My favorite film is Mike Leigh’s Naked (1993). If you have not seen it, you should run – not walk – to the library or video store to secure a copy. Aw, just go ahead and buy it from your preferred internet vendor: that is a little more expensive but a lot less frustrating. David Thewlis gives the standout performance as Johnny, a curiously endearing n’er-do-well who can impress the ladies in spite of his terrible personal hygiene while philosophizing the knickers off the philosophers. Well, I don’t think Johnny is interested in philosophers without underpants, so perhaps I should rethink the above trope. While I am doing that, you could perhaps place Thewlis by recalling some of his other roles: Edward Douglas in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), Peter Aufschnaiter in Seven Years in Tibet (1997), Knox Harrington in The Big Lebowski (1998), and Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter films.
When I discovered that Mr. Thewlis had published his first novel, I ran – I did not walk – to secure a copy. I happened to be in Edmonton attending an event for the expanded University of Lethbridge Building there, and so I was able to go to the West Edmonton Mall: no frustration with the thin holdings of our local bookstore and no waiting on mail order. What I got was a novel that does so much right, even those things that much more seasoned authors can never seem to do.
The Late Hector Kipling is, in part, about death, but not actually the death of its title character – not his literal death, if I can give that much away. Kipling is a successful painter whose renown falls somewhere between that of his friends Lenny Snook, an installation artist nominated for the Turner Prize, and Kirk Church, a struggling visualist who commits to canvas images of kitchen cutlery. Thewlis suggests here that great art comes from suffering: the book’s inscription from Edvard Munch claims “illness, insanity, and death” as his muses. But Kipling, by middle age, has never really suffered; he has a wonderful support network, still anchored by his doting parents. His one real brush with tragedy, discovering the corpse of his neighbor, delivers him an enviable flat, a perfect girlfriend, and a subject for his painting: his God Bolton begins a successful series of “large head” portraits. But Kipling begins this book by weeping in front of a Munch at the Tate Modern, and you get the sense that Kipling really believes himself a fraud. He simply stops dealing effectively with life’s sundry complications, and this behavior – or lack of responsible behavior – invites tragedy. Before the end of the book, Kipling has more tragedy than anyone could handle, and Thewlis questions whether this makes him a more genuine artist. His monstrous conflation of art and life, the perfect performance sought by the surrealists, makes us question just what we expect of an artist – and what might be the furthest extension of the audience’s desires.
This is, in many ways, a serious book about art. But it is so funny, you could be forgiven for not noticing. I have never in my life laughed aloud so much when reading. Thewlis is pitch-perfect in describing the absurdity of real life: take, for example, the passage when Kipling’s aged mother, high on tranquilizers, “body surfs” a flight of stairs, stark naked. “An unprecedented spectacle, I dare say,” Kipling speculates, with perfect drollery. “But then what do I know? I left home twenty-five years ago.” Thewlis also writes sex well. Who do you know who can do that? The key seems to be that Thewlis does not take Kipling’s couplings too seriously. Whether the character is trying to conceal stains on his parent’s couch or speculating on the sadomasochistic tendencies of the American punk poet with whom he has an affair, Thewlis keeps it light. But the real skill here is how the author moves from light to dark and back again with jaw-dropping deftness. Comedy and tragedy coexist for Hector Kipling as they do in real life, and if the transition makes you feel uncomfortable, that might be the point.
