I'm in with the general consensus here which is that Ben Elton's books are highly enjoyable if not actually 'good books'. I always quite liked him, ever since he made
Blackadder funny, and I quite like his stand-up too, though I think he's a bit too keen to be seen as a renaissance man (libretto for musicals? plays?
Maybe Baby?) and should stick to what he's good at.
I read his first three novels as they came out. Make no mistake if you haven't ventured into Elton's literary works: this ain't high-falutin prize-deserving stuff. It's entertainment, with a typically overdone social message. But usually pretty readable, if not always re-readable. His first novel
Stark was re-readable: great, long and dense and very very funny, even twice round (of course I was in my teens both times, please don't disabuse me) with a bash-on-the-head ecological message and even a sad ending! What more could mortal men desire?
Then, pretty soon after, came
Gridlock, which was not as long (but just as thick thanks to big type and wide spacing - my
betes noires), and not quite as funny, and - er - had another bash-on-the-head ecological message (cars this time, as you probably guessed), but was worth a look.
Then
This Other Eden, which for some no doubt "ideologically sound" (which veterans of the 80s will remember as the precursor for "politically correct") reasons came straight into paperback. I bought it and it remains the only 450-odd page book I have read in one day. So it was nothing if not a page-turner, though all I can remember about it was that it was something to do with biospheres and had a villain who was Rupert Murdoch in all but name (and possibly even in name too, come to think of it). I remember thinking at the time that it read as though it had been written very quickly, certainly with not half the attention to detail or thought of the similarly-themed
Stark.
I think his next book was
Popcorn, which I haven't read (theme: movie violence, I think?), nor his other one from around that time,
Blast from the Past.
I next came to him with
Inconceivable, a work of almost post-modern structural complexity - and I am only half-joking when I say that. Elton wrote it following his and his wife's experience of infertility, and it concerns a couple (Sam and Lucy) who are trying to overcome their own infertility, while Sam decides that their dilemma would make a great film idea, so he writes it and it's called ...
Inconceivable. Add to this the fact that Elton went on to write and direct the film of the book and our heads are quite spinning.
It's narrated in alternating diary extracts, Lucy in italics and Sam in upright font to make it easy for you. It's a quick read, as usual for Elton, which is helped by the elimination of chapters so you just keep ploughing on through: "Just one more entry...". In truth, and unexpectedly, I became much more interested in the story and the characters than the jokes. Although one review says
A laugh a minute ... at least
it's only a small smirk that they mean rather than a great big belly-whopper. But then what do you expect from reviews that have exclamation marks? No, the jokes are just OK with a few excellent exceptions. Most tiresome is Elton's insistence on having his celebrity characters as thinly-veiled versions of real stars, so we have no-brainer pop group Mirage with songwriter Bushy and singer Manky (Oasis), heart-throb Carl Phipps famous for some costume drama or another (Colin Firth), and breakfast DJ Charlie Stone with a fine line nauseating early-morning sexism (Chris Evans of course - and that alone shows how dated this tactic can make a book -
Chris Evans! Remember him? These days people reading it for the first time will presume he means Chris Moyles).
Anyway, the plot itself is surprisingly gripping for a tale which is basically
will-they-won't-they(-spawn)? As a cold-hearted singleton with no parenting instincts or broodiness whatever, I was surprised to be so won over by the main characters. Another slightly cleverer-than-thou aspect was the interaction of the private worlds when Sam decides to read Lucy's diary, with unhilarious consequences.
My disappointment was saved up, though, for the ending, which packs about 23 handbrake turns into the last dozen pages and ultimately cops out with that ultimate temptation for the writer-turned moviemaker - a Hollywood ending. Well, he has his directorial career to think of.
