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The Instructions by Adam Levin
5.0
(Much like the very-long novel itself, I fully realize this very-long review won't appeal to most readers. For that, I make no apologies — brevity not being the soul of wit here, hopefully. But if you've heard of The Instructions or Adam Levin and are the least bit intrigued, I'd suggest you make at least a good skim of what follows. This is a novel you should read.)
Imagine the frustration: You may or may not be the Messiah, destined (or not) to lead your people to "perfect justice." But the world is imperfect and so is the god who rules it.* So what do you do? If you're Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee, the 10-year-old protagonist of Adam Levin's debut novel, The Instructions, you lead a rag-tag group of pre-teens self-dubbed the Side of Damage in a holy war against "the Arrangement" — the jocks and teachers at their suburban Chicago junior high school — after which, you deliver your scripture.**
The Instructions, all 1,030 pages of it, captures four days of this struggle. And it's one of the more inventive, exhausting, entertaining, beguiling, hilarious and just awesome (technical reviewer term) novels I've read in a long time. But instead of doing what I just did — stringing together a list of unsupported adjectives and leaving you to trust me that they're true — let me instead make the case why The Instructions is each. Hopefully, what emerges here is a more complete picture of this huge novel than a boring, run-of-the-mill book review could provide.
1. Inventive — Building a novel around a messiah (false or otherwise) is nothing new, but when that maybe-messiah is a 10-year-old "Israelite, Chicago born" who agonizes over whether or not he is the Messiah, and then decides he really wants to be after he falls in love with 12-year old June*** well, kudos for creativity. The Instructions is actually Gurion's scripture, written and published seven years after the events of 11/17/06, the fourth of the four days over which the novel takes place. But to tell his story and give us the best possible understanding of his university, Gurion uses a number of storytelling strategies: He gives us emails from former teachers (Gurion's been kicked out of several Chicago-area schools for fighting, including an incident where he threw a stapler at the headmaster), reports by his social worker in his new delinquent-youth program at Aptakisic Junior High in Dearbrook Park, Illinois, and backstory on how his parents met and fell in love. What's more, Gurion lets us read his ISS (in-school suspension) assignments, where he explains such playground concepts as "snat" and "face," the history of "slapslap," and shows us how to make a pennygun — a weapon created with a balloon and the top of a plastic soda bottle, and his soldiers' weapon of choice. The effect of all these different strategies and style is a much better relationship with Gurion than a strict first-person narrative could've provided.
2. Exhausting — Besides the fact that this wrist-cramping novel weighs about 3 pounds, which is exhausting in and of itself, Levin's characters are extremely, um, thorough. They dissect everything logically and talk to each other in long, polished paragraphs. But these conversations aren't so much digressions as they are scrutinies under magnification to the nth degree — of words, ideas, arguments. They read as logical syllogisms (if, if, if, then) and if you're not in the right mood to be reading them, they can drive you mad, or cause you to doze off — which can be hazardous when you're holding a heavy book. As one example, Gurion spends three pages debunking the Jewish superstition that if a pregnant woman steps on nail-clippings, she'll miscarry. That one in particular is a lot of fun to read, but not all of them are. And, so, parts of the novel are exhausting..
Adam Levin
3. Entertaining — You don't pick up a 1,030-page novel and expect that the story alone will keep you reading — unless the name on the front is Stephen King or Tom Clancy. Levin's prose is magnificent — as entertaining in spots as it is exhausting in others. Did I mention Philip Roth has a cameo? As does a Smashing Pumpkins song. That was fun. Plus, characters have names like Boystar, the Janitor, and My Main Man Scott Mookus. Now, to address the 600-lb gorilla — comparisons to David Foster Wallace: Yes, they are appropriate. And never is this more clear as we're thinking along with a character as s/he spells out an argument. That ability to allow his readers to see into his brain as he wrote was Wallace's gift, and it's Levin's as well. And it's infinitely entertaining to read prose written that way. But as amazing as it is that Levin keeps you interested in such a small universe over such a short period of time, the novel picks up some pretty amazing speed after the halfway point. I read about the last 300 pages in what seemed like five minutes.
4. Beguiling — Levin's most astonishing trick in this novel is that he quietly winks at his readers, and allows them to be okay with a 10-year-old thinking, acting, and arguing like a scholarly grown-up. He knows it's not realistic, you know it's not realistic, so you just go with it. If you don't, you'll probably stop reading on page 2. Beyond the messiah stuff, the real question of the novel and thus the real challenge for the reader is to understand Gurion's overarching life philosophy. It's not an easy question at all. Gurion is the son of a civil rights lawyer father, presumably far to the left ideologically, who defends anti-Semites and a psychologist mother who is a former member of the Israeli Defense Force, presumably far to the right ideologically. But Gurion's own ideology is harder to pinpoint. His own outlook emerges slowly, piece-by-piece over time, and you really have to pay close attention to get it. The one thing that's clear is that Gurion is frustrated and that leads to violence and damage. What's less clear is why. Does Gurion believe the ends justifies the means? Is damage wrought in the pursuit of higher good acceptable damage?
5. Hilarious — Ranging from slapstick to subtle to sarcastic, Levin brings the funny — it's one of the many carrots that keeps you reading, and willing to forgive the exhausting arguments and logic. Here's one (of hundreds) example: Gurion's teacher tells him to "Mind the cheese doodles, Maccabee." Gurion responds: "The mind Maccabee, cheese doodles" and then explains why he likes that joke.**** Another: Gurion explains, when Boystar is injured, that Boystar's mother is upset because "she was shot in the son." Part of the fun of the novel, too, is how badly Gurion's followers misinterpret how they're supposed to be following him.***** But Gurion, because he's in love, and because he hopes he's the messiah, goes with it and concocts a scheme so fantastical, you can't help but laugh a little.
6. Just Awesome —This is my catch-all, which basically just gives me an excuse to gush. I'm not Jewish, so I'm sure there was much inside-joke-wise I missed. Even so, I loved this book! It's a book I couldn't wait to finish work or showering or eating lunch to get back to. Again, it's really too bad this novel won't find a larger readership (probably much like this review, which is running at a ratio higher than one word of review per page of book reviewed.) The thousand-plus pages and relative unknownness of its author (though, hopefully that'll change soon) will scare most readers away. But I encourage you whole-heartedly to carve out a few weeks and take it down.
Footnotes
(These footnotes are intended to give you an idea of Levin's style, while attempting to mimic part of it.)
*"Hashem is not perfect, I said, and I've never said He was perfect. I said, he's not all-powerful, either."
**There is damage. There was always damage and there will be more damage, but not always. Were there always to be more damage, damage would be an aspect of perfection."
***I said, I used to think I wanted to be a scholar, then a soldier — but now, whenever I'm near you, i start to think I've been confusing means with ends. I think I wanted to be the messiah all along and I didn't know it. I mean, I knew I wished the messiah would come, and a lot of times I wish I was the messiah, but the wishing — it wasn't wanting; there's a difference, I think.... What I'm saying is I want to be the me messiah, now. Or at least I want to bring him. Whenever I'm near you, I do. And I think that all along I thought that being a scholar or a soldier would help me become the messiah, or bring him, but—"
****"I liked that joke. I used the exact same words that Botha had used but the words meant nothing the way I put them in order, and they sounded like they meant something since I said the sentences in the same way he'd said the originals, and with the same rhythm, and that demonstrated that English words were meaningless by themselves, that they were just lung- and mouth-sounds unless they were in the correct order, which was a paradox because the correctness of the order of a string of words depended on what the words meant, but if correct order was what gave words their meanings, then how could their meanings determine the correctness of the order? No one knew, and no one else thought the joke was funny, either."
*****SLOKUM DIES FRIDAY; WE DAMAGE WE
Imagine the frustration: You may or may not be the Messiah, destined (or not) to lead your people to "perfect justice." But the world is imperfect and so is the god who rules it.* So what do you do? If you're Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee, the 10-year-old protagonist of Adam Levin's debut novel, The Instructions, you lead a rag-tag group of pre-teens self-dubbed the Side of Damage in a holy war against "the Arrangement" — the jocks and teachers at their suburban Chicago junior high school — after which, you deliver your scripture.**
The Instructions, all 1,030 pages of it, captures four days of this struggle. And it's one of the more inventive, exhausting, entertaining, beguiling, hilarious and just awesome (technical reviewer term) novels I've read in a long time. But instead of doing what I just did — stringing together a list of unsupported adjectives and leaving you to trust me that they're true — let me instead make the case why The Instructions is each. Hopefully, what emerges here is a more complete picture of this huge novel than a boring, run-of-the-mill book review could provide.
1. Inventive — Building a novel around a messiah (false or otherwise) is nothing new, but when that maybe-messiah is a 10-year-old "Israelite, Chicago born" who agonizes over whether or not he is the Messiah, and then decides he really wants to be after he falls in love with 12-year old June*** well, kudos for creativity. The Instructions is actually Gurion's scripture, written and published seven years after the events of 11/17/06, the fourth of the four days over which the novel takes place. But to tell his story and give us the best possible understanding of his university, Gurion uses a number of storytelling strategies: He gives us emails from former teachers (Gurion's been kicked out of several Chicago-area schools for fighting, including an incident where he threw a stapler at the headmaster), reports by his social worker in his new delinquent-youth program at Aptakisic Junior High in Dearbrook Park, Illinois, and backstory on how his parents met and fell in love. What's more, Gurion lets us read his ISS (in-school suspension) assignments, where he explains such playground concepts as "snat" and "face," the history of "slapslap," and shows us how to make a pennygun — a weapon created with a balloon and the top of a plastic soda bottle, and his soldiers' weapon of choice. The effect of all these different strategies and style is a much better relationship with Gurion than a strict first-person narrative could've provided.
2. Exhausting — Besides the fact that this wrist-cramping novel weighs about 3 pounds, which is exhausting in and of itself, Levin's characters are extremely, um, thorough. They dissect everything logically and talk to each other in long, polished paragraphs. But these conversations aren't so much digressions as they are scrutinies under magnification to the nth degree — of words, ideas, arguments. They read as logical syllogisms (if, if, if, then) and if you're not in the right mood to be reading them, they can drive you mad, or cause you to doze off — which can be hazardous when you're holding a heavy book. As one example, Gurion spends three pages debunking the Jewish superstition that if a pregnant woman steps on nail-clippings, she'll miscarry. That one in particular is a lot of fun to read, but not all of them are. And, so, parts of the novel are exhausting..
Adam Levin
3. Entertaining — You don't pick up a 1,030-page novel and expect that the story alone will keep you reading — unless the name on the front is Stephen King or Tom Clancy. Levin's prose is magnificent — as entertaining in spots as it is exhausting in others. Did I mention Philip Roth has a cameo? As does a Smashing Pumpkins song. That was fun. Plus, characters have names like Boystar, the Janitor, and My Main Man Scott Mookus. Now, to address the 600-lb gorilla — comparisons to David Foster Wallace: Yes, they are appropriate. And never is this more clear as we're thinking along with a character as s/he spells out an argument. That ability to allow his readers to see into his brain as he wrote was Wallace's gift, and it's Levin's as well. And it's infinitely entertaining to read prose written that way. But as amazing as it is that Levin keeps you interested in such a small universe over such a short period of time, the novel picks up some pretty amazing speed after the halfway point. I read about the last 300 pages in what seemed like five minutes.
4. Beguiling — Levin's most astonishing trick in this novel is that he quietly winks at his readers, and allows them to be okay with a 10-year-old thinking, acting, and arguing like a scholarly grown-up. He knows it's not realistic, you know it's not realistic, so you just go with it. If you don't, you'll probably stop reading on page 2. Beyond the messiah stuff, the real question of the novel and thus the real challenge for the reader is to understand Gurion's overarching life philosophy. It's not an easy question at all. Gurion is the son of a civil rights lawyer father, presumably far to the left ideologically, who defends anti-Semites and a psychologist mother who is a former member of the Israeli Defense Force, presumably far to the right ideologically. But Gurion's own ideology is harder to pinpoint. His own outlook emerges slowly, piece-by-piece over time, and you really have to pay close attention to get it. The one thing that's clear is that Gurion is frustrated and that leads to violence and damage. What's less clear is why. Does Gurion believe the ends justifies the means? Is damage wrought in the pursuit of higher good acceptable damage?
5. Hilarious — Ranging from slapstick to subtle to sarcastic, Levin brings the funny — it's one of the many carrots that keeps you reading, and willing to forgive the exhausting arguments and logic. Here's one (of hundreds) example: Gurion's teacher tells him to "Mind the cheese doodles, Maccabee." Gurion responds: "The mind Maccabee, cheese doodles" and then explains why he likes that joke.**** Another: Gurion explains, when Boystar is injured, that Boystar's mother is upset because "she was shot in the son." Part of the fun of the novel, too, is how badly Gurion's followers misinterpret how they're supposed to be following him.***** But Gurion, because he's in love, and because he hopes he's the messiah, goes with it and concocts a scheme so fantastical, you can't help but laugh a little.
6. Just Awesome —This is my catch-all, which basically just gives me an excuse to gush. I'm not Jewish, so I'm sure there was much inside-joke-wise I missed. Even so, I loved this book! It's a book I couldn't wait to finish work or showering or eating lunch to get back to. Again, it's really too bad this novel won't find a larger readership (probably much like this review, which is running at a ratio higher than one word of review per page of book reviewed.) The thousand-plus pages and relative unknownness of its author (though, hopefully that'll change soon) will scare most readers away. But I encourage you whole-heartedly to carve out a few weeks and take it down.
Footnotes
(These footnotes are intended to give you an idea of Levin's style, while attempting to mimic part of it.)
*"Hashem is not perfect, I said, and I've never said He was perfect. I said, he's not all-powerful, either."
**There is damage. There was always damage and there will be more damage, but not always. Were there always to be more damage, damage would be an aspect of perfection."
