The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep

By Raymond Chandler

As I mentioned a few posts back, I am making a concerted effort to read novels by authors I have previously ignored or, for whatever reason, passed by over the years. I'm trying to round off my reading in such a way that I have less unexplored corners and reading renowned writers who have otherwise travelled under my radar seems like the perfect way to cover a few bases. One such writer is Raymond Chandler, the detective writer extraordinaire and the grandfather of hard-boiled mysteries Chandler, along with Dashiell Hammett are single handedly responsible for the careers of a half dozen leading men in Hollywood between 1930 and 1960. Hard-boiled lingo has continued to exist right down to the present day. Chandler is certainly not a lightweight.

I admit, I was a little apprehensive about picking up a Chandler novel because, much like my first Agatha Christie, I was certain I wasn't going to like it. But I approached The Big Sleep with an open mind. Maybe I would like this one. Maybe I've read all the wrong early 206th century detective novels. Maybe this one would change everything.

Turns out, I was right. I hated it. I should listen to myself more often.

Before anyone gets mad at me, I better take this opportunity to caveat this blog post with a few reading facts about myself. First, I really don't like detective novels or mysteries in general. Rarely does a mystery hold my attention. I really have a hard time maintaining a level of concern for the intricacies of the plot. I know that connoisseurs of the genre have the ability to pinpoint definitive clues and red herrings from the prose. I'm lucky if I can maintain the direction of the general plot. Somewhere in the middle of the first act I will miss a key plot device that will leave me with one foot out the door for the rest of the novel. Obviously it goes without saying that I will not be solving any mystery before the reveal. I just can't bring myself to care.

Mystery writers are trying to outsmart their smartest, most loyal readers. They take great pains to keep the reveal a secret to the very end of the story and, therefore throw all sorts of nonsense at the reader in an effort to deflect their attention away from the important issues. I am neither smart nor loyal so I get lost in the morass of false flags, red herrings and misleading tangents. What makes it worse, I get lost and I don't care. I simply shrug my shoulders and check to see how many more pages until a chapter break so I can nod off, guilt-free.

Second, I hate hard-boiled jargon. There's opacity to the language that makes me feel like I'm standing in a crowd of investment bankers or lighting technicians or something. It makes me feel the same as when two high school friends would be talking about a new band and you ask "who?" and they look at you as if you've lived the past three seasons under a a pile of dirty wrestling tights in the school gym. There is very little in this world I hate more than exclusionary jargon whether it's street lingo or managerial nonsense. The Big Sleep is full of this sort of language.

The Big Sleep is a mystery (strike one) that is rife with exclusionary jargon (strike two). It is also interesting that The Big Sleep is not only the title of this novel but also the effect it has on the reader. It's not a long novel, but it took me over a week to read because every single time I picked it up I would drift off into a dreamless slumber after a dozen pages. I swear, I've never felt so rested as I have during the reading of this novel. I averaged about ten hours of sleep a day throughout this novel. In that sense, it is I who got the big sleep, unwittingly.

Like all of Chandler's novels, The Big Sleep centers around Detective Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is hired by aged General Sternwood to investigate something or other to do with his naughty daughters (both of which throw themselves at Marlowe through the course of the book). There is something to do with a lost husband, pornography and a half dozen murders. It all happens at the excruciating slow pace of a bad Japanese horror movie and at no point could I have given a damn. Once the mystery is revealed I had simply lost all interest in every character in the novel and couldn't wait to be rid of the book.

Now, it's not all bad or else I would have put it down long before the end. Chandler does have a way with words. If you are a lover of language (and can wade through jargon to get to the good stuff), I have to admit that Chandler has a way with similes and comparisons. and for this alone, The Big Sleep is worth the price of admission. How could it not be when you get lines like: "Her legs were as long as a couple of Dickens' novel and I read them cover to cover." (note: I made that one up because I'm too lazy to open the book and find a real example even though the book is within arms length. I just don't care enough to be precise).

And to be fair, The Big Sleep does seem a little cliched and predictable from thdays perspective simply because the story has been regurgitated in lesser forms for over half a century via film, television and parodies. It has been the subject of imitation, lampoon and homage to the point that even those who have never even heard of The Big Sleep probably know enough aspects of the story to piece it together if they so wish. But historical and stylistic context still don't excuse the lack of a compelling story, and this is where Chandler fails in my mind, no mater if it's 1933 or 2013.

All in all, The Big Sleep is similar to eating crab from the shell. It's more trouble than it's worth what with the exclusionary language and the plodding pace of the mystery (that I couldn't care less about... did I mention that yet?). Sure there is some really sumptuous morsels of goodness buried deep in the shrapnel-like shell, but it's difficult to get to and not enough of it to make it entirely worth your while.

I'll pass on any more Raymond Chandler.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

By Douglas Adams

I have a few reviews coming up this month that have to published on very specific dates, so it was going to be a little quiet around here for a few weeks. But I hate to let too many days go by without some sort of content so I thought it would be a good idea to discuss a couple of novels that I am currently rereading with classes or individual students. These are not new reads, but they are fresh enough in my memory to discuss with clarity and assurance, so let's get to it.

So anyway, I miss Douglas Adams. His death in 2001 is perhaps the only literary death that truly shook me not only due to his age (he was only 49) but because he was my first real literary love affair and the the author of the first book that really, truly made me stagger in awe. More on that later, but first, the story of how The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy very nearly cost me my university education.

Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it did almost make me fail my first year Western history exam (which would have been a disaster because that was my major). Here's the story:

It was the night before the exam and like any good Canadian university student, I was cracking my textbooks for the first time that semester in an effort to cram as much of the course material into my head in the ten hours (give or take) before the exam. I had the books all laid out on my bed OCD style and was just brewing up a pot of extra strong coffee when a friend from down the hall walked by my open dorm room door and tossed an inconspicuous little paperback onto the top of my neat textbook pile. He tossed it in a manner that suggested that he was discarding a chewing gum wrapper or a banana peel. He didn't even stop to tell me what it was.

At first, I thought it was some sort of exam prank. I'd grab whatever it was off my bed and find it covered in goo, or something equally annoying and time consuming. But when I went over and picked it up it was the oldest, most busted up paperback I'd ever seen. What was left of the cover was hanging on by the merest suggestion of a fiber, the spine was exposed, cracked and separating somewhere in the vicinity of page 86, there was no back cover at all and it looked like it had taken a dip in the bathtub on more than one occasion.

A looker, she was not, but something possessed me to flip to the beginning of chapter one to see why exactly my buddy had discarded this dilapidated old novel into my room.

Eight hours later, I finished The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, admitted to myself that it was my new favorite book and proceeded to shit bricks about my history exam that was less than three hours away (textbooks still unopened).

The story ends well. I ended up doing fine on the exam and continued my studies over the next three years without incident, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours. But I learned a couple of valuable lessons that night. First, I learned the practical usages for a towel, both physical and psychological. Second, never, ever start a novel when there is something pressing to accomplish. I have a difficult time prioritizing anything over books. And third, never underestimate the power of Douglas Adams.

Since then I've read this novel at least a half dozen times and it never ceases to make me smile. Through the fictional notion of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (A tablet-like guidebook for interstellar travelers), Adams prophesied the advent of the Internet, the e-reader, tablets, smart phones... or at the very least, Wikipedia. The Babel Fish imagined in the novel predated translation software (one program that actually bears the name Babel fish, in fact) and we are probably less than a decade away from very practical translation apps that will be able to instantly translate any language into any other language at conversation speed. Hell, Adams predicted (almost to the exact spelling), Google. And he did it with such ease that it seemed as though he were blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back. With such accuracy one might require three pints of bitter to soften the mental blow of his awesomeness.

On a more serious note, Adams was the first author I ever read that put a fine point on many of the questions I had about religion. I've been an atheist since I can remember. The way gay people say they've always known they were gay, that's me except with atheism. My family wasn't particularly devout, but they were church going people. But as far back as I can remember I found the entire ordeal of church, the rituals the forced (to me, anyway) joy and the stories to be deeply unsettling and, at times, creepy. It was Adams through The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that made me realize that I wasn't the only one who thought everyone around me was taking crazy pills. I credit Adams for allowing me to be unapologetically atheist. It's made my spiritual life a lot easier to reconcile.

