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When Can I Do When Everything’s On Fire?
by Jack Gardner
EDGE Contributor
Wednesday Oct 22, 2008

What Can I Do When Everything’s On Fire?,

the new novel by Portuguese writer Antonio
Lobo Antunes, leaves me asking just one
question. Why Bother?

The novel is difficult to read. Truthfully, it’s

nearly impossible. Each chapter is one single
run on sentence punctuated with dialogue and
with a complete disregard to sentence
structure and meaning. Think stream of
consciousness on a lot of drugs. The nearly
600 page novel opens with a three page
character list. This is the best thing about the
novel. Without it, there is no possibility of
making heads or tails of the plot - what little
plot there is.

The novel is narrated by Paolo, the son of

Lisbon’s most famous drag queen Soraia, also
known as Carlos. The novel follows the
madness of his mind as he is abused and
abandoned by his parents, spends time in a
mental hospital and witnesses the suicide of
his father’s lover. It is impossible to tell from
the writing how much time passes in the
novel. It is also nearly impossible to discern
what is going on in the novel as each
chapter/sentence jumps around in time and
action so much that each unpunctuated
paragraph requires several readings to figure out it’s meaning.

Lobo Antunes has been hailed as Portugals greatest living writer and has been
compared to Faulkner and Joyce. Personally, I don’t see it. To me "What Can I Do
When Everything’s On Fire?" seems to be a series of words and images loosely
constructed together trying to pass as literature. I think Faulkner and Joyce would be
offended at having their names even remotely connected to this writing style. I have
not read other works by Lobo Antunes so I cannot say whether this novel is indicative
of his writing style, but having read this novel, I sincerely doubt that I will make the
effort to read any of his other works.

Call me old fashioned, but I like my sentences with structure and punctuation. In
"What Can I Do When Everything Is On Fire," the paragraphs start, seemingly, in the
middle of a sentence, the author not having bothered to write the first of it down, and
then no more than five or six words into it, will switch to the middle of another
sentence about a completely different topic with no punctuation between or rhyme or
reason why.

This book will not top the best seller list. I am, frankly, surprised it was even
published. The wading through 584 pages of words thrown together on the page was
painful and disheartening. There are those who may call this novel great, but one
wonders by what standards? The purpose of the novel is to convey a story to the
reader and "What Can I Do When Everything’s On Fire?" can barely be said to complete
this purpose. To me, it was a jumbled mass of unconnected words on a page and I
was angry and irritated that I spent several hours reading it.

Jack Gardner is a founding producer of and director for Anagram Productions. He has performed in
Operas, Musicals and dramatic works as well as doing voice over and radio work. Jack lives in Miami
with his three dogs.

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