Damon Galgut – In A Strange Room

Damon Galgut is one of those writers whose books are guaranteed never to disappoint me. His last novel, The Imposter, was so gripping and masterfully written that I was incensed it wasn’t longlisted for The Man Booker that year. I still can’t understand it – it made half of those that did make it look leaden and wooden by comparsion. A previous novel of his, The Good Doctor, was shortlisted for the Man Booker some years previously, and it was that book that first brought Galgut to my attention.

In a Strange Room, published on 20th April 2010, takes a completely different path from its predecessor. The Imposter was full of intrigue and suspense; shady characters vied for attention and small omissions and untruths led to webs of deceit. In A Strange Room is more introspective. As with fellow South African J.M Coetzee’s last novel, Summertime, Galgut uses himself as the protagonist of the novel, though the reader is never sure how much of the story is based on fact and how much pure fabrication.

The novel is divided into three linked novellas. They tell of the journeys taken by a man – a writer named Damon Galgut – and the uneasy relationships – not necessarily sexual ones – struck up on the way. As with Summertime, the author examines why these relationships fail – is it due to his own shortcomings? – and there is much reflection and soul-searching. The tales are also adroit at showing the power play in even the most casual friendships and the resentment that can build up as a result.

A striking stylistic stroke is the constant movement between the first person and the third person. It is as if the narrator – whether it truly is Galgut or whether it’s a fictional recreation of him – is attempting to look at events with complete objectivity, so he sets off using the third person, but this distance between the he of the past and the current narrator is often lopped off when emotion drives him back into the person he was, re-living the events viscerally. This device is a clever one and was used to similar effect in A.L. Kennedy’s powerful Day, though there the remove was caused mainly by the trauma of war causing numbness and depersonalization in the ex RAF bomber.

The other noticeable feature of the prose here is that it comes in short, stacatto bursts clumped in paragraphs and is more sparse than the Galgut of The Imposter. But the style suits the subject matter. Clear, precise, unembellished language is perfect here because, despite all three sections encompassing travels, the focus isn’t so much the cultures and landscapes experienced but the taut, claustrophobic relationships built up and broken down on the way.

In the first section, the novel’s character Galgut strikes up an acquaintanceship with a fellow traveller in Greece. They spend a few days sight-seeing and, some years later, fall into taking a hiking trip together. The relationship sours. The power that one individual has and wields over another is acutely conveyed as is the magnification of emotions that occurs when people are thrust into each other’s company 24/7. Both this story and the one that follows also throw up astute observations about the nature of travelling – is it to search for something missing in one’s life? For love or meaning? And Galgut also captures the unreality of outside events while in motion: ‘He watches and watches, but what he sees isn’t real to him. Too much travelling and placelessness have put him outside everything, so that history happens elsewhere, it has nothing to do with him.’

For all the spareness of the prose, Galgut’s observations are still sharp as broken glass. The selfish companion in the first novella is oblivious to the history of the people whose land he traverses:

‘He sits studying that map of Lesotho for hours, he has traced out in it a series of possible routes in red pen. I look at these thin lines with fear, they are like veins going through some strange internal organ, it feels at times that for Reiner this idea is only a concept, some abstract idea that can be subjugated to the will.’

Galgut evokes unease so well and sets the stage so adeptly for something sinister to come that the ending of the first novella is unexpectedly benign, but then this illustrates how the wild fury which takes over at times and could lead to acts of murderous rage often dissipates when circumstances change.

In the second section, the same man, Damon Galgut, is wandering aimlessly on another trip. The author describes the urge to travel thus:

‘What is he looking for. He himself doesn’t know…His life is unweighted and centreless, so that he feels he could blow away at any time.’

The lack of question mark after the first sentence in that quote is no mistake, it conveys the lack of conviction or of a discrete goal. The character isn’t even sure himself if he’s looking for something elusive and evasive. There is also a certain listlessness; an apathy bordering on depression:

‘In his clearest moments he thinks he has lost the ability to love, people or places or things,most of all the person and place and thing that he is. Without love nothing has value, nothing can be made to matter very much.’

The character is so detached from himself that he often views himself from above, observing his actions with a dispassionate eye. Yet when he meets three fellow travellers with whom he clicks, his life is re-fuelled with motivation. The newly driven Galgut is a different man, he feels passion, has the urge to accompany his new friends, and is capable of viewing the outside world with renewed vigour: ‘Cicadas are shrieking on some impossible frequency, like a gang of mad dentists drilling in the tree-tops. The metal roof is humming in the heat.’

Galgut’s thoughts on travellers include contemplation of the beatific state many Western visitors to the third world reach:

‘In this place each of them is at the centre of the universe, and at the same time is nowhere, surely this is what it means to be spiritually fulfilled, they are having a religious experience.’

In this respect this section has echoes of the second novella in Geoff Dyer’s last novel, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanassi. Galgut and Dyer share a perceptive eye for the unequal relationship between Western visitors and their hosts, the potential exploitation on both sides.

However, this is no tourist guide. The spotlight is always on the troubled fictional Galgut; the soaring of his spirits when he feels a connection has been made and the bitter disappointment and chasms of despair when opportunities are lost. And the author Galgut is skilful at projecting these complex emotions, evoking the discontent of his fictional self with a few choice lines or an aptly chosen simile: stilted greetings at a much-anticipated reunion are ‘tinny and false, like some kind of bright paper wrapped around the meaning of the moment.’ And, just as in The Imposter, the impossible weeds which re-grew the same way as quickly as they were tugged out presented a metaphor for the way South Africa continued to show corruption and exploitation despite regime change, here too a garden provides a metaphor, though this time the nurturing, symbiotic relationship between gardener and plants represents hope.

The third section is a nightmare account of another journey undertaken by the same Galgut character. This time, he takes along a female friend who has suffered psychiatric problems; both hope the trip will do her good. Does it? You’ll just have to read this book to find out.

Galgut’s new direction is intriguing. The influence of Coetzee’s fictional autobiographical trilogy is clear, but Galgut’s originality is all his own. The reader is drawn into the narrator’s experiences and fascinated by where the line between fact and fiction has been drawn. More than this, though, Galgut questions the nature of self and happiness and of what we look for in others, and examines the constant searching that many are driven to via travel. He leaves you wanting more, truly a sign of the best writers.