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arirang's review
3.0
'It doesn't matter how you play the game, zero is always zero'
Eduardo Rabasa's A Zero-Sum Game should really be right up my street. It is translated fiction (and translated by the excellent [a:Christina MacSweeney|7280159|Christina MacSweeney|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] - see this interview on the novel http://fictionadvocate.com/2016/11/07/the-literary-tourist-interviews-christina-macsweeney/), from one of my favourite US independent presses, Deep Vellum (https://deepvellum.org/ - [b:Recitation|29633856|Recitation|Bae Suah|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1460506197s/29633856.jpg|49985193], [b:Sphinx|23129715|Sphinx|Anne Garréta|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1486598166s/23129715.jpg|3234917], [b:Eve out of Her Ruins|32068085|Eve out of Her Ruins|Ananda Devi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1474173935s/32068085.jpg|2142338], [b:Vaseline Buddha|27135623|Vaseline Buddha|Young-moon Jung|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1457528015s/27135623.jpg|47172688], [b:Tram 83|25712965|Tram 83|Fiston Mwanza Mujila|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1434090752s/25712965.jpg|42621228] etc) and it is a deeply political novel (big tick) set around the elections for the residents management company of a property block (enormous tick).
It even comes with an author's recommended music list to accompany the novel, http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2016/11/book_notes_edua_1.html, which includes Nine Inch Nails, The Clash and Nirvana. Lyrics from a Radiohead song form the book's epigraph and speak to one of the key themes:
Boys in first class don't know we're born just know
Someone else is gonna come and clean it up
Born and raised for the job
Someone always does
So that it didn't entirely live up to my expectations probably reflects more where I am in my reading cycle - suffering a little from reading too many books from award shortlists, notably the tediously dreadful [b:4 3 2 1|30244626|4 3 2 1|Paul Auster|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1463822564s/30244626.jpg|50710100] and the deliberately difficult [b:Phone|33222325|Phone|Will Self|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1485576067s/33222325.jpg|53926729] - than on the novel itself.
Eduardo Rabasa studied political theory at Mexico's National University and wrote his thesis on the concept of power in the works of Orwell, and the novel draws from the same well, mainly satirising the current neo-liberal political and economic consensus.
A Zero-Sum Game is set in the large development of Villa Miserias, where the annual elections for the Resident's Committee, and the general management of the estate, have been gradually changed to reflect the theories of one particular resident, 'with an albaster smile', Selon Perdumes:
The foundations of Villa Miserias were conceived on the same basis as Selon Perdumes’ fundamental doctrine: Quietism in Motion. Its forty-nine buildings were constructed using an engineering technique designed to allow shaking while avoiding collapse.
Quietism in Motion is based on the theories of the sword and the tea bag.
The former was based on the equilibrium of unequal things, the distinctive characteristic of a good sword. It may be the blade that cuts, but it’s the hilt that is in control. When wielding a Samurai sword, in order to obtain horizontal equilibrium, the extended finger must be placed on the juncture of the hilt and the blade. If the finger bears down slightly harder toward the blade, the greater weight of the hilt is magnified and wins the day. And from this came the Perdumesian maxim: cannon fodder should respect the rank of the person who holds the weapon. Hence the Quietism.
The motion came from the tea bag. Perdumes would ceremoniously pour the hot water from his antique porcelain jug into a white cup and slowly remove the tea bag from its paper wrapping, allowing his audience to confirm the absolute transparency of the water. The tea bag was then gradually introduced into the cup at an angle of ninety degrees to the surface of the water. Initially, nothing happened. Then, when the tea could no longer bear the scalding water, it exuded a thin, blackish thread that diffused into the water. Perdumes would accentuate the effect by a series of upward jerks. The tea seeped out evenly in all directions until the correct hue was attained. But if one were to move the bag around without rhyme or reason, what would happen, he would ask rhetorically. You might say, exactly the same, he then quickly replied, yet turbid tea is acidic and doesn’t have the same flavor. The motion is necessary, in its proper time and place.
