Declan Tan's M Against M: A Book Review

I think it goes without saying that as the Big 5 publishers were motivated more and more by profit that which qualifies as literature would more likely come out from small and university presses. I don’t want to get into the whole “what is literature?” debate. I have my own definition. Let’s just say I’m not a part of the “It’s all literature!” crowd. That’s like saying that the painting in your hotel room of a vase of flowers and a painting of flowers by Georgia O’Keefe are equivalent in risk, effect, and importance. Some people are making “art” and some people are making “Art.” Some people are writing “books” and some people are writing “literature.”

This is all to get to the point that I want to make. Declan Tan’s novel, M Against M (Montag Press) is literature. It’s an important book. I truly believe more people should be reading it.

I read quite a few books by small presses. More often than not, I find them serviceable. Good reads, really, with even moments of excellence. I will admit that it took me about 40 pages to really get into M Against M. Narratively, it doesn’t quite offer up the challenges of Joyce’s Ulysses (thank goodness) but, for a dystopian novel, it doesn’t share too much in common with its brethren like Fahrenheit 451 or The Handmaid’s Tale. It has a very challenging narrative structure that invites the reader to engage in a way one wouldn’t with a more spoon-fed plot structure.

M Against M is something unto itself in the best possible way.

I’m not even certain that I fully understand what happened in the book… again, in the best possible way. I just know that as I was reading it, I kept finding myself thinking, “This is big stuff though, right? It is. This isn’t just another novel out from a small press.”

I know I need to read it again.

I don’t think this is the place to get into plot, but it’s got the standard stuff of a dystopian novel, but perhaps in a more quiet and satisfying way. Unlike Guy Montag or Winston from 1984, the characters in M Against M do not have some moment that suddenly awakens them to the flaws of their society’s structure. Tan’s characters, like most of us, both reject and long for the rewards that society has to offer.

Even though it’s there plot, at least for me, was not the most satisfying part of M Against M. I was much more drawn to the thought and philosophy in the book. One of our protagonist’s in the book is Arthur Sonntag, a writer trying to say something in a world that could care less about his words.

I’m usually not a big fan of books that feature protagonists who are writers, but Tan makes it work. And it’s because Sonntag is a writer that we get passages like this:

“In this life we have everything backward. Born into death. Politeness before truth. The suicidal earth sets itself alight. And just as how death comes before his life for some of us, man does not work because he has something to offer the world. Instead he is forced to work because he is told something can be offered to him. Forced to cultivate a personality beneficial to the slow suicide of the Earth. And where do we find acceptance? Always in another, always external. Rarely in these conditions could we hope to find it within.”

I was often taken by the poetry of the words in M Against M, but the poetry was never just for the sake of pretty words or experimental language. I found observation of the world in the words. It was all really quite a symphony, as in this passage:

“Neon tubes filled with futile, absurd wants. Set on edges of welfare we will all fall deep. But it will be more than giving up. I have not known purity for any of my moments. Sentimental alleviations and sympathies out of pouring wine jugs. Complex marionettes dried in karma and destiny. If you believe in that sort of thing: Play the strings to the march of brass and gold. And watch it all shine under water.

Do the crackheads and junkies still have more in common with me than these silent suited armies? I do not know. Opened minds to realities of shadows and what sleeps in gutters and under bridges. Under ground. And earth.

Sleep in arms this night and see. Play a hymn for this hundredth requiem. A last note for the big bad word.

Soft eyes and transparent windows to beliefs clay-set but gratefully flaking.

I need rest from these artificial glows and false auras. Set me apart and treat me so. Leave me if I do not respond.”

Sometimes passages from the book read as though Walt Whitman had returned to observe our modern condition.

I recall that as I was reading the book, I needed to know what others were saying about it. I was surprised to find only three ratings on Amazon. I was surprised by the sales rank. Sure, the book came out in 2013 but, seriously, people should be talking about it. People should still be reading it.

Books, unlike batteries, do not have a shelf life… and books like M Against M hold more juice than any lithium battery ever could.

One reviewer on Amazon wrote: “Declan Tan writes like a futuristic old soul. The book begins with a lot of keen social observations and philosophical insights that catch you off guard. Then it quickly turns into an awesome adventure with well charted twists and turns. Highly recommend!”

Truly, a very concise and accurate review of the book, albeit too brief to really catch one’s attention. The “Highly recommend!” isn’t emphatic enough. I don’t know how to say it otherwise because everything, every platitude and hyperbole, has been said about other books.

So maybe, I just say it plainly and honestly and hope that you trust me: 

If you’re curious about what I’m calling a significant work of literature, you need to purchase and read a copy of M Against M.

As I write this review, I realize my own words are failing to do the book justice… to express everything I felt I wanted to say. What I realize is that I just want to include as much of the book as I can in this review, knowing that Tan’s facility with language will entice more than mine.

There’s one section that just floored me when I realized what Tan was doing… or at least imagined that I understood what he was doing. It’s a section of the book I would call the “Here” section, and I felt as though the writing was trying to capture all of life in five pages, as witnessed in this excerpt:

“Here is the world, here are the poems here, the brushes of paint. Here are the songs, the sung, the yet to be, the lung. Here is an eye, a lip, a new way to embrace. Here is the water breaking on the beach. Here are parasols shielding the sun’s fighting rays. Here are the days and coming morning. Here is the bed we share the coffee you make the food you prepared. Here are clothes and the changing fashions. Here is consistency. Here is the way a man is taught to live. Here is the broken pencil. Here is distance growing with age. Here is pretending. Here is power and the way it lays, where it lies and how it thinks. Here is faith. Here is penetrating. Here is the population, expanding and dying. Here are apologies and bathtubs, falling water hot and made for steam. Here is liquid, here are the lakes, rivers the seas and the ocean and the journey they make inland. Here is ferocity. Here are the stoics. Here is Empire. Here is the darkness. Here is the light, the sun and how one day it will all shatter. Here is the beginning. Here is the middle. Again, Here is the beginning. There is no end…”

And here, most importantly, is the link to M Against M: here

Jeff Vande Zande is an English professor at Delta College in Michigan. His latest collection, The Neighborhood Division: Stories, is now out through Whistling Shade Press and available: here.