Bamboo [Hardcover]

William Boyd - Bamboo

William Boyd is well known for his fiction, but he has also been a prolific and perspicacious writer of non fiction in the form of book reviews, essays and think pieces. The topics covered have been varied, ranging from critiques of well known artists, novelists and filmmakers to more esoteric pieces on topics that ignite a particular passion in him.

Bamboo, first published in 2005, is a formidable collection of these musings. It is divided into seven themes - life, literature, art, Africa (where he was born and where he lived with his parents before being sent to boarding school in Scotland at the age of nine), Film, TV, and People and Places.

What is immediately obvious is the depth and breadth of Boyd's knowledge on the arts. Having planned to become an artist until his doctor father persuaded him to pursue a more reliable career, his insider's understanding of the work of twentieth century art is perhaps not surprising, and his vast knowledge of literature both old and new is impressive but to be expected from an award winning novelist and ex Oxford tutor, but he also exhibits an informed familiarity with photography, film and politics at home and abroad.

The book starts with a few essays on some aspects of his childhood, both in Africa and at boarding school. It is easy to become entraced by his vivid descriptions, especially because he exhibits a veracity that many writers shun when musing on their past - for instance, he is not afraid to admit that although he was popular and successful at school, he, like most other boys, did not befriend loners or try and reduce their misery at the hands of the bullies.

The essays on places such as New York and London are, by virtue of the necessity of a tight word count, doomed to being mere scratches on the surface of expansive subjects, but the way Boyd personalises them - for instance, incorporating his impressions of New York into a piece about his daily walk there - immerses the reader until they too are striding along Madison, glancing at the well-dressed yuppies as they march between designer shops, or meandering down Lexington, hypnotised by the bustle of life around delis and laundrettes.

In some pieces, Boyd adopts an A to Z approach in order to cover many disparate elements of a sprawling subject, writing a few paragraphs about one topic relevant to that essay beginning with each letter of the alphabet. This sometimes works better than other times - by committing himself to devoting roughly as much space to each letter and only using each once, an uneasy weight is placed on the piece so that where he might have expounded further on other apt topics beginning with some already used letters, he only tackles one, and the forced use of letters like X and Z is not as enlightening as more Boydisms on other areas might have been.

Boyd's articles on other writers were the part of the book I found most fascinating. He merges discussion of the writer with background information about their personality, life events, and so on, so that each work discussed becomes framed in the explanatory set in which it was conceived. This brings a whole new facet to the writer in question and their work slots into place in the jigsaw of their lives to create the whole picture. The chapters on Evelyn Waugh are particularly enlightening in this respect, as Boyd explains that the cold, cruel, unfaithful Brenda Last in A Handful of Dust, published in 1934, was almost certainly based partly on his first wife who had been unfaithful while he was away researching travel book. The bitterness and sourness of A Handful of Dust make more sense when considering how badly Waugh took the trauma of his divorce.

There is a moving and harrowing section on Boyd's Nigerian friend Ken Saro-Wiwa, a multi-talented man who achieved success as a film maker, novelist and businessman but was ultimately murdered by the brutal despotic regime.

The section on art is informative and intelligent, but the fact that the book has no plates is a drawback in any discussion of art. Still, for anyone unfamiliar with the stunning work of George Grosz, Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, the German painters who depicted harsh, nihilistic, black images of life in Weimar Germany, the chapter on Grosz certainly whets the appetite.

I borrowed this book from the library but it is definitely one to buy to dip into time and time again. In my view, it places Boyd firmly in the ranks of authors who can beguile consistently in myriad forms.

Boyd's "Bamboo" - an absolute Aladdin's Cave of good things, any of which it would be invidious to spotlight. Open at random, dip and delve, or read from cover to cover: one is guaranteed entertainment, information, wit and wisdom. The catalogue of personalities and subjects seems endless, and - cast within the context of our own recent times - provides a commentary almost encyclopaedic, often idiosyncratic, always informed and literate.

Such a collection results in a bulky book of some 650 pages, and herein lies my only criticism: it is one of the most 'uncomfortable' books I have ever handled - not only bulky, heavy, but opens stiffly. No, definitely not a bedtime book, but one for your most comfortable armchair. That said, the physicalities are worth struggling with for the store of literary delights within.

William Boyd gives us a fairly conventional set of opinions in a set of essays and reviews on a range of literary and cultural figures, including Evelyn Waugh and Pablo Picasso. The book is always interesting, though what I most enjoy about William Boyd is not his opinions, it is the sharp narrative drive of his novels, which obviously has no place in this non-fictional collection. I'd say, read the novels first, but this is amusing enough to pass a few hours.