Customer Reviews

Water Music

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TC Boyle challenges the reader to "hold on" through the chapters as you race along the rivers and lives of this story. I was enchanted, humored. frightened, anxious and enriched with this experience. Not only did I burn out quite a few flashlight batteries reading late into the night trying not to disturb my husband, but realized I needed to find a more advanced dictionary/thesaurus to keep up with Mr. Boyle's remarkable command of vocabulary. Great fun!

Revolving around the expeditions of Mungo Park, T. Coraghessan Boyle's novel Water Music is not easy to categorize; it is a travel account, picaresque and novel of manners rolled into one.

In 1795 the Scotsman Mungo Park (1771-1806) went to Africa to explore the Niger, a river no European had ever seen. Upon arriving in present-day Gambia, he went 200 miles up the Gambia River to the trading station at Pisania and then traveled east into unexplored territory. In 1796 he reached the Niger River at the town of Segu and traveled 80 miles downstream before his supplies were exhausted and he had to turn back. He returned to Africa in 1805, intending to explore the Niger from Segu to its mouth. His expedition was attacked at Bussa, and Park was drowned. Dedicating the book to the (fictive) Raconteurs' Club, master storyteller T.C. Boyle has concocted an ingenious narrative. At first he spins numerous strands, weaving them into an intricate exotic literary tapestry, as the tale progresses. In fact, the 104 chapters can be read as short stories in their own right. Their titles are sometimes alluding to literary masterpieces by such figures as Ivan Turgeniev, Joseph Conrad and Langston Hughes.

Boyle's story starts in the year 1795. Mungo Park is held hostage by Ali Ibn Fatoudi, the Emir of Ludamar, one of the inland Muslim principalities in what is now the Sahel. A protégé Joseph Banks, erstwhile companion of Captain Cook on his circumnavigation of the globe and now President of the Royal Society and Director of the African Association for Promoting Exploration, Park, a former surgeon on an East India merchantman, has been selected to lead the first expedition in search of the river Niger.

Mungo's guide and interpreter is the intriguing Johnson a.k.a. Katunga Oyo. The early biography of this Madingo is reminiscent of the adventures of a character from Maryse Conde. Kidnapped and sold into slavery Katunga Oyo is shipped to a plantation in England's new world colony of South Carolina. After a visit to his overseas possessions the landowner takes him to London. Here Johnson, as he is now called, learns to read and write, and develops a passion for literature, becoming a "true-blue African homme des lettres". After killing a man in a duel, Johnson ends up back in Africa. Here he "melted into the black bank of the jungle". Johnson's idiom is full of - often humorous - anachronisms. He is calling the local cuisine "soul food" and his old plantation songs "the blues". He is capable of self-mockery: "Don't look at me, brother. I'm an animist." Sometimes he sounds like a 18th century Muddy Waters. Oscillating between his African heritage and newly acquired European culture, he manages to graft the latter upon his African roots. Johnson becomes a shaman of sorts: At the behest of his former master, who happens to be a member of Sir Joseph's Association, Johnson agrees to join Mungo Park's 1795 expedition. His price: the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Ned Rise, a pauper from the London underworld, son of an alcoholic hag, `not Twist, not Copperfield, not Fagin himself had a childhood to compare to Ned Rise's'. Through a twist of fate, this impresario of live sex shows avant la lettre, corpse digger and convicted murderer ends up at Fort Goree, just off the Coast of Senegal. Here, at this `gateway to the Niger and bastion of rot' he is drafted into the Royal African Corps and selected to accompany Park on his fateful second expedition into the African interior. Because of his sublime survival instinct he is very able to tune in with his environment Consequently, Ned Rise appears to be better suited to establish a rapport with the natives than Africa-veteran Park.

Water Music is more than a travel account. Although it is clear that Boyle has researched his subject meticulously, he is not interested in a mere historically correct chronicle of events as has explained in his introduction.

But Boyle does address the issue of the objective of travel-writing seriously. In this respect, it is interesting to see how Mungo Park's own view on his mission evolves in the course of his first journey; the cool observer of the flora and fauna in Sumatra is giving way to the romantic. Held at the court of Ibn Fatoudi Park resolves to make his findings known to the world.ý

After an audience with Mansong, ruler of Bambarra, there is a amazing twist. Reading a page from Park's notebook, Johnson notices that the explorer's recording of the meeting is not only inaccurate, but embellishing it beyond recognition. Johnson reproaches Park for this.

It seems as if the tables have turned; the African - `the object of study' - demanding accuracy, wanting it `guts and all'. But who is speaking here, and what is his motivation? Is it the intellectual Johnson defending the great cause of science? Or is it the up-rooted Mandingo Katunga Oyo, who wants Africa depicted in all its bizarre horror, motivated by self-hate? Why, on the other hand, does the scholar-explorer Mungo Park want to embellish and cover up? Does he intend to create an image of the `noble savage'? (After all, this is the age of Jean-Jeacques Rousseau). It leaves the reader with questions: how are travel accounts to be read and interpreted? Can a travel-writer's intentions be discerned? And can his account be trusted?

The author addresses here an important issue because it goes to the core of travel-writing. Is it possible at all to represent the reality of other cultures? It also raises questions concerning the intertwining of fact and fiction; the imaging of cultures. Water Music is multi-layered; although not an explicit critique of imperialism and although the author does not allow himself to be restrained by ideological shackles, there are implied, ironic observations.