***I said, I used to think I wanted to be a scholar, then a soldier — but now, whenever I'm near you, i start to think I've been confusing means with ends. I think I wanted to be the messiah all along and I didn't know it. I mean, I knew I wished the messiah would come, and a lot of times I wish I was the messiah, but the wishing — it wasn't wanting; there's a difference, I think.... What I'm saying is I want to be the me messiah, now. Or at least I want to bring him. Whenever I'm near you, I do. And I think that all along I thought that being a scholar or a soldier would help me become the messiah, or bring him, but—"
****"I liked that joke. I used the exact same words that Botha had used but the words meant nothing the way I put them in order, and they sounded like they meant something since I said the sentences in the same way he'd said the originals, and with the same rhythm, and that demonstrated that English words were meaningless by themselves, that they were just lung- and mouth-sounds unless they were in the correct order, which was a paradox because the correctness of the order of a string of words depended on what the words meant, but if correct order was what gave words their meanings, then how could their meanings determine the correctness of the order? No one knew, and no one else thought the joke was funny, either."
*****SLOKUM DIES FRIDAY; WE DAMAGE WE
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
2.0
Meh. Foregone conclusion + Stieg trying to be dramatic about information he's already revealed to the reader + some hilariously unbelievable parts = Meh.
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
4.0
Joshua Ferris pretty much cornered the market on the "workplace novel" a few years ago with his story of a Chicago ad agency titled Then We Came To The End. But Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists stands rather adequately on that novel's shoulders, advancing the theme that we never really know anything important about the folks with whom we spend 40-plus hours a week. However, where Ferris's novel was funny, with the occasional instance of sentiment, Rachman's novel is more sad and sincere — with a touch of humor sparingly sprinkled about.
It's a just-right mix, though, to tell us about the lives of these lonely journalists, toiling away at a failing English-language newspaper in Rome. We get 11 path-crossing vignettes describing the lives of 11 people. There's the lonely copyeditor who spends New Year's Eve in a hotel room drinking by herself, all the while dousing herself with the cologne of the married man she's obsessed with. There's the young journalist trying out for a stringer position in Cairo, and soon realizing he's in way over his head. And there's the overworked news editor who has overachieved in his love life, snaring a beautiful woman 14 years his junior. But can he keep her interested?
At the center of these beautifully rendered character studies is a paradox: The newsroom encompasses the entirety of the world in terms of access to and dissemination of information. But yet those who inhabit that newsroom on a day-to-day basis, reporting the goings-on across the globe, are some of the most lonely, troubled people you've ever met. They are constantly making messes of their personal lives, cheating on their spouses, and sweating their careers. Journalists are a different breed, to be sure — and job-related stress, especially in this age of declining newspaper readership, adds to the plight of these characters, but also to the delight of the novel's reader.
This is a great novel, covering a wider breadth of themes — ambition, mortality, experience, love, loneliness — than you'd think possible in such a slim book. Near the end of the novel, Rachman describes a character reacting to a painting: "(The artist) flubbed it, not simply because his human forms were inept but because the human form can never be rendered beautiful." Part of what makes this novel great is that Rachman doesn't try to render characters beautifully. He emphasizes their flaws, and that's what makes them more interesting.
Four out of five stars for The Imperfectionists. Minus one only because one or two of the vignettes aren't quite as compelling as all the others.
It's a just-right mix, though, to tell us about the lives of these lonely journalists, toiling away at a failing English-language newspaper in Rome. We get 11 path-crossing vignettes describing the lives of 11 people. There's the lonely copyeditor who spends New Year's Eve in a hotel room drinking by herself, all the while dousing herself with the cologne of the married man she's obsessed with. There's the young journalist trying out for a stringer position in Cairo, and soon realizing he's in way over his head. And there's the overworked news editor who has overachieved in his love life, snaring a beautiful woman 14 years his junior. But can he keep her interested?
At the center of these beautifully rendered character studies is a paradox: The newsroom encompasses the entirety of the world in terms of access to and dissemination of information. But yet those who inhabit that newsroom on a day-to-day basis, reporting the goings-on across the globe, are some of the most lonely, troubled people you've ever met. They are constantly making messes of their personal lives, cheating on their spouses, and sweating their careers. Journalists are a different breed, to be sure — and job-related stress, especially in this age of declining newspaper readership, adds to the plight of these characters, but also to the delight of the novel's reader.
This is a great novel, covering a wider breadth of themes — ambition, mortality, experience, love, loneliness — than you'd think possible in such a slim book. Near the end of the novel, Rachman describes a character reacting to a painting: "(The artist) flubbed it, not simply because his human forms were inept but because the human form can never be rendered beautiful." Part of what makes this novel great is that Rachman doesn't try to render characters beautifully. He emphasizes their flaws, and that's what makes them more interesting.
Four out of five stars for The Imperfectionists. Minus one only because one or two of the vignettes aren't quite as compelling as all the others.
