Jason has
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| # | cover | title | author | isbn | isbn13 | asin | num pages | avg rating | num ratings | date pub | date pub (ed.) | rating | my rating | review | notes | recommender | comments | votes | read count | date started | date read |
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date purchased | owned | purchase location | condition | format | ||
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| 0982860188
| 9780982860182
| 0.00
| 0
| Jun 15, 2013
| Jun 15, 2013
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) (Originally written for the Billings Gazette, and reprinted here with their kind permission.) It's become almost a cliche by now, the rich and famous who build upper-class rural estates in Montana so to "get away from it all," unfortunately instead bringing it all with them to the consternation of locals; so it would make sense that writers would find it interesting to fashion novels out of such a dramatic conceit, like Billings author Russell Rowland has done in his latest, High and Inside, his third book after multiple best-of-the -year picks In Open Spaces and The Watershed Years. And Rowland adds to the drama by making this a redemption story too, not just a famous person moving to Montana but an infamous person fleeing there -- disgraced major-league pitcher and raging alcoholic Pete Hurley, that is, whose drunken errant pitch that ended the career of a saintly Dominican up-and-comer has inspired a national movement towards more safety in baseball, and who on top of everything else also accidentally paralyzed his girlfriend after they both took an unluckily serious tumble while in a blackout fugue. Hurley has come to Bozeman not necessarily for its charms, but merely to get as far away from everyone else as he can, although he's convinced himself that he's come so to accomplish the pipe dream of building an entire house by himself; but that's what gives us one of the first clues as to how damaged he actually is, in that he has an almost comical lack of knowledge about tools or construction, just one of the many elements (including haranguing in-laws, a sexy but tough neighbor, and a three-legged dog) that keeps our anti-hero on his wobbly toes throughout the course of this tragicomedic novel. And to be sure, we're supposed to have an ambivalent attitude towards our hard-to-love protagonist; a runaway addict still in deep denial, Hurley has the habit of making things even harder on himself by picking drunken fights with the people who could've helped him the most (for example, the city employee in charge of approving and overseeing construction projects, standing in for every local who's ever gotten angry at an encroaching outsider), as well as scaring his young nephews on a regular basis and creeping out females in a whole variety of different ways. And that's of course a big part of this novel's entire point, to show our hero at his worst so that we can follow along as he gets better, a classic bottoming-out story but with a lot more than usual at stake. Rowland handles such a story with a lot of aplomb and maturity, turning in a novel by turns funny and serious that takes its time getting to its point. But unfortunately, High and Inside has its problems too, in a few cases pretty big ones that pull the book's overall enjoyment level down a couple of notches. Chief among them, for example, is Rowland's habit to trust neither himself nor his audience and turn in many moments too broadly; after all, this is a man who not only caused one of the most horrific injuries in the history of baseball because of his drinking problem (a 100-MPH pitch straight into a man's eye socket), but then just a few months later permanently paralyzed his girlfriend, a bit of an overkill when all is said and done, and there are multiple other examples here of Rowland sometimes going too big, or sometimes too sentimental, or sometimes too melodramatic. Plus, he's chosen some details for his characters and settings that can sometimes approach hackneyed from overuse; and like a lot of authors of more slowly paced stories, Rowland has a habit of sometimes including entire scenes that only exist to spell out little inconsequential niceties ("And then they had dinner, and then they engaged in small talk, and then everyone went home") that ultimately have nothing to do with either the plot or the characters' growth. All in all, though, High and Inside was an enjoyable read, as long as you keep your expectations reasonable going into it, a solid character study that shows off the Montana culture and landscape in an engaging way. It comes somewhat recommended to a general audience, and more to those who specifically enjoy good stories about addiction and recovery. Out of 10: 8.1(less) | Notes are private!
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| Jun 18, 2013
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Jun 18, 2013
| Paperback
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| 9781939987082
| 3.91
| 11
| May 27, 2013
| May 27, 2013
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This is CCLaP's newest book, being released on May 27th. At that point I will get a more substantial essay posted here, all about the book and why I d...more
This is CCLaP's newest book, being released on May 27th. At that point I will get a more substantial essay posted here, all about the book and why I decided to sign it in the first place. We'll be making a strong push towards getting copies of the book into the hands of every person who adds this to their library, so I hope you'll have a chance to do so in the coming weeks.(less)
| Notes are private!
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| May 10, 2013
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May 10, 2013
| Hardcover
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| 1934081388
| 9781934081389
| 4.33
| 6
| Nov 01, 2012
| Nov 01, 2012
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) In my half a decade of reviewing indie literature now, the one great small press that I think most gets overlooked is the fantastic Casperian Books; for while they always pick the most superb authors out there when it comes to the specific thing these authors are trying to accomplish, what this tends to be are smaller, more slowly paced character studies, which when combined with their lackluster covers tends to get them lost in the shuffle many times of the literal thousands of indie presses that now exist. Take Tom Mahony's Pacific Offering, for example, which doesn't offer up too many thrills from its actual storyline -- longtime surfer buddies take one last poverty-stricken road trip to Mexico to catch some waves, realizing along the way that they are growing too old to tolerate the recklessness of such trips anymore, and that their diverging lives are rapidly bringing an end to even their friendship, a serviceable enough plot but no great shakes. But when it comes to evoking the melancholy tone and feel that such a premise suggests, Mahony has few peers; and as someone who lives in the area and most likely has picked up the board a few times himself, he brings a real authenticity to this telling, and really pulls you in to the southern California coast and all its details in an engaging and impressive way. A quiet and winsome book but a compelling read, perhaps your life won't be changed by its small slice-of-life scope, but certainly you will be rewarded by this well-done loss-of-innocence tale. Out of 10: 9.0(less) | Notes are private!
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1
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| Apr 10, 2013
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Apr 10, 2013
| Paperback
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| 4.82
| 11
| Jul 21, 2012
| Jul 21, 2012
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This tender but surprisingly creepy coming-of-age tale exemplifies Mason's work in a nutshell -- charming yet edgy, funny yet dark, not quite indie-we...more
This tender but surprisingly creepy coming-of-age tale exemplifies Mason's work in a nutshell -- charming yet edgy, funny yet dark, not quite indie-weird but not quite mainstream-friendly -- and it was the strength of this particular piece that largely led me to signing him to my publishing company, for the even more powerful "Sad Robot Stories" coming out later this year. A major new young voice in the Chicago literary community, Mason's star is definitely on the rise these days, and this particular story is a fine example of why people go so nuts for his work. (less)
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| Mar 05, 2013
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Mar 05, 2013
| ebook
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| 0062099477
| 9780062099471
| 3.26
| 388
| Jun 12, 2012
| Jun 12, 2012
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Former Chicagoan Elizabeth Crane is just a little too good a personal friend for me to claim I could do an "objective" review of her newest book, last year's We Only Know So Much (BONUS: Listen to my 2007 podcast interview with Crane); but I wanted to get a mention of it up here anyway because I enjoyed it so much, another solid winner in what's always a delightful career. A contemporary human-interest dramedy firmly in the Franzen dysfunctional-family vein, the story is peopled with more eccentric weirdos than a Wes Anderson film -- the wife having an affair with a guy who then dies, the husband obsessed with getting Alzheimer's, the vapid daughter, the nerdy son, the senile grandfather and the pissy 98-year-old great-grandmother -- and Crane builds an interesting, event-filled plot for all of them to go through, the kind of entertaining and charming novel that sleeper low-budget Hollywood hits get adapted from. Given that Crane is mostly known at this point for her short stories, I love seeing her expand here into full novel territory, and this quiet yet sophisticated tale is sure to strike a chord with fans of Jennifer Egan and the like. Out of 10: N/A(less) | Notes are private!
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| Jan 16, 2013
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Jan 16, 2013
| Paperback
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| 193408137X
| 9781934081372
| 4.75
| 16
| Oct 01, 2012
| 2012
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Other small presses might get more publicity and do flashier things, but I have to say that I've been quietly impressed the last several years with the unassuming Casperian Books, and especially for their habit of picking up great little stories that would otherwise get lost in the shuffle because of their overly general subject matter. Take for example Candi Sary's highly readable Black Crow White Lie, which in synopsis form is a pretty generic dysfunctional-family coming-of-age tale -- namely, preteen boy deals with his alcoholic New Age single mother, who has convinced him that he has special supernatural healing powers, as they shuffle from one motel to the next among the seedier sections of southern California, while she disappears for days at a time to be with her boyfriend and drinking partner. But it's in the details where this book really shines, because Sary has a fine-tuned understanding of what makes a story like this work; among the little moments, that is, like the time Carson spends with a sympathetic tattoo artist in front of his Hollywood shop, or his dealings with the hard but cute girl at school he has a crush on, or his growing sense of empowerment over what seems to be a successful string of actual psychic healings, the truth of which we don't learn until the very end of the book. Eventually, though, this novel does build to a bigger climax, as the now thirteen-year-old Carson makes plans to cross the country by himself so to visit his dead father in a Washington DC military cemetery; and this too is handled in a very satisfying way, as Sary takes all these little character-building moments from before and applies them to what is suddenly a much grander plot, the final kicker that elevates this story above the multitude of only mediocre coming-of-age tales that now exist out there. A former semi-finalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, it's easy to see why such mainstream publications as Publishers Weekly has called this "praiseworthy [and] poignant," and I have to admit that this was one of the most emotionally satisfying reads I've had all autumn. It comes strongly recommended to one and all. Out of 10: 9.2(less) | Notes are private!
