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3.28 AVERAGE
3.28 AVERAGE
Where to start with this book?
Downside: it was too long. This is an issue I personally have with most contemporary literature. 500 pages?!?
But then again, this book -- more than most other long contemporary novels I've read -- needed to be long. I don't think it could have been much shorter; the entire feel and atmosphere of the novel would have changed.
Moreover, despite its length, there were many parts of this book that I really loved. The Prague setting, of course, fascinated -- though I'm admittedly biased. More than that: Crain's writing about language, and about being lost in a foreign language. The natural way Jacob's understanding of Czech improved throughout the book, and how that was shown through his connection with Czechs, be they students or love interests, and his conversations with them. The dialog was also interesting and, I think, successful: writing dialog in two languages, English, and "Czech" (translated into English). And then there are conversations that have Czech and English in them, and the way the group of English-speaking expats naturally incorporated a number of Czech words into their general conversations. And the amount of Czech words actually used, crediting the reader with an ability to understand from context -- so often these things are dumbed down, and I appreciated that it wasn't here. All very well done.
There are also the great expat aspects of the book. Chad Harbach's blurb on the cover refers to "intense expat friendships", which I find an inspiring phrase in its own right, even if it doesn't begin to cover it. Luckily the book does, without wallowing in it. As for the expat experience, Crain sometimes really nails this:
"He was at the right distance from his country, he thought. This was where he wanted to see it from." (p.56)
"Leaving would be a kind of revenge on what had frustrated him here" (p.59)
(The following quotes are not really spoilers, but you may not want to read them if you intend to read the book:)
"He felt sad and misplaced, with the abrupt, overwhelming, dizzying sadness that comes over people in countries not their own, which has none of the richness of feeling that usually comes with sadness but is rather a kind of exhaustion." (p.66)
"Together they watched out two of the news program's ten-minute cycles, and the war began to make a difference in the feeling of things. It seemed to pick out the Americans in the larger picture that Jacob kept in his mind. It seemed to daub Jacob, Carl, and Rafe each with a spot of bright paint. Somewhat irrationally, Jacob began to feel himself to be less of a guest in the Stehliks' living room. The war seemed to prove that the larger world was a setting where America was the principal actor, and therefore, by extension, a setting where Jacob ought to feel at home. The Stehliks lived inside that world in the same way that Jacob livedinside theirs. A part of him felt ashamed of the grand entitlement that this sense of things implied, but he did not pretend to himself that he didn't share it. He merely kept silent about it." (p.191)
"'Do you think you are more free here, than in America?' Jana asked.
'Absolutely. Here there are no expectations.'
'There never are, for an exile,' Melinda suggested. 'It's a great privilege.'" (p.196)
"He knew Carl wouldn't need to be persuaded. He knew Carl also felt it. He just wanted the pleasure of trying to articulate it to him. He wanted to say that they had all become somehow permanent to one another, that Carl was right--leaving didn't matter, leaving wasn't going to change the relation that they were all in with one another [...] The connection was going to outlast the time that they were going to share, and somehow they felt the afterlife of it now, while they were still together, almost as a physical thing, casting a retrospective aura, which they felt prospectively. And it was terribly sad, as it turned out, and something else, too--exhilarating, somehow, maybe because they hadn't lost one another yet--and he wouldn't even be trying to talk about it if he weren't drunk." (p.302)
"'Do you ever think,' he asked Henry, who was nearest, 'a year ago I was here, and now I'm here?'
'Yes,' Henry answered." (p.306)
"Jacob wondered if he was remembering places like Arbat in anticipation of leaving--if he was assembling a map of the city in his memory, so as to be able to revisit it later. It was strange to realize that one couldn't know in advance which places one was later going to wish to remember. [...] Would he remember this room, for example? A large, white, underground room, furnished with low, flimsy card tables and filled with the smells of cigarette smoke, dancers' sweat, and spilled bear." (p.412)
"...the more backward the twin-tub was, the more authentic Jacob's experiences of Czechoslovakia. Expatriate's vanity." (p.426)
This is a writer's book, it seems to me. I don't know how autobiographical it is, or is meant to be, but of course some of it is, based on what I know of the author's experiences. The main character is a young gay man who lives in Prague for a year and wants to be a writer, and the book seems indulgent: sprawling, descriptive, wandering, questioning, reflective. It could have been further edited, certainly. Furthermore, there was much I didn't understand, from a construction perspective: Ota, for example, disappears; what is the point in the big picture of the narrative, of so many events; what is the point of Vaclav the hamster, of strange Kaspar, of Carl appearing and leaving? In retrospect, I'm not sure I care. This book was set up to encompass these things, to not be about anything huge or "life-changing", to cover the events of the year. There was no "moment", no dramatic event, to make this book. It meandered in the moment much the way an expat does, and therefore I am relieved of the usual criticism I have of such indulgent work.
