Condalmo

Audiobook review: "Then We Came to the End."

My review of Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End - the audiobook - can be seen amongst other editorial reviews at Amazon, and is forthcoming in the print edition of AudioFile.

Chip Kidd's "The Learners".

Chip Kidd's work (as a well-known and talented cover designer) was featured in a collection.  He's also written two books: The Cheese Monkeys, and The Learners.  I've written here about my appreciation of his covers, but to be honest hadn't felt much interest in his writing.  You know - actress turns to singing, singer turns to acting, movie star with great skills turns back to writing poetry/painting/photography after starring in a really big popular series of movies, the usual. 

I became interested in the new one right around the time I was turning up the heat on studying for my counseling/psychotherapy exam:

Fresh out of college in the summer of 1961, Happy lands his first job as a graphic designer (okay, art assistant) at a small Connecticut advertising agency populated by a cast of endearing eccentrics. Life for Happy seems to be — well, happy. But when he's assigned to design a newspaper ad recruiting participants for an experiment in the Yale Psychology Department, Happy can't resist responding to the ad himself.

What experiment?  This experiment:

 

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

 

 

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.^[4]

So, did I like it?  Yes.  I liked the book.  But.  I liked the humor, but at times felt a little bit like I was stuck in a sitcom.  And I was confused by what appeared to be Kidd's disinterest/inability in really digging into the ramifications of the experiment and the effect participation in the experiment had on Happy.  I know, he's happy, he's unhappy, he's not feeling like himself, so he's the un-happy.  Right, I get it.  But considering the moral crisis Kidd wants us to believe Happy is going through, remarkably few words are actually devoted to the crisis, except as asides, reminders that Happy isn't happy.  But I didn't want asides mixed in with chuckles; I wanted the experiment to take center stage, because look, Happy, you just fried a dude.  Or at least, you thought you did, and thought you had become the sort of person that could do that sort of thing.  I didn't want hijinks involving a very large dog name Hamlet wearing shoes as a promotion and then going PG-13 berserk. 

 

But look, that's a minor quibble, no doubt made larger because of my background in this field, my interest in the subject matter.  If you're really interested in Milgram's work, you'd be better served elsewhere.  I doubtless would have been happier if Happy (sigh) had, after the experiment, endeavored to recreate the experiment over and over and over with paid actors.  That's probably just me, though.  The takeaway here is that it was an enjoyable enough read, made me laugh, didn't feel like a waste of my time.  In all the ways this book could have been spectacularly bungled, my complaint's probably pretty low on the list.

(As a final note, I read an interview with Kidd - I think it was with Birnbaum - in which he indicated yes, he would very much like to see this made into a movie.  Which would be good, except too late Shatner beat you to it!)

Wall of background/window of background.

The always-thoughtful Brian of Five Branch Tree considers Joseph Coulson's Of Song and Water (the former) in relation to Steinbeck (the latter) - grist for further thought, given the comparison made between Steinbeck and Coulson with regard to his prior work, The Vanishing Moon.  I haven't read Steinbeck in many years, so can't really comment on his take.  I greatly enjoyed Of Song and Water and interviewed Coulson in March.

Remainder.

At this one moment, everyone here is asleep save myself.  I should be, but I wanted to get something down about Remainder before moving on to my next read, which I anticipate to be arriving by mail as soon as tomorrow.  More reasoned & seasoned minds have already written about this book's many wonders, probably much better than my tired head could at this point, but this is one great goddamn book.  The quick and dirty:

A man is severely injured in a mysterious accident, receives an outrageous sum in legal compensation, and has no idea what to do with it.

Then, one night, an ordinary sight sets off a series of bizarre visions he can't quite place.

How he goes about bringing his visions to life– and what happens afterward– makes for one of the most riveting, complex, and unusual novels in recent memory.

That's the best summary I've seen of it, and every word there is true and pointed - it is riveting, the time you could spend thinking about the complex ramifications of some of the events within this book multiplies the further into it you read, and it is unusual in its single-minded focus on creating a feeling of having one's actions be true, real, not encumbered by any sort of ironic or other knowledge of those actions.  This book gleams, it hums, and I found it to be perfect in that way - that way, you know, where you finish a book and you close it and you think "this guy took this idea, this concept, and he could not possibly have done a better job bringing it to light."  Which is, of course, different from foolishly calling it "a perfect book,"  but if what McCarthy explores here - existentialism, trauma, amnesia, etc. - floats your boat, then here's the perfect wave.  (Yes, I should be in bed.  It is true.)

Richard and Dan have written about this book - in fact, Dan's offhand mention of it in a post a few weeks back was what set me to looking into it, and then purchasing it - better than I'll be able to tonight.  I strongly encourage you to have a look at what they've written, and here's the first chapter to further tempt you.  I'm usually pretty squeamish about flat-out pushing a book on readers here, knowing diverse tastes etc., but kids you should sell some old CD's or savings bonds or platelets and get this book pronto.  And then come back here and thank me.

After Dark - Haruki Murakami.

Dooley again with the Murakami.  I've had his review of After Dark saved in my Google Reader for a few days and just got around to it.  I'd been thinking I'd hold off on reading this review, and Ed's, until I got around to writing my own review, but kids, I read the book months ago, and have read a lot since, and I'm not going to reread it to write a cogent review.

That's my review: I'm not going to reread it. 

I think most of what Dooley says mirrors my feelings, at least with regard to this particular book.  There is a whole lot of inscrutability going on here, some especially bad dialogue, and no Murakami-doppelganger first-person main character to speak of.  I can tolerate a certain level of inscrutable (in part, because it's such a fantastic word - inscrutable) - at times, it's the best thing going.  I like it when some of the cards are being played so close to the vest, when you're done reading, you wonder if the cards were ever even there.  I don't have any need to solve the puzzle, figure out what he's saying metaphysically/existentially, if I get a sense of where he's going, and if he's making it enjoyable to ride along.  No sense this time; some enjoyment, but in the end, not enough.  Unlike Dooley, I'm not at a point of writing Murakami off; maybe I've just read less Murakami than he has, and will get there after Kafka, or what-have-you.  Maybe not. 

I've got mixed feelings about After Dark.  Bad/tired & busted Murakami is better than tired & busted Auster, or pretty much anybody else, but as I said, I won't feel a need to re-read it.

Review: "Ticknor" by Sheila Heti.

As it's being released in paperback, it's time to revisit Ticknor.  My review is up at Small Spiral Notebook.  Excerpt:

George Ticknor: jackass.

Review: "The End of Mr. Y" by Scarlett Thomas.

Warning: what could be considered spoilers follow.

---

Here's something from Mark Sarvas to get us started:

That hoary workhorse, "the novel of ideas," gets an invigorating kick in the pants in Scarlett Thomas' imaginative new novel The End of Mr. Y. Among the ideas on offer for our reading pleasure, one can choose from the works of Samuel Butler, Schrödinger's Cat, Erasmus Darwin's Zoonomia, relativity vs. quantum mechanics, the power of prayer, Jacques Derrida, homeopathy, the search for LUCA (the Last Universal Common Ancestor), Victorian science (luminiferous ether, anyone?), Heidegger's Being and Time, and the genetics of laboratory mice. And that's a partial listing.

But The End of Mr. Y is considerably more than a precocious recitation of seemingly disparate ideas. It is, above all, an exhilarating, breakneck narrative that leaves the reader dizzily impressed with Thomas' brio and talent as she takes each new preposterous plot development (an 8-foot-tall mouse god? a secret government plan for mind control?) and makes it utterly convincing.

Well, I can't say as I'm on board with that.  In the end, it felt like Thomas had pulled together a collection of fascinating puzzle pieces from different puzzles and laid them together to create something new - but the edges of the pieces overlapped in ways that, to me, were dissatisfying. I did enjoy reading it, for the most part, and the chapter with her riding the train of fear was great.  When the book was good, it was really good - and I intend to track down a copy of Thomas' PopCo at some point.  I'd rather read a book that shoots for such lofty targets and misses than a book that plays it safe.

I think this book had a failing in meshing the philosophical/scientific pieces of the book with the plot/action of the book - it was trying to be both, but they felt like two pieces of writing, instead of one larger piece.  (An example of a success in this area would be Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World - a book that covers some of the same ground.)

So, I'm on the fence, and then the deal breaker -

And then I realize: We're together, alone, in the Troposphere.  Adam is actually here.  Or at least, it certainly seems that way.

"Adam," I say softly.

He walks closer to me.  So much for not feeling anything in the Troposphere.  The syrupy feeling intensifies to a point where it's almost uncomfortable, but only in the sense that an orgasm is uncomfortable.  And everything in me seems to slow down.  This doesn't feel like it would in the physical world: There's no racing pulse; no sweaty hands.  My body feels like a misty landscape, melting into its sky.

"Ariel," he says.

Ugh, I say.  Sorry, not to be a jerk about this, but here we've got two characters who are completely in love for no discernible reason - the development just wasn't there.  We get this syrupy reunion, and then they (after setting free the 8 foot tall mouse) (...) have universe-shattering sex straight from the imagination of every comic book store enthusiast across the land. 

And while I don't mean "universe-shattering" literally - well, that's not far from the mark. 

I felt cheated - cheated out of an ending, or maybe a non-ending, a more-loose-ends-than-in-the-beginning sort of ending that befits a book that takes such much philosophy and theory under its wing.  There should be unanswered questions, questions raised by answers.  Instead, a trillion orgasms and life eternal.  This is a book where attention to ideas should have trumped cheap love drama, but in the end, it went the other way. 

Others loved it.
Website, with excerpts.

Why I'm late with the book review.

Dear________:

You wrote, asking for reviewers with reviews past due to write and explain why.  I think you meant me.  My defense is multifaceted.  For now, allow me to present exhibit A:

Woman has crocodiles strapped to body

Sometimes, you can't help but click, no matter how focused you are.

Yours,

"Of Song and Water" by Joseph Coulson.

My Of Song and Water review is now online at the Spring 2007 issue of "The Quarterly Conversation."  Also available are essays on Orhan Pamuk and on Wizard of the Crow, a review of Robert Bolano's Amulet, reviews of  The Children's Hospital, The Shape of Things to Come, Reading Like a Writer, and All Aunt Hagar's Children. 

I thought Of Song and Water (Archipelago Books) (where, to my surprise, I discover - me) was pretty great, one of those nice finds where the subject matter is reflected in the style of the writing to powerful effect. 

Marquez bulldozed my house.

My wife has expressed bemusement many times over my reluctance to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Any number of reasons - too big a project, I have this or that book to review, it's in the TBR pile (it being One Hundred Years of Solitude) and I'm just not there yet, saving him for when I'm really lacking something dynamite to read - none of them especially convincing.  I finished The People of Paper and didn't immediately grab anything else - I was waiting for my copy of The Children's Hospital to arrive in the mail (which it did, finally, to my very great excitement) and didn't want to start anything lengthy in the meantime; then I agreed to review another book that should be arriving any day now, which left me with a small opening.  "Now's your chance to read Memories of My Melancholy Whores," she said. 

So, I did.  I was initially underwhelmed - this was the grand master?  I had a mix of expectations - yes, it was virtually a novella compared to some of his other works, and so probably smaller in ambition of reach, a Body Artist, so to speak.  And yet, Gabo.  The story unfolded in a decent enough fashion, and I dutifully read on.

Around thirty pages in, the book really took off for me.  I wish I had written about it immediately afterward, or even as I was reading; as is too often the case, I was full of thoughts I wanted to get into a post here, but time has scattered them.  I did dog-ear this passage:

The only things that remained the same were my columns in the newspaper.  Younger generations launched an attack against them as if they were assaulting a mummy from the past that had to be destroyed, but I maintained the same tone and made no concessions to the winds of renovation.  I remained deaf to everything.  I had turned forty, but the young staff writers named it the Column of Mudarra the Bastard.  The editor at the time called me into his office to ask me to conform to the latest currents.  In a solemn way, as if he had just thought of it, he said: The world is moving ahead.  Yes, I said, it's moving ahead, but it's revolving around the sun.  He kept my Sunday column because he could not have found another cable editor.  Today I know I was right, and I know why.  The adolescents of my generation, greedy for life, forgot in body and soul about their hopes for the future until reality taught them that tomorrow was not what they had dreamed, and they discovered nostalgia.  My Sunday columns were there, like an archeological relic among the ruins of the past, and they realized they were not only for the old but also for the young who were not afraid of aging.  Then the column returned to the editorial section and, on special occasions, to the front page.

They, living as large as possible in youth, didn't think about the future until they were already discovering that it wasn't to be taken for granted - that hopes, once laid out, aren't safe to be put aside as "finished", because as the world changes around you, your ideas of what a "good future" will be need to change, as well.  But because we're all carpe diem in our youth, when we reach tomorrow and find it doesn't match our long-ago blueprints, drawn and set aside, that we instead prefer to think of the times that those blueprints were in front of us.  That we still had the pen to make changes.  The nostalgia.

Or something like that.  Literary analysis, not my strong suit.  But I like a good passage as much as the next guy.  The book became magical around this point, but not magical in an old-man-with-wings sort of way - just in the quiet way Marquez gave something to his old man, something to long for without actually knowing what it is he needs, or why, or if possibly he might even already have it and just not understand. 

Tormented by love, I had the storm damage fixed and also took care of many other repairs I had put off for years because of insolvency or indolence.  I reorganized the library according to the order in which I had read the books.  And I discarded the player piano as a historical relic, along with more than a hundred rolls of classical music, and bought a used record player that was better than mine, with high-fidelity speakers that enlarged the area of the house.  I was on the verge of ruin but well-compensated by the miracle of still being alive at my age.

Nostalgia, indeed.  Out with the old and in with the new as he simultaneously embraces his old age and seeks the meaning in it.  His new love drives him to make change after change.  That last sentence sums it all up, for me - the torment he feels ruining him and also thrusting him into a feeling of life, of aliveness. 

