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How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Novel
It’s hard being a single-dad raising a son—especially if your kid is also a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle .
There’s nothing more troubling than having your child break down on the side of the road, leaking oil, overheating, and asking tough questions like, “What is death?” and “Why did Mom leave?”
But stay calm!
Because How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive is not only a dizzyingly beautiful novel, it’s also a handy manual with useful chapters on “Tools and Spare Parts,” “Valve Adjustment,” “How To Read This Novel,” and, most important of all, “How Works a Heart.”
Welcome to Christopher Boucher’s zany literary universe, a place where metaphors shift beneath your feet, familiar words assume new meanings, objects talk, trees attack, and time actually is money. Modeled on the cult classic 1969 hippie handbook of the same name, How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive is an astonishing tour-de-force that tackles some of life’s biggest How do you cope with losing a parent? What’s the secret to raising a child? How do you keep love alive? How do you get your car to start?
There’s nothing more troubling than having your child break down on the side of the road, leaking oil, overheating, and asking tough questions like, “What is death?” and “Why did Mom leave?”
But stay calm!
Because How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive is not only a dizzyingly beautiful novel, it’s also a handy manual with useful chapters on “Tools and Spare Parts,” “Valve Adjustment,” “How To Read This Novel,” and, most important of all, “How Works a Heart.”
Welcome to Christopher Boucher’s zany literary universe, a place where metaphors shift beneath your feet, familiar words assume new meanings, objects talk, trees attack, and time actually is money. Modeled on the cult classic 1969 hippie handbook of the same name, How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive is an astonishing tour-de-force that tackles some of life’s biggest How do you cope with losing a parent? What’s the secret to raising a child? How do you keep love alive? How do you get your car to start?
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
15 people are currently reading
381 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Boucher
185 books14 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
This is Christopher^Boucher, where ^=space. (default profile)
About the Author:
Christopher Boucher is the author of the novels How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive and Golden Delicious.
He's also an Associate Professor of the Practice of English at Boston College and the managing editor of Post Road Magazine.
This is Christopher^Boucher, where ^=space. (default profile)
About the Author:
Christopher Boucher is the author of the novels How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive and Golden Delicious.
He's also an Associate Professor of the Practice of English at Boston College and the managing editor of Post Road Magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
August 27, 2011
Don't let me three stars fool anyone. This might have been a four star book. Or a high three? Why am I feeling so ungenerous. I don't know. I partly want to shy people possibly away from the book. I'm afraid that they will not like it much. Why, Greg, do you think that anyone actually reads any of your reviews and then thinks so highly of your opinion that they go out and read something because you gush over it? I don't know. All I can hope is that I don't influence anyone in anything. The thought of effecting someone's life is almost too much to bear.
Speaking of bearing, as I write this a hurricane is preparing to bear down on us unlovely citizens of NYC. In an unprecedented move the mayor who constantly likes to set himself up in a position of father lording over the welfare of dimwitted children has ordered public transportation to be shut down hours before anything major is happening. I think there is something here to complain about, maybe just the air of I'm going to do what's best for you that Bloomberg keeps adopting on all kinds of issues, but I'm also grateful. I got out of having to goto work today, and I finished this book. And now I'm writing this review. None of this would happen if the trains were running.
Is that last paragraph important to the review? Nope. It's just a snapshot of when this is being written.
How to write about this novel?
It is quirky. Almost too quirky for it's own good. Out of the various young (I think he's young, or shall I say new?) writers that George Saunders is grooming this one has taken quirky to a whole new level. I think the weight of the 'quirks' he adds to the book is almost too much for the narrative to sustain. The book feels like it always about to collapse in on itself. It doesn't though. But I'm not sure if it works either.
There are words on the page. And there is meaning to those words, and independent of the meaning of the words is a story that weaves it way through the book. That I'm able to grasp the story is surprising, reading this book almost feels like looking at one of those pictures where if you look at it one way it's an old woman or a duck and if you look at it differently it's a young woman or a rabbit. It's like I'm reading this kind of weird duck story and I keep seeing the duck, but at the same time the presence of the mournful rabbit (why would a rabbit be mournful?) story is making itself known. It's a kind of cool thing, but I don't think most readers want a kind of cool way to inflict melancholy on themselves from a book.
With a gun to my head I wouldn't be able to tell you what the Volkswagen is supposed to represent in the book. At times the metaphor shifts around. Most of them do in the book. And everything is named something funny, that's the quirky. Like the police are called the City Dogs. Farms move. Buildings talk and die. Western Massachusetts is constantly in flux, but not nearly enough flux that I didn't know many of the places featured in the book, and it's been ten or twelve years (thriteen you old fuck, you were last there thirteen years ago, almost to the day... no memory-of-Greg-when-he-was-younger-and-still-believed-in-the-future, it was 12 years, it was right before starting to visit the grad-school that would kill memory-of-Greg, and for the record the shirt I was wearing today while running errands was the same one I wore the night I got there for the last time, I remember because some jock-tree (a jock? in one of the most laid back and liberal places in the world) threatened to kick my ass for wearing a shirt with the musicroad name Kill the Man Who Questions on it. (are you noticing weird words slipping into the power-review? I'm booking them in to give the sofas and pillars out there a readingfeeling for wordoil that this powerbook does (ok, I went overboard on this sentence, none of them are this bad for inserting words like this, but most of the words were taken from the book))). At the heart (an apt word to use for this book, it has a lot of heart, and it plays a major part in the book, just look at the cover where you can see the Volkswagen heart) it's a book about coping with the loss of a father. A heart-attack tree splits his fathers chest in two and carries him off along with Atkins Farm one Sunday morning. That night the narrator, who has no name because he sold it for minutes (just nod along, ok?) in grief faiths with his ex-girlfriend, the Lady from the Land of Beans, and she gives birth to a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle. This book is about trying to keep his son, the car, alive. A car that runs on stories and memories.
That is the basic premise of the book. Confused? Me too.
It's a very sad book though. Crushingly sad. I don't think something that has baffeled and confused me on a straight forward narrative level has ever had such an emotional impact on me. I mean, how often do you read Beckett and have real feelings being stirred by the text? (Ok, maybe you do, for me it's usually a very removed, intellectual feeling, like yes I get the loneliness and alienation, but not an oh my god this is making me feel pretty sad (not crying sad, just melancholy I guess--this is no Book Thief)).
Take back what i said earlier, I'm going to knock this up to four stars and hope that people do read it. I want to know what other people think of this strange book about a man, his Volkswagen son and the Memory of My Father.
Speaking of bearing, as I write this a hurricane is preparing to bear down on us unlovely citizens of NYC. In an unprecedented move the mayor who constantly likes to set himself up in a position of father lording over the welfare of dimwitted children has ordered public transportation to be shut down hours before anything major is happening. I think there is something here to complain about, maybe just the air of I'm going to do what's best for you that Bloomberg keeps adopting on all kinds of issues, but I'm also grateful. I got out of having to goto work today, and I finished this book. And now I'm writing this review. None of this would happen if the trains were running.
Is that last paragraph important to the review? Nope. It's just a snapshot of when this is being written.
How to write about this novel?
It is quirky. Almost too quirky for it's own good. Out of the various young (I think he's young, or shall I say new?) writers that George Saunders is grooming this one has taken quirky to a whole new level. I think the weight of the 'quirks' he adds to the book is almost too much for the narrative to sustain. The book feels like it always about to collapse in on itself. It doesn't though. But I'm not sure if it works either.
There are words on the page. And there is meaning to those words, and independent of the meaning of the words is a story that weaves it way through the book. That I'm able to grasp the story is surprising, reading this book almost feels like looking at one of those pictures where if you look at it one way it's an old woman or a duck and if you look at it differently it's a young woman or a rabbit. It's like I'm reading this kind of weird duck story and I keep seeing the duck, but at the same time the presence of the mournful rabbit (why would a rabbit be mournful?) story is making itself known. It's a kind of cool thing, but I don't think most readers want a kind of cool way to inflict melancholy on themselves from a book.