Nemesis by Philip Roth
4.0
Bucky Cantor is mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore. The protagonist of Philip Roth's thought-provoking new novel Nemesis believes that life isn't fair, that life's dealt him a horrible hand, and he is fed up living under the reign of an angry god who kills people willy-nilly. It all just seems so arbitrary, or, as Roth eloquently puts it, "He was struck by....how powerless each of us is against the force of circumstance."
As the cover blurb states, this theme is one Roth has played with frequently in his recent quartet of slim novels (Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling and Nemesis). Nemesis, though, may be the best of the lot. The novel is set in Newark in the summer of 1944, amidst a burgeoning polio epidemic. Bucky supervises a playground of grade-school-age kids and laments the fact that his poor eyesight has prevented him from joining the war effort, as his two best friends have.
Some fellas just aren't happy unless they're miserable, and Bucky seems to be one of these. When kids on his playground start contracting — and dying from — polio, Bucky gets angrier and angrier, and he feels more and more helpless against chance. So he takes a chance of his own, accepting a job as an instructor at a summer camp in the Poconos where his new fiance is a counselor. But he immediately feels badly about it — like self-preservation is a sin, like not taking a challenge (even an invented one) head-on is a discredit to himself. For Bucky, the fact that his two friends are fighting the Germans seems to mean he should have to create and fight his own battles, whatever they may be — even if they're against himself and his own desire to be happy.
Bucky is such a tragic character — but one with whom it's easy to sympathize. He's your standard nice guy, he has the respect of everyone who knows him, and the reader can't help but like him. His harangues against God's unfairness are few and far between at first, and seem more like a minor glitch in an otherwise normal guy, rather than a overarching philosophy that guides Bucky's life. But guide his life his God-anger does. And the angrier he becomes with God, the angrier he is with himself for what he perceives is his helplessness to stop these fresh-faced youths from getting polio. So the question — which Roth spends the rest of the novel answering — is who is Bucky's real nemesis, himself or God?
Beyond Bucky's misguided self-castigations — and how brilliantly, though simply, Roth renders them — the other thing I loved about this novel is how the idea of people's fear of the unknown about polio, and their need to assign blame, definitely draws to mind contemporary issues. Folks in 1944 had no idea what caused polio and how it spread. And, despite reactionary and ineffective strategies to try to contain it, fear spread at the same rate.. Sound familiar?
I loved this book, sure. But in the interest of full disclosure, Roth can do little wrong in my eyes. He's one of my favorites, and I've read him more than any other novelist. Nemesis isn't quite in the top-tier, American Pastoral or Portnoy's Complaint level of Roth novels, but it's very, very good. Highly recommend!
As the cover blurb states, this theme is one Roth has played with frequently in his recent quartet of slim novels (Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling and Nemesis). Nemesis, though, may be the best of the lot. The novel is set in Newark in the summer of 1944, amidst a burgeoning polio epidemic. Bucky supervises a playground of grade-school-age kids and laments the fact that his poor eyesight has prevented him from joining the war effort, as his two best friends have.
Some fellas just aren't happy unless they're miserable, and Bucky seems to be one of these. When kids on his playground start contracting — and dying from — polio, Bucky gets angrier and angrier, and he feels more and more helpless against chance. So he takes a chance of his own, accepting a job as an instructor at a summer camp in the Poconos where his new fiance is a counselor. But he immediately feels badly about it — like self-preservation is a sin, like not taking a challenge (even an invented one) head-on is a discredit to himself. For Bucky, the fact that his two friends are fighting the Germans seems to mean he should have to create and fight his own battles, whatever they may be — even if they're against himself and his own desire to be happy.
Bucky is such a tragic character — but one with whom it's easy to sympathize. He's your standard nice guy, he has the respect of everyone who knows him, and the reader can't help but like him. His harangues against God's unfairness are few and far between at first, and seem more like a minor glitch in an otherwise normal guy, rather than a overarching philosophy that guides Bucky's life. But guide his life his God-anger does. And the angrier he becomes with God, the angrier he is with himself for what he perceives is his helplessness to stop these fresh-faced youths from getting polio. So the question — which Roth spends the rest of the novel answering — is who is Bucky's real nemesis, himself or God?
Beyond Bucky's misguided self-castigations — and how brilliantly, though simply, Roth renders them — the other thing I loved about this novel is how the idea of people's fear of the unknown about polio, and their need to assign blame, definitely draws to mind contemporary issues. Folks in 1944 had no idea what caused polio and how it spread. And, despite reactionary and ineffective strategies to try to contain it, fear spread at the same rate.. Sound familiar?
