Greenland

A Novel

David Santos Donaldson, David Santos-Donaldson

• Publisher: Amistad
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780063159563
• eBook ISBN:
  9780063159570
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Shortlisted for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction 

A dazzling, debut novel-within-a-novel in the vein of The Prophets and Memorial, about a young author writing about the secret love affair between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl—in which Mohammed’s story collides with his own, blending fact and fiction.

In 1919, Mohammed el Adl, the young Egyptian lover of British author E. M. Forster, spent six months in a jail cell. A century later, Kip Starling has locked himself in his Brooklyn basement study with a pistol and twenty-one gallons of Poland Spring to write Mohammed’s story.

Kip has only three weeks until his publisher’s deadline to immerse himself in the mind of Mohammed who, like Kip, is Black, queer, an Other. The similarities don't end there. Both of their lives have been deeply affected by their confrontations with Whiteness, homophobia, their upper crust education, and their white romantic partners. As Kip immerses himself in his writing, Mohammed’s story – and then Mohammed himself – begins to speak to him, and his life becomes a Proustian portal into Kip's own memories and psyche. Greenland seamlessly conjures two distinct yet overlapping worlds where the past mirrors the present, and the artist’s journey transforms into a quest for truth that offers a world of possibility.

Electric and unforgettable, David Santos Donaldson’s tour de force excavates the dream of white assimilation, the foibles of interracial relationships, and not only the legacy of a literary giant, but literature itself.

Part 1

The Very Last Englishman

The Outlaw and the Legend

My crazy situation—being locked up in this cramped basement study—starts with the fact that I’m a novelist. At least that’s what I call myself. As of yet, no publisher has wanted to grant me that identity. But I have a literary agent, Wilson—a genuine gentleman and a scholar. He’s a tall, seemingly liberated WASP. Fashionably youthful enough to wear edgy, thick-framed Italian glasses but old enough to be that rare, nearly outmoded literary professional who believes in nurturing raw talent. He’s taken me on and is representing a manuscript I presented to him two years ago. A novel based on the life of the great British writer E. M. Forster.

My historical novel focuses on the three years Forster lived in Alexandria, Egypt, during World War I, when he fell in love with the Black Egyptian tram conductor Mohammed El Adl. At the ripe age of thirty-eight, Edward Morgan Forster (known as Morgan to friends) had never had sex. The affair with Mohammed is well-documented as Morgan’s first and most meaningful sexual relationship and unfortunately, it was a doomed one. I had written the novel in a voice close to Morgan’s perspective. I myself am in many ways like the shy, self-doubting gay British writer—I was even raised in Weybridge, the suburb of London where Forster lived. Wilson liked my novel, a real-life story of gay star-crossed lovers. Also, A Passage to India was one of Wilson’s favorite novels. It was one of mine too—along with Howards End and Maurice. And who doesn’t adore the Merchant Ivory films with Helena Bonham Carter and Emma Thompson? A Room with a View—gorgeous! Wilson, like me, was a fan of the gentle British soul; he sympathized with the repressed homosexual writer, and he helped me to refine my manuscript.

After a year of gut-wrenching rewrites (“Kipling, cut this part,” “I don’t think we need this part either,” “Can we add flashbacks?” “What about flashing forward too?” “It’s great! Just one more thing . . . we need to shave it down about half the length. Make it lean, sharp, snappy!”) it was finally polished—no fat, lean. Nearly emaciated, I thought. But better. I secretly thought it even had moments of brilliance. We—mostly Wilson, really—titled it Morgan and Mohammed: A Love Story.

But after a year of submissions, no publishers took it up.

Then, two days ago, a major literary editor in the publishing industry contacted Wilson. She was intrigued by the novel, she said, and although she would not be offering on it, she expressed interest in having a meeting with me and Wilson. Wilson confessed to me that this was highly unusual. Normally a publisher either accepts or rejects a project and rarely meets with the author after declining. We were both perplexed but also hopeful. I couldn’t sleep that night; my heart and mind were racing like dueling drumrolls. Excitement and fear must be one and the same, I was convinced. Was it finally going to happen, the dream of my life? And not with just any editor; this was the biggest literary editor in the business—a publishing legend!

A day later, just yesterday, we found ourselves in the editor’s huge Madison Square Park office—a tasteful, sunny room with tall windows, a gray leather Milo Baughman sofa with matching armchairs, white metal bookshelves, and a towering fiddle leaf fig tree.