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| not set
| Dec 11, 2012
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Dec 11, 2012
| Mass Market Paperback
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| 067171693X
| 9780671716936
| 3.41
| 22
| 1961
| 1994
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) (In autumn 2012 CCLaP auctioned off a first-edition copy of Peter Ustinov's The Loser through its rare-book selling service [cclapcenter.com/rarebooks]. Below is the description I wrote for its listing.) Don't let anyone tell you any different -- Peter Ustinov was a great writer. And the reason some might say otherwise is of course that this British second-generation German/Russian immigrant was known primarily in his lifetime as an award-winning actor, while otherwise being literally the classic, slightly insulting definition of "dilettante" -- someone who dabbles in everything but isn't good at anything, including in Ustinov's case doing a children's album, penning a series of stage plays, directing several operas, being a fixture on American talk shows, starring in an improv radio comedy for the BBC, collecting rare cars, learning six languages, color-commenting on Formula One races, working for UNICEF, and being the passionate president of a prominent "world government" organization. And among these Renaissance Man activities, Ustinov was the author of a handful of novels, including 1960's The Loser, his very first; and for a man who was known by so many for his more wacky roles, he couldn't have picked a more serious subject to tackle for his first novel, charting the entire rise and fall of Germany's Nazi Party through the story of a random twenty-something citizen who got convinced to be one. After all, this came just 15 years after the end of World War Two, and right at the beginning of the countercultural, twentieth-anniversary "naked new look" at exactly what had happened back then; so this was suddenly a very hot topic among society at large at the time Ustinov wrote this, a yearning among the generation right after the war (i.e. the Baby Boomers) to look at these events from their parents' youth, and to speak of both the complexities and atrocities in a way that the older generation simply didn't have the emotional capacity to do. And that's why I call Ustinov a deceptively great writer, because he takes a surprisingly complex look at what exactly went wrong in Germany in the 1920s and '30s to lead to so many millions succumbing so heavily to the dark side, not exactly sympathetic but more showing that any country back then could've suffered the same fate; in fact, that's where this multifaceted book starts, is with a hefty indictment of all the parties involved with the apocalyptic farce known as World War One, which both the winners and the losers had treated at first like any other of the six-month regional skirmishes they were constantly fighting throughout the Victorian Age, but then with neither side willing to eat crow and finish the damn thing once casualties reached the millions because of the unforeseen innovations that the Industrial Age brought to mass killing. Wounded as a nation, then, overly punished by the winning Allies, with a fascist-friendly culture that had been obsessed with the military and nationalism for an entire half-century, the main narrator of The Loser is a typical young German named Hans symbolically born right at the end of the Great War, literally raised since birth in a culture that could easily breed a party of thugs like the Nazis, with the rest of this novel basically a look at what exactly developed among society there back then to make things turn first as ugly then as nihilistic as they did. A sweeping saga that takes us through several battlefronts before delving into surprising plot turns in Italy, Ustinov's dry, sometimes harrowing novel ends with the question of whether any German raised in such a way would ever have the capacity to be normal, productive members of society again; and the dark answer here is, "Eh, not really," an assessment that panned out in the real world as well, in that Germany was unable to rise even incrementally as a cultural, economical and humanitarian force in the world again until all the way in the 1970s, not coincidentally when all the middle-agers who had lived through the war started dying off, and their positions of power taken over by an entire new generation of radically liberal, green-friendly children. Ustinov was pretty brilliant to be able to lay all this out in such a simple yet powerful way, and this surprisingly great novel will be a welcome treat to those interested in the war, German history, and forgotten gems of Mid-Century Modernist literature. (less) | Notes are private!
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| Oct 25, 2012
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Oct 25, 2012
| Paperback
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| 0983969701
| 9780983969709
| 3.70
| 30
| Oct 01, 2012
| Oct 01, 2012
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Regular readers will remember Robert Jacoby, who last year gave us the interesting sailing oral history Escaping from Reality Without Really Trying; and now Jacoby has a new book out, a fictional novel this time, entitled There Are Reasons Noah Packed No Clothes and concerning the manytimes dysfunctional ways that enforced mental institutions for teens were still working even up to the early 1980s. But alas, although this is a well-written book with a deft stream-of-consciousness touch, which will strongly appeal to those specifically seeking out the subject, unfortunately its Out of 10: 7.5(less) | Notes are private!
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| Oct 24, 2012
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Oct 24, 2012
| Paperback
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| 0983927146
| 9780983927143
| 3.00
| 1
| Apr 13, 2012
| Apr 13, 2012
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Although I admire the attitudes and goals of Sensitive Skin Books, I have to confess that so far I haven't particularly cared for any of the actual titles by them I've now read, with Carl Watson's Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming being a perfect example of this; because this tale of down-and-outers is not so much a three-act narrative story as it is an endless string of platitudes and cliches stretched one right after each other for 200 pages, which I find admirable in theory but tiring to actually read. An old-school ode to lumpen-proletarians that shambles without structure from one biker bar and drug den to the next, as our hero takes a Beat-inspired road trip without much of a destination or even purpose, it's this chain of tropes that is precisely the book's main problem; for while Watson is to be commended for admiring and mimicking the typical Mid-Century-Modernist countercultural rambling anti-hero tale, it's also important to note that this type of tale is now edging on 60 years old, and has been so repeated so many times over the decades that simply doing a good job at it is no longer enough to make for a compelling piece of fiction. Well done for what it is, and absolutely a heartfelt ode to the fringes of our society, it unfortunately doesn't bring a single new thing to a story type that most of us have now seen hundreds and hundreds of times, and it should be kept in mind before picking up a copy yourself. Out of 10: 7.5(less) | Notes are private!
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| Oct 17, 2012
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Oct 17, 2012
| Paperback
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| 0451525981
| 9780451525987
| 3.81
| 441
| 1929
| Apr 01, 1995
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) (CCLaP's rare-book service [cclapcenter.com/rarebooks] recently auctioned off a first edition, first printing copy of Sinclair Lewis' 1929 Dodsworth. Below is the write-up I did for the book's description.) Poor Sinclair Lewis! Once one of the most celebrated writers on the planet, for an unprecedented string of commercial hits in the 1920s making vicious fun of the bored, corrupt, empty-headed middle class of the American Midwest, all of them turned into bestsellers precisely by the self-hating middle-classers he was making fun of, Lewis' career went quickly sour upon the start of the Great Depression, when these suddenly broke middle-classers found themselves being punished enough by life in general, and no longer needed his finger-wagging to produce the painless punishment that was assuaging their guilt throughout the "Roaring Twenties." But now that we're about to approach the centennial celebrations of these early hits, it's time that a new cultural assessment of Lewis be made, and that he be acknowledged as a sharp futurist who has a lot to say about our own times; because in reality you can strongly argue that he was the Jonathan Franzen of his times, a critically adored author (the first American writer in history to win the Nobel Prize, for example) who nonetheless heavily employed the pop culture and slang of his day in order to create devastating indictments against the consumerism, celebrity worship and herd mentality surrounding him, eaten up in the millions by the very people most guilty of the behavior, because they're able to recognize in these indictments every single person they know besides themselves, the problem that led to the Great Depression just as surely as it did in our own times to the 2008 Economic Meltdown. Dodsworth was the last of these great hits, released just a few months before the stock market crash of 1929, and in a nutshell can be called "Lewis meets Henry James;" centered around Sam Dodsworth, the fifty-something founder of the hugely successful car manufacturer in Zenith* who has just sold the entire thing to a thinly disguised General Motors, now that he's "retired" his forty-something wife convinces him to go on an old-fashioned Grand Tour of Europe, just like rich Americans have been doing since the Victorian Age if they want to consider themselves truly cultured. (And note, by the way, that this would be the last period in history that this would be true, one of the many elements that makes this almost more important now as a historical document than as a piece of popular fiction; after the destruction of Europe and the ascendency of America at the end of World War Two, the global headquarters of culture quickly shifted to the US and specifically New York, and it suddenly became passe among rich Americans to take European grand tours anymore.) The simple plot, then, follows the same structure as so many of Lewis' novels from the '20s; our narrator starts as the living embodiment of whatever Lewis is trying to criticize (in this case, the business-focused, proudly ignorant American, forced on an unending parade of interchangeable cathedral visits and appalled by the lack of modern creature comforts now taken for granted in nearly every large American city), but after being exposed to the good things from that new environment (including, as always, the potential love of an enticingly independent modern woman) he slowly becomes a convert, just to be shunned by his former peers as pressure to "return to the fold." And as mentioned, this is perhaps why collectors are best off thinking of this as an important historical document, rather than to focus on its admittedly only so-so quality as a novel; because given that Sam's payment for Dodsworth Motors would've likely been just a little cash but a whole lot of stock, it's fascinating to realize that in the real world, he would've been bankrupted just a few months after the events of this book take place, and that he suddenly would have a whole lot more to worry about than pompous Brits, brash expats, and how all those dirty artists in the Left Bank were always getting in his way. That's the treasure of this book in general, that it's a snapshot of a moment in history right before an unexpected period of tremendous upheaval, with none of the characters (nor even the author) even remotely aware that such upheaval is about to take place; note for example Sam's ho-hum attitude towards the pre-power Fascists he meets in Europe, or how one of the biggest sources of conflict is whether Sam is going to accept the high-powered VP position of the new conglomerate at home next year, or blow another million on staying at five-star hotels across the Continent for yet another year, a much more historically naked treat than any revisionist "winds of change" novel written after the fact. Lewis' fans in his own lifetime turned on him for this, but it's time that we restore the respect and fame he deserves for being such an astute prognosticator; and with this copy of Dodsworth being auctioned at a deliberately low starting bid to encourage an actual sale, this is a fine choice for a collector who wishes to "beat the odds" before this re-lionization of Lewis takes place next decade. *For those who don't know, Lewis set many of his novels in the fictional Midwestern state of Winnemac, which was supposed to be sorta southish of Michigan and sorta northish of Indiana and Ohio; and Winnemac's version of Detroit or Cleveland or St. Louis was the industrial powerhouse of Zenith, where so many of his stories specifically take place. In fact, in Dodsworth Lewis makes almost a science-fiction author's amount of insider references to his now expansive alt-reality, name-dropping in casual conversations such former characters as George Babbitt and Elmer Gantry. (less) | Notes are private!
