Reading this book was one of those happy accidents that I brought about through my own stupidity. Sometimes it's good to be an idiot.
I got a kind offeReading this book was one of those happy accidents that I brought about through my own stupidity. Sometimes it's good to be an idiot.
I got a kind offer to receive an advance copy of this from the publisher, and I confused Curtis Sittenfeld with another author that wrote a book I loved. (A male author no less, and their names share nothing in common. I’m too embarrassed to even name him.) So I’ve never read Pride & Prejudice nor seen a film version of it, never had no urge to do so, and scratched my head at the thought of a modern retelling of it that didn’t have zombies in it as a hook. I still accepted the copy based on that case of mistaken identity. Only after I got it did I realize my error, and I was horrified at what I’d done and was trying to think of how I could politely send it back. Then I remembered that I had read a book by Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife, and quite liked it. So I somewhat grudgingly decided that I was honor bound to at least give it a try. Then I ended up enjoying the book a lot.
I told you that little tale because it’s fitting that my experience with the book began this way because it’s the kind of thing that drives the whole story. An innocent mistake, embarrassment about it, an awkward obligation, and then confusion about how to handle the situation.(view spoiler)[ And it has a happy ending. (hide spoiler)]
The Bennet family consists of the parents and five daughters. After Mr. Bennet has a heart attack the two oldest sisters, Jane and Liz, return home to Cincinnati from New York to help during his recovery. Since their mother cares only about traditional appearances and social status she’s embarrassed that Jane and Liz aren’t married and is desperate for one of them to hook up with handsome and rich Dr. Chip Bingley who was recently on a reality TV show called Eligible where he unsuccessfully tried to find a wife. Mrs. Bennet wrangles an invitation to a barbecue where the daughters meet him, and Jane and Chip actually do hit it off. However, Liz is far less impressed with Bingley’s friend and fellow doctor Fitzwilliam Darcy after she overhears him making insulting comments about her hometown and her family.
Complications arise with Jane and Chip’s budding romance, and the other Bennets are also a mess. The pragmatic Liz finds herself trying to fix situations ranging from her mother’s compulsive shopping and her parents’ financial problems while trying to motivate her younger sisters to do something with their lives. She also has to deal with the doubts that she starts having about her own long term affair with a married man.
You wouldn’t think that a 19th century novel of manners would work as a modern American story since we pretty much seem to be without shame as a people these days. After all, how do you have a plot that depends on social niceties in a culture that has things like reality television and cell phones? However, some clever choices by Sittenfeld make it all seem natural. Having Mrs. Bennet be obsessed with old school social norms and constantly finding her daughters lacking for their modern ways is one piece of that. Setting it in a Midwestern city, but having Darcy be from California draws nicely on coastal elitism to set the stage for a lot of the friction between him and Liz. The lack of internal filters of the younger sisters seems to come straight from a society where speaking your mind (Even if it's a rude or stupid thought.) is prized over simple civility and politeness.
All of this could have seemed like a bad romantic comedy cooked up by Hollywood that hinges on misunderstandings and wacky characters. What keeps it out of that ditch is the way that Sittenfeld writes the characters, particularly Liz who is the main focus. It required a deft touch to hit the right balance of letting Liz misread some situations while not making her seem like an idiot. She has to sometimes be judgmental, but she never comes across as shrill or a hypocrite despite her own imperfect choices. The story also requires her to be kind of a busybody, but she doesn’t seem like a bossy know-it-all. Overall, she seems like a nice woman doing her best to help her idiotic family and friends deal with their lives, and she can generally find the humor in all of it, including her own behavior.
I’m not sure how hardcore P&P fans will react to this, but I’d think they would generally find it a clever update. Checking out the Wikipedia page on the original tells me that there were some Easter eggs that went right over my head that they would probably enjoy. If you haven’t read it, but are looking for kind of a low key family drama with some well-drawn characters and a sense of humor then I’d highly recommend it because it was an entertaining read without knowing anything about the source material.
One other note: At about 500 pages this may seem like a borderline kitten-squisher, but it is made up of many very short chapters. Some of them are just a paragraph or two. So there is a lot of white space on the page, or at least there was in my ARC. So it's a very fast read, and the word count is a lot lower than you'd think just looking at a copy....more
If Richard Russo wasn’t a great writer he might have made a pretty good physicist because he seems to know all about inertia. Or at least he’s an expeIf Richard Russo wasn’t a great writer he might have made a pretty good physicist because he seems to know all about inertia. Or at least he’s an expert at having his characters struggle against its force whether they're trying to get moving or change direction.
This sequel to Nobody's Fool returns us to the blue collar town of Bath in upstate New York. A change in his circumstances from the previous book has made Donald Sullivan relatively prosperous with no need to work the kind of back breaking jobs he’d done for most of his life, but at 70 he’s just received some very bad news about his health. Sully’s old nemesis, Douglas Raymer, is now the police chief, but no one respects him including Raymer himself. His wife died just as she was about to leave him for another man, and Raymer is obsessed with learning the identity of this guy by using the only clue he has, a remote control for a garage door opener.
In addition to Sully and Raymer we catch up with several other Bath residents. Rub feels forsaken and heartbroken that he doesn’t get to spend all day working with his best friend Sully anymore. Carl Roebuck’s construction company is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and a disgusting unknown substance oozing of the basement in his latest project isn’t going to improve that situation. Ruth used to cheat on her husband with Sully, but even though their affair has cooled off she is growing conflicted about his regular presence in the diner she runs. She’s also worried that about her no-good former son-in-law hanging around now that he’s out of jail despite the restraining order against him. Raymer has to deal with his sassy officer Charice whose sharp tongue often makes him feel even dumber than usual, and her twin brother Jerome isn’t helping his state of mind either.
There’s a couple of things that set this apart from Nobody’s Fool. The first book happened over several months and took its time getting you into the small town rhythms of Sully’s life. Everything here occurs over an eventful 48 hours that begins with a funeral and includes a construction accident, deadly reptiles, a tree pruning mishap, lightning strikes, and a crime spree. Russo does a nice job of filling us in on the back stories of the previous novel while catching us up on what’s happened since, but as with Nobody’s Fool or Empire Falls the real charm lies not with the story but with the characters.
You’d think that with small town folks like these would be fairly dull, but Russo gives us the rich inner lives of each person he shifts the focus to so that each of them feels like the hero of their own epic story. Even a pretty simple and stupid guy like Rub, whose biggest dreams are of free cheeseburgers, becomes a minor tragedy as he reflects on how much he misses working with Sully every day and faces the realization that things will never be like that again. However, Russo is also constantly throwing in touches of comedy that keep things from becoming maudlin and morose.
Sully is as big a draw here as he was in the first novel. There he was an aging rogue who was determined to live his own way even if he acknowledged that his stubbornness was preventing him from ever getting ahead. Older now and facing his own mortality Sully has started to reflect a bit more on what his actions mean for the lives of others.
Raymer is the second major piece and maybe more of an accomplishment for Russo. Moving an existing character like Sully forward ten years has the advantage of starting with a known quantity. Raymer was a very minor figure in the first book who was portrayed as a complete idiot. Turning him from that into a sympathetic guy who constantly thinks of himself as a fool who is failing at everything was no easy task. He could have come across as self-pitying or tiresome, but I found myself engaged and rooting hard for Raymer to pull his act together.
As with other two Russo books I’ve read it did seem to go on a bit too long, and there were a few too many story twists and turns. Still, he’s got an incredible knack for writing about these small town people and immersing us in their lives to the point where I’m interested and entertained by pretty much anything they’re doing. It’s a great follow up to Nobody’s Fool with the same warmth and humor.
One thing did bum me out while reading this. Nobody’s Fool was adapted into a very good movie starring Paul Newman as Sully. Newman died in 2008 so obviously he couldn’t reprise the role, but that film also had Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who was just starting out at the time, playing Raymer. Reading this now I was repeatedly struck by the thought this would have been a fantastic part for Hoffman to come back to. More’s the pity....more
The main character of this book, Donald ‘Sully’ Sullivan, is a routinely careless man who left his wife and had almost nothing to do with raising his The main character of this book, Donald ‘Sully’ Sullivan, is a routinely careless man who left his wife and had almost nothing to do with raising his son. He’s had an affair with a married woman for twenty years, and he’s lusting after yet another man’s wife. Sully also drinks and gambles on a near daily basis. At one point in this book he pimp slaps a woman, and there's another part in which he engages in an act that probably meets the legal definition of animal cruelty.
Sounds like a real bastard, doesn’t he?
Actually, Sully is one of the most likable characters I’ve read in some time, and most of the damage he inadvertently does to others is trumped by the amount he does to himself.
In the blue collar town of North Bath in upstate New York, Sully is a 60 year old laborer with a bum knee that he injured on a job, but rather than follow the advice of his lawyer and everyone else he knows Sully insists on returning to work rather than follow the legal course of trying to get full disability. Why? Even Sully couldn’t tell you, but his insistence on doing things his way rather than the smart way is a lifelong habit with him. The fact that this attitude has him perpetually broke with only a run-down pick-up truck to his name does nothing to hinder Sully’s commitment to turning left whenever someone tells him to go right.
If he’s low on money then Sully is rich in friends. Or at least he has no shortage of people to bullshit and argue with as he makes his daily rounds of the coffee shop, OTB, and the local bar. As Sully tries to get back to work while coping with his wrecked knee he bumps into his estranged son Peter and his family who are back in town for Thanksgiving. Events eventually force Sully to face that even though he’s spent a lifetime trying to avoid even the mildest form of personal responsibility that there are some times when it can’t be dodged any longer.
I've seen the movie version of this with Paul Newman several times over the years and liked it so much that I always meant to pick up the book but never got around to it. After checking out Russo’s Empire Falls and now this, I’m wishing I’d been reading him for a lot longer. Stories about small communities fallen on hard times are something he does exceedingly well in both, and while there are a lot of similarities between his fictional towns he creates large and vivid casts of characters with their individual histories and motivations that feel unique to each book. There’s also more than enough humor to keep the whole thing from becoming a boring slog about how hard life can be.
Sully is a particularly great creation as a good natured slob with a self-destructive streak that he acknowledges even as he feels no particular urge to change. He’s smart enough to win most of the arguments he gets into, but still usually too stubborn to lose a battle to win a war. While he may bitch about how he’s spent his life working like a dog and yet doesn’t have to pot to piss in there’s also a feeling of general contentment about Sully. As long as his truck starts and he can afford to bet his daily horse race and get a few beers at the bar he really doesn’t feel like he needs much more.
It’s a bit long and there are a few too many sub-plots for my taste. (The scaled down plot of the movie actually works better as a story.) It’s still a terrific book with a lead character that you can’t help but like even as you wish that he’d wise up just a little bit. ...more
Empire Falls, Maine is a town that’s best days are long behind it. The mill and factory that used to be the main employers have been closed for years,Empire Falls, Maine is a town that’s best days are long behind it. The mill and factory that used to be the main employers have been closed for years, and the only person around with two dimes to rub together is the very rich Francine Whiting who essentially owns and controls everything worth having in the area. Miles Robey was on the verge of earning his college degree and escaping Empire Falls forever when he returned home to care for his dying mother and ended up working for Mrs. Whiting as the manager of the Empire Grill.
