Oh. God. So. Good. I love love John Brandon anyway, back from the painfully spectacular Arkansas, and this one gives you that same sinking feeling in...moreOh. God. So. Good. I love love John Brandon anyway, back from the painfully spectacular Arkansas, and this one gives you that same sinking feeling in your stomach once you get into it, once you know that there is just no way this will get better or go well. Toby and Shelby, the main characters in this one, are just amazing and so so real. (I hope I never get too old to ache and squirm when I read about teenagers falling messily and awkwardly and terribly for one another.) John Brandon's writing is so simple and brusque it's exquisite. I don't know why he wants to write about such fucked up shit, but holy hell is he good at it.
***
And OMG, in case you need more convincing, here's what Daniel Handler, whom I desperately love, has to say:
[Brandon:] subverts the expectations of an adolescent novel by staying true to the wild incongruities of adolescence, and subverts the expectations of a crime novel by giving us people who are more than criminals and victims. The result is a great story in great prose, a story that keeps you turning pages even as you want to slow to savor them, full of characters who are real because they are so unlikely. “Citrus County” subverts countless expectations to conform to our expectations of a very good book.
Great, harrowing, horrifying, devastating, maybe a little bit redemptive? But mostly just appalling. There was one scene which is etched crushingly in...moreGreat, harrowing, horrifying, devastating, maybe a little bit redemptive? But mostly just appalling. There was one scene which is etched crushingly into my brain, and if I allow myself to dwell on it for more than a few seconds, even now, many many months after I read this book, I will burst anew into tears. (less)
Bought this at a used book store in Amsterdam because how cool is that? Well, not so cool, actually, when the book is as flimsy and superficial as thi...moreBought this at a used book store in Amsterdam because how cool is that? Well, not so cool, actually, when the book is as flimsy and superficial as this. I imagine it's like a store-brand Gossip Girl (though I've never seen the show, so that's merely speculation). It doesn't matter. This is a book about terribly rich British prep school girls taking ecstasy and playing tricks on their teachers. The characters are absurdly one-dimensional, the plot is formulaic at best, with plot devices that are like being smashed in the head with a signpost that says GUESS WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT?!! Oh anyway, whatever. It got me through a couple of hours on the flight home, and saved me from having to watch The Time Traveller's Wife. (less)
I remember being really impressed by Jaeggy's Sweet Days of Discipline, but this book is brutal. It's not even a hundred pages long, but I couldn't br...moreI remember being really impressed by Jaeggy's Sweet Days of Discipline, but this book is brutal. It's not even a hundred pages long, but I couldn't bring myself to finish it. It's just unrelentingly bleak. Dead children, abused prostitutes, homelessness, bitterness, despair despair despair. Fuck. No thank you. (less)
Unfortunately, my initial thoughts remained true throughout the rest of the book. I'm sorry, Nick Flynn, that your last book was so fucking good that...more Unfortunately, my initial thoughts remained true throughout the rest of the book. I'm sorry, Nick Flynn, that your last book was so fucking good that anything else you write will (most likely) pale in comparison.
****
I'm still more or less reserving judgment, but as I'm now just over halfway through, I'm sad to say that I am not loving this nearly as much as the brilliantly incredible Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. The language here is beautiful, sure, but somehow not quite as beautiful as there. The subject matter is much more nebulous, maybe as much philosophically essay-ish than plangently memoir-y. And there is a distance here that I can't quite describe – a wall, a space, a bubble perhaps, which I am unable to penetrate. This book deals as much with torture and current events as it does with Flynn's life, and when I read passages where he describes interviews with prisoners at Abu Ghirab and the like, I just can't feel the horror, the despair. Perhaps it's a failing in me, perhaps a general failing in humanity, that when faced with images or descriptions of very awful things, we (I) disassociate, step back, refuse to comprehend. I don't know, and I don't mean even to say that there are incredibly graphic passages here, because there aren't, it's much more theoretical, detailing at most "light" torture. I don't know. Perhaps I'll feel differently when I finish, but as yet Ticking has failed to reach in (out) and really grab me the way the raw, riveting, devastating Suck City did from practically the first page. (less)
I paid thirteen goddamn dollars for this baby, my first choice for my upcoming nine-hour flight to Alaska. Good thing I <3 Jasper so much.
And wow,...moreI paid thirteen goddamn dollars for this baby, my first choice for my upcoming nine-hour flight to Alaska. Good thing I <3 Jasper so much.
Margaret Atwood has been my most favorite writer since I was sixteen. There's maybe ten authors in second place, many of whom (especially Cortázar) re...moreMargaret Atwood has been my most favorite writer since I was sixteen. There's maybe ten authors in second place, many of whom (especially Cortázar) regularly rear their heads in my imagination to try to supplant Atwood's place for first, but every time I go back to Margaret, I seriously fall in love again. More than anything, I love the way that her language shifts my actual thought patterns, or at least my constantly streaming internal monologue, until it sounds like she's the one inside my head, narrating me. Is that crazy? Maybe I'm crazy. But reading even a page of Atwood's prose makes my thoughts more elegant, more intense, more literary for days at a time.