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| Sep 20, 2012
| Oct 16, 2012
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Sep 20, 2012
| Paperback
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| 188896314X
| 9781888963144
| 4.39
| 14,199
| 2004
| Nov 01, 2010
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) It was through CCLaP critic Oriana Leckert's write-up for her Jugs & Capes essay series last year (book version finally coming next week!) that first brought Jeff Smith's epic comic Bone to my attention, plus of course the fevered recommendations I'd sometimes hear from the edges of the comics-loving crowd around me; so when the Chicago Public Library recently acquired a copy of the full 1,500-page omnibus edition, I thought it was finally time for me to sit down and check it out myself. And oh, am I glad I did, for all the passionate fanboy things you hear about it is true; done by a guy who grew up with dual obsessions for Walt Kelly's Pogo and JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, it's a massive saga that combines both, the tale of three silly cartoon characters from "the next universe over" who stumble one day into the middle of a realistically drawn fantasy epic among the neighbors they never knew they had. So as such, then, there are a whole number of things going on here to admire, that don't sound like they'd go together in one book but somehow do -- the surrealistic expressive perfection of such 1930s cartoons as Krazy Kat and early Disney, the sweeping landscapes of representational drawing, a contemporary sensibility when it comes to dramatic highlights, all married to a story complex enough for a 1,500 page narrative -- and while I'm not a particularly obsessive fan of either Pogo or Lord of the Rings, I sure found myself becoming one of Smith's attempt to bring them together, a project that can be equally loved in a subtle, knowing way by adults (think of the difference between watching Chuck Jones at ten versus thirty) and in a straightforward, surface-level way by the actual ten-year-olds. (And indeed, in what has come as a shock to the indie-zinester creator, one of Bone's largest audiences has turned out to be actual kids, so much so that Scholastic recently paid a hefty sum for the reprint rights, and are spending the next decade re-publishing the entire run now in full color and marketed directly to pre-teens.) So then flush with heady excitement over this new find, I also pulled up on Netflix a documentary that's been made about Smith and the Bone phenomenon, 2009's The Cartoonist; although I'm happy to report that it turns out to be about a lot more than just that, in reality a great overlook at the entire indie-comics explosion that happened in the 1990s, everything from confessional art-school kids to a new superhero publisher, all the way to such hard-to-classify projects as Bone or Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. It turns out that Smith was part of a little clique of self-publishing cartoonists back then, who banded together in various smart ways in order to help each other stay afloat -- sharing expenses at conventions, promoting each other's work -- making this not just a narrow film about the comic itself and how it came about (although there's plenty of that too, including the revelation that Smith has been casually doodling the "Bone" characters since literally a child, and that in high school and college he really did put them through a series of adventures in their own world that are only briefly referenced in this newest epic), but also a bigger documentary about the DIY spirit, the changing face of small business, the trials and tribulations of self-publishing, and a lot more. Granted, the production values are not high -- it features lots of talking head shots, lots of personal offices being used as set backgrounds, and all the other things one associates with cheap quickie docs found in many DVD extras -- but the content more than makes up for it, especially when coming right on the heels of reading the book for the first time like I did. Both come very strongly recommended. (less) | Notes are private!
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| Sep 20, 2012
| Nov 07, 2012
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Sep 20, 2012
| Paperback
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| 1593765088
| 9781593765088
| 3.72
| 106
| Feb 12, 2013
| Feb 12, 2013
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) I was a big fan of Joshua Mohr's debut novel, Some Things That Meant the World to Me, back when I read it in 2010; and after another novel in 2011 that I missed, Damascus, I just had a chance to read his brand-new one, Fight Song by the now Counterpoint-owned Soft Skull Press, which I not only liked just as much but found a lot more entertaining. A Jonathan-Franzen-style comedy about the foibles of a dysfunctional family, for most of this book we are following the misadventures of our hapless hero Bob Coffen, a meek and overweight videogame developer who is dealing with a whole series of quirky situations -- a wife training to break the world record in water-treading, a female bodybuilder and fast-food attendant who also runs a "drive-thru speaker-sex" business on the side, a janitor who's also a guitarist for a French KISS cover band, and a New Age marriage counselor who's also a professional magician, among others. And in fact, Mohr's solid and mature handling of what could've been a a spiral down into B-movie mayhem reminded me many times of another book that got this balance really right, Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys; for like that novel, Mohr has a good grasp over believable and complex characters, but nicely spices it up with a considerable amount of absurdism and even sometimes outright slapstick. A book that will be a little too silly for some, it'll be perfect for existing fans of literary writers who do smart comedy right, from Tom Perrotta to Jane Smiley to John Irving, and is the novel that finally starts vaulting the talented Mohr up into the same ranks of all the people just mentioned. Strongly recommended. Out of 10: 9.4(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Aug 20, 2012
| Feb 14, 2013
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Aug 20, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 190655711X
| 9781906557119
| 4.67
| 6
| Oct 29, 2010
| Oct 29, 2010
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) At first, Peter Weissman's new memoir about the 1970s, Digging Deeper, can be a frustrating reading experience; apparently a sequel to a memoir about the '60s he wrote much sooner after the real events, which dealt mostly with a drug-induced mental illness he went through, this newest volume picks up right afterwards, and starts in the same kind of badly meandering, confused tone that I suspect the entire first volume was written in. Once he settles into his groove, though, Weissman finds a nicely anecdotal, quietly slow tone to it all, one that befits its setting among '70s intellectuals and former hippie burnouts now all living in various leftist meccas in the pre-Reagan years. (If you think of the deliberately languid pace of character-heavy cinema from these years, Weissman's book has much of the same feel.) Plus, although a running theme is his frustration over this memoir taking so long to write, it must be said that Weissman really benefits from the extended period of time between these events and now; it allows him to approach his retelling with a much more balanced attitude, be able to make critical comments about his own youthful behavior, and benefit from getting to foreshadow the cartoonishly conservative swing the country would take right afterwards. You'll need to be a certain type to really appreciate this unhurried story; but those who like the same kind of flowing literature that this '70s memoir talks about will be sure to love this as well. Out of 10: 8.4(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Jul 09, 2012
| Feb 26, 2013
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Jul 09, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0394756959
| 9780394756950
| 3.93
| 2,731
| 1944
| Mar 12, 1988
|
(As of July 2012, I am selling a first-edition copy of this book through the rare-book service at my arts organization, the Chicago Center for Literat...more
(As of July 2012, I am selling a first-edition copy of this book through the rare-book service at my arts organization, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com/rarebooks]. Here below is the description I wrote for its listing.) Written in the middle of World War Two and the winner of the 1945 Pulitzer Prize, this was just one of the many high points of the fascinating John Hersey's life, over the course of a long and eventful career. A missionary brat who learned to speak Chinese before he could speak English, he was eventually a Yale football star and once a private secretary to Sinclair Lewis, experiences which made him almost perfect to be a TIME magazine correspondent in Asia as well as Europe during the war, where among other heroics he survived four plane crashes and was commended by the Navy for evacuating freaking soldiers in Guadalcanal. He was most known in his own lifetime for the groundbreaking, hauntingly poetic reporting he did from the aftermath of Hiroshima, eventually assembled into an entire standalone issue of The New Yorker that officially kicked off both the term and era of "New Journalism," a public sensation (once read out loud by ABC Radio over two hours because the printers literally couldn't keep up with demand) that led directly to the first successes of other storytelling journalists like Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson a decade later. (Interestingly, New Yorker founder Harold Ross once called the publication of the Hiroshima issue the happiest moment of his professional life, while the event ruined Hersey's relationship with TIME co-founder Henry Luce, who felt that he should've offered it to sister publication Life magazine first*.) But before all that, though, was his first novel, 1944's A Bell for Adano, a thin fictionalization of an actual situation he stumbled across as a war correspondent during America's liberation of Italy. Set in one of the tiny Medieval fishing villages that dot the southern Italian coast, crucial as launching and resupply posts for the inward-bound Americans during the invasion, the book largely follows the fate of one Major Victor Joppolo, back home an Italian-American sanitation-department clerk in the Bronx but here the "temporary mayor" of Adano, essentially the mid-level officer in charge of such medium-term goals as rounding up all the remaining fugitive Fascists, replacing draconian local