Two decades later and Miles is a middle aged punching bag still slinging burgers who probably bursts into tears every time he hears Pearl Jam’s Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town. His selfish wife Janine is divorcing Miles to marry health club owner Walt Comeau who likes to stop by the Empire Grill every afternoon to rub it in. Miles’ father Max is the town neer-do-well who is impervious to guilt and is constantly trying to get money out of him. Town cop Jimmy Minty starts approaching Miles under the guise of friendship but has some long simmering grudge against him. Worst of all is that Miles has to report the slender profits to Mrs. Whiting even as she refuses to pay for any improvements to the increasingly shabby diner. The one bright spot in life for Miles is his teen-aged daughter Tick who he loves dearly and has a close relationship with.
This is the first book I’ve read by Russo (Although I’ve seen the movie version of Nobody’s Fool.), and I absolutely loved it. At least until the ending, but we’ll get to that shortly. The depiction of a small blue collar town slowly going under was done incredibly well from the opening that describes how Empire Falls has been ruled by the Whitings for generations and how heir C.B. went from his dream of wanting to be a poet and artist in Mexico to running the family business and marrying Francine.
The characters are another big selling point because there’s a lot more than I described in the brief summary above, and all of them seem rich and fully developed. It’s to Russo’s credit that he was able to make a cast that includes some absolutely infuriating and unpleasant people and make you at least understand all of them. There were times where I wished that Miles would push his father out of a moving car or toss a pan full of hot grease into the face of Walt, but there was also a certain obnoxious charm to them most of the time.
Miles is the heart of the book, and I was a little worried that I wasn’t going to like him much in the early going. I’m generally not a fan of passive characters that are so wrapped up in regrets and unearned guilt that they’re essentially just pawns for anyone looking to use them, and Miles fits this description to a T. Being raised Catholic by his selfless mother has convinced him that wanting anything is practically a sin, and he’s almost pathologically incapable of standing up for himself. However, Miles’ brother is constantly calling him out for taking the path of least resistance and urging him to at least try to change his circumstances. That awareness of his nature and the flashes of backbone that Miles shows at times make him sympathetic despite being pretty much a doormat.
As far as the ending (view spoiler)[ I loved that Mrs. Whiting had essentially turned Miles into an indentured servant because of the affair his mother had with her husband. Miles seemed exceptionally slow on the uptake there, but the hardest place to see a trap is from inside it.
However, I was less pleased with other elements. John Voss shooting the people in the high school was the kind of dramatic moment that it would take for Miles to make a big gesture like leaving Empire Falls to protect Tick. So while I wasn’t sold on the idea of this character driven story about small town secrets and regrets turning into a ripped-from-the-headlines tragedy, it made sense in that respect. But I didn’t like how everything got kind of deus ex machina after that. Mrs. Whiting drowns, Jimmy Minty is disgraced, Zach gets shipped off to Seattle, Janine leaves Walt all while David and Bea get the new restaurant going. That all just seemed a little too convenient for Miles. (hide spoiler)]
Despite those complaints this was still an exceptionally well written book with that did a great job establishing and exploring all the tangled relationships in one dying town, and it has enough humor to keep everything from getting overly grim and depressing for the most part. It’s easy to see why it won a Pulitzer. ...more
One of the stories in this collection features experimental drugs that can enhance someone’s verbal ability to describe an event. I feel like I could One of the stories in this collection features experimental drugs that can enhance someone’s verbal ability to describe an event. I feel like I could use a few doses of that stuff to help me review this book because I’m struggling to articulate what I found so good about it.
At a basic level, there are ten short stories that reminded me somewhat of Kurt Vonnegut because Saunders uses sci-fi concepts and humor in several of them to depict various aspects of human nature, but this has some nastier edges than you’d usually find in Vonnegut’s more melancholy tone.
I enjoyed almost all of them, but there are three stand outs. Escape From Spiderhead features a genuinely disturbing account of a prisoner being used an experimental subject for various drugs that can be used to make someone fall instantly into love or hit a suicidal depth of despair within moments. Victory Lap is about a young man whose behavior has been so dictated by his parents that he finds himself almost paralyzed as he witnesses a neighbor girl being abducted. Exhortation is written as a message from a corporate middle manager urging his people to do a better job that takes a sinister turn.
There are similar characters and ideas brought up in a several of the stories like a dystopian future with a corporate layer of bullshit laid on top of it. Both Spiderhead and My Chivalric Fiasco have drugs that can modify behavior to extreme lengths. Prominent characters are poor and stupid like Al Roosten and the narrator of The Semplica Girl Diaries.
The only one I didn’t care for was the very short Sticks about a man whose yard decorations get increasingly bizarre. That one seemed more gimmick than story. ...more
Treasure of the Rubbermaids 19: Big Rock Candy Mountain
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containerTreasure of the Rubbermaids 19: Big Rock Candy Mountain
The on-going discoveries of priceless books and comics found in a stack of Rubbermaid containers previously stored and forgotten at my parent’s house and untouched for almost 20 years. Thanks to my father dumping them back on me, I now spend my spare time unearthing lost treasures from their plastic depths.
Francis Phelan is living the romantic life of a hobo during the Great Depression. Drifting from town to town by hopping trains and with no responsibilities to tie him down, Francis enjoys the company of his fellow bums as they share cans of beans and jugs of wine.
