David Sornig

Perhaps the best way to review Spiel would be simply to quote examples of Sornig’s fantastic prose – like this one:

I drive home through a thin toxic mist of lead and particle pollutant that is stretched across the flat volcanic plain of the western suburbs, from the chemical plants to the docks, through the brown paper bag and bottle end of the city grid, trapped under a raft of cool oxygen, out of the puny reach, the straining of short-necked humanity.

Sornig writes with all the precision of a brain surgeon. He electrifies the forgotten wires of connotation and association that run between words and images. This is quick, dense writing; thick with allusion and imagery, but not crowded; constantly pushing the boundaries of how much can be crammed into a single word. If the perfect verb doesn’t exist, Sornig invents it, as in: The cat snakes around my shins, mrrkgnaowing with hunger. His prose is almost always a pleasure to read. Almost.

Call me quaint, but I refuse to believe that sentences with the words ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ in them can stir any positive emotions. Spiel is a ruthlessly vivid slice of humanity with all the unpleasantness left in – urination, defecation, ejaculation. As our young protagonist delves into the mysteries of a gritty, post-Berlin-Wall Germany, his memories of life in Australia are also played out, piece by piece – and it’s hard to say which section of the novel is more unpleasant. Karl (if that is actually his name) is a disillusioned architecture student who wonders whether civilisation might be nothing more than a disease on the face of the planet – an anomaly which nature will eventually correct – and after seeing so many of Sornig’s characters behaving like animals, I am almost ready to agree.

Spiel appears (to me, at least) to be a novel about decay – about the inevitable breakdown of order in cities, stories, civilisations, personalities. Perhaps it is only fitting, then, that the structure of the novel itself decays; the story does not so much wind up as it does break down. But after being knocked around in this tumble dryer of a book for two hundred pages, readers won’t be expecting a normal conclusion. They won’t quite know what to expect. Sornig’s almost-real world is pervaded by a lurking sense of the bizarre. We are constantly made aware that we are in a different reality, with different rules, and there will be no clear resolution to this story. Much of the time, we’re left unsure if these characters even exist – and yet, in this context, to talk of anything as clear-cut as existence seems almost childish. ‘Spiel’ is the German word for ‘game’, and Sornig’s novel is a game that the reader cannot win.

For me, reading Spiel has been like a first encounter with a mechanical bull. I have been bucked off, but still had an enjoyable time of it. Perhaps a second reading will enable me to hang on tighter and extract more of what this novel has to offer. Still, it’s a shame that Sornig’s brilliant language won’t be appreciated by the wider audience it deserves – the content will, I expect, defeat too many potential readers.… (més)