officials, getting the local judges and police working again, re-establishing infrastructure, food distribution, open commerce, etc. And that's essentially what the story is -- a charmingly slow-paced look at Joppolo's work in this chick-lit-worthy, impossibly magical little Mediterranean town, Hersey's point being to show people back home how the natural "get 'er done" resourcefulness of the average American, combined with the democratic freedoms that so many of us were dying for at that point in the war, repeated over and over in thousands of little situations like this one, was the key to the slow turn in tide that was happening in the war right around this time period. Although certainly "rah-rah U-S-A" in tone throughout, the obvious explanation for its Pulitzer win a year later, popular Broadway adaptation a year after that, and popular Hollywood movie a year after that, the book definitely has its fair share of darkness as well, moral ambiguity over how the town should even start approaching the job of punishing next-door-neighbors for being on the losing side of the war, and plenty of self-critical comments about the lousiness of some Americans over there; see for example the blustery "General Marvin," plainly modeled after real war hero General Patton but here presented as the story's main villain. An amazing start to an amazing career, and a war novel admired by both troops and citizens of the time, its low price here makes it a perfect acquisition for Hersey fans, WW2 buffs, and those compiling a collection of Pulitzer-winning first editions. *Oh, and yet more fascinating trivia about Hersey, a man who's been sadly forgotten by the culture at large and deserves to be re-discovered: he once won the National Jewish Book Award despite not being Jewish; a critical essay on the dullness of grammar school literary samplers directly inspired Dr. Seuss to write The Cat in the Hat; and in the late '60s Hersey became a passionate champion of anti-war protestors, the Black Panthers and other countercultural movements, all while serving as a Yale dean, owner of the school's bulldog mascot, and overseer of the campus's antique letterpress program. Wow!(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Jul 05, 2012
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Jul 05, 2012
| Paperback
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| 1897141467
| 9781897141465
| 4.53
| 15
| Apr 15, 2012
| Apr 15, 2012
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) It's been a while since we've heard from our friends at Pedlar Press, a small Canadian publisher dedicated to experimental yet mainstream-accessible work, and who are right now putting out some of the best designed mass-produced paperbacks in the entire Western indie world; but their latest recently showed up here not too long ago, Anne Fleming's story collection Gay Dwarves of America, and I have to admit that this may be one of the best ones they've put out yet. See, unlike most of the Pedlar titles I've reviewed here, Fleming's manuscript doesn't start out deeply experimental and then with crowdpleasing aspects added to it, but is instead a collection of mainstream stories about such banal subjects as suburban teenagers acting stupid while bored, then adds an engaging experimentalism to the dialogue, style and even plot turns, making this a highly entertaining yet dark-tinged and thought-provoking tome, the kind of extremely well-written human-interest fiction you might otherwise see at a place like McSweeney's. A bit too precious here and there, which is why it isn't getting a higher score (I could've done without the story containing just one word per page, for example), it's nonetheless a highly readable and satisfying collection from a press known precisely for such collections, and comes today with a big recommendation. Out of 10: 9.0(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Jul 02, 2012
| Jul 20, 2012
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Jul 02, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0983748411
| 9780983748410
| 3.55
| 29
| Aug 18, 2011
| Sep 03, 2011
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Writing a semi-autobiographical novel, especially as one's first book, can be a cathartic experience but also one laced with challenges, as neatly demonstrated by Therese Doucet's "recovered Mormon" tale A Lost Argument, precisely because it can be difficult to for the author to separate themselves from the subject, and to make the sometimes jarring changes from messy real life that lead to a tight three-act fictional story. Because to be clear, the first half of this novel is an incredibly charming story, and makes for an almost perfect natural story arc just on its own: mousey yet cute teen spends her freshman year at Brigham Young University studying philosophy, slowly coming to realize what a moral contradiction this is at a Mormon college; teen returns to her Arizona family home for the summer, and takes a pick-up class at the local secular university; teen meets handsome, dangerous fellow philosophy major, oozing sexuality and already adept at quoting Kierkegaard as a way of seducing brainy 19-year-olds; teen has simultaneous crises of faith and conscience, all while experiencing the very first blossoming of lust in her young sheltered life, all of it eventually coming to a dramatic head as the summer comes to a close. And if Doucet had stuck with just this story, changed a few of the details of the surprising end to the summer, and added a small coda wrapping things up, she would've had a real winner on her hands; but instead, she adds another entire half to this novel that is nothing more than random journal entries concerning the next five years of our gently subversive hero's life, random bits and pieces that almost immediately lose any sense of plot movement or character development, almost exactly as dissatisfying as if you went to a college student's LiveJournal account and randomly plucked out one blog post every ten or twenty pages. And that's a shame, because this is clearly a case of a talented but first-time author who simply didn't know where to finish her story, and didn't have an editor around to help her make that decision; and like I said, this is a common mistake when a person writes about their real life, because real life is chaotic and ongoing, while a great novel has tightly constructed boundaries and follows a fairly rigid structure. I'm still giving the book a decent score, because it's well worth it just for the funny and titillating first half alone; but readers would be wise to stop at that halfway mark, which is why A Lost Argument isn't getting a better score than it is. Out of 10: 8.2(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Jun 27, 2012
| Sep 14, 2012
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Jun 27, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 9780982744093
| unknown
| 4.00
| 30
| Mar 27, 2012
| Mar 27, 2012
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) I'm proud to count author Ryan Bradley, who's also the owner of Artistically Declined Press, as a friend of mine, which would make it an ethical conflict if I tried to pass off my review of his latest book, Code for Failure, as "objective;" I did however want to get a mention of it posted here online anyway, because this little book turned out to be really quite great, and I wanted to make sure it came to your attention as well. So consider my positive bias now announced! In reality a sneaky memoir of Bradley's time as a go-nowhere slacker at a small Oregon gas station, after leaving school but before taking up literature as a profession, it's designed as a series of one-page mini-stories about the weird and interesting experiences he had while there; but don't let these funny little anecdotes fool you, in that the manuscript added together paints a rather devastating emotional portrait of alienation, ennui and bad decisions, rife with the kinds of casual-sex disasters you would expect when sad small-town middle-aged women clumsily try to seduce beefy 22-year-old gas pumpers. Greater as a whole than as a sum of its parts, this fast-paced book affected me more profoundly than I was expecting it to, and I'm looking forward to the day that Bradley finally sits down and writes that masterpiece of a full novel that we all know he has in him. It comes strongly recommended today, despite my personal connection to the author. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Jun 27, 2012
| Nov 15, 2012
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Jun 27, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1590515188
| 9781590515181
| 3.25
| 16
| Aug 28, 2012
| Aug 28, 2012
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Carlos Zanon's new The Barcelona Brothers is a fascinating update of a traditional literary genre; specifically, it's a slow-moving, character-heavy noir, but set within the dark rainbow of the lowlife people of color who populate the poor sections of urban southern Europe, in this case the barrios that ring the tourist-friendly Spanish city of Barcelona. As such, then, the point is not really the minimalist plot on display, even with the clever nature of revealing this plot (a man beats a friend to death in a bar with a hammer in the first five pages then flees, his brother traveling through the poor sections of the city trying to find him, with the rest of the book slowly revealing why the act of violence took place), but rather to wallow in the sophisticated world-building that Zanon does here, a surprisingly leisurely and very literary look at the pockets of EU urban desperation that most Europeans would prefer you never think about. Powerful in a roundabout way, but rough around the edges like any good noir should be, it comes recommended to fans of Raymond Carver who are looking for a smart update of what by now can sometimes be some pretty cliched tropes. Out of 10: 8.9(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Jun 27, 2012
| Nov 28, 2012
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Jun 27, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1617750751
| 9781617750755
| 3.24
| 1,087
| Jun 28, 2012
| Jul 03, 2012