But what I like most about this The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and to a lesser extent the rest of the trilogy of five) is that unlike so many science fiction writers (I'm looking at you Arthur C. Clarke!) Adams wrote with a scathingly astute sense of humor and irony and he never once, ever took himself or his story seriously. The fact that the reader navigates Adam's world of morose robots, fjord designers and rock star politicians from the perspective of the mildest of mild-mannered Englishmen is as much a bottomless well of comedic potential as it is a source of comfort in a universe populated by drug and alcohol fueled party animals. Adams had enough sense to ground his readers with Arthur Dent when he knew full well that he was going to send us into a universe so supremely bizarre that there was at least someone we could look to in order to ask the questions we are all thinking about. Want to know the science behind the Improbability Drive? Don't worry, Arthur has you covered, and he'll try to bring along a cup or tea as well.

Thirty years after publication (and ten years after the untimely death of Adams himself) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels remain not only readable but also as relevant as they were in 1979. There are precious few works of science fiction that can compare to the Hitchhiker series. When so many authors were grappling with the moral, existential and ethical questions of androids, space travel, alien contact and cloning, Douglas Adams threw caution to the wind and made the sci-fi universe safe for those of us who would simply rather bypass the difficult questions, buy a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster and see where the evening takes us.

Here's to Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's series. He made all other sic-fi sound like Vogon poetry by comparison.

Incidentally, I still own that busted up copy of the book. It's one of my prized possessions.

We Need To Talk About Kevin

We Need To Talk About Kevin

By Lionel Shriver

I've been putting this book off for years. No real reason why. I've wanted to read it for ages. But the imminent publication of Shriver's new novel The New Republic, and the prospect of reviewing it in May (stay tuned) gave me the needed motivation to finally pick this novel up. And I'm kicking myself for not doing so earlier.

We Need to Talk About Kevin reminded me, in a lot of ways of Bret Easton Ellis's classic novel American Psycho. As with American Psycho, We Need To Talk About Kevin is a meticulous study of modern American antipathy and sociopathy. But unlike American Psycho, which delves so deep into the antisocial behaviors of disturbed protagonist Patrick Bateman that it remains unclear whether the events described in the novel actually occur or simply remain imbedded in Bateman's disturbed mind, Shriver's narrative paints an all too real portrait of modern American psychosis. Shriver's writing is razor sharp (though sometimes overwrought and overdone) and many a salient point is made about how and why these shooting continue to occur.

What I think sets We Need to Talk About Kevin apart from Ellis's novel is the manner in which Shriver uses characterization to sharpen the focus rather than blur the lines of what goes on in the head of a killer (or potential killer). Where Ellis clouds the reader with disturbing imagery and demented ideas, Shriver imbues us with anecdotal evidence from the mother of the killer. And while we cannot take everything the narrator says at face value, certainly some of what she says has inherent value in deconstructing Kevin's mind. And with Eva Katchadourian, Kevin mother, Shriver has created a character every bit as nuanced as Patrick Bateman. And she's not even the killer.

Kevin is an angry kid. He's been angry since the day he was born, or so says his mother, Eva, the narrator of this story. We Need to Talk About Kevin is organized as a series of letters from Eva to her estranged husband, Franklin, two years after Kevin killed eight students, a teacher and a cafeteria worker. The novel is both shocking and insightful that addresses many of the overarching causes of such shootings, including anti-social behavior, dismissive parenting, over-parenting, neglect and middle-class malaise, among others.

In her letters, Eva examines her relationship with Franklin, their subsequent decision to have a child and the years leading up to their son's killing spree. However, Eva is the very definition of the "unreliable narrator." She is over-analytical, selfish, judgmental and completely lacking in self-pity (ironically, these are the same qualities that she professes to abhor about the "typical American"). On the one hand, these qualities provide the reader (and Franklin, presumably) with a stark, brutally honest account of what she thinks occurred it is not difficult to see where Kevin developed many of his character traits. As the old proverb goes: The apples doesn't fall far from the tree.

Naturally, Eva asks the inevitable questions: Why did he do it? and How much are her and Franklin to blame? Was Kevin born bad? Or was it that Eva? Was it that Franklin's bygone/never-was 1950s, Ward Cleaver version of fatherhood? Or was it simply that once Eva began to see a trend, she couldn't stop seeing it, in a sense concocting a personal conspiracy theory between herself, her husband and Kevin? 

We delve deep into the darkest places within Eva as she sorts through these difficult questions and despite her failures as a parent, we find ourselves deeply concerned for her well-being and sympathetic to her situation. Considering the way in which we tend to vilify the parents of school shooters so instantaneously via television news, it seems essential that someone would come along and deconstruct the proverbial post-game show from the perspective of the parents. And with all due respect to Shriver's characters it is Eva who shines in this novel. It is her honesty, her selfishness and her lack of empathy that make Eva one of the strongest, most fascinating characters in modern American literature.

While We Need to Talk About Kevin isn't going to answer all the questions, but of course, why should it? It is, however, taking its place alongside American Psycho as one of the great American novels of the past twenty years and is a novel worthy of great praise.

Post Office

Post Office

By Charles Bukowski

In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.
Maybe I'll write a novel, I thought.
And then I did.

These are the last three sentences in Charles Bukowski's first novel, Post Office, published in 1970. These words will resound in my head forever. Perhaps some of the best closing words I've ever read.

I have always equated Charles Bukowski with Tom Waits. The similarities are actually pretty obvious. Both obsess themselves with the margins of humanity. The losers, low-lifes, freaks, hookers, junkies, flunkies, gamblers and bums. Both have the ability to transform the mundane experiences of failure into something slightly magical (in a bleak, tragic sort of way). Both sure as hell know how to tell a story and both have achieve an almost mythical place among their contemporaries and peers. It is no surprise that I read Post Office in Tom Waits's voice.

Once upon a time, Charles Bukowski, the poet and novelist, worked in a Los Angeles post office. Legend has it that the owner of Black Sparrow Press, John Martin, offered Bukowski $100 a month for the rest of his life if he would quit his job and write full time. Bukowski accepted the offer and wrote Post Office in less than a month in what is one of the great tongue in cheek moments in the history of literature. Until that point, Bukowski was a poet on the fringe of the fringe of the poetry world. Post Office marks his entry into the fringe of the fringe of the literary world, a place he would occupy until his death in 1994.

And I admit it, I always seem to forget about Charles Bukowski. When I'm thinking about artists of his particular generation and style I have no trouble remembering the likes of Alan Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson and R. Crumb to name a few. But somehow Bukowski's name consistently eludes me despite the fact that I actually like his work more than his peers (I don't much care for the work of Ginsberg, Kerouac or Burroughs). It speaks to the way in which Bukowski haunted the borderlands of the literary work for years without really, truly breaking out. Much like the characters in his novels, Charles Bukowski will forever be the forgotten man. A genius of 20th century literature buried under the weight of names with half his talent.

Post Office is a stark, autobiographical novel recounting the life of Hank Chinaski, a down and out alcoholic that stumbles into a full-time gig with the... ahem... Los Angeles post office. It is a existential account of life as a U.S. postal employee and how grinds Chinaski down into a shell of his former self. The Post Office becomes a metaphor for the relentlessly systematic manner in which life needles away at the human spirit, one compromise at a time. Post Office is also depressingly prophetic of the notion of "going postal," a gruesome idiom that would wriggle its way into the common lexicon a couple of decades after the publication of this novel (though the idiom has absolutely nothing to do with this novel, lest you are wondering).

At its core, Post Office is a quintessential Bukowski offering and Chinaski is the stereotypical Bukowski anti-hero: the unrepentant bachelor who is was he is and does what he does without apology or shame. A marginal man with virtually nothing going for him in life except his next paycheck, his next night at the track, his next fifth of whiskey, his next floozy girlfriend. The vicious circle of mediocrity. Charles Bukowski's work may repulse readers with its prosaic style and narrative, but one often forgets that this was Charles Bukowski's life, once upon a time.

