Ambition Is Putting A Ladder Against The Sky...

"Stealing is very bad. Only really bad people take things that don't belong to you..." 

"Where do you get your ideas from?"

A question deemed formulaic and dreaded by most artists alike, as the answer is complicated, albeit a touch annoying and even difficult to answer. Divulge too much you come off pompous, say too little and you just might be hiding something. You just can't win.

Maurice Swift is someone who knows exactly where his ideas come from. They come to him easy.

Utilizing his charms and smoldering good looks, he ingratiates himself towards famous writers, not to learn the craft or be around like minds, but to steal from them. Maurice is a plagiarist, a story vampire if you will. He has taken the infamous quote --- "good artists copy, great artists steal" --- as a mantra for himself so he can reach his literary ambitions, for there is no other way for him to do so. See, Maurice lacks not only a soul, but writing talent. He wants to be a famous writer and win literary awards such as "The Prize", but he cannot come up with a original idea to save his life, and doesn't possess a flair for prose, thus he must feed off of others to replenish the fantastical image he so fashions for himself.

His climb begins in Berlin in the late 1980s, when while working as a waiter at the Savoy he captures the attentions of renowned novelist Erich Ackermann. Ackermann, lonely, aging, and fresh off of literary acclaim and a Prize win for his latest novel, becomes enraptured with Maurice and his desires to become a success, thus he allows him to become his assistant while he travels for his book tour. After some time Ackermann becomes consumed by Maurice, desiring to further an intimate relationship with him, but when he lets his guard down, Maurice takes advantage and uses his charms to coax Ackermann to divulge a secret that poses damaging consequences for the author. This secret enables Maurice to launch his career, leaving Ackermann's career and livelihood in a shambles.

Then it is onward, and upward the ladder to the next victim...




Broken up into three separate narratives, and interludes (including a wicked little war of words with famed writer Gore Vidal) A Ladder To The Sky follows Maurice through decades of deceit and destruction, as with each new trusting figure forms into a new victim ---- and another story for Maurice to climb another rung on the ladder with. This is my first time reading Irish author John Boyne, and the way he handles going from narrator to narrator with fluid punch is impressive. Each character is developed in such distinct ways, almost to where it doesn't feel like fiction, though it is.

What works is Boyne's sense of pacing, seen best when we're introduced to Edith, Maurice's wife in the second act. His unfolding of her character along with her race (more on that later) is just so realized, and unexpected, all while framing her narrative in the difficult detached second person narration, that in the end lends effective. Boyne's also able to embody Gore Vidal with aplomb, which is quite a bold literary move considering how much a giant of words the man was, but Vidal's razor blade tongue gets to slice anew under Boyne's pen.

Still, Boyne has the most compelling character with Maurice. He's vicious and apathetic and to see him escalate in malice, test the limits of his ambition, and encroach on his victims brews more disturbing as the story goes on, but Boyne's also crafted a compelling, and malevolent world for his monster to prowl around in. If you believed the world of the literati was low-key, then be prepared for Boyne disrupt the quiet and show how fringed in darkness it is, and how individuals within teeter-totter on tightropes between competition and envy, enterprise and fanaticism. Everybody is terrible, acts terrible (and Maurice and Edith's sister are competing for being the worst person ever), even the innocents are in grey, because they get caught up, and the lines blur. Is it the world they occupy that makes them this way, or is it just what a human does as a means of survival? Boyne allows you to decide.

There's a hint of meta here as the story itself is not wholly original itself. Obvious cues from Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ira Levin's A Kiss Before Dying, and in parts, the 1993 Will Smith film Six Degrees of Separation leap out, and Maurice Swift comes off as every lecherous social climbing sociopath that has roamed in fiction, and the real world alike. Nothing is 'new', nothing is 'surprising' within this, but that could be the course Boyne wants to take us through to further emphasize Maurice's mediocrity, and further the fact how a familiar character he truly is.

I truly don't think Boyne could've predicted that amid the release of this book that Maurice Swift would leap to life with the recent revelations concerning Woman In The Window author A.J. Finn, aka Dan Mallory. In a disturbing, but fascinating New Yorker expose, Mallory's breakout hotshot author veneer has been peeled away to reveal a habitual liar and plagiarist who has fabricated academic credentials, illnesses, and the deaths of family members, throwing this novel into an eerie, surreal reality.

It's why I feel Boyne has tapped expertly onto our current social climate with A Ladder To The Sky. How we're living in a world of hyper-competitive, self-absorbed amorality, with an even larger prevalence of sociopaths like Maurice Swift who are able to wield influence and glide up their own chosen ladders towards success, and do so on a micron of talent, but a lot of manipulative skill and just the right racial and gender pedigree.

For Dan Mallory it's evident that being white and male was enough for him to be taken by his word, and allowed him ample breathing room to navigate the publishing world, same goes for his literary counterpart, as Maurice is able to ruin careers, and get by unscathed for decades, and ---- most jarringly --- at one point, completely erase his Black wife in voice, and embody it without a second thought or inquiry from others. It's as Electric Literature's Ruoxi Chen says in an excellent assessment about Mallory: it's the oldest story in publishing, how men even while coasting on mediocrity are promoted faster, taken more seriously, and paid more over women, all while such women (especially women of color) remain on the slush pile, languishing. Most of the female characters in A Ladder To The Sky are also realistically used as props for Maurice's literary disposal. When Maurice sets up a literary magazine later on, he uses it as a story mill for his disposal, and most of the ideas and manuscripts he steals from are from other women. But of course, poor lone Edith is the only realized female who gets to have her say, but (and to not spoil anything further!), her say is still not on her terms, as Maurice has sure enough taken care of that.

I love a novel that explores beyond the surface and plays more than one role, and A Ladder To The Sky is ambitious in its dual acts. On one end, we have dark, and deliciously wicked thriller about a slithering sociopath, that creeps on tip-toe till out of nowhere its keeping their polished wingtip firm on your neck, not letting go and making you wonder just how long will he keep this up? The other is a searing, almost satirical look into a all true societal dysfunction of the naked hunger for success, it setting shop within the world of literature and being drum majored by quite a sickening son of a bitch whom you hate to become entranced by.

Whichever way you go, however you read, both ends will merge and take you to the wild, toxic edge, a place you know, a place you don't want to be, but can't help peeking through the fingers and meeting eyes with a charming and cunning reality.

////

from the margins

• Rating: ****
• 368 pages
• Published November 13th 2018 by Hogarth Press // First Published August 9th 2018

in the key of...

Sade - "Smooth Operator" - "His eyes are like angels, his heart is cold"



Obvious choice, but every time Maurice slunk into a scene, I couldn't help hearing Sade's smoky vocals lending out a word of warning in the background.

• LOL: "You've heard the wonderful news, I presume?"/ "No. Has Mr. Trump died?" - Such a nice dig at Individual Orange here. I love how a maniac is discussing another one in such a manner.

• Interview: Goodreads has a great 2018 interview with Boyne where he discusses more about how he conceived A Ladder To The Sky, and it's well worth the read to gain further insight to an author and their crafting of such a engaging tale.