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July 18
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New comment on Martin's review of
On Chesil Beach: A Novel
(see all 2 comments)
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July 15
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Martin
gave
to:
On Chesil Beach: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Ian McEwan
bookshelves:
2008books
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in July, 2008
Martin said:
""On Chesil Beach" is a tight, tiny gem of a book. Almost a novella, the writing is so precise and evocative and meaningful that it takes virtually no time to read at all. I read "Atonement," also by Ian McEwan, a few years ago a...more
"On Chesil Beach" is a tight, tiny gem of a book. Almost a novella, the writing is so precise and evocative and meaningful that it takes virtually no time to read at all. I read "Atonement," also by Ian McEwan, a few years ago and enjoyed it very much; the same dark perspective on human relations and keen insight into behavior and the inner life is at work here. The book is "just" a study of a young couple’s wedding night in England, 1962. We learn about bride and groom in turn, peering briefly but pointedly into each family, assembling just enough pieces to understand and appreciate the inevitability of the book’s tragedy. The plot’s not central here – though the final chapter I found as suspenseful and gripping as anything I’ve read recently – rather, the careful observations of two characters at an intersection in their lives, at a time of intersection and change in the world, create all the drama and tragedy one could ask for.
The power of language, naming, and words takes on huge importance in the book, and interestingly enough, that power is a force for good and ill, but mostly ill. So often the "power of language" takes on a heroic role in contemporary fiction (one would expect contemporary writers to place such an importance on their stock in trade), yet in "On Chesil Beach" most of the labels and names and many singular words have terrible consequences. Fascinating, surely, to see the power of language to destroy and damage instead of elevate and enlighten or redeem. In fairness, it is often the lack of appropriate words that bring about disaster: “...there existed no shared language in which two sane adults could describe such events to each other” (169-170). But at the same time, plenty of words, especially labels, do enormous harm in the course of the text.
Ultimately "On Chesil Beach" is an absolutely beautiful book: emotional, truthful, and as rigorous in its writing as poetry. Truly, no paragraph, sentence, or even word goes to waste. The meticulous descriptions of the main characters' interactions took me aback – I felt huge sympathy and sadness for Edward and Florence, and absolutely understood all their actions and missteps. These felt like utterly real people, in a completely real situation, saying and doing the things I could imagine myself doing and saying in just such a scenario. It was uncanny, flawless, and truly impressive....less
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July 07
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Martin
took the never-ending book quiz.
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July 05
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Martin
gave
to:
Absurdistan (Paperback)
by Gary Shteyngart
bookshelves:
2008books
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in July, 2008
Martin said:
"I feel like "Absurdistan" succeeds in spite of itself, as strange as that might seem. It is a very funny book, and I think comedy is hard to do well in novels, especially ones that aspire to be taken (at least somewhat) seriously. Let me ...more
I feel like "Absurdistan" succeeds in spite of itself, as strange as that might seem. It is a very funny book, and I think comedy is hard to do well in novels, especially ones that aspire to be taken (at least somewhat) seriously. Let me rephrase: I think it is hard to be "silly" in a serious novel. In that respect, "Absurdistan" -- most of whose comedy derives from silliness -- succeeds in spite of itself. Towards the beginning of the book, especially, it feels like a ripoff of "A Confederacy of Dunces," one of my all time favorite books. That's a major strike. The hugely fat, tragicomic protagonist of "Absurdistan" just has too much in common with the outsize main character from "Dunces," Ignatius P. Reilly, one of my absolute favorite characters in literature. That "Absurdistan" manages to steer itself away from those similarities and ultimately not feel like a re-tread of that particular great comic novel is another way it succeeds in spite of itself. The last example I'll offer is the way Shteyngart writes a dim parallel of himself into the plot as "Jerry Shteynfarb" -- the kind of awkward self-referentalism that I don't much care for. Yet he -- the real Shteyngart, not Shteynfarb -- manages to keep his alter ego at the periphery of the story and as the butt of the jokes and doesn't sink too deep into what could easily have become pure post-modern onanism.
