Apostrophe S

 If you’re wondering why I haven’t posted for ages then you haven’t been following my tumblog. Anyway, I’ve just broken a several-months-long spell of reader’s block. Not sure what it was. It probably started when I picked up “The Brothers Karamazov.” I wanted to read something hard. So I picked a doozie. As the page turning slowly decelerated over the course of a couple of months, I soon began to grow disillusioned. I’d told myself I wouldn’t go back to reading multiple books at a time. (I’d at one point had about a dozen books with dog-eared pages and could barely remember any of them.) But I also didn’t want to give up on the ol’ Brothers K. So fast-forward many moons and I hadn’t read much at all.

So I hid TBK under the bed and pulled out something a bit more colorful. “Filth” is the story of a man descending into disrepair of the soul and madness. It contains what must be the most vile and despicable antihero in all literature. The main character is a racist, misogynist, foul-mouthed cocaine addict, as well as a corrupt police officer with loose morals who’ll fuck anything that happens by and then berate them afterward. He betrays and sets up for disaster those he would feign friendship with, and then puts them down and says they deserve it. On top of it all, he abandons personal hygiene, has a nasty crotch rash, and carries a tapeworm around in his gut. But the tapeworm is more than just a parasite. It starts speaking to him, giving him instructions and even acting as his conscience when he does things particularly cruel.

“Filth” is the kind of book that when you reach the halfway point you realize that there’s no way this character can redeem himself to bring about a happy ending. Likewise, there’s no ending that could make the story feel more sordid than it already is.

I simultaneously was annoyed by and enjoyed the eccentric spelling and grammar meant to reproduce a heavy Scottish accent. At times I couldn’t even translate, and some cultural references went right over my sheltered American head.

In any case, this blue book with a $4.95 price tag on the front hopefully has restarted my regular reading schedule. I’ll try to get through some more quickly.