Neither does Boyle ignore the culture clash that is occurring within Africa itself between the Muslims, often North-Africans of Arab descent, and the indigenous population of western and equatorial Africa, which is largely animist. The latter are but despicable infidels to the `Moors', who, usually having the political upper hand, prosecute them relentlessly, retaining or selling them as slaves. It is, incidentally, this conflict which forms a central theme in Condé's earlier mentioned novel Segou. It would be interesting to discover whether Condé has read, and was influenced by, Water Music.

But Boyle's main preoccupation is with Mungo Park, the man. In an interview he has explained that, when ýýdoing research for his thesis on 19th century English literature, he came upon Mungo Park in a book by Pre-Rafaelite poet John Ruskin (1819-1900). Further investigation learned that Ruskin's terrific hero appeared to be rather common. What fascinated Boyle was how this seemingly ordinary man came to chase a dream. To abandoned his family and embark on a crazy adventure only to die miserably in the jungle. During the second expedition, He lets Ned Rise also muse upon Mungo Park's insane, relentless push into the interior.

Like all good travel-writing Water Music is about two journeys: into the interior of Africa and into the interior of the self, the true heart of darkness.

Boyle, one of my favorite authors, is a black-humored satirist. His books are usually based on historical events and people, but that's where the reality usually ends. Water Music is ostensibly about the "discovery" of the Niger River by a Scotsman named Mungo Park in the late 1700s. In actuality, the book follows the parallel lives of the fictional "Ned Rise", a Dickensian sort of sleazebag and smalltime thief, and Mungo Park, a renaissance man of sorts whose travels and yearnings take him back and forth from Africa to Europe more regularly than his family wishes. The book, arranged in blocks of flashbacks and essays rather than formal chapters, is sprinkled with all of the other quirky historical events that occurred at the time of this story. Boyle, whose short fictions I have also enjoyed in The New Yorker, tells a story that reaches all of the senses, and his books are a mess of smells, tastes, sights, and sounds, not to mention an open door on the raw sexual and animal side of humankind. Like Roahl Dahl (author of such children's stories as Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and James and the Giant Peach), Boyle's protagonists always seem to end up where and how they should, the bastard always seems to get what he deserves... which is rich and satisfying for as emotional a reader as I am. i always have 3-4 copies on my shelves to give out to friends who haven't read it.

I started reading this book without knowing anything about it. "An adventure novel", I thougt, not very enthusiastic. But, it turned out to be the best piece of literature ever come across my hands. It is incredibly funny, sarcastic and sad. And, the descriptions are so brilliant, the metaphores so good, that I could almost hear, smell and feel Africa. I love humor, when you have to go a little bit deeper and find it in between the lines. I think this is the book that made me laugh the most and made me want to read more and more and more.

When I'd finished reading Water Music I turned the book over and read it again. It is the only book I have ever read twice without a break in between. The narrative is like nectar - to be swished around the tastebuds and savoured page by delectable page.

I've read all the novels he's written. I fell in love with this one right away, and ended up re-reading it at least three times that I remember. It's just a pleasure to read. It is a kind of very sophisticated literary candy; I think that World's End is probably a better overall book but Water Music is just fun.

That said, a warning: anything after World's End is bound to be a disappointment after these two gems. He's mastered a cynical tone that just doesn't sound real. I found the other books tough to read b/c I wasn't "living" the story, but rather found myself outside looking in.

Why have I read all the novels? I keep hoping that something will approach the quality of the first two. Riven ROck comes the closest (though still far away) IMO, though this could use a heavy-handed editor.

I didn't want it to end because it was so much fun to read. Boyle's descriptions are so good that you don't have to "work" to be lost in the story and visualize every character and place. It was a great escape. Better than the movies!

While I've enjoyed all of the Boyle novels I've read, this one is a real gem. Fans of T.C. Boyle know he loves to juxtapose the clash of cultures between characters from radically different backgrounds in most of his work, but nowhere does he do it better than in this work. This is how Dickens would have written had he been into psychodelic mushrooms. You'll have to put this book down several times just to bring your laughing under control. The dialog with the drunk who brags about hitting the pub owner on the pillory with six rotten turnips and a dead cat is worth the read alone and put me right on the floor in hysterics.

I found this book by chance in a bookshop in Norway in 1983 - and once I'd started reading it, I was hooked. Whenever I've travelled abroad to stay away from home for a while, I've packed my "Water Music", just because I've felt the need to have it with me, if I should ever need something good to read suddenly. As it turns out, I never did read it again, until last week. I had to go into the hospital for some horrible surgery, and had to spend a week in bed - and all I packed with me when I left home was "Water Music". And what a week it turned out to be. All my pain was forgotten, and I drifted off into the darkest interiors of Africa (as well as the darkest interiors of London). I still absolutely love this book - EVERYONE should read it!!! If there is one book that should be in everyone's bookshelf it is this one! Thank you T.C.!

Water Music by TC Boyle is about the songs of life. There are several melodious ways to get through life; rise above your less than ideal beginnings, navigate unknown territory, or spend your whole life waiting. Boyle brilliantly succeeds in portraying these lifestyles with his main characters and does it in a way that is darkly humorous and never dull. The reader will snigger their way through this uniquely creative tale.Outstanding!