Flesh, the Booker-prize-winning novel by the British-Hungarian author David Szalay, is many things. So is its central figure, the Hungarian István, whose rags-to-riches-and-back tale covers more ground than many of us can expect to experience in our own lives, from soldiery in Iraq to bouncing at nightclubs in London and finally hobnobbing with politicians over billion-pound property developments. The mere accumulation of believably rendered scenes, however, is not what makes this interesting as fiction. Instead, it is Flesh’s rendering itself that is exciting. Through a bare, pared-down style, which is especially visible in its shockingly direct dialogue, the novel is a brilliant example of saying without stating and showing without quite telling.
The work’s title sets out its thematic scope right from the get-go. István is a man who appears to be someone wholly devoid of interiority or reflection – all body, no mind. He spends much of the book in a kind of passive role – things happen to him. Those things, often as not, involve sex. Whether that’s his sexual initiation at the hands of an older woman or the affair with his boss’s wife that sets off his rise to the upper reaches of British polite society, interlocking bodies are almost always involved. Despite his taciturnity and passivity, István succeeds in life. At least to a point. This result raises questions about whether such things as interiority and reflection are really necessary and has allowed some commentators on the novel to turn it into a kind of guide to practical stoicism.
Such a view is wrongheaded. If the novel shows that a man can reach the top of the world without interiority or reflection, that fact reflects poorly upon that world. So much is possible, certainly, except what truly matters – mainly, in this case, love. The view also downplays those little, quietly articulated, developments within the novel, that show István changing even as the world does not. The growth of his imagination and empathy, for example, and his attempts to move from passivity into a certain kind of activity. That none of this is ultimately rewarded says nothing against him. Instead, after so much time spent meditating on flesh, we are left wondering how the world and people might change if we wanted to value mind also.
Plot
István comes from relative anonymity in small-town Hungary and ends up, briefly, at the top of British polite society. During his rise, two things stand out: the role of chance, and that of his own relative passivity. An older woman begins his introduction to sex as a teenager, less with his consent, than with his compliance. When the affair is discovered, István and the woman’s husband fight, with the young man accidentally killing the older in a brawl. After his release from a young offender’s institute, István loafs. An attempt at intimacy with his uncle’s stepdaughter leads to him being rebuffed, but it plants the idea of joining the army in him. After a tour in Iraq and therapy for PTSD, he becomes a bouncer in the UK, where one night he comes across a man being attacked by a mugger. István doesn’t rescue him so much as make it impossible for the mugging to continue by crying out. Nevertheless, it’s enough.
The man saved, to István’s good fortune, runs a bodyguard service. After training, István receives as his clients a very wealthy Scandinavian couple, the Nymans, who divide their time between London and the countryside. The much-younger wife, Helen, begins an affair with István, which comes into the open after her husband’s death from cancer. For a few years, they enjoy their life openly. But her son from her marriage, Thomas, is destined to inherit everything from his father upon reaching the age of twenty-five. Thus István’s stint at the top becomes time-limited. The novel sketches out the shape of its arc early enough, even if the exact shape, the clicking together of the pieces of the decline, retains its capacity to surprise.
Chance and Passivity
The role of chance is so important within the novel because of István’s essential passivity, or at best reactivity. The older woman begins their affair by unexpectedly asking if she can kiss him. As for the heroism that fends off the mugger late at night, it’s described like this:
“Help,” a voice says.
The voice sounds strangely normal, like someone just neutrally saying the word.
Maybe it’s for that reason that he does nothing for a second or two.
Then he starts to move towards it, past the weakly lit display windows of the bookshop.
“Hey!” he shouts.
Which seems to be enough.
At key moments like these, István’s actions have been prompted by external stimuli, and always with delays, as if he is a simple, slow, organism. His PTSD centres upon his failure to rescue a friend from a burning military vehicle in time – for too long, he simply watched the flames in shock, he thinks. Even his language is reactive: “Sure, thanks.” “Okay.” I remember making a mental note when I first saw a sentence of dialogue from István which required a second line in the book – it was so unexpected.
