{"id":26584,"date":"2019-08-08T13:03:04","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T17:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=26584"},"modified":"2019-08-08T13:03:04","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T17:03:04","slug":"deborah-levy-the-man-who-saw-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2019\/08\/08\/deborah-levy-the-man-who-saw-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"Deborah Levy: The Man Who Saw Everything<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Man Who Saw Everything<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\nby Deborah Levy (2019)<\/span>
\nBloomsbury (2019)<\/span>
\n208 pp<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018Hello, Saul. How\u2019s it going?\u2019 \u2018I\u2019m trying to cross the road,\u2019 I replied. \u2018Yes,\u2019 she said, \u2018you\u2019ve been trying to cross the road for thirty years but stuff happened on the way.\u2019<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″]T[\/fusion_dropcap]he Beatles album Abbey Road<\/em> (the last time all four participated in recording sessions together) famously has on its cover no words but just a photograph, taken in August 1969, of the fab four crossing a zebra-crossing outside the EMI Studios in the road of that name.<\/p>\n

I say “all four,” but of course the iconic photograph actually contained various clues confirming rumors that Paul McCartney had, in reality, died in a car accident in November 1966 and had been replaced by a look alike, William Shears Campbell: the funeral procession like setting, with Lennon dressed as an angel, Starr an undertaker, and Harrison the gravedigger; the corpse, McCartney, out of step with the others and barefooted, his cigarette held in his wrong hand; the numberplate of the strategically placed Beetle 28IF (Paul would have been 28 if he was still alive, and silly objections that he would actually have been 27 not 28 completely miss the symbolic way age is calculated in the eastern mystical cultures important to the late pop idol); and the mysterious lady with the blue dress on the reverse cover, among others. Further proof of McCartney’s death, if any was needed, was that while John Lennon was to produce arguably his finest work after the break-up of The Beatles, the supposed “McCartney” went on to front the band Wings and to compose “The Frog Song.”<\/p>\n

The photograph is perhaps the most imitated in pop culture, and Deborah Levy’s new novel, The Man Who Saw Everything<\/em>, opens with her narrator Saul Adler (not Paul given he is from a Jewish family), a young historian specializing in Eastern Europe, attempting to do the same in 1988, the photo to be taken by his art photographer girlfriend Jennifer Moreau. Adler is about to embark on a trip to the GDR (the fall of the Berlin Wall one year later unforeseen), and the photo is a gift to the sister of his state-appointed interpreter, a Beatles fan, although she is rather keener that he brings a tin of hard-to-obtain pineapple chunks.<\/p>\n

While traversing the zebra-crossing he is struck a glancing blow by a car, causing him minor injuries. But various clues alert us that all is not as it seems:<\/p>\n