I was disappointed in the way the book ended; too pat.  But I felt after reading the book that I had sorely underestimated the power of Marquez in his old age.  Like his narrator, he's taken an old story and presented it in a way that combines the nostalgia with that greed for life.   He no longer needs three hundred pages to turn our heads. 

Review: "The Exquisite" by Laird Hunt.

My review of Laird Hunt's The Exquisite is online at PopMatters.   

There's also a review of it in the Dec/Jan Bookforum, though that isn't reflected on their site.

Review: "Yann Andrea Steiner" by Marguerite Duras.

I'm not sure if I linked to this when I switched blog providers:  my review of Yann Andrea Steiner by Marguerite Duras, at the Archipelago Books website. 

Brief beating of "Free books" dead horse.

After consulting with wiser peers, and reading further posts in various places, I've decided to go ahead and review whatever, regardless of it possibly appearing in an ad at my site.  I've only had this version of the site up since August, but hopefully my intentions are clear by this point. 

I promise to shut up about this now.

Review: "The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology"

The people behind The Brooklyn Rail paper, started in 1998, are fond of sharing the original plan for the paper: a small publication, no charge, aimed at folks riding the L train to and from Manhattan, no big deal. The paper has grown significantly since then, though the "slanted opinions, artfully delivered" badge is still proudly displayed both in a recent editor’s note and in the introduction, penned by fiction editor Donald Breckenridge, to The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology, published earlier this year by BR and Hanging Loose Press.

Breckenridge writes in the introduction that this was "conceived not as a "best of" the Rail fiction section, but as an accurate overview of the various types of short fiction that have been published." The Rail has sought out fiction that defies labels, which at times results in risky, rewarding work from little-known writers, and other times results in fiction that feels like the author was straining to defy categorization, to the detriment of the writing. The pieces here are varied enough to appeal to all varieties of readers interested in something slightly outside of "normal," "mainstream" fiction.

One of the authors, Brian Evenson (author, most recently, of The Open Curtain from Coffee House Press) translates a piece by Jean Fremon and contributes his own three-part "Traub in the City," describing an artist’s madness:

Days later, back in the city, having left the mountain inn, the body buried and left behind, Traub found himself shaken. He began to see heads in the emptiness, in all the space that surrounded them, isolated and remote. On the platform in the metro surrounded by hundreds of people he saw nothing but a series of heads, each suspended in a vast emptiness, each face in the crowd parcel of a single face that was changing with a rapidity he could no longer comprehend - as if a progression in time had been instead smeared out over space, all the faces of the city a record of one man’s death.

This sort of haunted, character’s-mind-unraveling narrative is approached by these authors from multiple perspectives in this anthology. While some of the authors, like Evenson, are unambiguous about their character’s state of mind, others show their characters’ unravelings in less direct ways. A wife tries to avoid revealing to her husband, who is dealing with his alcoholism, her feelings regarding the death of her lover - difficult work that only leads to disgust, as she realizes that her role may be the easiest. A mother discovers that her fourteen-year-old daughter is a prostitute and has bought the apartment next to theirs with her ill-got earnings; as she tries to make sense of this shocking revelation, her daughter and pimp sit on either side of her, offering caring reassurances. There’s a junkie’s account of trying to give up heroin, and an account of life in Cold War-era Soviet Union, with a description of the sacrifices and choices people faced daily that reads less like a fictional account of that life and more like a first hand narrative not of a life unraveling, but of a life that has had no previous normalcy from which to unravel.

Another piece concerns the last days of a mother as narrated by the son living with her; he works in a tire warehouse, his life dead-ending all around him, and the answers he seeks only lead to more questions. The detached, clinical tone of "Family Life" makes the story of a disintegrating family even more tragic - the few good moments of family togetherness, of love, are related with the same cold observation as the emotional abuses they lob at each other, giving the reader a sense of resignation and bitterness, a sense that while the reader may gape at the dysfunction, the narrator is too far removed from himself to feel any sense of shock or loss. Sharon Mesmer’s "Revenge" is an Austeresque tail of unexpected karma, of a snobbish linguistics professor who believes himself to be doing a woman a favor with the gift of his company. Michael Martone’s Michael Martone (recently lauded online by the LitBlog Co-Op ) is excerpted.

The Rail’s interest in putting out the risky stuff sometimes results in the sort of melodramatic Beat-flavored pieces you’d expect to read over the shoulder of the goateed guy in next to you in the coffee shop. An interview with Mickey Mouse, for example, takes an idea that is slim from the start - children’s character with adult personality - and does not go especially far with the concept. This piece is in the minority, though. As a whole, the anthology more than pays for itself in the pieces that connect, and readers will likely find a handful of authors to pursue further. This is a success, artfully delivered.

The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology

Ed. Donald Breckenridge

Hanging Loose Press 2006, 432 pages, $24.00

(Note: credit is due to Anthony Sage and the folks at Small Spiral Notebook for this review copy, their patience, and their editorial guidance and suggestions on this review.) 

On reviews and free books.

I hope by now you've read the post, and the following comments on that post.  (Ed is not pleased.  No, not at all.)  I feel I should address it here, as I'm thinking of moving more of my own reviews over time to this site.  My thoughts on this might get long-winded and rambling; please, bear with me.

My feelings on this agree with different things that different contributors to the MetaxuCafe discussion have contributed.  I have reviewed books from my own collection, from the library, ARC, RC, and just plain old free copies.  My gut tells me that it would be a bad idea to mark reviews according to which one of these categories they fall under - I don't want readers to ascribe a value to a review without reading the review, and hopefully reading my other reviews, and deciding for yourselves what I'm about and whether or not you want to read the book yourselves.  In case it isn't clear, I'll tell you: I'm deeply cynical about a great many things in this world.  Books are not one of those things.  I was an avid reader throughout my childhood and teenage years.  I took some time off in college to drink copious amounts of cheap beer and pursue promiscuity.  Over the past few years, I found my way home again and now can't imagine not reading.  I experience physical and mental stress when I don't have something worth reading, whether that something is "good" or "bad".  That looks absurd, overly dramatic, written down here.  But it's true.  My bookmark: "I have never found any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve." 

My site is not in a weight class high enough to receive massive shipments of random books; generally, publishers seem to know what audience they're looking at when they send me books.  I have reviewed some of these books for sites that do not accept negative reviews, and because of that have had to return the reader copies they sent me.  I have received free books and not gotten around to reading them; I have received free books and written negative reviews.  I have received free books and thought so little of them, they didn't even get a mention.  I have received free books and given them high marks.

None of this had anything to do with the free-ness of the book.  The publishers I've worked with all seem to understand that I'm going to judge a book based on what I think of the writing, not on whether or not I've been showered with attention.  One publisher has been especially kind to me, and I believe that to be an act of faith on the part of the publicist - faith in the quality of the books she is publicizing.  She not once has pressured me for a review of any sort, much less a positive one; she knows she's got great books on her hands, and is willing to take a chance that I'll agree.  So far, I do.  If she sends me one that I think stinks up the place, I'll say so, and if that means no more RC, that's what it means.  I don't think it will, but that's not relevant.