Anyway, Bodily Harm is great, of course. It covers most of her preferred themes: proto- and post-feminism, strong and complex female (and male) characters, lush settings, everything described with an accompanying (and often multi-layered) smell, sexy sex (anticipated and actual), complicated plot involving the intersection of the personal with the political – or is it the immersion of one into the other? Or the amplification by same? Whatever. This book actually got a lot more violent and dark at the end than I remembered (this is at least my fifth read, probably more), but it's Atwood Atwood Atwood, and I love her more than anyone else. (less)
A few of these stories are stellar, most of them are pretty average, and all of them are way too short. There's poor balance between stories and also...moreA few of these stories are stellar, most of them are pretty average, and all of them are way too short. There's poor balance between stories and also a weird overuse of themes: nearly ever story has runaway parents, dysfunctional siblings, people who work in factories, sexy redheaded ladies, and lots and lots of loneliness.
I'm really glad I already love Meno a whole lot, because if this had been the first book of his I read I don't know if I'd have picked up more.(less)
This definitely did its job, though, as expected, we didn't really take a very tourist-y trip, opting instead to mostly just wander the streets and ge...moreThis definitely did its job, though, as expected, we didn't really take a very tourist-y trip, opting instead to mostly just wander the streets and get advice from people. Some awesome things in here, though; lots of good galleries in particular. The maps are very detailed, but (as always) it's tough to figure out how things connect when you're in the cracks between neighborhoods. Plus one star for listing Kunsthaus Tacheles, the "Sistine Chapel of Graffiti"; minus one for not knowing about Spree World, the completely abandoned amusement park in the southern corner of the city.(less)
bought for $1 at the art book fair. I'm ten pages in and it's already hilarious & awesome.
*****
Aw, this book is very clever & funny. It takes...morebought for $1 at the art book fair. I'm ten pages in and it's already hilarious & awesome.
*****
Aw, this book is very clever & funny. It takes fifty-two songs and examines them fairly thoroughly, giving their history, who wrote / performed them, lyrical and musical explications, why they're depressing, etc. He's a bit over-enamored with his own sense of humor, though; you can tell that he's writing to make himself sound very witty and smart, which can be a bit grating. He also uses pretty predictable construction of musical metaphors (like "The song ends with a flurry of reverse piano figures whipping around, as if the entire bird flock just soared into the Transamerica building) and artistic augmented comparisons (like _____ sings like a poor man's _____ on drugs / being run through a cheese grater / falling out of a helicopter, etc). But I did laugh aloud fairly often while reading, so that's pretty good.
His song choices are pretty varied; from the predictable ("Teen Angel," "Strange Fruit") to the obscure ("The Christmas Shoes," "In the Year 2525"), from old standards ("The Rose," "Tell Laura I Love Her") to new-ish hits ("The Freshman," "Prayers for Rain"). He introduces ideas like the Quantum Tragedy Paradigm ("the shorter the relationship between two people, the more overwrought and tragic the song that describes it") and the Perfect Storm ("mortality plus misguided passion," plus generally a horrifying diva screaming it out). There are very good goth-girl-about-to-off-herself illustrations throughout, and after I finished reading I had a whole bunch of new songs to download. So all in all a nice book to read in distracted small pieces, like on smoke breaks or on the crapper.(less)
pre: Found in a rain-wilted box on the curb, and I don't know one single thing about it. Very exciting!
post: Holy shit this book is great. Given that...morepre: Found in a rain-wilted box on the curb, and I don't know one single thing about it. Very exciting!
post: Holy shit this book is great. Given that it is all about amnesia, intentional and unintentional memory suppression, the existence or non-existence of consensus-based reality, the possibility or impossibility of coincidences, etc., I am stunned and delighted that it came to me so anonymous, so unknown. I still know not a thing about Sam Taylor (though I plan to learn more once I finish this review), but for such a book-obsessed nerd like me, that is so refreshing & awesome. To go into a book with no expectations, no popular "wisdom," no snobbery or elitism or pre-hate...well, it's fucking great.
And so rewarding – in this case, anyway. Before I do too much delving, I'd like to let this otherwise not overly meta book give you a description of itself:
Someone should write a true-to-life detective story, James thought bleakly; an existential mystery in which the answer is not to be found, clear and logical, at the book's end, but only to be glimpsed, or half-grasped, at various moments during its narrative; to be sensed throughout, like a nagging tune that you cannot quite remember, but never defined, never seen whole; to shift its shape and position and meaning with each passing day; to be sometimes forgotten completely, other times obsessed over, but never truly understood; not to be something walked towards but endlessly around.