The novel contains a lot of theory of this nature - seemingly abstract but highly applicable to Rabasa's view of our current economic and political situation, a settlement that claims to be post-ideology but is in-fact all-encompassing ideology (rather like religion) and a democracy that largely exists to perpetuate economic inequalities - designed to allow shaking while avoiding collapse as per the earthquake-proofing of the buildings. For example, Perdures increasingly moves to make service charge contributions proportional to the benefit gained - initially to the apparent disadvantage of the wealthier residents who lives in the larger and higher apartments - but then moves to make voting weights also proportional to the charge paid.
Perdures theory's are backed up by the statistical science of G.B.W. Ponce who takes opinion polling and the form of multi-level regression analysis used so successfully by Yougov in the 2017 General Election (https://yougov.co.uk/uk-general-election-2017/) to a whole new level:
G.B.W. Ponce had acquired great renown in the socio-scientific community for a statistical discovery known as the Ponce Scheme. After years of battling with his algorithms—his beaky, condor face lost its glow and his hair started to gray—he’d managed to compress thousands of variables into a method he retained for his personal use, in spite of stratospheric offers to share his secret. Inspired by the philosophical notion that history is just an untiring repetition of itself, he proposed to condense the millions of correlations studied into an accurate predictive method: his aim was to quantify the eternal return. If all thought, every impulse or action is contained in the characteristics that define each individual, he could explain real events without having to wait for them to occur.
[...]
The aim was to attain a delicate balance: gathering the opinions of people so as to then mold them. It was explained it using the allegory of a fountain that feeds on the water of a river, only to then return it, transformed, to the stream before feeding once again on that slightly modified source, in a patient reiteration that eventually modifies the raw material through its own elements.
Another key role is played by the elderly cleaner Juana Mecha, whose rather random and cryptic utterances as she continually sweeps, are ascribed Delphic properties by the residents - for example that which opens my review, or, pertinent to a key theme of Quietism in Motion, “If you put everything in the wash together, the clothes lose their colour”.
The novel focuses on Max Michaels, who inherited a flat from his father, and is hired by Ponce and Perdures to find a candidate for the election to take Quietism in Motion, and in particular Perdures theory (expressed so well by Radiohead) that society needs an elite supported by a large bulk of the population that knows its place, to the next level.
Max ends up running for office himself, aiming to expose the cynicism of Ponce and Perdures' theories, but perhaps (this is left to the reader's interpretation) simply serving their purpose.
As I write this review, I can't help feel this is novel I would love to read! One obvious criticism is the sheer amount of exposition, but actually to me the main failing was the attempt to make this more of a conventional novel by giving Max more of a fleshed-out back story and his own cares and concerns (notably an odd love-affair with Nelly, the young editor of the property's house journal). Rabasa as highlighted the lack of character depth in his fiction as a weakness of Orwell, but perhaps this is actually a strength of Orwell's work:
And at times the story rather loses focus - for example Max's election campaign is rather dominated not by conventional speeches but by performance art presented with two close friends (the origin of their relationship constituting another back story). After one complex allegorical game has been enacted, the house journal comments, rather reflecting this reader's view:
There's no doubt that something very intense happened in Plaza de Orden, but the problem is that no one knows just what it was.
or on another occasion:
The main problem is that no one, including himself, it seems to me, knows whether his shadow-theatre spectacle is actually showing us anything or is in fact hiding something.
To be fair to Rabasa he acknowledges the novel's potential 'flaws', particularly as seen by different readers, in this very honest and helpful interview: https://thenewinquiry.com/life-that-could-fit-in-a-spreadsheet/
Overall intriguing, and some wonderful ideas, but not entirely successful in its execution.
