have been where I got the phrase from as well! Still kudos for her for hypnotising reviewers into spreading her gospel.

By annihilated (and yes "absent" or something would be better) I took her as saying that the narrator herself was absent, rather than the prose being powerful - indeed it's almost the opposite. It's also more striking in Outline as a technique, as in Transit the narrator re-inserts (indeed re-asserts) herself.

And the subject matter is I'd concede divorced-mums(albeit not chicks)-lit, in the same way that Knausgaard is middle-aged-bloke-lit.

Although I do like both and don't really identify with either (well, yes I am a middle-aged, just about still, bloke but one with rather different tastes to Knausgaard in almost everything bar books).

Indeed to sort of start another topic, from the panel discussion on innovation vs subject matter, i.e. Deborah Levy said she was only interested in book if she was interested in the topic matter. I have almost the opposite reaction. If I look at the books I've appreciated most in the last 12 months things like Mexican-US border controls, vegetarianism in East Asia, world war 2 pilots etc aren't topics that would interest me at all in non-fiction / newspapers. And many aren't about anything much at all. And indeed as I have mentioned with a certain book on the Booker list, I love comedy and politics but not particularly in a novel.

Jonathan wrote: "I did a more thorough on line search of the generic description "annihilated perspective" Paul has twice used to position Cusk's latest work, and her consideration for literary awards that proclaim..."

I don't think it would matter too much to Rachel Cusk what the random members of mumsnet think of her fiction.

I think it mattered to her a great deal

https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...

New Statesman who are a partner in the prize running a Q+A with each of authors. Cusk's
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/f...