I know that might be off-putting, especially for those who had an aversion to, say, House of Leaves, so let me assure you that, while this book is tricky, and slippery, and seems always to cycle itself away from the truth, refusing to reveal its secrets, which seem so tantalizingly close to the surface...while all that is true, it is much, much more satisfying than the preceding description would indicate. It has a clear narrative structure, interesting and consistent characters, lots of surprises, and a totally satisfying conclusion. So, to summarize: trickery, yes; obnoxious, no.
Let's go back a bit. The Amnesiac is the story of James, who lives in Amsterdam with Ingrid, but who is haunted not by his memories, but by his lack thereof. He can't recall anything that happened to him for about three years, not the last three, but some time ago, in college. This drives him to such eventual confusion that he lets Ingrid leave him, and returns to London to figure out his past.
Thick with real and metaphorical labyrinths, clouded windows, and mirrors reflecting mirrors, James's journey back to his past is slippery and very cleverly done. Everything seems at once pre-determined and also too absurd to be continuable. As his fragmented memory begins to reassemble, things get weirder and weirder, then pull back into normalcy, then slip off into absurd dreamworlds, then switch again to comprehensibility. But it is all so carefully controlled, you have full faith in the author's ability to let James (and you) untwist slowly and, eventually, clearly.
I should mention that there are strong correlations to a certain somewhat recent upstate New York movie, also about memory and its insistence on recurring, no matter how hard we try to repress it, and though I was a little bit bothered by this, it was only because it made some of what should have been gasping surprises a little bit predictable. But no matter; Sam Taylor is masterful and brilliant, meshing James's present life in modern-day Amsterdam with a long snippet-ly revealed Victorian murder mystery, with also a longish research paper about an imaginary philosopher, plus of course James's fragmented and splintery distant past and recent past and close and overtaking future. All beautifully counterpointed, intricately woven, creating an eventually terrific and complete whole.
Despite a last-minute emergency trip to the Strand, this is the book I wound up taking with me to Mexico. Strange, of course, as I have no recollectio...moreDespite a last-minute emergency trip to the Strand, this is the book I wound up taking with me to Mexico. Strange, of course, as I have no recollection of ever acquiring this book; it was just something sitting numbly on my shelf which my eyes passed over myriad times while looking for other things.
Even stranger is that I didn't know a thing about Larry Kirwan before reading this. I'd never heard of the (apparently) seminal Irish punk band Black 47, had no idea at all what I was going to be in for. But he opens each chapter with the lyrics for one of his songs, which both sets up (and sometimes gives away) what will happen in the coming chapter, and also goes a long way toward helping someone with no knowledge of his music become familiar with his themes, his passions, his fears, and his triumphs.
I really enjoyed this book. It's got its flaws – chief among them being that it is, first and foremost, a vanity project – but Larry Kirwan has lived a very interesting, very cool life, and it was terrific to be privy to a sampling of that. It's also one of those book that reminds me how very much I don't know, how very Americentric my life is, despite all my strident dislike for so much about this country and these times.
The first, oh, hundred pages all take place in Ireland, and it's the pre-history-of-the-author stuff, where he goes into detail about his parents and grandparents, about the Troubles and the British vis-á-vis the Irish, and the Catholics vs. the Protestants and all the religious persecution and famine and horror of those times. It was shockingly informative, though also a bit dry, and, as I said, a strong reminder of how little I know about the history of anywhere but here. (In my defense, I don't know all that much about American history either, because I spent most of my school years being a bit of a fuckup, paying more attention to boys and drugs than, you know, learning shit.) So but anyway, I plan to put in some serious Wikipedia time filling in some of those gaps.
Then Larry comes to New York, and, I admit it, this is when the book really came to life for me. I am such a sucker for 'dirty New York' memoirs, for hearing about Alphabet City when it was full of druggies and pimps, Times Square when it teemed with tranny hookers, the Bronx when it was Irish and drunk and mean. I love this stuff, and Larry did a fabulous job of recounting it.
He also did an amazing job of describing the trials and tribulations of making music in the seventies and eighties, the insanity of the record companies, the intimacy and fervor of small shows at bars and huge shows all over the world. His description of playing for tens of thousands of post-Communist agitators in the Czech Republic was astounding and beautiful. He was pals with Lenny Bruce, Cyndi Lauper, David Burns, and a host of others, and it's brilliant to hear their exchanges too.
The reason why I said that I think this is a vanity project is partly because it's so long. For all the fascinating anecdotes and gorgeously rendered passages, there is honestly a lot of fluff and filler too. I suspect this book wasn't that carefully edited, because at times it drags, and there are several sections that could have been cut to maintain the sharpness and tension of the more beautiful and raging parts. But the beauty is there, and on the whole this was a compelling, fascinating, and incredibly informative book.
I didn't manage to read this in Mexico, though I was told it would be the perfect smart-person airplane book, but I did pick it up as soon as I got ba...moreI didn't manage to read this in Mexico, though I was told it would be the perfect smart-person airplane book, but I did pick it up as soon as I got back, and it was very much as promised: dryly hilarious, fast-moving, clever, and a whole lot of fun.