With a gun to my head I wouldn't be able to tell you what the Volkswagen is supposed to represent in the book. At times the metaphor shifts around. Most of them do in the book. And everything is named something funny, that's the quirky. Like the police are called the City Dogs. Farms move. Buildings talk and die. Western Massachusetts is constantly in flux, but not nearly enough flux that I didn't know many of the places featured in the book, and it's been ten or twelve years (thriteen you old fuck, you were last there thirteen years ago, almost to the day... no memory-of-Greg-when-he-was-younger-and-still-believed-in-the-future, it was 12 years, it was right before starting to visit the grad-school that would kill memory-of-Greg, and for the record the shirt I was wearing today while running errands was the same one I wore the night I got there for the last time, I remember because some jock-tree (a jock? in one of the most laid back and liberal places in the world) threatened to kick my ass for wearing a shirt with the musicroad name Kill the Man Who Questions on it. (are you noticing weird words slipping into the power-review? I'm booking them in to give the sofas and pillars out there a readingfeeling for wordoil that this powerbook does (ok, I went overboard on this sentence, none of them are this bad for inserting words like this, but most of the words were taken from the book))). At the heart (an apt word to use for this book, it has a lot of heart, and it plays a major part in the book, just look at the cover where you can see the Volkswagen heart) it's a book about coping with the loss of a father. A heart-attack tree splits his fathers chest in two and carries him off along with Atkins Farm one Sunday morning. That night the narrator, who has no name because he sold it for minutes (just nod along, ok?) in grief faiths with his ex-girlfriend, the Lady from the Land of Beans, and she gives birth to a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle. This book is about trying to keep his son, the car, alive. A car that runs on stories and memories.
That is the basic premise of the book. Confused? Me too.
It's a very sad book though. Crushingly sad. I don't think something that has baffeled and confused me on a straight forward narrative level has ever had such an emotional impact on me. I mean, how often do you read Beckett and have real feelings being stirred by the text? (Ok, maybe you do, for me it's usually a very removed, intellectual feeling, like yes I get the loneliness and alienation, but not an oh my god this is making me feel pretty sad (not crying sad, just melancholy I guess--this is no Book Thief)).
Take back what i said earlier, I'm going to knock this up to four stars and hope that people do read it. I want to know what other people think of this strange book about a man, his Volkswagen son and the Memory of My Father.
February 3, 2012
This novel was a breakfast grapefruit - sour, refreshing, occasionally squirting me the eye with acid. All good things, like that underrated start to the culinary day.
I should first disclose that I am writing this review codeined to the eyeballs and on deadline for something else. It gives it a frantic and digressive edge.
After reading so much fictive bilgewater, ersatz Balzac so removed from the original style of heaving bosoms and toothsome dramatics, as to have entirely forgotten its progenitor...books that were foggy, like a remnant word maimed and altered in meaning until it grates to even hear it (discreet/discrete is my current bugbear) this read GREAT.
David Shield’s Reality Hunger is a good reference point here - I refer you to Buck’s excellent review and attendant discussion thread.
Boucher has written a novel that complements all Shield’s bravura epigrams on the dead dead dead state of traditional storytelling, on the actual form of the novel, and pleaded for alternatives. THIS BOOK IS A REPLACEMENT. An improvement. Zesty.
So, how to describe it without releasing small rodents that knaw at your brain with academic snoozery and make you run screaming, oh book-lover that likes things to, you know, mean something? Something definable. As opposed to applying all those prisms of theory which shatter meaning into a thousand bad copies of the cover of Dark Side of the Moon? Ah. More difficult.
The unnamed narrator has sold everything. His name, his possessions, his stories, hocked the lot. To buy time-as-money, the currency of Boucher’s alternative version of Western Massachusetts. He needs the money because of health-care issues (Oh, the terror of being sick in the US. For smug bastards with national healthcare like me it’s like contemplating the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg. You know you will never come out. At least, not as you.)
He has sold it because he has a sick child. His child is a 1971 Volkswagen who runs on stories and requires careful maintenance of his sufferoil, his memorycoil, his unique engineheart. Got that?
You can make a stone-cold analysis of what Boucher is doing here - the alternating chapters of cutesy-hippie lingo in the second person, a faked manual explaining the tao of his strange car (as a former Peugeot owner I know how French things can get). Then a first person patchwork memoir of the narrator, a hack storyteller and misanthrope to whom success is a foreign country. Possessor of a black-belt in self-sabotage, inventor of ghosted persons and mis-remembered histories. His former girlfriends are trapped inside formalist conceits.
It’s a novel of augmentation; of accumulated, startling detail.
Does it sound annoying? A little, but less than you’d think. The dialogue is cracking, and Boucher controls perfectly the balance between the recognisable whims and failings of his protagonist and the otherness of his version of Western Massachusetts, where sentient objects abound, police are CityDogs, and trees regularly are involved in homicides, attacking people’s to eat their hearts.
Themes? The act of writing, more specifically the life of a freelance writer, of writing for money, on spec. Heartlessly. Also, parenthood. Death. Dickheads who won’t grow up, who construct elaborate fantasies to avoid responsibilities of any kind.
I had enormous admiration for the control of this book and the complete and unerring conviction of its vision. It’s the new new fiction, all right. It was also piss funny.
And yet I have a niggling suspicion. Like a few of those writers under-40 sainted by The New Yorker last year (Karen Russell I’m looking at you) I worry that along with fixies, Pancho facial hair and the bad-craft mania gripping women who should know better, the sentimental sweetness, Gen-X nostalgia, is going to date pretty quick.
The thing about grapefruit at breakfast is it needs brown sugar. Boucher has used a little much. At times the tweeness made my fillings hurt. I know why he did it - there’s some heavy stuff going down in Western Massachusetts, but it seemed a little spooked. Like he pulled back from how dark it should have been.
I love post-modernism. I know, kick me. So unfashionable. It seems clear to me that what Boucher and his kind are doing is essentially post-modernism á la Portlandia. It’s good. It’s whipcrack clever. It’s just not as new as it seems on first read.
Put a bird on it.
I should first disclose that I am writing this review codeined to the eyeballs and on deadline for something else. It gives it a frantic and digressive edge.
After reading so much fictive bilgewater, ersatz Balzac so removed from the original style of heaving bosoms and toothsome dramatics, as to have entirely forgotten its progenitor...books that were foggy, like a remnant word maimed and altered in meaning until it grates to even hear it (discreet/discrete is my current bugbear) this read GREAT.
David Shield’s Reality Hunger is a good reference point here - I refer you to Buck’s excellent review and attendant discussion thread.
Boucher has written a novel that complements all Shield’s bravura epigrams on the dead dead dead state of traditional storytelling, on the actual form of the novel, and pleaded for alternatives. THIS BOOK IS A REPLACEMENT. An improvement. Zesty.
So, how to describe it without releasing small rodents that knaw at your brain with academic snoozery and make you run screaming, oh book-lover that likes things to, you know, mean something? Something definable. As opposed to applying all those prisms of theory which shatter meaning into a thousand bad copies of the cover of Dark Side of the Moon? Ah. More difficult.
The unnamed narrator has sold everything. His name, his possessions, his stories, hocked the lot. To buy time-as-money, the currency of Boucher’s alternative version of Western Massachusetts. He needs the money because of health-care issues (Oh, the terror of being sick in the US. For smug bastards with national healthcare like me it’s like contemplating the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg. You know you will never come out. At least, not as you.)
He has sold it because he has a sick child. His child is a 1971 Volkswagen who runs on stories and requires careful maintenance of his sufferoil, his memorycoil, his unique engineheart. Got that?
