I am crashing towards 700 posts, really picking up steam on the consolidation process. Heartening. What if Blogger just went away one day because Google decided the ads were generating enough income? This blog generates no income for anyone!
Published 1/3/18
A Kind of Freedom (2017)
by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
One of the themes of this blog is that being an audience member is an aesthetic act- after all, an author or artist might be brilliant, but if no one reads/listens/watches, it doesn't very well matter. The romantic concept of the undiscovered artistic genius may be a well established trope for artists and audiences alike, but from a "real world" perspective, those people might as well not exist.
If you read books, what you read is more important than whether you read at all. Better to read nothing then to fill one's head with trash. Which is not to say that "trash" is some objective concept- there are plenty of counter-examples in genre fiction, but, for example, plowing through romance novels or sci fi series about orcs and trolls
So when I saw A Kind of Freedom on the National Book Award long list, and saw that author Margaret Wilkerson Sexton was not only an African American BUT ALSO a trained lawyer, and that the book dealt with several generations of African Americans living in New Orleans, I immediately put it in my Los Angeles library queue. Six months later... voila!
Sexton paints a picture of the long toll that discrimination takes against generations of African Americans. The grand parents, the first African-American doctor in New Orleans and his light skinned wife. Their daughters, one a lawyer, the other a struggling single mother and the son of one of the daughters, a just released from jail aspiring marijuana grower with a son on the way.
It's the grandson that I felt was the most distinctive character. Hard to say why A Kind of Freedom didn't make the short list.
Published 1/10/18
Home Fires (2017)
by Kamila Shamsie
If I have a regret about this project, it's that my living circumstances over the past half decade haven't allowed me to BUY many of the books I've read. If being an audience member is an aesthetic act, the primary action available to the conscious reader is to BUY the books involved. Instead, I've checked out over 90% of them from the library. During that time I've sold a house in San Diego, rented a condo, occupied an apartment in Los Angeles with my boo, moved with her to a house in another part of Los Angeles, moved out of the condo in San Diego and now, finally, purchased a home in Los Angeles (Atwater village, come and say hi!) I've been careful not to accumulate possessions this entire time- basically since 2013 or so. Thus, while I've been reading plenty, I haven't been supporting the authors. That's less important for the older titles, but now that I am firmly in the world of contemporary fiction, I believe that participating as an aesthetic audience member requires BUYING not checking out, the books involved.
Home Fires is the recent novel by Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize last year, and I selected it because the perspective of a FEMALE author from South Asia is one that I am interested in exploring. Home Fires is Shamsie's take on Antigone, the ancient Greek play by Sophocles. In Antigone, a teenage girl is forced to choose between obeying the laws of her Kingdom and her religion when her brother betrays his King and is ordered to be left unburied, a grave violation of Greek religious law.
This scenario is transported to the present day, where a pair of adult sisters is forced to deal with the choice of the twin of the younger brother to become a jihadi, serving in the Islamic state media division. The older sister, Isma, leaves London for Cambridge to pursue her PHD in sociology. While there she meets Eamonn, the only son of a Pakistani-English politician with a reputation for calling out his own people. Eamonn forms a connection with Isma, but he returns to England and promptly falls for Aneeka, the younger sister of Isma and twin of jihadi Pervaiz. Shamsie switches between perspectives, including Eamonn's politician father in the mix.
As tension builds, the reader is thrust into the perspective of English citizens of Pakistani decent, who feel crushed between the pressures of English disapproval, Muslim comraderie and their own desires and ambitions.
Published 1/16/18
My Absolute Darling (2017)
by Gabriel Tallent
This debut novel from Northern California born author Gabriel Tallent packs an emotional wallop- the kind of wallop that endears an author to a critical audience and potentially alienates the broader popular audience (we're talking about the popular audience for literary fiction here, not the broader "reading public.") It's the kind of book that gets people talking, and piques the interest of potential audience members because of the strength of reaction that it evokes from those that have read it. In short, My Absolute Darling has all the makings of a career establishing hit. At the same time, the subject matter is NC-17 and explicitly deals with sexual subjects that are still, vaguely, beyond the pale of polite discourse.
Julia "Turtle" Alveston is the only daughter of Martin Alveston, a Mendocino county recluse. Martin mixes a love of automated weapons with a healthy distrust for authority figures. He is also indisputably mentally ill, in ways that become apparent almost from jump street. Mom is nowhere to be found, allegedly having disappeared "diving for abalone." People actually do die that way, but it seems clear that it is equally likely that Martin killed Mom and covered up with the abalone story.
Turtle is torn between a real love for her father, who has his good moments, and an almost feverish desire to escape, tempered by her knowledge that "Daddy" as she calls him, would not take her departure well. Further discussion of the plot risks spoilers, but I found the location detail (the wild Mendocino coast) richly observed, as well as the detail about what it actually means to be a wacko survivalist, or at least the child of one. Rest be assured, Turtle knows her way around a firearm, and she is also chock full of survival skills... of all types. Ultimately it becomes clear that Turtle is the only real survivalist in the family but the ride to get that point is so harrowing that it might turn off the weak of heart among potential audience member.s
Published 1/25/18
Heather, the Totality (2017)
by Matthew Weiner Probably the best advice you could give to an aspiring writer of literary fiction would be, "Become a celebrity doing something else, acting, music or politics are all good. Once you have obtained a sufficiently large audience for whatever it is that made you famous, move into another area, and use your existing celebrity to draw attention to your new endeavor." In other words, an audience for one endeavor, if large enough, is sufficient to generate an audience for a new, largely unrelated endeavor.
Matthew Weiner is an American, "writer, producer and director." Most notably he was the guiding creative force for
Mad Men, which is a cornerstone of the "peak TV" era. He also worked on
Sopranos, which is another cornerstone. It means that when Matthew Weiner decided to write a novel, he got his book deal, and when it was published, it got reviewed.
The Guardian review is as long as any book review I've ever seen in that publication, surely a testament to the fact that those Editors know that there will be a large amount of ambient interest in a novel written by Matthew Weiner.
It has also attracted plenty of negative critical attention, a stellar example of the need for critics to take authors down for not having earned their audience. Whether the critic chooses to acknowledge their bias or not, it is inescapable and it dovetails with a general critical distrust of the cult of celebrity.
Entertainment Weekly (or "Edubs" as we call it around the house) called
Heather, the Totality the worst book of 2017! This happened while I was on the waiting list for my copy at the local library, and it piqued my interest.
The first thing to know about
Heather, the Totality is that it is a slight book, with spartan prose, enormous margins and small pages. You can sit down in read
Heather, the Totality in one session. The second thing to know is that
Heather the Totality is a hateful book, a hateful take on humanity. The intersecting lives of a family of privilege- Heather is the daughter of the wealthy couple, and a member of the working-under class, who is growing up at the same time-ish as Heather, just barely an adult.
I can see why people would hate it, if only for the way it depicts the emptiness at the heart of widely separate ways of life. There is a dry, clinical feel to the prose that probably repulses many readers, and would certainly be foreign to fans who are following him over from television, people who haven't read Thomas Bernhard or Martin Amis. I'm still not sure what I think. I certainly didn't hate it. How can you hate a sparse, well written 144 page book- it's over before you get up to go the bathroom?
I didn't love it either, for essentially the same reason. I did like the mechanics of his plot, spartan though it was
, obviously Weiner knows about pacing from his work in television. I'd be interested to read a more substantial work by him, but I wouldn't hand out a prize to this book. I've also observed in the past that you can distinguish potentially canonical works by their ability to evoke a strong NEGATIVE opinion. If everyone says that a book is amazing, that's almost the same as people saying it's just ok. If some people hate a work of art and other people are inspired by it, you create the kind of discussion that generates longer-term critical and popular attention.
I think much will depend on whether Weiner writes another novel, and how that is received. If he writes another one and people like it, the critics of this novel will look out of date. If he doesn't write another novel, the initial negative reaction is likely to stand because there won't be a reason to revise it.
Published 1/28/18 The Power (2016)
by Naomi Alderman Naomi Alderman is an English author, and
The Power was published in the UK in 2016. In the fall of 2017,
The Power got a big United States release. The Power is firmly in the wake of the smash hit TV version of
A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Atwood and
A Handmaid's Tale are splashed all over the marketing material, Alderman thanks Atwood in the afterword for being her inspiration and mentor. Less acknowledged, but I think, equally influential is the very not-literary multiple-platform smash,
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks.
The Power exists between those two extremes- a well regarded writer of literary fiction extending her gaze into the realm of speculative fiction (Atwood) and a hack with a good idea launching a multi-platform international intellectual property juggernaut (Brooks.)
The fact that
The Power even got the big American release is proof that this is a property destined for bigger things. According to the
still brief Wikipedia entry, the television rights have already been sold after an, "11 way auction." Alderman adopts the "peak tv" technique of spreading her story out amongst a handful of lead character whose paths intersect and diverge. She includes a mock historical introduction that presents the main narrative of
The Power as itself a work of speculative fiction written by a male scholar five thousand years down road, long after the events depicted in the novel. Alderman also includes illustrations of "artifacts" that illustrate the central event of The Power: Seemingly overnight, all women develop the ability to harness electricity using a new muscle/organ called "the skein."
What, Alderman asks, would happen next? While there is simply no doubting that Alderman has a multi-national hit on her hands, I found the similarities between
The Power and
World War Z telling. Ultimately though,
The Power lands on the literary fiction side of the sense. She tells an R-rated story, no talking around the state of power relations between women and men in this book. The picture she presents of the consequences of this evolutionary development is neither Utopian nor dystopian. Her use of the framing narrative evokes both classic 19th century narrative but also the conventions of genre fiction in the 20th century.
I think the best argument for reading
The Power is that you are likely to hear about the television version in the future, so best to get ahead of the curve.
Published 2/11/18
Kintu (2014)
by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi,
United States Publication 2017 Transit Press Kintu, by Ugandan author Jennifer Nasubuga Makumbi, was originally published in 2014, but it got a United States release late last year, by Transit Press. That sentence alone should tell anyone that Kintu is a break-out kind of book. It makes sense- Uganda is an English speaking country with a national identity that pre-dates English colonialism. The reputation for Uganda as a location for horrific tragedy is decades out of date and the political situation has stabilized to the point where the absence of news stories in the west about Uganda is seen as a relief.
In
Kintu, Makumbi has written the type of novel that slots neatly into the expectation of Western readers- she tracks back and forth in history from the mid 18th century to just about present day, charting the fortunes of the descendants of Kintu- an 18th century nobleman in the pre-English Bugandan Empire. Like other cultures, Ugandans (the dominant ethnicity are the Ganda people, but present day Uganda was long a draw for other ethnicities, notably Tutsi's, who play a part in this book.
Kintu is permeated with the Ganda traditions regarding twins- it's not too much to say that twins are the central narrative theme here, twins and their relationship to the generational curse that torments Kintu and his descendants.
Kintu is very much the type of novel that only fully establishes it's reputation years after the initial publication date, and I think Makumbi is very much putting Uganda on the international literary map with this book.
Published 2/15/18
Dogs at the Perimeter (2012)
by Madeline Thien
Published in the United States in 2017 by W.W. Norton
Originally published in her native Canada and the UK, Dogs at the Perimeter finally got a US release in the fall of last year. Presumably that had something to do with her 2016 novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, making it onto the Booker Prize short-list. If South Asian writers were the hot thing in the 1990's and 2000's, it is hard to argue with the proposition that East Asian writers and themes are the hot thing for the present decade. Certainly there are subjects a plenty, at least including multiple genocide level type events in China and Cambodia. Do Not Say We Have Nothing is about China, and Dogs at the Perimeter is about Cambodia. Specifically, Dogs at the Perimeter is about the experience of the characters at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
The protagonist is Janie, a native of Cambodia who managed to escape (only after the death of both of her parents) and relocate in Montreal, where she works as a scientist studying the brain. Dogs at the Perimeter is worth reading simply because of the factual type description of living through the first years of the Khmer Rouge. If you happen to be unfamiliar, basically the Khmer Rouge marched into the capital, Phnom Phen, and forcibly relocated the entire population, murdering everyone who either worked for the government or qualified as an "intellectual." Janie's father, a freelance interpreter, apparently qualified under the latter category.
Janie's description of the past is interspersed with her complicated life in the present, obviously suffering from PTSD and obsessed with finding her colleague, a fellow scientist who emigrated from Japan as a child with his family. His brother disappeared during the 1970's while he was working as a Red Cross doctor in Cambodia. What the reader learns is that there is always hope amongst the ruins, but that the impact of that destruction on the human mind can bar a return to the prelapsarian state.
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| Canadian author Madeline Thien made it the Booker Prize short-list in 2016 with Do Not Say We Have Nothing, her epic family drama about the cultural revolution. |
Published 2/21/18
Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016)
by Madeline Thien Do Not Say We Have Nothing was the break-out novel for Canadian author Madeline Thien. Specifically, when it made it to the Booker Prizer short-list, This was followed almost immediately by the release of her 2011 novel,
Dogs at the Perimeter, in the United States, in 2017.
Dogs at the Perimeter covered the impact of the Khmer Rouge on survivors,
Do Not Say We Have Nothing covers similar psychic territory, but on a grander scale, tackling China and the impact of it's cultural revolution and the events at Tienanmen square.
I'm convinced that the cultural revolution is THE literary event of 20th century China. What makes it so interesting is that so many people who were caught up in the process of arrest and re-education returned to power, from the top down, including Deng Xioaping, who has to be seen as the hero of 20th century Chinese history.
Do Not Say We Have Nothing is the kind of sweeping, multi-generational work of historical fiction that is content to simply narrate some amazing personal histories without showy post-modern narrative techniques. That makes her Booker Prize short-list even more surprising- the only "angle" on
Do Not Say We Have Nothing is that it is about China, with a light over-lay of contemporary Canada.
While there are dangers to embracing fiction as history, it's also a great starting point (fiction) for getting a general sense of historical events. Especially if you are talking about reading about history outside of school- you don't really need history books themselves per se, it's just a question of finding the right fiction. Do Not Say We Have Nothing is not a short book- I read it on my Galaxy phone Kindle app, via the ability to borrow Ebooks through the Los Angeles Public Library system. Most major US library systems have signed up for that. You can also get almost every new Audiobook, as well. They only have a few copies of each title but unless it's brand new demand is low for literary fiction.