Ultimately, "Absurdistan" hits the heart and not exclusively the funnybone. In that way it manages (like "Dunces") to exceed the trappings of being a "funny novel" to become, simply, a GOOD novel. Its comedy is neither uproarious nor strained; its tragedy is neither heartbreaking nor heavy-handed. If I could give it another 1/2 (or maybe 1/4?) of a star, I probably would, but it just wasn't a 4-star book for me. An enjoyable book, to be sure: funny with enough of a heart and enough of an edge to be more than just a joke, but not funny enough or heartfelt enough to be a classic....less
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May 28
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Martin
gave
to:
The Things They Carried (Paperback)
by Tim O'Brien
bookshelves:
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
Martin said:
""The Things They Carried" feels a little like a bunch of stories smushed into a novel. I may well have been biased by seeing on the title page all the various magazines which had previously published chapters of what became this book, but ...more
"The Things They Carried" feels a little like a bunch of stories smushed into a novel. I may well have been biased by seeing on the title page all the various magazines which had previously published chapters of what became this book, but I like to think that I would have noticed it anyway. Some chapters were interconnected, the characters recurred, but the book as a whole didn’t feel like it built in any particular way to any particular climax. To be sure, it operated on a very high, consistent level throughout, but it didn’t necessarily peak anywhere. Regardless, if that’s the worst criticism I can level at the book, that’s pretty great. And it’s the only criticism I can level.
I really enjoyed this book, though "enjoy" might be the wrong word. I found it to be moving, wonderfully written, and enormously readable. I flew through it, as awful and heart wrenching as much of the descriptions and stories were. In fact, "heart wrenching" might be the best word to describe the entire experience. The descriptions and situations were often horrible or disgusting (or both!), yet not so horrible or disgusting that it was at any point unreadable or beyond reasonably shocking (if there's such a thing as a reasonable amount of shock). Mostly, the book was filled with elegant and elegiac stories, as well as keen insights – psychological and otherwise – into the experience of foot soldiers in Vietnam.
The lack of "shocking" material put me in two minds:
1) I thought about how hard it is in today’s day and age to be shocked about war in general, or the war in Vietnam in particular. We’ve all seen and read so much about Vietnam, and with the current war going on, it seems easy to be inured to the misery of war. Certainly that’s a sad state of affairs, but there it is. Reading this book I kept envisioning "Apocalypse Now," for better or worse. I think we have reached (I have reached?) a saturation point culturally with the Vietnam war, where so much is reducible to the film-versions; I think of Robert Duvall saying "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning" or hear the strains of "The Ride of the Valkyries" in the background as I read. I was mesmerized by "Apocalypse Now" and "Full Metal Jacket" and others but I think that that sort of shock gets worn away over time – now I have a bit of a more ho-hum attitude towards the stories and visions of insanity, as amazing as that may be. Yet Tim O’Brien did an excellent job of not just conjuring the insanity and horror, but explaining the thought-processes, the inner lives, of the poor soldiers in the midst of it all. Explaining a character’s inner life in such compelling detail is impossible for even excellent actors like Duvall or Martin Sheen or Vincent D'Onofrio.
2) I appreciated that the book – without shying away from gore and nastiness – was more about the redemptive power of writing than the actual hard, cold facts of war. In a way that’s made most explicit by the book’s closing chapter, the entire novel (if it is, in fact, a novel) is an elegy and redemption and therapy and a compulsion. The most fascinating part of this fascinating book is the glimpse into the mind of one writer struggling with this awful experience and controlling it, redeeming it, through the writing of this very book. It’s post-modern and strange to consider while also being very very interesting. Not to mention: sad and beautiful.
Along the same lines, deciphering what is true and false, what is fiction and fact, becomes a captivating (even primary) part of the book and the experience of reading it. O’Brien plays a powerful and genuinely surprising "game" with his readers; even as I have become more than familiar with the classic "unreliable narrator" convention in literature classes, and have even written many a paper on just such an idea in college, the way O’Brien explicitly and implicitly plays with the established rules and expectations was gripping, and even shocking to me in some cases.
