Patrick’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Patrick’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

my heart is an exuberant absolute yes!!! my brain, is being more tentative (practical?). so for right now, i have to say maybe. but i'm going to do everything i can to make it happen. will let you know very soon.
--maybe the Evisons need an au pair. i could apply for that position.

i was just musing with Jennie how nice it could be to hang with the dorks and the redwoods. i love a tree that makes me feel tiny.

when Weiner conflates and uses her discomfort with the novels "potty-talk" to connect it with the "whiny white guy" debate, i think she misses her mark. and maybe her snap defensive posture clouds what, i think, is her more interesting question; does the level of heavy guy-speak, the "gross-out sex talk" as she puts it, serve our understanding of Ben and Trev? does it help illuminate their relationship or does it feel like a crutch the author relies too much on? a sort of "authorial paralysis" in her words.

i admit, the first time i read the book some of the more aggressively blue scenes or conversation, made me wince. not that i couldn't handle it or that I didn't find it funny (i grew up around my much older brothers & their friends- i've heard it all from day one) but I feared that the relentlessness of it would shut some readers down(i was specifically thinking of some of the women who i recommend or share books with at the library). and like Patty said, realistic or not, that type of talk can be tiring. and a distraction.

ultimately for me, my own initial whingey-ness aside, the novel is richer and more complicated than that. Her review hints at that richness, begrudgingly acknowledges it, but she still doesn't really want to go there.

- if I were to hazard a guess, and as Ben already suggested, saddled with a name like Weiner and then titling your books "Good in Bed" and "Then Came You", she probably fields her fair share of smirking juvenile snickering already. yeah, probably touchy.

glad you enjoyed that review, i did too.

i'm working on a list of some of the queer moments in his books. it will take me a while. - chapter 12 in Cutting Lisa, the 2 old guys go out for a beer and end up in a nautical themed gay bar. nonsense ensues.

"wrastles" is the perfect word.

i also want to borrow a phrase that johnny dropped over in the RFOC thread- when he mentions "masculinity in crisis". of course, he was talking about his own book- but it certainly feels like a re-occurring theme for PE. and you are completely right about the odd psycho/sociopath angle. he can lull you a bit and then suddenly things will shift tonally. it's strange because i feel like in a way, that darkness or the threat is always close by. sometimes, like with Cutting Lisa, your told explicitly what to expect, but somehow, in the end it's still disarming. do i always believe it... that's a good question, probably no, but like you said, he does challenge. in a lot of ways. and his work, especially some of the ones that seem more straightforward, linger in a way that always surprises me.

i forget, did you read God's Country. that is another example where much of that book was really funny to me, but you hit a point near the end especially where there is a slight shift and what felt like a Blazing Saddles style lampoon just gets dark. brutal dark. disturbing, but i found it effective.

hi all.
so, here we go.
for those not on facebook- our captain has had some pretty stellar reviews coming thru.

hello, janet maslin!! love this!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/boo...

and this is nice too:
http://www.startribune.com/entertainm...

but, apparently, jennifer weiner is the one who really wants to get this party started.
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/28/1599934...

ouch. but, it's all about the conversation, right, je?

i know, it will be easy for some of us, to jump on the weiner review, hackles raised and want to knock her down, but in all seriousness, aside from the somewhat puritanical snark, and clear grievance with "whiny white men" she seems, reluctantly, nearly won over by the end. my questions is what do others think, is Weiner missing the ball completely??

http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/post/...

won't say the erasure article isn't still dry, but i liked it. sadly, haven't gotten thru all the essays in the book & what i have... hit & miss. dry in a heady academic way, but i appreciate that. it's worth hunting down.

been thinking quite a bit about erasure again- even before reading the article. that novel is so rich. at first read, (and from many reviews i've read) people focus on the book within a book- read it as a sort of rebuttal(?) to Sapphire's Push. certainly, there is a thread of that but it's so much more complicated.

listening to the Bat Segundo interview made want to read Wounded again. when he said, the reaction to it was that it was one of his more "realist" novels but he thought, in terms of language, it was one of his most experimental. sometimes, when he says things like that, how serious he is... i believe he believes it, but i also think he loves to play games.

i've also wanted to return to Wounded to consider the "queer" aspect of it, how that was handled. almost everyone of his novels has had either a gay character or scene(s) and sometimes (often) the representation is so odd and awkward it makes me wince. but, it's also such a consistently reoccurring theme or sticking point for him -it's curious. wondering how it lays into his larger reoccurring themes of the tricky or slipperyness of identity politics.

