Reality. Pah. Impossible! (Leading the Cheers - Justin Cartwright)

Member Name: KingHerrod

Product:	Leading the Cheers - Justin Cartwright
Date:	04/04/02 (111 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Clever, poignant, intelligent

Disadvantages: Something, just not sure what exactly

Justin Cartwright is a critically acclaimed author, short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1995 for his novel In Every Face I Meet and winner of the Whitbread Novel Award in 1998 for this novel, Leading The Cheers. This is a book that I have been meaning to read for a while; I find winners of the Whitbread awards good and intelligent reads, without being as impenetrable as some Booker Prize winners. It was the good old Times Book offer that got me my copy: 5 books for £14 - a bargain, if there ever was one. I delved into this novel with high expectations.

Leading The Cheers focuses on Dan Silas, a man made redundant from his job as a high-flying advertising executive by virtue of a Japanese take over. Dan has never married, but has two long term broken relationships behind him. Living with his dog in his trendy London house, he gets an invite to return to Michigan, where he had been schooled up to university level. It is that old school reunion thing, come and see how your peers have got on, see who has cracked, who has become a big shot and see what the ravages of time have done to your once young and hopeful class mates. However, this invite is not as innocent and pleasant as it first seems.

Dan is English, having spent most of his life in England, but those formative years were spent in rural America; he has forgotten America, become English again, having studied at Oxford University and worked in London, but America has not forgotten him. He returns to realise that he turned his back on people that still remember those High School days and certain events in particular. Dan finds some of his old buddies in a confused state of identity, making their own cosy reality as their lives hurtle past middle age. Dan is of course suffering his own identity crisis, his own mid-life "what is it all about" dilemma; and he experiences something of a personal release by realising that he is not the only one and that he is not, nor was never
supposed to be Mr Perfect.

Leading The Cheers examines reality and truth, it examines perspective on the past. Is your recollection of events that have happened to you, the truth, or are you remembering what you choose to remember? Is another's recollection the truth, or is it just their perspective. The answer is obvious: nobody ever recalls the truth, just his or her perspective on it? The truth is an elusive concept. Cartwright makes this point in a very pertinent way and certainly makes the reader think, which is no bad thing. Leading The Cheers is more than an examination of past reality in the normal sense, it is in a way an espousal of Hegel's theory that things may not be as they seem to anyone - who is to know what is sanity? Are the insane really insane or is society too narrow-minded to contemplate that the insane may have more of a grip on reality than the supposed sane people. Cartwright illustrates this point with his use of Gary, the one time class genius, the Harvard Scholar, who has supposedly, according to society, had a breakdown as he thought he realised that he was a reincarnation of an old Indian Shaman. Who is to say that he is not such a reincarnation? Cartwright uses this discussion on sanity to weave into the plot a story line of how badly the Native Americans were treated by all of the colonists and how their descendents are still persecuted today; which is not a new point, but it is illustrated very well in the narrative. The use of the Native Americans and their beliefs cleverly leads Cartwright perfectly into a discussion about death, the spirit world, whether there is such thing as a spirit or soul that survives death and our own perception of self. He seems to conclude that religion is merely a creation of the human species to explain who we are, or our perception of self and what happens to this notion upon the death of the body housing the self or spirit.

"Of course it is virtually imposs
ible to think yourself back into the world of the first missionaries and explorers. All too easy now to see how they misapprehended everything then, unaware that all religious customs and rituals serve the same purpose in all human societies, namely to explain death. That is what I believe."

Leading The Cheers is written in the first person from the perspective of Dan. It is blunt, but not fast moving; there are few flowery descriptions of people or places, although the book does portray a real essence of rural America and its dilemma of where its place is, in America let alone the world. There are many philosophical musings of the crisis ridden Dan and if you like a book that is going to make you reflect on the bigger points of life, religion and death, then this is a book for you. "Death is not a question in life." However, the plot is not gripping and I found it hard to identify and empathise with some of the characters, although I felt the closest to the classified by society insane, Gary, but I think that is what the author wanted, he wanted to shake your perception of reality. One thing I will say is the plot, rather than the ideas, is hard to follow, the writing at times, jumps from place to place and time to time as Dan reflects on events; this serves to disengage the reader from the narrative, but again I think this disorientating effect was intended by the author.

I found myself wondering how much of this story was autobiographical as Cartwright himself was educated, first in America and then at Oxford University. I would guess we will never know, but I reckon that Dan's crisis of his own identity and created reality stems, in part, with a crisis that Cartwright himself had, but of course I am just speculating.

I was slightly disappointed by this book. It made me think, it made me reflect and it makes valid points about people and the fragile false reality that they create for themselves, but it did not
grip me, it did not absorb me and I didn't feel compelled to keep picking the book up to see what transpired. This is not totally a bad thing, but a novel is also about entertainment and whilst there is some black humour in Leading The Cheers, (I am sure certain members of this site will smile wryly when I tell you that Dan's lawyer informs him that he will be charging him £200 an hour for some pretty simple tasks) this is not a book that reeks of hope or optimism for the future, or one that makes you laugh at the stupidity of it all. In fact if Cartwright's portrayal of reality is correct, I think I would rather be insane. Perhaps I was disappointed because I had created my own false reality, I was expecting so much and so the book was never going to live up to my expectations, had I been expecting nothing, then I would probably be raving about this book.

Leading The Cheers is very intelligent, it is very cleverly constructed, it is well written, it is philosophical, but to me it missed something that is hard to put my finger on. Published by Sceptre and priced £6.99 at 273 pages it is an interesting rather than a captivating read, it has not left me champing at the bit to read more of Justin Cartwright. Maybe that is unfair, but we all have our own subjective views, how close they are to the truth is anyone's guess.

I have given this a 4 star rating, but in all reality, it is probably about a 3 and a half star book.

"In accordance with what principle can I say that my experiences are definitely my own."

Summary: