Brian

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This novel achieves a great deal with its close insistence on the dignity of a quiet life invigorated by the most defamiliarising art form of them all.’ I feel like I should have liked this book more. I feel like I was the target audience for it, but it just didn't work for me. This type of book can work on many levels: on one it’s a look at how film and the film buff have evolved: from attending cinemas to streaming, plus the availability of global culture became more accessible by the 2010’s and so a wider variety of films were being screened with the technology to clean them up as well.

Brian by Jeremy Cooper | Waterstones Brian by Jeremy Cooper | Waterstones

At Talacre one weekend a woman had walked over to Brian’s bench and introduced herself as Dorothy, Camden Council’s manager of the playground. She had noticed the gentle way he had been playing with the children on and off all summer and, being short of staff at weekends, she wondered if he might agree to keep volunteer-watch over the facility for a fixed couple of hours on Sunday mornings. The thought of community participation, of acceptance within a worthwhile group of local people delighted Brian and when, as it always seemed to, everything fell apart he felt especially hurt. Two mothers had complained about his unqualified status and, with regret, Dorothy asked him not to come again. For his own sake she suggested it might be safest if he did not visit the gardens at all for the time being, as his accusers were a vindictive pair, Dorothy warned. As have the two previous novels from Jeremy Cooper, Ash Before Oak and Bolt from the Blue, which contained a lot of nature and modern art respectively but which failed, unlike works from authors such as Sara Baume and the hybrid art/novel works that are a trademark of Les Fugitives, to draw this reader in and makes me want to seek out the things referenced. And Brian does the same, or rather fails to do the same, with film. This is the 60th of the blue-covered fiction titles from Fitzcarraldo Editions, all of which I've read and reviewed, but it sadly confirmed my hypothesis: their taste and mine in Anglophone male writers simply doesn't overlap. Brian" is the perfect title for this book. The eponymous character is the caricature of a middle-aged British man. Damaged by some indistinct yet ever-present childhood trauma, Brian makes his life as predictable, regular, and free of excitement as possible.The book is at its strongest in portraying the comeradeship, if not really relationship, Brian enjoys with his fellow buffs, many of them socially unconventional, and indeed Brian looks down on some of them in the same way that Beavis has contempt for Butthead. Boeken kunnen mensen veranderen, of meer inzicht geven in het leven en de maatschappij. Dit hoeft vanzelfsprekend geen betoog op Goodreads maar hetzelfde geldt eigenlijk ook voor de 7e kunst, film. In Brian zien we het gelijknamige hoofdpersonage evolueren van een gesloten, eenzaam persoon, naar een mens met (weliswaar beperkte) sociale interactie en een breed wereldbeeld. Het is een langzame evolutie, aan de hand van de schier oneindige hoeveelheid films die Brian bekijkt dankzij een abonnement bij het British Film Institute (BFI). Joining his local film society opens him up to horizons and experiences far beyond his own ken. Film opens his sensitive mind to experiences, relationships, and emotions, in a way that both warms and rends the heart. There is an oddly detached tone to the novel which is narrated in the third person, almost like character notes for someone playing Brian in a movie, or the interview notes of a psychologist (although the only time Brian does seek help his GP tells him the NHS no longer funds such things):

Brian by Jeremy Cooper | Goodreads Brian by Jeremy Cooper | Goodreads

Jeremy Cooper’s work is consistently haunting and layered, built on a refreshing trust in the reader to delve deeper behind the quiet insinuations of his prose. His work resists every modern accelerant, creating a patient and precise tonic. He is easily one of the most thoughtful British fiction writers working today.’ The titular character is an office worker who lives a cautious existence, until, after a long process of thought, becomes a BFI member. Slowly he starts to become enamoured by cinema and the book documents his progress from the 90’s all the way to the present day.Low-key and understated, this beautiful book ... is a civilised and melancholy document that slowly progresses towards a sense of enduring, going onwards, and even new life. It feels like a healing experience.’ A study in how writing can give lives meaning, and in how it can fail to be enough to keep one afloat, this is a rare, delicate book, teeming with the stuff of real life.’

Jeremy Cooper on Creating Verisimilitude Fact, Fiction, and Film: Jeremy Cooper on Creating Verisimilitude

First and foremost, I think, Cooper’s novel is a love letter to the cinema. Much of its length is given over to Brian’s thoughts on the films he sees. Even though I haven’t seen most of them myself, I felt again the sense of openness and possibility that comes from being able to range far and wide with films. As the years roll by, and more details emerge, I found myself trying to decide what was simply personality, and what was pathology. Which I guess is a question we can all ask ourselves in the mirror.Brian tends to reticence and caution in personal and social interaction, an inborn temperament only exacerbated by his parents’ bullying and debasement, intended to toughen him up during his childhood in Northern Ireland. Free of their grip—his mother’s death when he is 16 and his estrangement from his father and older brother—he moves to England, becoming a file clerk for Kentish Town, a position he holds for the entirety of his professional career. Ever shy and awkward, always fearing calamity and the inadvertent commitment of a faux pas, Brian keeps to himself, talking to co-workers only under duress. Avoiding improvisation and spur-of-the-moment decisions, Brian is keen on routines well-defined and predictable. For several years he had promised himself he would become a member at the BFI, failing to do so for no reason other than the trepidation he generally felt about doing anything new. The Talacre Gardens fiasco impelled urgent action and after a visit to the watch-repairer in The Cut on a Saturday afternoon not long after seeing The Outlaw Josey Wales, Brian grasped the moment, walked on over to the South Bank and filled in the inexpensive BFI membership form. He felt a rush of rightness as he placed a copy of the month’s programme in his bag to study at home. From then on, he booked in for a screening at least every couple of weeks, berating himself for not having done so sooner.

Brian by Jeremy Cooper — solace in cinema in London - Financial Times Brian by Jeremy Cooper — solace in cinema in London - Financial

Walking slowly home, Brian thought of his own brother, Peter, nine years his senior, with whom he was unable to remember ever laughing. They barely knew each other, had never lived in the same house. Brian stopped suddenly in the street, muttering to himself, and stamped on the pavement several times one foot after the other, furious that playing with those two nice boys had awakened images of Peter and his father and their treatment of his mother. Hard to put into words just how much I loved this story of a solitary Northern Irish man who experiences a sense of belonging for the first time after getting a BFI membership at the age of 39. I loved the narration style, reflecting (yet at a remove from) Brian's thought process. Quirky and sometimes very funny.This was only the second time Brian had been to the BFI, twenty years after his first visit, when he was nineteen, taken to see Kes along with two other youngsters by the manager at their hostel, to show them, Mr Trevor had said, that positive things do sometimes turn up, replacing hardship. Or something like that. It felt long ago, a period from which Brian had managed to move on, without ever finding a comfortable alternative place for himself. After having published his luminous Ash Before Oak, Jeremy Cooper now brings us Brian, equally a work of mysterious interiority and poetry. It confirms that however solitary life might be, art enriches both our imaginations and our realities. This is a very tender book.’ kaggsysbookishramblings on In the Belly of the Queen by Karosh Taha (tr. Grashina Gabelmann): Women in Translation Month