http://www.edrants.com/the-bat-segund...

and i read that some of the earlier titles will be available in ebook format soon- for those who swing.

http://www.dzancbooks.org/libraries/

just reread the opening of Cutting Lisa the other night. domestic and ordinary is the perfect description. while reading, it felt slight, but once i was done i couldn't stop thinking about it.

i also read the essay on Erasure that was in that book i showed you at the dorka. i liked it quite a bit. gave a few titles to look at before i read Erasure again.

did you know that Angela Basset had been trying to make a film baaed on Erasure? not sure if it's still in motion. i generally have a very casual attitude about film adaptations--and as novelists go, Percival seems ripe for a (quality) adaptation... but the idea of this one makes me nervous.

it may be time for a dork book & bake sale.
or car wash?

i just finished up the last can of coke zero leftover from our week. you think Dan would run and pick up some more??

i LOVE that curtis mayfield bran van song..."astounded"... i thought i talked to you about it when your mix was playing. good stuff.

it's only 9:30 here and i'm ready to fall asleep. i'm such a square. how do you night owls do it?

here you go:

http://www.lfla.org/event-detail/688/...

would love to get your thoughts once you hear it. and i'd also be happy to share my (very) flawed transcription of the excerpt he read from his new book- (if anyone w/ a better ear wants to help me clean up the messy spots) i'll let people listen first & if you want me to post what i have let me know

about Assumption. part of me, initially, was frustrated with the last section of the book. and mostly that was because it felt too short and wrapped up to quickly. he has a tendency at times to be a bit abrupt with his endings. sometimes it works- leaves me marveling & wondering -wtf, just happened there. while in the moment it can feel spare and sometimes insufficient later i'll be haunted by it and wondering just how he did it. Cutting Lisa struck me that way. As i was reading it, i wasn't convinced it was working. it's a troubling one on various levels. very spare. but it's one i find myself thinking about a lot. waiting to go back to it.

If i remember correctly (patty correct me if i'm wrong) at the reading she was at Percival said that the book was in many ways about Assumptions people have about him. which struck me as interesting. but the more i thought about it, listened to him and read more of the books- i realize that is a bit of running theme of his- the tricky nature of identity. the multi-various mis-identifications. often played to comic effect but things can also go dark and troubling very quick.

i say spoil away, Dan. glad you liked it. i've been wanting to read it again since listening to a podcast of him and Steve Erickson together. He didn't actually talk much about Assumption- he talked about and read from his upcoming book- sadly, not due out til next year. but the host of the discussion kept coming back to Assumption & she made me want to read it again. but i gave my copy away already. will have to retrieve it.

geek that i am, i actually transcribed the passage that he read from his upcoming book- so i could spend more time rereading it. the book sounds nuts.

someone, clearly, is not getting invited to the dorkapalooza.

Mau, i just love that you used the word truculent.

and just to add to the (gender?) discussion. some have probably read this already- Percival Everett responding to Franze's Freedom and "the Great American Novel"-

http://vidaweb.org/freedom%E2%80%99s-...

and
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/...

and, Dan, to go back to one of your original questions i agree with Patty's letter c) - read what you like.

but i think the fact that you have opened up the question for yourself (and us) signals a willingness to seek(sneak) outside your normal comfort zone. i like that.

after rereading the article it still rankles. and I agree with both Gloria and Ben that the tone of the piece was both whiny and crass. more than that, it felt like it rested on outdated, troubling and faulty assertions of what "successful" even means.

i'll spare everyone my ranting. i'm feeling inarticulate about it all & a little cranky.

but just a few things that jumped out-
even though she was being facetious, referring to Franzen and Eugenides earlier work as "macho stories" was the first alarm bell. maybe it's my own prejudice. just seeing Franzen and macho in the same sentence feels silly to me.

"more baldly ambitious"- i'm all for ambition, but in some cases i fear there is a conflation(or mistaking?) as ambitious what simply might be the handiwork of an ego inflated.

"more authentic novels"- really?? seriously??

"funny and serious at the same time"- love or hate her, Lorrie Moore is both. Aimee Bender and Zadie Smith. and i'll take Mary Guterson's We're all fine here over anything i've read (thus far) by Franzen or Perotta.

Dan you need to come to one of our friends of the library book sales here on the island. they would love you. and bring Kerry with you.

i recognize that one too, but i'll stay mum for now because i don't have a new one to post. when i have a chance i'll try and crop a few to have handy.