I'd actually consider buying a copy of this book if I saw it in a store, like a hardback edition. It would look good on a book shelf I'm sure. Impressive- at 450 pages- a drag reading on my phone- it actually tells you that the book takes a normal reader almost nine hours. I managed it in half that but that still is a long time to be reading on your phone. But reading on your phone opens up time to read when you can't reasonably pull out a book- and is also good if you have the television on and lighting is low.
Published 3/27/18
Like A Fading Shadow (2017)
by Antonio Munoz Molina The Man Booker International Prize 2018 (it's every two years) announced the long list on March 12th. The shortlist comes out April 12th. The long list consists of the following titles:
• Laurent Binet (France), Sam Taylor, The 7th Function of Language (Harvill Secker)
• Javier Cercas (Spain), Frank Wynne, The Impostor (MacLehose Press)
• Virginie Despentes (France), Frank Wynne, Vernon Subutex 1 (MacLehose Press)
• Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany), Susan Bernofsky, Go, Went, Gone (Portobello Books)
• Han Kang (South Korea), Deborah Smith, The White Book (Portobello Books)
• Ariana Harwicz (Argentina), Sarah Moses & Carolina Orloff, Die, My Love (Charco Press)
• László Krasznahorkai (Hungary), John Batki, Ottilie Mulzet & George Szirtes, The World Goes On (Tuskar Rock Press)
• Antonio Muñoz Molina (Spain), Camilo A. Ramirez, Like a Fading Shadow (Tuskar Rock Press)
• Christoph Ransmayr (Austria), Simon Pare, The Flying Mountain (Seagull Books)
• Ahmed Saadawi (Iraq), Jonathan Wright, Frankenstein in Baghdad (Oneworld)
• Olga Tokarczuk (Poland), Jennifer Croft, Flights (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
• Wu Ming-Yi (Taiwan, China), Darryl Sterk, The Stolen Bicycle (Text Publishing)
• Gabriela Ybarra (Spain), Natasha Wimmer, The Dinner Guest (Harvill Secker)
The 1001 Books list published it's last update in 2012, with no new edition of the horizon. It seems like the hardest part of identifying books going forward is squaring the need to find books from non-English speaking authors that have 1) been translated within a year or two of the original publication date and 2) been read in English. The Man Booker International Prize seems like a good source for potential selections. Looking at the long list Binet's The Seventh Function of Language stands out as a book that was actually read by a decent sized audience. Korean Han Kang is a prior winner of this prize, for The Vegetarian.
The Man Booker International Prize draws from English publishers, so many of the long listed books haven't been published in the United States just yet. One exception is Like a Fading Shadow by Spanish author Antonio Munoz Molina, which has already been published in the US by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
I wasn't overwhelmed with Like A Fading Shadow, which combines a retracing of the steps of Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray in Lisbon, when he was on the run after the King assisination with the recollection of the "author" about his experience in Lisbon in the 1980's, before his break-out as a succesful writer of literary fiction. It's a familiar kind of meta-fiction, combing historical fiction with the vagaries of the process of writing fiction. Like every protagonist of European fiction in the past century, the author figure of Like A Fading Shadow does little but wander around a European city, thinking about life.
The portions focusing on the peregrinations of James Earl Ray are more interesting, but cover territory similar to the territory explored by Don DeLillo via John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in Libra. At the same time, the idea of a non-American author tackling a discrete subject in American history (the assassination of Martin Luther King) is certainly novel. I haven't been able to round up many more of these books, but I've got my eyes peeled for the Han Kang joint.
Published 4/27/18
The Dry (2017)
by Jane Harper
When I look for new books to read, I'm generally looking either for major literary award nominees or books that border between genre fiction and literary fiction. The Dry, by Australian crime-fiction writer Jane Harper, is one of those boundary books, clearly a work of detective fiction, but also skillful and deep enough to qualify as literary fiction at the same time. The Dry gets extra points for being a debut novel AND for taking place in an interesting locale: A small Australian farming community located outside of Melbourne.
I managed to obtain the Los Angeles Public Library audiobook after waiting for several months. I'm positive I heard about it at the end of last year when it made some year end lists- the original publication date was in January of last year. The narrator had a pleasing Australian accent, truly the performance of an audiobook is a skill in and of itself, often requiring the reader to "do" different voices, ages and genders. I'm unclear as to whether the accent was regionally specific, but my ignorance didn't detract from the listening experience.
Jane Harper has already moved on to book 2 in what is now called the "Aaron Falk" series. Falk, a detective/investigator with the Federal Australian Police in their financial crimes department, returns home to grapple with the apparent murder-suicide of his childhood friend, wife and one of two children and simultaneously deal with the fall out of a mysterious death of his high school (girl) friend. And while there is nothing particularly original about any of the elements, other than perhaps, the location in rural Australia, Harper shows herself a deft writer, with a solid grasp of literary technique as well as the mechanics of genre. She creates a double mystery, and the conclusion leaves the reader satisfied. The Dry is a must both for genre fans of detective fiction and readers of Australian literary fiction.
Published 4/28/18
The World Goes On (2017)
Laszlo Krasznahorkai
The World Goes On, by Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai, is the third book from the 2018 Booker International Prize list of nominees, and the second book from the six title short list. I'm on the waiting list for a third short list title, Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmad Saadawi. I'm frankly unsure if I'm going to be able to track down the other three titles. The World Goes On is a collection of short stories, about three hundred pages long, and a terrible, terrible, terrible book to read on a Kindle. Reading the stories in The World Goes On at time resembles Samuel Beckett, who is actually the narrator of one of the stories in the book. Another reference point is Portuguese author Jose Saramago. Stretching back further in time, Borges.
Listing those three authors as reference points is about as complete a description as I can give without simply description the action (or more often) lack of action in each story. The marketing and critical material that accompanies this release includes frequent use of the term "apocalyptic," and I suppose you could say the same thing about Beckett, so in that regard, it's true, but for heavens sake don't expect anything exciting to happen.
Each story has a puzzle aspect that requires the reader to actively consider, what, exactly, is happening. That is a hallmark of experimental fiction, and a result, The World Goes On fits squarely within that tradition, without innovating- it's like a skilled homage. Krasznahorkai was omitted from the 1001 Books list- you could argue that taking one of his books, instead of Celestial Harmonies by Peter Esterhazy would be a more fitting representative for late twentieth century/early 21st century central European fiction in a representative canon. Not this book though. And I wouldn't think The World Goes On wins the 2018 Booker International Prize, either.
Published 5/5/18
Less (2017)
by Andrew Sean Greer
Published July 17th, 2017
Lee Boudreaux Books
I'm sure I wasn't the only one who had to look up Andrew Sean Greer when Less, his fifth novel, won the the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction last month. I picked up the win early enough that I was able to snag the pre-win library copy within a month. When I picked the book up from the library, I was surprised to see a quote from Armstead Maupin on the cover. Perhaps Maupin sells books, but he's not really a prize winner type. Reading the plot summary on the back flap: Aging novelist, well regarded but not popular, struggles with the end of a lengthy affair with a younger man and his approaching 50th birthday by patching together a world tour of speaking engagements, culminating in a camel caravan in the Moroccan desert; I thought to myself- sounds kind of light for a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction winner.
Then I actually read the book, and I can see where the Pulitzer committee was coming from. As Arthur Less, the narrator and protagonist reflects, the generation of Gay artists that came before him was essentially wiped out by AIDS. Part of the benefit of wining the Pulitzer Prize in Literature is that you don't have to convince an audience to read your book, they'll just read it because it won the award. That's great news for Less, and for Greer, who is no doubt is now receiving the type of attention that can't help but expand his audience. As Less himself himself points out- or rather- has pointed out to him by a variety of different character in the book- the plight of a lonelyish, poorish, highly cultured gay man living in late 20th century San Francisco is not a particularly sympathetic plight. It's not particularly, as they on the internet, relatable.
I'd probably actually buy an earlier novel by Greer if I saw it at a bookstore. Less seems like the kind of book that will be adapted for film or screen but I could see a very bad version.
Published 5/5/18
The song of Achilles (2011)
by Madeline Miller
I'm guessing that Circe, the new novel by American author Madeline Miller, is going to be a hit, think the multi-format property Wicked, but instead of the Wicked Witch of the West, Circe, the sorceress from the Odyssey. The song of Achilles was her first novel, published in 2011. It took me a minute to lay hands on Circe. In the meantime, The song of Achilles was readily available. Like Circe, The song of Achilles is any easy pitch, "The Trojan war, retold from the perspective of the male lover of Greek hero Achilles."
Focusing on the gay relationship at the center of Achilles, between the hero and Patroclus, who narrates the book, misses the larger concerns of Miller. Any biography of Miller will tell you that she is an astute student of the time period, with a background in "the classics" as they are still taught in the Ivy League schools of the United States. I found her grasp of the psychology of the Greek hero to be acute: Anything you need to learn about fame and the desire of fame you can get from the ancient Greeks. They invented the idea of individual fame and personally I think there is a straight line to be drawn between the Greek Gods and modern celebrity culture. TMZ and The Iliad, basically the same thing.
Miller gets that. One of the only actual Greek words that makes it into The song of Achilles is when Patroclus critizes Achilles for his hubris, or pride leading to downfall. Hubris is all over The Iliad, the Odyssey and Greek literature generally. It teaches us that man should try to compete with Gods. We still haven't learned the lesson.
Published 5/8/18
The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Modern World
by Maya Jasanoff
Published November 2017
I love Joseph Conrad, and so does author Maya Jasanoff, the excellent Harvard Professor of European History. Jasanoff begins The Dawn Watch, which is a combination of literary criticism and literary exploration, by apologizing for liking Joseph Conrad, even though his books feature racism in a prominent position. Her answer to, "Why Conrad?" boils down to an argument that Conrad was instrumental in helping the world places see places: colonial Africa, Asia and Latin America that were blank places on the map, as far as literary imagination went.
I agree with Jasanoff, and I've said on this blog- before reading this book- that the pleasure of Conrad is the pleasure of discovering these new places. Conrad did we might call "raise awareness," and by doing so he set the stage for the explosion in the literature of the global south. I found a particularly telling moment near the end, after Conrad died, when Virginia Woolf, arch-modernist, penned a hateful obituary in the Times Literary Supplement. When Jasanoff quotes her, you can hear the sneering voice of the high modernists across the decades.
I listened to the Audiobook version- my first non fiction Audiobook, but Jasanoff is such a skilled writer, and the subject is so interesting, that I felt like I was listening to a work of fiction. I would recommend The Dawn Watch for anyone interested in Joseph Conrad, his life and his works.
Published 5/11/18
The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013)
by Robert Flanagan
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, the six novel by Australian author Robert Flanagan, won the Booker Prize in 2014. I purchased a hard back copy shortly after the win. After that, my hard back copy sat on the shelf for three years, until I read it during summer of last year. It is unclear why it took me so long to read such an eminently readable (320 pages) book about an interesting subject: The experience of Australian POW's building the Burma Railway in 1942. Notably, Flanagan also includes the lives of the captors, including both Japanese officers and Korean enlisted men among the dramatis personae.
The horrific experience of the POW's during the war occupies only a portion of the narrative- the rest of it moves backwards and forwards in time, as Flanagan explores the causes and consequences of the inhumanity of the Japanese to their captors (and to their own soldiers, it must be said.) The "hook" of The Narrow Road to the Deep North is this multi-dimensionality. Although I can think of at least a dozen World War II era POW books, not a one uses characters from both sides, or at least not to the extent that Flanagan does here.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a must for fans of 20th century war narrative, less so for others, but rewarding for those who take the plunge.
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| John Freidrich, the real life inspiration for Siegfried Heidl, who turned a sleepy industrial education outfit into a multi hundred million dollar fraud scheme. |
Published 5/14/18
First Person (2017)
by Robert Flanagan
Published in the United States April 2018 This is the first novel by Australian (Tasmanian) author Robert Flanagan since
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which won the Booker Prize in 2014. The longlist for the 2018 Booker Prize is announced in July, my take is that the best way to stay on top of potential longlist titles is to read new books by prior nominees and winners, priority given to winners and recency of the win.
First Person is both by a winner and a recent winner. Extra bonus points for being the first novel he's published since he won- I've noticed that authors put together several nominations and one win for a sequence of novels.
The argument against
First Person being a potential Booker Prize longlist title is that it was not well received- at least in the United States, by critics or audiences. I suspect the reception was similar everywhere except his native Australia. However, as a card carrying member of the philosophy of the con, or the idea, best expressed by David Mamet in
Glengarry Glen Ross, that the essence of life and society can boil down to successfully stealing money from other people. My sense, in reading the coverage of
First Person, is that reviewers are not disciples of this school of thought, and they aren't particularly interested in the experience of John Freidrich, the real life inspiration for the Siegreid Heidl, the Australian con man who the Flanagan/narrator character (Kif Kehlmann).
I don't agree with critics who called the narrative structure- a series of nested flashbacks as the present day Kif Kehlmann types out his memoirs in a New York City hotel room- clunky. This might be chalked up to the decision to listen to the Audiobook instead of obtaining a physical copy. I would recommend the Audiobook if you want to take
First Person for a spin.
Published 5/15/18
Circe (2018)
by Madeline Miller
Published April 2018
If you want to get idea about what American authors might be in line for the National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize in Literature this year, you could do worse than to look at the "related items" listing for Circe over at Amazon.com. You've got Circe itself- which is a best seller, critically acclaimed, published by a mainline US publisher, and from a genre (historical fiction) that has found favor in the past decade. Related titles include Overstory by Richard Powers, The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer and the Only Story by Julian Barnes- all new books by past literary prize winners.
Miller herself seems poised to jump into that field with Circe, which you could argue is a companion piece to A Song of Achilles, in the same way that The Odyssey and The Iliad are related. Specifically, A Song of Achilles covers the territory of The Iliad and Circe tackles the The Odyssey. In Circe, Miller plugs into many au courant literary trends beyond re-telling a classic work of literature from a new perspective. The mythological element adds a dash of fantasy/Harry Potter type appeal, her grasp of the psychology of Greek heroes imparts a piece of modern TMZ style celebrity culture.
Circe as portrayed by Miller is of course, sympathetic. She finds herself exiled to a remote desert island as a scapegoat for a newly discovered power of witchcraft, among her and her siblings, the children of Helios, the titan/god of the Sun and her mother, an ambitious nymph. On the island she has her famous encounter with Odysseus, which leaves her with child, and which sets the stage for the remainder of the narrative.
There is nothing slow or boring about Circe- Miller keeps clipping along, and by the end I was left with the conviction that the best-seller status and critical acclaim was merited. Towards the end, I found myself wondering who would be cast as Circe in what is sure to be a movie version. Would Gal Gadot be too on the nose after Wonder Woman?
Published 5/25/18
Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013)
by Ahmed Saadawi
Congratulations to author Olga Tokarczuk and translator Jennifer Croft for their 2018 Booker International Prize win for their work on Tokarczuk's novel, Flights. Frankenstein in Baghdad by Iraqi novelist Ahmed Saadawi was a short-list nominee for the same prize, and I was finishing Frankenstein in Baghdad when the winner was announced. It hasn't been easy to lay hands on the shortlist nominees, let alone the longlist nominees for this award. Based in the UK, many of the titles either don't have a United States publisher or are only published after the nominations are announced. I was pleased to find an Ebook copy in the Los Angeles Public Library, and I only had to wait a month to check out the copy.
I was excited about reading Frankenstein in Baghdad because of the combination of theme and place. Theme: the timeless modern tale of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. Place: Iraq in the aftermath of the United States invasion (second), when Baghdad was a seething cauldron of oft violent competing interests. Into this familiar but little explored (in a literary sense) territory, Saadawi introduces his cast of characters, a Christian grandmother, deserted by her family, a junk dealer and the restless spirit of a Muslim security guard killed by a suicide bomber.
Here, the creator of the corpse is not a doctor, but a junk-man, struggling to cope with the ongoing trauma of post-invasion Iraq. He pieces the monster together from the body parts of bombing victims. Shortly thereafter, the monster is infused by the spirit of the departed security guard and given shelter by the Christian grandmother, who thinks the monster is her long-dead son, Daniel.
Meanwhile, a Baathist security officer, in charge of the supernatural crime unit of the Baghdadi police force, hunts the monster for reasons entirely his own. Saadawi uses a journalist as a major narrator and protagonist, simply to maneuver the awkwardness of featuring a monster as your main character. A lengthy portion is narrated by the monster himself, surely a violation of Frankenstein's monster canon. Surely Frankenstein in Baghdad is a surreal take on a very real horror, and it is hard not to admire the work. Major bonus points for an Iraqi novelist writing in Arabic. Shame it didn't win!
Published 5/30/18
The Making of Zombie Wars (2015)
by Alexsandar Hemon
I read The Making of Zombie Wars under the mistaken assumption that it was another effort by an author of literary fiction to write a work of genre fiction. Hemon is one of the most well regarded young authors in American fiction, with a string of prize winning and nominated books. A Bosnian immigrant, Hemon has drawn comparisons to Conrad and Nabokov, and is acclaimed as a prose stylist. The Making of Zombie Wars represents a change in tone for Hemon, who is known for his existentialist protagonists and books that dwell on the impact of immigration and dislocation on the life experience of his characters.
Joshua Levin, the would-be screenwriter at the heart of The Making of Zombie Wars, is not an immigrant, but he works as a teacher of English as a second language, which brings him to the orbit of typically Hemonian characters: Immigrants from the former Yugoslavia who are adopting to life in the west with varying degrees of success. I'm not wholly unfamiliar with this world- one of my college era friends was a Croatian immigrant from St Louis, and I always admired the combination of European world-weariness and Midwestern enthusiasm that characterized her behavior back then. I recognize her in Hemon's milieu.
The Making of Zombie Wars is rude and occasionally funny. I'm not sure that slapstick is Hemon's best move, but it increases the likelihood of him scoring a mass market hit a la a Chuck Palahnuik.
Published 6/19/18
The Sky is Yours (2018)
by Chandler Klang Smith
I'm generally interested in literary dystopia- as supposed to the strictly genre YA dystopian fiction market- less obvious, not always featuring a YA protagonist, grappling with contemporary societal issues ETC. It's an interest that ties in with a larger interest in the border between popular and critically acclaimed, and particularly, what are artists and works that are both at the same time. I enjoy reading science fiction, or did, as a youth, and it's really only the merest pretext of literary aspiration in a review that's required to trigger my interest.
So it is with The Sky is Yours- a Penguin Random House release from January of this year, by a first time author Chandler Klang Smith (a woman, just because you wouldn't know from the name.) Reviewers have dropped comparisons to David Foster Wallace in terms of her depiction of a realist-fantasy of American dystopia. The twist, as it were, are dragons, a pair of them, endlessly circling a stand in the New York City, which has been burned to a crisp, and a hollowed out, leaving only the very rich and condemned criminals.
In a cast of dozens, the major players are the Ripple clan- father, scion of one of the last remaining land owning clans in not-New York; Son- Duncan- is a past-his-prime his intended bride- Baroness Swan Lenore Dahlberg- the real star of The Sky is Yours, and her aged, gun toting bad-ass mom. On the eve of his impending (arranged) marriage, Duncan is blasted by on of the dragons, and lands on a garbage island where he meets, beds, and falls in love with Abby, a feral girl-child with a secret past. That is basically chapters one and two- and The Sky is Yours keeps on for about 500 pages.
The Sky is Yours is NOT a YA title- there is sex and violence aplenty to merit an R rating. At the same time Smith writes with such a vigor that it isn't hard to imagine a world where high school read it. I would observe that Smith's prose really pops, and that The Sky is Yours is evidence of an author who can be popular and critically acclaimed at the same time.
I'm not sure that The Sky is Yours is, actually, a hit. If it isn't, that's a drag, but you should still give it a spin on the off the chance that either catches fire or is picked up a for a prestige tv or movie version. Not that a tv version or movie version is likely to be good. I could well imagine it being terrible, since it is really Smith's deft touch and talent for layered references that would be hardest to convey in another medium.
Published 8/22/18
84K (2018)
by Claire North
Claire North is one of the several pen names of English writer Catherine Webb, 32, who has been a published author since 2002, when she was 16. Her father, Nick Webb, was an author and publisher well known (mostly as a publisher) in the world of science fiction/fantasy. Notably, he published The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, which was a huge, world wide success- continue to the present day.
Thus, if there were any 16 year old capable of obtaining the status of published author in the world of science fiction and fantasy, it would be a child of Nick Webb. Not to take anything away from Webb, who writes not only under Claire North but also as Kate Hopkins- I'm guessing perhaps to keep science fiction and fantasy personas distinct. The use of so many pen names at such a young age suggests a sophisticated concept of the idea of authorship.
84K is her entry in the dystopian science fiction genre, and it is unusual in that she has written about a dystopia of utilitarianism, moderated by late consumer capitalism, set in either an alternate reality similar to ours or slightly in the future. The United Kingdom has become a corporate state and in a final abdication, sold all functions of government to a single corporation, called "the company," which presides over a decaying "pay as you go" society, where an inability to pay results in being "sent to the patty line"- i.e. used as slave waiter in any one of a number of post-industrial enterprises, from actually making meat patties for consumption to writing fake on line reviews (for juveniles).
Each town requires a corporate sponsor, both for employment and civic services, and those who can not pay end up exiled where they become ranters or screamers. The narrator and hero is "Theo Miller" (not his real name), son of a small-time criminal, who obtains a sponsorship for Oxford after his Dad is sent to prison, due to the largesse of a local crime boss, at whose direction Theo's dad was operating.
After an illegal duel, he assumes the identity of his dead classmate, Theo Miller, and settles down to life as an "auditor" this world's version of the police, where every crime has it's price, called an indemnity. Pay, and all is forgiven, don't pay, and you have to work off your charges on the patty line. Theo is living the small, anonymous life of all protagonists in the early stages of dystopian fiction when he is disrupted by the arrival of former girlfriend type from his small town. She is desperate to find her daughter, who she says Theo Miller fathered while on break from school.
I listened 84K in Audiobook format, probably a mistake because of the numerous stylistic fillips that North inserts into her prose. Commonly, characters do not finish their sentences. North includes the numerous jumps back and forward in time that are common to both literary and now I suppose genre fiction as well. The second and third act clearly mark 84K as belonging to the genre rather than literary end of the dystopian fiction continuum. Published in May of this year, the sales figures at Amazon don't proclaim a hit. I have no idea whether this is the type of book to win a genre level prize, but her prior success in that area (World Fantasy Award) would seem to indicate that it is a possibility.
The idea of a fully late capitalist dystopia is more interesting that the story North chooses to tell. Nearly 100% of dystopian scenarios involve some iteration of 20th century totalitarian. Technology, the environment, feminism are favorite overlays or explanations for why a particular totalitarianism, but the totalitarianism itself usually resembles conventional totalitarianism, with a government that is
"always watching" and usually maintains a vibrant domestic military presence, with a high level of diabolical professionalism.
Here, the dystopian government is tatty and poor, the plot, considering the limited resources available to the hero and his rag tag group of supporters, wholly relies on the tattiness. There was a clear echo of the graphic novel, V for Vendetta, in North's depiction of a semi-collapsed England.
Published 8/26/18
Warlight (2018)
by Michael Ondaatje
US publication May 2018 by Penguin Randomhouse
Among the thirteen books longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, only two- this book and The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner, can be located in your average local/chain/indie bookselling establishment. Kushner, because she is an American author with a history of short list nominations for major literary awards, and Warlight by Canadian author Michael Ondaatje, because he wrote The English Patient, which is one of those canon-level international best sellers that make up a significant portion of the 1001 Books list from 1990 to 2006.
The English Patient is one of those cross-platform winners that had a huge popular audience (Best Seller on Six Continents!), critical acclaim (Booker Prize win), and a movie version that also had a huge popular audience and critical acclaim in its own right. Although The English Patient wasn't Ondaatje's first novel, it might as well have been as far as his popular audience was concerned. Since then, Ondaatje has kept writing novels, but none of them have really landed, certainly nothing anything close to what happened with The English Patient.
His appearance on the 2018 Booker Prize longlist isn't exactly a shock, since he's a past winner, but if you peruse the summaries of the novels he's published since The English Patient, it looks like his most viable book in terms of a potential popular audience/succesful movie in literally decades. Warlight is both a bildungsroman and a psycho-geographical historical novel about London during the second World War.
Nathaniel, the narrator, is suddenly abandoned by both his parents, who disappear mysteriously during World War II for unexplained reasons. With his sister, Rachel, he is left in the care an "only in London" character called "The Moth" who does it isn't clear what, and introduces Nathaniel and Rachel to a panoply of characters located at the nexus of secret war work and criminal enterprise. At the end of the War, his Mother returns, and then the rest of the book is spent teasing out the implications of that childhood abandonment.
The Audiobook I listened to was particularly well done- the narration in the voice of Nathaniel is very smooth heard out loud, almost like listening to someone tell you a story- which is not always the case for Audiobook narration, whether the fault of the writer or reader. I'd have to say that Warlight is a favorite for the Booker Prize shortlist, given his status as a prior winner combined with his decades long absence, "Ondaatje is back!" seems like a good guess. Ondaatje is also one of those authors who could surprise with a Nobel Prize- if you look at his books since The English Patient, they almost sound like they were written with the Nobel Prize committee in mind: international in scope and serious in intent. I think it's pretty clear that the Nobel Prize committee despises the non-literary "best-seller" and has a limited sense of humor in any language.
Published 8/26/18
The Milkman (2018)
by Anna Burns
Due a quirk of the rules, books published by Irish publishing houses were excluded from the Booker Prize, which covered, I guess, only books published in Commonwealth countries, so an Irish writer published by an English company was fine, but not an Irish author published in Ireland. This was corrected around the same time that the rules were amended to include writers from the United States. For the last couple years, the United States has been dominant, but Ireland has three representatives including, The Milkman, written by Anna Burns, from Northern Ireland, and published in the United Kingdom, not Ireland, where the other two authors were published. If Burns is included with the two authors published in the Republic of Ireland, Irish authors out class Americans this year, 3 to 2.
A writer like Burns even getting a sniff of a mass American audience can only be a blessing. The Milkman itself is dark and stylish, like the past two decades of Scottish and regional English fiction filtered through a Lynne Ramsay film. For one thing, none of the characters, or very few rather, have actual names, calling each other names like "maybe boy friend" "third brother in law" etc. In a brief aside,the narrator, an 18 year old Northern Ireland woman who belongs to a family of "Renouncers" (of the British government), explains how every name is a political act, revealing the sympathies of the bearer and thus better avoided.
The Milkman is clearly set in Northern Ireland, during the troubles, probably Belfast, although it could be a secondary Northern Ireland city (Burns is from Belfast.) Again, no names are used, so there is nothing specific to tie the events of The Milkman to a specifically Northern Ireland scenario. The use of this style elevates The Milkman from an interesting but not spectacular work of regional British fiction to something much darker and stranger, more like Ishiguro, and more clearly a work with a potential international audience.
On the one hand, The Milkman is an obvious longshot for shortlist status vis a vis the 2018 Booker Prize, on the other hand, it's exactly the kind of distinct, memorable book that comes from nowhere to take the literary world by storm. I'm only three books into the 13 books longlist, and it looks like I'll only get to maybe one or two more titles before the short list.
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| Author Lauren Groff was a 2015 National Book Award finalist for her novel Fates and Furies. Her new collection of short stories, Fates and Furies, is a possible contender for a nomination this year. |
Published 9/4/18
Florida (2018)
by Lauren Groff
Published June 5th, 2018 by Riverhead Books Psychogeography isn't a genre or sub-genre of literary fiction, it is a state of mind, specifically a state of mind linked to a particular place. Originally that place was London due to the number of English and London based authors who developed psychogeography in their fiction. Despite this link, there isn't anything inherently English or London centered specific to the idea of writing about the psychology of a place. Nor is there anything to link this concern to a specific literary format- novel, short story, novella, poem. Nor is psychogeography limited to literature itself- it is very easy to imagine studio art informed by this mind set, film (
Los Angeles Plays Itself comes to mind).
Still, a psychogeographical work written in America, about America hasn't ascended to the highest levels of critical and popular acclaim.
Florida, by American author Lauren Groff, is being put forward as a candidate to be this book, and the sponsor is publishing giant PenguinRandomHouse, so that puts it into direct contention for a National Book Award nomination. Groff, of course, was herself nominated in 2015 for her novel
Fates and Furies. I listened to
Florida as an Audiobook read by Groff, and I'm a big fan of having authors read their own books, here it was again a good choice.
The mostly nameless, almost entirely female characters in Groff's stories often resemble Groff herself: Northern immigrants who relocated to Florida for college, and then stick around or leave- one of the stories is set in Brazil, and France makes multiple appearance- and struggle with the vicissitudes of life in different ways. Always,
Florida is there, and Groff's careful description runs through each of the stories like the rampant Floridian vegetation.
For the type of people who read literary fiction, both here and abroad, Florida is a kind of punch-line for "crazy America" in the same way that California and New York are symbolic for "cool America" and Texas symbolizes "uncool America." Each of these places: California, New York and Texas have their own authors who have established a literary identity for the place in the mind of readers, until Groff came along, it would be hard to argue that anyone has done the same for Florida, unless, perhaps, you want to include Elmore Leonard.
Lauren Groff then, has added to the literary map.
Published 9/6/18
Snap (2018) by
Belinda Bauer
Released July 2018 by Atlantic Press The 2018 Man Booker Prize longlist can be read as a response to critics- including many past winners and nominees, that the expansion of the eligible countries to the United States represents a threat to the identity of the Booker Prize as the best of the former UK Commonwealth. Presumably, those critics don't have the same hard feelings about a similar expansion to include books published in Ireland. This year, it is the Irish, with three nominees, that look to be disrupting the traditional regions like Africa (zero nominees) and Australia/New Zealand (zero nominees).
The inclusion of
Snap, an above average work of detective/suspense fiction set in Scotland by the British/South African author of other works of detective fiction, is a good example of the "home isles" emphasis in the 2018 Booker longlist. My own predilection for investigating the borders of genre and literary fiction mean that I don't find the inclusion of a genre book on a literary fiction longlist surprising. That distinction would belong to the graphic novel(!) that was included on the longlist this year.
Reading it on my Kindle app, I found the first 30% or so of
Snap difficult to enjoy, then of course, as the pace quickens and you find out what it is that makes Snap a longlist nominee, it was easier to find the time to finish. It would be even more surprising to see Snap on the shortlist, but perhaps this enough to jump start an audience for her in the United States, since the book itself is an easy sell.
Published 6/27/18
Red Clocks (2018)
by Leni Zumas
I would call it a fair argument that the commercial and critical success of the Hulu version of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale has spawned a tidal wave of novels which combine dystopian genre conventions with feminist concerns to produce work which appeal both to a popular and critical audience. For proof, look no further than The Handmaid's Tale itself, but also The Hunger Games for an example on the more popular side of the spectrum. Or, there are a half dozen works of literary fiction published in the last year that maybe haven't obtained a huge popular audience, but succeeded in drawing a combination of writing talent and publishing savvy.
Red Clocks arrived- in a well produced Audiobook format- as a best-seller from earlier this year. Reviews have downplayed the genre-dystopian influence- a widely circulated quote by the author mentions that the events that precede the action of Red Clocks: A constitutional "right to life" amendment that bans abortion as well as in-vitro fertilization, could take place, "tomorrow." I'm not normally someone who picks apart science fiction books for lacking "realism," but I would beg to differ that the events in Red Clocks are potentially around the corner.
Again with the caveat that I am not usually someone who questions the plausibility of a fictional work, as a criminal defense lawyer who works in federal court, I take issue with one of the central elements of the book: A prosecution, at the state level, by a district attorney, of a local (rural Oregon) witchy woman who is accused of trying to induce an abortion at the behest of the wife of the local High School Principal. Assuming the accuracy of the statement that a Constitutional Amendment was passed outlawing Abortion, a prosecution for a violation of this amendment (and any resulting law) would be in Federal and not state court.
Perhaps the author's defense is that she was trying to simplify the plot for a best-seller level of popular audience, and I would accept that, but if the Federal Government got it together to outlaw abortion totally and start prosecuting people, those prosecutors would be working for the federal government, and they wouldn't be state court District Attorney's, as portrayed throughout Red Clocks. An easy, and accurate analogy is the situation under Prohibition. Bootleggers were prosecuted under Federal law, in Federal court. I guess...Oregon could pass a law saying that attempted abortion is attempted murder under state law, but that is not how Zumas writes it- all the legal talk involves the federal laws involved.
I wouldn't even point it out but for the fact that Red Clocks made it to a best-seller list, so people are obviously taking the ideas seriously- and they should- because the central dilemma of the rural high school student who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy is already true in many parts of the country where abortions are dramatically restricted at the state level. A major strand of plot concerns the attempts by a teacher of the high school student and her attempts with artificial insemination. Zumas is on shakier ground from an audience empathy point of view with the teacher, something the character herself struggles with on almost every page.
The paths of the major characters: student, teacher, mid wife/healer and wife intersect in surprising and unexpected ways, blending the concerns of plot with the larger explorations of the attitudes towards child bearing and child rearing. Zumas differentiates the perspectives of the different characters by using the title of the character, "Student," "Wife," "Healer." etc. I may not be using the exact right terms, not having the book in front of me. A necessary component of almost all dystopian fiction is that the societal changes happen off stage and in the past. Any in depth discussion wouldn't make it past the pen of editor looking for the human dimension. At the same time, the societal changes can't be so far back in the past that the characters don't understand the difference- again- characters that have no framework towards the "before" time are likely to alienate any substantial audience, one that lacks the patience to decipher a new language or guess at character motivations.
In this way, the very near present of Red Clocks pushes the boundaries right to the point of departing from genre convention entirely, making it a straight forward work of domestic fiction with a avowedly feminist perspective , the like of which have now been winning awards for decades. It's hard not to visualize an HBO level version of Red Clocks as a television show. With four major perspectives there are plenty of roles to go around, and length to be drawn out. I'd be surprised if the visual rights haven't already been sold.
Published 7/24/18
The Sparsholt Affair (2017)
by Alan Hollinghurst
The longlist for the Man Booker Prize 2018 was announced yesterday. Thirteen books on the longlist, and three Americans in that group: Rachel Kushner, for The Mars Room, her California women's prison book, Richard Powers for his tree-hugging saga The Overstory and artist/author Nick Drnaso, who has received the first ever Booker Prize nomination for a graphic novel, Sabrina. Of the other nominees, only two are not from the UK/Ireland, no nominees from Australia, New Zealand, Africa or South Asia, which strikes me as highly unusual. The two non UK/'Ireland authors are both Canadians.
The only prior winner is Michael Ondaatje, for Warlight. Ondaatje also recently won the so-called Booker of Bookers for The English Patient- besting Rushdie and Midnight's Children, which had won a similar Best of Booker Prize Booker Prize a few years back. Absent from the longlist was this book by prior winner Alan Hollinghurst, for The Line of Beauty in 2004. His first nomination for the Booker was in 1994 for The Folding Star.
Like his other books, The Sparsholt Affair is a closely observed book- with a historical first act taking place at Oxford University during the early 1960's, homosexuality still being a criminal offense. Also like his other books, The Sparsholt Affair is about the experience of being a gay, English, man, both before and after homosexuality was decriminalized in the mid 1960's. The Oxford setting is deeply reminiscent of late early 20th century writers like Eveyln Waugh. Hollinghurst is nothing is not a (the?) preeminent prose stylist writing in English today, and the reader expects beautiful language on every page.
When I read of the American publication of The Sparsholt Affair earlier this year (after a fall 2017 release in the UK, where Hollinghurst is a much bigger deal), it seemed like the ideal candidate for a good Audiobook edition. Of course, the publisher would want to do right by such a beautiful writer, and of course, The Sparsholt Affair sounds great. However, at over 400 pages in print, the listening time is over 10 hours. The sheer density of observation made portions of The Sparsholt Affair more curious than beautiful.
I had presumed that this book would be a lock for at least the Booker longlist, especially in a year with so many nominees from England and the greater UK area. It is almost shocking.
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| First time novelist Lisa Halliday has found an audience and critical buzz by virtue of the publication of Asymmetry. |
Published 7/28/18
Asymmetry (2018)
by Lisa Halliday
Published by Simon & Schuster One of the vagaries of the interaction between the capitalist-market economy and artistic production is that an unknown artists best opportunity to become known is with the publication of their FIRST book, movie, album. If an audience eludes an artist on their first try, whatever the circumstances, the chances do not grow, but rather diminish over time. This is not, of course, what is taught to aspiring artists, who often focus on growing their skills and resulting audience over time. Perhaps because the idea that if people don't read your first book they will never read any subsequent book is too grim to internalize.
Conversely, if a new artist does obtain a popular audience and critical acclaim for, say, a first work of literary fiction, as has been the case with the novel Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday, it buts that author in a superior position to have all subsequent books taken seriously by both a popular audience and critics, and inevitably sets up the possibility of canonical status, often for the writing of the first book itself.
The fact that a work of serious literary fiction can land a place on the New York Times Best Seller list, which is a hodge podge of celebrity, self help books and genre works. Any place on any list by a work of literary fiction is impressive. That, plus a sheaf of high profile, laudatory reviews in the critical organs of record: New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, etc is about as good as it gets for a first time
If a prospective reader is looking for a "why" beyond the description of a smart book that combines a transgressive roman a clef with the problems of a Muslim-American trapped at Heathrow on his way to search for his missing brother in Iraq, there is the inclusion of Ezra Blazer as the much older love interest for twenty something Alice, a Harvard graduate, albeit one who doesn't know how to pronounce the name of the author Camus, who is trying to find her way in contemporary New York City.
Blazer is clearly and obviously based on Nobel Prize NOT Winning author Philip Roth, with whom Halliday had an affair, in her 20's, when she was working for Roth's New York based literary agent's office. As other reviewers have mentioned, much of the pleasure gained from Asymmetry from combining this no doubt interesting but hardly uplifting may-september affair with the story of Amar, an Iraqi American stuck in Heathrow airport. The reader is led to suspect that this portion has been written by Alice, the character in the first section. This gives rise to a series of interesting questions that can be loosely described as "meta fictional" paradoxes or complications.
Asymmetry is, in a word, more than the sum of its parts. As a first novel it represents an opportunity for critics to get in on the ground floor of an exciting new talent, and while a Pulitzer seems outlandish, Asymmetry does seem like the kind of debut that might grab the attention of the National Book Award, which has shown a fondness for young, female writers in recent years.
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| Tommy Orange, author of There There an auspicious debut set in the urban native community of Oakland, CA. |
Published 8/8/18
There There (2018)
by Tommy Orange
Published June 2018 by Penguin Randomhouse When I was attending law school in San Francisco (Hastings College of Law AKA UC Hastings) I clerked at California Indian Legal Services in Oakland, California. CILS as it's known has a proud tradition of litigating on behalf of California native tribes and individuals, though a flood of gaming money has dramatically changed the landscape for native legal services in the past decades. My job was typically intake, fielding calls from different people all over the state- mostly northern california, with a galaxy of problems, many involving their own Indian tribal government.
During the two summers I clerked there, I made trips into the hinterland of California to visit different Native homelands. California is a hugely diverse location for native peoples, and northern California especially so. However, I also learned about a different population, of what were called "Urban Indians"- these were legit tribally enrolled peoples who had migrated to Oakland and formed their own pan-tribal community. They had a community center just east of downtown that I recall visiting on multiple occasions. This urban native community in Oakland California is also where Tommy Orange calls home. One of the characteristics of the urban native community in Oakland is that it isn't necessarily composed of Native Californians, rather the population broadly reflects the relative size of tribes in the USA as a whole.
Tommy Orange is an exciting new literary voice, and
There There is an exciting book with a very distinct voice- of the urban native community of Oakland CA BUT ALSO an accomplished prose stylists- cool, but not alienating, creative but comprehensible. The plot of There There, which deploys about a half dozen narrators, focuses loosely on a plot to rob a Pow-Wow being held at the Oakland Coliseum. The characters are tied by family and proximity, and Orange moves them backwards and forwards in time, using the flashbacks to establish a longer narrative of the urban native community, inevitably spending time on the occupation of Alcatraz and moving forward from there.
Orange hints at two of the deepest complexities that surround the urban native communities: The use of so-called "blood quantum" to determine tribal membership and the outsize role that remaining "on the reservation" plays in reevaluations of priorly determined tribal membership. In other words, you can leave the reservation, but don't expect to maintain your tribal membership forever into the future. At least one of the characters muses on the irony of the blood quantum standard, and the exclusionary impact it might have on native people who have parents from different tribes and may not be enrollable in any.
The world picture that Orange paints is grim, though not without hope. Urban natives have the fortune or misfortune to be able to exist almost invisibly among the larger urban underclass and the contrast between that and the often claustrophobic existence of life on tribal land has a liberating effect. And of course, urban natives, like the author himself, have access to resources that are sadly absent in rural places where tribal homelands tend to be located. Surely,
There There is an auspicious literary debut, and perhaps a contender for a National Book Award nomination? Is a Pulitzer our of the question?
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| American author Katie Williams makes her literary fiction debut with her gently dystopian novel, Tell the Machine Good Night. |
Published 9/12/18
Tell the Machine Good Night (2018)
by Katie Williams
Published June 2018 Riverhead Press It makes sense that children's books authors would be a rich potential source of authors of prize-winning, best-selling, literary fiction. Presumably publishers only put out children's books that sell, so any author from that realm knows about bending an artistic vision to the whims of the book-buying public. Children's literature is itself an occasional source of canonical works,
Alice in Wonderland is a good example. At any rate, it is unlikely that a children's book author has developed a style that would be too sophisticated for the reading public.
Katie Williams is from the world of children's and y/a fiction, with what I assume is a good track record.
