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The People of Paper

4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 · rating details · 2,413 ratings · 374 reviews

THE PEOPLE OF PAPER is an astonishing debut novel about the anguish of lost love. Author Salvador Plascencia, a "once-in-a-generation talent" (George Saunders), weaves together the stories of a large cast of colorful characters, including: a disgruntled monk, a father and daughter, a gang of carnation pickers, and a woman made of paper.

Paperback, 256 pages

Published November 13th 2006 by Mariner Books (first published June 6th 2005)

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Mar 12, 2012 Megha rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews

tl;dr review: High on style and imagination, low on substance.

Salvador Plascencia wanted the People of Paper (PoP) to make a smashing impression at the party. He went to great lengths to pick a dazzling dress, right accessories, make-up and all that. While this made for an eye-catching presence, he forgot to hook PoP up with cue cards listing some interesting things to talk about that could have kept the guests enthralled.

The People of Paper suffers from being the author's first novel. Plascenci...more
tl;dr review: High on style and imagination, low on substance.

Salvador Plascencia wanted the People of Paper (PoP) to make a smashing impression at the party. He went to great lengths to pick a dazzling dress, right accessories, make-up and all that. While this made for an eye-catching presence, he forgot to hook PoP up with cue cards listing some interesting things to talk about that could have kept the guests enthralled.

The People of Paper suffers from being the author's first novel. Plascencia has this bag full of tricks which he is too eager to show off. In a novel that is a marriage of magical realism and meta-fiction, he fails to deliver a focused work.

My favorite thing about this book would be the imaginary world Plascencia had conjured up. The novel is full of strange and fascinating images. There are so many tiny bits - little girl's lime addiction, monk fifty-three, origami surgeon, baby Nostradamus - that are going to stay with me for a while. In terms of fantastical imagery, the closest comparison that I can think of - among the books I have read - would be Lanark.

Plascencia plays around quite a bit with form and structure. The characters wage a war against the tyranny of the omniscient narrator who wouldn't leave their private thoughts alone. Some characters walk out of the novel to meet the author. There is multiple viewpoint narration, multiple columns laid out on some pages, some completely blacked out sections, a few diagrams, some rectangular holes in the pages because the author didn't want a certain name in his novel. This meta-fictive finery lends a unique touch to the book. Most of all, Plascencia keeps it from looking like just an annoying gimmick.

All is fine and dandy so far. But the core premise of the novel is too flimsy to shoulder the whole book. Innovative style and all aside, I am one of those readers who are also interested in 'what the hell is this book about' aspect. If you want your book to be about loss and sadness, you have got to let us stay with a character for more than half a page at a time and connect with them. Drowning the already thin emotions in the shiny surface doesn't help.

One of the back cover blurbs says, "Calvino, Borges and Garcia Marquez will come to mind." Well sure, when you think Latin-American magical realist, you immediately think of Marquez. You think of meta-fiction, you think of Calvino. But those names are really difficult for anyone to live up to. Please don't go in expecting something at the same level, you will only be setting yourselves up for disappointment.(less)

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Feb 21, 2011 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, mcsweeneys

I don't know what to write about this book. Anything I say feels like a spoiler, even if it's not exactly one. The novel unfolds at the pace of the author and giving away anything feels like I'm making a decision about what you should or shouldn't know before the author thinks you should know something. TC Boyle gives a fairly good idea for the novel when he compares it to Calvino and Borges. Those names get thrown around a lot and most of the time they are big flags for a book being flashy with...more

I don't know what to write about this book. Anything I say feels like a spoiler, even if it's not exactly one. The novel unfolds at the pace of the author and giving away anything feels like I'm making a decision about what you should or shouldn't know before the author thinks you should know something. TC Boyle gives a fairly good idea for the novel when he compares it to Calvino and Borges. Those names get thrown around a lot and most of the time they are big flags for a book being flashy without substance, but in this case the book does live up to the comparison.

Someone named Natalie, who is friends with thirteen people I'm friends with, but not one of my friends made a comment on my rating for the book (I say rating because there was no review there yet, obviously, since I'm typing the review right now....) saying "What a gem this book was." And I think that is a very good description of the book too. If you're going to read this book I'd recommend reading it without reading any of the other reviews here, they are liable to give away anything about the book. Don't read the back of the book either, I didn't. And I couldn't read the back of the book I got from the library because of all the tape and stickers and libris shit that was affixed to it. I could basically only read the the TC Boyle comparison I mentioned above. I'd also recommend getting a copy of the original hardcover because it's nicer looking and there are words cut out of it and it's nice having the words cut out instead of just scribbled out as in the paperback. But reading the paperback won't diminish your enjoyment too much, and there are only a couple of words cut out so it's not too much of a gimmick.