Parts of this book were really a joy to read, and I underlined/copied/oohed over so many lines and passages (the above excerpts are only a fraction of the total). I wouldn't rush to recommend this book to everyone, but if you're interested in Prague or have been an expatriate, you'll find something to like, and if you write, you'll likely find something to captivate you. Whether that's worth the 500-page commitment, I can't say.
I will also add that, after finishing this book, I had a funny moment in which I felt excited to return to Prague. It was almost a subconscious feeling. Then I became confused because I don't have any plans to go to Prague in the near future, and I realized I was looking forward to the Prague of the book - only to be disappointed when I remembered I had finally finished it. I guess that's the advantage of 500 pages: it becomes a kind of constant in the background of your life, expecially if you're reading as slowly as I did.
Downside: it was too long. This is an issue I personally have with most contemporary literature. 500 pages?!?
But then again, this book -- more than most other long contemporary novels I've read -- needed to be long. I don't think it could have been much shorter; the entire feel and atmosphere of the novel would have changed.
Moreover, despite its length, there were many parts of this book that I really loved. The Prague setting, of course, fascinated -- though I'm admittedly biased. More than that: Crain's writing about language, and about being lost in a foreign language. The natural way Jacob's understanding of Czech improved throughout the book, and how that was shown through his connection with Czechs, be they students or love interests, and his conversations with them. The dialog was also interesting and, I think, successful: writing dialog in two languages, English, and "Czech" (translated into English). And then there are conversations that have Czech and English in them, and the way the group of English-speaking expats naturally incorporated a number of Czech words into their general conversations. And the amount of Czech words actually used, crediting the reader with an ability to understand from context -- so often these things are dumbed down, and I appreciated that it wasn't here. All very well done.
There are also the great expat aspects of the book. Chad Harbach's blurb on the cover refers to "intense expat friendships", which I find an inspiring phrase in its own right, even if it doesn't begin to cover it. Luckily the book does, without wallowing in it. As for the expat experience, Crain sometimes really nails this:
"He was at the right distance from his country, he thought. This was where he wanted to see it from." (p.56)
"Leaving would be a kind of revenge on what had frustrated him here" (p.59)
(The following quotes are not really spoilers, but you may not want to read them if you intend to read the book:)
"He felt sad and misplaced, with the abrupt, overwhelming, dizzying sadness that comes over people in countries not their own, which has none of the richness of feeling that usually comes with sadness but is rather a kind of exhaustion." (p.66)
"Together they watched out two of the news program's ten-minute cycles, and the war began to make a difference in the feeling of things. It seemed to pick out the Americans in the larger picture that Jacob kept in his mind. It seemed to daub Jacob, Carl, and Rafe each with a spot of bright paint. Somewhat irrationally, Jacob began to feel himself to be less of a guest in the Stehliks' living room. The war seemed to prove that the larger world was a setting where America was the principal actor, and therefore, by extension, a setting where Jacob ought to feel at home. The Stehliks lived inside that world in the same way that Jacob livedinside theirs. A part of him felt ashamed of the grand entitlement that this sense of things implied, but he did not pretend to himself that he didn't share it. He merely kept silent about it." (p.191)
"'Do you think you are more free here, than in America?' Jana asked.
'Absolutely. Here there are no expectations.'
'There never are, for an exile,' Melinda suggested. 'It's a great privilege.'" (p.196)
"He knew Carl wouldn't need to be persuaded. He knew Carl also felt it. He just wanted the pleasure of trying to articulate it to him. He wanted to say that they had all become somehow permanent to one another, that Carl was right--leaving didn't matter, leaving wasn't going to change the relation that they were all in with one another [...] The connection was going to outlast the time that they were going to share, and somehow they felt the afterlife of it now, while they were still together, almost as a physical thing, casting a retrospective aura, which they felt prospectively. And it was terribly sad, as it turned out, and something else, too--exhilarating, somehow, maybe because they hadn't lost one another yet--and he wouldn't even be trying to talk about it if he weren't drunk." (p.302)
"'Do you ever think,' he asked Henry, who was nearest, 'a year ago I was here, and now I'm here?'