It should also be indicative of my position on making money for publishers in that I plug BookMooch every third post.  (Not linking this time!)  I'll tell you all day long to go buy this book or that book - let's make book buying and book writing a great vocation - but in the next breath I'll tell you to take a quick look online, because if you've got five books you're done with, you're well on your way to a free book in the mail yourself.

I'm not here to make money or get free books; I'm here because I live in East Bum and this is the closest I'll get to being part of a well-read community, with lively discussions and thoughts about books.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy free books, but sending me a book guarantees neither a review, nor a positive review.  Nor even a mention - there's just too many books, and this blog isn't my full-time job.  I work, I parent. 

I can say that I'll look at anything I get sent, and if I have something (hopefully) interesting to say about it, I will, whether that means it gets a positive or negative review.  And if I love a book, you'll know it - I'm glad that someone gets free publicity, if they've written a book I really appreciate.  They've earned it.  So publishers should know how my tastes run before they launch the newest chick-lit book in my direction. 

With regard to the Brianiads on this site - that's thorny.  I know there's an ad for Firmin coming, and I've chosen to steer clear of that book - I don't want to talk here about a book that will make me money, should you decide to click on the ad.  I can opt out of the ad, but I don't think I'll do that; it looks like an interesting read.  I just don't want to do anything with it here, because I'm not going to be trumpeting books (assuming I'd like it) that in turn would make me money.  That would be lame.

I want to be exposed to really good reads and I want to share my experiences - negative and positive - with readers at this site.  That's it.  Comments on this are welcome, as I'm sort of figuring it out as I go.  (In case that isn't already obvious.)

UPDATE: TDAOC comes clean.  I had my suspicions.  Grammy, you will be avenged.

UPDATE TWO:  I agree.  (He clearly had a better self-edit on this than I did.)

UPDATE THREE:  I agree, despite that it throws some monkey wrenches into my thinking.  Or maybe because it does...

"The pitfalls of receiving free books"

I don't have time for the thought this post will require right this minute, but plan one for later.  In the meantime, I strongly encourage you to read this post, particularly if you frequent lit-blogs and/or operate them. 

UPDATE:  Ed has some strong thoughts on the matter.

"Blood" by Matt Cheney.

I've written in the past about my fondness for One Story - they've consistently done good things, injecting quality stories into my days in the smallest of spaces.  I've let my OS reading slide a bit recently, but for reasons unknown I started right in when Matt Cheney's "Blood" arrived in the mail.  (Took me a while to make the connection between this story and The Mumpsimus - the author's note makes no mention of his site.) 

I'm glad I did - I found it tied in well with my recent enjoyment of The Open Curtain, in that they both deal with violence and a strictness of thought, tying these themes together and showing how they relate.  The Open Curtain took a century-old murder and tied to it the present; "Blood" relates a story of a family's disintegration in the face of violence, but does so from multiple approaches - a mother's leaving, a father's paranoia, sibling relations, children being forced into adulthood - and the writing is direct, leaving a clean, neat story that allows the readers to work out for themselves the details.  That's a poor way of putting it, and I'm struggling to find a better way, but the interview at One Story with Matt conveys it better:

Where did the idea of this story come from?
I attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in the summer of 2000 and was in a workshop with Barry Lopez, a workshop that completely rearranged my thinking about both fiction and language. One of the exercises Lopez gave us was to write about a violent act, but in a particularly deliberate and compassionate way -- in a way that attempted to preserve the humanity of both the person committing the violence and the victim. I don't remember the details, but this exercise got me thinking about the language of violence, because when I was young I had loved gory horror movies and books, but had eventually come to find them angering because of how manipulative and exploitative they were—entire situations were created simply as excuses for violent acts and for inspiring revulsion in the reader or viewer. I don't find such an approach pleasurable or even justifiable anymore. I've seen enough violence in the real world to want to find ways to represent it in language, to shape it and give it meaning, but I also want to do so in ways that do not trivialize human pain and complexity.

I returned home from Bread Loaf and wrote the first draft of this story as a way to explore what I had been thinking about there, so it started as a technical exercise. As the characters and situation became clearer to me, though, I realized that it was all much more than an exercise, and that it could be a way to express feelings and fears that tend to plague me—feelings of disconnection, fears of destruction. Ultimately, despite my best intentions, I always end up writing from the depths of my neuroses.

Cheney's ability to take a story that is, on the surface, about one thing, and give the reader just enough to see the undercurrents, makes a great read.  This is a whole novel of ideas boiled down to the essentials.

Review: "The Dead Fish Museum", Charles D'Ambrosio.

Note: I wrote this review months ago for a new site that never came to be.  We're stealin' it back.

A look at the essays of someone who primarily writes fiction can often be useful in providing backdrop to that fiction.  Charles D'Ambrosio published an article in the April 20th edition of The New York Times on his checkered history with residences - residences, because excepting the newest (a large pink house) few of them seemed to have the characteristics one usually associates with home.  He describes living in a tiny "shoebox" of an apartment, mentioning obliquely an assortment of roommates that likely provided great fodder for stories, and this shoebox was a step up from his previous residence/job: living in a warehouse, " a cavernous place with no shower or stove or refrigerator... I slept on sofas that were wrapped in plastic, ate off tables marked for discount sales the next day."   Best of all was the employment part: rent free, if he set glue traps for rats at night and then got rid of them in the morning.  "The worst part of the deal was when a rat stepped into a trap late at night.  It wasn't easy to locate a crying rat in the dark of that vast warehouse, but I always got up, making my rounds by flashlight.  Otherwise it would drive me batty, listening all night, because a trapped rat, believe it or not, makes a horrible high-pitched cry like a very faraway, very tiny lost baby."

This sense of searching in the dark for that which will not let us sleep is not that unusual a theme in fiction.  What is unusual is the skill with which D'Ambrosio's "The Dead Fish Museum" teases out unique interpretations of this feeling.  The collection opens with "The High Divide," arguably a weaker entry, and from a boy's point of view tells of life in an orphanage, only to shift abruptly into a story about his friend Donny, and Donny's father - the three of them out on a hike, coming to terms with some changes.  Like every story here, it has shining moments of humor and of that kind of pain that the reader feels strongly because D'Ambrosio knows exactly how to express it, in this case loneliness.  The fault of the story could be seen as a fault of the choice of narrator; while D'Ambrosio stays true to the way a pre-teenage boy would tell a story, this results in a disjointed, somewhat haphazard narrative.

From there, D'Ambrosio hits home run after home run.  "Drummond & Son" concerns relationships between a typewriter repair shop owner, his dead father, and his schizophrenic son Pete, sitting in the shop day after day, laughing for no apparent reason.  After an ill-fated visit from a social worker and a painful walk down the road from another store, when Drummond tells his son "Do your job now," the son resists, deciding to go outside for a smoke first; "'Please,' Drummond said under his breath.  'Do your job first.'"  Pete goes from typewriter to typewriter, fulfilling his menial assigned task of taking out all the typewriter paper that people have typed their practice nonsense on throughout the day, replacing it with fresh paper.  D'Ambrosio perfectly captures the reader in a net of pity for the son and father, pride for the son's efficient work at this one expected task, sadness for the potential expressed here and the inability of these men to find a way to make it work.  D'Ambrosio neither tries nor needs to give us the details of schizophrenia here; what matters is the expectations of one generation following in the footsteps of another, and what must be done when this expectation will not be met.

