Brian

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On paper it sounds like an exaggeration but The Arts really do have a transformative effect on people. Jeremy Cooper’s novel Brian goes into this, the medium, in this case, is cinema. At Talacre one weekend a woman had walked over to Brian’s bench and introduced herself as Dorothy, Camden Council’s manager of the playground. She had noticed the gentle way he had been playing with the children on and off all summer and, being short of staff at weekends, she wondered if he might agree to keep volunteer-watch over the facility for a fixed couple of hours on Sunday mornings. The thought of community participation, of acceptance within a worthwhile group of local people delighted Brian and when, as it always seemed to, everything fell apart he felt especially hurt. Two mothers had complained about his unqualified status and, with regret, Dorothy asked him not to come again. For his own sake she suggested it might be safest if he did not visit the gardens at all for the time being, as his accusers were a vindictive pair, Dorothy warned.

Brian by Jeremy Cooper — Books on the Hill Brian by Jeremy Cooper — Books on the Hill

Jeremy Cooper’s work is consistently haunting and layered, built on a refreshing trust in the reader to delve deeper behind the quiet insinuations of his prose. His work resists every modern accelerant, creating a patient and precise tonic. He is easily one of the most thoughtful British fiction writers working today.’ There is an oddly detached tone to the novel which is narrated in the third person, almost like character notes for someone playing Brian in a movie, or the interview notes of a psychologist (although the only time Brian does seek help his GP tells him the NHS no longer funds such things):

Brian

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Brian is a middle-aged man, working in a clerical job at Camden Council, with no real friends or, until he, after exercising his characteristic caution and detailed preparation for trying anything new, he enters into the world of classical world movie, joining an informal crowd of film buffs that watch showings every day at the BFI at the Southbank. Cooper has maximised the potential of this literary convention to achieve a work of great depth and quiet power. Over three decades, a mother and her artist daughter communicate only by letters, excavating their relationship as it evolves with melancholic, astute precision. At times spellbinding and mesmerising, the work also proves provocative and inspirational. As much a love letter to the lost art of letter-writing as it is a thirty year-long dialogue of familial love, Cooper has produced an understated book that nonetheless resonates powerfully. This book is deeply sensitive to the ebb and flow of relationships over time and the way love is disguised, expressed and experienced, and it achieves that elusive dream of all authors and finds new meaning in the recording of life.’ Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? After having published his luminous Ash Before Oak, Jeremy Cooper now brings us Brian, equally a work of mysterious interiority and poetry. It confirms that however solitary life might be, art enriches both our imaginations and our realities. This is a very tender book.’

Brian by Jeremy Cooper The quiet joy of a deep interest: Brian by Jeremy Cooper

But this book just didn't work for me. It felt more like reading a never ending cinema programme than a novel. But there's no explanation about any of the films, just the briefest of nods towards them. So even though I'd seen dozens of the films in the book and could often decipher what the author was alluding to, even that didn't really help. God forbid you've not got an encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema. A study in how writing can give lives meaning, and in how it can fail to be enough to keep one afloat, this is a rare, delicate book, teeming with the stuff of real life.’ This is the 60th of the blue-covered fiction titles from Fitzcarraldo Editions, all of which I've read and reviewed, but it sadly confirmed my hypothesis: their taste and mine in Anglophone male writers simply doesn't overlap.When we first meet Brian, he is about 30 years old, single, living in a small apartment, and already set in his ways. He loves films, however, and one night he decides to ride the local tram to the British Film Institute (BFI), which is showing a film he has long wanted to see. From enjoying that initial experience, Brian soon finds himself going to the BFI twice a week, and after six months or so, he decides to buy a membership in the BFI, to watch films more often. As his attendance increases, he notices a group of men—the same men every time—standing in the foyer discussing the film shown. Being Brian, he is too shy to approach the group, but loving films, he is curious about their conversation. He eventual allows himself to come within earshot of them and discovers a few enticing details: None are called by name, all have interesting things to say, and no one is trying to score points at the expensive of the others. The combined anonymity, camaraderie, and enthusiasm for film encourage Brian to approach the group and comment on a film. His comment is noted by the group and appreciated, and he soon finds himself joining in every night. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. In a novel based around a film buff, actual films naturally play a part in structuring the narrative. Like novels, films mean different things to different people, provoke contrasting responses. My wish was to describe the many movies mentioned in Brian in a form which reflected the emotions of my central character, whilst also communicating accurately something of the films’ original essence, and at the same time not undermining cinemagoers’ individual memories of the work. To achieve this I needed my text to have a certain openness and freedom from rigidity. Although the chronology is accurate and all the films titled and attributed correctly, the narrative style allows for focus often on lesser-known aspects and for the insertion of mild inventions. Told entirely from close to the closed point of view of Brian, the isolated buff, the book’s views on life in general and film in particular are his. The merging in Brian of fact and fiction is designed not to confuse readers but to liberate them. The book is at its strongest in portraying the comeradeship, if not really relationship, Brian enjoys with his fellow buffs, many of them socially unconventional, and indeed Brian looks down on some of them in the same way that Beavis has contempt for Butthead.

Brian by Jeremy Cooper | Fitzcarraldo Editions Brian by Jeremy Cooper | Fitzcarraldo Editions

This type of book can work on many levels: on one it’s a look at how film and the film buff have evolved: from attending cinemas to streaming, plus the availability of global culture became more accessible by the 2010’s and so a wider variety of films were being screened with the technology to clean them up as well. Brian tends to reticence and caution in personal and social interaction, an inborn temperament only exacerbated by his parents’ bullying and debasement, intended to toughen him up during his childhood in Northern Ireland. Free of their grip—his mother’s death when he is 16 and his estrangement from his father and older brother—he moves to England, becoming a file clerk for Kentish Town, a position he holds for the entirety of his professional career. Ever shy and awkward, always fearing calamity and the inadvertent commitment of a faux pas, Brian keeps to himself, talking to co-workers only under duress. Avoiding improvisation and spur-of-the-moment decisions, Brian is keen on routines well-defined and predictable. Brian aims to be seen as “true” in two divergent ways, in the convincing depiction of an obsessive central character and in acceptable portrayal of actual films and other public events. The novel assumes overlapping areas of unity between fact and fiction, for even in the driest documentary re-telling of an historical episode choices are made—in the language of description, in what to leave out, in presentational design, and as to which external experts to trust on disputed issues. There is inevitably an element of fiction in all factual writing, because the taste and judgement of an individual has informed its composition. In reverse, almost all fiction has a factual core, colored by the life of its writer, by the people they have come across, and by the underlying emotional tenor of the author’s interests. Whether by intention or not, a novel in part documents its writer, at times with the deliberate contradiction of openness versus restraint and verbal shimmer against solid realism. What makes Jeremy Cooper’s seventh novel appealing and convincing is the author’s serene prose and tender, understated empathy…This is an affectionate, thoughtful portrait of a gentle soul.’This morning I woke up to terror such as I have never experienced before: I was entirely stripped of feeling. I was completely empty, without pain, without pleasure, without longing, without love, without warmth and friendship, without anger, without hate. Nothing, nothing was there anymore, leaving me like a suit of armour with no knight inside. With an effort he managed to clear his head of unwanted family memories and continued on into Kentish Town Road. Walking slowly home, Brian thought of his own brother, Peter, nine years his senior, with whom he was unable to remember ever laughing. They barely knew each other, had never lived in the same house. Brian stopped suddenly in the street, muttering to himself, and stamped on the pavement several times one foot after the other, furious that playing with those two nice boys had awakened images of Peter and his father and their treatment of his mother.