Yet in spite of this essential reactivity, István’s ascent is meteoric. As a bouncer, then later as a bodyguard, he is in roles where his passivity and silence become virtues. Even with the women who fall for him, such as Helen Nyman, it seems that his reticence is taken by them as a sign that he can be trusted for a clandestine affair. Later, once he moves into British polite society, his lack of personality means that he can easily “fit in.” His interests, such as they eventually are, appear to be expensive cars and watches. He does not rock the boat. He barely makes it bob, stepping in.
The World Attained
By all of this I read Flesh as having a clear moral implication. If so much of our world is achievable without much thinking or conscious action, what does that say about the value of our world?
István gets to his position without friends of any sort, without any extended dialogue. He is addicted to cigarettes, then later adds alcoholism, while Helen’s son Thomas eventually has develops a heroin addiction. The only changes for István between rags and riches is the quantity and brand of what he’s smoking. At one point, after Iraq, in one of the novel’s most memorable moments, we learn about the development of his habit:
When he went to Iraq he smoked ten to twenty cigarettes a day.
Now it’s forty.
There is something gleeful about the narration here, a kind of revelling in self-destruction. It’s shocking to me because normally in our stories we expect our characters to be moderately rational, to want what’s best for them, to grow in positive directions. Instead, here, Szalay has István only get worse. And we could not expect for things to be otherwise, or hope for that, because István lacks the kind of interiority that might make such a thing possible. Yet in spite of that he still “grows” socially and financially, time and again.
The sex of the novel ranges from exploitative to hateful, and only rarely does it seem loving or a meeting of two minds and bodies in mutual recognition and respect. But that it happens over and over, especially within the contexts of infidelity, also becomes an argument of sorts. The world, as it comes to István at least, is full of unhappy people, trapped in unhappy situations. He can give them sex, but it is hard to say if he can achieve anything more. The material success of the Nymans has clearly not saved them, in any serious way, from the unhappiness that seems to afflict most of the characters of Flesh. The novel’s willingness to indicate a change in material conditions, especially through brand names for cars, watches, and cigarettes, is contrasted with this lack of any kind of change to the people consuming them – still sad, whether they know it or not.
We can also think about the dialogue again in connection with this world-critical angle. Taking a page at random, here’s a snatch of dialogue between Helen Nyman and her sister-in-law Mathilde, while Helen’s husband is in the hospital for cancer treatment:
“And how are you?” Mathilde asks her. “Are you okay?”
“Yes I’m okay.”
“You need to look after yourself.”
“I know.”
“You mustn’t let yourself go.”
“I know,” Helen says.
This dialogue is above all really strange. It is the right words, perhaps even the real words, but on the page it’s startling, as is all of the dialogue of Flesh. There is a distinct unliterariness to it – instead of flowing, the end of each line is like a cliff edge we must carefully lower ourselves down on to reach the beginning of the next. That awkwardness is the point, of course. Here are two people not really communicating to one another. They are, like the many-jobbed István, playing roles. They are also, deliberately, consciously, not connecting. The clipped speech makes it seem that they are all acutely, painfully conscious of the possibility of being hurt and choosing to give the slightest possible opening. Even if István’s own speech lacks this sense of self-protection, it certainly contains its sibling – the self-retention. “Okay” is one of the hardest replies to find an answer for, after all.
This dialogue relates the other topics, the sex and the material aspects of the world, by being another reminder of this world’s shallowness. Certainly these people could say more. They have, as the novel eventually reveals, more inside them. But the world as it comes to them, by and large, does not bring these things out. A bad world makes for bad dialogue, just as it makes for bad sex. Everyone here is trapped, without even the words to escape their cages.
The World Missing
f Flesh were merely a parabola of a man’s life, without growth or change, with merely an implied judgement on the world, it would probably still be reasonably good. However, what elevates the novel is the way that it also offers an answer, or at least a hint, of what is missing, and what it looks like. These missing things are threefold – love, imagination, and goodness.