You can make a stone-cold analysis of what Boucher is doing here - the alternating chapters of cutesy-hippie lingo in the second person, a faked manual explaining the tao of his strange car (as a former Peugeot owner I know how French things can get). Then a first person patchwork memoir of the narrator, a hack storyteller and misanthrope to whom success is a foreign country. Possessor of a black-belt in self-sabotage, inventor of ghosted persons and mis-remembered histories. His former girlfriends are trapped inside formalist conceits.
It’s a novel of augmentation; of accumulated, startling detail.
Does it sound annoying? A little, but less than you’d think. The dialogue is cracking, and Boucher controls perfectly the balance between the recognisable whims and failings of his protagonist and the otherness of his version of Western Massachusetts, where sentient objects abound, police are CityDogs, and trees regularly are involved in homicides, attacking people’s to eat their hearts.
Themes? The act of writing, more specifically the life of a freelance writer, of writing for money, on spec. Heartlessly. Also, parenthood. Death. Dickheads who won’t grow up, who construct elaborate fantasies to avoid responsibilities of any kind.
I had enormous admiration for the control of this book and the complete and unerring conviction of its vision. It’s the new new fiction, all right. It was also piss funny.
And yet I have a niggling suspicion. Like a few of those writers under-40 sainted by The New Yorker last year (Karen Russell I’m looking at you) I worry that along with fixies, Pancho facial hair and the bad-craft mania gripping women who should know better, the sentimental sweetness, Gen-X nostalgia, is going to date pretty quick.
The thing about grapefruit at breakfast is it needs brown sugar. Boucher has used a little much. At times the tweeness made my fillings hurt. I know why he did it - there’s some heavy stuff going down in Western Massachusetts, but it seemed a little spooked. Like he pulled back from how dark it should have been.
I love post-modernism. I know, kick me. So unfashionable. It seems clear to me that what Boucher and his kind are doing is essentially post-modernism á la Portlandia. It’s good. It’s whipcrack clever. It’s just not as new as it seems on first read.
Put a bird on it.
July 11, 2011
I guess I should write something as a review if I'm one of the first folks on Goodreads to finish this book.
At its core, "How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive" is a story about a man, his father, and his son. The father is killed by a Heart Attack Tree and the son is a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle. The narrator must handle the loss of his father while raising his car-son alone. It's a familiar plot structure the familiarity of which does not lessen its impact potential.
HTKYVA has one of the characteristics I most desperately hope to find in a piece of writing: a very familiar despair set in a dizzying and absurd world which stays consistent to its own rules. That's why I love George Saunders so much.
This is not written to be read literally, and it's riddled with representation and symbology. To what extent this is a fantasy world v. the 'real world with an unreliable and broken narrator I'm not positive, though there are clues which suggest that it's more the former than the latter.
Boucher does a very good job of manipulating the elements of language, using words to convey sentiments mostly or totally unrelated to the 'meanings' we associate with them. The sense of play behind the sentence construction and 'meaning'-mutation keeps the reading fun, even as the plot grows grim.
While this convolution and obfuscation was fascinating, it often left me feeling like I didn't totally "get" everything that was happening. I can accept this for most parts of the story, but I found that Boucher's wordplay and meaning-mashing hamstrung the narrative at HTKYVA's emotional peaks. Even as I grew to accept and appreciate the world into which I had been thrust, Boucher seemed more concerned with tweaking his fantasy realm than letting the powerful parts of the HTKYVA really *hit* the reader. He came so close! Just a few paragraphs of letting us feel it--or, at least, refraining from introducing *another* new quirk of Boucher's world--might have done wonders. (but what the hell do I know?)
For my issues with it, I liked the book. I'll definitely keep an eye on Boucher's career and pick up another book or story of his. He seems to have the hard parts down.
And motherfucker can turn a phrase: "My face never did run the same after that day... To this day, I still can't properly smile--whenever I do it's a police lineup."
At its core, "How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive" is a story about a man, his father, and his son. The father is killed by a Heart Attack Tree and the son is a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle. The narrator must handle the loss of his father while raising his car-son alone. It's a familiar plot structure the familiarity of which does not lessen its impact potential.
HTKYVA has one of the characteristics I most desperately hope to find in a piece of writing: a very familiar despair set in a dizzying and absurd world which stays consistent to its own rules. That's why I love George Saunders so much.
This is not written to be read literally, and it's riddled with representation and symbology. To what extent this is a fantasy world v. the 'real world with an unreliable and broken narrator I'm not positive, though there are clues which suggest that it's more the former than the latter.
Boucher does a very good job of manipulating the elements of language, using words to convey sentiments mostly or totally unrelated to the 'meanings' we associate with them. The sense of play behind the sentence construction and 'meaning'-mutation keeps the reading fun, even as the plot grows grim.
While this convolution and obfuscation was fascinating, it often left me feeling like I didn't totally "get" everything that was happening. I can accept this for most parts of the story, but I found that Boucher's wordplay and meaning-mashing hamstrung the narrative at HTKYVA's emotional peaks. Even as I grew to accept and appreciate the world into which I had been thrust, Boucher seemed more concerned with tweaking his fantasy realm than letting the powerful parts of the HTKYVA really *hit* the reader. He came so close! Just a few paragraphs of letting us feel it--or, at least, refraining from introducing *another* new quirk of Boucher's world--might have done wonders. (but what the hell do I know?)
For my issues with it, I liked the book. I'll definitely keep an eye on Boucher's career and pick up another book or story of his. He seems to have the hard parts down.
And motherfucker can turn a phrase: "My face never did run the same after that day... To this day, I still can't properly smile--whenever I do it's a police lineup."
May 1, 2019
I rated this book five stars. Does that mean I love it? No.
But I want to rate this book five stars because of the sheer creativity and innovation that went into writing it. As much as I didn’t ever fully understand what was going on, the author made me really care about his son, the 1971 Volkswagen, and the Memory of His Father, and The Lady from the Land of Beans. But even without understanding what was going on, Boutcher made me care. And he made me feel loss, and heartbreak, and abandonment, and it was powerful.
I think that even though I don’t *love* this book, I can’t really criticize it. I believe that the author accomplished precisely what he set out to do. And what he wanted to do was so inventive and fresh that he deserves some recognition for it.
If you’re curious and ready to read a book unlike any other, this is for you.
But I want to rate this book five stars because of the sheer creativity and innovation that went into writing it. As much as I didn’t ever fully understand what was going on, the author made me really care about his son, the 1971 Volkswagen, and the Memory of His Father, and The Lady from the Land of Beans. But even without understanding what was going on, Boutcher made me care. And he made me feel loss, and heartbreak, and abandonment, and it was powerful.
I think that even though I don’t *love* this book, I can’t really criticize it. I believe that the author accomplished precisely what he set out to do. And what he wanted to do was so inventive and fresh that he deserves some recognition for it.
If you’re curious and ready to read a book unlike any other, this is for you.
August 28, 2012
To say that I don't get it would be a modest understatement.
I picked up reading this book because it is my girlfriend's absolute favorite. She has proven to have very good taste in the past and we agreed to read some of each other's most beloved books.
This is Christopher Boucher's first, and so far as I know, only work. It's a very personal (so personal it invents words, in fact) exploration of parenting through the lens of completely interpretive metaphor.
The speaker remains unnamed throughout the story, having sold his name for "time", which in Boucher's microcosm is not just a proxy, but literally is, money. Confused yet? His son is a 1971 Volkswagon Beetle that is plagued by various maintenance issues for which the speaker has no choice but to periodically confront and fix, McGuyver style. The book is presented as an assembly of his tried and true methods, some chapters even start out phrased as tutorials.
What I'm pretty sure I read was an exploration of the confusion of young parenting, presented intentionally in a world as frightening and random as the enterprise itself. I could feel comfortable just summing it up at that, but there are portions that have nothing to do with the subject, even when distilled from their confusing imagery. Parts of the book feel like the dream of a profoundly troubled man sorting out some kind of trauma.