Other stories find people in search of similar elusive satisfaction.  D'Ambrosio peppers these stories with memorable images - the paper gown of a woman in a psychiatric hospital burning away to nothing from a dropped match, leaving her unharmed and nude; a horrible death of a young girl on a farm, in language that is neither overly detailed and yet does not spare the reader the feeling of having been punched in the gut; a bologna sandwich flying out the window of the construction site of a porn set.  It speaks to D'Ambrosio's strong talent that while these people, so lost in their own heads and the meanings of their lives, do not really nail down whatever piece is missing, neither do they entirely fail.  As in day-to-day life, the people in these stories find bits and pieces of redemption mixed in with canceled checks and overdue bills.  The fact that he populates these memorable stories with people - they do not seem like characters - shows a great storyteller at work, someone who has taken that flashlight out night after night to find the exact spot the wailing comes from.

The Auster Follies.

Can you tell already?  Would I be putting a picture of the young, hungry Auster next to a picture (probably just a bad day, but) of the present-day Looking Really Bad Auster if I had a similar reaction as, well, nearly everyone else? 

I finished The Brooklyn Follies this afternoon (traffic jam due to car accident, 3:35PM, Forest Ave) and thank god.  Sublimely disappointing?  My earlier comment about the book, about Auster's overinflated dialog, holds true throughout the rest of the story.  I can accept that, given that this is a book of Follies - the name, to me, suggests that this will be something of a production, theatrical - that the dialog might come across as stilted in that pursuit; in the end, however, it's just irritating.  When 90% of the conversation comes across as one grand statement or pronouncement after another, you don't feel that the characters are real enough for you to care about what happens, and it makes them all unlikable. 

The book is not without its pleasures; the story, itself, is somewhat entertaining, and as a statement of life directly prior to 9/11, it has the effect of nostalgia, both for the good and the bad that came before that day.  There are passages that are vintage Auster; I dog-eared as many pages for good bits as I did for bad bits.  There are, however, passages that are not vintage Auster, but second-rate Russo.  Reading The Brooklyn Follies in the shadow of The New York Trilogy is like watching Over the Hedge instead of Waking Life or A Scanner Darkly - it's predictable rhythms, cliches, and none of the innovation or risk we get from Auster's earlier works.  Is it worth reading?  Depends on how long your TBR list is.  As a summer beach read, you could do so much worse.  As Auster goes, though, it's better to go back to the good old days.

Review: Brian Evenson's "The Open Curtain"

My review of The Open Curtain appears this morning at The Elegant Variation.

Silly rabbit! Paul Auster's "The Brooklyn Follies" IS for you!

What was I thinking?  Of course I'm going to read it.  Did anyone besides me actually think I'd get this in the mail and then send it back, unread and unreviewed?

Perhaps this guy.  Some interesting questions raised for me here.  Don't bother clicking unless you just like to click, because here it is:

First, I should mention I've been a huge fan of Paul Auster for a long time, since the New York Trilogy stories were first published on their own, (Music of Chance and Invention of Solitude are my favorites), so naturally, I go out and buy every new Paul Auster book in hardcover, which is something I never do, for any other author. With that introduction, in the past ten years or so, the only book of his during this period I still recommend to anyone is Timbuktu. I liked the fact that in Oracle Night the real action occurred in the footnotes - but I didn't really like the book, just that gimmick. 'Brooklyn Follies' I came close to tossing out the car window ... but for littering laws.

What I now think is that it is hard to be a writer and keep writing. It's hard not to write the way you do. You repeat yourself. You recycle yourself. It's no easy thing to get outside of yourself and do somthing new (which he came closest to doing with Timbuktu, I think). It's also hard to stop. Do you remember the potato chip commercial with the slogan 'no one can eat just one?'. No one can write just one, it seems.

So, for the writer, I say go ahead and write, but for the reader, beware. You might just get over-exposed.

OK, so he didn't like it.  He did like Timbuktu, which many others (including my wife) did not care for. (I have not read it yet.)  And he suggests that the writer can damn well write the same book over and over, changing it up a bit, and reader beware if you go out and buy all the books and read in a frenzy.  This is true more than ever with Travels in the Scriptorium; it's easy to see Auster writing this, reader be damned if s/he doesn't feel like it lives up to his previous metafiction.  In the end, you'll hear him say: he did it his way. 

Auster's "Travels in the Scriptorium": review.

NOTE:  I am running a contest to give away my copy of Travels.  Click here for details.

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I had planned to write a review of Paul Auster's Travels in the Scriptorium for another site, but given my overall feelings about Auster's works and my mixed feelings about this new book, rather than struggle to put it into perspective by the guidelines of the usual book review, I'm just going to go at it here.

Let me say two things right up front. 

First of all, I didn't hate the book; the first half was great reading, with a few bumps, and as a whole the book is not without its pleasures. 

Second of all, that being said, this book was ultimately a disappointment.  It has a promising premise, for fans of Auster's New York Trilogy:  A man with no memories, or at best hazy memories he can't put his hands on, wakes up alone in a white room.  There's a desk with photos and a manuscript, and a parade of characters - characters from previous Auster books, and you sense as soon as that starts that Auster's gone all meta on us again, and you cheer - visit him, by turns harassing him and supporting him, as he tries to piece together who he is, what he's doing there, and whether or not he can leave.

It also starts off strong, but before long - for me, anyway - it descends into the obvious.  There aren't really any themes here that Auster hasn't explored before.  The most interesting part of the book is the manuscript, supposedly by John Trause (of the superior Oracle Night), in which another captive slowly unravels how he got there.  There's allegories - Auster is no fan of the Bush administration, and had stated around Brooklyn Follies release time that his next book would address what he sees as Bush's mistakes.  To a degree, it does, but ultimately any connection between this unfinished manuscript, the completion of it by Mr. Blank, and what it might mean to have a captive completing a narrative about a captive during a time of multiple wars, of "detainees" and torture and diminishing civil liberties, is lost in favor of Auster's overriding drive:  the torment of being an author. 

Auster's biggest weakness, for me, is the sense he gives in his writing of being unmanagably high strung.  He seems to wear his "struggle of writing" as a badge - or rather, as a lot of badges; a whole suit made out of badges.  (Honestly, even the author photo looks like writing this 140 page novel was draining as pneumonia plus mono plus three rounds with Cassius Clay.)  It brings this to mind, from Wayne Wang, with whom Auster has collaborated in the movie world:

I remember one time on the set, I saw Paul getting very frustrated with an actor. Paul had written all of this character's dialogue expressing anger without any swear words. The actor, however, simply couldn't say the lines the way Paul had written them. The more Paul tried to correct him, the worse it got. Paul kept trying until he was beet red in the face. He finally walked away whispering the dialogue to himself over and over, as if affirming the certainty of it.