Love is the first. Flesh is a book that is all about sex, but love is quite clearly absent, most of the time. This is further emphasised by the way that the majority of István’s sexual encounters, indeed his sexual relationships, are infidelities by the second person against their husbands. But from the beginning, with his relationship with the older woman, István is at least aware of love and its importance. He tells her he loves her and she tells him he does not know what that means. He protests that he does, but there is no evidence that this is the case. This show of emotion disturbs the woman and precipitates the end of their affair shortly thereafter.
Love does come back onto the page until István’s relationship with Helen, half way through the book. This time it is she who confesses her love to him. He does not know how to react, and she even forbids him a response. But she brings the idea of love back into the book, so that when István has a chance to show his affection, and what she means to him, following an accident, he does it. Even if that showing is still just a restrained, pained, retreat into alcoholism, it is a sign of real emotion, however poorly managed. If the novel begins with a statement without emotion, here there is emotion without its statement.
Imagination is important in the novel as something missing from the main world of the work. In contrast to the materiality of things – the brands, and so on, which suggest a kind of objectifying vision on the part of the characters – imagination, in the form of empathy, provides a counterpoint: a vision of a better way of thinking about other people. After István’s time in Iraq, carrying the weight of his friend’s death in combat, he keeps it to himself except when encouraged to share by therapy. He believes others could not understand. He himself cannot understand art, that legendary transferal medium for emotions, as his trip with Helen to a museum shows. And when the affair between her and him is discovered by Thomas, his response to her suggestion that he might tell his father is simply to say “I can’t imagine it.” At first glance István wholly lacks imagination, the ability to place himself in others’ shoes.
Again, however, the matter is only a question of seeming. In the background there is therapy, and hopefully independent personal growth. By the time István has a son of his own and has to confront the realities of the boy’s growing sexual maturity, he is able to reflect, looking back into himself at that age, to compare and contrast. It has taken a book, but this is still small progress. We can also see this progress formally. Not merely in the shockingly long paragraph (average length for any other book) of reflection after István discovers a well-thumbed porn mag, but more concretely in the way that the book begins by sticking closely to István, but then expands its reach to give glimpses into the lives of other characters too, such as Helen and Thomas. I would say this is a controversial decision on Szalay’s part in terms of focus, but insofar as it fits into a framework of the novel showing a growing awareness of other people, it makes sense.
Finally, the last thing obviously missing from the main world of the work is goodness, or positive action. Towards the book’s end, István is faced with that strangest of things to a man whose rise has been given mainly by chance – a choice. It is quite a plain one, between the full and permanent attainment of the earthly riches he has enjoyed for much of the book at the cost of a bad action, or rather continued inaction, versus a moral and “active” action which puts that attainment at risk. In this situation, István makes the latter decision. In terms of these two worlds, it means that he loses this great moneyed world and gains a smaller world, one of reflection and self-worth. He chooses, we might say, soul over mere flesh at last.
Conclusion
What is Flesh, in the end? A lot of things. I read it as showing our world as it is – atomised (István has no friends), materially obsessed, helpless – and showing another world, shining through the mist. Ultimately it is no mere dismissal of life. Its title might seem to set off a negative view of the body, but “Flesh” is not body. Rather, it is something less. It is only in combination with mind, and reflection, and thought, that flesh can be elevated into harmony, can become truly “body”.
What is interesting here is the tentativeness of the work’s conclusions on this front, which has allowed some critics to see it as specifically about masculinity. (Thomas calls István an example of “primitive masculinity”, which supports this). István’s progress, his discoveries, are limited: from nearly no self-consciousness or emotional expression to just a little. If we come to the book to learn, to grow ourselves, we probably could not – we are probably already far more emotionally mature than our hero. But all growth is valuable, is a story, and for the relative rarity of this kind of story, Flesh becomes all the more worth reading.