As a writer, he was honest and Post Office (along with a slew of his other work) is Bukowski's life as a work of fiction. The alcoholism is real. The self-destructive lovers are real and the abject resignation is real. This is the very definition of quiet desperation in the American male. Post Office is perhaps one of the most poignantly honest accounts of the marginalization of a man ever written. Hank Chinaski is marginalized emotionally, intellectually, professionally, romantically and physically over his 11 year career as a post office clerk. He gets it from all sides and takes it on the chin like the down-trodden man he is. Chinaski lives for the simple pleasures: getting drunk, going to the track and a roll in the hay with his girl. The rest is inconsequential.

If you have never read any thing by Charles Bukowski, first of all shame on you! But fear not! there's still time. Post Office is a perfect primer. It is a brilliant account of the slow, incremental tragedy of life, an existential shoulder shrug with a dash of sly, self-deprecating humor. In that sense, it is a definitive Bukowski novel and, not surprisingly, it would make a perfect Tom Waits song.

I'd call it: Once Upon A Time.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

By Michael Chabon

It took me an eternity to get around to this book. I read Michael Chabon's book The Yiddish Policemen's Union last year and enjoyed it, but not enough to go rushing out and read another of his books, especially one that is over 600 pages long. But I kept hearing these things about this book. People kept telling me how it was one of the best books of the past ten years and totally deserving of the Pulitzer Prize. It simply weighed my bookcase down for far too long and I had to pick it up.

Glad I did.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is exactly what books and literature is all about. It's good writing and a great story about well-formed characters that deserve and gain the respect and empathy of their readers. It is well researched, impossible to predict and, as everyone seemed to tell me prior to reading, entirely deserving of the accolades it has garnered. OK, so I just sort of started vomiting attributes. Let me slow it down and explain.

First and foremost, Michael Chabon is a fantastic writer. I don't mean "fantastic" in the way we over use the word but rather in its more traditional usage as fanciful. But I knew this to be true when I read The Yiddish Policemen's Union  Of all the things I didn't like about that book (and there were a few things), Chabon's abilities as a writer were never questioned. He has an undeniable ability with tone, pace and, most of all, setting. I could practically smell 1940s Manhattan throughout this novel in the same way I could the Sitka Settlement in The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

As an aspiring writer myself, I find Chabon an intimidating novelist to read and appreciate. Reading a single paragraph is liable to send me to my bedroom a blubbering puddle of delicate emotions wrapped in a flimsy eggshell of a man not to be heard from for the remainder of the weekend. I mean how does he write that eloquently? Damn him! (And when I say "damn him," I mean he's fantastic (And when I say he's fantastic," I me... oh never mind)).

You can be a fantastic writer but if the story doesn't jive with readers, all those pretty paragraphs and succinct sentences (and all that alluring alliteration, I might add) are for naught. This was my fundamental problem with The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Great writing. Excellent characters. Wonderful tone. Good pacing. Boring-assed story. Not so with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I especially loved the fact that each character has their own story to go along with the common story of the novel. As in, each of the characters in the novel has their own problems and tribulations to deal with outside the bubble of the central story. And whereas some authors (coughcathylambcough) tend to spread the issues and drama on thick, Chabon knows exactly how much drama and stress to foist onto his characters shoulders without inducing reading induced epileptic seizures brought on by repeated eye rolling.

I genuinely cared for every single character in this novel (Yes, even Sheldon Anapol). They were rendered in such three dimensional detail that they seemed to have genuine texture and depth. I really felt like these guys existed in the annals of comic book lore. Surrounding him with real life comic book names such as Stan Lee and Bob Kane only augmented the illusion of reality. A very definite blur was put into effect.

And that's something else that deserves mention. Michael Chabon quite obviously researched the hell out of the comic book industry in the 1940s (and the Second World War as fought on the continent of Antarctica as well). As a fan of historical fiction I appreciate the attention to detail. But I also appreciate Chabon's determination to make shit up whenever it pleased him. I like Chabon's attitude toward history: Render it as close as possible to the truth whenever possible but throw it out the window when it doesn't fit the story he's trying to tell. Excellent lesson for any writer.

Speaking of the story, it is not only riveting (as I mentioned earlier) but it is also unpredictable. At no point during this narrative did I have a single clue where Chabon was taking me. There's nothing wrong with predictable story lines, good writers can take you down familiar roads and show you different sights along the way, but it's always nice to have someone show you an entirely different path. I, at no point in the reading of this novel, knew where Chabon was taking me. Furthermore, there were episodes in this novel that I could not have predicted in a thousand years of predictions.

So it won the Pulitzer Prize. Did it deserve it? Of course, I don't know. I haven't yet read everything published from 2000. But it couldn't have been the worst option. As I said off the top, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is everything that a reader should expect from literature. Good writing, strong characters and a romping good story.

I mean, seriously, in literature, what else matters?

Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest

By David Foster Wallace

There is something (slightly) wrong with the title of David Foster Wallace's 1996 novel, Infinite Jest. It is not infinite, though there were parts of this book that felt as if they were. This, of course, is a tongue-in-cheek comment. The title itself has very definitive purpose on the narrative of this novel and I'm not implying that I dislike it. It just makes me laugh a little, is all. What I can say with a degree of assurance, however, is that if ever you wish to read a novel whereby you can confirm that you are witness to genius, Infinite Jest is your huckleberry.

Infinite Jest is, admittedly, a major undertaking for any reader, whether casual, academic or accidental. I suggest quitting your job, booking a room at a hotel for a couple of weeks and blasting through. This behemoth of a novel should not be taken lightly by anyone (how could you? if you read it in its original printed version, it's the size of a telephone book from a mid-sized American city... Say... Toledo. Mercifully, I read it on my Kindle which offered another set of problems. (I'm still only 23% done? I was on 23% three days ago!)) It's the sort of book that would scare off most readers by its sheer size and reputation. I can only imagine the physical and psychological toll this novel would have taken on DFW. 1

Now, I'm going to be honest here. I read this book over the span of two weeks. At this point in my life, I'm a casual reader. I may like to read hefty, weighty novels, but I'm reading them in the informal sense. I'm not in a position to give this novel the academic treatment. There are thousands of pages of PhD and seminar presentations on the nature of subjectivity vs. objectivity in Infinite Jest floating out there. There are perhaps dozens of thesis papers discussing the feminine archetype in the works of David Foster Wallace or psychological deconstruction of Don Gately and Joelle Van Dynne. If you want an critical analysis of the Incandenza family, O.N.A.N. and Quebec separatism please go somewhere else (especially for Quebec Separatism).

See, here's the thing... Infinite Jest, for all its reputation as a scholarly read, for all its comparisons to Gravity's Rainbow and Ulysses and such, for all of it's 1000+ pages of carefully (and weirdly) constructed sentences, Infinite Jest is a surprisingly easy read. Enjoyable too. Downright entertaining if I may be so bold. Which is quite the left turn for those in the habit of writing scholarly fiction (are you listening, Zombie Thomas Pynchon?).2  At no point in my reading (which was certainly not an accredited academic combing) was I furrowing my brow in consternation, banging my head against the wall, drooling on the page or lamenting the deficiencies of my costly education. So don't let this book give you a case of the howling fantods or anything. It's accessible.

At its heart, Infinite Jest is a novel about a video (called an entertainment cartridge in the novel). This video is so entertaining that anyone who watches it will become infinitely, hopelessly and addictively entertained. They will remain comatose in from of said video so long as it continues to play (it loops) and if it is taken away, the remainder of the viewers life is spent begging, pleading and screaming for more. Even a single glimpse. It reminded me of the Monty Python bit from ...And Now For Something Completely Different where a joke writer writes the funniest joke ever and immediately dies laughing. His wife, thinking it's a suicide note, reads the joke and also dies, as does the first policeman on the scene... and the second. It turns out that the joke is so funny that anyone who reads it dies laughing. Naturally, the military takes notice, translates it and uses it as a weapon of war.

Anyway...

