True Stories

TRUE STORIES - three stories of modern life by John Fraser. True Stories poses the question: What is modern life? Struggling with bureaucracy, getting on, and off, lists? The protagonist, Kochi, and his young - then much older - friends, engage with love, philosophy ... the murder of a lover by the mother of a socialite, the centre of the hero's attention: and her reprisal. We follow them, their adventures, the search for the Great Principle, embodied by a fragile ancient, who dosses down and dies on his first night in Kochi's dwelling. Think, says the Master, but no life seems lived by Thinking. There are wildfires, concealed well-shafts, a flight by sea: happenstance determined histories. Eventually, in a declining night-club, the protagonist finds clues, a divan to sleep on, even work. All human knowledge is examined by Kochi and his new partner, the dancer, Jahan. Knowledge at last? Maybe ... The hero, Kochi, leaves by night, seeking a new adventure. Clap Your Hands traces the search for a relationship, taking us from a truncated marriage to Russia, passing through Trabzon in Turkey - the hero caged and dispatched like an exotic bird, and ending in refuge on the Danube's mouth. Smoke addresses the end of life - the narrator's, recalling his youth and his first objectives, the goals to be reached, the satisfaction to be enjoyed - entrusted to him by a sailor in a bar. The ends of life seem trivial, when you reach them - like the end of life itself. His end of life is bitter, though sometimes he remembers sweetness ... It's lived with the dissatisfied, the clueless, and the cheats ... and sadness prevails.