Gripped

A couple of years ago, while browsing the shelves in Pages, one of my favourite used-book shops in Calgary, I found a copy of Anakana Schofield’s Martin John. I’d been hunting for it for months, ever since I first read about it in The Worst Truth, John Metcalf’s castigating essay on Canadian fiction. In that slim volume, Metcalf commended the Giller-nominated title while savaging several other books I’d enjoyed. If Schofield’s second novel could earn the literary critic’s rare approval — he acquired the book for his imprint at Biblioasis — there had to be something to it. “Game on, Metcalf,” I thought.

But the 2015 publication sat untouched on my crowded bookshelf for over two years. Like many bibliophiles, I compulsively bring home more than I can possibly read, even when every available surface is stacked with uncracked spines. Sometimes I purge the clutter, hauling heavy bags to Little Free Libraries, but the piles inevitably regrow. I can’t help myself.

Recently, while I was sorting my unwieldy collection to find something to read, Martin John caught my eye. What first drew me in was the way the Irish Canadian writer uses language to mirror her characters’ inner worlds — especially that of her protagonist, an eccentric Irish man struggling to make his way in London. Martin John’s thoughts are scattered and chaotic, reflected in the text’s short, punchy sentences and frenetic, shifting focus. Section and page breaks fragment the narrative. Many paragraphs are one sentence long; numerous pages are made up almost entirely of white space. The reader rapidly moves through the story in a way that imitates the clamour of Martin John’s mind. And much of the language is cryptic. One whole page reads: “The Boss likes Martin John. He likes him for one reason. Martin John is reliable. He is never late and rarely off sick. Martin John knows this. His onion is on the pan.”

The threads of this unconventional text are woven together into a dark fabric. Martin John is a pervert who gets his thrills by exposing himself to women and rubbing up against strangers on the Tube. Although people report him to transit security and the police, he repeatedly escapes the authorities — or they let him go with a warning — and goes on to reoffend.

Schofield frames her character’s transgressive urges as uncontrollable: “He has made mistakes. All his life he has made mistakes. He continues to make mistakes. By Christ if he could only stop with the mistakes.” He tries to restrain himself by working hard and punishing himself, which includes holding in his urine until he is in pain. Despite his strict regimens, his impulses remain. They lurk beneath the surface, ready to surge when life’s pressures mount. “Whenever things sour down on the job,” Martin John goes to Euston Station, where “opportunities prevail. Legs, flesh, feet and trains.”

Our susceptibility to strong yearnings is part of the human condition. “The will,” the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, “is devoid of knowledge, and is only a blind, irresistible urge.” Reason and self-discipline may temper these forces, but irrational cravings will persist. While Martin John’s behaviour certainly deserves our disgust, he is also somewhat pitiful, because he didn’t choose his sordid desires. Again, from Schopenhauer: “You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.”

Ultimately, to curb his perversions, Martin John submits to a crude form of self-denial invented by his mother: “Mam tied his two wrists to the arms of the Chair. He didn’t struggle, just sat there limp, slouched like he’d been stuffed.”

Schofield’s innovative use of language transforms disturbing scenes into compelling, funny, and humanizing moments. Martin John is a pervert, yes, but he’s no monster. He’s unwell, needing treatment and support that the community around him can’t or won’t provide. “It was a time when people didn’t ask as many questions. That was the time it was,” the ever elusive narrator says. The society that Martin John belongs to doesn’t know what to do with people like him.

Morally ambiguous protagonists are unnerving. By framing Martin John as both criminal and vulnerable, Schofield grapples with blurred ethical responsibilities and the limits of free will, forcing her reader to ask, What if we, too, were subject to such overpowering compulsions?

I’m very glad this bold, gripping, and challenging novel landed on my bookshelf — and made it into my hands — whether it was my free will or “the will” that put it there.