The publisher—a straightforward, handsome woman with short silver hair—sat upright on the sofa with the warm yet detached air of a Buddhist nun. She said she admired my book, that the novel was moving. It was clear I had talent and that I’d done a great deal of research but that, in fact, was the problem for her: she disliked my adherence to historical facts, some of which I had interpreted differently from the way she did. (She clearly knew a lot about Forster.) She said she wanted to encourage me as a writer, but as Wilson and I knew, she wouldn’t be publishing this novel. Forster’s story had already been told by biographers and his voice was already known through Forster’s own work. Although my novel was well executed, she said, it offered nothing new in content or style.

When I realized my golden opportunity was slipping like sand through my fingers, my heart leapt to my throat and my palms got sweaty. I cannot let her say no, I said to myself—not when I’ve gotten this far.

All my life, through all the various ups and downs, I’ve only had one enduring dream: to be a published writer. I’m useless at anything but writing. In school I was the awkward kid shunned at every turn. The only ones who truly appreciated me were my teachers. “Kip writes wonderful stories,” they told my parents. “He has a rare and vivid imagination.” And they encouraged me too. “You’re a real talent, Kip. Your parents didn’t name you after the great Rudyard Kipling for nothing. It’s your destiny!”

I knew I had to dedicate my life to becoming a writer. I had no time for friends; my extracurricular hours were consumed with obsessively studying novels. Between the ages of twelve and fifteen, I read Crime and Punishment five times because my mother had mentioned that Dostoyevsky was a great writer. I had to drum his narrative techniques into my brain to become a great writer too. That was the only way I was finally going to matter. Me, the skinny, awkward Black boy who, for some reason, imagined he was going to fit in with his school peers. In my first year of secondary school, I discovered Giovanni’s Room and realized that becoming a writer had successfully exalted the skinny, gay Black American James Baldwin, so I decided I had to go to America to write, to be saved. Then I too would matter. Even my parents, despite their disappointment at having a “batty boy” for a son, would see that I could be a success.

I could not say all this to the publishing legend yesterday, of course, but I also could not take no for an answer. “Please,” I said to her, my voice betraying my desperation with a quiver. “Tell me what version of my Forster story would theoretically interest you for publication.” I needed to understand where I had failed to appeal to this gatekeeper of the literary market.

She tugged at her brown tweed jacket and then clasped her hands on the knee of her pleated wool trousers. “Mr. Starling,” she offered with an earnest frown, “a commercial media conglomerate is acquiring my publishing company in four weeks. Your novel would have been my last acquisition before the merger, and frankly I don’t know if literary fiction is something the conglomerate will be interested in publishing—they seem more interested in highly commercial authors.”

“But—” I was unable to contain myself. My insides were jumping like popcorn in a popper. “Sorry, but I must ask you this: If—if it were possible,” I said to the publishing goddess, hearing my own voice come out strained but deep, more aggressively than I’d intended, “if I could get you a new version of my novel in three weeks, before the merger, a version you’d really want to publish, what would need to change for you to say yes?”

The publishing legend tilted her head back and caressed the string of tasteful white pearls around her neck. She gazed up high, above the plant.

“Well,” she said, focusing on me again, speaking firmly, “perhaps if you were to tell it from the perspective of Mohammed. That would be interesting!”

Here I go: Mohammed’s Story. A draft the literary legend cannot refuse. I only have three weeks. Time is of the essence. I’ll have to work nonstop. I’m not leaving this basement study until I’ve finished the entire manuscript.

To secure my success, I’ve taken some drastic measures: I’ve boarded up the door from the inside, with seven planks of two-by-four pinewood nailed across the doorframe (that’s why I needed weapon number two: the hammer). If I leave this room, it will not be on impulse. I have all the necessary provisions with me—five boxes of Premium Saltine Crackers, three tins of Café Bustelo, and twenty-one one-gallon jugs of Poland Spring water—occupying almost all of the desk’s surface. That’s all I’ll need until I’m done. I can’t escape. I can’t sabotage my life’s dream. Drastic times require drastic measures, don’t they?

The logistics of this endeavor are not pretty, I must warn you. I have my essential writing supplies: my MacBook with its power cord and an Oxford English Dictionary (the shorter, two-volume set). My iPhone is stored away in the bottom drawer in case of emergencies—I barely get a signal down here anyway—and I’ve turned off the internet router. I want no distractions from the external world. Yet there are the internal distractions to consider, the bodily necessities. In the study there’s a tiny “half bathroom,” as they call it—a little water closet—but we never use it; the toilet doesn’t always flush properly. I’ll save flushing for when it’s absolutely necessary—otherwise I’ll piss down the sink; that ought to help. They say W. H. Auden, while a don at King’s College, customarily tinkled in his study sink. The expediency of poets! Art is a savage undertaking.