Cooking With Fernet Branca is dual-ly narrated by two next-door neighbors living on the Italian countryside: Gerard Samper, a very proper Englishman and self-proclaimed "master chef" (more on that soon), who makes his money ghostwriting autobiographies for idiotic sports stars; and Marta, a somewhat bumpkin-ish composer from Eastern Europe (Voynovia, actually) who has been commissioned to write a film score for a famous arty and controversial Italian film director.
So. Gerard and Marta are incredibly well-drawn characters, from her pidgin English and lovingly frazzled appearance to his fastidious mannerisms and constant stream of sarcastic inner monologue. They are both a bit unreliable as narrators, which is done with great subtlety at times, and then become very overt when the narrative switches sides and we get to see the same scene retold through the other's eyes. Their relationship is so complex, so changing, so real, that it carries the entire book brilliantly.
See, they hate each other. I mean, each was told when they bought their houses that their immediate neighbor was quiet and calm, and would only be home maybe one month out of the year. But Marta's brother keeps stopping by in a helicopter in the middle of the night, and Gerard sings horrifically off-key opera while he avoids work by loudly building fences and other such, and each drives the other totally crazy with their drunkenness and terrifying cooking.
And oh, the cooking!! This is where the book's darkest humor shimmers horrifyingly. Gerard, who punctuates his sections with explicitly detailed recipes, loves to cook. And the things he cooks are...well...not for the faint of heart. Examples include: stuffed udder in butterscotch sauce, smoked cat pot pie, parrots 'n' carrots, horse custard, and more and more. In fact, one of the subtle ways in which he wages war with Marta is with cuisine mépriseur, the cuisine of contempt. She – though unwittingly – does about the same thing, by always trying to feed him homemade Voynovian treats, which are every bit as horrifying to his palate as his deep-fried mice would be to hers.
In any case, of course, they bicker and fight and scheme and plot, and eventually work their way into one another's good graces, more or less. There is much much more to this book than I have let on here, but I hope I have at least...whet some appetites, as it were, because I really think James Hamilton-Paterson ought to be better known. I plan to get both the other books he's written about Gerard and Marta tout suite, before the fall ends and I am expected to read more, er, serious literature. (less)
I'm putting this on the new-new-new-thing shelf, even though it's not that new, because it is similar to all these new-new types of books happening no...moreI'm putting this on the new-new-new-thing shelf, even though it's not that new, because it is similar to all these new-new types of books happening now, which if I was more into theory or had gotten a Master's, I'd probably know the proper pedantic terms for. The point is, it's written fairly self-consciously, there are scattered meta bits and winks at the audience, it's clear Ben Ehrenreich is very smart and wants this book to be very unusual. And it absolutely is! But although I've got an extremely high tolerance for this kind of trickery and intellectualizing, The Suitors did feel a little contrived at times, a little forced.
Let me go back a bit. The opening sequence is wonderful, a very slippery picture of our hero and heroine, who start as characters outside of time, become more focused and detailed and personalitied, and then become more nebulous again, become a bit everyman and everywoman. I'm not doing a great job of describing this, but they're Payne and Penny, and they're at once specific characters with sketched personality traits and also meldings of all different kinds of characters, all of whom are united by the fact of falling in love with each other. (That's the best I can really do without quoting; have I made my point yet about intellectual trickery?)
(Actually, that was all Chapter 2. The first chapter, which is also the last chapter, is a very explicit snapshot view of everyone quite bloodily and gruesomely dead.)
Well, Payne and Penny get married and go off to live in the country in a little cabin. But Payne isn't happy with a little cabin to house his queen; he starts making little improvements and minor additions, then bigger and bigger and crazier things. It becomes clear that he wants to build a palace (because what else is fit for a queen?), and then the book enters its next phase, because skittering around the outskirts of their property is a nebulous number of other people, kids I guess, in the teenager sense, who spend all day huffing paint and having sex. Well so Payne enlists them all to help him erect his edifice. He is a ruthless taksmaster, and after the palace is built, they start going on raids to fill it with things. Soon it's filled with enough food and furniture and supplies and jewels and money to last several lifetimes, but they keep raiding, kind of just to kill people. Then they mine the mountain and start a smelting plant to make guns with, but when Payne tells them that they have to go fight in a war, everyone quits. Payne leaves anyway, leaves his Penny walled up in her castly, leaves his minions behind, and goes off to war.
Thus begins the next phase, which is the bulk of the book, where Penny, now pregnant, goes on to lead her bitter, furious, disassociated life with the minions. Did I mention that every single one of them, boys and girls alike, are destructively and totally in love with Penny? Yeah, that's the only reason anyone was doing what Payne told them to do all that time. I mean, they all couple and uncouple amongst one another, but each is slavering at all times for the merest hint of affection or even attention from Penny. And so it goes: they have lavish dinner parties, do inordinate amounts of drugs, fight terribly with one another, worship Penny, live their angry, unsatisfied little lives.