Tell the Machine Good Night is her first work of adult fiction, and it is a gently pessimistic work of domestic fiction set in a familiar San Francisco of 2031. It's not a dystopia, and hardly science fiction. The "Machine" of the title being a handheld device called "Apricity" that dispenses happiness in five, often opaque, suggestions at a time. The suggestions can be banal, "take piano lessons;" shocking, "stop talking to your sister;" or even grotesque, "Amputate the tip of the little finger of your right hand."
The story in
Tell the Machine Good Night revolves around Pearl, a divorced mother of one who shares narrator duties with Rhett, her manorexic teen age son and Pearl's ex-husband, Elliot. Also playing a part are Elliot's new wife and Pearl's boss. Pearl works for the Apricity manufacturing corporation as a device administrator, basically she goes into different work places and does readings for all the employees. Pearl's central preoccupation is her son, Rhett, who has been in and out of the hospital with a severe eating disorder. Elliot, the feckless man-child ex-husband is in and out of the picture.
I picked up the physical copy from the "new release" selection of the library after reading a couple of laudatory reviews. I wasn't disappointed in the "soft sci fi" approach, and Williams maintains the human interest in her tale of technology gone ever so slightly wrong. Going back and reading the same reviews having read the book, I was a little surprised at the level of enthusiasm that Williams generated, and it doesn't look like it's been a sale success. Still, those looking for titles at the intersection of genre and literary fiction will enjoy
Tell the Machine Good Night.
Published 9/13/18
Metamorphica (2018)
by Zachary Mason
Published July 2018 by Macmillan Press I try to keep abreast of new forms of fiction. "Flash fiction" is a term that may or may not represent a new literary genre, depending on who is asked. The
wikipedia entry for this term is illustrative noting that flash fiction has "its roots in antiquity" and has more recent antecedents in the "short short story" developed for American magazine's in the early 20th century. Recent developments in technology have given the idea of flash fiction a push, as writers experiment with stories written one tweet at a time, or in the comment section of blog posts.
As is often the case, the canon keepers have resisted flash fiction, probably because it is tough to base an entire classroom lecture around a fifty word short story, and equally hard to base a lecture on twenty different short stories that are each more than fifty words. At the same time, "real" novelists have incorporated some techniques popularized by flash fiction- I'm thinking of the many voices and perspectives of last year's Man Booker prize winner,
Lincoln in the Bardo, written by American author George Saunders.
I checked out the Audiobook of
Metamorphica by Zachary Mason based on a capsule description, "Ovid's
Metamorphoses as flash-fiction," which struck me as a potential critic and audience pleaser. Published in July of this year,
Metamorphica doesn't appear to have struck a chord with the reading public, but the reviews have been good. My choice of an Audiobook for this title, was a poor one- I don't think the Audiobook format works for fiction that progresses in units that average under one page per "story." Without the lay out of the text, the Audiobook tends to blend different stories together, and even with the chapters and sections announced by the narrator, the listener lacks a sense of the format.
Metamorphica is less confusing then another Audiobook of flash-fiction might be because he hews closely to the structure of
Metamorphoses itself- a compendium of Greek myths written for a "modern" (i.e. Roman) audience.
Metamorphica is ideal for a reader who hasn't read
Metamorphoses itself, Conversely, if you have read
Metamorphoses you might find yourself asking, as I did, whether brief snippets recounting the same stories from the view point of an Instagram model, who the Godlings of Greek myth often resemble in the original prose, is a worthwhile exercise. It doesn't help Mason that Madeline Miller has recently scored a cross over critical/popular success with a similar work,
Circe, which tells the tale of that witch with a modern voice.
For the less familiar stories, the Audiobook format was fatal- if I was reading the print or Ebook edition I would have stopped to look up the underlying myth, but you can't really do that in an Audiobook. I also remain unsold on flash fiction as a genre. Convince me.
Published 9/13/18
The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)
by Mohsin HamidReplaces:
On Beauty (2005) by Zadie Smith (
Review 2018)
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid is one of over 250 books that was added in the first revision and removed in 2012. It seems reasonable that there would be a lot of "like for like" swaps as the list moves onward into the present. On Beauty, by Zadie Smith scored major WOC points for the first list, but deviates from the second edition priorities of non-English, non-white voice in the sense that Smith's voice is largely a voice of privilege, even if the narrator writes as an outsider. Also,
On Beauty is a campus novel, which is under-represented in the first edition, and clearly out of sync as a genre with the priorities of the second list.
Hamid is a candidate for achieving the kind of South Asian/English language audience for literary fiction that is very rare. His most recent book,
Exit West (
Reviewed 2017)
was a very well received sci-fi/literary fiction genre straddler that continues to sell reasonably well and won some prizes and got on some year end top 10 lists. Like his narrator, Hamid attended Princeton University and he writes from a point of privilege. Changez, the narrator, is telling his story to an unnamed American visitor (not tourist) at a market stall restaurant in Lahore, Pakistan. The entire book is Changez talking to the American- no responses are included, though it is obvious that Changez is in conversation.
This makes
The Reluctant Fundamentalist an excellent Audiobook choice, since the book itself consists of a person speaking at length without interruption, mirroring the format of the Audiobook itself as a medium. Changez is a charming narrator, although his American dream of making 80,000 a year working for a firm that values businesses for the purpose of acquisition price seems almost laughably prelapsarian, and the events of the book, framed around the trauma of 9/11, mirror the before and after motif.
As the reader learns, the title describes Changez in terms of the attitude he develops towards his business life of analyzing business value for sale, and Hamid leaves alternative interpretations in doubt almost until the very last page.
2018 National Book Award Fiction Longlist
A Lucky Man(stories), by Jamel Brinkley (
Gray Wolf Press) #
Gun Love, by Jennifer Clement (
PenguinRandomHouse) !
Florida, by Lauren Groff (
Review Sept. 2018) !
The Boatbuilder, by Daniel Gumbiner (
McSweeneys) $
Where the Dead Sit Talking, by Brandon Hobson (
Soho Press) @
An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones #
The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai $
The Friend, by Sigrid Nunez $
There There, by Tommy Orange (
Review Aug 2018) @
Heads of the Colored People, by Nafissa Thompson-Spires #
# = African American author
! = Florida
@ = Native American author
$ = Inside the Bubble
All hail the 2018 National Book Awards Fiction longlist. The National Book Award also added an "in translation" category, similar to the one that the Booker Prize introduced. I'm interested in the in translation category but not this year! Surprising that The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner wasn't nominated (it made the Booker Prize longlist) and same with The Overstory by Richard Powers. Circe, by Madeline Miller was another title I thought had a cut and it didn't make the cut.
No Asian American representatives, despite a full slate of candidates, including Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. I thought There There was a very strong book, and looking at the other choices, I don't see any books that have separated from the pack. In fact, I haven't heard of any of the books I haven't read except The Boatbuilder, which was published by McSweeney's, and I read McSweeney's in my feed.
Many of these titles aren't even available at the library, which I think tracks with the fact that I haven't seen any reviews of the books I haven't read. I read Florida and There There because I saw prominent reviews and read them. The National Book Award Longlist is a huge springboard to get those reviews out there- so it's really a starting point for most of these authors. It seems like they focus on longlist authors who can really benefit from the designation, in a way that Kushner and Powers do not. It makes, sense, and I can dig it. They certainly spent enough years handing out prizes to white dudes.
Looking forward to the longlist and all the different viewpoints.
Published 9/17/18
The Incendiaries (2018)
by R. O. Kwon
Published July 2018 by Riverhead Books
The Incendiaries by R. O. Kwon has been tabbed as an auspicious debut novel, and the backing of Riverhead Books, the prestige imprint for PenguinRandomhouse in the United States, certainly can't hurt. One of the major advantages of the novel as an art form is the adaptability it has displayed over the nearly four centuries that it has dominated literary output. A format that works for many different writers, the bildungsroman, for example, a narrative about the growth between childhood and adulthood, was pioneered in early 19th century Germany, popped up in every major national literature in the mid 19th century onward, and provides a disproportionate number of "first" novels, both good and bad.
The bildungsroman is also a genre that blends well with other genres: almost the entire corpus of fantasy novels as a genre is some kind of coming of age story. The bildungsroman, or "coming of age story" in English, has also been hugely influential in other art forms, television and film, to name two. So for each new voice that comes along, a bildungsroman is a well understood step to bridge the gap from unpublished novelist to hot young novelist.
Kwon writes about a small group of Korean-American students attending a non descript college on the East Coast. Although Kwon switches perspectives around to build suspense, the major narrator is Will, a recovering religious fanatic(?) who has abandoned his west coast bible college in favor of a new start. His love interest is Phoebe, a "manic pixie" dream girl, who harbors a tragic secret. John Leal is the third major player- a half Korean- half white student religious leader who turns into the fulcrum of the plot. Kwon delves into the back stories of the major character- not Leal- just Phoebe and Will, both of whom reflect different aspects of the experience of childhood from the perspective of an assimilated Korean-American.
I didn't know the gender of the author of The Incendiaries and based on the main narrator being a man, I wrongly assumed the gender of the author. At the same time, I wasn't at all surprised. There is no rule that says a bildungsroman narrated by a man has to be written by a man, and indeed Kwon's bold choice has paid off in terms of the critical applause and best-seller status, recently obtained. Having read The Incendiaries, I'm surprised it didn't make the National Book Award fiction longlist, but it was a down year of Asian American nominees, after last year.
It is fair to observe that none of the critical and popular applause is due to The Incendiaries being a typical bildungsroman, of course there is something more, but you certainly have to read to find out what.
 |
| American author Ling Ma makes a bold debut with Severance, her combination of post-apocalyptic zombie thriller and first generation American bildungsroman. |
Published 9/19/18
Severance (2018)
by Ling Ma
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Augst 2018 You could call this book "#Apocalypse" or "Apocalypse, Meh," and both suggestions would convey the tone, if not depth, of
Severance, the first novel by first generation American author Ling Ma. Narrator Candice Chen, the daughter of Chinese immigrants who settled in Salt Lake City, is the last woman out of New York City, after a fungus inspired disease renders nearly every human on Earth, "fevered;" a state which resembles that of a zombie lacking ill intent.
The book switches back and forth between the present, where Candice falls in with a group of (the only) survivors travelling to a well stocked "facility" partially owned by group leader Bob. In between is a fairly straight forward bildungsroman about Chen's experience as the daughter of immigrants, and her work and love life in New York City as a lower level editor of Bibles at a company that handles outsourced printing jobs in China.
The almost universally laudatory reviews posit that
Severance is more than the sum of its parts, though I would reduce the number of those parts to two: the post-apocalypse narrative and the more conventional first generation American bildungsroman. Like Ma's writing, the idea is clever. Whatever the ultimate verdict on the literary merit of
Severance- this was another title I thought might be on the National Book Award for fiction longlist announced earlier this month, there is no denying that Severance is funny and thoughtful at the same time, and it makes fresh what otherwise is heavily trodden territory (post apocalyptic literary fiction and American immigrant bildungsromans.)
I would join the chorus of recommenders, and make a plug for the Audiobook- because the only weakness- Ma's choice to rely exclusively on a single voice for narration- translates perfectly to the Audiobook format, which favors such books where there is a single narrator or lengthy spoken monologues, and does less well with a diversity of narrators and conversational dialogue.
Published 10/5/18
The Friend (2018)
by Sigrid Nunez
Riverhead Press 2018 The Friend by Sigrid Nunez is another 2018 National Book Award longlister. Sigrid Nunez is a literary fiction lifer, with several novels under her belt, some minor awards, and a lengthy list of "visiting professor at" and "writer in residence at" type achievements. She seems like the type of author with a strong reputation inside the community of literary fiction, but still seeking the kind of mass-market audience that one presumably gets when you win the National Book Award for fiction.
It isn't clear to me why this particular Sigrid Nunez book got the longlist nod. The elements are classic "inside the bubble" literary fiction: A protagonist who is a writer/teacher, living in New York City, mourning the suicide of a complicated white-male writer/mentor after he commits suicide. The Friend of the title is a Great Dane, who "wife number three" dumps on the narrator after disclosing that the suicide identified her as a likely target. ("She's single, lives by herself, doesn't have to be away from home very much.")
Nunez is a clever writer- much of the best bits in
The Friend involves asides by the narrator referencing current student culture and literary culture. The major plot, about the narrator and her relationship with this elderly dog, was less compelling for me, but I can see what she was shooting for, and the National Book Award longlist designation would seem to indicate that she succeeded. Doesn't seem like a shortlister let alone a winner, but who knows- Nunez has obviously paid her dues.
Published 10/5/18
Upstate (2018)
James Wood
Farrar, Straus & Giroux James Wood is the head book critic for the New Yorker. He also writes fiction and non-fiction. Indeed, it's not hard to imagine Upstate starting out as a New Yorker short story, what with it's well educated, white, relatively well-off characters suffering from a variety of real and imagined maladies. The three main characters are Alan- a moderately succesful property developer in the Newcastle area of the UK, and his two daughters, Vanessa, a basket case/assistant professor of philosophy at a small liberal arts college in Upstate New York and Helen (older sister), a record label executive working for Sony out of London.
Alan and Vanessa head to Vanessa's college town after getting a message of distress from Josh, Vanessa's younger boyfriend, and the four converge on Vanessa's spacious home: LET THE TALKING COMMENCE! This was an actual book where I would preferred the Audiobook- almost all of the text is either dialogue or internal monologue. Even giving Wood some leeway for using Upstate as both a metaphor and a place, the place part of
Upstate isn't particularly well evoked. Alan seems some similarities between this place and his home of northeast England, but
Upstate is minimally represented by some religious neighbors and a gregarious bartender.
