Midnight All Day is collection of short stories by the author of My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of Suburbia, though to call it simply a collection of short stories is to mis-sell it rather. The book reads like an epic in the theatrical sense of the word, like Brecht at his most disjointed, but it's not so much Fear and Misery of the Third Reich as fear and misery of the third relationship. Every character is either having an affair, embarking on a new relationship as the result of an affair or discovering that their partner is having an affair. In this way it is as if it is one story told through the experiences of different people. None of the individual stories reach anything as traditional as a resolution, reading for more like verbal snapshots of random lives, but taken as a whole there is a sense of moving through a cautionary tale of what happens when we let desire take over.And yet, considering the subject matter all of the lives being portrayed in these stories are strangely passionless, as if everyone, married or in the middle of an affair is simply going through the motions. It's a theme that Kureishi has explored before, most notably in Intimacy, but whereas there it was believable for one couple to be having an affair that lacked any emotional intensity in Midnight All Day it is less believable for so many people to be involved in exactly the same situation, all lacking feeling. None of the characters display the slightest hint of lust for their illicit partners, let alone love and the whole thing just feels rather flat, but then perhaps that's the point.Above all this seems to be an extremely moral book and while I might be reading too much into it or misreading the author's intention completely there seems to be no doubt to me that the over riding tone is that infidelity will lead to misery, which may be a comforting thought for all those out there who have never been unfaithful allowing them to take the moral high ground, but it is also extremely simplistic. It's also unfair on those who may want to leave a unhappy marriage as at least one of the protagonists of these stories does, and then later on start again with a new partner because the stories are all pointing to the single conclusion that no matter how bad your first marriage is don't go thinking that you can start again because not only will the next one be exponentially worse but you will still have all the baggage from the first one to deal with.There are the lovers who arrange for a romantic weekend away only to be joined at the last minute by an inconvenient husband causing the tryst to be cancelled, when we next meet them years later they are all relieved that they did not pursue the affair. Then there's the couple embarking on a second marriage, soullessly choosing new furniture for their apartment in which they plan to entertain the friends that they had during their previous relationships. Or there's the man who is unable to see a long term future with his new partner despite her being pregnant with their child (this actually occurs in two of the stories) and other variations on this theme. Only two of the tales deviate from this structure but even these can be read in the same way such as the tale of the woman who has given up her family, first by divorcing her admittedly unfaithful husband, then farming her son off to her mother and finally dumping her casual boyfriend all to pursue her dream of becoming a novelist - in case you didn't get it her affair is with the act of writing which is the only time in the whole collection that someone shows any passion for anything. The other is a modern retelling of Nikolai Gogol's The Nose with the body part in question being the one leaving and embarking on an affair.Are these stories good? Yes, without question. Extremely well written and paced just right they nicely snapshot modern relationships. The problem is taking them all together in one collection makes for very bleak and somewhat one dimensional reading.
I really enjoyed this collection: most stories were incisively written tales of difficulties in love, amusing in places, beautifully written in others; but the last story is hilarious. Entitled "The Penis", it's a story of a porn star whose penis becomes detached. Amazing. (view spoiler)[The porn star chases the penis around London, and when he eventually catches up with the penis, tries to persuade him to become reattached. The penis, whose name is 'Long Dong', tries to persuade the porn star that to reattach him to his face.'Doug said "Where on my face exactly would you like to be attached? Behind my ear?""Where your nose is now. I want to be recognised, like other stars.""You'll get sick of it," warned Doug. "They all do, and go crazy.""That's up to me," said Long Dong. "There will be cures I can take"The penis took a sausage from the plate in front of him and held it in the middle of Doug's face."It would be like that, only bigger. Cosmetic surgery is developing. In the future there'll be all kinds of novel arrangements. What do you say to being a trendsetter?""What of my scrotum? It would ... ahem ... hang over my mouth"."I'd do the talking. I'll give you an hour to decide", said the penis, haughtily.' (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about Midnight All Day (1999)?
"the penis" is by far the jewel in this collection and in my opinion the one story that really gets the point across. the rest are too vague and homogeneous, as if Kureishi didn't bother to broaden his horizon before writing this collection. another minus point is that his 'voice' was too overshadowing in every story. the characters didn't completely seem their own as they all had more or less the same language.that being said, it's still an okay read for people interested in postmodernism, albeit i miss more 'over the top'-ness.
—Karen
All the stories in this collection were shit except for the last one called The penis.A porn star loses his dick one day and runs around town looking for it. It took him till evening when he came upon his dick in a cafe and has a conversation with it in which the dick expresses his desire to go solo. The dick wants to make more serious films and play characters like Hamlet. The dick says he'll only be prepared to go back under the porn stars management if he is attached to his face where the nose is. All of a sudden the dick loses consciousnous and the porn star rushes to a cosmetic surgeon to get it reattached to his balls.
—Zaki
Kureishi lives up to his legendary reputation as a misogynist in this book of short stories. He works a repetitive theme of rich, middle-aged men with bitter, hysterical ex-wives and demanding, clingy (often pregnant) new girlfriends. His males wander around London or Paris, drinking in cafés or taking mind-altering drugs, dwelling endlessly on the meaning of Life - or more correctly, just THEIR life, as these characters are so self-obsessed, they barely seem to know there is a world beyond themselves.Their ex-wives try to kill themselves as 'blackmail', their lovers harangue them in the street for wanting to see their children - to Kureishi women are lost causes without a man to complete them, or perhaps without one whose balls they can break.The men meet in coffee shops to exchange callous banter about relationships or to confront one another over a woman who is merely chattel between them - whose wife is it anyway? Stories end abruptly, usually with the man rising above the soul-destroying, fun-sapping complaints of his harem to realise another day will dawn.A preoccupation with sex permeates the stories - there is rarely a feeling that his males love the women they have left their wives and children for, more that they have been drawn away by lust and then trapped into the inevitable relationship demanded by their mistress. The final story, The Penis, in which a porn star's genitalia escapes him and seeks independent fame only emphasises that Kureishi's mind, despite his philosophical pondering is, just like those of his male characters, firmly rooted in his trousers.
—Emma
