Broken connections

Twist ★★★★★
Colum McCann
Bloomsbury

“I was never intimidated by it but I didn’t know it all that well. Now it means the place that carries so much of the world's information, the place that carries so much of who we are,” Irish novelist Colum McCann says of the meaning he attaches to one of the protagonists in his latest book, Twist — the ocean. 

Premised on the contradictory nature of the disconnect access to technology — and information — creates on a global scale, McCann explores universal themes of fracture and repair by plunging his literary pen into Poseidon's realm. 

Narrated by Irish journalist, failed novelist, playwright (and alcohol-dependent) Anthony Fennell who's assigned to write an article on the underwater cables that carry the world's information, Fennell's empirical research takes South African readers to a familiar setting: Cape Town. 

“He doesn't have an intimate relationship with the ocean, it's an intimidating, unknowable place, and also a place of convenience for him, but only for his story,” explains McCann.

Fennell's temporary home, the cable repair vessel Georges Lecointe, is docked at Cape Town harbour and based on the Léon Thévenin, a ship that does cable repairs “all the way up to the western seaboard of Africa”, which McCann spent time on while writing the novel.

Before boarding the Georges, Fennell meets the enigmatic chief of mission — and fellow Irishman — John Conway, who holds an inverse connection to the ocean.

“It's the place where he buries all his mystery. He likes to free dive, he likes the depths, he likes the darkness, he likes the places where his enigma can thrive. He feels entirely at home in the ocean ... it's the place for him that is probably the closest he has to a proper ‘home’,” McCann says.

The crew members Fennell meets aboard the Georges call countries from Algeria to Australia “home”, with McCann describing a metaphorical home as “that place that you can leave but once you leave it you have to go back to it again. The essence of it for many people who love being out at sea is: they want to be able to feel the power of going home. Sometimes we leave the thing we love to understand it and appreciate it.”

The first destination the crew members leave their geographical homes for is the Congo River, where landslides triggered by climate change — “a major problem hounding us all” — had ruptured sub-aquatic cables.

The repercussions of climate change are also artistically explored through Conway's partner, Zanele, a Joe Slovo township-born actress and member of a South African theatre troupe invited to England to perform her environmental reinterpretation of Waiting for Godot. 

McCann intentionally made Conway's partner a black South African woman as it was “important to showcase somebody who comes from a 'difficult' background and [is] moving out into the world, and the loneliness it entails. I also wanted to talk about important issues of our day, one of them being race and racial engagement”.

Technology plays a thematic starring role in Twist, and is interpreted by McCann as “not just something that is good for us but also potentially damaging, in extraordinary ways”, whereas Fennell's interpretation of technology “scares him: it’s something to be used, he doesn’t really quite understand it. Then he gets a chance to see a new facet of technology, an untold story,” the author explains.

Although smartphone-averse, Conway — described by Fennell as ... a creature from the unplugged side, or as unplugged as he could get — “knows technology, he's comfortable with it, but comfortable enough with it to know it’s dangerous,” McCann explains.

“He becomes a semi-Luddite even though he announces in the book that he's not a Luddite. Part of his character is desire to be away from technology. Hence the freediving, the descent. Even though he's interested in repair and bringing broken things together, he ends up recognising the problems of technology for all of us.”

Zanele's T-shirt reading “Unreachable by Machine” comes to mind as a sartorial depiction of the hold technology has over us. McCann's never owned such a shirt but believes it's a good slogan. “I might start wearing one myself and copyright it!” he laughs. (To which neo-Luddites worldwide reply with a resounding “aye, aye!”).

McCann remarks that it's important to realise that “the machine itself is not the problem, the machine is just made of sand and silicone and plastic and wires and glass; it’s our relationship to the machine and how we choose to engage with it. There's a certain point when we become wise and realise what power technology has over us. What we really must also understand is that much of this we have created ourselves.”

Yet technological feats remain fallible, with McCann exploring the vulnerability of cables in a segment of Twist which takes place in Alexandria, where cables have intentionally been destroyed, and in Accra, where a fishing accident caused a break, resulting in most of Ghana's capital being engulfed in darkness, with limited access to power and the internet. 

“You've also experienced internet blackouts and slowdowns before. If both cables going around South Africa were cut at the exact same time, it would be an extraordinary emergency.”

He describes the lack of awareness surrounding the detrimental effect damaged cables have on access to technology as “surprising”, deriding governments' inability to respond to the crises, and raising the question of whether the onus is on government to protect us. “Yes, it is. But guess who owns the cables? It's these big multinationals. 

“If they get cut, whose responsibility is it to protect our citizens? Do we have to protect them from the multinationals, too and are we protecting them from the large-scale multinationals?

“All these questions exist in Twist — some of them are unsaid because it's not the place for a fiction writer to go 'lecturing' abut this sort of stuff. But I think you must suggest and let the reader come up with the ideas for themselves and start asking questions about our relationship to technology.”

The novel was called Twist from its conception, McCann says, owing to the physically twisted nature of the cables and how twisting material is used to create them. 

“I was also interested in the form of narrative twist, and a twist in the story, at the end, and what it means when we continue to twist. Our stories continue to surprise us and I think that's part of the beauty of the world.”

The leitmotif of repair and destruction is also applicable to the human condition, with McCann applying these themes to Fennell's alcoholism and fractured relationship with his estranged teenage son.

“So many of us have issues of destruction in our lives. We’re living in a broken world and many pieces are lying at our feet: How do we pick up those pieces? And how do we make up a mosaic out of them that allows us to keep going, and in some cases, to make it better? In this shattered world — in this shattering — can we somehow change the conversation and make it one where we can look after one another, rather than being divided in extraordinary ways?”

Interpersonal fragmentation aside, McCann acknowledges that “sometimes within ourselves, we have this brokenness that we have to look at and see and if we can repair it. And I think that's the biggest theme for our times.”

It's understandable that the term that most resonated and remained with McCann when he visited South Africa is ubuntu. “I think it’s an extraordinary term and it means a lot for the notion of repair and how we get along.

“I do recognise some of the magnificent things that have unfolded in South Africa over the past few decades, but I think you have to recognise the difficulties,” he adds, likening the peace process in Northern Ireland to South Africa's inception of democracy, describing both as “sometimes shaky”.

“But if you do look to places like Ireland and South Africa — they’re speaking out on an international stage, saying things about what is going on in Ukraine, in Gaza. I find that to be brave, I find that to be admirable, and I think we have learned a lot about ourselves.

“It’s not arrogant, there’s a humility to it and a power to it that's trying to help other places, other people, and to recognise the importance of human dignity.”

Recognise and repair, we shall.