Unless one is a die-hard fan of wealthy white people and their problems,
Upstate is unlikely to wow, but it may evoke nods of recognition among similarly situated people. Me, I've read enough stories about well educated young white women with issues ranging from anxiety to depression- they are like the anti-manic pixie girls. "Cheer up!" I want to yell at Vanessa- I've spent a life time trying to deal with these sorts of women, and now they pursue me into the realm of fiction.
 |
Famous image from the Bhopal Chemical disaster, when exposure to toxic pesticide chemicals killed
thousands and maimed thousands more. |
Published 10/8/18
Animal's People (2007)
by Indra Sinha
Replaces:
Never Let Me Go (2006) by Kazuo Ishiguro (
Review April 2018)
Ishiguro's foray into dystopian fiction,
Never Let Me Go, is replaced by Animal's People, Indra Sinha's well received novel about the impact of the Union Carbide/Bhopal Chemical disaster, which has maintained its status as the worst industrial accident of all time until today. The leak of toxic chemicals killed thousands, but it also wreaked havoc on the unborn, accounting for a wave of horrific birth defects.
In
Animal's People, the narrator is one of those disfigured by the chemical exposure before birth. His spine twisted in utero, he walks on all fours, giving rise to his eponymous sobriquet, "Animal." Animal's status as a 20th century Indian street urchin will be familiar to readers of contemporary literary fiction. Animal is, as is acknowledged by the characters in the book, particularly bright in the way of literary street urchin, an Artful Dodger type, if you will.
Animal is part of a wider community that is engaged in a decades long attempt to obtain redress for the victims of the terrible chemical spill. Their leader is Zafar, a young Muslim community activist and Nisha, his love interest, and also Animal's patron. The plot is set into motion when Elli, an American doctor with no specific ties to the community, shows up and announces that she is opening a free clinic. Suspicions abound, leading to a community boycott, and Animal finds himself in the middle.
It's hard to argue with the replacement of
Never Let Me Go- Ishiguro was bound to see a reduction in any revision- and
Never Let Me Go is not one of his top three books and Animal's People fulfills the prime directive of contemporary literary canon construction: Acknowledge new voices and new perspectives. Although Animal's People is very much and Indian novel, down to characters to speak a geographically specific slang, there is a universality in the response of a downtrodden community to a brutal environmental-chemical disaster that elevates
Animal's People to a canonical level of interest.
 |
| Author Brandon Hobson, nominated for the 2018 National Book Award for fiction for Where the Dead Sit Talking. |
Published 10/8/18
Where the Dead Sit Talking (2018)
by Brandon Hobson Where the Dead Sit Talking is another 2018 National Book Award Fiction longlist nominee. Author Brandon Hobson is an enrolled member of the Cherokee tribe of Oklahoma. The protagonist of his bildungsroman about a Native American kid being raised in a foster home is Native American, but like the character in
There, There, another 2018 National Book Award Fiction longlist nominee written by a Native American author, all the action takes place, "off the reservation," and both books are deeply bound to the often isolated position of Native Americans within the larger American society.
There is nothing particularly Native American about the experience of young men alienated from contemporary modern society, but there is no denying that Sequoyah, is the product of an authentically Native American voice. One aspect of this experience in both books is the lack of an older generation to transmit "authentic" Native traditions, leaving the narrators to construct their own identities out of what they can grasp from their environment.
In Where the Dead Sit Talking, Sequoyah is literally marked off from the rest of society by a series of grease burns on his face, "An accident, it wasn't on purpose;" he tells people about the time his Mom, in the midst of an emotional phone call, gesticulated while cooking, burning his face with the hot grease.
His mom in prison awaiting sentencing on a drug case, Sequoyah finds some stability at the home of the Troutt family, and friendship with Rosemary, another foster child with the Troutt family, also a Native American. There is also George- not Native American, and probably autistic or at least on the spectrum. As Sequoyah uneasily awaits his Mother's next opportunity for release, he has experiences typical of the modern bildungsroman, a little sex, a little drugs. Hobson builds towards a third act that is foreshadowed on the first page, but still managed to leave me guessing- event after the end of the book.
Published 10/10/18
The Boatbuilder(2018)
by Daniel Gumbiner
Published by Mcsweeney's May 2018 The Boatbuilder was, I think, a surprise pick for the 2018 National Book Award Fiction longlist. It is a brief tale of addiction and redemption, featuring a very retro white-male (Jewish even!) protagonist, seeking to overcome an opiate addiction in a place that sounds like a combination of Bolinas and Mendicino in Northern California. "Berg" as he is known, is the grandson of a Rabbi who was making a decent living "selling anti virus software"(presumably at the enterprise level) when he succumbed to opiate addiction in the aftermath of a lingering concussion. He has relocated north in the hope of putting his addiction behind him.
Once he established himself, he falls in with an eccentric boatbuilder with a background in sociology and an excellent client who uses his finely crafted sailing boats to smuggle drugs from Mexico ("Only marijuana" Berg's mentor assures him.) The "action" in
The Boatbuilder is minimal, but there is plenty of incident, mostly Berg's own struggles falling in and out of addiction.
The author deserves credit for crafting a potential National Book Award winner out of such run of the mill material: A disenfranchised, well-educated white man, the hippie craft culture of Northern California, learning to overcome drug addiction. I personally had little sympathy for Berg and his plight. I've had plenty of direct experience with the impact of drug addiction on people's lives, specifically, many of my clients facing lengthy prison sentences are there because of their addictions, specifically because their addiction, and the need for money to finance said addiction, makes them ideal for the low reward/high risk work of drug smuggling. Those clients of mine, facing decades of prison, face real consequences because of their drug addiction.
Berg, on the other hand, has "really bad headaches." I mean, fuck off, Berg. Get your fucking shit together and get out there and do something with your life. Or die- it doesn't matter to me, neither before or after reading
The Boatbuilder. If this book wins the National Book Award for Fiction this year I will be sorely disappointed, and I don't recommend it unless you are specifically interested in the opiate crisis and recovery narratives.
Published 10/12/18
Small Country (2018)
by Gael Faye Gael Faye is a French-Rwandan hip hop artist, and Small Country is his debut novel, a bildungsroman about the Rwandan/Burundian civil war/conflicts, written from the perspective of a mixed-race child growing up in a privileged neighborhood of Burundi. Gabriel, the narrator and protagonist, is living as about as care free a life as one could hope for in the Africa of the mid 1990's. Yes, his parents- a white, French father and Tutsi-refugee mother from Rwanda have split up, but he lives in a nice neighborhood, in a house with staff, surrounded by other mixed-race and even white children who all go the same private school for the children of Europeans who live in Burundi.
Of course, every reader is well familiar with what lies in the near future, even if Gabriel depicts the decent into racial violence and genocide with a mixture of confusion and wonder. Gabriel remains at the fringes of the violence, though the Rwandan genocide is brought home for him when his Mother returns from post-genocide Rwanda is a state of shock which persists for the rest of her life. Faye describes the genocide itself through the eyes of his returning mother, and I have to say, I found it shocking, even with the 1000 page Nazi SS book
The Kindly Ones in my recent reading history.
What is so shocking about the 1990's Rwandan genocide of Tutsi's at the hands of the Hutu majority is that it was not hidden or secret, and was in fact instigated via mass media and perpetrated by, more or less, the entire population, not just the military or paramilitary gangs. Neighbors, hacking up neighbors with machetes- women, children, everyone.
Published 10/15/18
Measuring the World (2005)
by Daniel KehlmannReplaces:
Drop City by T.C. Boyle (
Reviewed 5/18)
I didn't much care for
Drop City, T.C. Boyle's book about a hippie commune that relocates from Northern California to Alaska. The replacement,
Measuring the World by German author Daniel Kehlmann, is much better, even if it doesn't accomplish much in terms of adding diversity to the 1001 Books list. A German author writing about two 19th century German scientists isn't much more diverse than an American author writing about hippie culture. At least the Kehlmann book is enjoyable, unlike
Drop City. Also,
Measuring the World is 300 pages, not the 500 pages of
Drop City.
Measuring the World tells, in elliptical fashion, the story of German mathematician Carl Gauss and Alexander Von Humboldt. Von Humboldt has some name recognition here in the US because he was the first European scientist to get into the wilds of South America. After he travelled to the US and met with then President Thomas Jefferson, before returning to Paris and finally Berlin. Gauss, meanwhile stayed closer to home, finding long term work as a land surveyor- the first- essentially to make an accurate map of Germany.
Late into the book, the two finally come together for a meeting, but most of the book is told along parallel line, one chapter for Von Humboldt, one chapter for Gauss. I wasn't surprised to learn that Measuring the World was a huge best seller in the original German- the combination of historically accurate adventure and achievement is well balanced by Kehlmann's depiction of the interior lives of Gauss and Von Humboldt, and any reader will come away with a new found appreciation for both of them.
Published 10/16/18
The Shape of Ruins (2015)
by Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Published by Riverhead in the US in September 2018
The English translation of The Shape of Ruins, the 2015 novel by Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vasquez, was released this summer. Amazingly, I saw the hard back of this translation in stock and in a prominent place at the Barnes and Nobel in the Grove, in West Los Angeles. I didn't buy it, ha ha- instead I checked out the Audiobook via the Los Angeles Public Library. The Audiobook is 20 hours long- that's about twice as long as your standard length, but the format, which includes lengthy soliloquies by the main characters and much "summation" of historical facts and theories by the narrator, who clearly shares multiple biographical details with actual author Juan Gabriel Vasquez.
I didn't actually know about the correspondences between author biography and the in book narrator, also an author with a similar career and publication history as Vasquez himself. This metafictional tweak isn't central to the plot, which still manages an almost dizzying number of different of narrative strands in 500 pages. And although any review of a Colombian author is required to name check "magical realism" and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the truth is that Vasquez seems closer to Pynchon then Marquez in terms of his influences. The calm, measured narrative tone (in contrast to the passionate events discussed from a century of volatile Colombian political assassinations) reminded me of Don Delillo, and it would seem to me that the fact that this book is being shipped to Barnes & Noble means that a major publishing house (Riverhead) must agree.
I don't regret the decision to listen to the Audiobook- I was amazed that it was out there so soon after publication for a book like this (translated from Spanish, Colombian author) but I think it would be a good book to buy because of the level of detail about Colombian history. It would be useful to be able to stop reading a physical book to look up different references to Colombian history
Published 10/30/18
Mother's Milk (2006)
by Edward St AubynReplaces:
Dining on Stones by Iain Sinclair (
Reviewed June 2018)
English author Edward St Aubyn has received increased attention in the United States following the somewhat inexplicable decision by Showtime to produce a Benedict Cumberbatch starring version of The Patrick Melrose novels, of which
Mother's Milk is the fourth of five. What possessed Showtime to think that America wants a five part series about Patrick Melrose and his incredibly disturbing family is beyond me.
Melrose, the narrator and protagonist of all five novels, is a perpetually aggrieved barrister who suffered a quintessentially upper class English version of a traumatic childhood (lowlights, left unexplored in this volume, including being raped by his father for several years as a young boy.) As you might expect from a work of contemporary fiction which includes such a detail, St Aubyn himself was raped by his father. Mother's Milk takes place when Melrose is an adult, unhappily married with a child, living in London.
Much of the book deals with the decision by his hated mother to donate his beloved French summer house to a new age type charlatan from Ireland. To call Melrose "upset" about this decision is to vastly underestimate the level of anger that Melrose feels about this choice.
Mother's Milk was nominated for the Man Booker prize in 2006, which I guess explains why the editors of the 1001 Books list picked this title to replace Iain Sinclair's psychogeographical love letter to East London,
Dining on Stones, but it seems like picking the first book in the series,
Never Mind, is the only book to pick, if you are going to pick one book to represent the series.
I doubt I'll see the Showtime version, since I don't subscribe to Showtime. Indeed, I find St Aubyn's inclusion unnecessary, surely there are enough novels about virulently dysfunctional wealthy English families. Maybe not if you are from England and are, yourself, from a virulently dysfunctional wealthy English family, but I'm not.
 |
| Canadian author Esi Edugyan was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize this year for Washington Black |
Published 10/31/18
Washington Black (2018)
by Esi Edugyan Washington Black is Canadian author Esi Edugyan's second novel. Her first novel, Half-Blood Blues, was shortlisted for the 2011 Booker Prize. Same for
Washington Black, which made it to the shortlist this year but lost to Anna Burns for her parable about Northern Ireland,
Milkman. Edugyan has the right stuff for a career in literary fiction, both of her books bringing alive different parts of history with characters who are well drawn.
Washington Black is filled with adventure, following the eponymous hero from his roots as a slave on a west indies sugar plantation to a career in London as the assistant to a well known marine biologist. Black's voice is undeniable, managing to encapsulate both the slave experience as well as the energy of being a participant in the heroic period of 19th century naturalism.
I enjoyed the listening experience of the well crafted Audiobook, which clocks in at about 12 hours. I would have preferred to read the hard copy, but I couldn't find it.
Washington Black is an easy choice for fans of literary fiction and historical fiction alike.
Published 10/31/18
The Comedown (2018)
by Rebekah Frumkin
I checked out the Audiobook of the first novel by American writer Rebekah Frumkin based on strong Kirkus review. The "first novel" is an important category of literary fiction. The first novel is the best chance of an previously unknown/little known writer gaining some kind of traction with a popular and/or critical audience. Considering the difficult economics of literary fiction (low sales, specifically) firing a miss with your first book of literary fiction might very well mean you don't get a second novel published.
The Comedown is an auspicious debut, filled with multiple voices and enough sex and drugs to get a casual reader interested in the story of two families who are united by a drug deal gone bad. Frumkin develops characters of all races and genders. One family is white, one family black. There are Jews, Christians and cults. There are straight people, gay people and trans people. The characters take drugs: cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy, LSD, crystal meth.
Frumkin seems more concerned with character than plot. The sheer number of different narrators means that the same events are retold from the perspective of different characters, condensing the number of events in the plot. I thought the major weakness was the plotting of the third act, and found the ending so unsatisfactory that it made me question the worth of the entire book.
Still, The Comedown is notably for the plurality of voices, and her treatment of drug usage is perceptive and beyond the simple "drugs bad, people who use drugs bad;" equation that continues to permeate popular culture despite years of education about the role of disease in spurring addiction.
Published 11/1/18
Fruit of the Drunken Tree (2018)
by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Fruit of the Drunken Tree is another debut novel by a young American author with much promise. Although most of Fruit of the Drunken Tree is set mostly in Colombia, Contreras wrote in English, and she lives in San Francisco. Contreras was raised in Bogota, and while fiction, this book draws heavily on her girlhood in Colombia. The central narrator and author stand in is Chula, a perceptive seven year old who lives in an upper middle class neighborhood with her older sister Cassandra and her Mother, a rare example of a woman from the slums who has ascended into the middle/upper class. Their father, an engineer who works on an oil platform, is present less often.