In all, it is a powerful book: deeply sad and troubling while, at the same time, strangely hopeful. O’Brien’s belief in, and use of, writing as a personal salvation makes for about as searing a novel – or any kind of personal expression – as possible.
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April 30
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Martin
gave
to:
The End of the Affair (Paperback)
by Graham Greene
bookshelves:
2008books
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in April, 2008
Martin said:
"The End of the Affair by Graham Greene is a fascinatingly internal little book, with strangely cinematic moments peeking through. (Perhaps I was biased because I read a copy of the book published to coincide with the 1999 Neil Jordan film adaptation...more
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene is a fascinatingly internal little book, with strangely cinematic moments peeking through. (Perhaps I was biased because I read a copy of the book published to coincide with the 1999 Neil Jordan film adaptation so I might have been hyper-aware of those few sweeping, visual moments. (Though the opening description of two of the focal characters meeting on a rainy night is absolutely a filmic layup!)) It is a slight book, for sure -- my edition came up short even of 200 pages -- but packs a lot of character and emotion into those scant 191 pages. It is essentially a character study of three people involved in a love triangle, while also serving as a tortured mediation on faith and the existence of God. If it sounds a bit weird, it is.
On the whole, I enjoyed the little novel, and was surprised (should I have been? it was first published in 1951...) at its sexual frankness. The writing is beautiful and incisive in its condensed descriptions of characters and situations. The smallest details are extremely telling, and Greene has a great eye for black comedy -- even sneaking in some post-WWII social satire. Yet bleakness prevails. It's an incisive and wonderfully-written book, but it's not any fun; unhappiness, misunderstanding, and and self-pity dog these characters at every turn. This isn't your classic conversion story, nor does anyone in the story really reach any sort of peace or understanding -- with each other OR the Almighty.
As a long novella or a shorter novel, everyone -- and everything -- in the book takes on a slightly poetic, condensed feel, more than symbol but slightly less that fully fleshed character. Much of the inner lives of the characters is left to mere allusion and suggestion -- effective in places and somewhat maddening in others. The woman in the center of this triangle gets the shortest shrift of all. We peek into her diary -- strangely, her narrative voice reads JUST like the narrative voice throughout the rest of the book...weird! -- but even that shortcut into her thoughts comes up short of offering any real explanation or understanding. Not a criticism, just a somewhat frustrated observation. Frankly, I found myself more interested in understanding the thoughts and emotions of the characters than with the mystical, religious (?), and enigmatic conclusion to the tale. It becomes clear the focus of the text is not so much to flesh out these characters as it is to wrestle with the ideas of God, spirituality, and organized religion -- the validity, existence, worth, etc, of the same. By the end of the book, part of me wished Greene had focused his impressive literary, linguistic, and observational skill just a bit less on their religious struggles and a bit more on their inner lives and motivations. But I guess that would make it a totally different book, huh?...less
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April 18
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Martin
gave
to:
The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq (Paperback)
by Rory Stewart
bookshelves:
2008books
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in April, 2008
Martin said:
"I wish everyone would read “The Prince of the Marshes.” On the one hand it a fascinating read about a part of the world that is SO much in the news these days yet is also so utterly unknown to us (and unknowable, says Stewart). On the other, it...more
I wish everyone would read “The Prince of the Marshes.” On the one hand it a fascinating read about a part of the world that is SO much in the news these days yet is also so utterly unknown to us (and unknowable, says Stewart). On the other, it is a clear-eyed, detailed description of the ground-level work in Iraq that DOESN’T show up on CNN.