Infinite Jest is about locating the master copy of this lethal entertainment (also referred to as the samizdat) in order to maintain the precarious stability of O.N.A.N. (Organization of North American Nations) and the precepts of Onanism. In the process it's about the Incandenza family with all its tremendous dysfunction. It's about James Incandenza, the maker of the film and his struggles with alcohol and his ultimate (grizzly) suicide (it's also about his ghost). It's about his wife Avril with all her proclivities toward hygiene. It's about Orin Incandenza, punter for the Arizona Cardinals. It's about Hal Incandenza, a highly ranked junior tennis player at an elite tennis academy and a closet marijuana addict (I never though that was even possible, but apparently it is). It's about a cast of dozens of other characters who are painted in shades and tones so vivid that even now I have a hard time understanding that these people are simply constructs of DFWs imagination.

The story is also one of addiction and all its dimensions. It's about America's addictions and America's addiction to addictions. It's about obsessions and compulsions and depression and psychological disorders. Crippling, debilitating depressions. Life-altering compulsions. I'll never watch another MASH episode in the same way. Infinite Jest made me realize that neither I nor anyone that I have ever known has ever, ever really had substance abuse problems. Not in any real, meaningful way. Not in the way in which Wallace portrays substance abuse. Not even close. Lucky me.

The story is essentially written in reverse with the ending at the beginning and doesn't come together until the very end. Be forewarned. The novel also has almost 400 endnotes (many of which have endnotes of their own). Casual readers may be inclined to skip the endnotes. Don't. They are infinitely (pun intended) important to the novel. A lot of character development occurs in the endnotes as well as the handy filmography of James O. Incandenza. If you read this, do not skip them.

Infinite Jest is indeed a very readable novel and so but it is still a major undertaking. David Foster Wallace is renowned for his use of arcane, obscure and invented vocabulary as well as jargon and massive, multi-clause sentences, so come into this book armed with a good dictionary and an open mind. I promise that if you enjoy reading and expect that, as Wallace is quoted as saying, that fiction is "about what it is to be a fucking human," well sir/madam/doctor you owe it to yourself to read Infinite Jest. David Foster Wallace shows use exactly what it means to be a writer. An open, honest, humanized writer whose heart and soul are splattered and smeared and spread across the page (or the 1000s of pages) and if one or two things come out wrong who cares because it's all about how it feels coming out rather what it looks like going in so just go with the flow and accept that while reading Infinite Jest you will be in the presence of absolute literary genius.

If you were to ask me: If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life and could only have one book in which to read forever, what would it be? Infinite Jest with all its wonderful layers of text and subtext and sub-subtext would be as good a choice as any.

Footnotes:

1. It is easy to fall into the trap of reading Infinite Jest as an insight into the emotional and psychological problems of David Foster Wallace, especially in lieu of his suicide in 2008. The novel explores substance abuse, depression and competitive tennis, all of which were important aspects of Wallace's troubled existence. But to read this novel as a microcosm for DFW's life is to sell this book short. It is quite a bit more than that.

2. Apparently Thomas Pynchon isn't dead. Who knew?

The Remains of the Day

The Remains of the Day

By Kazuo Ishiguro

This is the third Kazuo Ishiguro novel I have read in the past twelve months. If there is one overriding theme throughout them (the others being An Artist of the Floating World and Never Let Me Go) it is that Ishiguro is not interested in the story that appears on his page so much as he is interested in the story going on in your head whilst you are reading the words he put on his page. More directly, Ishiguro's novels are about the story not being told as opposed to the story being told. Furthermore, like his other novels, The Remains of the Day may not even really be about what it's about but rather may be an elegantly crafted metaphor about something entirely different. If I've sufficiently confused you, good. Let's get on with it, then.

The Remains of the Day is Ishiguro's third novel. Published in 1989, it was the winner of that year's Man Booker Prize and has garnered the status of classic since then, and for good reason. The novel is a thematic work of genius that examines (but doesn't examine) the subjects of dignity, loyalty and social constraints in post-colonial Great Britain as well as being a metaphor for the very same Great Britain.

The story centers upon Stevens, the butler of Darlington Hall, an old country house occupied by a preeminent English gentleman prior to World War II but currently (1956) owned by an American who bought the house (complete with authentic English butler) after the death of its former occupant. The story is ostensibly about short motor car trip undertaken by Stevens from Darlington Hall to the West Country in order to visit a former colleague. The story progresses as a series of journal entries along the way in which Stevens elucidates on the finer points of the domestic services industry and what (not who) makes a good butler. He also recounts several key events that occurred during his tenure at Darlington Hall that speak volumes about himself, his staff, his employer and the world around him. Though Stevens seems like a trustworthy character and one would hardly call his judgment into question, one must continuously question his ability to recall instances with the clarity this story requires. This gives the entire narrative a subconscious haze that must be navigated at all times.

The entire narrative is written in the stiff colonial language of the gentleman class and Stevens, like the people he has worked for in the past is obsessed with how he is perceived. Language and decorum are , therefore, tools in his profession as a way in which to cultivate an air of dignity benefiting a house such as Darlington Hall. ItThey are also self-constructed walls of social and class constraint that willingly bind Stevens to the house and the gentleman therein, regardless of his own opinions.

In lieu of thinking for himself, Stevens adopts an unconditional trust in his employer. Loyalty, dignity and professionalism trump all personal issues. In one particular scene which plays out as both comedy and tragedy, Stevens carries out his duties on a especially busy evening while his father falls ill and dies. It is an apt description of the social constraints that bound the class conscious British between the wars.

Buried deep within the bedrock of Steven's recollections is a more personal account of Darlington Hall's housekeeper, Miss Kenton. It becomes plainly apparent to the reader that Miss Kenton and Stevens have significant feelings for one another, but their professionalism, coupled with Steven's inability to read subtlety and nuance (to the point that I began to think Stevens might simply be mildly autistic, but I'll leave the psychological analysis of this novel to more capable reviewers) conspire to keep them apart. Even when a simple word or gesture might have broken the proverbial ice, they remain colleagues throughout, much to the consternation of this reader.

There are a lot of levels from which a reader might read this novel, but the most interesting (at least for me) was that The Remains of the Day is a brilliant metaphor for the end of the British Empire. In fact, the metaphor is so apparent (once you notice it) that it rivals Animal Farm in its bluntness. The novel itself is set in 1956 and although it is never mentioned in the book, that year coincides with the nationalization of the Suez Canal by General Nasser in Egypt. In Great Britain, the loss of the canal marked the end of the Empire. The era of the gentleman, country houses and the butler was over and Stevens himself is has become a relic of the past, a quirky historical curiosity sold along with a house to an American with a great deal of knowledge about colonial Britain but no idea how to actually be a gentleman.

But at a deeper level it is a social commentary on the relationship between crown and Empire. Lord Darlington represents the crown and the butler Stevens represents the Empire in this exquisite analogy of pre- and post-war Britain. Much like the pre-war British colonies in Asia and Africa, Stevens places an undue and undeserved amount of trust in Lord Darlington only to find that, in the end, Lord Darlington was involved in affairs far beyond his scope of understanding. Indeed, Lord Darlington represents a bygone England and his views are not even remotely in tune with the times. Naturally, Stevens remains unconcerned with his lord's affairs and serves him any way he can.

When war breaks out and Darlington finds himself on the wrong side of the line, it is Stevens that suffers most. And when Lord Darlington passes away, Stevens remains, left alone to pick up the pieces under the watchful eyes of an American. The parallels between this story and the demise of the Empire are so plentiful it probably merits a second reading at a later date.

The fact that Kazuo Ishiguro can write novels with so much nuance and subtlety is extraordinary. It takes a very gifted writer to write novels that work on a multitude of levels. Off the top of my head I can only think of a handful that have that capacity. I would hazard a guess that this novel wouldn't appeal to everyone due to its verbosity and pace (it is rather slow in bits) but The Remains of the Day really pays off in the end. I know that Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children has been deemed the Booker of Bookers but I'd give the nod to The Remains of the Day as the best Booker winner I've ever read.

The Angel's Game

The Angel's Game

By Carlos Ruiz Zafon

It is often said that one must suffer for their craft, whether it is woodworking, sculpture or writing. David Martin, the protagonist in Carlos Ruiz Zafon's vampish, moody follow-up to Shadows of the Wind is such an artist. A writer of popular gothic tales, Martin is the very embodiment of the suffering artist, though it is left unclear whether it is a suffering of his own design or whether a certain element of fate is involved in his grotesque descent into darker realms.

