A weighty subject to discuss but one that is best depicted through the world of fiction. Seeing how a character interacts with their surroundings and their solitary musings hit harder than a thousand think pieces.
What’s especially interesting is reading about characters who grew up marginalised for whatever reason (be it race, sexuality, gender etc) and how they react to a world that is (in theory) much more inclusive but it is still a fractured world.
This is the backbone of Ripcord.
Less of a novel and more a series of paragraphs where characters reappear eery now and then, Ripcord is a very 21st-century novel but with the beating heart of a Gen Xer behind it. The narrator is jaded, cynical, beat down by life in the new century but flashes of defiance can appear every now and then. In his 50’s, he sums up the transient nature of his life in these stark terms:
My life has scattered and I can’t gather it. Scraps now: matchbooks, napkins, parking tickets, credit card slips, bills past due, washing instructions, a grocery list. Not yet an eviction notice. A fragment a day keeps the ghost away.
Notice how clipped and minimal the writing is. A life reduced to scraps of paper.
Reduced to part time bartending, being “the other” man in a passionless but comfortable affair and digging out his old Lydia Lunch and Exene Cervenka records, the narrator is engaging in his alienation and disdain for the modern world. He had to escape his family at a young age and has accepted being the master of his own destiny. It’s just unfortunate that the reality of this is a cut off, superficial and self-obsessed world that has no time for people like the narrator, even though the world he resides in is a lot less homophobic than the one he escaped.
The end result is akin to having a conversation at 2pm with a solitary character in the No Trend t-shirt who’s propping up the bar.
A 21st century look at a timeless and universal issue.
Nate Lippens, 2024, Ripcord. Pilot Press. ISBN-13: 978-1739364960.
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.
Lydia Lunch arrived in our house in Springhill one Sunday afternoon. She was a favourite of Carrie. They missed each other as Carrie was in the States at the time.
ReplyDeleteClipped and minimal writing can be very evocative if deployed adroitly.
AM,
DeleteI put her on in Belfast in 2016. Was expecting her to be a nightmare but was very nice. Her books are excellent.
She was fine when at our home
DeleteYes, very different from this:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E92qnnRlQ2w
I enjoyed her in that!!
DeleteHer and Exene are sarky bastards!
ReplyDeleteI thought he set out to rile them and they give him what for. Very entertaining.
DeleteNardwuar is an acquired taste. He's toned the schtick down in recent years but he is a genuine fan of underground music.
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