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Regular readers know that I am a longtime fan of Chicago contemporary lit legend Joe Meno, one of only a handful of local authors here right now to have broken through into national-scale reputation, media attention and resulting sales; and there have been projects of his in the past that I've really loved, and ones I found only so-so, and ones I thought…er, not so so-so, so I'm never exactly sure what I'm going to get when I dive into a new one. But this latest, from our friends at the great Akashic Books and being released just this week, is a different thing altogether from anything else in this shapeshifter's career -- deliberately small and intimate, and easy to dismiss at first as the meaningless musings of hipster douchebags, by the end it manages to be rather wistful, heartbreaking and melancholy, a sneakily tight manuscript that gets better and better the farther you read. Essentially the full beginning-to-end tale of one of those torrid three-week romantic relationships that litter so many of our pasts, and set among good-looking twentysomething art-school dropouts because, hey, why not, Meno's point here is to look at one of these people who sometimes just randomly blows into our lives for a bit, changes it profoundly, then just as randomly leaves again for the entire rest of your life; and by following it in its full messy glory, Meno's bigger point is to remind us of why these experiences are so important, why we remember them so nostalgically and positively for nearly the rest of our lives. Set during the Great Chicago Blizzard of 1999, the entire book has a muted and closed-in tone that serves its Before Sunrise feel well; and although Meno occasionally leans on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl tropes a bit too much (she has doe eyes and a thrift-store coat! She bicycles in the snow! She does impromptu absurdist performance art on the el!), by humanizing her in a sophisticated and complex way he largely avoids the biggest sins of that cliche, making this a quickly paced charmer that I suspect will eventually be one of the most popular titles of his career. A novel just begging to get adapted into the quirky movie debut of the next big national indie-film darling, it comes strongly recommended to existing fans of Garden State and (500) Days of Summer; and don't forget that I recently had a chance to sit down and talk with Meno here in Chicago for nearly an hour almost exclusively just about this book for the CCLaP Podcast, so I hope you'll get a chance to check that out as well when it's available next week. Out of 10: 9.4(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| May 29, 2012
| Jun 27, 2012
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May 29, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1932664084
| 9781932664089
| 4.16
| 49,975
| Jul 28, 2004
| Aug 24, 2004
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) I was a huge fan of the Scott Pilgrim movie when it came out a few years ago, but had never gotten a chance to read any of the actual graphic novels it was based on; so I was extremely glad to receive a review copy of the new color edition of volume one earlier this year, which for those who don't know is merely the first of six parts making up the entire saga of this twentysomething Toronto slacker and indie-rocker. And indeed, perhaps the biggest surprise is how little the film changes any of the story found in the original book, many times simply copying entire scenes word-for-word and action-for-action; and that's a big testament to O'Malley's strength as a writer, within a medium that is instead mostly known for the strength of its images. Although that said, another big surprise is just how differently this exact same dialogue and action actually comes across, depending on who's handling the material; for while filmmaker Edgar Wright infuses every second of the movie version with a sheen of surreal absurdism, O'Malley clearly means for the book version to be mostly a grounded character study with just a few absurd touches thrown in, a fascinating example of how two very different visions can come out of the exact same written manuscript. Well worth your time if you're a comics fan (but of course you already knew that -- the black-and-white version of this book has been out for almost a decade now), even usual non-fans would be wise to take advantage of this new color print run of the entire series, and to check out what many call one of the best examples ever of what this medium is capable of when the artist in question is firing on all cylinders. Out of 10: 9.1(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| May 29, 2012
| Sep 20, 2012
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May 29, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0307889033
| 9780307889034
| 3.65
| 205
| Sep 25, 2012
| Sep 25, 2012
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Now that I'm finished with it, I find myself having a hard time deciding what exactly to think of critical darling and "professional nomad" Lawrence Osborne's latest novel, the engaging but also meandering The Forgiven. Because on the one hand, its Graham-Greene-meets-the-Tea-Party setting is going to be fascinating to most sheltered Westerners like myself; almost the entire story takes place within a former Moroccan village that an upper-class gay British couple have bought in its entirety and turned into a private sybaritic estate, where the former family hovels have been turned into WiFi-equipped guest bungalows, and once a year a week-long orgy of drugs and group sex is thrown for the spoiled globetrotters who fly in specifically for it, so notorious that it regularly makes the society pages back in the UK and US publications where most of the guests are from. And the plot that this veteran journalist and academic favorite places within this setting is fascinating as well; two of the guests, a bickering middle-aged British couple, decide to drive to the compound from the airport themselves, accidentally hitting and killing a local African teen in the middle of the night while the driver is slightly sauced, which serves as the catalyst for both a blow-up and deconstruction of their crumbling marriage, the husband's growing alcoholism, the wife's infidelity, the hosts' "tongue-in-cheek imperialist" lifestyle, and even such local issues as scared bravado masked as fiery political rhetoric, and pride versus familial duties. But on the other hand, it takes an awfully big suspension of disbelief to buy into the main plot turn that fuels the entire second half of the book -- that the drunken spoiled vehicular manslaughterer in question would voluntarily ride into the desert with the father of the slain teen and his knife-wielding buddies, for a weekend of penance and possible extortion to "atone" for the accident -- with the entire book sort of falling apart if you don't buy into this unlikely turn of events; plus there's the fact that, while Osborne provides satisfyingly complex looks at his white characters, he often falls back on lazy cliches for the local Moroccans, and of course the age-old argument among academic character-heavy novels that not a whole lot actually happens once this wonderfully complex milieu is established, although by definition this will bother some people a lot less than others. So when all is said and done, in general I recommend the book but with some caveats, that you need to be ready for a slower-paced story whose main joy is merely in lazily lounging among the characters in question, and not in finding out "what happens next." If you're able to do this, you'll find in The Forgiven a beautifully written, thought-provoking examination of 21st-century imperialism, and the debate over whether this attitude is simply baked into all Westerners from childhood by default or if it's a specific result of the same sociopathic urge that drives the One Percenters to become those people in the first place. Out of 10: 8.8(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| May 18, 2012
| Oct 02, 2012
|
May 18, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0679749039
| 9780679749035
| 3.44
| 633
| 1952
| Jan 30, 1996
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Regular readers know that I'm in the process of getting through Philip Roth's remarkable nine-book autobiographical "Nathan Zuckerman" series, a slew of novels written from the 1970s through early 2000s that essentially record the entire history of the Postmodernist Era, by looking very pointedly at Roth's own life as a major tastemaker of these Postmodernist decades. And in fact for a long time, the short 1985 novella The Prague Orgy was the official endcap of what was known then as the "Zuckerman Trilogy" (consisting of The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound and The Anatomy Lesson), although the reason it's getting such a short write-up today is because there's simply not much to it; more a glorified short story than a standalone book, it tells the tale of Zuckerman traveling to an academic conference in '70s Communist Czechoslovakia, where in usual style he falls in with an absolutely insane femme fatale, gets dragged to a group-sex party held by one of the bright lights of the Czech intelligentsia, and eventually runs afoul of the local secret police, getting whisked away in the middle of the night and unceremoniously dumped on the first plane back to America. An interesting little ditty for what it is, it can nonetheless be charitably called the least essential Zuckerman book of the entire series, and can be pretty easily skipped unless coming across it in the famed '80s four-book compilation known as Zuckerman Bound; and this finally leads us to what's the most exciting part of the entire Zuckerman series, when in the '90s Roth started using this character merely as an everyman narrator for what is widely considered the best books of his career -- 1997's American Pastoral, 1998's I Married a Communist and 2000's The Human Stain. Expect write-ups of those to slowly start appearing here over the next year. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| May 11, 2012
|
May 11, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0316129313
| 9780316129312
| 3.64
| 380
| Jun 26, 2012
| Jun 26, 2012
|