The plot arrives in the form of Petrona, a teenage maid from a near by slum. Petrona shares narrating duties with Chula, and it is through her that the reader grasps that harrowing events are in store for Chula and her family, while Chula herself remains unaware, and even hides facts from her mother and sister which may have prevented the dangerous events of the second and third act.
It is clear from the first chapter, which makes clear that Chula and her family have left Colombia permanently for the United States, that something terrible will happen, but it is the genius of Contreras from guessing, what, exactly is afoot until it is actually happening in the book. It's authorial craft at it's finest and I'm sure that it is the pacing that has drawn much of the positive attention paid Fruit of the Drunken Tree by critics.
You might call Fruit of the Drunken Tree a good example of the late 20th/early 21st century kriegbildungsroman or "war education novel" a twist on the traditional coming-of-age novel which defines the bildungsroman formula. A kriegbildungsroman is a coming-of-age novel set against the backdrop of armed conflict, either international or civil, and it finds its roots in the aftermath of World War II, when authors in all parts of the world, but especially Europe and the colonial south: Latin America, Africa, Asia, had the life experience of coming of age in the midst the mechanized horror of mid to late 20th century armed conflict.
Published 11/5/18
Fallling Man (2007)
by Don DelilloReplaces:
Saturday by Ian McEwan (
Reviewed 4/18)
It is hard to fathom how
Falling Man, Don Delillo's forgettable post-9/11 take on the impact of those events on those in and around ground zero, made it into the first revised edition of the 1001 Books list. Delillo is himself over-represented in the first edition,
Falling Man isn't even a top five title in his bibliography, it didn't sell, critics didn't like it.
Considering that it was published only months before the revised edition went to press in 2008, it's entirely possible that it was the last book added, in which case it is a clear example of how time and distance are required before anyone can judge which book may or may deserve inclusion in any particular canon. You can see where the editors might guess wrong,
Falling Man is by a recognized author about an important subject (9/11 attacks) that had not (and still has not) received the kind of canonical treatment that one expects from literature in the 21st century.
For all the pedigree,
Falling Man is not that book. Instead, it is a lesser work by Delillo, who is well familiar with the themes of the consequences of terrorism on the mental functioning of survivors, as judged by the importance of that theme in several of his books. Perhaps Delillo anticipated these attacks, since he was certainly aware of the state of anxiety which preceded them. In Delillo's universe, and the universe of his characters, there can be little suprise about the severity of the 9/11 attacks. There is no for surprise in
Falling Man, let alone the unexpected delight often discovered in works of great literary merit. I didn't, and I simply can't imagine anyone taking pleasure in the reading of
Falling Man, and if there is to be no pleasure, the author might as well have something to say about his subject, and Delillo, apparently, does not. Or at least nothing different then what he said in books like
Libra and
Underworld. The world is a dangerous place. Innocent people are hurt for no reason, other innocent people are not hurt also for no reason, and perpetrators of mind-numbing violence have their own reasons, with motives similar to those innocents they harm.
Published 11/7/18
Flight (2018)
Translated by Jennifer Crost
by Olga Tokarczuk
It has been a big couple years for literary fiction translated into English. First, the Man Booker Prize changed their international award to award a specific book, instead of giving it to a particular author. Second, the National Book Award announced a new award for works translated into English, starting this year. Olga Tokarczuk has been the big winner so far from both of these changes. First, she won the Man Booker in translation award last year. Second, she is the prohibitive favorite among the works selected for the National Book Award shortlist.
Tokarczuk then, is the face of this new trend towards appreciating books translated into English. Good for her, and us, too, because Flight is an inventive work of fiction, part "flash fiction," part short story collection, part novella, part novel, part roman a clef. In other words, Tokarczuk has taken well familiar forms and created something new. Her characters range across time and space, and in puzzle like fashion, the reader is asked to either figure out how they all connect, or I suppose, ignore connections and appreciate the whole of the work.
I checked out the Audiobook edition, simply because I couldn't lay hands on a hard copy, and I wasn't disappointed, but I would have enjoyed reading the actual book. It would have been easier to "unlock" the puzzle. As an Audiobook, I was simply swept along by the current.
Published 11/13/18
Boomer1 (2018)
by Daniel Torday I'm finding it hard to keep enough Audiobooks lined up to get me through my weekly driving around for work. Most of the books picked by the editors of the 1001 Books project for the initial revised 2008 edition are obscure enough to not have an Audiobook version available on the Los Angeles Public library app. After that, I'm looking for newly released literary fiction, but wait times are often measured in months.
Narrated by American actress Maggie Siff, Boomer1 is the first Audiobook that I actually didn't like. I'd hate to think it was because I didn't like the voice of the reader, a woman. It was more because I didn't like the book itself, a "satire(?)" about the "rise" of an anti-Baby Boomer terrorist organization founded by internet savvy millennials. I've read in various places that
Boomer1 is supposed to be funny on some level, but if so, I didn't get it. In fact, I found
Boomer1, and the characters of
Boomer1, to be some of the least amusing characters I've come across in recent years.
Today splits narration duties between Mark Bloomfield, bluegrass musician, professional failure and terrorist, his ex girlfriend Cassie Black (nee Claire Stankowitz) a fiddle playing, bi sexual hipster and his Mom Julia, also a fiddle player. Of the three, Cassie was the only one who kept my attention. Sad Mark and sad Julia don't make for a compelling mother/son literary duo, the mother literally (and metaphorically!) unable to hear, the son unable to listen.
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| Author Alison Hagy |
Published 11/26/18
Scribe (2018)
by Alison Hagy
Published by Graywolf Press
October 2nd, 2018 Scribe, the new novel by author Alison Hagy, takes place in an Appalachian flavored dystopia, that runs somewhere along the lines of Cormac McCarthy in his blood-soaked westerns. Hagy blends together many themes of apoca-lit, "migration, pandemic disease and the rise of authoritarianism" according to the copy on her publisher's page. Scribe is narrated by a nameless young woman, who lives in a (see above) world where the most distinctive characteristic is the disappearance of universal literacy. The narrator is a writer of messages, which she memorizes and repeats by travelling to the location of the intended recipient.
The basic story involves the appearance of a mysterious stranger- albeit in a world where all strangers are mysterious. The narrator exists by trading her literacy for favors, food, work on her land. She also manufactures paper, which apparently has some independent value of it's own accord. Narrator has twice inherited her land, first from her deceased doctor father, and second from her witchy-healer older sister, whose death is a substantial part of the story that unspools. Hagy does a solid job of keeping what sounds like a very R rated world PG-13. It is basically a frontier world lacking modern technology or government (or literacy) but still plentiful in terms of food and clean water.
Hagy keeps the action moving, and the choice to keep her narrator nameless isn't distracting, this being the kind of world where everyone knows your name, so to speak.
Scribe isn't quite YA, but it does exist at the border of YA and literary fiction. The central device of her first writing down the letter of her patrons and then having to personally deliver the contents of said letter seems a stretch to me, but it is the mechanism driving the story, so the reader either takes it or leaves it.
Published 11/26/18
Troubling Love (2006)
by Elena FerranteReplaces
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (
Reviewed May 2018)
Ferrante didn't really break out until the last year or so in the United States, mainly on the success of her four volume work known as the Neapolitan Novels, the first of which,
My Brilliant Friend, is currently receiving the prestige television treatment on HBO.
Troubling Love is NOT part of that set, but is her first novel, about a middle aged Italian woman trying to unravel the scandalous details surrounding her mother's untimely death.
Troubling Love is the work of a first time novelist who is already at the top of (presumably her) game, in the sense that
Troubling Love is a work of literary fiction that both delves insightfully into the human conditions while creating a story of suspense and revelation for the reader. Ferrante richly evokes the world of mid 20th century Naples, which I think is the setting of many if not all of her books.
Her replacement of
House of Leaves by American author Mark Z. Danielewski in the first revision of the 1001 Books list seems like a fair swap.
House of Leaves is an eccentric work which hasn't aged particularly well, and the bulky, mixed media nature of the book itself doesn't lend to canon stature.
Troubling Love, on the other hand, is brisk, manageable, and introduces a regional Italian viewpoint essentially absent from the canon before her arrival.
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| English Author Jim Crace has two Booker prize shortlists and a host of lesser prizes. |
Published 11/30/18
The Melody (2018)
by Jim Crace
Published June, 2018
Nan A. Talese There are a very few number of writers of literary fiction who manage to "make it" without having a break-out international best-seller (or American best-seller). These writers make it to the short list of the major literary awards and win lesser awards. They usually have multiple publishers and universally positive reviews but are less impressive when it comes to actual sales or recognition outside of the precincts of literary fiction.
Jim Crace is a classic example from this group, with two Booker shortlists and a Whitbread win in 1997. He established his reputation writing historical fiction- deep historical fiction, with books set in a Neolithic village (
The Gift of Stones) and the Judean desert 2000 years ago (
Quarantine.) In more recent books he has moved into the present, perhaps because he feels more secure as an established author of literary fiction. I mention all this because The Melody is very much the work of an established author, dealing as it does with the psychological minutiae of the artist in decline, very much an insiders work of theme and topic.
Said artist is Alfred Busi, a semi-popular, semi-famous singer and musician, living by himself (after the death of his wife) in a semi-abandoned villa overlooking the Mediterranean sea (I actually managed to listen to the entire Audiobook under the impression that the location was inside England, perhaps on the southern coast.) One night, Busi is attacked near his garbage bins by an unknown creature- he can't say whether it is animal or man, though he settles on describing the attacker as a feral, male child. This attack sets off a precipitous decline, which sees additional attacks on his person from various sources and the abandonment of the twilight of his professional career.
You might call this a hard sell, and certainly there is a whiff of the sales pitch in the advertising copy which focuses on the attack itself without mentioning that this activity is just a trigger for 300 pages of ruminations by Busi. Crace is, of course, a brilliant novelist, but
The Melody was a bit of a slog, and left me wanting to go back and read his break-through, award nominated books.
Published 12/2/18
The Savage Detectives (2007)
by Roberto BolañoReplaces: At Swim, Two Boys (2001) (
Reviewed March 2018)
I'm only twenty titles into the first revision of the 1001 Books list (2008), but the major trend is already clear: The introduction of large numbers of new authors from underrepresented regions of the globe. I've flagged a wave of Japanese titles that made it into the pre-1700's portion of the list. At the other end of the timeline, it is Latin American authors. Chilean poet-novelist Roberto Bolaño ranks at the top of this list, solely based on this book and 2666, his posthumously published epic about the femicide murders of Ciudad Juarez during the 1990's.
If
2666 is his
Naked Lunch,
The Savage Detectives is his
On The Road, a quasi-memoir that arrives at the intersection of Kerouac and Borges and proceeds to spin doughnut holes on the street like a participant in an Oakland sideshow. I bought a paperback copy of The Savage Detectives at a used book store down the street. It's almost 600 pages, but the
On The Road informed style makes for an easy journey for the reader. Sparkling and stuffed with the life of bohemia, as experienced by Spanish speaking intellectuals across countries like Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Spain and France, all of which make appearances during the frenetic, restless travels of the various characters- mostly poets and fellow travelers,
The Savage Detectives spans the 1970's, 80's and 90's most often taking the form of oral history where various characters relate stories about the two major characters- Arturo Bolano, a stand in for the author, and Ulises Lima. Bolano "himself" narrates the early adventures in Mexico City, after that the oral history format dominates.
The Savage Detectives is filled with sex, drugs and literature, often in that order. It is not a detective story except in the most oblique sense of that phrase (concerning the mid 1980's disappearance of Lima during a Central American conference of poets.
The Savage Detectives replaces
At Swim, Two Boys, which is great, but really, it's no comparison. Bolano is a force of nature, he comes from an underrepresented region in the original books, and it is impossible to deny the life force of one vis a vis the other.
Published 12/5/18
Bartleby & Co. (2007)
by Enrique Vila-MatasReplaces:
Schooling (2001)by Heather McGowan (
Reviewed March 2018)
Bartleby & Co is a real delight and discovery, by Barcelona/Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas. It takes the form of a series of footnotes to a non existent text, mostly about the "literature of no" as exemplified by the Bartleby of Herman Melville's short story(which is not on the 1001 Books list, fyi.)
I was enraptured by
Bartleby & Co, both by the delightful all footnote format, but also by the very real observations about the literature of no over the years, decades and indeed, centuries. The narrator of
Bartleby & Co, a dwarf clerk working anonymously in Barcelona, is a Borges short story come to light, and it's hard to consider
Bartleby & Co a very Borgesian exercise. It's a very satisfying replacement for Schooling by American writer Heather McGowan. McGowan hasn't done much since, and the school girl lolita motif with a heavy dose of modernist stream of consciousness narration does not add up to a canonical pick in my mind.
Bartleby & Co, on the other hand, is a genuine delight and worth looking up.
Published 12/7/18
2666 (2008) by
Roberto BolañoReplaces: Elizabeth Costello (2003)by J.M. Coetzee (
Reviewed March 2018)
2666, published after the death of the author from liver disease, seems destined to be one of those epochal books that many know and few have read, and fewer...understand. Nearly 1100 pages in the Spanish original and over 900 in the English translation, Bolaño left instructions that the single book published as
2666 was meant to be five different books, corresponding to the five interrelated parts.
The central part is part four, the "Part about the Crimes" the crimes being the hundreds of femicide murders that plagued the Ciudad Juarez area in the 1990's. Ciudad Juarez appears as Santa Theresa in the book, and it is clear that the murders described are meant to resemble the crimes from that city.
Two of the other four parts, the first and the last, concern the mythical German language novelist Archimboldi, the first part "The Part About the Critics" being about a group of Archimboldi scholars who try to track him down, Archimboldi himself having lived in Salinger/Pynchonesque obscurity for his entire life. The last part is written about the life of Archimboldi himself. The other two parts are a part about an African American journalist, last name Fate, who comes to Santa Theresa to cover a boxing match, only to discovery the horror of the murders. The final part (third in order) is the part about Amalfitano, a Barcelonan professor of philosophy, widowed, with a teenage daughter, who moves to Santa Theresa for work, and who slowly declines into madness.