But that isn't much of a review, or a recommendation. How will you know if the book is for you? I don't know, maybe if you like people like Borges and Calvino. Or maybe because you want to try reading a book that Natalie from Australia nicely describes as a gem.

This 'review' says very little about the book. Maybe I should try to say something constructive? It might be a five star book? How is that. There were parts of the book that I didn't think exactly worked, but I think it might have been my fault that I didn't get quite what the author was aiming to do, but those failings of mine didn't do very much to diminish my enjoyment of the book, it just made me give it four instead of five stars. If there were half-stars I would have given it four and a half. I'd given out too many five stars lately and I felt like I was giving them out too liberally, so I didn't bump this book up. Sorry Mr. Author.

(less)

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Jun 10, 2008 Imogen rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I guess everybody has a total boner for this one? I just thought it was fine, like it was everything that's good and bad and exciting and annoying about the McSweeney's scene. Like, does your mouth water at the prospect of a traditional (I say traditional like I'm talking about centuries of history, but really what I mean is that this reminds me a lot of 100 Years of Solitude), Latin American magical realist novel crossed with a more modern United States metafictional meditation on a failed rela...more I guess everybody has a total boner for this one? I just thought it was fine, like it was everything that's good and bad and exciting and annoying about the McSweeney's scene. Like, does your mouth water at the prospect of a traditional (I say traditional like I'm talking about centuries of history, but really what I mean is that this reminds me a lot of 100 Years of Solitude), Latin American magical realist novel crossed with a more modern United States metafictional meditation on a failed relationship? If that totally pumps your nads, then this is the book for you.

For me, I don't know. It went on and on, it felt kind of precious, and it used the expression 'lost love' a bunch of times. Which, I'm sorry, I wanted to get that tattooed on my knuckles when I was fourteen, but nowadays it's maybe the phrase more than any other that makes me think of- well- naive teenage romance. In the bad way. And I hate it when authors show up in their own books. It was annoying with Paul Auster, it remains annoying with Stephen King, and now I just don't care with Salvador Plascencia. Maybe one day I'll be super stoked about something metafictional, but I am not holding my breath.

At the same time though, there's really good stuff in there: the mechanical turtles, Merced de Papel, the girl who eats limes til her mouth rots, I love all that. I like the part where the real-life author kills his real-life ex in a few ways, just 'cause he can.

And I wanted to finish the book because I wanted to know what happened; but since I started reading Dean Koontz in fifth grade, I've felt pretty annoyed when an author hooks you with a good story, and then drags it out with annoying (or boring or pretentious) stuff for a hundred and fifty extra pages til you can get the payoff. Alex can just read the last page first and be done with it, but I don't have that in me.

Also: there are tricks of typography, razored out words, boxes of blacked-out ink over some passages, and other pomo meh whatever. My tolerance for that stuff varies depending on the day.

So... yeah. Compelling and annoying. Three stars. Next.

Wait, edit. I've been thinking about this all day. Ultimately I think what didn't work for me is, here is the premise of this book: 'a girl broke my heart, so I made a big ol' opus about my pain. Aren't I smart/great?' Whatever.(less)

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Sep 20, 2007 Matt Eckel rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anybody who's bored with reading

I got to meet Sal at a reading he gave at Skylight Books. He was touring the country with Eli Horowitz from McSweeney's (publisher). Sal is from El Monte and a bunch of his family and friends were at the reading. A lot of people were carrying heads of lettuce, which I didn't quite get. It was totally packed and even though I got there a little early, I had to stand way in the back. Sal read the selected excerpt, and then at a certain predetermined moment, members of the audience (the ones with t...more

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Dec 11, 2011 s.penkevich rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Seekers of creative new forms, metafiction fans, and kids who can't get over their ex

Shelves: metafiction

In the Cohen’s film Barton Fink, Barton (John Turturro) says he believes “that writing comes from a great inner pain.” Plascencia seems to also subscribe to this belief In The People of Paper, as the “great inner pain” felt by the author and all his creations is the impetus for their lives and actions. This novel pushes metafiction to new boundaries and does really unique things with form, however, the novel does have its share of pitfalls as Plascencia’s obsession with the “inner pain” begins t...more In the Cohen’s film Barton Fink, Barton (John Turturro) says he believes “that writing comes from a great inner pain.” Plascencia seems to also subscribe to this belief In The People of Paper, as the “great inner pain” felt by the author and all his creations is the impetus for their lives and actions. This novel pushes metafiction to new boundaries and does really unique things with form, however, the novel does have its share of pitfalls as Plascencia’s obsession with the “inner pain” begins to chafe on the reader after so long.