Despite fair warnings from his friends, Martin somehow becomes involved with a silver-tongued Parisian publisher by the name of Antonio Corelli who commissions a very specific project, one rife with peril. Over the course of the novel Martin 's relationship with Corelli sours as strange and unfortunate incidents begin occurring within Martin's circle of friends and family. Corelli manifests himself as some sort of incarnation of Satan, and Martin, in a tragic bit of irony, becomes embroiled in a mystery every bit as melodramatic and macabre as the "penny dreadfuls" that he seems to write at the conveniently regular pace of 6.66 pages per day.

The Angel's Game is, in essence, a literal tale about the creation and sale of art. The notion of an artist selling their soul to the devil for material gain is hardly new. 

“Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.” 

Any writer who has made money from their stories has, in a sense, has sold a portion of their soul in the form of their writing, leaving it in the hands of others to do with it as they may. Zafon hardly conceals the notion that a novel is a part of a writer's soul and the publisher plays the part of the devil in the literary transaction. To be sure, my favorite portions of The Angel's Game were the discussions between Martin and Corelli about the nature of good and evil and the political necessity of organized religion as a way in which to direct human faith toward political gain.

But let's not let Faustian imagery get the way of a good story, shall we? Zafon certainly doesn't. He's not interested in waxing intellectual on the philosophical nature of good and evil. A light dusting of critical thought on the subject as color for his narrative is more than enough to satisfy his whims. And although the The Angel's Game pays homage to dozens of classic works of fiction including Faust and Great Expectations, it is, at its heart a lurid romp through the streets of pre-Civil War Spain. He rarely stops long enough to chew the heavy issues fully, opting to wipe the slate clean and steam ahead with the narrative at hand. In this way, The Angel's Game is every bit the work of David Martin as it is that of Carlos Ruiz Zafon. 

Although there are moments in this novel that beg the reader pause for thought:

“It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies.” 

As mentioned before, it is unclear whether the descent of David Martin is a construct of fate or of free will, and such ambiguity give the novel an esoteric theme. But one cannot help but feel a certain level of pleasure from witnessing Martin become a victim of his own brand of gothic fiction. Unlike the adorable Daniel Sempere in Shadows of the Wind, David Martin is an unlikable and smug knave who seems to deserve all the pain and punishment inflicted upon him. And as the body count increases toward the end of the book, Zafon seems unafraid to take the novel to its unbearably tragic end. In this sense, The Angel's Game is delicious vision into the mind of a man intent on taking his troubles to the end of the line.

The narrative itself is long, convoluted and braided. It weaves through the dark corners, sinister alleys and saturnine houses of 1920s Barcelona, making stops at both Sempere & Sons Bookshop and the Cemetery of Forgotten Books (familiar locales for anyone who has read Shadows of the Wind). Zafon is a modern master of tone and mood, plotting his story through an relentless parade of eccentric characters who inhabit impossibly rank settings. I found myself time and again comparing the structure and pace of this novel to the work of Umberto Eco (and specifically Foucault's Pendulum). Confusion simply for the sake of confusion (and a good story). So long as the confusion remains plausible to the reader, we are willing to follow along the increasingly convoluted trajectory.

I got the impression that Zafon was trying to convey that writers can talk all sorts of big talk and throw all sorts of themes and styles and form into a story but at the end of the day, it's the story itself that prevails and it's the story that draws the reader in above all else. 

“Everything is a story, a narrative, a sequence of events with characters communicating an emotional content. We only accept as true what can be narrated.” 

And for that, the artist suffers.

In Patagonia

In Patagonia

By Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin's book In Patagonia is a minor classic in the genre of travel literature. Initially written in 1977 as a series of magazine articles, Chatwin's travels through the Argentina and Chile are chronicled in a mesmerizing freeform style that intertwines his own travels with the unique, and often bizarre history of the region. Furthermore, In Patagonia confirms to me that a certain element in the art of travel has been lost in recent years, but I'll get to that soon enough.

In the course of this book, Chatwin travels from Buenos Aires in the north as far as Tierra Del Fuego in the south (which would be the entire length of Patagonia, in fact). Rather than simply cataloguing the sights and events of his travels Chatwin entrusts himself with a host of locals, depicting the area as one of the most ethnically diverse areas of South America. Not only does he chronicles the stories of the indigenous people in Patagonia but also the surprisingly large numbers of immigrant populations: Aside from the obvious Spanish population, Patagonia is rife with Welsh, English, German, North American, Italian and Jewish families. Chatwin, who has the sort of detached writing style you expect from a British big game hunter in Africa circa 1870. There is a certain laconic wit that pervades through the entire narrative giving it an airy, formless feel.

And that's what's so wonderful about In Patagonia. It encapsulates that wondrous sense of unstructured excitement and discovery that comes from travel. The book ambles along, randomly picking up the travel narrative between nuggets of esoteric history (I had absolutely no idea that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had any connection whatsoever with Patagonia. As it turns out, they have a significant connection). In Patagonia brings us face to face with outlaws, cannibals, con-artists and unicorns. There are a host of eccentric men and women who dazzle us with their stories and Chatwin delivers simply by engaging in conversation and dinner.

Chatwin dishes the story in utmost style. I especially liked the way in which Chatwin bookends his narrative with his own personal story about a piece of skin from an extinct giant sloth that his grandmother kept at her house. The skin fragment was the only surviving piece from the remnants of a giant sloth uncovered from the ice in Patagonia years earlier by Chatwin's grandfather and would go on to the the physical impetus for Chatwin's wanderlust.

The structure of the book alone is worth the price of admission, but the way in which Chatwin weaves the narratives of the local people along with the history into one long, meandering river of words and meaning, it is so much more than a simple travelogue. In fact, I wouldn't use this book if I ever traveled the same course. In Patagonia is just as much about it's time as it is its place, which is why I loved it so much. It's a snapshot into the heady days of Peronist Argentina and the Chile of Allende. While many of the people Chatwin spoke with during his time in Patagonia have since denied much of what he published in In Patagonia, it hardly seems to matter. Such controversial issues don't dissuade from the enjoyment of a good story. It is travel literature the way it is supposed to be written.

See, I love aged travel literature. I have no interest in reading current travel literature. It's all the same. Fly here, see time, talk with him, eat that, lesson learned. Much like travel itself, travel literature has fallen into a predictable rut. This blog is not the place to discuss the pros and cons of globalization but Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat mentality has done irreparable harm to the travel industry. I don't mean tourism, which is alive and well and relaxing on a beach in Cancun. I mean travel. The make-your-way-however-and-with-whoever-you-can mentality of seeing the word. Hitting the road with a pack over your shoulder and no idea where you will be spending the night. Packing light and traveling hard. Travel is supposed to be about discovering the world and all it has to offer. Culture, food, people, ideas, experience. Travel used to offer it all. Now it's been reduced to tracks.

Nowadays you get off the airplane in Beijing, Budapest or Buenos Aires and you have the same stuff waiting for you. The same Starbucks coffee and the same Subway sandwiches. Travelers are given a menu of routes to take and it it increasingly difficult to skip you way off the well-travelled trail. Sure there are out-of-the-way places that you can visit to experience "authentic XXXXX culture," but one more often than not comes away from those experiences feeling as though they duped into yet another culture-for-profit display. It can all be a bit unsettling.

Even those who travel in search of extreme adventure have found themselves pigeon-holed, classified and market researched. Given the popularity of hiking to Everest base camp in Nepal, Arctic adventures and the parade of tourists who climb Kilimanjaro every day, even though who excel at finding out-of-the-way places are having trouble finding themselves off the beaten track.

This isn't to say there aren't places on this Earth that don't offer the real deal for travelers in 2012. Certainly I can think of dozens of locales that have not fallen prey to McTravel, but the ability to travel and immerse yourself in a culture off the tourist track becomes less and less likely as cultures trade their uniqueness for a pair of Adidas shoes and an iPhone. Perhaps my next vacation will be to Antarctica. The cooping of that experience is still a few decades away, one hopes.

But I digress.