My feeling overall is that one is not supposed to approach the story with any relation back to an anchor in reality. It's supposed to literally be the story of a man, the ghost of his father, his son the Volkswagon and Western Massachusetts. It's certainly much more approachable when one comes at it from this angle. If you can detach yourself from the incessant need to frame the story within reality, it becomes a hugely enjoyable read. That in itself is useful I think, and I'm glad my girlfriend got me to do it.
I picked up reading this book because it is my girlfriend's absolute favorite. She has proven to have very good taste in the past and we agreed to read some of each other's most beloved books.
This is Christopher Boucher's first, and so far as I know, only work. It's a very personal (so personal it invents words, in fact) exploration of parenting through the lens of completely interpretive metaphor.
The speaker remains unnamed throughout the story, having sold his name for "time", which in Boucher's microcosm is not just a proxy, but literally is, money. Confused yet? His son is a 1971 Volkswagon Beetle that is plagued by various maintenance issues for which the speaker has no choice but to periodically confront and fix, McGuyver style. The book is presented as an assembly of his tried and true methods, some chapters even start out phrased as tutorials.
What I'm pretty sure I read was an exploration of the confusion of young parenting, presented intentionally in a world as frightening and random as the enterprise itself. I could feel comfortable just summing it up at that, but there are portions that have nothing to do with the subject, even when distilled from their confusing imagery. Parts of the book feel like the dream of a profoundly troubled man sorting out some kind of trauma.
My feeling overall is that one is not supposed to approach the story with any relation back to an anchor in reality. It's supposed to literally be the story of a man, the ghost of his father, his son the Volkswagon and Western Massachusetts. It's certainly much more approachable when one comes at it from this angle. If you can detach yourself from the incessant need to frame the story within reality, it becomes a hugely enjoyable read. That in itself is useful I think, and I'm glad my girlfriend got me to do it.
Read
October 2, 2011What strange creature are you? What manner of sorcery, Christopher Boucher? So very strange, with its own dream-logic and its own contortions of language. It’s a world built on symbolism and puns and metaphors, and everything still makes sense, and it still manages to be affective. Maybe Kevin Thomas’ damned effective and accurate and so very right comic-review will help do the defining?
How the hell do you accomplish a book like this—it’s a baffling and bewildering accomplishment. How to make it so heartwarming, constructed as it is out of the absurd? A 1971 Volkswagen for a son. A narrator without a name because he sold it for a couple of hours—here, time is currency. Men are killed by renegade Heart Attack Trees. Tennis racquets get depressed. Stories are surgically removed from one’s person—amputated, more like it—and we see the amputee shuffling from the recovery room to discover that the life he thought awaited him, the woman he thought awaited him, was made of nothing but his fictions. Your own rules, your own standards of rationality. How do you do it?
It’s playful, it’s inventive, it’s clever. But it’s got heart. It does test my patience whenever Boucher decides to expand and elaborate on his already cluttered vision, when he’s got more than enough reason to calm down and tell the story that he really wants told. But it’s okay. It was fun. I had a lot of fun. And yes, the gimmick, yes, it’s there—but the heart’s bigger, definitely bigger. And that’s what matters more, at least me.
How the hell do you accomplish a book like this—it’s a baffling and bewildering accomplishment. How to make it so heartwarming, constructed as it is out of the absurd? A 1971 Volkswagen for a son. A narrator without a name because he sold it for a couple of hours—here, time is currency. Men are killed by renegade Heart Attack Trees. Tennis racquets get depressed. Stories are surgically removed from one’s person—amputated, more like it—and we see the amputee shuffling from the recovery room to discover that the life he thought awaited him, the woman he thought awaited him, was made of nothing but his fictions. Your own rules, your own standards of rationality. How do you do it?
It’s playful, it’s inventive, it’s clever. But it’s got heart. It does test my patience whenever Boucher decides to expand and elaborate on his already cluttered vision, when he’s got more than enough reason to calm down and tell the story that he really wants told. But it’s okay. It was fun. I had a lot of fun. And yes, the gimmick, yes, it’s there—but the heart’s bigger, definitely bigger. And that’s what matters more, at least me.
August 22, 2011
"VWs are born with the strength of dentist chairs but the minds of children, and they often end up in the junkyard, crushed and taken apart for scenery, because they couldn't trust anyone or refused to be saved."
"Cheese made the VW very nervous-the smell of it its skin, its high, rich voice."
"All I wanted to do was write, to make something, something wonderfully fake, a power made of dust and blood that I could turn on when I needed it and turn off when I had enough. If I could write myself away from my own life, get lost, even fucking better."
"I'd expected it to break me and it did-the bile of loss scored every surface inside me, incinerating some wires and parts completely and forcing others into new places in my body. I changed for good. I'd been a student and I became nothing: a poor father, a stumbling reporter, a really terrible lover. All the hair moved off my head and my stomach swelled with what I could not get back, with the terrible space of his no-voice, our non-talks, the never-again feeling of connecting with someone, of feeling understood, of being loved. I literally went to a new place in my own mind-drove off from some things things and never returned to them. I built an entire world inside myself based on loneliness and bewilderment, on what was not, on the sounds things make when they crack, break, split, shatter, pop."
"Cheese made the VW very nervous-the smell of it its skin, its high, rich voice."
"All I wanted to do was write, to make something, something wonderfully fake, a power made of dust and blood that I could turn on when I needed it and turn off when I had enough. If I could write myself away from my own life, get lost, even fucking better."
"I'd expected it to break me and it did-the bile of loss scored every surface inside me, incinerating some wires and parts completely and forcing others into new places in my body. I changed for good. I'd been a student and I became nothing: a poor father, a stumbling reporter, a really terrible lover. All the hair moved off my head and my stomach swelled with what I could not get back, with the terrible space of his no-voice, our non-talks, the never-again feeling of connecting with someone, of feeling understood, of being loved. I literally went to a new place in my own mind-drove off from some things things and never returned to them. I built an entire world inside myself based on loneliness and bewilderment, on what was not, on the sounds things make when they crack, break, split, shatter, pop."
December 12, 2011
"Her punch was an ocean."
Christopher Boucher's first novel, "How to Keep Your Volkswagon Alive" is about a hapless nameless man and his son, a 1971 Volkswagon Beetle living in Northampton, MA. The language alone, the twisting of metaphor and meaning, is both HTKYVA's immense (surreal) gift and curse. Every page has some invention (money counted in time units), or some odd and wondrous character (The Heart Attack Tree, the Memory of my Father).
"The first sign of an old soldier I never knew, his beard a forest of dying snow."
I bought HTKYVA on the strength of Mr. Boucher's reading in Philadelphia. He read a phenomenal sequence about a toy war game and I was taken with its sly political overlay and how funny and clever it was. [Note that because I read a printed (signed!) copy of the book (instead of e-booking it as usual), I couldn't highlight the passages I loved. Luckily, there is enough awesomeness throughout that I could just pick out these phrases at random.]
"'A what?' the drum set said. His voice was smoky and cracked."
The chapters and sub headers follow an old famous (actual VW) manual (by the same name) but then HTKYVA departs radically from there. Sometimes, it seems Mr. Boucher is using these subdivisions to play out his considerable talent and create this alternate universe, and I found my attention wandering sometimes, because the plot and characters weren't always strong enough to pull it all together for me. That said, I loved the sheer inventiveness of the language and I'm more than looking forward to his next book.
Christopher Boucher's first novel, "How to Keep Your Volkswagon Alive" is about a hapless nameless man and his son, a 1971 Volkswagon Beetle living in Northampton, MA. The language alone, the twisting of metaphor and meaning, is both HTKYVA's immense (surreal) gift and curse. Every page has some invention (money counted in time units), or some odd and wondrous character (The Heart Attack Tree, the Memory of my Father).
"The first sign of an old soldier I never knew, his beard a forest of dying snow."