OK, that’s bullshit. Any notions of the hobo lifestyle having some kind of appeal are dealt with quickly and brutally here. Francis’s existence is a daily grind of trying to avoid freezing or starving to death, and a hobo’s corpse quickly becomes food for wild dogs. With few teeth left in his head and a simple shoestring being beyond his means, Francis dispels the myth of the carefree hobo. Particularly cringe worthy is a scene in which he is trying to take advantage of a visit to a friend’s apartment by cleaning himself up and his underwear falls to pieces when he tries to wash them in the sink. Think about how skeevy those drawers had to be and tell me you want to hang out by the campfire under the bridge.
Francis is also dealing with a fair amount of guilt. He hit the rails the first time after killing a scab during a strike, and while he eventually came home after that incident, another tragic turn sent him on the bum for good when Francis dropped his infant son who broke his neck in the fall. (Way to go, butterfingers!) His life as a hobo added to his regrets as the rough existence of a drifter forced him to kill others along the way. As a wise man once sang:
Nothing beats the hobo life Stabbing folks with my hobo knife
Back in his old home town of Albany, Francis is stuck trying to work off a debt to a lawyer and dealing with the many ghosts that his past has haunted him with. He’s also trying to look out for his hobo girlfriend Helen and his buddy Rudy. Running into his grown sons provides the shocking realization that his family doesn’t hold a grudge for him abandoning them, but can Francis ever forgive himself?
Francis story is sad and compelling, and he’s an interesting character. He makes no excuses for the things he’s done or how he lives. Despite his capacity for violence, he doesn’t look for trouble. He’s generous with what little he has as well as compassionate. He’s got a kind of cheerful pragmatism despite the regrets he has.
The story of Francis makes this worth checking out, and it’s certainly well written, but I’m a little shocked that it won a Pulitzer. It seems very good, but not at a level of greatness that kind of prize would indicate. ...more
Mildred Pierce would have made a great guest for Dr. Phil or Oprah.
During the Great Depression, Mildred’s husband has been moping about since the collMildred Pierce would have made a great guest for Dr. Phil or Oprah.
During the Great Depression, Mildred’s husband has been moping about since the collapse of his real estate business and takes up with another woman until Mildred has enough and throws him out. That takes care of one problem but leaves her to support their two daughters herself. With no work experience, Mildred finally takes a job as a waitress that she finds humiliating, but eventually her parlays what she learns and her baking skills into a successful restaurant.
So Mildred could be a great example of feminine independence as a single mother who becomes a small business owner thanks to her hard work and careful planning. On the other hand, Mildred is often a conflicted mess with an inferiority complex who can never find the balance between living too cheaply or too extravagantly, and she’s got horrible taste in men.
And then there’s her daughter Veda.
Veda is an exceptional instance of a writer creating a character that you just love to hate with this snobby manipulative child who looks down her nose at the mother who supports her and grows into something even worse.
Damn, did I love to hate Veda.
I hated her so much that I hoped that Mildred would sell her off to work in a Depression-era sweatshop in which there was some kind of dangerous machinery that would mangle her.
I hated Veda so much that I hoped she’d get polio.
I hated Veda so much that I hoped she’d take an airplane ride with Amelia Earhart.
I hated Veda so much that I hoped she’d end up traveling with the Joad family so she’d get all the misery she so richly deserved.
I hated Veda so much that I started hating Mildred for loving her.
Since Cain created a couple of classic noir femme fatales in The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, it’s interesting that he wrote this book about the complex and unhealthy relationship between a mother and a daughter that also took a long look at what it was like for women of the era. ...more
As promised in the title, Skippy dies. In fact, he dies in the first few pages when he falls off his stool in a doughTalk about truth in advertising….
As promised in the title, Skippy dies. In fact, he dies in the first few pages when he falls off his stool in a doughnut shop. Who was this kid and what happened? Well, that’s what the rest of the book is for.
Skippy was Daniel Juster, a shy and nerdy boy at a Catholic boy’s school in Ireland. In the time before his death, we meet a variety of characters that are unknowingly part of the chain of events that lead to his untimely demise. There’s Skippy’s roommate, an overweight student named Ruprecht who is fascinated by the promise of multiple dimensions hypothesized in M-theory and who makes bizarre inventions that never work. Lorelai is a girl from a neighboring school that Skippy has developed a crush on, but she’s also the object of a creepy obsession of one of his fellow students who is also a pyschopath and novice drug dealer. Howard ‘The Coward’ Fallon is Skippy’s history teacher with his own complicated history at the school and who hopes to cure his dissatisfaction with his life by sleeping with a beautiful substitute geography teacher. Greg Costigan is the acting principal who cares so much about the school that looking out for its students has slipped far down his priority list.
What becomes apparent before Skippy’s death is that something is seriously troubling him, but all the characters are so wrapped up in the details of their own lives that no one takes the time to really help the young man. The resulting guilt causes a wave of bizarre repercussions.
I’ve seen this book compared to Infinite Jest and Jonathan Franzen. Those are apt, and I’d also say that it reminded me a bit of the film Donnie Darko. However, this is also a unique and moving book that had me at times laughing, angry, sad wistful, depressed and hopeful. The characters are incredibly well drawn and believable. Greg Costigan in particular is such a son-of-a-bitch that I wished he was real so I could get on a plane to Ireland just so I could kick him in the junk.
The teen characters are also very well done, and Murray absolutely nailed that weird contradiction where kids that age have well-honed instincts about some things like the hypocrisy of adults but are still naive enough to think that you can get pregnant from oral sex.