Like many of the maximalist titles of 20th and 21st century literature, simply finishing the book is enough to impart a belief that said book is "a classic." After all, what is the point of reading 1000 pages (or listening to a 40 hour Audiobook, in my case) and saying it was just ok. Once again in the case of a book longer than 500 pages, I felt like an Audiobook was the right choice. While Bolaño's background as a poet made me initially question whether I might be missing some kind of nuance from the printed page, the style of 2666 is shambolic, and admittedly so, since both the foreword and postscript point out that the author died before he finished working on the manuscript.
Certainly 2666 has it's poetic moments, but it has also has journalist/police report style pages documenting over 100 murders, every single one of them involving the sexual violation of women, and often involving crude methods of murder: stabbing, dismemberment, strangulation. It is enough to make the reader want to throw up, or at least to make even the most hardened true crime fan a little nauseous. The central question, left unanswered is, "who was responsible?"
Based on 2666 there appear to be several answers, and also several causes, but the social disruption caused by the young, female factory workers of the maquiladora industry of Santa Theresa, coupled with the status as that same place as a center of the international drug trade appear to be major contributing factors. It seems unlikely that there was a single perpetrator, instead, some women are killed by jealous spouses, others appear to be the victims of (likely more than one) sexually violent criminal gangs. The most outlandish theory, that the women are kidnapped, raped and murdered by wealthy businessmen and drug barons also seems to have some element of truth.
Amazingly, the use of DNA evidence never comes into play at any point, including the introduction of an American retired FBI agent who is brought in as a last ditch effort to get some answers. I would think, at least, that the question of DNA would at least have been raised during the 500 pages that Bolano devotes to "the part about the crimes" in 2666.
Compared to the part about the crimes, the other four parts pale in comparison, though Bolano does indeed manage to tie things together in the final part, about German novelists Archimboldi. 2666 replaces Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee, another writer who is grotesquely over-represented in the original 1001 Books list. It is truly a no-brainer switch. I highly recommend the unabridged Audiobook, it was excellent.
Published 12/17/18
Bleeding Edge (2013)
by Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon is eighty years old, and it entirely possible that his 2013 edge of 9/11 detective novel will prove to be his last published work. If this the case, Pynchon's published novels will fit neatly into two categories, "early" Pynchon, V.(1963), The Crying of Lot 49(1966) and Gravity's Rainbow(1973): all considered to be classics by critics and audiences alike, all still in print; and late Pynchon: Vineland (1990), Mason & Dixon(1997), Against the Day(2006), Inherent Vice (2009) and this book.
If and when Pynchon gets a literary biography, I believe the primary factual question to be resolved is what, exactly he was doing between 1974, let's say, after Gravity's Rainbow had made it's splash landing in the mind of the international reading public, and 1990, when Vineland was published. The gap corresponds neatly to the amount of time it would take to raise a single child, or the substantial period of several children between the ages of zero and adolescence.
Later Pynchon has elicited mixed responses. Vineland is generally the least well regarded of all his books. Mason & Dixon and Against the Day received canonical level responses from critics but failed to land with popular audiences. Regardless of the mixed responses, those three books make sense in that they carry a common serious purpose with his early period. What then to make of Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge, which are like a pair of coastal detective novels, Inherent Vice representing Los Angeles and Bleeding Edge New York City.
Further, Bleeding Edge is the first Pynchon novel to take on what is essentially a contemporary milieu, and the milieu is New York City on the eve of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. My personal memory of the release of Bleeding Edge is that it happened with barely a ripple in the public consciousness. Pynchon, of course, does not do press, let alone participate in social media marketing in public, and nor has he done something like won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
It is accurate to say that Bleeding Edge alongside Inherent Vice are the only two books that a reader might consider, "fun." It is also accurate to say that Pynchon at his most fun is not very fun. I almost felt out of my depth listening to the 30 hour Audiobook- had trouble keeping track of the galaxy of characters, and at several points stopped the Audiobook to Google references here and there.
The September 11th attacks were themselves like a Pynchon plot brought to life, and surely the question must have nagged the author as he wrote this book- in which the actual attack happens near the end of the book, and off camera, so to speak. Bleeding Edge is also, notably, a love letter to prelapsarian Manhattan, as much as Inherent Vice was a love letter to 1970's Venice Beach/Manhattan Beach. Where both books fit with the rest of the catalog is unclear. Neither book went far enough into what might be considered middle of the road public taste to spark a best-seller level phenomenon, and both plots are detective novels- not literary fiction with detective novel elements, which seems to have alienated the critical audience that more or less stood by him between the old and new periods.
I don't think anyone can read Bleeding Edge and say it in any way damages his legacy, but it didn't win him the Nobel Prize in Literature, making Pynchon second on the list (behind Philip Roth of "most snubbed 20th century American author." As of this writing it seems pretty clear that he won't win the award at all, a pretty harsh verdict for a titan of 20th century literature.
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| Author Nafissa Thompson Spires |
Published 12/17/18
The Heads of Colored People (2018)
by Nafissa Thompson-Spires The Heads of the Colored People, a short story collection by author Nafissa Thompson-Spires was longlisted for the National Book Award this year. I actually saw this book on the shelf at the local public library when I was picking up some other books and recognizing it from the longlist, I thought I would give it a whirl.
The Heads of Colored People is truly a short-story collection, not a novella with some odds and sods thrown in for weight. The themes that seem close to Thompson-Spires in this collection is the situation of African American's existed in largely white or multi-ethnic environments and the impact that has on the psyche of the various short story narrators and protagonists. For readers who share this experience, or a similar fish out of water ethnic or socio economic experience, the response is likely to be nods of recognition. For those readers without that experience, or with only a limited amount of such experiences, the reaction might well be more one of shock and horror.
I will be excited to see what is next from this author, presumably a novel.
Published 12/21/18
The Stolen Bicycle (2015)
by Wu Ming -Yi
Taiwanese author Wu Ming-Yi is one of a small handful of Chinese-language writers of literary fiction who have managed to find an audience in the West. Yi's novel The Man With the Compound Eyes was published in English in 2011 and The Stolen Bicycle followed in 2015. It was also nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, where he lost out to Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, and her elegant collection of interlinked short stories, Flights.
Compared to that book, The Stolen Bicycle is a much more conventional work, albeit an incredibly interesting example of what you might call "the memory novel," a sub genre of literary fiction where a character retraces the past in an attempt to solve a problem in the present. Both The Man With the Compound Eyes and The Stolen Bicycle delve deeply into the complicated history of Taiwan.
This history includes a diverse indigenous population with linguistic ties to the "Austronesian" family. These groups were overrun by Han Chinese immigrants beginning in the European middle ages and in the mid 17th century Taiwan came under the control of the Chinese Emperor. Today, the indigenous population comprises less than 5% of the population of Taiwan. Leading up the events of World War II, Japan made major inroads in Taiwan, eventually annexing it during the war. During the early 20th century, Taiwanese were sent to Japan to work and for school, and many indigenous Taiwanese joined the Japanese army.
Yi manages to integrate this complicated history, narrated by Cheng, a novelist who begins a quest to tie up a loose end surrounding his father's mysterious disappearance when he was a kid. Yi includes several chapters about the actual development of the bicycle in Taiwan, and during the course of the book Cheng becomes an avid collector-type of bicycle. The story develops as Cheng talks to different people who bring him closer to what he hopes is the truth.
The Stolen Bicycle makes for compelling reading, well worth the effort, with interesting detours into the history of the indigenous people of Taiwan and the experience of those people during World War II, fighting in the Japanese army.
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| English Author Sarah Perry, |
Published 12/21/18
Melmoth (2018)
by Sarah Perry Sarah Perry first came to international attention with her second novel,
The Essex Serpent, currently sitting on my bookshelf in hard back form, borrowed from a witchy friend of mine. Her new book, called
Melmoth, is a gender inverted, modernized version of the 1820 gothic classic,
Melmoth the Wanderer, which itself is loosely based on the story of the wandering Jew.
Perry mimics the technique of Maturin, who weaved together a variety of narratives in a method that would strike a modern reader as "post-modern." Incredibly, Perry and, I suppose, her publisher, seem to assume not only that the reader has not, themselves, read the original, but that they have not even heard of the original book. In fact, one of the characters refers to the original novel as being essentially lost to modern readers. That would probably come as a surprise to the publishers of the Oxford World's Classics series, who keep
Melmoth the Wanderer in print. It might also surprise the editors of the 1001 Books list, who included the Maturin book as a core title of their canonical list.
I didn't particularly like this Melmoth, as indeed I did not like the original, and I positively disliked the Audiobook edition, which I would specifically NOT recommend. The narrator's voice actually annoyed me and there were several moments- including the reoccurring incident of jackdaws loudly cawing outside a window- which almost made me physically sick. I've never experienced anything like that reaction for any other Audiobook I've encountered, including the amateur readers of the librivox app. I wouldn't recommend either book, to be honest. I have high hopes for
The Essex Serpent, which I still intend to read next year.
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| American author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah |
P
ublished 12/22/18
Friday Black (2018)
by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Published October 2018 by Mariner Books I've been coming to terms with the need to read more collections of short-stories. It is, after all, the best way to get a handle on newish type authors who will shortly be releasing novels. It is also a format that has really come into it's own in the past decade in terms of recognition by the literary prize authorities. For example, Alice Munro, the Canadian short story writer won the Nobel Prize in Literature a few years ago. The National Book Award has more or less regularly rewarded short story collections in the past couple decades. George Saunders, who finally published his first novel after a lifetime of short story collections, won the Booker Prize.
Saunders taught Adjei-Brenyah when he was attending the Syracuse MFA program, and it is hard not to think of the influence of Saunders on Adjei (and to be fair almost every other short story writer looking to break into the literary big time.
Friday Black, Adjei's debut collection of short stories lands somewhere between Saunders and the dystopian Netflix tv show Black Mirror in terms of his themes. Many of the stories herein contain a combination of the experience of African American men in contemporary (or slightly post-contemporary) America, and almost all of the stories contain a critique of consumer capitalism.
Friday Black is worth looking up, and I'm excited to see what Adjei will do next.
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| Tayari Jones, author of the much lauded novel An American Marriage. |
Published 12/22/18
An American Marriage (2018)
by Tayari Jones
2018 was a break-out year for American author Tayari Jones. Her novel An American Marriage was a selection for the Oprah Book Club, was subsequently optioned for a movie version by Oprah, made it onto the best-seller list and made it to the short list for the National Book Award. A Pulitzer Prize wouldn't seem out of the question at this point.
I can understand why
An American Marriage has elicited such positive feedback. The story is about a young African American couple, Roy and Celestial, who, seem on track for membership in Atlanta's African American elite in the beginning of the book. Roy is a first generation college student bursting with ambition, Celestial is a recent arts graduate, the daughter of a wealthy Atlanta area inventor, who has a viable artistic career as a maker of dolls.
Jones alternates narration duties between Roy, Celestial and Andre, Celestial's childhood friend. The near-idyllic and brand new (a little over a year) marriage is traumatized when Roy is arrested for raping a white woman in a motel near his hometown in Louisiana. While Jones is undoubtedly a talented writer, I found the circumstances leading to his conviction- the only piece of evidence being a cross-racial eyewitness identification by the victim- to be less than compelling. I'm not saying that cases like this aren't possible, but it just didn't sound right to me. For example, the utter absence of DNA evidence, the absence of which surely would have exonerated Roy well before trial.
But of course the reader needs to accept the premises of the author, and it is really the consequences of this wrongful conviction- i.e. Roy's lengthy imprisonment while his appeals make their way through the state and federal court system, which form the backbone of
An American Marriage. Large parts of
An American Marriage take place in epistolary format, the rest is first person narration by the three main characters.
I managed to land a copy of the Audiobook from the library after waiting three months. Since the entire book is either epistolary or narrated from a first person perspective, it makes for a solid Audiobook, but the emotional content is so charged that I found myself wishing I had the book instead, if only so I could shut it for a moment here and there and give the revelations time to settle.
Published 12/22/18
All the Old Knives (2015)
by Olen Steinhauer
The major bottle neck I'm facing in my book intake right now is the 15 book limit that the Los Angeles Public Library system places on holds for Ebooks and Audiobooks. Waits of 2 to 3 months for new and popular existing releases are common. I wouldn't be shocked to wait six months for a particularly popular title. The problem is especially acute for Audiobooks and so inevitably I'm going to forced to expand my reading in genre fiction. The relevant genres would be crime fiction, science fiction/fantasy and spy stories. All three genres have spawned canonical authors in recent decades, and detective fiction seems to have particularly influence non-genre literary fiction. You really can't throw a rock without reading a contemporary work of literary fiction that lacks at least a hint of detective fiction in terms of theme, style or characterization.
So here I am reading a 2015 novel by the intriguing but still solidly genre bound spy fiction writer Olen Steinhauer. The benefit of reading genre fiction is that it tends to sell well, and this makes it readily available. For example, no wait to borrow the Audiobook version from the library (5 of 7 copies available!) Another benefit of reading genre fiction is that it is not challenging. The negatives are that genre fiction is, by definition formulaic, and- this is particular to spy novels- it is incredibly white. White and well educated- is there any spy novel in existence that does not have a well educated, white, protagonist?
That certainly isn't the case for detective fiction, and certainly not the case for science fiction/fantasy, both of which have active minority communities of artists and audiences. All the Old Knives scores a zero on the diversity meter, but Steinhauer is a cleverer-than-most writer, and the format of All the Old Knives: Two old lovers meet in a restaurant in Carmel-by-the-sea (No one calls it that in California) two discuss the murder of a plane full of passengers by hijackers, an event which happened when both of them were stationed at the Vienna station of the CIA.
As it turns out, there was a mole feeding information to the terrorists on the plane and the book sets out reveal who done it and why. Personally, I wasn't surprised by any event on this book, up to and including the plot twists. I also found the motivation of the mole lacking. Not really something to discuss without spoiling the third act, but I didn't buy it one bit. There's a movie version in development. Interested to see how that turns out.