The epilogue to the book – written in Kabul in 2007 – should be five pages of required reading for everyone, everywhere. I particularly enjoyed Stewart’s realistic assessment that people who criticize the pre-planning, the planning, and the execution of the war in Iraq “imply that the problem is that we sent the ‘B Team.’ And that somewhere else an ‘A Team’ exists, or that at least such a team might be created...” (398) The entire book lays painfully, at times comically, bare the notion that any kind of democracy could be established in Iraq. Any notion of creating a stable government in Iraq is a pitiful, absolutely insane notion. The cultures, languages, and experiences between both the US/Britain and Iraqis, as well as in many cases between the Iraqi people themselves, are so vastly different that it would be no more possible for humpback whales to run the Kentucky Derby. I don’t mean to imply anything by that other than – US and Iraq are real different. The people who live in Iraq are all very different people from different tribes, with different values, different forms of religious expression, different experiences of the past and different aspirations for the future. On a removed, rational level, one might think (I certainly have thought) that a nation like the US could go to another country, explain a better form of government, and, over time, with the proper resources, set that up. Well, this book completely and utterly destroys that notion, at least in this situation.
Stewart tells the story of his wildly convoluted dealings and efforts clearly and straightforwardly. He seems idealistic yet pragmatic in the same breath, and this balance and depth makes for fascinating reading. Stewart is PART of the “coalition of the willing.” This book is not titled “Fiasco” or “The Tragedy of Iraq” or anything. Almost the entire text of the book is relaying Stewart’s personal experiences and frustrations as a “deputy governorate coordinator”; it is a story that shows, rather than tells, how fundamentally impossible the task is, in Iraq. It is also, strangely, not a despairing book, nor does it really point any fingers. The essentially apolitical nature of the book makes it twice as interesting for me to read than some screed against the war, Bush, Cheney, Bremer, etc etc etc. We already get all that, at this point. Everybody knows. This book looks at the communities, the tribal leaders, the regular people in a remote part of the southern region of Iraq and how nightmarishly confusing and difficult it is for Stewart and his Western team to accomplish anything.
It’s depressing, and fascinating, and instructive, at the same time as it is, in some ways, the blackest of black comedies. Especially at this juncture in time in the US, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Even if you just go to the bookstore and read the final 5 pages. Though if you are anything like me, once you read those final five pages, you’ll almost certainly buy the book and read the preceding 400. You won’t be disappointed....less
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March 26
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Martin
gave
to:
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto (Paperback)
by Chuck Klosterman
bookshelves:
2008books
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in March, 2008
Martin said:
"I enjoyed Chuck Klosterman’s "mix CD" of essays. One of the quotes on the back cover of the books touts Klosterman as "sometimes exasperating but almost always engaging." I couldn’t agree more. As thought-provoking and inci...more
I enjoyed Chuck Klosterman’s "mix CD" of essays. One of the quotes on the back cover of the books touts Klosterman as "sometimes exasperating but almost always engaging." I couldn’t agree more. As thought-provoking and incisively-reasoned as "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs" is, it is also exasperating. My primary criticism is that Klosterman seems to want to have it both ways in many of these essays – he wants to stand outside as the coolest, smartest, snarkiest observer (he is especially obsessed with the idea of 'authenticity' vs. 'irony'), yet is also clearly very much a part of, and a loving participant in, the things he profiles and discusses and trashes! For instance, his essay about a rock and roll symposium roundly criticizes the participants as being hilariously nerdy, white, elitist, and antithetical to the whole notion of ROCK, yet he ever-so-casually mentions at the start of the essay what a good time he had at this convention. After that briefest of admissions, the convention gets trashed. But it’s clear in a careful reading that as much as Klosterman is making fun and pointing his acerbic, witty finger at these people, he is also very much indicting himself. There is certainly nothing wrong with this, per se, but the taste it left in my mouth was…tricky. Similarly, his essay on "Toby [Keith] vs. Moby" is ostensibly about the value of country music and the arrogant stupidity of people who proclaim that they like "all kinds of music except country." (This is a topic particularly near and dear to my heart, as someone who likes all kinds of music INCLUDING country, and disdains those who summarily disdain all country music in the way Klosterman describes.) Yet after setting up his thesis, Klosterman spends the remainder of the essay hitting country music with one backhanded