In Patagonia is a travel story that would be extremely difficult to write today. Much of Chatwin's narrative would be stories about arguing with taxi drivers and the throng of touts that lurk in the shadows of train stations and descend on people with backpacks like a pack of wolves. I'm not hating on travel, I adore traveling, but it's not the same anymore.

And this is why In Patagonia is a classic. It's a glimpse into what used to be.

True Grit

True Grit 

By Charles Portis

Oh, Charles Portis... Where have you been all my life?

But first, this...

My wife refuses to go to the movies with me. That's fine because I'm never keen to go. I hate movies. I have a festering disdain for Hollywood nonsense such as Transformers, The Hulk, movies whose titles end in a number or anything starring Leonardo DiCaprio. I tend to ruin movies for people sitting around me. At particular points in the movie I will lean over to my wife and calmly note what I suspect will happen next. Invariably, it does. Or, more frustratingly, I'll lean in and say a variation on the line that is about to be delivered. I can only imagine how infuriating it must be to sit next to me.

I'm not telepathic or anything. My ability to anticipate the plot and dialogue of a movie stems from the complete lack of creativity among today's mainstream filmmakers. It's not that hard to figure out what's going to happen next. It's this formulaic drivel that forces me to behave badly in the darkened theater. My wife says I read too much and called me a snob. I'm comfortable with this if it means I have to go to the theater less.

I hate movies, but not film. (Yes, there is a difference. No, I'm not explaining it. If you don't know the difference, I'm not holding your hand). I've always liked film. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that I am a cinephile like Michael Bolton, I do like to sit down to a good Scorsese flick or get all nerdy about an upcoming Coen Brothers release or rant and rave about particular Oscar nominations and omissions.

I love a good many genre of films. I especially like films made in the 1970s. There's something gritty and grainy about that era of film. And the actors and actresses working at the time have proven to be the best generation of acting in the history of film (editor's opinion). Some of my favorites from the decade include Dog Day Afternoon, The Last Picture Show, Annie Hall, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Graduate. It was truly a special time for film.

What I enjoy about those films is that the writers of that generation had a knack for dialogue. With the advent of special effects and the blow-em-all-up endings, writers seem to have been reduced to writing snappy one-liners and witty comebacks in lieu of real discourse. It's been a real blow to the film industry that has been going on since the day Star Wars premiered (I love the original Star Wars movies but I cannot deny their role in the infantilization of film and the demise of dialogue). I partially blame George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, but it really has more to do with the Ray Bradbury-esque dumbing-down of the movie-going public, people would rather heard fart jokes than real witty banter. This is a trend that depresses me every other day.

What does this have to do with Charles Portis, you might ask...

OK, I'll get on with it.

Dialogue is what drew me to the films of the 1970s and what draws me to a lot of books. As with film, I am a sucker for novels with good dialogue. It's not the only thing that draws me to a book, but it's a big one. Dialogue can make (Lush Life, Barney's Version) or break (The Da Vinci Code) a novel. In terms of dialogue, the work of Elmore Leonard, Mordecai Richler and Richard Price are especially dear to me. And as of right now, I'd have to add Charles Portis.

As a reader and a fan of old films, it might come as a surprise that I've never read True Grit. True be told, I, like so many, had no idea that it was a novel before it became a John Wayne classic. I only recently discovered that the story was not only a best-selling novel but also considered a prime example of classic modern American literature (if that makes sense).

For those who are unaware (aka too young to know), True Grit is the post-Civil War era story of Mattie Ross's resolute drive to exact revenge for the murder of her father at the hands of Tom Chaney. She employs the services of the shifty, oft-drunk federal marshal, Rooster Cogburn to hunt Chaney down in the wild territory known at the time as the Choctaw Nation (modern day Oklahoma). Another lawman, a Texas Ranger by the name of LaBoeuf needles himself into the manhunt as well. The motley threesome set off on a wild search for Chaney and his band of outlaws. It is a classic western.

I've seen the recent Coen Brothers remake of the film starring Jeff Bridges, but I didn't think that counted in comparison to the original film (loved it though). As it turns out, the Coen Brothers movie is decidedly faithful to the novel. But that's alright. I was glad to break my never reading a book after seeing the movie rule for this one. Had I adhered to my usual rule, I'd have missed out on some of the best dialogue ever written.

Charles Portis has a knack for characterization via dialogue. Mattie Ross as narrator in the novel is light on characterization, putting emphasis on what, exactly happened. But it is through the dialogue that each character develops, a skill that only the best writers are capable of doing. The precocious, right-minded protestantism of Mattie Ross. Rooster Cogburn's hard drinking cynicism and LeBeouf's morality all manifest themselves through Portis's dialogue.

And here's the best part: If you haven't read this novel and you like dialogue as much as I do, you'll be interested to know that almost the entire novel is written in dialogue. The book is told from the perspective of Mattie Ross who, like I mentioned above, isn't long on characterization as a narrator, but excellent at recalling events and conversations. And that is exactly how she recounts the story, through short bursts of narration followed by extensive amounts of dialogue.

I'm happy and sad that I finished this book. I'm happy that I broke my rule about reading the novels after seeing the film. I would have missed out on a true classic. But I'm sad that it took me this long to find and read this book. It felt like the sort of book that might have changed my life as a teenager. I did get a distinct feeling that I missed out on something here if only I had read it a few decades ago.

Oh well, better late than never.

Shout Out

If you have read this far and would rather read something interesting for a change, go check out Bibliomania. Erin reads a lot of books about the brain, which is fascinating to read, even if only in review form.

Seven Days at the Silbersteins

Seven Days at the Silbersteins

By Etienne Leroux

Living in a non-English speaking country is a challenge for a reader. For me, books are often hard to come by and while it's not impossible to get them (there are bookstores in Taipei, three hours by train and Amazon does ship to Taiwan), it can be feast or famine at times. while my Kindle has eased some of the worst famines, I'm certainly not living in a place of unlimited access to books.

Despite the challenge inherent to a reader in Taiwan, there is an interesting side-advantage that I never considered but turns out to be true. Living in a medium-sized city with a small population of English speakers from all over the world has provided me with the chance to read a wide assortment of English literature from countries I would otherwise have ignored (unwittingly, of course). If I still lived in Canada I would be inundated with Canadian and American literature with a smattering of English novels to fill the gaps. Aside from the odd worldwide curiosity, I would hardly get exposed to the depths of Australian literature, or New Zealander, or South African.

As it turns out, I've had the opportunity to read a lot of interesting books from around the world due to the fact that I live in an international expatriate community and Seven Days at the Silbersteins is a prime example of a book I would have never read otherwise.

Seven Days at the Silbersteins is a classic South African novel by Etienne Leroux. Originally published in Afrikaans in 1962, Seven Day at the Silbersteins is a classic in it's original language. I'm not sure if this book is widely available outside Sotuth Africa. This particular English translation was done by Charles Eglington. Needless to say, I imagine this book would be difficult to find in a North American bookstore. Despite such obscurity, Seven Days at the Silbersteins won the Herzog Prize, the highest award in Afrikaans literature.

On the surface it is the story of Henry Van Eeden, a young, well-educated South African who is escorted to the vast Silberstein estate by his uncle, J.J. in order to meet Salome, the young girl he is betrothed to marry. Henry spends seven days at the Silberstein's winery and cattle ranch (called Weldevonden) meeting the family (of which the enigmatic Jock reigns supreme), attending parties populated by eccentric gentry and farmers and, mysteriously enough, not meeting Salome. She is in attendance at all the functions, but Henry remains uncertain as to which guest is his fiancee until the very end. The surface story is the literary equivalent of a Three's Company episode.

But this novel cannot be read on a surface level. Leroux's prose is dense with philosophical and social implications. Written as a time of social awakening in South Africa, the text is a bizarre trip that examines the nature of good versus evil, the essence of salvation, the formlessness of being and the divine among a plethora of other themes. At another level, Seven Days at the Silbersteins is a literary awakening of the Afrikaans voice at a time when South Africa was itself awakening from several decades of crippling apartheid to find themselves increasingly the pariah on the world stage. I get the impression that this novel and its highly liberal ideas when a long way toward softening the Afrikaans stance on race relations in South Africa, but I could be wrong.