I bought HTKYVA on the strength of Mr. Boucher's reading in Philadelphia. He read a phenomenal sequence about a toy war game and I was taken with its sly political overlay and how funny and clever it was. [Note that because I read a printed (signed!) copy of the book (instead of e-booking it as usual), I couldn't highlight the passages I loved. Luckily, there is enough awesomeness throughout that I could just pick out these phrases at random.]
"'A what?' the drum set said. His voice was smoky and cracked."
The chapters and sub headers follow an old famous (actual VW) manual (by the same name) but then HTKYVA departs radically from there. Sometimes, it seems Mr. Boucher is using these subdivisions to play out his considerable talent and create this alternate universe, and I found my attention wandering sometimes, because the plot and characters weren't always strong enough to pull it all together for me. That said, I loved the sheer inventiveness of the language and I'm more than looking forward to his next book.
December 28, 2012
2.5 stars
Things I understood:
1. Everything in this book is literally alive. Buildings, natural phenomena, the state of Colorado...they talk, drive, insult people, etc. Actually, correction: I don't think there any actual people in this book.
2. Driving is reading is making music. The road is the story. The car is the book. It gets meta.
3. The whole thing is either a metaphor or an acid trip.
I don't even know why I finished this book. (Probably had something to do with the fact that I bought it for 600 pesos.) Although it did have its moments, I didn't really feel like I got anything from it when I finished, which sucks because I spent so much time (and/or money) trying to decode the damn thing.
I mean, I like wordplay as much as the next girl but sometimes you just have to let metaphors be metaphors. No need to make it all gimmicky and add all that anthropomorphic shit.
Maybe it's just that I'm the kind of person who needs to get into the syntax of the language to appreciate it thoroughly. Maybe it's my fault because I got tired of trying to understand things to no avail and resorted to reading during commercial breaks just to get it over with. Maybe I'm just not cultured enough to get surrealist literature.
In any case, as I said, it does have its moments and I give mad props to the author for being able to keep this up for a full novel. I do think there's method behind the madness but I didn't really have the patience to figure it out.
Things I understood:
1. Everything in this book is literally alive. Buildings, natural phenomena, the state of Colorado...they talk, drive, insult people, etc. Actually, correction: I don't think there any actual people in this book.
2. Driving is reading is making music. The road is the story. The car is the book. It gets meta.
3. The whole thing is either a metaphor or an acid trip.
I don't even know why I finished this book. (Probably had something to do with the fact that I bought it for 600 pesos.) Although it did have its moments, I didn't really feel like I got anything from it when I finished, which sucks because I spent so much time (and/or money) trying to decode the damn thing.
I mean, I like wordplay as much as the next girl but sometimes you just have to let metaphors be metaphors. No need to make it all gimmicky and add all that anthropomorphic shit.
Maybe it's just that I'm the kind of person who needs to get into the syntax of the language to appreciate it thoroughly. Maybe it's my fault because I got tired of trying to understand things to no avail and resorted to reading during commercial breaks just to get it over with. Maybe I'm just not cultured enough to get surrealist literature.
In any case, as I said, it does have its moments and I give mad props to the author for being able to keep this up for a full novel. I do think there's method behind the madness but I didn't really have the patience to figure it out.
September 10, 2011
fully imagined world but too plodding and plotless for me. it reads like a manual, good in some ways but dont expect it to really go anywhere (the story, like the narrator and metaphorical vw-son, stalls). the literary/story related argot is fine, intriguing...but tedious. i like to believe we all run on hope and stories, too, but the author doesnt take that to the next level, merely explains the idea in the terms of a vw manual. even the presence of northampton+the haymarket+smith college+atkins farm--all places dear to me--couldnt kwwp me interested! and though the ultimate message is meant to be uplifting (i skipped to the end) the process isnt engaging enough to make the payoff worth it. too much metaphor, not enough substance or plot. for my tastes.
June 18, 2012
I didn't manage to finish reading this book -- every time I thought about picking it up and continuing, my mind made a frowny face, and after a while I just gave up. Now, normally, a book that I can't even get all the way through doesn't merit 3 stars, but I wanted to give credit where credit is due. Boucher has written a truly unique book here, and while I found his take on surrealism to be a bit on the pretentious/trying-too-hard side, I applaud his efforts to do something different. Also, there are several turns of phrase in the narrative that are stunningly beautiful, and so the book gets a couple of stars for these moments of poetry.
Read
August 14, 2011Imagine a book written entirely in coded sub-text and you've got an inkling of what is going on here.
July 31, 2011
Odd and endearing.
Want to read
July 27, 2011Although I still have a bit of rage at Melville House for Tao Lin and Zachary German, I am willing to forgive. And anyway, this book sounds amazing.
January 14, 2013
So hard to get through, so so very hard. Whimsical yet wise, crazy yet honest, funny and confusing. My attention span is super short, lately, but I have been trying for a very long time and it is not easy. This book could have been shorter, I would find passages so sweet and evocative that it would make me stop and savor it, but then not start again. Worth a try though!
Note: all typos actually are not typos…
“…the Tree that attacked my father was poor and hungry, a wanderbus following sound. I don’t know if he targeted my dad as he pulled into the parking lot, but I like to think that he at least heard something unique- a particular rhythm, a tempting yarn, an abnormally loud yarn or loving pulse- coming from my father’s chest…before he could move or do anything, the Tree attacked- slamming his fist into my father’s chest and pulling all the stories out of his heart.”
“How to read this book:
Even after I was told my father was dead, I believed (I still believe) that I could fix everything- that if I logged enough miles in my VW and kept telling stories through the countless dead ends and breakdowns, I could undo the terrible tree events…not that I should have expected to with this particular power, which is incomplete (as I was forced to sell a few stories and procedures for time-of-money), full of holes. Sure, the book turns on, lights up; its fans whirr and the bookengine crunches. But some of the pages are completely blank; others hang by a thread. The book’s transmission is shot, too, so don’t be surprised if the book slips from one version to the next as you’re reading. Finally, the thermostat’s misked, so you should expect sudden changes in temperature, the pages might get cold, or it may begin to snow between paragraphs, or you may turn the page and get hit with a faceful of rain or blinding beams of sunlight.
So go ahead. Do it-open the book. See? You see me, right? And I see you. See? I am reading your face, your eyes, your lips. I know the sufferdust on your brow. I can see you reading, and I can tell, too, when you are here, when you are absent, what you’ve read and how it affects you. There is no more hiding. I see your chords- your fractures, your cold gifts, where and when you’ve hurt people…your stories are written right there on your face!”
“The heart of the engine is the one part that I can’t help you find, unfortunately. There is just no way for me to document its location; it’s different in every car. I could barely find the heart of my VW-it was too confusing, and there were too many routes. Every time I thought I’d reach the center point I realized I was lost, not where I thought I was, following the wrong sunrise yet again. I wonder: Does the heart move around or something? The geographic arrangement of the engine compartment doesn’t make things any easier- some of the mechanical parts are underground, nestled in the hills, and others are hidden behind the hustle and lathe of small mechanical cities. But don’t cloudy-day! We’ll find the heart eventually- I don’t care if we need to tear the engine down to every bolt and moment to do so.”
“What are they doing?” he whispered.
The pinball machine’s scoreboard was full, the bank’s windows fogged. They were so involved- so cofaithed- that they didn’t know we were there.
The VW’s face joined, “Are they hurting each other?”
I took a breath. “There’s risk involved, because of what they can’t see. Plus the risk of trust. But no-they’re not hurting each other.”
The bank whispered something in the pinball machine’s ear and the pinball machine giggled.
“What are they saying to each other?” the VW said.
“They’re expressing their faith, VW-sharing it.”
Just then I heard a rustle, soft at first, then louder…Distracted by other things-the VW, the faith in the trees- I had forgotten to keep the mountain straight in my mind. I had let it go, and now it was changing, reversing itself, growing young: the leaves were turning from brown back to green… THIS was western Massachusetts-unpredictable; a changing moving bitch; a switcher of faces…how could I have many any progress here when mountains were mountains one moment and something else the next; when people were here one day and then GONE?”