The Good
The story of The People of Paper follows Federico, his daughter and EMF, a Mexican gang of carnation pickers, as they wage war on Saturn for spying on their every move. As the story unfolds, countless strange characters pop up, from a women made of paper who sleeps around, a baby Nostradamus who sees all, and lead turtles just to name a few. Saying anything more about the plot, even the smallest detail, would give too much away as this novel employs a highly creative story and it would be a shame to ruin it. There really are a lot of good things going for this novel, as Plascencia wields some rather innovative tricks, literally cutting names out of the pages (actual holes where names should be), blackening out hidden thoughts, and allowing the author and characters to comingle with each other in a way that was very fresh and new to me. It was similar to O’Brian’s At Swim Two Birds, but taken to the next level with Plascencia actually being rebelled against by his own characters. Also, the form of the book changes with many chapters having Saturn’s part in one column on the left page while two different characters have the story told from their perspective in two separate columns on the right page. Pretty cool, eh? He also uses this technique wisely, using varying perspectives to gain further insight into situations and having the reader observe events in a jumbled fashion, often learning the end of an event before the beginning of it, while making sure not to let different perspectives overlap over the same anecdote. The book reads as highly surreal and magical, and the final scene is exciting and fascinating. All in all, this book is expertly written and thankfully the gimmick does not tire or wear too thin.

The (overwhelming) Bad
Plascencia tries his best to dazzle you with all his metafictional finery because the actual substance of his work is where the magic of the book really begins waning. As stated earlier, the inner pain felt by all the characters, and Plascencia himself, is what drives this novel. In its opening chapter, he crafts a quirky little metaphor of the book, showing art being brought about from pain and loss. Basically, a death drives a young boy to create magnificent art that literally takes on a life of its own, akin to Plascencia’s own goal with The People of Paper. The novel then takes the reader down rough winding roads of break-up stories and heartbreaks, one after the other repetitively to the point of obnoxious, showing how love cuts deep and drives us to commit many strange and depraved acts just to rid ourselves of its heavy burden. It reminded me of that friend at the end of high school who had a savage break-up and it was all fine to hear them out and console them and support them, but as time went on and they didn’t pick themselves up and move on, instead spinning the same forlornly tirade over and over, it begins to be irritating. That’s how this novel comes across after awhile; you may find yourself wanting to shake Plascencia by the neck and tell him to ‘get over it’ because you don’t need to hear about how sad his unnamed girlfriend leaving him makes him. Every character is a sack of tears slogging across the desert trying to free themselves from their inner pain, and maybe it’s just that I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t bemoan past heartache, but it really detracted from the book for me. Also, Plascencia finds it imperative to tell you about how his new girlfriend, who is more of a person to sex the pain of his ex away with, has a massive bush. He brings it up constantly. All these supposed ‘negatives’ I have brought up all do have their place in the novel and are part of what makes it good, but there is just a bit too much of it. The book left me wanting in a few other ways as well since this is a very surface novel. There is not much lying in wait beneath the words to be untapped and I felt there was so much emphasis on the flair of the book that the subtleties and depth was greatly sacrificed. This novel could have benefited from more editing and polishing, but it is important to keep in mind that this book is very experimental, so when parts don't seem to run smoothly or things fall apart slightly to give him some credit for being original.

Verdict
With this novel, you must take the good with the bad. There really are a lot of good aspects, from the stunning metafictional plot, the unique forms, and outrageous cast, but the novel never really rises out from the pit of love's despair. There is hope, but there is a near endless trail of incessant wailing to get there. If you are at a point in your life where it feels good to embrace heartache, and admittedly we all go through this phase, then this book is a perfect choice for you. Had I read this a few years ago it probably would have made a larger impact on me. It should also be noted that if you pick this up, try and find the hardcover published by McSweeny’s as it is a masterpiece of art on its own. This book is worth getting through for its metafictional form, but I would suggest At Swim Two Birds or, of course, Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler… as more fruitful options. While some may argue good writing comes from this “inner pain”, it should be noted that the William Faulkner-based character of the film Barton Fink responds to this statement by laughing in his face, relieving himself on the ground, and sauntering off down the road singing drunkenly. I do not wish to draw any conclusion from that myself, so take that as you will.
2.5/5
(less)

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Aug 30, 2009 Ethel Margaret added it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. It's on order from Skylight.

I read this at the insistence of a friend, who after reading the first four pages, emphatically enlisted others of us to read it as well. It's an engaging story that plays with the structure and process of literature, incorporating visual elements to good effect. The People of Paper is the meeting place of Magic Realism and Postmodernism. Avoid reading the back of the book — I think the experience of this one is enhanced by growing with the book.