The prose is so dense that it takes a linguistic machete to hack through its layers. One of the central themes of the book is the notion of reality vs. illusion and the book often diverges into bizarre twists and turns that are sometimes difficult to understand. Leroux is concerned with the the notion of masks and hidden realities and this not only comes out in the surface narrative but also on various philosophical levels. This obsession with illusion and reality is perfectly manifest in the ongoing interplay between the very real Henry and the illusory Salome, whose presence is entirely definite, but at the same time, entirely indefinite.

While the novel itself is short (only 157 pages) the writing is so dense and layered that it should be read slowly in order to really chew the philosophical fat. Each chapter represents a particular day and each chapter descends deeper into a world where very little is certain and everything seems possible. But don't get me wrong, aside from the deeper themes of the novel Seven Days at the Silbersteins is very much a piece of humor. Watching Henry stumble and bumble about his future in-laws estate, being continuously misunderstood and misinterpreted (often to his advantage) is a lesson in good comedic writing. The pacing is as it should be. Quick on story and long on thought.

If you are into philosophical comedy and/or Afrikaans literature (and I know you are!), this is as good a place to start.

Shout Out

Despite the fact that she has really culled back her posting recently (boo!), I really dig what Erin has to say over at Erin Reads. Excellent blog. Check her out!

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

By John Le Carré

In case you are wondering, John Le Carré is not going to hold your hand. Not even for one page.

You'd be well served to do your homework before attempting Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, John Le Carré's classic Cold War spy novel featuring the enigmatic George Smiley and the first novel in his Karla Trilogy. You are going to need all your knowledge about Cold War era espionage to decipher this narrative, but I'll come back to that in a bit, but first a little background. Unlike Le Carré, I will hold your hand (and take you out for a nice steak dinner, if you are inclined).

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy progresses via a series of flashbacks and tracks the history of the Circus (the in-house name of M16, the Secret Intelligence Service). After an agent engages in a love affair with the wife of a Soviet intelligence officer in Hong Kong, it becomes apparent that the British office has been infiltrated by a mole. Smiley has the unenviable task of ferreting out the mole, spying on the spies as it were. The title of the novel are the code names given to the potential spies in the British intelligence service. A trap is set, the culprit is apprehended and there's a neat little twist ending that... oh who am I kidding? I have no idea how this book ended. I finished it, but I'm not entirely sure what happened.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is considered a classic in the spy genre and was recently made into a film starring my favorite actor of all time, Gary Oldman, as George Smiley. the film garnered several Academy Award nominations including a Best Actor nod for Oldman (good for him!). I can't vouch for the film, though because I haven't seen it and after reading the novel, I have no plans to do so (even if it does have Gary Oldman... I'm not a fanboy). That's how much this novel frustrated me.

I's not no idjit, ya hear? But I couldn't make heads nor tails of this book. It was borderline nonsense to me. Entire chapters would go by and I had no idea what had just happened. At times I felt like I was reading a foreign language. I'm not the sort to be intimidated by a novel and I'm more than comfortable diving into classic novels that others find weird, verbose or abstract (I've read and enjoyed Naked Lunch, Vurt and Pussy, Queen of the Pirates, I'll have you know!). But even with the Wikipedia page and other sorts of cliff notes, I had trouble understanding this book. I realized there were flashbacks and I could follow the storyline at times. but there seemed to be a never-ending chorus line of minor characters and pointless tangents. It was an overload of information!

And the jargon, my GOD! I was constantly going back to find out that the hell a lamplighter or shoemaker or a janitor was. It was infuriating. I found myself drifting off for pages at a time and not really caring about what I had missed. Not a good sign when reading.

Now, I know that John Le Carré is a well respected spy novelist and I'm not going to go so far as to disrespect the man on this blog like I did to Cathy Lamb. Salman Rushdie is not everyone's cup of tea, but his reputation affords him some wiggle room from people who don't like his work (even from Ayatollahs). I think I owe Le Carré the same courtesy. So, instead of rambling on about why I didn't like this book, I'd like to hear from anyone out there that did like this book and why? Given its stature as a classic, there must be more than a few people out there that love this book. I'm addressing you! What did I miss here? How could I have read this book differently and enjoyed it? Really! I hate it when I don't get it but....

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy? I don't get it.

(It does have a cool cover, though).

The Virgin Suicides

The Virgin Suicides

By Jeffery Eugenides

Before I get into this, I have a recommendation to make for anyone thinking about reading this novel. Do not, under any circumstances, read this book while feeling sad. Don't read it if you feel depressed, down, off, low or even slightly unhappy. And, for the love of God, do not read this book if it has been raining consistently in your vicinity for more than a week (in my case, three weeks). I'm not the sort to suffer from depression (mild or sever) but this book put me in a serious funk.

OK, on with the show...

The Virgin Suicides is the 1993 debut novel by Jeffery Eugenides. It is a book I have been meaning to read for over a decade but circumstances have conspired against me all that time (conspiracies include: forget about the book when I'm in the bookstore, bookstore doesn't have the book, living too far away from bookstore, book is obscenely expensive and I refuse to buy it). After reading and reviewing Eugenides more recent novel Middlesex last year, I decided that enough was enough, ordered it on my Kindle and finally sat down and read it. So to say that this book was built up in my mind is an understatement. There was literally a decade of anticipation burbling under the surface as I delved into this one.

Without going into too much detail, the story is about five sisters who, in the course of a year, each commit suicide. It charts the build-up and execution (no pun intended) of the first suicide and the slow, painful descent of the Lisbon family in the wake of tragedy. It also follows the trajectory of the neighborhood who don't seem to have the emotional capacity to deal with the disintegration of a member group in the community. The novel itself seems often reads like a community coping mechanism, albeit too late. In a broader sense, The Virgin Suicides encapsulates the social and emotional isolation of suburban America. Heady issues for a debut novel, Mr. Eugenides!

Eugenides employs the seldom utilized first person plural narrative, which took some getting used to. The narrator, as far as the reader can tell is a boy within a very large social circle living in the same community (although nameless, clues in the narrative suggest that the community is somewhere in suburban Detroit circa the mid 1970s) who speaks for everyone in his social circle from a point several years after the suicides. The narrative reads like a formal introduction (via collection of evidence and interviews) for some sort of investigation (or perhaps memorial) into the suicides, but the reasons for the formality remain unclear to the very end. It had the effect of reading a modern myth narrated by a Greek chorus.

Once I settled into the narrative style, I decided I liked it for several reasons. The first person plural encapsulates the thoughts, memories and opinions of a large group of people in the community and, therefore creates a semi-omniscient narrator. We experience the story through the eyes of the entire community, which gives the feeling of an urban legend (myth) come true. A lot of the details in the book are gained by heresy and conjecture only adding to the obvious distortion of the truth throughout the novel. Many of the "facts" contradict and there is often a measure of dissent among the interviewees on specific details. All this makes The Virgin Suicides a pleasure to read for those who love narrative nuance.

But the narrative style works very well on a second level. Despite the semi-omniscience of the community, it never penetrates into the actual thoughts, memories and opinions of the Lisbon girls, which is the crux of the story, after all. The narrative style builds a metaphorical wall around the girls (to go with the literal one that is their house and parents). This distance from the subjects places them firmly on a pedestal in the mind of the narrator and, in turn, the mind of the readers. The girls are literally and figuratively out of reach. They are completely intangible and, therefore, lapse into the realm of legend in the minds of the local boys. The girls achieve a distant, almost ephemeral quality in the novel. They are already ghosts at the beginning of the novel and only seem to drift farther from reality as the story progresses. These girls exist only in myth and the motives of the narrator suggest myth making.

Surely, if the narrator had gained more access to the girls while they had been alive, they would have been more human. There are glimpses of their humanity in the book but the narrator seems to miss willfully miss them in order to preserve the girls mythical status. But one gets the impression that the narrator has no intention of humanizing these girls. The Lisbon girls have infected the boys in this community so thoroughly that they will never full recover from what transpired and their particular coping mechanism is to mythologize rather than humanize.