That's all the summarizing I can handle.
Here's the thing. As with most of this type of book, this motherfucker can write. There are large swaths of great beauty, be it philosophical asides, stunning descriptions of scenery, dissertations about love and hate and being and non-, snaps of great dialogue, brutal scenes of sex and murder and mayhem. The book is mostly very beautiful to read. But there's a lack throughout... I don't know if it's nothing more than a yearning for some kind of traditional narrative structure, or a need for some little bits of explanation for some of the more impossible things (characters sometimes go months without eating, for example, or swim entire oceans without stopping), or what, but it's all just sometimes... unsettling.
I bought this because Ehrenreich has a story in a forthcoming McSweeney's collection that is just mindblowingly incredible. (Plus his mom is the lady who wrote Nickel and Dimed!) It really is fascinating book, totally unique and strange and brutal and beautiful, but honestly? The short story was better than all of this. Hey Ben? Can you turn that into a novel please??(less)
**spoiler alert** I picked this up because I wanted to read a Kurt Vonnegut book that I haven't read before, and neither the title or the back-cover s...more**spoiler alert** I picked this up because I wanted to read a Kurt Vonnegut book that I haven't read before, and neither the title or the back-cover synopsis sounded familiar to me. But it only took a chapter to realize that I have indeed read this before, probably several times. And that's the thing about Kurt Vonnegut I've always found bewildering: His books are so good, right? But, with the exception of Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions (and Slaughterhouse Five, obvs), I never remember them for more than a few days after I've finished. I don't know why that is, because he is nothing if not insanely detailed. There are so many characters, and everyone has a backstory and frontstory and friends and desires and funny things to say, and his plots are so rambling and strange and back-and-forth and unique, and his dialogue is believable and well paced. And on and on and on. So what gives?
Anyway, if only for my own reference the next time I try to pick this up, thinking I've never read it before, here's a quick plot rundown (spoilers to follow, if anyone cares). Otto and Emma Waltz are incredibly wealthy and frivolous, he a fraud of an artist, she a debutante. They get married and live in a huge old carriage house. They have two sons, Rudy and Felix. Felix goes off to war, and then Rudy accidentally shoots a woman (he is twelve). His father (sort of) takes the fall and does a little time in prison. The husband of the woman killed sues the Waltzes for everything they have, and since neither parent has ever washed a dish or folded a blanket or cooked so much as a piece of toast, Rudy becomes their personal servant. There's a lot more (the book is told in flashback after both parents are dead and Rudy and Felix own a hotel in Haiti), but I'm tired and I said I would only do a synopsis anyway.(less)
Huh. This book was much better I expected. I'm not sure what's up with the punk-lite hipster on the cover, because these stories are about hicks and p...moreHuh. This book was much better I expected. I'm not sure what's up with the punk-lite hipster on the cover, because these stories are about hicks and philanderers and and drunks and guns and motorcycles and children drowning in pools.
As with any collection, the stories are uneven, and as I always always always say when I finish a book of short stories, the best ones made me really upset when they ended. The terrific-est by far were "Make Me" (two teachers who used to be together have broken up because they're each in love with one of their students – who also used to be together. Since the students broke up, the girl has gone on hunger strike, and the boy has begun an affair with the lady teacher) and the title story (a young-ish guy is tentatively having an affair with a married diabetic veterinarian who "forgets" to take her insulin and goes out of her head in a very very sexy/dangerous way), each of which could easily easily have been stretched into novels that I would have loved to read.
Everyone knows that Cortázar is my favorite ever, but everyone probably also knows that I much prefer novels to story collections. Some of these stori...moreEveryone knows that Cortázar is my favorite ever, but everyone probably also knows that I much prefer novels to story collections. Some of these stories are spectacular, of course, but there's a lot that aren't, so meh.
Some good ones are "The Night Face Up" (a guy who has just had an accident on his motorcycle and is fading in and out of consciousness, but when he dreams, he's being carried to a pyre to be sacrificed by Aztecs... then of course it goes into the whole 'what if the dreamlife is the real life and the real life is all a dream, etc.) and "Bestiary" (a little girl who spends her summers with a falling-apart family that has an unpredictably violent tiger living in their house). Interestingly, "House Taken Over", about, uh, what the title says it's about, is echoed pretty directly in the Kelly Link story "Stone Animals" which blew my mind for the millionth time last month. I wonder if she is also a Cortázar fan? Good lord. (less)
after reading: Meh. I dunno, this book is fine, but it's really just him repeating the same things over and over. Be the pack leader! Take your dog on...moreafter reading: Meh. I dunno, this book is fine, but it's really just him repeating the same things over and over. Be the pack leader! Take your dog on more walks! Dogs experience the world with their noses first! Take your dog on more walks! Did I mention how cool my life is? Take your dog on more walks! Etc. I mean, I don't know what I was really expecting; it's not like a very general book like this is really going to tell me what to do with my specific bratty little semi-aggressive dog who only goes after pitbulls. I know also that a lot of people violently hate this book because of some of his more questionable techniques, but like I said, meh. I wasn't going to try 'flooding' anyway. The only thing I really took away from this (other than the fact that I really should be taking the dog on longer walks) is that I try to sort of act more leader-y lately when we're out on a walk. You know, head high, no-nonsense tone of voice, quicker pace, etc. Is it helping? Well, when there are no pitbulls around.
before reading: My little dog with the Napoleon complex has become a bit of a bastard lately, so maybe this book that I got for free several years ago and never cracked will have something to teach me?