Below are the notes I...more

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Oct 18, 2007 Darcy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: twentieth-century-novels, graphic-fiction-and-non-fiction

The People of Paper is a novel about writing a novel. It follows, at the beginning, two separate storylines that are in fact inseparable. Salvador "Saturn" Plascencia is an aspiring novelist whose girlfriend leaves him when it becomes apparent that he cannot balance the novel and his relationship with her. The second storyline involves the novel's characters, Froggy, Little Merced, Sandra, Federico de la Fe, etc. Living in El Monte, Federico de la Fe decides he can no longer stand the omnipresen...more The People of Paper is a novel about writing a novel. It follows, at the beginning, two separate storylines that are in fact inseparable. Salvador "Saturn" Plascencia is an aspiring novelist whose girlfriend leaves him when it becomes apparent that he cannot balance the novel and his relationship with her. The second storyline involves the novel's characters, Froggy, Little Merced, Sandra, Federico de la Fe, etc. Living in El Monte, Federico de la Fe decides he can no longer stand the omnipresence of Saturn, and creates EMF--an organization that declares war on omniscient narration. No longer do the members of EMF want Saturn watching all that they do. The two storylines eventually collide, as Saturn attempts to make sense of his novel and the decisions he must face in writing a fictional/autobiographical novel.

The first thing I thought of when I flipped open the book was Tristram Shandy. This isn't formatted, for one thing, like your "normal" novel--large chunks are blacked out, some pages are blank, one of the characters speaks in images. The People of Paper, not unlike TS, is a story utterly about narration. Narration switches from character to character, with pages generally divided into two columns, each column with a new narrator. So, for example, on page 29, sections of the story are narrated by Little Merced and a Glue Sniffer.

This novel is unlike anything else I have ever read, for what that is worth. I can't say what the novel is "about"--it is about, above all, the act of creating a literary work or literary subjects. It is also about mechanical turtles, a baby who forsees the future, past and present, a Catholic saint who is also a Mexican wrestler, a woman who purposefully infects her own body with bee poison, and a couple who spend their time breaking down the aphorisms of Napoleon Bonaparte.

An excerpt from the prologue:

Antonio split the spines of books, spilling leaves of Austen and Cervantes, sheets from Leviticus and Judges, all mixing with the pages of The Book of Incandescent Light. Then Antonio unrolled the wrapping paper and construction paper and began to cut at the cardboard and then fold.

She was the first to be created: cardboard legs, cellophane appendix, and paper breasts. Created not from the rib of a man but from paper scraps. There was no all-powerful god who could part the rivers of Pison and Gihon, but instead a twice-retired old man with cuts across his fingers.

Antonio was passed out on the floor, flakes of paper stuck to the sweat of his face and arms, unable to hear the sound of expanding paper as she rose. His hands were bloody, pooling the ink of his body on the floor, staining his pants. She stepped over her creator, spreading his blood across the polished floor, and then walked out of the factory and into the storm. The print of her arms smeared; her soaked feet tattered as they scrapped against wet pavement and turned her toes to pulp.(less)

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Jun 17, 2007 Xtina rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Metafiction can be offputting; its reflective trickery can read as self-absorbed and altogether too precious. But Plascencia somehow skirts this effect, developing characters--literal and figurative "people of paper"--that a reader can become absorbed in while remaining aware and appreciative of the craft behind their construction. It's study and fiction and memoir and book art rolled into one.

But here's the brain fuck: What's the significance if one knows--as I've been told is true by a person...more

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Mar 01, 2009 Nick rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: didn-t-finish

Kind of a funny book here from the people at McSweeney's. I should disclose I am not normally a McSweeney's fan. I'm not sure if I just 'don't get it', I'm a few rungs down on the 'hip ladder' or what. This book is kind of like if Joe Meno's 'The Boy Detective Fails' met up with Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation and they had a love child. And then they would incessantly read '100 Years of Solitude' as bedtime stories. Said lovechild would probably write this book.

I'll get back to this book when Mr. C...more

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Jun 03, 2007 chris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who like sarcastic stories about love.

I enjoyed this. It has a very non-linear style, with multiple narrators co-narrating the story simultaneously. There's also the fact that the plot is completely insane.
Characters flow in and out of reality, interacting with the narrator, with each other, and with historical figures on an equal plane that often makes no sense but also often connects in tagential ways that are interesting anyway. The same story is basically told on three different planes of existance, and they collide and depart a...more

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Feb 07, 2012 Andrea rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fans of One Hundred Years of Solitude

Amazing. Brilliant.

I would write a review, but someone else already said it better:
"Self-aware like Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveller. Magical like Marquez' 100 Years. Clever like Foer. Just reading the dust-jacket got me giddy. People of Paper lived up to it all."