Eduardo Rabasa's A Zero-Sum Game should really be right up my street. It is translated fiction (and translated by the excellent [a:Christina MacSweeney|7280159|Christina MacSweeney|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] - see this interview on the novel http://fictionadvocate.com/2016/11/07/the-literary-tourist-interviews-christina-macsweeney/), from one of my favourite US independent presses, Deep Vellum (https://deepvellum.org/ - [b:Recitation|29633856|Recitation|Bae Suah|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1460506197s/29633856.jpg|49985193], [b:Sphinx|23129715|Sphinx|Anne Garréta|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1486598166s/23129715.jpg|3234917], [b:Eve out of Her Ruins|32068085|Eve out of Her Ruins|Ananda Devi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1474173935s/32068085.jpg|2142338], [b:Vaseline Buddha|27135623|Vaseline Buddha|Young-moon Jung|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1457528015s/27135623.jpg|47172688], [b:Tram 83|25712965|Tram 83|Fiston Mwanza Mujila|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1434090752s/25712965.jpg|42621228] etc) and it is a deeply political novel (big tick) set around the elections for the residents management company of a property block (enormous tick).
It even comes with an author's recommended music list to accompany the novel, http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2016/11/book_notes_edua_1.html, which includes Nine Inch Nails, The Clash and Nirvana. Lyrics from a Radiohead song form the book's epigraph and speak to one of the key themes:
Boys in first class don't know we're born just know
Someone else is gonna come and clean it up
Born and raised for the job
Someone always does
So that it didn't entirely live up to my expectations probably reflects more where I am in my reading cycle - suffering a little from reading too many books from award shortlists, notably the tediously dreadful [b:4 3 2 1|30244626|4 3 2 1|Paul Auster|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1463822564s/30244626.jpg|50710100] and the deliberately difficult [b:Phone|33222325|Phone|Will Self|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1485576067s/33222325.jpg|53926729] - than on the novel itself.
Eduardo Rabasa studied political theory at Mexico's National University and wrote his thesis on the concept of power in the works of Orwell, and the novel draws from the same well, mainly satirising the current neo-liberal political and economic consensus.
A Zero-Sum Game is set in the large development of Villa Miserias, where the annual elections for the Resident's Committee, and the general management of the estate, have been gradually changed to reflect the theories of one particular resident, 'with an albaster smile', Selon Perdumes:
The foundations of Villa Miserias were conceived on the same basis as Selon Perdumes’ fundamental doctrine: Quietism in Motion. Its forty-nine buildings were constructed using an engineering technique designed to allow shaking while avoiding collapse.
Quietism in Motion is based on the theories of the sword and the tea bag.
The former was based on the equilibrium of unequal things, the distinctive characteristic of a good sword. It may be the blade that cuts, but it’s the hilt that is in control. When wielding a Samurai sword, in order to obtain horizontal equilibrium, the extended finger must be placed on the juncture of the hilt and the blade. If the finger bears down slightly harder toward the blade, the greater weight of the hilt is magnified and wins the day. And from this came the Perdumesian maxim: cannon fodder should respect the rank of the person who holds the weapon. Hence the Quietism.
The motion came from the tea bag. Perdumes would ceremoniously pour the hot water from his antique porcelain jug into a white cup and slowly remove the tea bag from its paper wrapping, allowing his audience to confirm the absolute transparency of the water. The tea bag was then gradually introduced into the cup at an angle of ninety degrees to the surface of the water. Initially, nothing happened. Then, when the tea could no longer bear the scalding water, it exuded a thin, blackish thread that diffused into the water. Perdumes would accentuate the effect by a series of upward jerks. The tea seeped out evenly in all directions until the correct hue was attained. But if one were to move the bag around without rhyme or reason, what would happen, he would ask rhetorically. You might say, exactly the same, he then quickly replied, yet turbid tea is acidic and doesn’t have the same flavor. The motion is necessary, in its proper time and place.
