Author of his own demise

WHEN we meet Michael Ardenne, the antihero of Ian Shadwell’s Slush Pile, it has been more than a decade since he won the Man Booker Prize.

SOMETIMES an author will have one big hit and then … nothing. When we meet Michael Ardenne, the antihero of Ian Shadwell’s Slush Pile, it has been more than a decade since he won the Man Booker Prize for his debut novel Ephesus. Now, he is ‘‘as dry as an old dog turd’’. Instead of writing, he pseudonymously occupies message boards about his own book, watches porn, drinks his cellar dry and leers at the teenage girl next door.

A pile of unopened, unpaid bills for which Michael is responsible is soon noticed by his hardworking wife, Tanya, who has taken over the household finances since the money from Ephesus dried up. Michael clings, pathetically, to the idea of his own literary genius, and resists for as long as possible the idea of getting a job. But Tanya has had enough.

Slush Pile, Shadwell’s first novel, is a rollicking black comedy with an entertainingly unlikable main character. As this selfish, pleasure-seeking, pompous and arrogant man digs a hole for himself, due to the conviction that he is entitled to everything he imagines he could have, the reader both cringes and eggs him on, to see just how far he will go.

When he is forced to take a job installing pink batts in roofs with a couple of ‘‘members of the labouring classes’’, he will do anything to escape this work, though he does briefly rom­anticise the idea of getting dirty with the ‘‘common man’’, a la George Orwell.

The way out lies in the slush pile of other authors’ manuscripts his publisher has sent him to read (for cash). After throwing one of many tantrums, and tossing manuscripts submitted in ridiculous fonts around the room, he comes across one that draws him in. Soon, he begins to write a story very much like it, disregarding any possible consequences.

A pathetic male character — pretentious, lascivious and egocentric — is nothing new in literature, but Shadwell has created a story that zips along and is full of genuinely funny moments, particularly recognisable to those who work in the world of books or have attended writers festivals. Having said that, the story is just as translatable to anyone who has known their share of pompous arses.

At first, it’s difficult to know why Tanya has stayed with Michael, but then there’s a great scene where we learn she fell for him when he tripped over a gravestone in the rain at a funeral. Her pity and love had been mixed from the start, and so we buy their relationship and her continued forgiveness of him.

The narrative takes a dark turn after Mich­ael finds himself back on top of the literary world, flying first class to the Byron Bay Writers Festival, and reunited with the attractive teenager with whom he has always been mutually flirtatious. (The sceptical reader is placated by the fact he is portrayed as genuinely talented — at least, he once was — and as having hair like Keith Richards.)

After the narrative takes this dark turn, we wonder whether it will be time, finally, for Michael to rein in his ego, to realise he must take responsibility for his actions.

This book is not a parody in particular of any living Australian author — or is it? — but is satirical of cultural class divides: between winners and mid-listers, ‘‘elites’’ and tradespeople, privileged men and underappreciated women, between people getting drunk and talking the talk and those doing the ‘‘grunt’’ work. It features caricatures, but that is the way Michael sees the world, through his own narrow view of ‘‘types’’.

And we do get close enough to Michael to feel some reluctant sympathy for him. It would be hard to have reached such dizzy heights and not have the luck (or work ethic) to reclaim them. It would be hard to be edged sideways out of the warm spotlight. It would be hard to have someone re-editing your Wikipedia page with critical comments every time you snuck in and changed it (and your rivals’ pages) yourself. But if you find yourself feeling too sorry for him, you may want to put down your glass of expensive pinot gris and take a long hard look at yourself.

Angela Meyer is a writer and critic.

Slush Pile

By Ian Shadwell

Puncher and Wattmann, 250pp, $24.95