All I can think of is starting over again as soon as I'm finished. I think I would be happy if this were the only book I had in my possession. It will definitely be on my list of favorites with One Hundred Years of Solitude...more

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Jun 04, 2012 Rayne rated it 5 of 5 stars

this wasn't the first piece of metafiction that i've read, but it is without a doubt the best. i fell in love with this book pretty early on in the story, and that love just kept growing and growing. everything is so perfectly woven together, and everything unravels beautifully towards the end. An absolutely wonderful little love story: imaginative, harrowing and emotional. The novel is outwardly surreal, but the characters provide an accurate portrayal of human behavior, especially in times of...more

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Aug 13, 2007 Jenny rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Lillian

Shelves: fiction

magical, sad and painfully well-played, this lovely meta-ish novel grips, smacks and coddles with all manner of dreamy metaphors and the unrelenting allegories of the plots and subplots. there's enough reality, even with these devices, to make the book, all about heartbreak, a total heartbreaker. i read it at my friend lilly's house over last thanksgiving in tacoma, so i associate it with her army of teas, napping with buster and leather the cats, and the rainy northwest coast. but most of the n...more

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Oct 05, 2007 Chelsea rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: the lead character in the science of sleep

this book is absolutely amazing.
a little like following a gang of children as they collectively tell a tale of wonder while you're wondering how they've seen so much of life already. maybe it's the innocence and hope, intermingled with indescribable & utterly perplexing sadness.

written in columns by character perspective, drawing on rich imagery of flower harvesting and astrological intervention, and utilizing the tormented, love abandoned heart, salvador deftly mesmerized me.. in such a w...more

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Sep 25, 2012 Liviania rated it 5 of 5 stars

THE PEOPLE OF PAPER is not an easy book to describe. You can throw around terms like 'postmodern' and 'magical realism' to try to get a grip on it. While both of those are accurate, they're too small for THE PEOPLE OF PAPER. It's a highly experimental novel, ambitious, a mesh of fiction and fact, a meditation on art, the debut of Salvador Plascencia, and it should be a total mess. There is a character whose name is cut out of the book. But it's a mesmerizing work that exceeds its ambition and st...more

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Aug 19, 2012 Eric Sasson rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the most imaginative and original novels I've ever had the pleasure of reading, Plascencia mixes fable, magic realism, meta-fiction and brutal emotional honesty in what may very well be the ultimate break-up novel. Federico de La Fe's wife leaves him when he wets his bed. Left with his daughter Little Merced, he organizes the flower pickers of El Monte to wage war against the omniscient planet Saturn, which de La Fe claims is bringing the lives of everyone down by watching over everything...more

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Aug 27, 2011 Zoelle rated it 5 of 5 stars

I am literally obsessed with this book. It was one of three books I included in my thesis on the response of contemporary experimental print literature to the digital threat. It is a beautiful, moving exploration of the place of the author; the transience of paper, narrative and relationships; and so, so many more things. This book made me cry by cutting a whole in a page. That shouldn't even be possible. I cannot say enough wonderful things about this incredible book. Admittedly, I've also spen...more

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Feb 21, 2010 Moira Burke rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: for-recommendations, favorites

"What to say about such a sweeping, poignant novel? Like Don Quixote this is a bit of a meta-novel, with recursively embedded plots and characters learning of their existence from other characters who've read the book. Like House of Leaves, text is printed at odd angles and sections are blacked out; here holes are even punched in the pages. Yet above the unconventional typesetting is the riveting writing, and above the writing is the inescapable theme: the battle against sadness. Selected passag...more

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Jul 07, 2009 Rachel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature, booky-babes-club

Cool book! You know how you like the playful post-modern meta-ness of authors like Dave Eggers (or maybe you don't), but sometimes it feels gimmicky and cheap? Maybe it seems like that whole thing has been explored and we should all just move on?

Well, Salvador Plascencia convinced me that there is plenty of new post-modern territory to be explored. In The People of Paper, the meta-story gradually precludes, then becomes part of the "story," as the characters begin to realize they are being toyed...more Cool book! You know how you like the playful post-modern meta-ness of authors like Dave Eggers (or maybe you don't), but sometimes it feels gimmicky and cheap? Maybe it seems like that whole thing has been explored and we should all just move on?

Well, Salvador Plascencia convinced me that there is plenty of new post-modern territory to be explored. In The People of Paper, the meta-story gradually precludes, then becomes part of the "story," as the characters begin to realize they are being toyed with, and wage a war against "the commodification of sadness" - as in, the use of tragic events by an author to create an interesting novel.

Could this be incredibly cheesy? Yes. Is it totally new? No. But Placencia's fanciful touch and the way he completely embraces his concept, especially in the visual display of the print, make the whole thing work incredibly well on so many different levels.

