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A review by geckoedit
The Fugitives by Christopher Sorrentino
4.0
Award-winning author Christopher Sorrentino, whose writing has been compared to Don DeLillo, Hunter S Thompson and Philip Roth, brings us a story of race, identity, story-telling and truth in The Fugitives.
Sandy is a fugitive from his ex-wife and the relationships that have caused a scandal back in New York. He flees to Michigan, hoping the seclusion will help him finish his latest novel. Kat flees her clingy, needy boyfriend and an unsatisfying job, chasing a story that might propel her career into what she really wants. She’s also fleeing her past, as she seeks anonymity and abandons her cultural identity. They meet at a library, where John Salteau tells “Native Tales” to children. However, is he really who he claims to be? Or is he too a fugitive, hiding in plain sight from the local mobsters?
My first impression was overwhelmingly positive. I highlighted almost every other paragraph to quote later; Christopher Sorrentino really knows how to put a sentence together. I liked the characters and I was interested in the story of some gangster pretending to be a Chippewa Indian. It was interesting to see how the book touched on the workings of the publishing industry, concepts of identity and race (and how we create identity through the stories we tell ourselves), and the action-packed parts were exciting. However, as I read on, small flaws started to bother me.
Sorrentino’s style is very intellectual; he writes long, dense sentences that sometimes need to be unpacked a little. Sometimes a paragraph covers multiple pages and when you get to the end you’re still not sure what it was pointing you towards. This is not a quick, easy read; it requires the reader to do a bit of work, and there’s a lot of reading between the lines that must happen as well. He plays with form, sometimes to great effect. Sometimes it was a little confusing. Even with a degree in literature, and the handy built-in Kindle dictionary, I found it tricky to get the main point behind what a lot of the book was saying. I feel like this is a book the critics and literati will love, but the laymen will simply scratch their heads and feel inadequate as the point goes soaring over their heads.
However, it’s not all bad. For instance, Sorrentino does some interesting things with form, using his two narrators (one in first person, and utterly unreliable, and the other slightly more reliable third, but very selective and secretive) to tell the story. It was slightly repetitive until I realised what was going on; there were tiny contradictions pointing out the flaws in their stories, both in how they describe themselves and how they describe the world around them. Sandy frequently glosses over the truth, choosing instead the version that portrays himself in the best light, while Kat’s cynicism exaggerates the negatives and ignores many positives. It was very cunningly done; I feel like Sorrentino gleefully distracts the reader with long, dense monologues about publishing and race and identity, sucking you in as you believe everything you’re told, until, in the end, with Iain Banks-like flair, nothing has any substance or certainty. I finished the book, completely confused. But I enjoyed the ride.
Is it a flaw for a book to be too clever? Maybe. For me, I found that the most interesting part of the story got about 5% of the attention. I cared more about Salteau and his real identity, and how he went about conning people, and what happened to the missing money, and the gangsters and Becky and so on, than I did about Sandy’s narcissistic existential crises, or Kat’s bitter self-loathing and their mutual self-destruction. As interested as I am about the publishing process and the “death of print”, I skimmed most of Monte, Nables and Dylan’s monologues about them. I’m sure there are people who will appreciate the intertextuality and meta and fourth-wall breaking and so on; for me, it felt like a load of pretentious waffling, whingeing and obfuscation that took narrative time away from the real story. This book is a lot of work to understand, and I feel like I missed the main point of it. However, the words sounded good together, the characters were great, the main premise was gripping and I loved how the narration of the story became a pivotal part of the story as well.
I received this book from the publisher for free, in exchange for an honest review. You can read more of my reviews at Literogo.com.
If I arrive at the library before eleven, I’ll wait. There’s no other feeling like that of the restraint in a quiet room filled with people. Conditional unity, breached under the duress of petty bodily betrayals, farts and sneezes. The heads come up, mildly curious, then fall once more to the printed lines.
Sandy is a fugitive from his ex-wife and the relationships that have caused a scandal back in New York. He flees to Michigan, hoping the seclusion will help him finish his latest novel. Kat flees her clingy, needy boyfriend and an unsatisfying job, chasing a story that might propel her career into what she really wants. She’s also fleeing her past, as she seeks anonymity and abandons her cultural identity. They meet at a library, where John Salteau tells “Native Tales” to children. However, is he really who he claims to be? Or is he too a fugitive, hiding in plain sight from the local mobsters?