On a second level, this novel deconstructs the deep isolation of the post-World War II North American suburban experience. Eugenides does a spectacular job with setting (as he did in Middlesex). He encapsulates the loneliness and tedium of life in these communities. And this story derives from the dichotomous desires of people who want calm and serenity while simultaneously desiring chaos and disorder. This is best represented in the book during the sub-plot involving the on-going community plan to eliminate Dutch Elm disease in the community trees by cutting them all down, reducing the neighborhood to a barren, naked landscape. The plan is both systematic and chaotic, much like the quietly desperate lives of those who live in the suburbs.

Did this book live up to its reputation (a ten year build up)? Absolutely. Eugenides proved (to me) with Middlesex that he is a significant force in the literary community. Going back and reading The Virgin Suicides only confirms that the pedigree was always there. My recommendation is that if you have not yet read this book, do so. It deserves to be recognized as a modern classic. I finished the book the day before writing this and since I insist on writing my blog within a day of completing a book (to keep it fresh as well as to see what sort of spontaneous nonsense comes out of me) this blog post cannot and will not do this novel justice. There is so much to this book and I fear I will need to re-read this book before too long.

I just hope it doesn't rain when I do.

On Writing

On Writing

By Stephen King

I owe a lot to Stephen King. 

I'm not sure if I have ever told this story on this blog before (and I'm far too lazy to go back and check). Fact: I developed my love for reading from my mother and, by extension, Stephen King. It is not a sordid tale that had my mother traveling to Maine ever fortnight. It's rather more simple than that. Allow me to explain.

For as far back as I can remember, my mother was a reader. When I was very young there was never a time when there wasn't a book sitting next to her purse on the kitchen counter (next to the dishwasher) when she got home from work at night. At the time, she was partial to those immense paperbacks of the supermarket variety. I'm not sure but I would hazard a guess that a lot were written by James Clavell, James Mitchner and Arthur Haley. I couldn't read at the time, but they were books of that size, dimension and paper quality. I was awed by the fact that my mom could read so many pages without any pictures.

Ironically, it was the lack of pictures that drew me in. Since I couldn't read, I used to obsess over the covers of the novels my mom brought home. Especially the horror books. They always seemed to be a bloodshot eye or a scary looking cat or an ominous looking building on a hill with a tree and maybe, maybe a.... ghost! I both dreaded and yearned for covers that had ghosts on them. Those where the ones that fascinated me and to this day I still enjoy perusing mass market paperback shelves in supermarkets and airports looking at the covers. They are always so jazzy.

This was during the late 70s and early 80s. At the time, novelty cut-out covers were all the rage. You still see them now and again, but at the time it seemed that every other book had an odd cut or that little window on the cover that opened to a bigger, scarier picture on the inside (or did they open to something more disappointing inside? I can't remember clearly. Probably a page of blurbs). To me, those covers represented the Lambourghini Countash of novels. Value added for illiterate 5-year olds (back in the days when it was normal for 5-year olds to be illiterate). I concocted whole stories from those pictures. Some of them were probably better than the novels themselves. I don't know. Never will.

For whatever reason, I was always obsessed with what my mom was reading and how far her bookmark had traveled through a book on any given day. I was always asking her how much longer it would take her to finish this particular novel. Two days? Three days? Do you already have a new one? Where is it? Can I see it? Where do you get your new books? There's a store for books? (I don't recall even knowing what a bookstore was until my town got it's first shopping mall and I discovered the Choose Your Own Adventure series, circa 1983).

Later, once I started to read, one of the first names I recall seeing on those covers was Stephen King. I recall Firestarter and Salem's Lot and Pet Semetary all passing through our house and spending time on the counter next to the dishwasher. When I asked about them, I was told that Stephen King wrote scary books and I wasn't old enough to read him yet.

...

Oh really?

Challenge accepted.

It took me a few years and a few false starts with The Shining (you'd think I'd pick a less daunting book) but I managed to make my way through Cujo at the age of 10 and by the end of high school I had added Carrie, Skeleton Crew and (finally) The Shining to my list of Stephen King books read. He never became my all-time favorite novelist, but I was always happy to immerse myself into his world when I had a chance. And some of his stuff still keeps me up at night, specifically The Jaunt.

But of course, like so many children who defy and rebel against their elders, I went through a long period where I scoffed at the very notion of Stephen King. He was simply a mass market paperback hack. He wrote for the money. He wrote for the movie contracts. He was the literature version of a pop star. Shiny and cool on the outside but devoid of any meaningful artistic merit. Pfft. As you can well imagine, I went through this stage during university and my "idealistic" 20s. I think I even sported a soul patch for a good portion of that time to complete the pretentious dick persona... Yeah, i was that guy, probably pretending to read Ulysses.

But I (think) I have demurred with age and have come full circle on Stephen King. Okay, sure he's a wildly inconsistent writer, but who am I to judge, right? While I wouldn't consider myself the worst writer on the planet, I've not written so much as a short story since high school. I just like to read books and talk about them. Besides, for every Tommyknockers and Gerald's Game there is The Stand, Night Shift and The Shining. He's written some absolutely outstanding novels and short stories. Anyone who thinks that Stephen King hasn't left a lasting impression on the world of literature is kidding themselves. He exemplifies an era, like it or not.

King has redefined horror writing and, for the past thirty years, has single-handedly kept the short story genre from sliding into a literary black hole. His legacy is positively assured. Stephen King has absolutely nothing to prove to himself, the literary world or anyone. Wipe your hands, turn the lights out on your way out, there is no more need for discussion. 

So it was more than a shock to discover that he went ahead and wrote what is, in my opinion, best book I have ever read on the subject of writing: On Writing. Furthermore, it might just be the best thing he has ever written. I have not read extensively on the subject of writing, but I've read more than enough to know that, by and large, books on the subject of writing are dull, dreary and chock full of nonsense. Listening to a writer go on for 300-400 pages about the process of writing only to tell you that, no, he/she doesn't know why some people can write well and others can't, but if you keep at it even the worst writers can become Charles Dickens.

King cuts through that bullshit right quick. Bad writers will always be bad writers (d'you hear that, Cathy Lamb?). great writers will always be great. But with a lot of hard work and careful honing of your craft, good writers can become marginally better. Might as well take you down a few notches before doling out the good stuff. I like that brand of realism. King himself is not a great writer. But he is a very good one who has over the years, made himself just that much better and he's perfectly willing to tell you how he's done it. 

On Writing can be divided into three equally fascinating books. The first part discusses his childhood and how he developed his love of reading and writing. It chronicles his family life along with his early struggles to get published, first in short story (and pornographic) magazines and then novel form as well as his struggles with substance abuse. The second part of the book is nifty little toolbox of advice for would-be writers. From the mechanics (vocabulary, grammar and Strunk & White) to the {insert number here} habits of highly effective writers. I am humbled that King has the same opinion on adverbs as I do. The third section of the book is a clinical account King's accident (he was hit by a van while taking a walk) and recovery while writing On Writing. 

While all three parts intertwine into a nice little package it was the second part that interested me the most. Perhaps it's because the book is called On Writing and it was in the second part that I got what I paid for, advice on writing. It's short, to the point, filled with anecdotes about himself and other little factoids about idiosyncratic writers. More importantly, it strips out all the crap about what you should do and what you shouldn't do, rules and plotting and character studies and all such nonsense. King outlines how he approaches writing, discusses how others approach their writing and they offers habits that will serve to help. In the end it really boils down to: Always read. Always write.

Of course there's more to writing than that and I encourage anyone with an interest in writing to read this book (of course, if you have an interest in writing you have probably read this book before. Probably more than once). Beyond the "how to" section there is invaluable information on how to get your work published, what sorts of roadblocks and troubles you might expect along the way, how to get an agent, how to present a manuscript etc... All this information is an invaluable resource for would be authors looking to get their work published.

Stephen King has gotten a lot of unnecessary criticism from both the literary community and myself over the years, most of it undeserved. The truth is, Stephen King has done a lot for the world of books and literature and me. It's time he get the recognition he deserves for all hie has achieved. 

But if I may be so bold: On Writing is his greatest addition. There is so much in this book that I will use (and have already started to use) in my writing. I learned more about writing in five days than in all the years I have spent out of school. On Writing is a book that I will keep on-hand for a long time to come. I'm really excited to put his suggestions to task.

Thanks again, Mr. King.