“I’d also suggest your VW practice scales, a new one each week. I started my VW on the PIT scale (pit-pot-put-pat-pet), but another good one is the calendar scale (calendar, centerpiece, cylinder, collateral, cutthroat.) Any one will work to start with, as long as it helps the VW begin to hear words as a series of sounds, helps them understand that each word has inherent musical qualities…”
“LOVE is measured in GAUGE TWENTY- specifically, love pressure in the surrounding area. If it drops below four percent, though, you may have trouble-the VW might get sad, slow down, or even stop altogether. If this occurs, you have to immediately find/write a story that somehow convinces him that there is more love, caring or compassion in the area than he thinks there is. I can’t tell you how many times this has been a problem for us- how many trips were interrupted because I had to head into the nearest populated town to see if we could find examples of kindness.”
“I wish I could have shown you that engineheart- the system of pieces and parts that moved us forward, that moves us forward still. One day, a few weeks after my son’s death, I took the bolt off the casing and opened it up. Just to see how it worked. Opening that heart was like the opening the first page of a book- there were characters (me, the Memory of My Father), there was rhythm and chronology, I saw, in the images, old roads I’d forgotten- and scenes from stories where the VW was just a newborn. I do know that it held a true translation: miles to words, words to notes, notes to time. It was the HEART that converted the pedestrian song of Northampton to something meaningful, and it did so via some sort of fusion: the turtle that howls a bluegrass tune at the edge of Bow Lake becomes a warning in the VW heart…and that’s just the beginning- the first heart layer. It will take years and years of study, and the energy of every single living thing, to understand the tiny minds and roads in the subsequent layers, the mechanics at work to make every single heartmoment turn together… The point is, this WAS always the way it was supposed to be. Even I could see that the Volkswagen heart was wired for travel-genetically coded. His pages were already written-as are mine and yours. Yes, yours too! I am looking into your eyes right now and I am reading your life, and I am excited/sorry for what the road holds for you. It’s going to be amazing/really difficult. You’ll love/loathe every minute of it!”
Note: all typos actually are not typos…
“…the Tree that attacked my father was poor and hungry, a wanderbus following sound. I don’t know if he targeted my dad as he pulled into the parking lot, but I like to think that he at least heard something unique- a particular rhythm, a tempting yarn, an abnormally loud yarn or loving pulse- coming from my father’s chest…before he could move or do anything, the Tree attacked- slamming his fist into my father’s chest and pulling all the stories out of his heart.”
“How to read this book:
Even after I was told my father was dead, I believed (I still believe) that I could fix everything- that if I logged enough miles in my VW and kept telling stories through the countless dead ends and breakdowns, I could undo the terrible tree events…not that I should have expected to with this particular power, which is incomplete (as I was forced to sell a few stories and procedures for time-of-money), full of holes. Sure, the book turns on, lights up; its fans whirr and the bookengine crunches. But some of the pages are completely blank; others hang by a thread. The book’s transmission is shot, too, so don’t be surprised if the book slips from one version to the next as you’re reading. Finally, the thermostat’s misked, so you should expect sudden changes in temperature, the pages might get cold, or it may begin to snow between paragraphs, or you may turn the page and get hit with a faceful of rain or blinding beams of sunlight.
So go ahead. Do it-open the book. See? You see me, right? And I see you. See? I am reading your face, your eyes, your lips. I know the sufferdust on your brow. I can see you reading, and I can tell, too, when you are here, when you are absent, what you’ve read and how it affects you. There is no more hiding. I see your chords- your fractures, your cold gifts, where and when you’ve hurt people…your stories are written right there on your face!”
“The heart of the engine is the one part that I can’t help you find, unfortunately. There is just no way for me to document its location; it’s different in every car. I could barely find the heart of my VW-it was too confusing, and there were too many routes. Every time I thought I’d reach the center point I realized I was lost, not where I thought I was, following the wrong sunrise yet again. I wonder: Does the heart move around or something? The geographic arrangement of the engine compartment doesn’t make things any easier- some of the mechanical parts are underground, nestled in the hills, and others are hidden behind the hustle and lathe of small mechanical cities. But don’t cloudy-day! We’ll find the heart eventually- I don’t care if we need to tear the engine down to every bolt and moment to do so.”
“What are they doing?” he whispered.
The pinball machine’s scoreboard was full, the bank’s windows fogged. They were so involved- so cofaithed- that they didn’t know we were there.
The VW’s face joined, “Are they hurting each other?”
I took a breath. “There’s risk involved, because of what they can’t see. Plus the risk of trust. But no-they’re not hurting each other.”
The bank whispered something in the pinball machine’s ear and the pinball machine giggled.
“What are they saying to each other?” the VW said.
“They’re expressing their faith, VW-sharing it.”
Just then I heard a rustle, soft at first, then louder…Distracted by other things-the VW, the faith in the trees- I had forgotten to keep the mountain straight in my mind. I had let it go, and now it was changing, reversing itself, growing young: the leaves were turning from brown back to green… THIS was western Massachusetts-unpredictable; a changing moving bitch; a switcher of faces…how could I have many any progress here when mountains were mountains one moment and something else the next; when people were here one day and then GONE?”
“I’d also suggest your VW practice scales, a new one each week. I started my VW on the PIT scale (pit-pot-put-pat-pet), but another good one is the calendar scale (calendar, centerpiece, cylinder, collateral, cutthroat.) Any one will work to start with, as long as it helps the VW begin to hear words as a series of sounds, helps them understand that each word has inherent musical qualities…”
“LOVE is measured in GAUGE TWENTY- specifically, love pressure in the surrounding area. If it drops below four percent, though, you may have trouble-the VW might get sad, slow down, or even stop altogether. If this occurs, you have to immediately find/write a story that somehow convinces him that there is more love, caring or compassion in the area than he thinks there is. I can’t tell you how many times this has been a problem for us- how many trips were interrupted because I had to head into the nearest populated town to see if we could find examples of kindness.”
“I wish I could have shown you that engineheart- the system of pieces and parts that moved us forward, that moves us forward still. One day, a few weeks after my son’s death, I took the bolt off the casing and opened it up. Just to see how it worked. Opening that heart was like the opening the first page of a book- there were characters (me, the Memory of My Father), there was rhythm and chronology, I saw, in the images, old roads I’d forgotten- and scenes from stories where the VW was just a newborn. I do know that it held a true translation: miles to words, words to notes, notes to time. It was the HEART that converted the pedestrian song of Northampton to something meaningful, and it did so via some sort of fusion: the turtle that howls a bluegrass tune at the edge of Bow Lake becomes a warning in the VW heart…and that’s just the beginning- the first heart layer. It will take years and years of study, and the energy of every single living thing, to understand the tiny minds and roads in the subsequent layers, the mechanics at work to make every single heartmoment turn together… The point is, this WAS always the way it was supposed to be. Even I could see that the Volkswagen heart was wired for travel-genetically coded. His pages were already written-as are mine and yours. Yes, yours too! I am looking into your eyes right now and I am reading your life, and I am excited/sorry for what the road holds for you. It’s going to be amazing/really difficult. You’ll love/loathe every minute of it!”
September 24, 2025
So I was not really that into this book at the start. It is a terribly difficult and confusing read but after a bit it starts to suck you in. Partially because it seems to be an interesting story but also because you are driven to continue reading just to figure out what the fuck this book is about. Yeah, well, about that... See I read this whole damn book and to tell you the truth whole I did enjoy it I cannot, for sure, tell you what it is about.
I think it might be about the process of writing and how it effects you and where, in a person, stories come from. I think it might also be a guide telling you how to write, or maybe just explaining what makes a good book.
I'm reasonably sure it is also about dealing with loosing a loved one and the process of getting over it. It might also be about trying to keep a shit box car running because you don't want to let go of it because of it's connection to a lost loved one. Or it could be about growing apart from your son and/or him leaving home or cutting of connections; or maybe them dying I can't really tell for sure.
