None of that Will Do. Now What? by Miles Newbold Clark

“This is America, and in America contemplation of anything is a sign of weakness.”
-from None of That Will Do. Now What?

Too often the postmodern, stream-of-conscious novel reads like an egotist’s diary, embracing tangents for seemingly aesthetic reasons while offering no justification for such. In short, they offer author catharsis disguised as inaccessible wisdom. Miles Newbold Clark’s None Of That Will Do. Now What? is different. Expect the stream-of-conscious style’s defining sentences running four-plus lines; expect these lines to be peppered with just as many commas; and expect a narrator often bloated by his own self-worth. But expect more than what its equally egotistical brethren offers. The reader is taught early to trust the narrator; a simple direction, but one that is wholly lacking with most stream-of-conscious novels.

Hugo, the narrator, is an intellectual, culturally saturated man who often spits cynical anger. When we first meet Hugo he is at the end of a life spent between his rural roots and the draw of a quasi-urban, mid-tier university life. He has settled down with his unhappy wife, Dora. He drives trucks for a living. The domestic unrest amongst the couple is heightened by the narrator’s over-analysis of every gesture, every slight exchange, every spoken idea. We are left to assume that if this guy would simply stop thinking so much he might be happy. But it is exactly this tension that keeps his plight not just interesting, but real.

This tension manifests itself naturally throughout Hugo’s life. When first opening up to university life he is forced to bartend a new friend’s party, giving him a peripheral insight which informs his tendency to contemplate, while also acting in opposition to familial confrontations he is forced into at home:

It wasn’t a bad gig, even, because it meant I didn’t have to say anything about poststructuralism, and drank as much as I wanted, my eyes drifting from the group around the coffee table and the black television. There was something reassuring there. [pg. 107]

The novel is structured as three, non-linear sections, each representing a defining era of Hugo’s life. The first places Hugo as a truck driver, surviving the echoes of a life that promised more. The second flashes back to Hugo’s life as a burgeoning student, where the idea of being a truck driver was simply non-existent. The final section, Dora’s mother’s death, is a section that informs Dora’s childhood while bringing the relationship between the couple into stark focus. This chronological reversal forces the reader to appreciate each sentence as a true moment in the lives of these characters, as opposed to the simply descriptive element it might otherwise seem. We know where they are, but how did they get there? And despite this constant uncertainty we trust that Hugo and Dora will find their equilibrium, no matter the effort it may require:

Because the only reason you care about sweat to begin with is because you’re already a hopeless case; sweat is not about emotion, it’s about effort. The best you can do is let that sweat wander, and burn your eyes, and hopefully pass and cut through the bed of makeup and turn into something better. [pg. 181]

At times None of That Will Do. Now What? echoes the ambulance riding hysteria of Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son (no small compliment), at times Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby—with the learned urban intellectual, Galahad, being Hugo’s Gatsby—while in between these recognizable moments existing as something truly unique. None of That Will Do. Now What? is an asset to our current literary landscape, one of the best novels of 2007. Not to mention, one of the best, and simplest, cover designs as well.

Miles Newbold Clark. None of That Will Do. Now What?. San Francisco: No Record Press, 2007. $8, paper, ISBN: 978-0-9789808-0-1.

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