compliment after another after another. He, clearly, doesn’t like country music himself, and has tons of obliquely obnoxious things to say about the genre, at the same time as he is purportedly defending it from elitist detractors. Boring! I’m sure that this sort of irony-laden "text vs. meta-text" idea is very much up Chuck Klosterman’s personal alley, and I certainly acknowledge it creates an interesting conflict of authorial viewpoints, but it also feels like he is being a total holier-than-thou, do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do-style jerk, for lack of better (or fewer) words. I don’t think Klosterman would disagree with anyone who called him a jerk, and I don’t intend it as an indictment – only as a critical reservation I had towards the book itself: sometimes the "jerk factor" was overwhelming; most of the time he keeps it in check and allows his fascinating, obsessive connections to generate wonderful questions and insights. My reservations, while probably detailed at too great a length in this review, are actually very minor. On the whole I liked the book a great deal and was engrossed by his hyperverbal, hyperanalytical, hyperconnective analyses -- a thought-provoking, funny, and insightful book overall....less
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March 20
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Martin
gave
to:
The Human Stain: A Novel (Paperback)
by Philip Roth
bookshelves:
2008books
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in March, 2008
Martin said:
"This is just an incredibly written book. The first Philip Roth novel I read was "American Pastoral," and I remember thinking as I read it that I was consciously aware of how beautiful the writing was. Not the subject matter or anything, b...more
This is just an incredibly written book. The first Philip Roth novel I read was "American Pastoral," and I remember thinking as I read it that I was consciously aware of how beautiful the writing was. Not the subject matter or anything, but the simple arrangement, placement, sequence, and flow of the words on the page. I cannot remember a book before I read "American Pastoral" that so swept me away with the language and dexterity of prose, simultaneously gripped by reading and yet with a part of my brain standing apart, aware even in the moment of how much I was encompassed by the writing. It's an odd sensation, and one I'm sure I'm not describing at all well.
Regardless, and unsurprisingly, I had the same experience reading "The Human Stain." The writing is just flatly phenomenal: gorgeous passages of imaginative inner monologue, powerfully thought-provoking set pieces, amazingly lengthy and convoluted sentences that read as fluidly as anything in a children’s book. It was really a continuing surprise and a joy to read this book. The subject matter itself is incredibly depressing, yet interesting and extremely thought-provoking at the same time. There’s virtually no plot to summarize, “The Human Stain” is just a fabulous, angry, complex meditation on identity, the state of America, the changing of times, the passing of generations, race and racism, death and dying, judgement, human fallibility, the nature of truth, the nature of thought and knowledge, the possibilities of writing itself, and who knows how much more! Surely an infinite amount more, on the conservative side.
I can’t recommend “The Human Stain” and “American Pastoral” more. Beautiful books, both....less
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March 06
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Martin
gave
to:
Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul (Hardcover)
by Karen Abbott
bookshelves:
2008books
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in March, 2008
Martin said:
"In “Sin in the Second City” Karen Abbott tells us in her subtitle that the book is ultimately about “the Battle for America's Soul.” Pretty heady! I suppose that the battle still persists to this day, so I shouldn’t have expected a victor...more
In “Sin in the Second City” Karen Abbott tells us in her subtitle that the book is ultimately about “the Battle for America's Soul.” Pretty heady! I suppose that the battle still persists to this day, so I shouldn’t have expected a victor in the book itself, yet was left feeling unsatisfied at not even having a side to root for. Abbott seemingly couldn’t decide if she was writing a slice-of-life about Chicago’s vice district at the turn of the century, a profile of two successful sisters running a posh brothel, or a narrative history of the battle between reformers and vice lords. Elements of all three different books come to the fore at different times in the relatively scant 300 pages of text, with no one tack prevailing. I never felt that I had a satisfying level of detail about “the Levee” – the infamous vice district – or a real grasp of the tale of Ada and Minna Everleigh – the sister-proprietors of the infamous “Everleigh Club” – OR a clear-cut understanding of the major players and sequence of events in the battle between the reform movement and the criminal element. Ultimately, Abbott gives a muddled portrait of a bunch of people at the turn of the century who, while colorful enough, aren’t well-enough detailed to be compelling, or motivated well enough to be understandable, dropped into a sequence of events that seems dramatic but is utterly without stakes or importance.