For instance, as the characters try to block their thoughts from the omniscient narrator, big gray blobs literally block parts of their first-person narratives. Yes, there are some Eggers-style drawings, but the crazy typesetting and columns have a purpose and symbolism of their own. The multi-column chapters show three perspectives at once, and the columns themselves begin to take on greater significance as physical constructs to be destroyed (as in the story of Samson, alluded to in the book).

The author makes no attempt to hide the fact that events in the "story" are closely modeled after (what I presume to be) his own life, the meta-story. The recurring themes of the man, heartbroken and abandoned by woman, self mutilation as a way of dealing with pain, lips that are cut and mouths sore, people and towns that easily disintegrate and crumble... these seem to recur over and over. But rather than make the book seem repetitive, in just reflects the obsessions of the author and his meta-story.

So the meta-ness is not just there for the sake of being "meta", but much like in Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the quirky form and po-mo playfulness are directly related to the plot and characters. Beautifully done, you just have to hold it in your hands and experience it.(less)

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Feb 11, 2009 Vijay rated it 4 of 5 stars

fact that this made me endure hating the first 70 pages isn't to be taken lightly. Maybe I got used to the tone of the book, or maybe it actually changed, I can't really tell, but I seriously considered just giving it back to the library; boy would that have been a mistake. I also won't give it 5 stars because it's just not really worth it.

If I had to sum this novel up, I'd say it's a novel filled to the brim with graphological and metafictional acrobatics, but it's all about love love love. O...more

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Dec 26, 2012 Mehlika rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: ayrıcalığı-hakedenler

sanırım hepimizin kederi alt etme yöntemleri farklı, yanıklar,kağıt kesikleri, arılar; ama bir yandan da "kederden besleniyoruz". bir arkadaşım aşık olduğu zamanlar-platonik olarak diyelim- acıkmadığından bahsetmişti. bunlar hep keder

not:keder piramidi ve daha fazlası için
yayınevinin blogundan

http://sireninsesi.blogspot.com/searc...

bu da benden

http://sonresminarkasi.blogspot.com/2...

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May 09, 2011 Maren rated it 1 of 5 stars

If McSweeney's were a person, I would shove his/her (to be gender-fair about it) head in a toilet, make a YouTube video about it and hopefully gain riches and fame out of the ensuing millions of fans who were just too afraid to state openly that they, too, despise everything about McSweeney's. Including its progeny -books like The People of Paper.

Lest you think I am just a hateful person, let me explain. My problem with this book is multifold and not just purely irrationally generating from my...more If McSweeney's were a person, I would shove his/her (to be gender-fair about it) head in a toilet, make a YouTube video about it and hopefully gain riches and fame out of the ensuing millions of fans who were just too afraid to state openly that they, too, despise everything about McSweeney's. Including its progeny -books like The People of Paper.

Lest you think I am just a hateful person, let me explain. My problem with this book is multifold and not just purely irrationally generating from my hatred of McSweeney's and the current state of PoMo (maybe all PoMo?) literature in general:

1. It plays with magic realism - win! Well, normally. The obvious comparison because the writer is South American as are the characters, but it pretty much ends there for me. Which leads me to point two -
2. Two-dimensional characters who exist only as a compendium of overly-written details, rather than fully-integrated personalities. Marquez' novels, while "fantastical" in nature (not in the genre but the departure from reality sense), always always always maintained compassion for and a commitment to their characters. Enough so that he could create an entire novel around only three people and still manage to make their singular and utterly universal/unoriginal problems interesting.
3. Speaking of unoriginal and uninteresting problems, this novel has one and it never made me care. In fact, the combination of Saturn's wholly pedestrian reaction to being abandoned by his ex ("cunt" repeated over and over again) was significantly less charming when juxtaposed against the pretentiousness of what he was writing. His self-pity was neither charming nor relatable especially since I didn't care at all about any of the people in the novel, because neither did he. The novel-in-novel conceit was ultimately the book's most damning feature because the writer was a unrivaled narcissist and emotional adolescent.
4. The characters. Oh, the characters. They eat limes until their mouths bleed, burn themselves and sting themselves with bees. While I'll concede that this works as a series of explorations on how human beings torture themselves to feel or not to feel in the wake of unrequited love, every character's narrative had the same exact voice and the same reduction from person to quirk. They're all fractured explorations of the same thing but not a single one of the characters really stands out as different from the other and I was totally bored trying to keep track of them all and how quickly the narrative would switch from one to the other.
5. I am biased. I have a knee jerk reaction to novels that do away with the typical format of telling a story for the sake of doing so. NOT because I think it can't be done well but because it can and when it is it is one of the most powerful things ever written. To really do something like this well, though - to reject linear storytelling, cohesive narrative, three-dimensional characters and a separation of writer and characters - takes immense talent because, along the way, you still have to capture your reader's hearts and minds and alienating tactics like the above make that all the more difficult. I never was engaged in the story because the book couldn't work on any level for me other than as an interesting, cerebral, think-piece; something to show off in McSweeney's (for whom admission to the publication seems predicated on using what another reviewer called 'bells and whistles' over just plain good storytelling). I can hear people who love McSweeney's crying that, no, all these bells and whistles are more than that. They're a way of telling the story the way the story demands and that's why the form is what it is (because content dictates it). This content - for me - didn't. The sub-characters (or only characters, depending on how you view Saturn and everyone else) were totally irrelevant to me as a reader. Once the "ah-hah!" moment happened, everyone quickly turned into the metaphors and symbols I had sneakily always assumed them to be and they became even less compelling as PEOPLE.

