The Peculiar Life of A Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault: A Review and A Recommendation
The Peculiar Life of A Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault: A Review and A Recommendation
I wanted to hate this book.
That dull, laboured nicotine stain of a title hardly inspired me - and furthermore - I had already heard things about Denis Theriault.
I had heard that his work was “quirky”.
Quirky – adj – meaning “Having or characterized by peculiar or unexpected traits or aspects”.
Quirky – that first (and I do mean first, not last) vestige of the truly talentless.
The first stop for those who lack any sort of creative imagination.
The first refuge of the contrived.
Lilly Allen was “quirky”. Sandi Thom was “quirky”.
When Sia, a white Middle-Aged and not very attractive Australian woman, appropriates (or to speak in less euphemistic terms, steals) African-American music, namely Hip Hop, to sing middling, meaningless, commercially contrived tripe like Cheap Thrills, less skilfully than an African-American lady might do, and with less purpose, we are supposed to commend her for it because she wears a weird wig.
And that weird wig absolves her from any moral responsibility for her cynical and shameless plagiarism for monetary gain – because that weird wig makes her “quirky”, right?
Never mind the fact that what apparently makes Sia, and Nicki Minaj, and countless other clones, so “quirky”, and implicitly so “original” and “unique” is in fact exactly the same visual aesthetic in Pop Music used 40 years ago by a man born in Brixton, London, on 8 January 1947, who was given the birth name David Robert Jones.
When Dom Joly performed exactly the same oversized mobile phone prank, in exactly the same charmless way with all of the comic timing of a parsnip and no more character, in the warmly received Trigger Happy TV, although that joke was never really funny the first time around, and we had to endure it weekly for 3 whole years, we endured it to a trendy Indie Rock soundtrack, as his “character” walked off in slow motion.
So although Dom Joly did not have the comic genius of a Peter Sellars, or a Sacha Baron Cohen, he was allowed to persist – and he was forgiven for lacking the talent to make us belly laugh, and only being able to induce a drunken post Friday night out smile, because his show was, at least, “quirky”.
I have never had a great deal of time for quirky. I am far too quirky for that.
As I began to rocket my way through the pages of “The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman”, I did wince somewhat once the epistolary device emerged, and I certainly rolled my eyes when the well travelled territory of the Haiku became the engine room of the action.
Yet Theriault proves himself to have a Kafka-esque eye for surprise. As the protagonists own Haikus become more and more accomplished, so does the tone of the book – more of a novella than anything else – with Theriault’s imagination in full flow as he wields his considerable lyrical powers, and demonstrates considerable literary ambition.
The moral unease we feel at the creepy overtones of the start of the protagonist’s journey gives way to the simplistic, fable like quality of the plot, and the book’s denouement is executed with genuine skill.
Theriault is able to touch upon the profound without much intellectual grandstanding – and much like Yukio Mishima his style is as beautifully fluid, as it is economical.
Theriault is the real deal. Quirky or not.