Also, I listened to the audio version of this and it was done with a full cast doing all the different dialogue. It was one of the best listening experiences I’ve had yet with an audible book. ...more
I had high hopes for this and it started with an incredible opening sentence. But the whole thing remained curiously flat to me despite some detailed I had high hopes for this and it started with an incredible opening sentence. But the whole thing remained curiously flat to me despite some detailed sympathetic characters and an interesting premise. I think my reaction may have more to do with my state of mind than the book itself. It’s the middle of a long hot summer, and my literary cravings are running to crime thrillers and sci-fi that I can easily absorb as I cower from the sun in the house with the central AC on so high that the senses become numb. Or to shake off the frostbite, I’ll brave the heat on the shady part of the deck but it takes a lot of cold beer to make that tolerable. Those conditions aren’t ripe for books that make you think too much.
In the early 1700s in Peru, five random travelers are in the wrong place at the wrong time when crossing an old Incan bridge and go splat. A priest got obsessed on figuring out if those victims ‘deserved’ their fate any more than the lucky bastards who just missed being on the bridge. The book gives a glimpse at the trials and tribulations of the people who died and the circumstances that had them on the bridge at that exact moment.
There’s some great writing and good characters here, but there’s also an aloofness that makes you feel above caring about what happened to these people. From the afterward in this edition, Wilder deliberately kept the reader at a distance so that we can view what happened somewhat dispassionately. For my taste, he did it a little too well because this didn’t have much emotional impact to me. This is one that I ended up admiring as a technical accomplishment rather than liking as a story. ...more
Most of us have one big advantage over rich people and fictional characters when it comes to dealing with our personal issues. For example, look at MoMost of us have one big advantage over rich people and fictional characters when it comes to dealing with our personal issues. For example, look at Moses Herzog in this book. Herzog goes through an ugly divorce, and his circumstances allow him to wallow in his misery and behave erratically for months. I’m sure any of us in similar circumstances would like to put our lives on hold as we picked at our emotional scabs while ignoring our jobs and taking trips across Europe.
However, most of us don’t get that luxury. Those are usually the times when we can least afford to screw up so even though all you really want to do is hide under the covers or drink heavily or eat ice cream or drink heavily while eating ice cream under the covers, we gotta get up and go to work. And pay the bills. And do the laundry. And get the oil changed in the car.
And that’s to our advantage. Because getting over something like a divorce means moving on, even if you’re faking it half the time. Eventually, you’re not faking it anymore, you are actually living your life, and that’s how you finally recover.
Or you just completely lose your shit and end up getting stuck in endless loops inside your own head as you ping pong from one impulsive thought and whim to another until you’re completely unable to tell the good ideas from the bad. Like Moses Herzog. If he would have had to get off his ass and go back to work rather than mooching off his family then he might not have gone cuckoo for Coco-Puffs and come unglued while writing a series of bizarre letters to family, friends, celebrities and dead historical figures.
Yes, I know that Saul Bellow was using Herzog to make a statement about how a modern man viewed his life and society in the ‘60s, and the writing is as good as his reputation. But I just couldn’t get into it, mainly because I wanted someone to give Moses a brisk slap and tell him to grow up and get over himself. I didn’t dislike the character, I actually felt bad for him. That just made me wish even more that Herzog could start pulling his life back together instead of indulging in his self-involved musings....more
Reading this book is like going into the future and eavesdropping on a conversation between two old friends who haven’t seen each other in years:
“RemeReading this book is like going into the future and eavesdropping on a conversation between two old friends who haven’t seen each other in years:
“Remember Bennie Salazar?”
“Sure. He was that record producer who used to put the gold flakes in his coffee. Didn’t he used to be in a band?”
“Yeah, he was a wannabe punk rocker in the ‘80s. He was friends with Scotty back then.”
“Was Scotty normal then? Because I heard he’s completely shithouse-rat-crazy these days.”
“Oh, he’s totally insane. Hey, what was Bennie’s assistant’s name?”
“Sasha?”
“That’s it. Whatever happened to her?”
“I’m not sure. I heard she was a total kleptomaniac.”
“Really? I heard some wild stories about her running around Europe back in the day.”
“Someone told me that a friend of hers drowned and really messed her up.”
“Huh. It had to be something. Oh, did you know Bennie’s ex-wife used to work for that PR woman Dolly?”
“The one who is trying to resurrect her business by helping that dictator rehab his image?”
“That’s her. Like she’ll ever get steady work again after that disaster she put together.”
“Wasn’t it Bennie’s ex-wife’s brother who attacked that actress that’s been hanging around that dictator, too?”
“That’s right! Small freaking world.”
See what I mean? You don’t really know these people, but after a while, you get to know their stories and get a feeling for the connections between them. That’s what Jennifer Egan has done in this creative little novel. By telling a series of stories loosely based around Bennie and Sasha’s past, present and future, she builds a web of relationships that becomes large but always feels intimate.
One of her cuter tricks is an entire section told via a PowerPoint presentation written by a child in the future. It sounds like a gimmick that might be good for a few laughs, but Egan actually uses it to give us a pretty detailed portrait of the future family of one of the characters we’ve read about earlier in the book.