And maybe that's the way this book needed to be told. And I wish I could have two sets of scales - one for the "virtuosity" of the novel, which I would hate to give 4 or 5 stars to but would probably have to so as not to feel irrational and one for the enjoyment or overall aesthetic value of the novel, which I would still rank as a 1, because the novel as a whole is incomplete. Saturn is a whiny 14 year old and the novel's characters, in trying to deal with the pain of lost love ended up turning to the kind of specific quirks (honeybees, limes, etc. see above) that are the signature of PoMo literature that fails; because even though this author did what he set out to do and convinced me of the interlocking Russian Dolls'-esque turn of the narrative, ultimately Saturn/the writer's hand was too much all over things and I ended up feeling exactly as the characters themselves did: suffocated and ready to wage a battle with lead to get Saturn out of my head. (less)

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Jul 15, 2009 Alfredo Sabillón rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book has three parts. The first, a tale of the borderlands told with the same fabulousness that has been attributed novels of the Latin American Boom in the 1960s. In the second part, the hints of metafictionality from the first part tear through to the foreground, where the characters, the author, and the reader become engaged in a War declared against Saturn (explicitly a signifier for the author) and third-person omniscient narration. The third part resolves everything quite chaotically,...more

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Oct 15, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of flaws

Shelves: 2011

What an amazingly charming book. It's disarming and inventive, it will keep your mind flexible while you read it. Even the layout of the text is a part of the story, sometimes in columns, sometimes in chapter format, sometimes with text cut out. The story is told in narration style by a number of characters, including a mechanical tortoise. It is about big things, war and lost love. There are big ties with Mexico and Southern Cali. The people who are a part of this story have a number of quirky...more

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Apr 18, 2013 Ana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: couldn-t-understand

Well, I would say it was a wonderful book! If it just hadn't been so hard to read it..! In my edition of the book, some parts are written on the side, some chapters are blank, and I understood that this is how the author wanted it to be, but it made reading it a bit harder. The story was great, and I really love how the author writes, it gives you a feeling of a different reality when you read it, because it seems so serious! Anyways, great book!

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Dec 18, 2008 Jamie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Moses has been telling me to read this book forever, but when I peeked through and saw it had a pention for crazy formatting, yet was nearly three hundred pages long, such a commitment seemed...daunting. Formats given to whimsy in a short story are one thing--I love a weird poem or some strange accent or voice...but The People of Paper...is a total rabbit hole of a book: entire pages are blacked out, names literally CUT from the paper, and sometimes moving the book from vertical to horizontal is...more Moses has been telling me to read this book forever, but when I peeked through and saw it had a pention for crazy formatting, yet was nearly three hundred pages long, such a commitment seemed...daunting. Formats given to whimsy in a short story are one thing--I love a weird poem or some strange accent or voice...but The People of Paper...is a total rabbit hole of a book: entire pages are blacked out, names literally CUT from the paper, and sometimes moving the book from vertical to horizontal is required.

Additionally, as a person who relies deeply on character analysis, I balked at the idea of what I assumed would be kitchy, almost sarcastic characters, "the Baby Nostradomas," who speaks in blacked out passages," or the Frankensein-like inventer of paper organs who makes an orgami partner for himself instead.

But, the cover has always been really gorgeous, and Moses and I have never really had a chance to share a book, so...I thought I'd try and probably re-shelf it promptly. Instead, I couldn't put it down and it lived in my handbag, despite weighing a good couple of pounds.

For starters, I've never read anything by a Mexican author before. The cultural references were entirely uncharted territory, but, like everything else of local color, it was tremendously interesting. Adobe and limes, citric poisioning, potions and Guadalajara--it was like Maurikami without the Japanese aspect.

Of course, my favorite aspect was Marced de Papier (Papir? I took French, not Spanish--and the book's not with me, sorry), combined with the realization (and it took a LONG time), that the author was all-seeing, and the characters knew and resented him for it--hence, De La Fe's war on Saturn.