The confusing plot is frustrating at times but also rewarding, even if your not sure you got it right...
Normally I would not give a book this confusing four stars, I prefer things to be clear in a book. However the constantly shifting and amazing metaphors in this book make it worth a lot of the trouble in reading it. Not for the faint of heart though.
I think it might be about the process of writing and how it effects you and where, in a person, stories come from. I think it might also be a guide telling you how to write, or maybe just explaining what makes a good book.
I'm reasonably sure it is also about dealing with loosing a loved one and the process of getting over it. It might also be about trying to keep a shit box car running because you don't want to let go of it because of it's connection to a lost loved one. Or it could be about growing apart from your son and/or him leaving home or cutting of connections; or maybe them dying I can't really tell for sure.
The confusing plot is frustrating at times but also rewarding, even if your not sure you got it right...
Normally I would not give a book this confusing four stars, I prefer things to be clear in a book. However the constantly shifting and amazing metaphors in this book make it worth a lot of the trouble in reading it. Not for the faint of heart though.
August 7, 2022
After this book, you might find yourself thinking, "what the hell just happened?" A book with a premise as convoluted and mind-warping as it is groundbreaking, I was left with a weird feeling of not being entirely satisfied. Which might be an achievement in and of itself, having building up to a climax that I wished just lasted a little while longer.
This is a story of a man whose son is a 1971 Volkswagen, whose dad was killed by a heart attack tree, and whose city seems to be moving whenever he looks away. In a sort of inspired narrative structure, he writes his own manual for raising a child (and refers to it in the meantime). It's a testament to Boucher's literary imagination that even the most wonky scenes, like a war inside of a box, have that uncanny feel of wonder.
And with such a crazy world, this book doesn't fall in the trap of giving so much power to the narrator. Instead of being our divine guide to this world, he seems to be falling through it as much as anyone. Even despite his own power in creating it. He often comes off as dismissive and unaware, which in a way makes this book. After all, there is no manual to being a parent. Or being alive in this whacky world that we all create.
This is a story of a man whose son is a 1971 Volkswagen, whose dad was killed by a heart attack tree, and whose city seems to be moving whenever he looks away. In a sort of inspired narrative structure, he writes his own manual for raising a child (and refers to it in the meantime). It's a testament to Boucher's literary imagination that even the most wonky scenes, like a war inside of a box, have that uncanny feel of wonder.
And with such a crazy world, this book doesn't fall in the trap of giving so much power to the narrator. Instead of being our divine guide to this world, he seems to be falling through it as much as anyone. Even despite his own power in creating it. He often comes off as dismissive and unaware, which in a way makes this book. After all, there is no manual to being a parent. Or being alive in this whacky world that we all create.
August 12, 2018
I bought this book as the blurb sounded quirky and different from anything I had ever encountered before. I was intrigued to see what the book was like. It wasn’t long before I discovered what the book was like and it wasn’t a positive impression that it left on me.
It opened with a birthday party scene where the main character was in the park with his ‘son’ who was the Volkswagon celebrating his birthday. The main character though appeared to be human but the author had given the car human traits and personalities. Then a little bit later we have a story about the main character meeting his Dad in a café for lunch or the like. His Dad apparently arrived in an invisible car (my head was spinning by this stage), and then the author talks about how his Dad was attacked by a Heart Attack Tree. By this stage I couldn’t cope with the story any longer. I was way more confused than I felt comfortable with. Needless to say I couldn’t keep reading the book so I had to stop reading it.
The biggest problem with this book was not that it used metaphor (and I suspect a lot of other English tools to make the story unique) but that it appeared to overuse metaphor. There was so much metaphor that it confused the whole story, for me at least. Unfortunately, I won’t be reading any more of this author’s books anytime soon by choice. Very disappointing venture into finding another new author to add to my repertoire.
It opened with a birthday party scene where the main character was in the park with his ‘son’ who was the Volkswagon celebrating his birthday. The main character though appeared to be human but the author had given the car human traits and personalities. Then a little bit later we have a story about the main character meeting his Dad in a café for lunch or the like. His Dad apparently arrived in an invisible car (my head was spinning by this stage), and then the author talks about how his Dad was attacked by a Heart Attack Tree. By this stage I couldn’t cope with the story any longer. I was way more confused than I felt comfortable with. Needless to say I couldn’t keep reading the book so I had to stop reading it.
The biggest problem with this book was not that it used metaphor (and I suspect a lot of other English tools to make the story unique) but that it appeared to overuse metaphor. There was so much metaphor that it confused the whole story, for me at least. Unfortunately, I won’t be reading any more of this author’s books anytime soon by choice. Very disappointing venture into finding another new author to add to my repertoire.
March 14, 2019
I only picked up this book because it repurposed the title of John Muir's classic how-to manual: How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot.
It's tough going but I applaud Boucher's imagination and innovative techniques for story telling.
It's tough going but I applaud Boucher's imagination and innovative techniques for story telling.
August 11, 2019
A weird and rambling and sometimes wonderful metaphorical journey on the page about loss, parenting, and the process of writing a book. Patience and understanding will be required.
March 23, 2021
The longest short book of all time. Experimental fiction isn’t for me.
April 23, 2024
baslarda guzeldi
November 15, 2011
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive is a book about mechanics, writing and, inadvertently, Cartesian philosophy of mind. It describes an absurdly improbable world inhabited by two absurdly improbable kinds of creatures: 1) heart-bearing machines that feel, talk, think, and feed on stories and 2) animals that need to make and tell stories in order to fully inhabit their worlds in a satisfying way. In other words, it's a book about that probably extinct, possibly mythical creature called the human being.
In the book we discover that humans are, if extinct, mercifully so, given their consistent failure to acknowledge reality. We learn that they maintained relationships with non-existent people, holding conversations with the memories of their dead fathers and raising the mere promises of their own sons. What poor, disjointed, superstitious animals--talking to those who no longer exist and dreaming about a future that doesn't yet!
Even the present did not exist for them, it seems, until they had recalled it, put it into a story, and wrote it down or told someone about it. What funny, unnecessarily reflective creatures! They had cute things called "words," an incomplete form of acronym, and "conversations," a kind of clogged information transfer, that they used for this silly reflection business.
Admittedly, at times their behavior was beyond the pale. Humans had a weird habit of caring for machines like real, live things, raising cars like children and being hugged and carried by elevators. As a result, they created all manner of obstinate, personalitied, and temperamental contraptions (like the Volkswagen bug) that required entering into a full-fledged, interactive relationship with another piece of reality that wasn't identical to themselves. These anthropochines, primitive assemblages of gears, boxes, and edges--these no-pods and nor-pads--were positively unseemly in their non-seamlessness. Neither slick, smooth, nor unobtrusive, they hinted darkly at an external world existing in its own right, rather than at and for our service--a world without permission or function that might even have other humans in it, trying to steal our stage.
What a mistake! But an understandable one, given the once prevalent belief that humans themselves were not also machines: so they inevitably projected their own hearts upon the cold, inhuman world for warmth. But now we know better and don't bother: warmth is uncool; we have no hearts left to project; we are the machine. Thanks, Christopher Boucher, for this disturbing cautionary tale!
In the book we discover that humans are, if extinct, mercifully so, given their consistent failure to acknowledge reality. We learn that they maintained relationships with non-existent people, holding conversations with the memories of their dead fathers and raising the mere promises of their own sons. What poor, disjointed, superstitious animals--talking to those who no longer exist and dreaming about a future that doesn't yet!
Even the present did not exist for them, it seems, until they had recalled it, put it into a story, and wrote it down or told someone about it. What funny, unnecessarily reflective creatures! They had cute things called "words," an incomplete form of acronym, and "conversations," a kind of clogged information transfer, that they used for this silly reflection business.