This weakness, whether accurate or not, seems to be the theme of this book.  Except that the struggle of the author piece of it isn't really played all the way though.  The whole "piecing together clues of his past and the identity of his captors" is a red herring.  It goes nowhere, or at least nowhere that feels like a payoff for the time spent getting there.  The quality of the writing goes up and down; an editor might have encouraged Auster to find a less clumsy way to let us know about Mr. Blank's bathroom escapades, might have picked up on this:

It won't do, he mutters in a low, barely audible voice.  Then, to reassure himself, he repeats the same sentence, shouting at the top of his lungs: IT WON'T DO!

Inexplicably, this sudden burst of sound gives him the courage to continue.

Inexplicably?  Why is this inexplicable?  It just doesn't seem thought out. The great writing is the exception; all in all, this has some of the flattest writing I've seen from him.

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That said, even as I was reading this and began to see where it was going to go, I still was excited by what I was reading.  I didn't recognize all of the characters, as I mentioned in a previous post, because I haven't read all of the Auster books.  But from reading elsewhere, I knew Trause would pop up somehow, and I knew Quinn would come into the story himself.  This is where my biggest disappointment stemmed from, because while these former Auster characters come in, it's only the slightest of connections to their stories of origin, along with their names, that identify them as those characters.  They are, essentially, too removed from their original "worlds" to be of any interest, or of any real value to this book.  They are cardboard cutouts.  When Fanshawe's wife arrives, she might as well be anybody.  Quinn is a lawyer - ok, that's interesting, so Auster envisions Quinn recovering at the end of City of Glass and going to law school?  Or does this take place before that story?  Completely removed from time?  Or is this more related to The Locked Room?  And why is it me asking these questions instead of a recovering Mr. Blank?  Or anybody?  This book could have been a masterpiece, if it were two or three times as long and the stories of these characters were actually taken into account as they moved into Mr. Blank's world.  It's as if Auster wanted to weave together all his previous works, but couldn't get past the outline stage, and that's what we've got - 140 pages of outline.  There's little to suggest that these characters are actually who they say they are, given how little they seem to have in common with the Quinn of COG, the Sophie of TLR, and so on.  It's disappointing to see Auster thinking so little of his characters.  He's much more concerned with Mr. Blank.  We aren't. 

Brooklyn Rail apologies.

I e-mailed a few folks to say that I would be posting excerpts from The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology as I read it; obviously, that hasn't happened.  Between being sick and - well, ok, just being sick, I've had some trouble putting coherent thoughts together.  I may still get some excerpts up here, if I get well before some other pressing matters come up. 

The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology: Brian Evenson.

I've been lucky enough to receive a copy of The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology for review.  (Here's the Brooklyn Rail site.)  I'll be getting to a full review soon; on vacation this week, with reading as the number one scheduled activity.  I'll also be posting excerpts that strike me as especially tasty.  Here's the first, from Brian Evenson's Traub in the City.

Days later, back in the city, having left the mountain inn, the body buried and left behind, Traub found himself shaken.  He began to see heads in the emptiness, in all the space that surrounded them, isolated and remote.  On the platform in the metro surrounded by hundreds of people he saw nothing but a series of heads, each suspended in a vast emptiness, each face in the crowd parcel of a single face that was changing with a rapidity he could no longer comprehend - as if a progression in time had been instead smeared out over space, all the faces of the city a record of one man's death.  No matter where he was he had the distinct impression that there was only he, Traub, sitting beside a bed where a body was slowly giving way, through a desperate flurry of faces, to an implacable and faceless corpse.

On Being an Amateur Book Reviewer.

On Being an Amateur Book Reviewer.

OVER THE NEXT YEAR, the NBCC will be talking to book editors and critics around the country. We recently caught up with tiny, irrelevant lit-blog operator "Condalmo", book reviewer at Condalmo, PopMatters, Quarterly Conversation, Small Spiral Notebook, and the author of zero novels.  Condalmo talked to us about his double-life as a critic and less important human being, and as a twin to nobody.

Q: You have an identical twin brother who is a novelist. How do I know I am talking to the good Condalmo?

A:  You can always tell.  I'm the one who doesn't have a twin brother.  It makes good copy to say that I do, though - look at the Wolff brothers!  Genes and all.  So let's just let it stand.

Q: You are one of a handful book critics who writes reviews with one hand and novels with the other. Which came first, and could you do one without the other?

A: There are more of us than you'd think. To be truthful, since we aren't pros, we can't be such Renaissance men as to be writing novels; I use my other hand to snap the carrot, if you know what I mean.  Thus, no novels.  Carrot snapping does not a novel make.  Updike, of course, has had success with that method, but I'm no Updike. 

I know many people, you know.  They are famous authors and they are like me. 

Without question, I wrote fiction first; those who can't, review, and those who can, do, and then they become professional book reviewers and rub elbows with Updike, n'est pas?  I am full of passion.

Of course, this isn't to say that reviewing isn't my important job too.  I am a man who consumes many things and writes professionally, and yet I am free to use frickin' and pillhead.  It's a professional's perogative; I can do what I want to do.

Q: Some of your own taste in books is a little bit bent from the mainstream -- Matthew Tiffany, however nice a writer, has yet to catch on. Do you have to make an extra case when reviewing writers like him in Time? Does your editor keep tabs on what you read?

A: I'm always talking to my editor about what I read. I probably talk to her about it more than is strictly polite or interesting. I beg her to keep tabs on me!  And handcuffs!  I didn't say that.  It is important to me that the grotesque reader be exposed to more bent like a hairpin literature.

I have my biases and vices, which I try to stay aware of, and once in a while even correct for.  I would guess, though I don't know, that Condalmo's readership skews a little older and more conservative than me, since it's mainly my mother and her co-workers at the library, and doesn't necessarily unanimously share my passionate admiration for Andy Griffith's BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND. But at the same time, I can remember a particular meeting where I was being asked to review three bland, past-their-prime upper-mid-list novels, and at the time I'd been staying up late and missing stops at Subway reading CARROT TOP'S JUNK IN THE TRUNK: SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED and I was damned if I was going to review any effing other thing besides that, and I got all worked up about it and started yelling.  Effing means fuck, by the way.  I didn't say that.  Wicked embarrassing.  Yessah. 

Q: What's it like going in to work every day at Time.  Do you ever arm wrestle Joe Klein on your lunch break? Do the windows open? Before you started did you read the reviews of the critics who preceded you?

A: That first sentence should have a question mark at the end, like this: "?"  You see, I am a professional reviewer, and so pick up on things like that.  I don't think there are many little kids who go to bed without thinking about my book reviews. I've come to like it. Time is a powerful institution, and there's a lot to be said for allying oneself with powerful institutions. Time is on my side; yes it is.  If you like a book, you can give it a good solid push. It's kind of like the end of Aliens, when Ripley climbs inside that giant robotic exoskeleton: Time is big and unwieldy, but it amplifies one's puny human strength. Plus you can stomp acid-blooded alien queens.  Huh huh huh; cool.