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this review, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) Sometimes I'm very glad that I've never met Chicago author Patrick Somerville, because it lets me do full critical reviews of his work without the taint of a personal bias; and that's especially welcome in the case of his newest novel, This Bright River, because it's a stunner that turned out to be one of my favorite reads of the entire year. Essentially Somerville's attempt at a Jonathan Franzen novel (or at least the first two thirds, but more on that in a bit), it tells what at first is a meandering dysfunctional-family story, about a disgraced trust-fund twentysomething who has been tasked by his rich Chicago parents to clean up a recently deceased uncle's home in the small Wisconsin town where they all grew up; and for the majority of the book this story unfolds in a highly competent if not expected way, as we get a more and more detailed look at the recent events that have made this man-child and minimum-security convict have the life he now leads, as he awkwardly reconnects with a former high-school acquaintance who is also back in their hometown as a means of running away from some sort of bad incident in her own recent past. Ah, but then we enter the extended third act of this novel, which is where everything changes; because without giving away any plot points, it becomes clear that the incidents from the woman's recent past are both a lot more dangerous than anything else we've been looking at so far in these characters' lives, and an ongoing problem that hasn't yet been resolved*, turning This Bright River into a legitimate action thriller for its last hundred pages, a delightful thing to see after thinking that this was to be yet another character-heavy look at messed up Midwestern families. Now combine this with a growing sense of mystery about the unexplained death of this recently deceased uncle's son a decade ago, which seems in the first half to be merely a clever literary detail by Somerville but which blossoms into a main hinge of the plot by the end; and what you're left with is not just the usual academic tale of dysfunctional families but a deeply moving and thematically complex look at the black secrets all of us carry around in our lives, no matter who we are or how normal our lives seem to outsiders, a story that will have you not only thinking for days afterward but literally tearing through pages by the end, from the sheer sense of beach-read adventure that Somerville bakes into what is otherwise a pretty typical MFAer plot. A book that will easily earn a spot on our best-of-the-year lists coming in just another few weeks, this is a triumphant achievement for Somerville as an artist, especially after two previous books that I found only so-so; and if you haven't read this haunting novel for yourself yet, I urge you to pick up a copy soon. Out of 10: 9.7 *SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! (view spoiler)[I usually try to avoid mentioning any important plot details in my book reviews, but I just had to make a special note in this case, and say how incredibly impressed I was by Somerville's treatment of the sexually violent sickness that guides our villain's actions in the climax of This Bright River, and especially how this villain has managed to get away with these acts of violence for decades now because he has literally only committed these acts four times in his life, a truly ill individual who acknowledges his sickness and spends years between each episode trying to control it. Although the literal plot details in this part are similar to how a supermarket thriller might play out, I love how much reality and nuance Somerville brings to the motivations that guide these actions (versus the cackling serial killer most such novels portray their sexually violent villains as), making the story that much more chilling by showing us that this villain could literally be any of a dozen people all of us know in our own real lives. Kudos to the author for delivering one of the best character developments I've read in years. (hide spoiler)](less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Oct 27, 2012
| Dec 03, 2012
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Apr 26, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 0923389873
| 9780923389871
| 4.09
| 23
| Jan 01, 2012
| 2012
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) (IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE: About a year ago, the author of this book wrote a complimentary article about CCLaP for her personal blog, although in no way was this done in expectation of a good review in return. Nonetheless, it should be kept in mind when reading this write-up.) Knowing what I do about author Karen Lillis, I had been sort of gritting my teeth in expectation of reviewing this latest novella by her; because to be frank, this academically-minded former bookstore employee has a habit at her popular blog of championing the kinds of abstract, highly experimental work that I have a low tolerance for, and I was afraid that this was going to be the case as well with this newest slim volume of hers. But the good news is that this is actually a highly readable, engaging and entertaining story, essentially a deep character study of one of those douchbaggy, intellectually bullying, constantly mooching "artist dudes" that otherwise smart women seem to constantly fall for, written entirely as a series of reminisces from one of these smart women and examining all the sneaky ways that such guys manage to burrow under such women's skin. As such, then, potential readers shouldn't expect anything even resembling a traditional three-act plot, but rather should be prepared to enjoyably wallow in Lillis' casual, unhurried prose style, the point not really to find out "what happens" but rather to get a complex inside-out understanding of just what makes such Proust-quoting underachievers tick, jumping randomly from location to location around the world but admittedly at its Romantic finest (with a capital R) when looking at the characters' time spent in a deliberately precious contemporary Paris, cliched days of staying on back cots at Shakespeare's Books and pretending that poor artists still hang out in the Left Bank, but effective and moving nonetheless. A perfect companion to Ann Beattie's Walks with Men (covering the exact same subject but set in early-'80s lower Manhattan), this will strongly appeal to fans of New Yorker stories and other intriguing blends of academic and mainstream work, and it comes recommended to that specific audience. Out of 10: 8.8(less) | Notes are private!
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) I recently found myself with the opportunity to interview revered author Bonnie Jo Campbell for the CCLaP Podcast; and so before doing so, I thought it would be beneficial to read her two most popular books besides the one I've already read (2011's Once Upon a River, that is, considered by many to be a frontrunner for this year's Pulitzer). And indeed, it turned out to be quite important that I read her 1999 breakout novel Q Road before talking with her, because it turns out to be a clever sort of prequel/sequel to the Once Upon a River title we'll mainly be discussing; set on the cusp of the new millennium, it tells the story of the "last hurrah" of sorts for a rural farmland area just outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan before finally succumbing to the capitalist steamroller of exurban subdivisions, chain restaurants and pristine golf courses, an Altmanesque interrelated ensemble character piece in which one of the characters (teenage tomboy and child bride Rachel Crane) just happens to be the daughter of the main character of Once Upon a River (the even more hardcore tomboy Margo Crane), only with the newer novel set in the older 1970s and examining Margo's own teenage years as a tight-lipped, sharpshooting pregnant runaway. And in fact you can look at all three of these books in much the same light (including the slim 2009 story collection American Salvage, the third title in this list); they are all episodic in nature, take a sympathetic and nonjudgemental look at the kinds of characters we would traditionally call dumb white trash, yet can frequently reach a level of poetic harshness and violence akin to a Sam Shepard play, stories that don't excuse the behavior of the meth addicts, racists and uneducated hillbillies that populate her universe but that don't dismiss such characters either, an attitude that I'm sure at least partly stems from Campbell's own background as a willful tomboy in this exact kind of rural Michigan environment (but more on that in the finished podcast episode, coming next week). Powerful and unflinching, yet beautiful and easily readable, it's no surprise after reading these three books that Campbell would have the kind of intensely passionate fanbase that she does, as well as racking up such academic tentpoles as a Pushcart Prize, Eudora Welty Prize, National Book Award nomination and National Book Critics Circle Award nomination; and I wholeheartedly recommend them all to a general audience. Out of 10: Q Road: 9.4 American Salvage: 9.0(less) | Notes are private!
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) I recently found myself with the opportunity to interview revered author Bonnie Jo Campbell for the CCLaP Podcast; and so before doing so, I thought it would be beneficial to read her two most popular books besides the one I've already read (2011's Once Upon a River, that is, considered by many to be a frontrunner for this year's Pulitzer). And indeed, it turned out to be quite important that I read her 1999 breakout novel Q Road before talking with her, because it turns out to be a clever sort of prequel/sequel to the Once Upon a River title we'll mainly be discussing; set on the cusp of the new millennium, it tells the story of the "last hurrah" of sorts for a rural farmland area just outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan before finally succumbing to the capitalist steamroller of exurban subdivisions, chain restaurants and pristine golf courses, an Altmanesque interrelated ensemble character piece in which one of the characters (teenage tomboy and child bride Rachel Crane) just happens to be the daughter of the main character of Once Upon a River (the even more hardcore tomboy Margo Crane), only with the newer novel set in the older 1970s and examining Margo's own teenage years as a tight-lipped, sharpshooting pregnant runaway. And in fact you can look at all three of these books in much the same light (including the slim 2009 story collection American Salvage, the third title in this list); they are all episodic in nature, take a sympathetic and nonjudgemental look at the kinds of characters we would traditionally call dumb white trash, yet can frequently reach a level of poetic harshness and violence akin to a Sam Shepard play, stories that don't excuse the behavior of the meth addicts, racists and uneducated hillbillies that populate her universe but that don't dismiss such characters either, an attitude that I'm sure at least partly stems from Campbell's own background as a willful tomboy in this exact kind of rural Michigan environment (but more on that in the finished podcast episode, coming next week). Powerful and unflinching, yet beautiful and easily readable, it's no surprise after reading these three books that Campbell would have the kind of intensely passionate fanbase that she does, as well as racking up such academic tentpoles as a Pushcart Prize, Eudora Welty Prize, National Book Award nomination and National Book Critics Circle Award nomination; and I wholeheartedly recommend them all to a general audience. Out of 10: Q Road: 9.4 American Salvage: 9.0(less) | Notes are private!