Dead Famous came next, which I liked a lot. I doubt fans of
Big Brother would though, since the best thing about it is Elton's unrelenting, vicious, choleric hatred of the reality TV genre. (Though no doubt it will seem quaint now - more Elton datedness - now that
Big Brother has become the respectable face of the form.) The closest thing we have to an authorial voice is the inspector investigating the murder, Coleridge (representing values of literature, culture and higher things - geddit?!), and even though Elton tries to make him appear fuddy-duddy at times, he's clearly Elton in a flasher's mac and pipe and is always sympathetic and, of course, always right. The bile piles up early:
But they were all irritating. Or at least they were to Coleridge. Every single one of them, with their toned tummies and their bare buttocks, their biceps and their triceps, their tattoos and their nipple rings, their mutual interest in star signs, their endless hugging and touching, and above all their complete lack of genuine intellectual curiosity about one single thing on this planet that was not directly connected with themselves.
It's important too, not to overlook the almost miraculous brilliance of the concept: the perfect closed-room murder mystery using a world-famous contemporary setting, made all the more curious by the fact that the housemates are under camera cover 24 hours a day. Hats off to Elton not only for coming up with the idea, but executing it pretty well. In truth it's the murder-mystery aspect - or the denouement thereof - which is the weakest part of the book, but it's all carried off with such brio and aplomb that I didn't care at all. In fact
Dead Famous is the only book I can remember which has kept me up in bed to finish it in a 200-page burst. And, with hand on literary heart, you can't say that for
Ulysses.
With
High Society - great title - Elton made a break from the more small-scale ideas of his last few books and returned to big issues, this time drugs, but he seems less interested in making us laugh than before.
If he was expending all the effort he saves not making so many jokes in making believable characters or careful prose then that would be something. However he doesn't, and the book still reads as though it took him only slightly longer to write than it took me to read. Although there is some confusion at some points over the relative times when scenes take place, it's never hard to follow, largely because Elton gives most of his characters thick regional accents which he spells phonetically - so we have Jessie the Scots crack whore ("Ah didnae know any different"), Sonia the Brummie drug trafficker's patsy ("Down't blame moi if I puke") and Tommy Hanson, the Robbie-Williams-alike talent-show-winning pop-erstar who appears to be from somewhere oop North ("Just fookin' do it") - whose book-long occasional monologue, incidentally, is where the laughs do reside. The supporting characters are no less cardboard, from hardened tabloid pack-rats who break into spontaneous applause at a show of pluck from a cabinet minister's teenage daughter, to crack-house pimp's madames with hearts of gold.
But then you don't read Elton for subtlety, so why should you be disappointed when you don't get any? What you do get is supersonic readability and plenty of political-with-a-small-p hectoring. The book essentially traces the story of a government backbencher who introduces a private member's bill for the legalisation of all recreational drugs. Elton, never particularly interested in concealing the authorial voice, believes the argument for legalising drugs is unanswerable. Certainly he doesn't bother to answer it:
I am attempting to point out that, under British law, pretty much the entire population of this country has been criminalised. We are all either criminal ourselves or associates of criminals or relatives of criminals. We buy CDs produced by criminals, we watch films that star criminals, we watch awards shows compered by criminals! Our stocks and shares are brokered by criminals, our roads are swept by criminals, our children are taught by criminals. Can we not admit it? Are we not a mature enough society to face the obvious truth? We must admit it. Our future way of life depends upon it. For this vast nation of - how shall I put it? - social criminals is linked arterially to a corrosive, cancerous core of real criminals. Murderers. Pimps. Gangsters. Gunmen. Lethally unscrupulous backroom chemists! We are all connected to these people because there is no legal way for an otherwise law-abiding population to get high, which it is clearly intent upon doing! The law is effectively the number one sponsor of organised crime!"
So it's entertaining, persuasive and lively, but ultimately disposable. I was also disappointed by the ending, just as I was in
Inconceivable and
Dead Famous, albeit in a different (and braver for Elton) way. A single thumbs up then.
Haven't read
Past Mortem, you'll be pleased to know.
) but as a novelist - Dead Famous was the only one I thought was a good read from start to finish- well constructed and well executed with a good twist at the end.
The only book of his I couldn't get on with was Inconceivable.