I don't arm-wrestle Joe Klein, but he does stop by to kick my ass six ways to Sunday now and again.  I think he reads more than I do. The windows don't open; if they did I would hurl office supplies at the lousy Barry White impersonator who performs for the tourists at 6th Ave. and 50th St. When Bozo the clown speaks, important people finish their Ramen noodles.  Each and every weaver since the beginning of time liked to do things when they weren't working.  Are there any pencils that were not made to write?  I didn't read my predecessor's reviews before I started, but I read them now, and I frequently pilfer them for that professional look.

Q: Occasionally, Condalmo packs you off to go interview someone. Who are some of the authors you've visited over the years, and can you share anything that happened off-camera, so to speak, that was amusing?

A: Mmmmm...amusing is probably an overstatement. I half-killed myself getting out to John le Carre's estate on the coast of Cornwall. Word to the wise: if you ever book a sleeper train in England, book it first class.  If I don't tell you more, it will be mysterious.  I am that way.

Other authors I've visited would include Joan Didion, James Patterson, Tom Wolfe, Curtis Sittenfeld, Martin Amis, Jonathan Safran Foer , J.K. Rowling, Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, Haruki Murakami, Tom Clancy, Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, Tom Robbins, Douglas Adams, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Piers Anthony, Matthew Tiffany - and his twin; Richard Scarry, William Trevor, Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, that Bridges of Madison County guy, John Updike, Henry Rollins, Aesop, Mortimer Jerome Adler, David James Duncan, Henry Adams Bellows,  Francine Prose, Johanna Drucker, Vincent B. Leitch, Edward W. Said, Villehardouin, Edith Hamilton, Donna B. Norton [ed. note: edited for space]

Q: After a decade or so of covering books, how would like to see book pages change in the coming years?

A: At the risk -- nay, certainty, nay! -- of sounding kind of snobbish, I wish book sections in general would leave book-reviewing to the Amateurs. No, just kidding, I mean pros like me.  Pro as in professional.  There's a pervasive notion among the illiterate masses, bless their sad little hearts, that anybody who can read can write a book review.  Not so.  Good God Man, there is nothing so boring, so dank and unappealing, so excrutiatingly vomit inducing, so thoroughly castrating, so completely thoroughly wholly finally finally finally finally - what was I saying?  Pros like me, we contain multitudes.  Amateurs should stick to their sad little blogs and only dream of working for Condalmo. 

And at the risk of sounding reverse-snobbish, I'd like to see more serious review attention go to genre fiction.  It is, after all, what most people read. Well, not me, of course; I'm right in the middle of Pessoa.  Yeah, it's his best one, really tops.  The worst of it is very bad, and the best of it is very very good.  Why not help potential book-buyers divide the one from 'tother?  Ain't that just sensical?

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Note: This interview was conducted via e-mail with Mr. Condalmo.  There seems to have been some confusion on his part as to whether he was speaking of himself, or the fine Lev Grossman, book reviewer at Time magazine.  Repeated attempts to contact Mr. Condalmo to clarify went unanswered; at press time, we made the decision to go forward with this interview, as he is likely too professional for us to understand; the confusion actually being on our end, not his.  Our apologies to Mr. Condalmo and his followers.

"The Brief History of the Dead" - Kevin Brockmeier - review.

Finished listening to Kevin Brockmeier's fine The Brief History of the Dead.  I'd like to take two views of this book - the first, a general review of the story itself, and second, a look at how it works as an audiobook.  A lot of purists turn their noses up at the audiobook - but, more on that later.

Part I

Looking at BHD as a book, it excels in so many ways.  I'm not able to comb through the audio for passages to quote here (for reasons previously explained), but for a look at this great writing, click here.  It's the first chapter, and it's a hook.  The general premise behind the story is outlined at the beginning:  when we die, we go into a purgatory of sorts, in this case a fully functioning giant city.  We continue here, at the same age we were when we died.  Being in this city is dependent on continuing to be in someone's memories in "the real world" - so, once everyone that knew you, remembered you in some way - once they are all dead, you vanish from this city, ostensibly gone to your final reward.  It's a simple enough theory, but Brockmeier takes it and spins gold.  For those allergic to purely literary looks at such weighty issues, there's a nice bit of suspense plot thrown in there - Laura Byrd, a researcher at the bottom of the world, learns that a virus (whether it is man made or natural is never completely clear, but he lets just enough possibility of terrorism slip in to make things feel very current) has exterminated millions upon millions of people.  Is she the last person on Earth?  If not, can she reach anyone else, someone who has found an antidote?  What happens to the city as millions of people "here" die? 

In a sense, this book nicely jumps between fiction, fantasy, science fiction, and literary fiction so often that you soon lose track of the differences in your head, and it becomes a story about memory, about death and the different types of death, about the differences between the spirit and the soul and the body.  It's intelligent without being stultifying; Brockmeier knows where the line is between a good story and windy philosophy, and his dances around that line show the work of a writer that isn't afraid to dig at the truth. 

Part II

Yes, it works as an audiobook.  The reader is Richard Poe, and he differentiates well between the different voices without being corny.  It actually helps, in a way, to have these different voices all sounding very similar (being spoken as they are by Mr. Poe) - fits in with the narrative.  It is easy to pick up the thread, if you listen in fits and starts - commuting, waiting rooms, bathrooms.  (I have no shame.) 

I had intended to get into the plusses/minuses of audiobooks, but this post is overdue as it is, so I'll save that for another time.

Flaccid Murakami?

Scott calls foul on all the reviewers heaping praise on Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman:

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is 20 stories of more of the same and 4 pretty good pieces. I don´t think that´s enough. I think Murakami needs to do more than that to earn a favorable review in most major newspapers.

I agree, and disagree.  No author deserves a free ride, and authors coasting on previous successes (or success; see Palahniuk for examples) should be called on it.  At the same time, what I think Ed's review, and Scott's criticism are missing, is that this is a collection from throughout Murakami's career.  As such, there's bound to be some ground in there that has been covered again since the stories were originally written; even more so with Murakami, who returns to the same themes frequently.  I had a similar reaction to the book as Scott when I finished it, but I think that was in part due to my trying to read too much Murakami without breaking for a different author, and I burned out a bit on him.  I think we need to look at BW,SW both as a stand alone work and in context of his other works.  For a fan who has read a bunch of his stuff, BW,SW can be a letdown.  For someone new to Murakami, it could be much more powerful. 

Small Spiral Notebook, Fall 2006 - new look.

The subject pretty much says it all:  new issue out, brand new look to the site.  It looks great.  I don't know if the linkage remains the same, but here's my most recent review for them in the new format. 

And, as if I haven't beaten the horse enough recently, here's a roundtable discussion with some of the authors of This is Not Chick Lit. 