The novel contains a lot of theory of this nature - seemingly abstract but highly applicable to Rabasa's view of our current economic and political situation, a settlement that claims to be post-ideology but is in-fact all-encompassing ideology (rather like religion) and a democracy that largely exists to perpetuate economic inequalities - designed to allow shaking while avoiding collapse as per the earthquake-proofing of the buildings. For example, Perdures increasingly moves to make service charge contributions proportional to the benefit gained - initially to the apparent disadvantage of the wealthier residents who lives in the larger and higher apartments - but then moves to make voting weights also proportional to the charge paid.
Perdures theory's are backed up by the statistical science of G.B.W. Ponce who takes opinion polling and the form of multi-level regression analysis used so successfully by Yougov in the 2017 General Election (https://yougov.co.uk/uk-general-election-2017/) to a whole new level:
G.B.W. Ponce had acquired great renown in the socio-scientific community for a statistical discovery known as the Ponce Scheme. After years of battling with his algorithms—his beaky, condor face lost its glow and his hair started to gray—he’d managed to compress thousands of variables into a method he retained for his personal use, in spite of stratospheric offers to share his secret. Inspired by the philosophical notion that history is just an untiring repetition of itself, he proposed to condense the millions of correlations studied into an accurate predictive method: his aim was to quantify the eternal return. If all thought, every impulse or action is contained in the characteristics that define each individual, he could explain real events without having to wait for them to occur.
[...]
The aim was to attain a delicate balance: gathering the opinions of people so as to then mold them. It was explained it using the allegory of a fountain that feeds on the water of a river, only to then return it, transformed, to the stream before feeding once again on that slightly modified source, in a patient reiteration that eventually modifies the raw material through its own elements.
Another key role is played by the elderly cleaner Juana Mecha, whose rather random and cryptic utterances as she continually sweeps, are ascribed Delphic properties by the residents - for example that which opens my review, or, pertinent to a key theme of Quietism in Motion, “If you put everything in the wash together, the clothes lose their colour”.
The novel focuses on Max Michaels, who inherited a flat from his father, and is hired by Ponce and Perdures to find a candidate for the election to take Quietism in Motion, and in particular Perdures theory (expressed so well by Radiohead) that society needs an elite supported by a large bulk of the population that knows its place, to the next level.
Max ends up running for office himself, aiming to expose the cynicism of Ponce and Perdures' theories, but perhaps (this is left to the reader's interpretation) simply serving their purpose.
As I write this review, I can't help feel this is novel I would love to read! One obvious criticism is the sheer amount of exposition, but actually to me the main failing was the attempt to make this more of a conventional novel by giving Max more of a fleshed-out back story and his own cares and concerns (notably an odd love-affair with Nelly, the young editor of the property's house journal). Rabasa as highlighted the lack of character depth in his fiction as a weakness of Orwell, but perhaps this is actually a strength of Orwell's work:
His essays and journalistic pieces, and even some of his letters, were more compelling than his fiction. I think every main idea that made its way into the fiction was already there, more or less explicitly ... he himself admitted that he saw himself as a “pamphleteer,” and that every time he set out to write something, it was with a political purpose in mind, such as exposing a lie or advancing a cause. I think this is probably the reason why his style and even his characters sometimes lack depth, in strict literary terms.(interview link below)
And at times the story rather loses focus - for example Max's election campaign is rather dominated not by conventional speeches but by performance art presented with two close friends (the origin of their relationship constituting another back story). After one complex allegorical game has been enacted, the house journal comments, rather reflecting this reader's view:
There's no doubt that something very intense happened in Plaza de Orden, but the problem is that no one knows just what it was.
or on another occasion:
The main problem is that no one, including himself, it seems to me, knows whether his shadow-theatre spectacle is actually showing us anything or is in fact hiding something.
To be fair to Rabasa he acknowledges the novel's potential 'flaws', particularly as seen by different readers, in this very honest and helpful interview: https://thenewinquiry.com/life-that-could-fit-in-a-spreadsheet/
Overall intriguing, and some wonderful ideas, but not entirely successful in its execution.
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