It’s a well-written and clever book, but the tone’s a bit sad and depressing because it deals a lot with the loss and regrets that all adults have over what gets left behind as you move through life. I might have liked it more if I hadn’t just read Super Sad True Love Story, which also dealt a lot with the down side of aging. The two books also share a similarity in depicting a future state where smart phones and constant communication have changed society. (This one is mostly set in the past and present with only a couple of sections in the futue.) So while I liked this, I got a bit of a been-there/done that flavor when reading it, and I think I hit depression overload somewhere in the middle of this....more
I’m more a genre guy than a literature reader, but I’ve been trying to branch out lately. I’m glad I did because I’ve read some amazing things that I I’m more a genre guy than a literature reader, but I’ve been trying to branch out lately. I’m glad I did because I’ve read some amazing things that I probably wouldn’t have tried otherwise. However, it only takes one book like this send me running back to the mystery or sci-fi section for comfort. It wasn’t bad, but it’s just working so damn hard to be an ‘important’ book that it really isn’t much fun to read. And maybe all books shouldn’t be fun, but they really shouldn’t feel like this much work either.
The book begins in the early 1970s in New York with a writer named Nadia losing all her furniture due to a break up with a boyfriend. A mutual friend steers Nadia to Daniel Varsky, a young Chilean poet who is getting ready to leave New York and has an apartment full of furniture he wants to loan out until he returns. The most impressive item is a large desk. Nadia takes the furniture and later hears that Daniel was tortured and killed in Chile during Pinochet’s brutal rule of the country.
Years pass and the one constant in Nadia’s life is the desk. However, when a young woman claiming to be Daniel’s daughter from a fling he had in Israel shows up, Nadia immediately relinquishes the desk to her, but soon regrets it.
Several other stories are told in parallel to Nadia’s. An Israeli man mourning the death of his wife pours his heart out in a story to the son he never understood. The husband of a British writer discovers a shocking secret about his wife after her death, and a young woman reflects on her love for a man who had an odd relationship with his sister and their father who is trying to recreate the study of his childhood home that was lost in the Holocaust. Eventually, the links between all of the stories emerge.
Krauss is one of those writers who impresses me technically but leaves me a bit cold despite writing something that was obviously going for the heart. A big part of my problem is that that four of the characters are almost exactly the same. Nadia, the British writer, the young woman in love, and the Israeli son are introverted types who live their lives mainly through books and words to the point of ignoring everything else. I especially found Nadia tiresome because this is a woman with every advantage who deliberately chooses her writing career over relationships yet whines about her own nature constantly. It’s hard to feel too sympathetic for someone who cut themselves off of their own free will and yet who is so fragile that the loss of a desk will plunge them into a depressive bout of writer’s block.
The plot comes together in a nice web of cause-and-effect, but overall this book felt like getting stuck in a conversation with someone who obviously wants to be doing something else, but then proceeds to tell you about everything they’ve talked about with their psychiatrist....more
*Update 9/23 - Jonathan Franzen was in town doing a reading & signing last night, and after listening to him talk, I’m officially backing off of theor*Update 9/23 - Jonathan Franzen was in town doing a reading & signing last night, and after listening to him talk, I’m officially backing off of theory #1 below. He does not seem like a douche bag, at all. In fact, despite all the Oprah hoopla (Which he described as a fiasco, not because of anything that he or Oprah did, but because the whole thing got blown out of proportion.) and the backlash after the early raves for Freedom, Franzen came across as remarkably down-to-earth and funny. He seems like a very smart guy who doesn’t take the media hype too seriously, but is clearly having a lot of fun with all the recent attention.*
I picked up Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections earlier this summer, and it was one of the oddest reading experiences of my life because while I despised nearly every character in it, I still enjoyed the book. So when I started Freedom, I was hoping that I’d find some more likeable people in this one. After fifty pages, I was horrified to realize that it was looking like this book would be another collection of self-absorbed asshats.
At that point, I thought there were two possibilities: 1) That Jonathan Franzen is a complete douche bag himself and that he actually thought he was creating sympathetic characters. 2) That Franzen has an even lower opinion of people than I do and uses his skill to convey an utter contempt for mankind by creating these pathetic excuses for human beings.
However, as I got deeper into Freedom, and we started getting the history and alternate view points, I started to sympathize with most of the characters. (Except for Joey. I hated that smug little bastard through the entire thing and was really hoping that he‘d get set on fire at some point.)
The Berglunds seem like a prime example of family-first socially conscious living. They bought a house in a run down St. Paul neighborhood and became the first wave of gentrification for that area. Walter is a lawyer who works on environmental causes. Patty was a talented college basketball player who channels all her old competitive instincts into being the best mother and neighbor possible. The two kids, Jessica and Joey, are intelligent and seem destined for big things. And just to give them a touch of cool in their suburban existence, Patty and Walter are old friends with Richard Katz, a womanizing musician who has just gained mainstream popularity.
But the Berglunds quickly fall apart in spectacular fashion. Joey moves in with a neighbor after rebelling against Patty’s overwhelming love, and he and Walter can’t have a conversation without it turning into a screaming match. Patty has turned into a lost and bitter shadow of her former self. Walter has left his old environmental job to work with a rich man with ties to the coal industry, and as the kids leave for college, the parents are off to D.C.
The novel covers a tremendous amount of ground, not just with the elaborate characterizations, but in terms of the backdrops. From Minnesota to New York to DC to West Virginia to South America, Franzen touches on 9/11, the Iraq war, environmentalism, overpopulation, rampant consumerism and the political fracturing of America, but by keeping it in terms of a family disintegration, he keeps the story relatable.
One of the key things that comes up repeatedly is the idea that Americans have about freedom. It’s a word tossed around easily, and as Franzen explores here, many take it as their God given right to engage in mass consumption and lead completely unexamined lives with no regard for the consequences. Those who ask for more social responsibility are derided as ‘liberals’ and ‘intellectuals’ and ’elitists’. (I’m pretty sure Sarah Palin would hate this book. Assuming she could find someone to read it to her and explain the big words.)