Admittedly, at times their behavior was beyond the pale. Humans had a weird habit of caring for machines like real, live things, raising cars like children and being hugged and carried by elevators. As a result, they created all manner of obstinate, personalitied, and temperamental contraptions (like the Volkswagen bug) that required entering into a full-fledged, interactive relationship with another piece of reality that wasn't identical to themselves. These anthropochines, primitive assemblages of gears, boxes, and edges--these no-pods and nor-pads--were positively unseemly in their non-seamlessness. Neither slick, smooth, nor unobtrusive, they hinted darkly at an external world existing in its own right, rather than at and for our service--a world without permission or function that might even have other humans in it, trying to steal our stage.
What a mistake! But an understandable one, given the once prevalent belief that humans themselves were not also machines: so they inevitably projected their own hearts upon the cold, inhuman world for warmth. But now we know better and don't bother: warmth is uncool; we have no hearts left to project; we are the machine. Thanks, Christopher Boucher, for this disturbing cautionary tale!
November 2, 2011
So I was not really that into this book at the start. It is a terribly difficult and confusing read but after a bit it starts to suck you in. Partially because it seems to be an interesting story but also because you are driven to continue reading just to figure out what the fuck this book is about. Yeah, well, about that... See I read this whole damn book and to tell you the truth whole I did enjoy it I cannot, for sure, tell you what it is about.
I think it might be about the process of writing and how it effects you and where, in a person, stories come from. I think it might also be a guide telling you how to write, or maybe just explaining what makes a good book.
I'm reasonably sure it is also about dealing with loosing a loved one and the process of getting over it. It might also be about trying to keep a shit box car running because you don't want to let go of it because of it's connection to a lost loved one. Or it could be about growing apart from your son and/or him leaving home or cutting of connections; or maybe them dying I can't really tell for sure.
The confusing plot is frustrating at times but also rewarding, even if your not sure you got it right...
Normally I would not give a book this confusing four stars, I prefer things to be clear in a book. However the constantly shifting and amazing metaphors in this book make it worth a lot of the trouble in reading it. Not for the faint of heart though.
I think it might be about the process of writing and how it effects you and where, in a person, stories come from. I think it might also be a guide telling you how to write, or maybe just explaining what makes a good book.
I'm reasonably sure it is also about dealing with loosing a loved one and the process of getting over it. It might also be about trying to keep a shit box car running because you don't want to let go of it because of it's connection to a lost loved one. Or it could be about growing apart from your son and/or him leaving home or cutting of connections; or maybe them dying I can't really tell for sure.
The confusing plot is frustrating at times but also rewarding, even if your not sure you got it right...
Normally I would not give a book this confusing four stars, I prefer things to be clear in a book. However the constantly shifting and amazing metaphors in this book make it worth a lot of the trouble in reading it. Not for the faint of heart though.
August 28, 2011
Confusing! But I read it in a day, so that's definitely something.
One review of this book used the term "ever-shifting" and I think that's a good one, because what anything in this book means or represents is constantly changing.
Is it about parenthood or loss of one's own parent or dating or random acts of heart-thievery?
Well, yes, but mostly I think it's about the process of writing, even goes so far as to mythologize (lionize?) the writer himself. This, of course, could be annoying, and at times I found it so, because writers writing about writing is not only overly self-referential but can speak to inflated egos, etc. Still, this book was so inventive and circuitous that I found I was less concerned with the author's sense of self and more with what he was trying to do, about which I am still puzzled. But not disappointed, really.
It may have been a speeding kaleidoscope of a book, lacking constancy and cohesion, but that doesn't mean it's not fascinating to watch.
One review of this book used the term "ever-shifting" and I think that's a good one, because what anything in this book means or represents is constantly changing.
Is it about parenthood or loss of one's own parent or dating or random acts of heart-thievery?
Well, yes, but mostly I think it's about the process of writing, even goes so far as to mythologize (lionize?) the writer himself. This, of course, could be annoying, and at times I found it so, because writers writing about writing is not only overly self-referential but can speak to inflated egos, etc. Still, this book was so inventive and circuitous that I found I was less concerned with the author's sense of self and more with what he was trying to do, about which I am still puzzled. But not disappointed, really.
It may have been a speeding kaleidoscope of a book, lacking constancy and cohesion, but that doesn't mean it's not fascinating to watch.
December 27, 2011
Sure, this was a book about father-son relationships rather than VWs, but still … really? As an absurdist novel it has some merit, as much as absurdist novels go, I suppose. But comparing this to Brautigan? Please. I was reading Bruatigan long before Boucher was born, and while that fails to make me an expert it does, to a point, qualify my opinion. And in one of the reviews posted here Boucher's work was compared to Vonnegut and Pynchon, and that's just wrong. Yes, this was different in its own cute way (I don't know how I could abuse an authors' work more than by calling it cute). A novelty novel. A singing fish mounted on a cheap plaque that you push the button once to hear its song then walk away hoping never to hear it again. I also lived by the original book for many years, crisscrossing the county in late-1960s VW vans - complete with tie-dyed curtains and a box of extra parts stashed (along with my stash) under the built-in bed. So, if this is what passes for current cutting edge neo-literature, well, I guess I pass.
August 29, 2016
A bizarre, and surprisingly beautiful book about love, loss, and family. While the start is a bit slow, and the writing highly unconventional, I found myself unable to put it down. This is a book that grabs you firmly by the hand, and leads you on an inward journey. You live this book, not just read it. Magical realism at its finest (no disrespect to Karen Russell, but this is the real deal). Reminds me somewhat of Momus's The Book of Jokes, but without the graphic imagery and crude, raunchy plot points. A beautiful, fascinating story, and one that sits with you for a long while after reading. I can't wait to read more by this author, and will definitely be looking for a copy of this book to add to my shelves.
June 22, 2011
This is a heartwarming story that follows a man struggling through life while dealing with the death of his father and trying to raise his son. Wait, did I mention that his son is a Volkswagen and his father was killed by a heart attack tree? There is serious imagination going on in this book. Words are shifted in strange ways (Heard the phrase time is money? Well, imagine the two literally switched.). Objects are sometimes living things (it's kind of hard to say sometimes). In short, crazy fun. However, some craziness sacrifices story. Here, nothing could be further from the truth. Toasters may do stripteases, fish may be mechanics, faith may be "love," but the story is enhanced rather than sacrificed to the strangeness. This is a marvelous story. A strange, wondrous, marvelous story.
October 20, 2011
This book is a beautiful bird that flies all weird. The writing is one of a kind, surrealist in the Brautigan vein but without losing any complexity. There's a logic to it, something you can hang on to, and moments of truth and clarity that you couldn't explain but which ring just right. On the other hand, at some point I realized I wasn't really interested in the plot, and was just reading from one such moment to another, and he could have taken the story in any direction and I wouldn't have been surprised, which isn't a great sign. Will they catch the tree? Didn't care. Still, very impressed with the book.
LK, I think you would like this one.
LK, I think you would like this one.
November 27, 2011
Really... impressive. And, clearly, not for everyone. It brings to mind names like Richard Brautigan, and Donald Barthelme, and Kurt Vonnegut, and Thomas Pynchon.
This book is smart, funny, sad, incomprehensible, and strangely clear if you don't look directly at it. And, even though it has virtually nothing to do with VWs, it brought back pleasant memories of owning my own 1973 VW Beetle, and owning my own copy of John Muir's "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive," way back when.
Christopher: if you read these reviews, congratulations. You did a truly nice piece of work here. Perhaps I'll buy you a chai some day.
This book is smart, funny, sad, incomprehensible, and strangely clear if you don't look directly at it. And, even though it has virtually nothing to do with VWs, it brought back pleasant memories of owning my own 1973 VW Beetle, and owning my own copy of John Muir's "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive," way back when.
Christopher: if you read these reviews, congratulations. You did a truly nice piece of work here. Perhaps I'll buy you a chai some day.
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