Milkman is a novel by Anna Burns. Booker won. It’s a book. It is a book about a place, a place that is not named, but we know where it is because its divisions, borders, red lines, call it what you want, are common currency in its social gap and international recognition. It is a place that is part of another place, or it is not, depending on your vision of history, although it is the present, its present, the only relevant place to inhabit. There is another place on the border, and, yes, another one on the water, but in the past those from there have often been on this side of the ditch to leave their marks and then return home, or not, which is in the root of the problems of this place with its border, its division, its divisions, this side of the water. The writing style that graphically conveys this complicated story and endlessly complex social interactions is necessarily oblique and, at first glance, like its subject matter, impenetrable. There are often no paragraphs, no line breaks in the stream of consciousness, like this.
Like everywhere, there are people all over this place, but, unlike almost everywhere, they very rarely have names, or if they do, they don’t want to use them, clearly believing that the name would incriminate, accuse, label. , even identifying in this situation where making yourself known always carries risks. If you’re a milkman, or even a milkman, you can live with the label, possibly because it strikes fear into those who listen to it, fear of association, or retaliation, or identification, or even not getting your pint. That’s what capitalization can do, or undo, if you don’t have it, just one, at the beginning, make a word a name, but not a name to identify, just a name to label. Letters at the beginning of paragraphs are capitalized, but so are those at the beginning of sentences. So if you see one, who’s to know if it’s a paragraph or just a sentence…
But then there are a lot of labels on this side of the water. There are labels above all others, which can determine where you live, can reveal what you believe, can dictate where you can and cannot walk, where you can drink or buy chips, where the rest of the store snubs you. and you can even forget about paying your chips, of course, because you’re always likely to pay, eventually, in other ways. It is these labels that make you walk faster through the ten-minute zone that divides the divisions, the path where you are being observed, counted, registered, photographed, registered, identified as identifiable, both in the future and in the present, that yourself will become a permanent past if your name, still unspoken, receives the celebrity of appearing in someone’s file. If you’re lucky, or maybe unlucky, depending on who’s doing the recording, you might even have a paragraph of your own.
Unless, of course, you’re that Somebody McSomebody who’s already known, already connected, already identified, probably already on file, in which case that Somebody McSomebody probably doesn’t want to be seen, doesn’t want to venture into that no-de ten minutes. someone’s land, not no man’s land, which functions as the border between there and here or the ditch between here and over the water, separating, maintaining the division. Unless, of course, you’re family, in which case you’re known as brother or sister and by number, first, second, third, etc., or you’re known intergenerationally, like mom, dad or grandpa, which you might even have a name. , like one of your brothers, what better not to say in any case, since he would be recognized, labeled, identified or simply chiseled on a tombstone. That’s always the risk, especially when your family is known to sympathize with causes that are not talked about in private but are inevitably embraced in public, because the photographs, the records, the archives prove that you still live there, on that side. from the ten minute zone. which marks the division. And you might even have, by family association, one of those surnames that identifies and therefore demands a paragraph of its own in Someone’s file that probably has the word secret stamped all over it, just like every other paragraph that comes along. supposed to not be there
And, once you’ve decided who you are or could become, if you agree to continue seeing a milkman or another for the purpose of anything other than getting milk, then you need to watch your back to make sure your potential boyfriend isn’t looking at you while you’re having sex. you are in your deception, which is not deception, because you are not trying to deceive. And then, at the end, you’re at the end of the book, which isn’t really a book, but a train of thoughts, events, thoughts about events and analysis, rationalizations of the irrational, all inside the head of an eighteen. a woman of a few years, who turns out to come from one side or the other of the divide, in the divided land, which is from one side of the border and the other side of the water ditch that separates it from there. You have traveled the roads, lived the short lives, felt the threats, been taken to all the places the eighteen year old has thought you would see, felt the turmoil that life has brought into her life, and experienced the lack final that inevitably applies to things that have no end. The only certainty, and this at least is certain, is that this book, which might not actually be a book, but thought, experience, and imagination, is a worthy Booker and possibly one of the greatest achievements in the history of things that they are generally called books and are therefore worthy of paragraphs of their own.