But this isn’t about idealizing liberal policies. Franzen makes a lot of valid points about how American politics has become a constant screaming match more concerned with beating the other guy than accomplishing anything. He makes good use of the character of Walter to illustrate how all the pent up rage and frustration, even for a ‘good’ cause, can make for a pretty miserable life. What good is trying to save the world if you can’t stand any of the people in it?
Terrific book that’s almost a pitch perfect statement about what American life has been like since 2000 as seen through the eyes of some flawed, but decent people. (Except for Joey. That kid is a prick.) While freedom and happiness are usually considered to go hand-in-hand, these characters show that poorly used freedom can make you supremely unhappy.
Random thoughts:
-There’s several similarities to The Corrections: Everyone hates their family. There’s a very odd love triangle. A mother/son relationship is pushed to creepy extremes to irritate a father. A character gets caught up in an elaborate overseas get-rich-quick scheme. The daughter of the family is probably the most adult and sensible character. And there’s a really nasty scene involving human turds. Eww. What’s with all the poop, Franzen?
- One of my favorite parts was Richard Katz’s interview where he makes several hilarious comments about the music industry.
-The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality, also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage. That’s just about my entire existence summed up in one sentence.
- There’s a plot point involving cats attacking song birds late in the book. Just as I was reading this section, a stray cat came up on our deck and tried to attack one of our two house kitties through the door screen. It was very startling to be reading about feral cats and then hear godawful yowling, hissing, screeching and general mayhem in the next room. For a second, I thought Franzen was so good that he caused me to have audio hallucinations. ...more
While reading The Corrections I really understood the meaning of ‘schadenfreude’ because I despised almost every character in this book so much that tWhile reading The Corrections I really understood the meaning of ‘schadenfreude’ because I despised almost every character in this book so much that the more miserable their lives got, the more enjoyment I took from it. And when a shotgun was introduced late in the novel, I read the rest of it with my fingers crossed while muttering "Please please please please please please..." in the hope that at least one of those pitiful shits would end up taking a load of buckshot to the face.
The Lambert’s are a Midwestern family, and while the grown children have all moved to Philadelphia and New York, the parents have remained in St. Jude. The father, Alfred, was a workaholic middle manager for a railroad and he's the kind of joyless repressed bastard that considered all pleasures frivolous and taking a coffee break as a massive character flaw. Now retired, he’s suffering from Parkinson's and dementia. He deserves it.
Enid is the mother. (Seriously, Franzen? Enid? I’ve lived in the Midwest all my life and have never met an Enid. I know you were making a point on how square the old school Midwesterners are, but that‘s pushing it.) She’s a delusional nagging harpy from hell who aims her passive aggressive attacks at whichever family member has recently burst the bubble of whatever fantasy she is currently clinging to. Through most of the book, Enid has her heart set on one last family Christmas at the house in St. Jude, and the evil bitch will stop at nothing to get it.
Gary is the oldest and a successful investment adviser in Philly, but he married a woman who wants all ties severed with his family and has a special way of getting his sons to join her in her efforts. Torn between trying to placate his wife and his mother while letting their denials of reality make him crazy and trying to be 'the responsible one', Gary is running himself ragged to avoid admitting that he’s depressed. Someone should pimp slap him so hard that his fillings fly out of his teeth.
Chip, the middle son, is a waste of skin with a special talent for self-destruction. He torched his academic career as a professor just as he was about to get tenure by having an affair with a student and then becoming obsessed with her. He’s now a mooch in New York working on a screenplay so horrible that it'd make a Michael Bay movie look good by comparison. He’s also the kind of douche bag who thinks that getting rivets put in his ears and wearing leather pants is cool even though he’s over thirty.
Denise is the one character that I actually had some sympathy for. A daddy’s girl who adopted Alfred’s work ethic, she’s a successful chef of an upscale restaurant, but she’s also got a messy personal life, including trying to figure out her sexuality. At least she’s the one member of this dysfunctional hellspawned family that knows she has issues and tries not to deceive herself any more than most people do.
The weird thing is that even though I loathed the Lamberts and almost every supporting character, too, that I actually enjoyed this book. I usually can’t stand stories where all the characters’ problems are self-inflicted emotional wounds due to a basic refusal to admit and face reality. However, I have to admit that I found this compelling reading. Maybe I was into it for all the wrong reasons. Namely, that I hated the Lamberts so much that their continued suffering brought sweet tears of joy to my eyes. That’s probably not what Franzen intended, but he had to create some incredibly vivid characters and do justice to their pathetic lives to make me hate them so very, very much. ...more
If you took the scenes from Forrest Gump where Tom Hanks runs across the country several times and mixed that with some sections of The Time TravelersIf you took the scenes from Forrest Gump where Tom Hanks runs across the country several times and mixed that with some sections of The Time Travelers Wife, you’d have an idea of what this book is like.
Tim Farnsworth is a successful lawyer, and he lives with his wife Jane and their daughter, Becka, in upper middle class splendor. Becka has some weight issues and general case of teenage angst, but overall they’re living the American dream. However, Tim has an odd problem. He has twice endured periods of time when he compulsively walks. When in the grips of one of these attacks, Tim will just start walking and is unable to stop himself. After the walks end, he falls into a deep sleep no matter where he is. This can be a tad dangerous if, for example, Tim happens to walk out into freezing temperatures and he isn’t wearing his mittens.