This leads to the primary question I had with the book: who are we, the readers, supposed to root for (if anyone), and/or who does Abbott seem to prefer in this mini-epic “Battle”? I am also not so simple a reader as to require a “good guy” and a “bad guy” in the stories I read, but some person or people I could care about on more than a cursory level would have been sufficient. Seemingly, the Everleigh sisters, in trying to raise their whorehouse to a higher standard and cater to a more exclusive, monied clientele, are our heroes, as it were. But we know precious little about them, partially because they (presumably by necessity) obfuscate so much information about their lives, and partly because there are so many other outsize characters in the book that Abbott doesn’t have the time to invest them with anything other than the most limited amount of depth. The other characters in the Levee are mostly abominable: vicious pimps and madams, forcing their whores into disgusting and vile acts, while meting out healthy portions of abuse and disease. Nobody to sympathize with there… Abbott then treats the reformers of the time with disdain, portraying them as timorous moralizers, pedantic grandstanders, superficial busybodies. I suppose there is something postmodern in the idea that there are no heroes in this story, but one still gets the feeling that Abbott sides with the vice district, somehow wishing that prostitution, segregated from the mainstream of society, could entirely be elevated to the “classy” level of the Everleigh Club and allowed to continue on(?!). Certainly the reform-minded crusaders – religious and political – are not shown as heroic janitors of a social filth. Yet Chicago’s vice district IS clearly a rats’ nest of illness and misery – with the possible exception of the dubious accomplishments of the Everleigh Club in partially raising the brothel to a not-totally-disgusting-and-horrendous level.
In this book, it would seem a shame that the Everleigh Club was shuttered by an apprehensive and capricious mayor. It may be that it is meant to be a shame simply because of the changing of the times – the passing of an epoch. But I had a hard time working up a great deal of emotional nostalgia for the closing of Chicago’s fanciest whorehouse out of a pack of awful whorehouses. Is this the sort of changing of the times that we should lament? The end of the good times? (We aren’t even to the Roaring ‘20s yet!) Were these times really so good in the first place?? Abbott is at pains to downplay much of the basis for the moral fervor over “white slavery.” She seems largely to dismiss the idea advocated by the reformers: that credulous women from out of town were lured off train platforms into houses of ill repute by (moustache-twirling) villains. Instead, she indicates that many of these women chose “the life” for themselves. I both have a hard time believing this, and have a hard time accepting it as a mitigating factor in the brutal turn-of-the-century sex industry. Is it proto-feminism? A woman’s right to do with her body as she pleases? Based on some of the nasty anecdotes in the book, one would imagine it was anything but. Is she really advocating for women to be allowed to be publicly whipped in S&M-style displays for male titillation? (Such were some of the entertainments at the less-classy brothels.) Does anyone really think women were willingly and rationally choosing this for themselves? Yet Abbott’s authorial loyalties do seem to lie with her unruly, anti-heroic whores and madams. (Obviously, I just don’t get it.)
The book was interesting enough as a sketch of a wonderfully alien time and place, all taking place here in the city where I live and the streets where I walk. But beyond the curiosity factor, I did not find much of any substance – certainly nothing that would indicate this book was about the battle for America’s very soul! I would have appreciated Abbott tipping her hand more: why, aside from the vaguest modern-day resonances of religious people legislating morality, were the reformers so lame in her eyes? Conversely, Abbott would have been well served to detach herself and give us sympathetic characters on both sides of the battle: a compassionate reformer with the best interests of women and society at heart, clashing with a big-hearted madam just trying to make a living, to show the democratic conundrum between freedom and immorality. But the battle is inconsistently pitched, from an authorial perspective, and ultimately relegates the book into muddled, if interesting, purposelessness....less
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chicago readers
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