I loved this book, sure. But in the interest of full disclosure, Roth can do little wrong in my eyes. He's one of my favorites, and I've read him more than any other novelist. Nemesis isn't quite in the top-tier, American Pastoral or Portnoy's Complaint level of Roth novels, but it's very, very good. Highly recommend!
By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham
2.0
Midway through Michael Cunnigham's slim new novel, By Nightfall, a character describes a rich woman's expensively decorated living room as "...so magnificent it transcends its own pretensions." That's also a good description for what Cunningham must've hoped his novel would be. But since it's not exactly magnificent, we're pretty much left with just pretentious. And the novel, though well-crafted, sure is that.
But the novel failed for another reason, too: Its protagonist is an utter dolt. Far be it from me to need likable characters to enjoy a novel, but Peter Harris is not just unlikeable — he's totally unbelievable. Here's the story: Peter's a mid-40s New York City art dealer in the midst of a crisis. He's not sure he's happy with his life. (Real original, right?) When his wife Rebecca's much-younger, much-troubled brother Mizzy comes for a visit, idealistic Peter develops all these notions of Mizzy as quintessential Youth, Beauty, and the Happiness of his marriage when it was still new. And then, Peter thinks he might be in love with Mizzy. But is he actually in love with Mizzy or is he in love with what he's convinced himself that Mizzy represents?
But heterosexual, married Peter's possible homosexual crush on his brother-in-law (which to Cunningham's credit is certainly an original take on the mid-life crisis dilemma!) is not even the ridiculous part. The ridiculous part is how silly Peter, who Cunningham painstakingly renders as this uber-self-aware, contemplative, hip New Yorker, seems at various points in the novel. He's like a rocket scientist who can't balance his checkbook. As one example of this: Early in the novel, he comes home and sees Mizzy naked in the shower and actually mistakes him for his wife, wondering why she looks so much younger all of a sudden. Yes, this is a foreshadowing of what's to come, but its too gimmicky to be believable. And then later, Peter so blatantly misses some rather important signs that by that point are so obvious to the reader, it's impossible to take him seriously anymore.
So, then, Peter's naïvete contradicts with his (and the novel's) pretentiousness. As evidence of that pretentiousness, read this sentence (from Peter's thoughts): "She sighs voluptuously. She could so easily be a Klimt portrait, with her wide-set eyes and bony little apostrophe of a nose." A beautiful sentence, no doubt. But how does someone sigh voluptuously? And who is Klimt? Peter certainly knows, and maybe that's how an art dealer would think, but Cunningham is practically holding it over his readers' heads that they don't. And that, and dozens of similar examples throughout the novel, are what drags the novel into pretentiousness.
I do think By Nightfall is an original, smart piece of contemporary lit. But to me, the annoying peripherals cancel out the ingenuity of the story and Cunningham's often stylish prose. I'd like to give Cunningham's work another shot, though, because while I didn't much like this one, I know a lot of people really like Cunningham's other work, especially The Hours. Is Specimen Days good? Any other suggestions on where to look for another shot at Cunningham?
But the novel failed for another reason, too: Its protagonist is an utter dolt. Far be it from me to need likable characters to enjoy a novel, but Peter Harris is not just unlikeable — he's totally unbelievable. Here's the story: Peter's a mid-40s New York City art dealer in the midst of a crisis. He's not sure he's happy with his life. (Real original, right?) When his wife Rebecca's much-younger, much-troubled brother Mizzy comes for a visit, idealistic Peter develops all these notions of Mizzy as quintessential Youth, Beauty, and the Happiness of his marriage when it was still new. And then, Peter thinks he might be in love with Mizzy. But is he actually in love with Mizzy or is he in love with what he's convinced himself that Mizzy represents?
But heterosexual, married Peter's possible homosexual crush on his brother-in-law (which to Cunningham's credit is certainly an original take on the mid-life crisis dilemma!) is not even the ridiculous part. The ridiculous part is how silly Peter, who Cunningham painstakingly renders as this uber-self-aware, contemplative, hip New Yorker, seems at various points in the novel. He's like a rocket scientist who can't balance his checkbook. As one example of this: Early in the novel, he comes home and sees Mizzy naked in the shower and actually mistakes him for his wife, wondering why she looks so much younger all of a sudden. Yes, this is a foreshadowing of what's to come, but its too gimmicky to be believable. And then later, Peter so blatantly misses some rather important signs that by that point are so obvious to the reader, it's impossible to take him seriously anymore.
So, then, Peter's naïvete contradicts with his (and the novel's) pretentiousness. As evidence of that pretentiousness, read this sentence (from Peter's thoughts): "She sighs voluptuously. She could so easily be a Klimt portrait, with her wide-set eyes and bony little apostrophe of a nose." A beautiful sentence, no doubt. But how does someone sigh voluptuously? And who is Klimt? Peter certainly knows, and maybe that's how an art dealer would think, but Cunningham is practically holding it over his readers' heads that they don't. And that, and dozens of similar examples throughout the novel, are what drags the novel into pretentiousness.