'Yes,' Henry answered." (p.306)
"Jacob wondered if he was remembering places like Arbat in anticipation of leaving--if he was assembling a map of the city in his memory, so as to be able to revisit it later. It was strange to realize that one couldn't know in advance which places one was later going to wish to remember. [...] Would he remember this room, for example? A large, white, underground room, furnished with low, flimsy card tables and filled with the smells of cigarette smoke, dancers' sweat, and spilled bear." (p.412)
"...the more backward the twin-tub was, the more authentic Jacob's experiences of Czechoslovakia. Expatriate's vanity." (p.426)
This is a writer's book, it seems to me. I don't know how autobiographical it is, or is meant to be, but of course some of it is, based on what I know of the author's experiences. The main character is a young gay man who lives in Prague for a year and wants to be a writer, and the book seems indulgent: sprawling, descriptive, wandering, questioning, reflective. It could have been further edited, certainly. Furthermore, there was much I didn't understand, from a construction perspective: Ota, for example, disappears; what is the point in the big picture of the narrative, of so many events; what is the point of Vaclav the hamster, of strange Kaspar, of Carl appearing and leaving? In retrospect, I'm not sure I care. This book was set up to encompass these things, to not be about anything huge or "life-changing", to cover the events of the year. There was no "moment", no dramatic event, to make this book. It meandered in the moment much the way an expat does, and therefore I am relieved of the usual criticism I have of such indulgent work.
Parts of this book were really a joy to read, and I underlined/copied/oohed over so many lines and passages (the above excerpts are only a fraction of the total). I wouldn't rush to recommend this book to everyone, but if you're interested in Prague or have been an expatriate, you'll find something to like, and if you write, you'll likely find something to captivate you. Whether that's worth the 500-page commitment, I can't say.
I will also add that, after finishing this book, I had a funny moment in which I felt excited to return to Prague. It was almost a subconscious feeling. Then I became confused because I don't have any plans to go to Prague in the near future, and I realized I was looking forward to the Prague of the book - only to be disappointed when I remembered I had finally finished it. I guess that's the advantage of 500 pages: it becomes a kind of constant in the background of your life, expecially if you're reading as slowly as I did.
Crain creates an intriguing world with intriguing characters. However, I rarely found them to be all that compelling. I enjoyed certain aspects of the main character's journey but I found his internal dialogue to be obnoxious in a way that was not necessarily foiled by any other characters. I enjoyed being back in Prague, after studying there in 2013, and I think that Crain does the 1991 post-revolutionary city justice. I think I found the premise about ex-pats making it in this new wild-ish city to be boring and not particularly interesting. I would have loved this as a collection of related short stories.
This is one of the most heartbreaking, melancholic and swooningly romantic novels I have ever read. Yes, it is a ‘gay’ novel, and one of the best modern books about gay life. However, the last thing I want to do is pigeonhole such a wonderful book, as it deserves as wide an audience as possible.
The story is deceptively simple: 20-something American Jacob Putnam arrives in Prague a year after the Velvet Revolution, with a vague plan to teach English. While the country is at a crossroads between communism and capitalism, Jacob finds himself equally unsure as to the direction his life is going to take (and what exactly is meant by being a socially responsible and productive citizen, of whatever country one finds oneself in).
Jacob experiences Prague in a kind of disassociative, yet hyper-aware, state that any expatriate will be intensely familiar with. In addition, the social and professional interactions of a close group of expat friends and colleagues forms Jacob’s emotional barometer of Czechoslovakia.
Crain’s depiction of the city and its culture is exquisitely nuanced and detailed. Jacob’s first affair with a local leads to some pointed lessons about the vagaries of the human heart (not to mention international détente).
Thereafter we follow his often meandering journey towards a kind of maturity and acceptance. The end. It is easy to trivialise this incredible novel, which weaves its delicate and mesmerising spell for nearly 500 pages. Yes, not much happens. The narrative highlights include a hamster called Vaclav and Jacob’s first encounter with a proto twin tub washing machine in Prague.
However, what gives this novel its particular weight and resonance is Crain’s intimate understanding of the expat mentality, and how this elides with Jacob’s developing sense of his own gay identity (interwoven with a complex awareness of being ‘exiled’ from America itself).
It took me ages to read this, as I found myself often going back to reread sections, as well as reading numerous passages out loud to myself. Superb.
The story is deceptively simple: 20-something American Jacob Putnam arrives in Prague a year after the Velvet Revolution, with a vague plan to teach English. While the country is at a crossroads between communism and capitalism, Jacob finds himself equally unsure as to the direction his life is going to take (and what exactly is meant by being a socially responsible and productive citizen, of whatever country one finds oneself in).
Jacob experiences Prague in a kind of disassociative, yet hyper-aware, state that any expatriate will be intensely familiar with. In addition, the social and professional interactions of a close group of expat friends and colleagues forms Jacob’s emotional barometer of Czechoslovakia.