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write reports on whether or not they deserve the label Essay #65: The Magnificent Ambersons (1918), by Booth Tarkington The story in a nutshell: Originally published in 1918, Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons tells a story familiar to that time, about the vast changes that had happened in America between the Civil War of the 1860s and then, as the nation first turned from an agricultural to an industrial economy and then brought resulting things like public education, indoor plumbing and electricity to the interior "heartland" of the country for the first time. Set in the fictional city of Midland but in reality a thinly veiled version of Tarkington's hometown of Indianapolis, we follow this history by basically following the fate of one super-rich family over the course of these decades -- one of the "founding families" of this city who helped maintain the genteel, agriculture-based aristocracy that used to run such little civilized patches out in the middle of the rural wilds of the Midwest, until the Industrial Revolution replaced them wholesale with an entirely new upper class of brash entrepreneurs, and with their former wealth of desirable land and vast farms quickly made worthless by the invention of cars, highways, public transportation and the very idea of suburbs. As such, then, our particular story concentrates on just one member of this family, poor George Amberson Minafer (carrier of his father's name but heir to his mother's fortune), who ends up getting the short end of the stick from both sides of the historical ruler -- prepared by an overly doting mother for an old-money life as a spoiled blue-blood, blowing off his college years because of feeling like his real adult job will be to look after his family estate (not to "hold" a "job" like some commoner), it's his arrogant, unwavering belief in the unchanging nature of this old system that leads to so many problems when the changes actually occur, with the author cleverly using the rise of the automobile as an ongoing symbol of this change all through the course of this manuscript. (When given a chance to invest in the industry when they're first invented at the beginning of the book, George blows them off as a fad for the bored elite, and declares that nothing will ever beat the financial stability of large estates near the the center of town; while by the end of the book, it's precisely the explosive popularity of these 'horseless carriages' that have made his family's land a virtually worthless slum area of the rapidly growing city, exactly the same thing that happened for example in Chicago's Prairie Avenue neighborhood in those same years.) Throw in an on-and-off relationship with a feisty, independent neighbor, a kowtowed aunt who seems to be the only sane one of the entire family (and hence the one most completely ignored), and wistful descriptions of a slow-moving 19th-century "golden age" for the American Midwest (based on Tarkington's real-life childhood as a member of one of these ruined old aristocratic families), and you're left with a story in turns infuriating and pity-provoking, a simultaneous paen to progress and elegy for what is invariably lost in the process. The argument for it being a classic: Well, for starters, it was the winner of the 1919 Pulitzer Prize, with Tarkington in general one of only three people in history who have won the Pulitzer more than once; plus there's the celebrated 1942 movie version by no less than Orson Welles, the fact that it made the Modern Library's "100 Best Novels of the 20th Century" list, and the fact that this was in the top-ten bestselling novels in the nation every year for an entire decade after first getting published. And that's because, fans claim, this is a blessedly clean and straightforward look at one of the more important periods of American history, essentially a period much like India is going through right this second -- when the US went from basically a big mass of mostly lawless rural villages to a legitimately unified and industrialized nation, with both all the good and all the bad things that come with such a transition, the "Great Change" that basically turned the American Midwest into the modern collection of industrial powerhouses and bland surrounding suburbs that we now know it as today. If you want an entertaining, plain-spoken look at this transition, without all the head-scratching experimentation that bogs down so many of his peers' works from those same years, just turn to what was for a long time one of the most popular novels in this country's history, the very definition of literary classic. The argument against: Critics of The Magnificent Ambersons tend to take the same facts its fans do but then posit the opposite argument; that the reason this hasn't held up very well over the years is precisely because it's missing all the "fancy-schmancy experimentation" that his peers in the 1910s and '20s were including; or put another way, the phenomenon known as Modernism, which would quickly become the singlemost defining trait of the American arts for the entire rest of the 20th century. While not exactly Victorian in nature, critics argue, Tarkington certainly missed the boat when it came to the grand tide of history that the arts were going through during his lifetime; and while his Henry-James-inspired Realist tone was rightly loved by his contemporary audiences, hungry for work that spoke in the same language as them and discussing the hot issues of the day, it's this same tone that made his work fall so flat almost the exact moment his original audience died out, leaving us with what is certainly a fascinating historical document but nothing you could reasonably argue that every single person should one day read before they die, the way that we're defining "classic" in this particular essay series. My verdict: Oh, have you never actually heard of Booth Tarkington before? Yeah, same with me until first putting this CCLaP 100 list together, and including in that list a few completely random and forgotten Pulitzer winners from the past, simply to see for curiosity's sake why they had won the Pulitzer and why they were then forgotten again so quickly. And indeed, this reading experience surprisingly ties in nicely with something making the rounds of the blogosphere just this week, when a professional book collector over at BookRiot.com controversially declared that in a hundred years, no one's going to have even the slightest clue who Jonathan Franzen is; because The Magnificent Ambersons in many ways made me exactly think of a 1920s Jonathan Franzen, and made me realize a lot more what this essayist at BookRiot was trying to say. Because the fact is that the book is really not that bad at all, a quickly paced and not too challenging generational story, that feels more important in the heat of the reading moment than it probably is because of taking on such a grand theme, and using the exact same kind of slang and dialogue style that was popular among real society at that exact moment in history; and these are all great things when it comes to contemporary audiences seeking contemporary works that speak directly to them, and we should rightly celebrate Tarkington for once literally being more popular in this country than Mark Twain, just as we should celebrate Franzen for having no less than the President of the United States quietly ask one day for an illegal early copy of Franzen's newest novel a few years ago, at a random bookstore while on vacation. But if you compare The Magnificent Ambersons to just two other novels in the same years and exploring the same issues, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, it's impossible to deny that Tarkington comes up woefully and profoundly lacking; and that in a nutshell is the danger of declaring a book a "classic" at too early a moment in history, the whole reason we find it important to even make classics lists in the first place, because it's only the process of time and future generations that can tell us what history ultimately finds most important about our own era, and which of the artists of this era were to contain the strange spark that went on to define the entire generation after them. That's what makes it so fascinating right this exact moment in history to be exploring this particular literary time of just about a century ago, because this is the exact last moment in history that many of these books will even be argued as classics by anyone in the first place; and that makes it extremely interesting to read up on such people as Tarkington, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair and more, in that who knows whether anyone will even remember these writers at all in another fifty years from now. Although I definitely recommend reading it, since it's a quick and easy read that nicely illuminates this particular period of history, I can't in good conscience declare The Magnificent Ambersons an undeniable classic, and in fact suspect that in just another couple of generations this debate won't even be taking place at all. Is it a classic? No, but read it anyway (And don't forget that the first 33 essays in this series are now available in book form!)(less) | Notes are private!
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) There's nothing inherently wrong with a novel concentrating on the minutiae of one particular industry or type of job, and in fact sometimes this is what novels do best -- think of Moby Dick or The Jungle, for example -- but it does mean that you're risking turning off big portions of your potential audience if they end up not really caring that much about the specific topic that book is discussing, and if you don't give them enough reason to be fascinated by the topic anyway. And here, unfortunately, Meg Howrey's look at being a young, full-time professional dancer in New York City is just too full of meaningless details and bereft of larger conclusions to have had much of an impact on me, certainly beautiful and entertaining at many moments but with those moments too few and far between. Containing a level of detail about the mundanities of a typical dancer's day that I myself found really intolerable at times, it'll be a wet dream for anyone who specifically wants to read about such a subject; and its charming anecdotes about gaggles of brave yet scared teenage roommates having the biggest adventures of their lives in a magically romantic midtown Manhattan absolutely bodes well for Howrey's long-term career, and shows that she has a real winner in her in the future when she weds this attention to detail with a stronger story premise. A limited recommendation, only to those interested in reading a genteel take on the daily life of a working ballerina, but those people should go fairly crazy over this enjoyable sleeper. Out of 10: 8.2, or 9.2 for ballet fans (less) | Notes are private!
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The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write reports on whether or not they deserve the label Essay #66...more The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write reports on whether or not they deserve the label Essay #66: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), by Robert A. Heinlein The story in a nutshell: Conceptualized in the early 1950s, but not written and published until 1961 (supposedly so that "society could catch up with it," according to the author), Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land is a classic example of a science-fiction (or SF) novel acting as a premonition to its real-world times, only moderately successful when it first came out but eventually a must-read touchstone among the hippies of the Countercultural Revolution a decade later. It starts with the first-ever manned mission to Mars, which because of its length was crewed only by couples, which ended tragically with the unexplained deaths of all on board; but when a second team finally arrives twenty years later, they discover that one of these couples had secretly had a baby, one Valentine Michael Smith, and that the lone survivor was raised by the insanely unhumanlike native Martians as one of their own, guaranteeing his re-introduction to the human race being as awkward as Tarzan being returned to Greystoke Manor. And in fact, surprisingly the entire first half of this long novel is dedicated merely to the complicated legal questions that have arisen by Smith's appearance, including what powers he exactly has to grant property and mining rights to individual nations or even to commercial interests, cleverly reflecting the real debates that were going on at the time over these same questions in regards to the Soviet/US race to the Moon. And so this is how the gentle, confused man-child eventually becomes friends first with the feisty nurse Gillian Boardman at the hospital where he's being kept; then her sometimes lover, brash journalist Ben Caxton; and then Caxton's friend and one of the most memorable characters in all of modern American literature -- lawyer, doctor, curmudgeon, millionaire hack author, angry libertarian, proud sexist, sculpture collector, Poconos-mansion-owning octogenarian Jubal Harshaw*, who eventually invites the whole party to an extended stay at his secluded Austin-Powersesque compound (including a household staff straight out of a James Bond parody -- three beautiful