I do think By Nightfall is an original, smart piece of contemporary lit. But to me, the annoying peripherals cancel out the ingenuity of the story and Cunningham's often stylish prose. I'd like to give Cunningham's work another shot, though, because while I didn't much like this one, I know a lot of people really like Cunningham's other work, especially The Hours. Is Specimen Days good? Any other suggestions on where to look for another shot at Cunningham?
C by Tom McCarthy
3.0
Remember the mid-'90s tune "Everything Zen" by Bush? Remember how everyone loved the song 'cause it rocked, but no one had any idea what it was really about because the lyrics are a goofy mess of seemingly unrelated phrases and ideas? That's kind of how I felt about Tom McCarthy's uber-literary, Man Booker-shortlisted novel C.
There's a pretty straightforward story here that I enjoyed strictly on a "beat and rhythm" level. And then there's what it really means. McCarthy creates a laundry list of themes, images and ideas that recur throughout the novel. The meaning of these in terms of how they fit together and complement each other and the story holistically is frequently tough to decipher.
The story is Serge Carrefax's, who is born to English wealth right before the turn of the 20th century. Serge's father runs a school to teach deaf children to talk and experiments with various wireless communication technologies, and so Serge becomes infatuated with the burgeoning field of radio from an early age. He fights in World War I as a navigator, parties in post-war London and then moves on to Egypt to scout locations for new communications ventures.
Serge is a bit of an odd ball. He finds out early in his life during an art class that he "just can't do perspective: everything he paints is flat." And Serge's lack of perspective — in the broader sense of the phrase — is a cornerstone of the story. Serge is an impartial observer to his own life. In fact, oftentimes, the reader is left to form his/her own conclusions about things Serge tells us about, but doesn't understand or doesn't care enough about to explain more fully. Is that his sister he sees having sex in an early scene in the novel? Or is it something else he's describing? It's hard to tell.
The novel also has its own unconventional logic and rules, which McCarthy uses to pack in his list of tropes and tricks. For instance, he'll mention something seemingly inconsequential at the time, only to have the idea re-emerge later in a more symbolic context. Serge and some of his fellow soldiers discuss free will vs. determinism, and then soon after, they're building a tunnel to nowhere and no one is in charge of its construction. The effect is disorienting — it's hard to figure out which instance is the one McCarthy intends you to decode and add to the meaning of the story. And then there is the recurrence of several images and themes: Insects, wireless communication, descriptions of shapes and geometry, and drugs all flit in and out of the novel. What do they all mean?
C is not difficult, as some reviewers have purported. But extracting meaning might be. You constantly feel like you're missing something or left out of a joke or not understanding a reference. And that can make reading frustrating at times. There's so much going on here, it's obviously a novel meant to be read several times — like a Charlie Kaufman or David Lynch film is meant to be viewed several times to pick up a little more each time. The story's interesting, but I'm not sure it's enough of a draw to get me to read again. So, three out of five stars for C.
There's a pretty straightforward story here that I enjoyed strictly on a "beat and rhythm" level. And then there's what it really means. McCarthy creates a laundry list of themes, images and ideas that recur throughout the novel. The meaning of these in terms of how they fit together and complement each other and the story holistically is frequently tough to decipher.
The story is Serge Carrefax's, who is born to English wealth right before the turn of the 20th century. Serge's father runs a school to teach deaf children to talk and experiments with various wireless communication technologies, and so Serge becomes infatuated with the burgeoning field of radio from an early age. He fights in World War I as a navigator, parties in post-war London and then moves on to Egypt to scout locations for new communications ventures.
Serge is a bit of an odd ball. He finds out early in his life during an art class that he "just can't do perspective: everything he paints is flat." And Serge's lack of perspective — in the broader sense of the phrase — is a cornerstone of the story. Serge is an impartial observer to his own life. In fact, oftentimes, the reader is left to form his/her own conclusions about things Serge tells us about, but doesn't understand or doesn't care enough about to explain more fully. Is that his sister he sees having sex in an early scene in the novel? Or is it something else he's describing? It's hard to tell.
The novel also has its own unconventional logic and rules, which McCarthy uses to pack in his list of tropes and tricks. For instance, he'll mention something seemingly inconsequential at the time, only to have the idea re-emerge later in a more symbolic context. Serge and some of his fellow soldiers discuss free will vs. determinism, and then soon after, they're building a tunnel to nowhere and no one is in charge of its construction. The effect is disorienting — it's hard to figure out which instance is the one McCarthy intends you to decode and add to the meaning of the story. And then there is the recurrence of several images and themes: Insects, wireless communication, descriptions of shapes and geometry, and drugs all flit in and out of the novel. What do they all mean?