(Tenuously related note: For those who have been following the gendered pronoun discussion, Cesar [and/or his ghostwriter:] have done an interesting thing here – alternating pronoun genders by chapter. So in odd chapters the dog is 'him' and the person is 'her', and vice versa in even chapters. This was made further obvious by including a pre-text mention of the fact that they did this. Awesome.)(less)
Meh. I know I just gushed and gushed about the new Jonathan Ames book, which is a compilation of a bunch of magazine articles, but Subwayland, which i...moreMeh. I know I just gushed and gushed about the new Jonathan Ames book, which is a compilation of a bunch of magazine articles, but Subwayland, which is also a whole bunch of articles, is a good argument against putting a whole mess of the same thing together in a book. I mean, these articles, which are from a New York Times column called "Tunnel Vision," are all (or mostly) pretty interesting. But they all have exactly the same pace, and exactly the same structure, sort of like a Journalism 101 template, really. Start with broad or general observation about life in the city / on the subway / human nature's quirkiness, narrow the focus, come to a point, cite evidence (with quotes and/or stats) to support or enhance said point, and close with a quote or thought, generally "clever," that either summarizes or subverts the point. So, if I were to read these pieces, say, once a week in a regular column, this might be fine, but to have them one after another after another like this was really very tiresome.
That said, I did learn a lot of interesting subway trivia and lore. To wit:
* There are 468 subway stations, covering 230 miles. * There is (or was, in 2001) a daycare center in an unused section of the Prospect Park Q train station. * Pigeons board the A train at Far Rockaway and then get off at the next stop and fly back. * On the Paris Métro, they give out (or did, in 2001) free massages, crackers, and tea during rush hour at some of the cities most crowded stations. * Four hundred retired subway cars have been sunk off the coast of Delaware to make artificial barrier reefs. (I already knew this one, but it bears repeating.) * The G trains are so short because in the 90s they wanted to add more trains on that line, but they didn't have any more trains (or money to buy them, I guess). So they chopped the last two cars off each train, then attached the bits into a bunch of new four-car trains. * An old gross scam when tokens were still used was called token sucking: jamming a token slot with a matchbook, waiting for someone to drop in a token and then leave in a huff when the turnstile remained locked, and then literally go and suck the token back up out of the hole. This was in fact such a common thing that cops would sprinkle cayenne pepper on the most oft-sucked token slots! * Getting into the subway via the doors that will open up exactly at the stairs or door of your destination station is called pre-walking. * 78% of New Yorkers do not own or lease a car, as compared to the national average of 54%. (This was true in 2000, anyway.)
So yes, this book had some cool shit in it. But I guess I'd really rather have read a book about subway history and lore, rather than a bunch of very formulaic, very pat, very forcedly clever little columns. (less)
before Ohhh this book is like my favorite hoodie—threadbare and falling apart but so so soft and comfy, with all those little stains and patches as sw...morebefore Ohhh this book is like my favorite hoodie—threadbare and falling apart but so so soft and comfy, with all those little stains and patches as sweet reminders of long ago. Love love love love this book...
after Well yes, I do love this book as much as ever, but I was actually kind of surprised at how different it was from the last time I read it, oh, five or six years ago. Here are some reflections (in list form, because I'm feeling lazy):
1. I am still terribly and utterly in love with Duncan, who was I believe my very first literary crush, when I was like fifteen. But some of the magic is gone this time. He's gotten a little clichéd with over-reading, I guess? (I've easily read this ten times.)
2. I was really surprised how steeped in fifties mentality and early feminist theory it was. Marian has to quit her job when they find out she's getting married, for example, and this is accepted placidly as normal. Huh?
3. While the story is totally awesome and the characters are incredibly great, the most important element (for me) of any Margaret Atwood book is always the stunning stunning language, which was not so much on display here. This was (I'm pretty sure) her first published novel, but she was a poet before that, and so it's not like she didn't already know how to turn like the most beautiful phrases ever.
4. The whole "not eating" thing... Gosh, I'd remembered it being like the whole book, this agonizing descent, food item by food item, into essential starvation, but actually she doesn't even stop eating meat until like a third of the way through the book.
5. Also, I remembered being totally on Marian's side when she goes sort of crazy, but this time she really did seem a bit more hysterical, a bit less a victim of oppressive and destabilizing circumstances.