The only other distraction is, of course, people. In my case, two specific people: Ben, my husband of the last seven years, who announced last week he’s breaking up with me—he wants a divorce (details to come)—and my ex–best friend, Concepción (Concha). I haven’t spoken to Concha in eight months now, or rather, she hasn’t spoken to me—not since our disastrous lunch at the Broadway Diner last April. It was either a colossal misunderstanding we had or else too much truth told all at once. In any case, it ruptured our perfect “friendom,” the private kingdom we’d created for ourselves, fortified, I thought, with bulwarks as thick as the old city walls of her Spanish hometown, Seville, where we first met during our college years. Now our friendom has been pillaged and abandoned. But Ben has somehow rallied Concha to break her silent treatment, to help him save me from what he calls “the madness of my extreme measures.” Together they’ve been outside my study for an hour now, pleading for me to unbarricade myself.

They claim they are worried about my approach—not against the work per se, but against the insanity of locking myself away like this. “Write your book,” says Ben, “but just do it in a practical way! You don’t have to harm yourself, Kip!” Even in my ire I have to smile when he says “harm” the way we Brits say “ham.” I still find his Boston-Irish brogue adorable—damn him! Concha warns me against “starving” myself. She learned English in London and has an even posher accent than mine. If you close your eyes, you can’t tell it’s not Emma Thompson speaking. The only difference is that Concha’s gestures remain very Spanish. She emphasizes her words like an orchestra conductor bringing a baton to the downbeat. Her every move, no matter how small, seems to carry the flare of flamenco—always a stomp of defiance against the cruelty of life. Now, together, Ben and Concha have come as a unified choir to save me from myself.

I’m ambivalent about them both right now. My heart actually feels like it’s melting in my chest at the thought that they care enough to protest. I almost wish they’d break down the door to prove how much they really love me. Then we’d all embrace, beg forgiveness, and sob in each other’s arms. But on the other hand, they have both broken my heart terribly, and I can’t forgive them. How can I trust in their motives? I’m not sure if either of them ever truly loved me. The real me. But then, my therapist, Margaret, suggests maybe it isn’t their fault. “Do you ever show them the real you, Kip?” she asked me.

Do I ever show myself the real me? I thought. Who is the real me? Isn’t that the existential question? The same question posed in the ancient Vedas?

I can hear the two conspirators whispering now. Do they think I can’t hear them? The study door is paper-thin—another reason why I’ve nailed up the two-by-four planks. I hear every word they’re saying: Ben wonders if I’m taking our breakup too badly. Concha says she’s been worried about me since last year. I’ve been getting more and more unstable as my Forster novel’s not getting sold, she says. “He’s completely self-absorbed, Ben. Obsessed with nothing but that book.”

“I know, I know,” says Ben. “Do you think we should call his therapist? There’s something really off about this stunt of his. Manic. Nailing up boards over the door? Who does that?”

“I know, I know,” says Concha. “And only eating crackers for three weeks?”

“Maybe we should take him to Bellevue,” says Ben. I bet he’s deepening those vertical furrows between his fifty-six-year-old brows, his “empathy marks.” I can practically see his pale, freckly face. “Kip should probably be on medication. Maybe a mood stabilizer. I actually wonder if he’s becoming delusional.”

“Really?” says Concha. “Is it that bad?”

I shouldn’t have told Ben that Margaret recommended medication. But the truth is, Margaret actually set up an appointment for me to meet with a Dr. Brian Welch, a psychiatrist on Eighty-fourth and Riverside Drive. As soon as possible, she said. I was supposed to have the appointment today. But I don’t need to see Dr. Welch, and I don’t need medication. I just need to be published. There are some of us who know our raison d’être. Publication, that’s my cure!

With all their fuss outside the door, I’m realizing that domesticity is the enemy of Art. I should have planned this better. I should have gone away, stayed in a cheap motel somewhere off the New Jersey Turnpike. A Motel 6 in Elizabeth or East Brunswick. Artistic genius has come from New Jersey, after all: William Carlos Williams, Amiri Baraka, Bruce Springsteen. New Jersey would have been the best idea. Far away from home and loved ones. Loved ones are the most dangerous threat to one’s self-realization.

“Please, please, please bugger off! Both of you!” I finally shout through the door.

I hear the hysteria in my own voice. Are they right? Am I going mad?

There is a precedent for t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Part 1: The Very Last Englishman
• Part 2: The Body Electric
• Part 3: The Nowherian
• Part 4: The Great Plan
• Part 5: The Snow Men
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on the Cover
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher