Luther Blissett, Q, William Heinemann, 2003
reviewed by McKenzie Wark
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Q is a terrific read, an epic from the bowels
of history.(517) The story follows two main
characters. One wants to overthrow the
social order. The other is a spy in the service
of the forces who want to maintain it.
Q is the spy, in the pay of Father Carafa, an
ultra conservative figure, rapidly rising up
the hierarchy of the Catholic church. The
other main character is a radical protestant,
who sets himself against both the corrupt
power of the Catholic church, and also
against Luthers Protestant reformation. For
the more radical protestants, Luther is a
political tool in the hands of a rising
mercantile class, not a friend of the peasants
and artisans. His is just a new kind of
authority, which is putting a priest in our
souls (353)
These two characters cross paths many
times, from one end of Europe to the other,
until coming together for a final
confrontation, in Venice, where their
identities will finally be revealed to each
other
If that were all there were to it, this would
be a fascinating, but ultimately over-long
genre novel the historical thriller. But Q
is not so much a novel as an anti-novel. The
confrontation between the two characters
ends up something of an anti-climax. It
provides a narrative impulse to get the
reader through to the end, but the real
narrative strategy it conceals is quite
different.
In Q, conflicts are never resolved, merely
deflected, transformed, shifted to another
level. Yet that does not mean that in
renouncing the bourgeois novels sense of
narrative closure and harmony, that Q falls
for the other dominant form, pulp serial
fiction, which creates the necessity for each
new installment out of the inevitable
incompleteness of the episode. In Q, our
hero learns from his struggles, grows wiser,
avoids old mistakes. This is a didactic novel,
but with a different purpose. It is about
learning how to struggle against the ruses
of power and get by.
One of Qs lessons is not to get too bogged
down in identity. Our hero changes his
name many times. He adapts, he sheds
failed strategies. He finds new friends, new
structures of belief and methods for reading
the signs.
This is not unlike the authors of the book
themselves. The Luther Blissett who wrote
this book is Roberto Bui, Giovanni
Cattabriga, Federico Guglielmi and Luca Di
Meo. They emerged out of a milieu in which
Luther Blissett was a popular pseudonym
for all kinds of radical actions, avant-garde
provocations and spectacular pranks. But
they too have moved on, and now call
themselves Wu Ming.
In Q, the Blissett crew finds a form and a
narrative to hold together a popular account
of all that a generation has learned in
various struggles. The book can be read as
an allegory for the history of the late 20th
century. The folly of Mao and the prudence
of George Soros can all be read between the
lines in the actions of the books many walk-
on characters.
Or, one can read Q as a more local allegory,
for a series of struggles waged by the
Italian left from the 80s to the 90s. It may
not matter whether these allegorical
readings are actually intended. One of the
effects of the book is to encourage
allegorical reading and some skepticism
about it. The many radical protestant
leaders who populate the first third of the
book are forever using the bible as an
allegorical machine for reading the signs of
the times with very mixed results. Just as
60s Marxists read every hiccup of capitalism
as heralding the crisis, Qs true believers
see everywhere the coming apocalypse.
English language readers will find some of
the background material familiar if they
have read Norman Cohns book about
radical sects, The Pursuit Of The Millennium,
or Raoul Vanegeims The Movement of the
Free Spirit, or even Greil Marcus Lipstick
Traces. The latter was famous for insisting
on a subterranean link between the Sex
Pistols John Lydon and the radical
Anabaptist John of Leyden. Leyden is a
featured character in Q, but a much less
romantic one.
This Leyden is emblematic of the reactive,
persecutory forces that can seize hold of a
radical movement from within, just at its
moment of triumph. There is a remarkable
study here of the forces and pressures that
can lead a militant movement into self-
delusion, worthy of Guattari.
Those familiar with radical European avant-
gardes will find much to chuckle over in Q.
In this version of the 16th century, radical
forces use theology and religion in much the
same way as the avant-gardes use theory
and art. There is a useful dialogue with the
Situationists in these pages. Blissett seems to
have a fondness for the practical strategies
of the SI. The derive, or the drift: the
wandering through cities, cutting across the
order of the working day is artfully applied
here to give wonderful portraits of medieval
Venice, Antwerp and Münster.
The whole book can be read as one long
exercise of the other SI