Only a very few were born to love the status quo, at least insofar as they were certain that it contained a privileged place for them. Everyone else, accommodating it in all of its arbitrary contradictions, effaced to a certain extent what they’d been branded with at birth. But Nables couldn’t erase the rubbed ebony skin, the full lips, the broad nose with the flaring nostrils, and he was even less capable of erasing the stroke of indignation connecting his every decision to a central motivation. So he messed with his staff. It was a way of actively not waiting for the chimerical story that would force the world to apologize for being itself.
My first impression was overwhelmingly positive. I highlighted almost every other paragraph to quote later; Christopher Sorrentino really knows how to put a sentence together. I liked the characters and I was interested in the story of some gangster pretending to be a Chippewa Indian. It was interesting to see how the book touched on the workings of the publishing industry, concepts of identity and race (and how we create identity through the stories we tell ourselves), and the action-packed parts were exciting. However, as I read on, small flaws started to bother me.
Oh how well she’d avoided Becky Chasse for ten years. Just didn’t want to go wherever that might lead. People bobbed up all the time, more often than you’d ever dream; she pictured a billion souls spread out across the night, each tapping the names of the lost into a search engine by the light of a single lamp. But happy reunions were for Facebook, a nice smooth interface between you and all the bad habits and ancient disharmonies. Who was waiting for you in the vast digital undertow there? Kat avoided it.
Sorrentino’s style is very intellectual; he writes long, dense sentences that sometimes need to be unpacked a little. Sometimes a paragraph covers multiple pages and when you get to the end you’re still not sure what it was pointing you towards. This is not a quick, easy read; it requires the reader to do a bit of work, and there’s a lot of reading between the lines that must happen as well. He plays with form, sometimes to great effect. Sometimes it was a little confusing. Even with a degree in literature, and the handy built-in Kindle dictionary, I found it tricky to get the main point behind what a lot of the book was saying. I feel like this is a book the critics and literati will love, but the laymen will simply scratch their heads and feel inadequate as the point goes soaring over their heads.
To erase yourself completely was commonly thought to be the most difficult of feats. Most people’s identities were important to them, something they wouldn’t shed. It was proud, it was timid, it was laudable, it was stupid. It stuck people with dumb friends and crummy marriages. Trapped them in dead towns and murderous neighborhoods. It manufactured tradition from the uninterrupted drudgery of successive generations. It transformed ignorant belief into folklore, and ignorance itself into defiance. Identity was a trap.
However, it’s not all bad. For instance, Sorrentino does some interesting things with form, using his two narrators (one in first person, and utterly unreliable, and the other slightly more reliable third, but very selective and secretive) to tell the story. It was slightly repetitive until I realised what was going on; there were tiny contradictions pointing out the flaws in their stories, both in how they describe themselves and how they describe the world around them. Sandy frequently glosses over the truth, choosing instead the version that portrays himself in the best light, while Kat’s cynicism exaggerates the negatives and ignores many positives. It was very cunningly done; I feel like Sorrentino gleefully distracts the reader with long, dense monologues about publishing and race and identity, sucking you in as you believe everything you’re told, until, in the end, with Iain Banks-like flair, nothing has any substance or certainty. I finished the book, completely confused. But I enjoyed the ride.
Your authority derived from the story you recognized to be about yourself. You adopted it, told it, then found other people who told the same story. The days of evading witnesses were over. The witnesses eliminated themselves; faded into the fabric of new jobs, new cities, new pastimes, new friends; multiple vectors diverging from a common originating point. The days of people were over. It was a vast democratic plurality of groups out there – political parties, associations, alumni, fans, account holders, veterans, employees, signatories, professions, and end users. Join and vanish. Learn the secret handshake, get the secret haircut. Try to be a person and you realized just how alone you really were. The only thing to do was to break away, shed what marked you before you were shed and disowned.
Is it a flaw for a book to be too clever? Maybe. For me, I found that the most interesting part of the story got about 5% of the attention. I cared more about Salteau and his real identity, and how he went about conning people, and what happened to the missing money, and the gangsters and Becky and so on, than I did about Sandy’s narcissistic existential crises, or Kat’s bitter self-loathing and their mutual self-destruction. As interested as I am about the publishing process and the “death of print”, I skimmed most of Monte, Nables and Dylan’s monologues about them. I’m sure there are people who will appreciate the intertextuality and meta and fourth-wall breaking and so on; for me, it felt like a load of pretentious waffling, whingeing and obfuscation that took narrative time away from the real story. This book is a lot of work to understand, and I feel like I missed the main point of it. However, the words sounded good together, the characters were great, the main premise was gripping and I loved how the narration of the story became a pivotal part of the story as well.
I received this book from the publisher for free, in exchange for an honest review. You can read more of my reviews at Literogo.com.