Combative Narrative

A.J. Somerset’s Combat Camera Is a Novel in a Struggle With Itself

Fringe ArtsArchibald Alexander — Published November 23, 2010

Combat Camera is the first novel by A.J. Somerset. It concerns Lucas Zane, once a praised war-photographer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, now a broken man who’s turned to drinking, fighting off his demons, and shooting low-budget pornography to pay the rent.

On set he meets Melissa, a young stripper and porn actress, a girl whose secret yearning is to go “a long, long way from any place I’ve ever been.” The novel is about what these two characters can do for—and along with—one another.

John Metcalf, head of Biblioasis Press, called Combat Camera “one of the finest Canadian novels” he had ever read. That’s hard to believe. Combat Camera is not an awful book, but it suffers from misrepresentation. Even Somerset seems to have misunderstood its true nature.

The novel is full of stock characters with predictable motives, superficially exposed in the light of affected and overly clever prose.

The story is well built, and well paced, but it has a tired tale at its core: the immensely promising artist, mired in superficial problems, meets a woman likewise lost, who’s from a different world than his entirely, etc.

On top of this, one gets the sense that before writing this, Somerset had just put down his “How to Write Fiction” handbook. There is, for instance, a subplot about Zane’s childhood where young Zane fails to impress his father; it is utterly superfluous, but Somerset includes it—as if to conform to the rule in his handbook that states “You must provide adequate back-story for a troubled protagonist.”

All of this may sound harsh, but it comes down to this: Combat Camera feels like it should have been a pulp fiction novel. If Somerset had recognized this, it might have made the novel significantly more enjoyable.

Instead, there is a terrible tension between the conceit and seriousness of the creator and the product of his labour, which seems to chomp at the bit to take on a more piquant life of its own.

Somerset’s ambition to create something thought-provoking, perhaps meaningful, is marred by his so-so skills as a novelist.

None of this, of course, would have been so glaring if the novel were not being presented in a light so disproportionate to its merit: it’s not terrible, but great Canadian literature this is not.

This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 15, published November 23, 2010.