The walking compulsion had vanished before, but it returns as the book begins. Since they’ve been through this twice, Tim and Jane know that doctors and psychiatrists can’t help Tim, and efforts to drug or restrain him just make matters worse. With almost no hope of recovery or answers, Tim desperately tries to hang onto his job, and Jane’s tries to help as they both struggle to maintain some semblance of a life. But the toll of dealing with Tim’s condition is making life miserable for them, and things are about to get worse.
This was an interesting story, but a very depressing read. Tim and Jane are nice people who know they have it good, and are grateful and content with their lives. Reading about how this weird walking compulsion steals their happiness and normality is about as much fun as watching a sack full of puppies get drowned. ...more
A grim little tale of a pack of losers leading sad and desperate lives in L.A. in the 1930's. Tod is an artist with a job at one of the movie studios,A grim little tale of a pack of losers leading sad and desperate lives in L.A. in the 1930's. Tod is an artist with a job at one of the movie studios, and he's in lust with Faye, a wannabe actress with no talent and a sick father, who has made it clear that she has no interest in Tod, but that doesn't stop her from teasing him. Homer Simpson (Bear in mind that this was written before Matt Groening was even born.) is a yokel in from Iowa who came to California for his health who apparently has some form of OCD that involves his hands having minds of their own. Throw in a Hollywood producer, a handsome cowboy who just leans against a building all day, a guy who runs cock fights, and a very small bookie, and you've got a crowd of misfits who will make almost anyone feel better about their own lives.
This has some incredible writing with short spot-on depictions of hopelessness and quiet despair. Just to make this an even happier read, the introduction tells how the author, West, was friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald and was killed in a car accident while rushing to F. Scott's funeral. This is the book that just keeps on giving. Unfortunately, what it's giving is depression.
The worst thing about the book isn't even the author's fault. Having a character named Homer Simpson makes it hard to read something as serious fiction, especially a book like this. Every time I saw the name, I started grinning, even as as the story is describing his sad and shabby little life. All that was missing was an alcoholic named Barney....more
There was hardly any sports in this book at all. What a rip-off....
Frank Bascombe craves a 'normal' suburban existence the way a junkie craves heroinThere was hardly any sports in this book at all. What a rip-off....
Frank Bascombe craves a 'normal' suburban existence the way a junkie craves heroin. Once an up-and-coming writer living with his wife in New York, Frank quit fiction writing and fled to the 'burbs in Jersey when offered a sports writing job for a weekly magazine. Frank's efforts to be a plain old suburbanite with zero introspection of his own life haven't exactly worked out, though. His young son died of a wasting disease and his wife left him with his other children when she found evidence that he cheated on her during one of his trips to cover a sporting event.
The book takes place over an Easter weekend that begins with Frank meeting his ex-wife (that he refers to only as X) at their son's grave on the anniversary of his death, and most of the book deals with Frank's inner monologue about the way things should be.
Frank claims to love the solid suburban lifestyle he still clings to even after his divorce and has nothing but thinly veiled contempt for academics and other artsy types, even though he used to be one. He prides himself on being a literalist who deals only with what's in front of him and doesn't waste time on 'dreaminess' like he used too.
Frank is so square that ninety degree angles are jealous of him. His idea of a romantic weekend with his new girlfriend, Vicki, is a few days in Detroit on one of his sports writing assingments, and when a male friend confesses a homosexual encounter, Frank thinks of it as 'monkeyshines'. Frank would probably live inside a Norman Rockwell painting if he could.
However, despite all of his claims of literalism and suburban tranquility, Frank is quietly having a meltdown. He prides himself with dealing with life as it is, but he's disappointed and ill equipped to cope when things go off the rails. For example, he had hoped to write an uplifting story on a former football player paralyzed in an accident about how the player had overcome adversity. When he finds that the man is actually devastated, Frank thinks only of how he can make the guy fit into the story he planned to write, not of how he could honestly tell how the man's life has fallen apart.
Very well-written, but I had a hard time dealing with Frank. Maybe it's because as a male suburbanite looking down the barrel of middle-age myself, I had little patience for Frank's self-deceptions and fairy tales of suburban life being the best place to live to keep one 'normal' and 'happy'. I like my 'burb, but it's just a quiet place to live. As I close in on 40, quiet has become very important to me. Now get off my lawn, you kids!
This is the second book I've read recently that involved the main character being an adulterer, impregnating someone other than his wife, and generallThis is the second book I've read recently that involved the main character being an adulterer, impregnating someone other than his wife, and generally being such a screw-up that they wreck the life of anyone who depends on them. But while I hated Rabbit from Rabbit, Run to the point of wishing he was real so I could find him and pummel him with a baseball bat, I actually LIKED Grady Tripp and rooted for him to put down the joint and get his act together.
I'd read Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union, and I liked both those books, but this was the first book of his that I felt a real emotional attachment to the characters. Grady isn't a bad guy. He's just a doofus pothead who has let his love of weed dictate his life. His avoidance of making hard choices has paralyzed him, especially with the writing of his monster novel that has swollen to over 2000 pages because of his inability to decide what it's about. And because he can't stand conflict, he avoids breaking bad news which just draws out all of his problems.
Grady's weekend adventures with his talented but weird student, James Leer, while trying to avoid his editor, makes for a sadly funny story about a middle-aged man trying not to hurt the people in his life while not realizing that he already has and now is just running in circles to avoid the fall-out.
This could have been a very depressing book, or just another tale of middle aged ennui, but its sad sense of humor and likable characters keep it entertaining....more
Loading...
