\nWhat\u2019s going on in Portland USA today, and elsewhere in the \u2018States\n\u2013 the teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets shot at protesters by\narmed men in riot gear – is on a line tracing back through Occupy\nWall Street in 2011, the LA uprising in \u201892, the anti-war protests\nat Chicago\u2019s National Democratic Convention in \u201868, and keeps\ngoing, probably all the way back to the founding of the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nAuthor Nathan Hill doesn\u2019t write of Los Angeles but links Chicago\n1968 and New York 2011 with a depth and dexterity that expands\nthrough his characters to present a national psyche as complex as an\nencryption wrapping the United States up in a riddle of\ncontradictions. His debut novel, The Nix – <\/em>published\n2016 – unlocks the\ncode such that in hindsight the current state of the country is as\nlegible as the alphabet. A leads to B leads to C\u2026 \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nHis ability to capture and present\nthe nation\u2019s soul through a handful of characters is what has\nearned his work the accolade of a Great American Novel by The\nGuardian, <\/em>even though the\naccolade feeds the very national hubris the novel eviscerates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nThe hubris of polarisation, a way of life played as a zero sum game.\nCall it the unresolved consequences of a civil war, but it\u2019s all in\nthere, zoned in on specific time periods which were periods of\nepiphany for his characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nAnd also through the news broadcast, with which chapter 1 opens in\nlate summer 2011: a new Republican presidential candidate has been\nattacked! \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nOn an unscheduled meet-and-greet through the park. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nOthers have been injured!<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nHe had handfuls of gravel thrown at him!<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nBy a 62-year-old woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nA video emerges (revealing a devastatingly insightful interaction\nthat strips away the patriarchal wiring of our infotech society with\nits dialogue of anger and annoyance and entitlement met with an\nindifference born of the desire to placate with as little effort as\npossible).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nMatters escalate. We are introduced to Samuel. Still late summer\n2011. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nThen we see a childhood, late summer 1988, much of which sets us up\nfor 1968, and so this novel rolls three decades through narrative\nthat is as gripping as it is unsettling. There is a haunting within\nthe main characters; Samuel and his mother, Faye Andresen-Anderson.\nAn expression behind the eyes through which we engage in the events\nof \u201888, \u201868, and 2011, the present. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nThe brilliance of The Nix<\/em>\nalso lies in the secondary, and even minor characters, who act as\ncatalysts and occasional drivers, providing a granular clarity to a\nvery specific view, such as a Democratic presidential candidate at\nthe Chicago \u201868 Democratic National Convention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then he takes this character he\u2019s been putting together piece by piece and wades her right into the student protests and the cops swinging at them with batons, and the threats and conspiracies and battle-lines drawn, and there\u2019s a sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu as you look at Federal cops swinging batons on your newsfeed and realise the whole idea of there being such a thing as a Great American Novel is at the root of the eternal conflict of ever-rising stakes: to be Great as a nation is to be better than, hence the near mania for a winner, not considering every winner creates a loser, and thus systemic failure is written into the cultural DNA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Great American Novel is a myth, much like the baseball world series, and is the myth that undermines the nation. There can of course be a North American great novel. The Nix certainly is that, and even better than that: it is a great novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What\u2019s going on in Portland USA today, and elsewhere in the \u2018States \u2013 the teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets shot at protesters by armed men in riot gear – is … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[1133,1134,1131,1132,1130],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4318"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4320,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318\/revisions\/4320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}