Crain’s depiction of the city and its culture is exquisitely nuanced and detailed. Jacob’s first affair with a local leads to some pointed lessons about the vagaries of the human heart (not to mention international détente).
Thereafter we follow his often meandering journey towards a kind of maturity and acceptance. The end. It is easy to trivialise this incredible novel, which weaves its delicate and mesmerising spell for nearly 500 pages. Yes, not much happens. The narrative highlights include a hamster called Vaclav and Jacob’s first encounter with a proto twin tub washing machine in Prague.
However, what gives this novel its particular weight and resonance is Crain’s intimate understanding of the expat mentality, and how this elides with Jacob’s developing sense of his own gay identity (interwoven with a complex awareness of being ‘exiled’ from America itself).
It took me ages to read this, as I found myself often going back to reread sections, as well as reading numerous passages out loud to myself. Superb.
The synopsis isn't much to look at. Caleb Crain's debut novel follows the story of Jacob, a gay American man who goes to Prague shortly after the Velvet Revolution, while the country is transitioning from communism to capitalism. Jacob makes friends. Jacob makes boyfriends. Jacob runs into male prostitutes, whom he disapproves of.
I hold this book in high regard, however, for several reasons. Firstly, Crain writes beautiful sentences. One gets the sense that Crain really toiled over the prose herein, and reaping the rewards of the author's hard work can be quite enjoyable. But perhaps more interestingly, if Gary Shtyngart's debut novel, The Russian Debutante's Hanbook, is a farcical, satirical take on Westerners who travel to Prague in the 1990s, then Necessary Errors is the so-called New Sincerity's answer to that book. It would be easy to make fun of (let alone criticize) Jacob and his friends, upper-class, white intellectual Westerners who travel to Prague looking to "find themselves." Shtyngart, after all, did it quite masterfully. But the hard thing to do, I think, is to tell the truth, to show people as they actually live and breathe and think (post-modern theory be damned, I suppose). The reason I consider this novel to be a triumph is because despite the fact that it's incredibly easy to mock Jacob, Crain never does, and somehow, the reader never does either. It should be easy to find oneself apathetic to Jacob and his "white people problems," but because of the way Crain handled this book, it isn't. One finds oneself not only caring about the characters in this novel, but rooting for them, and sympathizing with them as well (and it's worth noting that the characters in Shytngart's novel weren't incredibly sympathetic, a weak spot in the book).
It's not a flawless novel by any means. It's almost 500 pages, and badly in need of a good editor. Some scenes seem to repeat themselves, or at least fail to advance the plot. The (I assume intentional) juxtaposition of Jacob's newfound sexuality with Czechoslovakia's newfound economy is a little pretentious. Some of the secondary characters could be a bit more fleshed out and three-dimensional.
But overall, this is a really exciting, enjoyable, and encouraging first novel. I'm eager to see where Crain will go next with his fiction.
I hold this book in high regard, however, for several reasons. Firstly, Crain writes beautiful sentences. One gets the sense that Crain really toiled over the prose herein, and reaping the rewards of the author's hard work can be quite enjoyable. But perhaps more interestingly, if Gary Shtyngart's debut novel, The Russian Debutante's Hanbook, is a farcical, satirical take on Westerners who travel to Prague in the 1990s, then Necessary Errors is the so-called New Sincerity's answer to that book. It would be easy to make fun of (let alone criticize) Jacob and his friends, upper-class, white intellectual Westerners who travel to Prague looking to "find themselves." Shtyngart, after all, did it quite masterfully. But the hard thing to do, I think, is to tell the truth, to show people as they actually live and breathe and think (post-modern theory be damned, I suppose). The reason I consider this novel to be a triumph is because despite the fact that it's incredibly easy to mock Jacob, Crain never does, and somehow, the reader never does either. It should be easy to find oneself apathetic to Jacob and his "white people problems," but because of the way Crain handled this book, it isn't. One finds oneself not only caring about the characters in this novel, but rooting for them, and sympathizing with them as well (and it's worth noting that the characters in Shytngart's novel weren't incredibly sympathetic, a weak spot in the book).
It's not a flawless novel by any means. It's almost 500 pages, and badly in need of a good editor. Some scenes seem to repeat themselves, or at least fail to advance the plot. The (I assume intentional) juxtaposition of Jacob's newfound sexuality with Czechoslovakia's newfound economy is a little pretentious. Some of the secondary characters could be a bit more fleshed out and three-dimensional.
But overall, this is a really exciting, enjoyable, and encouraging first novel. I'm eager to see where Crain will go next with his fiction.