6. Also WTF, I was so bummed that (minor spoiler, I guess, if you care) Ainslie wound up deciding to get married after all—even trying to get Len to marry her! Blaugh. (Again, though, this was written in, what, the mid-fifties or early sixties? So what do I know.)
7. It made me really upset to realize, about halfway through, that I am older than these characters. If not all of them, at least most. I don't really feel like going into why this was so disconcerting, but it was, staggeringly.(less)
Let's be honest: it's not like there was a chance I wasn't going to like this book. Jonathan Ames is the best best best, though of course extremely po...moreLet's be honest: it's not like there was a chance I wasn't going to like this book. Jonathan Ames is the best best best, though of course extremely polarizing – you either want to hear about trannies and suckling and bizarre sexual escapades and shitting oneself, or you don't. And I guess if you asked me that question not in the context of a Jonathan Ames book, I probably wouldn't be so enthusiastic about all those subjects. But there is something so sweet and simple about the way he writes about these things... I guess what I'm saying is that female ejaculation never sounded so, um, pleasant?
But lest you think that various and unappetizing bodily effusions are the only things you'll find herein, let me disabuse you of that notion right quick. In addition to the aforementioned, you will delightedly read about:
* The vast and varied audience members at Illinois's Gothicfest, including a Chomsky fan and a sword-seller and a very cool dad and of course lots and lots and lots of silly people in black clothes. * Drinking absinthe with Marylin Manson (who, like female ejaculation, I have never liked nearly so much as I did within these pages). * Going clubbing with Lenny Kravitz, who also managed to come across as pretty interesting. * Courderoy and its appreciators. * Spending thousands of dollars (courtesy of G.Q.) in one weekend in the Meatpacking District. * And lots and lots and lots more sex (duh).
Anyway, the essays are all great, just as great as any of his essays always are. They were all previously published, in big-name magazines like Spin and the New York Times and such. There are also some short stories here, and while I'm not generally a fan of his fiction, the subject matter in the stories was close enough to his essays that I though they were all lovely. (In fact, one of them I didn't realize was fiction until the very very end.) Plus there's some diary entries about his travels in Europe as a teenager, and others about his son.
Oh and plus! There's an essay about that boxing match he did a year or two ago which I actually went to see, and the whole time I was reading the essay, I was (totally irrationally) hoping he was going to say something like And right before the bell rang I looked out over the ropes and there was this sweet smiling twenty-something girl with curly hair and I thought she looked like someone I'd sure like to be friends with.
Picking this book up was a wild stab in the dark – I was thinking to maybe dig up some Salinger but I couldn't find The Catcher in the Rye, so I went...morePicking this book up was a wild stab in the dark – I was thinking to maybe dig up some Salinger but I couldn't find The Catcher in the Rye, so I went to a shelf I usually don't remember to check and scanned the spines with my eyes all like half-closed, and this one just leapt out at me. It's one of the last books I took from the Strand before I got fired, just because of the cool cover and all, and I kind of didn't think I'd ever really read it.
But! Wow, it was really quite good. And it's funny that I was looking for Salinger but came up with this, because – though I didn't know this until the end because I don't read the blurbs – like every reviewer compared this book's protagonist with Holden Caulfield. Which is odd and not too apt, I don't think, though it's been a very long time since I've read Catcher in the Rye, which was why I was looking for it in the first place.
Um, what? Oh, How the Light Gets In. It's the story of Lou Conner, a super-smart, disaffected and depressed high school senior who lives with her pretty poor, white-trash (or their version thereof) family in Australia. Her two nasty slutty older sisters spit on her and beat her up, to the jeers of their much-older nasty boyfriends, which her mom thinks is totally fine. Neither of her parents work, or read books, or do much other than watch television and drink themselves stupid. So Lou's decided her ticket out is to do a one-year study-abroad in the States, though she's quite sure she'll never be going back home.
So the book opens with her flying to Chicago to meet her host family, the Hardings, an upper-middle-class suburban clan composed of prim and proper mom, brooding and smart dad, thirteen-year-old picture-perfect Bridget, and nerdy fifteen-year-old puberty-wretched James. Everyone is very anxious to get along, but the forced pleasantries and awkward attempts at closeness, sharply juxtaposed against Lou's real wants, fears, and desires, are heartbreaking from the start. It's quickly apparent that everyone wants each other to be different than they are; everyone has constructed an image of one another that no one can hope to fulfill, and they all embark on a sad choreography of failure-to-live-up-to. There's the sexual tension between Lou and James, the competitiveness between Lou and Bridget, the questionable getting-along of Mr and Mrs Harding, the three teenagers just trying to find their different ways through all the bullshit of high school. It's in a lot of ways a pretty tragic book, because pretty much nothing goes truly right for anyone.