women who also happen to be experts at office management, cooking, engine repair, high diving and more). And indeed, there's a good reason that it turns out to be such a complex battle to get Smith away from the draconian "protection" of the US government; because hey, it turns out that such "psychic abilities" as mind-reading and telekinesis are actually ho-hum scientific principles, as easily accomplished when you know what you're doing as solving a hard math problem is, just that no human had been smart enough to "crack the code" until Smith was basically raised from birth with the knowledge by the evolutionally superior Martians, skills that the US Army are awfully anxious to learn themselves. It's when the action switches to this compound, then, that the much more famous second half begins; because with Smith being the curious, inquisitive soul that he is, of course the first thing he wants to do once gaining his "freedom" is to tramp across the country vagabond-style, exploring as much as he can about human life and sampling a wide variety of traditional and mystical religions, trying to find something that can adequately explain the curiously hippie-like belief system the Martians adhere to, and especially the all-important concept in their culture of "grokking" (not quite the simple act of understanding something, not quite religious revelation, not quite a profound connection between two living creatures, but a sort of combo of them all, impossible to fully understand unless you can actually speak Martian yourself). And indeed, this is exactly what Smith ends up doing, is creating his own religion (the Church of All Worlds) dedicated to teaching humans to speak Martian so that they can fully grok this new, enlightened way of living, which apparently also includes a nudist lifestyle and lots and lots of hot group sex…or, er, communal free love, I mean. (Man, those Martians are some real swingers.) Needless to say, this doesn't sit well with most of the other religions of the world, including the suspiciously Scientologist-like "Fosterites" who Heinlein also explores in depth in the book's second half, leading to an easily anticipated martyr-like death for our perpetually misunderstood hero; but not before Smith has a chance to let his followers know that what he's really done is kickstart the next step of human evolution, and that those who refuse to learn the new ways will eventually become as obsolete and then extinct as the Neanderthals are to us. The argument for it being a classic: Well, for starters, it won the prestigious Hugo Award the year it came out, with Heinlein himself the very first winner of the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America (in fact, when people refer to the "Big Three" SF authors of the 1960s, Heinlein is one of them, along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke); plus the Heinlein estate claims with some authority that this is the biggest selling SF novel of all time, with it certainly undeniable how much of an influence it's had on the culture since, including the introduction into the general lexicon not only of "grokking" but the phrase "Thou art God"**. And that's because, fans claim, Stranger in a Strange Land is a perfect example of genre fiction as metaphor, of a fantastical story that actually helps guide us in our everyday lives; that its perfect combination of humor, drama, action and philosophy preaches important lessons about self-determination, loving your neighbor (in all sorts of ways), and the facile nature of so many traditional religions, to say nothing of fringe cults that prey on the weak-minded. A landmark publication in the history of Libertarianism (and with Heinlein in general the originator of the "Libertarians in SPAAAAAACE!" trope now so common in science-fiction), fans say that its lessons of thinking for yourself and rejecting bureaucratic BS couldn't be more timely, the rare book that can be positively cited by both the Tea Party and the Occupy movement; the fact that it almost single-handedly pushed the entire SF industry into mainstream respectability is mere icing on the cake, simply an external sign of just how important this novel is. The argument against: Ahem. "Oh, are you freaking kidding me, you stupid grokking hippie trash?" That's an attitude you heard from a lot of people in the years after this book first came out; and while the vitriol has calmed down some in the 51 years since, it still remains the most effective argument against it, that this silly ode to long-hair orgies and Stickin' It To The Man isn't nearly as well-written or as important as its fans claim, and that it mostly has the reputation it does merely because Heinlein was damned lucky to have put it out right at the exact moment in history when mainstream society was most clamoring for a story like this (an accusation we've heard before in this essay series, don't forget, when we were discussing Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer). And this didn't get any better at all, they claim, even after Heinlein's widow in 1991 managed to get over 60,000 words from the original manuscript put back into the official bookstore version, after originally being cut in the early '60s for being "too scandalous;" because almost all of this cut material happens to be from the novel's infuriatingly repetitive and digressive second half, with literally hundreds of pages in the modern edition now dedicated to dated, rambling explanations of this group's adherence to free love, public nudity, water-based sharing rituals, and the importance of being "one with the universe" (that is, when you're not violently raging against the commies, capitalists, and other SOBs who are trying to steal away all your personal liberties -- oops, sorry, Heinlein apologists, did I just poke a hole in your precious little peacenik logic? Sorry about that!). And besides, say his critics, Heinlein was a cantankerous sexist and military booster who may or may not have been a fan of certain ideas commonly associated with fascism (but see Starship Troopers for a lot more on that), so you're officially forgiven for not buying into his luvey-duvey New Age charlatanism. My verdict: So for those who aren't familiar already with the fine points of SF history, perhaps it's best to start with the following to understand my thoughts today about Stranger in a Strange Land -- that between the early days of this genre, when it was considered good for not much more than empty kiddie crap, and our own post-Star Wars age when we just take it for granted that a genre project can have millions of fans and generate billions of dollars, there was a perfect storm in the 1950s and '60s (aka "Mid-Century Modernism") when an obsession with rationality and philosophy, a weariness over dogma-fueled wars, the explosive birth of the Electronic Age, and the sudden maturing of American literature all came together in a glorious mess in the world of science-fiction, a "coming of age" moment in which the genre was suddenly the single hottest thing in the entirety of the arts; and Heinlein had a huge role in helping to make this happen, demonstrably the very first genre author in history to get published regularly in conservative, mainstream, middle-class publications like The Saturday Evening Post, and also one of the first people in history to write SF stories where the fantastical science was simply a given, the stories themselves exploring the more underlying human-interest subjects that would naturally come with such innovations (now known as "social science fiction," and again not reaching its true apex until the Countercultural Era a decade later). So for Heinlein to put something as shocking and subversive as this out in the Kennedy years, after having a following of millions for his generally suburban-safe post-WW2 "juvenilia," was very much like the Beatles putting out "Sgt. Pepper" a mere three years later; a game-changer, in other words, not just a new project but a literal gauntlet that forced other writers to catch up, a line in the sand that served as an easy litmus test in those years to determine whether someone could "dig it" or not. And indeed, reading it for the first time a half-century later, this is still a very funny, thought-provoking and above all highly entertaining novel, full of intelligence and wit and great surprises; and sure, its critics have a point, that the second half does get bogged down occasionally with Heinlein's love for pontification (plus overly detailed descriptions of hippie orgies), but in an era that gave us Walden Two and Atlas Shrugged, it's important that we be more forgiving of this than we would with a contemporary novel, and understand that overblown philosophical treaties disguised as genre actioners are actually one of the most charming things about Mid-Century Modernist literature in general. Granted, this book inspired a lot of awfulness after the fact, not least of which is the entire trope of "Brilliantly Advanced Space Alien Who Acts Like Sweet Guileless Mentally Challenged Man Child Merely Because He Doesn't Yet Understand The Dirty Ways Of Our Flawed World" (see E.T., Starman, K-PAX, The Man Who Fell to Earth, ad nauseum); but in general, this is exactly as groundbreaking and still inspirational as its fans claim, and I have no hesitation today in declaring it a literary classic that everyone should read at least once before they die, a title that I'm convinced is just going to become more and more important as the years continue. It comes strongly recommended to one and all, as long as you approach it with a little patience and forgiveness, just as you should with all Mid-Century Modernist genre novels. Is it a classic? Yes (And don't forget that the first 33 essays in this series are now available in book form!) *And hey, yeah, just how autobiographical is good ol' Jubal? He sure looks and talks like Heinlein, after all; and in fact many have argued that the main character in this novel is not Smith but rather Harshaw himself, and that the entire Martian premise is just a thinly veiled excuse for Heinlein to essentially rant for several hundred pages on the subjects of women's lib, artists who receive state money, out-of-control central governments, and how much he hates each and every one of them. But on the other hand, genre editor and Heinlein friend David G. Hartwell has said before that Harshaw was based on mystery author and "Perry Mason" creator Erle Stanley Gardner, who like Jubal was a prickly former lawyer who got filthy rich off an endless series of hacky pulp novels. **And speaking of its impact on the real world, here's an amazing piece of trivia I came across that didn't fit well into the main essay: that a year after the book first came out, a man who now goes by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart started a very real church modeled after Smith's fictional one, which like the novel adhered to a strict policy of hedonism and Do What You Want. And they're still in operation! (less) | Notes are private!
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(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of C...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.) This slim debut novel by J.M. Tohline has an interesting conceit at its core; cleverly combining details from Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby but neither of their actual plots, it tells the story of a young novelist invited to housesit a mansion in Nantucket one winter, eventually becoming emotionally adopted by the upper-class family of misfits next door. The catch? It turns out that not only both brothers of that family but a close family friend have all had passionate love affairs at one point or another with the titular manic pixie dream girl, each of whom know only some of the truth about all of the others; so when said Lenore magically shows up at our everyman narrator's place four days after she apparently died in an accident, the family next door already starting to break down into Peyton-Place histrionics over their loss, needless to say that it throws a real wrench into the entire proceedings, especially after Lenore requests that our hero keep her existence a secret so that she can take advantage of the rare opportunity to see how all these various lovers of hers exactly react to her death. The problem, though, is that once Tohline puts this admittedly fascinating milieu together, he can't seem to figure out anything interesting to do with it; for while the entire thing is definitely well-written, and contains all kinds of knowing asides for the pleasure of heavy literary readers, the last two-thirds of this short book seem to consist of not much more than a bunch of people all endlessly screaming to each other, "I loved her more!" "No, I loved her more!" before building to a contrived climax that feels as if Tohline simply ran out of energy to continue. Fantastic as a short story idea but lacking as a novel, as belies the author's actual career experiences so far, this certainly is a sign of a writer who still has a lot of great work ahead of him, although with this particular book receiving only a tepid recommendation today. Out of 10: 8.1(less) | Notes are private!
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| Feb 05, 2012
| Apr 30, 2012
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Feb 05, 2012
| Paperback
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