C is not difficult, as some reviewers have purported. But extracting meaning might be. You constantly feel like you're missing something or left out of a joke or not understanding a reference. And that can make reading frustrating at times. There's so much going on here, it's obviously a novel meant to be read several times — like a Charlie Kaufman or David Lynch film is meant to be viewed several times to pick up a little more each time. The story's interesting, but I'm not sure it's enough of a draw to get me to read again. So, three out of five stars for C.
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
4.0
Life is hard. Life can be absurd. And when you're a teenager, you're not equipped with the same perspective as an adult, and every decision, every crush, every cruel joke seems like the most critically important thing that will ever happen. That notion is the foundation on which Paul Murray builds his profound, often-funny, rather lengthy Booker Prize long-listed novel Skippy Dies.
Murray's trick, though, is keeping his readers interested when he kills his main character in the prologue. What emerges after we learn that Skippy really does die — that the title isn't just a gimmick — is a portrait of Seabrook College, a modern-day boarding school in Dublin, Ireland. The novel begins several weeks before Skippy's death, and follows him and his group of kind of nerdy (his overweight roommate Ruprecht is obsessed with astrophysics; 11-dimensional M-theory, in particular), prank-pulling, drug-doing, girl-obsessed friends through their day-to-day trevails.
The brilliance of this book is that we read with the same sense of immediacy that these kids seem to be living their lives. We're constantly looking for clues that might predict why Skippy will die; like everything seems important at the time, but we have no way of know what actually is. Isn't that the way teenagers are? Like everything that happen, or every decision may forge the path for the rest of you life? Ruprecht, wise beyond his years, explains (in example of some of Murray's sagacious prose):
"...that every path you take, no matter how lofty or effulgent, aches not only with the memory of what you left behind, but with the ghosts of all untaken paths, now never to be taken, running parallel."
Murray's writing (see below for another fantastic theme-furthering passage) and the huge cast of characters make this book tremendously readable. I especially enjoyed the story of Howard the history teacher, his crush on the substitute geography teacher, and his failing relationship with his American girlfriend, Halley. Murray is very insightful and writes with an amazing sense of affinity for his characters, even the ones who are real jerks. After all, life is hard. But reading this novel sure is lots of fun! Four out five stars (minus one for missing a few chances to edit some sections, which drag a tad). But still very highly recommended.
("And she realizes that love doesn't go in straight lines, it doesn't care about right or wrong or being a good person or even making you happy; and she sees, like in a vision, that life and the future are going to be way more complicated than she ever expected, impossibly, unbearably complicated and difficult. In the same moment she feels herself grow older, like she's finished a video game and moved on invisibly to the next stage; it's a tiredness that takes over her body, a tiredness like nothing before, like she's swallowed a ton of weight...")
Murray's trick, though, is keeping his readers interested when he kills his main character in the prologue. What emerges after we learn that Skippy really does die — that the title isn't just a gimmick — is a portrait of Seabrook College, a modern-day boarding school in Dublin, Ireland. The novel begins several weeks before Skippy's death, and follows him and his group of kind of nerdy (his overweight roommate Ruprecht is obsessed with astrophysics; 11-dimensional M-theory, in particular), prank-pulling, drug-doing, girl-obsessed friends through their day-to-day trevails.
The brilliance of this book is that we read with the same sense of immediacy that these kids seem to be living their lives. We're constantly looking for clues that might predict why Skippy will die; like everything seems important at the time, but we have no way of know what actually is. Isn't that the way teenagers are? Like everything that happen, or every decision may forge the path for the rest of you life? Ruprecht, wise beyond his years, explains (in example of some of Murray's sagacious prose):
"...that every path you take, no matter how lofty or effulgent, aches not only with the memory of what you left behind, but with the ghosts of all untaken paths, now never to be taken, running parallel."
Murray's writing (see below for another fantastic theme-furthering passage) and the huge cast of characters make this book tremendously readable. I especially enjoyed the story of Howard the history teacher, his crush on the substitute geography teacher, and his failing relationship with his American girlfriend, Halley. Murray is very insightful and writes with an amazing sense of affinity for his characters, even the ones who are real jerks. After all, life is hard. But reading this novel sure is lots of fun! Four out five stars (minus one for missing a few chances to edit some sections, which drag a tad). But still very highly recommended.
("And she realizes that love doesn't go in straight lines, it doesn't care about right or wrong or being a good person or even making you happy; and she sees, like in a vision, that life and the future are going to be way more complicated than she ever expected, impossibly, unbearably complicated and difficult. In the same moment she feels herself grow older, like she's finished a video game and moved on invisibly to the next stage; it's a tiredness that takes over her body, a tiredness like nothing before, like she's swallowed a ton of weight...")