Murakami Roundtable/Review of "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman"/Other goodies

The Fall 2006 issue of The Quarterly Conversation is up and running.  Lots of the usual goodness, plus an extended look at Haruki Murakami, including essays, a dictionary, and a review of "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" by yours truly.  It's a great collection of stories, though maybe as a whole a bit weaker than The Elephant Vanishes.  It felt like a tying up of loose ends, collecting together all the stories in one place that had been floating out there in magazines and such - which, I suppose, is true of most collections of stories; but, some of the stories are kind of weak, which adds to that feeling.  Still, a highly recommended book to check out.  Literally, if you have a good library nearby.

Links to my older book reviews.

Not all of them, but the ones I could readily find old posts about.  I am looking through my poorly organized Gmail folders for more worthy posts and reviews.

My review of Susan Perabo's "Who I Was Supposed to Be" is now up at small spiral notebook.
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I'm not sure how clear my review was on my feelings about this book, mainly because the feelings themselves were not clear, are not clear.  This seemed like it would be just the sort of thing I like a lot - ambiguity, strangeness, dreamlike interactions and occurences. Part of me suspects that the reason it didn't hold up was a lack of framework - narrative-wise, maybe, or plot-wise - to hold up the strangeness.  And yet, these small scenes of dark, forboding oddities are delicious in other places - Haruki Murakami, of course.  Murakami puts odd notions together with Carver-inspired narrative and a sprinkling of cultural references that ground the story, tethers that hold the whole thing somewhat close to the ground.  Even arcane references to a Japanese culture I know nothing about would have made a difference in these stories, but they really seem disconnected from any particular time.  Which, again, as I write it, seems like it would be a plus and not a minus. 

And in my earlier post, I wrote something about this book of stories being something akin to a drink of really clean, clear water.  (I wasn't sure then, either.)  I still hold to that - some of the stories have stuck with me.  In fact, one of them I make reference to in the review - the man pursuing his wife and another man across various landscapes and forms of transportation - that story, at least, seems to be about something, despite not being willing to A) tell me what that something is, or B) leave the door open in a way that allows for different interpretations.  There's no interpreting because there just isn't enough there to invite conjecture.

And yet, I keep coming back to it. 

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My review of Insect Dreams - The Half Life of Gregor Samsa appears today in the Spring Quarterly Conversation - about halfway down in the table of contents.

 

Spring 2006 Quarterly Conversation

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Here's my (not) latest review - of My Father's Rifle.

Some recent posts from the old Condalmo.

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Just finished the "Author" chapter - and I use the term "chapter" loosely, as I suspect Mr. Dixon would prefer* - of Stephen Dixon's I.

But what's he going on about?  I. isn't his initial ("I am not I.," he's tempted to say, but that's not the person he's writing this in

... is the sort of meta talk talk talk he's got going on in this chapter - in all the chapters, really - a woman accuses him of nearly running her over, in a matter-of-fact sort of way, and he retreats into his head, dissecting the incident, exploring all the angles of the incident from multiple points of view.  He questions her version, he questions his version; he questions the notion that there can be one version.  In another chapter, he turns the situation on its head, right in the first graf -

He tries to put himself in her position.  She asked that a number of times:  "Try.  Then maybe you'll change how you treat me." So, in his mind he has her condition.  Confined to a wheelchair, has to be helped in and out of bed and often fed.

The stories/chapters in this book connect together slowly, as you read through - there's no instant snap of connection, as with David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, where you suddenly get it.  Dixon gives you bits and pieces, but it can be like trying to put together a puzzle where some of the pieces are reversed - light where it should be dark - and though you know what the premise is (says it right on the back:  "I. is about a man raising two young daughters while caring for his wife, victim of a debilitating disease, her health and mobility worsening monthly.") you get these reversals, these stories about stories that are ancillary to the "main storyline" - which seems to be the point with I. The above quote is from the "The Switch" chapter, which is a prime example - he imagines everything reversed, and it's a fantastic look at everything he is not as a caregiver; you get nuances on top of nuances, and yet it's written in plain prose.  The devil is in the details, but it's not the usual sort of descriptive details - setting, emotional states, etc. - it's the details of everyday life, the stuff other writers don't include. 

It's a fantastic read. 

I'm realizing this post is less about the "Author" chapter than I intended, but I'll come back to that later.

* Actually, I doubt Mr. Dixon would care.  From that interview I recently posted about, he doesn't seem to care whether we see these as chapters or stories; he probably cares even less about writing about his writing in general.  God love him. 

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This is one of Murakami's earlier works, and it shows at times, with clunky writing in places that feels a little bit like he was trying to find "the writer's way" to phrase a description or bit of dialogue.  Where later stories seem effortless, at times this feels a bit forced.  It also drags a little bit, about halfway through, during a section where two of the main characters are making their way through a lengthy underground passage.

There - I said it, and I'm glad.  All in all, though, this is a good book.  Two narratives that seem quite different eventually connect - no surprise there, but it is interesting how he explores the workings of the mind.  (The writeup on the back cover is a little bit on the horrid side - honestly, "cyberpunk"? - and it gets worse from there.) You see him touching on some of the themes of isolation and searching for meaning that he develops further in - well, most of his work.  Like a teenage Murakami effort.

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Nice article/interview this morning on the "phenomenon" of ChickLit, how it has (the author posits) shouldered aside the literary fiction being put out there by female writers.  There's some backlash from the ChickLit writers - they're swinging their purses at Aimee Bender at all of her readings.

Excerpt one:

It is indeed true that many women -- myself included -- can viscerally identify with the problems chick-lit heroines face. I will never again sign up to deliver snacks to my son's school without thinking ruefully of Allison Pearson's "I Don't Know How She Does It," in which would-be mistress of the universe Kate Reddy finds herself smashing in store-bought mince pies in the middle of the night to make them look homemade. Nonetheless, the cry that chick lit deals with real women's concerns in a relatable way while literary fiction spins off into greater degrees of irrelevance is somewhat disingenuous.

First, it is not as though literary fiction doesn't -- at least some of the time -- trawl the same terrain as chick lit, though Weiner is not wrong when she says the stories tend to not end as happily. But perhaps more important, the formula of chick lit itself -- with its comedic farce and fantasy solutions to real-life problems -- ultimately undercuts its claim to social relevance. Super-consumer Becky of Sophie Kinsella's "Shopaholic" series never files for bankruptcy protection. Kate Reddy quits her job and moves to the country with her family only to find -- lo and behold -- a small toy factory in need of saving. Deus ex machina and coincidence reign in the world of modern gal fiction.

Excerpt two:

OLEN: What, if anything, is wrong with chick lit?

MERRICK: We all need light reading, light entertainment from time to time--I'm certainly not against that. You will see me at the gym with Us Weekly now and then. But there is an amazing flourishing of women literary writers at the moment that is being obscured by a huge pile of pink books with purses and shoes on the cover. Women readers are having a hard time finding substantive reading material because of the dominance of these narratives.

I just find it absurd when ChickLit authors compare themselves to - I'm going to go ahead and say it - real authors, writing with some level of depth about lives and what happens to real people.  The argument that these books are &qu