The characters in this book are magnificent. The dialogue is totally natural and compelling. This is definitely an elevator book: one you'll pull out even on a twenty-second elevator ride, just to read half a page, because it just propels forward. I loved it, and I recommend it highly. (less)
I read about fifty pages of this and was totally bored and lost interest, but after reading a few other books I came back to it. And it was so much be...moreI read about fifty pages of this and was totally bored and lost interest, but after reading a few other books I came back to it. And it was so much better!! I forgot how totally readable and sassy and fun Jane Austen is. And I don't even really like zombies all that much, but it was pretty fun & funny how well-woven it all was. I am very tempted to re-read the original now, because some of the time I couldn't remember if bits were actually Jane Austen's or not!
Also, this definitely gets my vote for both best cover and most original idea this year. I hear dude is already contracted to do several more, the next being (I think) about Abe Lincoln. Ha!(less)
I'm not sure why I liked this book a bit less than Raising Demons. Maybe it suffers from what I privately consider the "Tom Robbins syndrome", which t...moreI'm not sure why I liked this book a bit less than Raising Demons. Maybe it suffers from what I privately consider the "Tom Robbins syndrome", which to me means that certain authors (or musicians, or artists generally) actually suffer from their originality. I mean, the first time I read Tom Robbins, he blew my fucking mind, he was so different than anything else I'd ever encountered. But by the fourth or fifth book of his, while they were still really different than everyone else I could get my hands on, they were an awful lot like each other. Does that make sense?
Anyway, Life Among the Savages. It's still really great, of course, but I guess the novelty has worn off a bit. This one was actually written a few years prior to Raising Demons, but they're similarly structured, each beginning with a major move and ending with Christmas. There's only three children in this one, because Barry hasn't been born yet, and the three kids are much younger, so there's not so much of the really crazy conversations and hijinx. But this was still a fucking perfect book for reading on a blanket in the park on the first hot Sunday of the season. It only takes a few hours cover to cover, and is light and silly enough that you can take frequent breaks to doze and snack and smoke without sacrificing any of its fun. (less)
I unearthed this book from the very bottom of a very large stack as a possible candidate to read to my sister while she was recovering from surgery (b...moreI unearthed this book from the very bottom of a very large stack as a possible candidate to read to my sister while she was recovering from surgery (broke her fucking jaw). We chose Alice in Wonderland instead, but then I thought I'd maybe glance at this one, which I haven't read in years.
Um, I think – with the possible exception of The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan – that this may well be the funniest book ever written. I read only eleven pages over a cigarette and found myself laughing – out loud – three times. How often does that happen? Not ever, actually.
*********
This book is extraordinary. Truly, it is so clever, so silly, so warm and sweet. And so funny!! Did I mention that? It's a book of stunning minutia, where the seemingly simplest things – a Little League game, getting a new dog, making a family dinner, finding a missing sneaker – really just bubble with life and love and joy and fun. Shirley Jackson has just got an impeccable ear for speech and an unsurpassable sense of story, rendering with stunning deftness detailed conversations with her children (in all their non-sequiturian glory) and the many hilarious episodes in her family's day-to-day small-town life. It is absolutely mind-boggling to think that this kind, sweet, gentle, sarcastic woman is the same person from whose brain sprung "The Lottery" and other such disturbing pieces.
Here's the cast. Shirley herself, a very poised, often self-deprecating but extremely perceptive wife and mother of four. Her husband, an English professor at a nearby women's college, coin collector, and extremely sarcastic wit, who is regularly bewildered by his entire family. Then the kids: Laurie, about thirteen, the protective older brother who loves baseball and building stuff and is always being fined by his dad for pronouncing things to be 'real cool' or 'flipped'; Jannie, maybe ten, in her mind a future beauty queen (or princess, hopefully), who is quite smart and often funny; Sally, about five, who speaks in the most delicious "odd jangling manner", which usually means repeating the central theme of each sentence at its end, as in, "Laurie is on his bike, and Jannie has been eaten by bears, eaten"; and finally Barry, two, whose constant companion is a blue teddy bear named Dikidiki.
And look, I should mention that this is not the kind of book I would ever think to read. I mean, it's a memoir by a fifties housewife about life with her family in a small town in Vermont. I hate the perceived preciousness of small-town life. I hate women who think their little babies' foibles are worth transcribing in agonizing detail. And I really hate – or am at least made distinctly uncomfortable by – fifties housewives who simper and obsique, describe themselves as 'helpless little women', and defer to their husbands on everything. Truth be told, I have absolutely no idea what possessed me to pick this up in the first place, given the above. But honestly? None of that matters. Shirley Jackson is just brilliant, in every way, and I don't care what she's writing about – it's just so much fun to listen to and be a part of. I did wind up deciding to read a few little selections to my sister – just a paragraph or two here or there – but each time I started, she didn't let me stop for twenty or thirty pages! I'm avoiding transcribing passages here for the same reason: if I started, I'd have to type up the whole damn book. Shirley Jackson is just superb.(less)
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