Naturally, Moses rolled his eyes at my stupidity on several occasions--at my brow-furrowing questions of "bees? Who lets bees sting them all over?" and "is a mechanical turtle a car but they don't know the difference?" It took quite a while to come to terms with the "no analegies required" method of Plascencia's writing. If he says mechanical tortise, he means it...if he says people consumate via a small hole in adobe, then they do.

But all in all, there was something strangely resistant about this novel--an essence that went beyond even what I think the author intended. The people of the EMF hate Saturn, and Saturn hates himself and sadness prevails, but there is good, too--triumphing even when Pascencia seems beaten down. The anger is always so heated, so full of life, beating out even the tangible sadness--the women are scorned and angry--to the end, the prophetic baby is all knowing, yet silent, so the future can play out and Saturn is not undermined, and even Little Merced--dead from her beloved limes, rises up (with swamp breath and limited powers of omission, sending her back to the begining,) still standing.

Plascencia was, at the heart of everything, still very young sounding and incredibly boyish. His light-hearted jab at being "Saturn," yet still being Sal, who can't get his ex to return his calls or even really "kill" his rebound in ink sucessfully, is humorous, despite everything. And though he is sad--sad to the core of his being, he's still SO alive that the novel is worth reading for story, not to mention the undeniable talent of the writing itself.

It is not often that I say I am truly IMPRESSSED with a book--not so much the story, although it was great, but honestly, the prose. The idea that Plascencia wove such chaos together, and then manages to untangle it again, to a degree, for a finish, is utterly astounding--and his weird notions and fanciful ideas--a woman of paper who will not leave even a piece of her lovers marring her skins once they have been left behind--is so beautiful, so intricate and thoughtful a character, that I have to say I find the author astounding.

Completely self-aware, yet still so..vulnerable and with a sense of wraith and scorn only the young-ish can maintain, I am and always will be in awe of this novel. I first imagined the crazy format to be a tactic to pull someone with a sense of style through a book--the beautiful cover and inked out passages seemed so...typical of a book you buy for show and can't muddle through. Plascencia didn't NEED them, he used them because they came from the soul of that book. It is BETTER with the strange formatting, but it doesn't rely on it to propel a reader.

So why not the last star? It's hard to say. Something holds me back. Makes me think a part of it was lucky--the raw tear that yanks through this novel...or maybe it's just that it couldn't go on forever?(less)

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May 16, 2011 Rachel Rochester rated it 4 of 5 stars

I think I may have had unrealistic expectations of this book. It was so popular that for the last couple of years, every time it came up in conversation, people would ask, "You haven't read that yet?" I suppose I was saving it for a rainy day when I needed a really wonderful book. It wouldn't be fair to say The People of Paper disappointed, because it is a fabulous, inventive book. That being said, certain aspects of it rang hollow.

At certain times, this book read like a confession, and it somet...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Cameling rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fanatasy

Reading this reminded me a little of Murakami's The WindUp Bird Chronicles in terms of the surrealism. There was a time when people were made of paper. A boy's cat is butchered and the grieving boy revivifies his cat by making paper organs and becomes the world's first origami surgeon. A woman is made of paper while her creature is left with multiple paper cuts all over his hands. A baby Nostradamus is born. A man loses his lime eating wife because he can't stop wetting the bed, and decides to t...more

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Aug 22, 2011 Mike Polizzi rated it 3 of 5 stars

I lost my copy bout 2/3 of the way through. I'm interested in finishing-- mainly due to the strength of the beginning. Plascencia builds a series of parallel worlds on a number of metaphors that seem scattered and incoherent, but each has a kind of folksiness to it that lets you know he's playing with the perception of Mexican identity in America. Robot tortoises, wars with saturn, gangs who cut flowers-- all interesting. So too are the paper automata who wander in and out of the action or the p...more

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Aug 07, 2011 Gina rated it 4 of 5 stars

What a well-done contemporary book! As my co-worker put it, this book is successfully unpretentious. The fantastical story lines conjure up thoughts of magical realism, which has peaked my interest. Perhaps I will look for more books that are labeled under that genre. For the most part I enjoyed the multitude of voices, but did get confused at the end when minor characters reappeared and I struggled to remember how the character fit into the whole story. I love books that push the boundaries of...more

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About Salvador Plascencia

Salvador Plascencia is an American writer, born 1976 in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The Plascencia family eventually settled near Los Angeles in the city of El Monte when he was eight years old. Plascencia holds a B.A. in English from Whittier College and an MFA in fiction from Syracuse University. The recipient of a National Foundation for Advancement of the Arts Award in Fiction in 1996 and the Peter Ne...more

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Quotes from The People of Paper

“I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds– but I think of you always in those intervals.” — 610 people liked it

“One day I will forgive you; until then there are scabs everywhere that you have touched me.” — 49 people liked it

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