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26 Wednesday Nov 2014
Posted A Vlog with Jon, Random Thoughts
inTags
24 Monday Nov 2014
Posted Book Reviews
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Publisher: Picador
Format: Paperback
Pages: 180
Originally Published: 2008
ISBN#: 0312428510
Buy: Amazon, Powells, Goodreads
Though Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark weighs in at a mere 180 pages, it attempts to tackle some heavy hitting subject. War, loss, love, death. Auster shoehorns them all into this slim volume. He does so, primarily, by using the story within a story construct. This also allows Auster to explore the nature of narrative, and the way stories, no matter how fanciful and seemingly escapist, really reflect our own inner concerns and issues.
The story unfolds over the course of a single night during which the main character, August Brill, lies awake in his bed, battling with his usual bout of insomnia. Brill, a 72 year-old widower of sorts, saddled with a gimp leg and a lifetime of regrets, fears the memories that might come for him in the darkness. To keep them at bay, he tells himself stories. Brill says, “That’s what I do when sleep refuses to come. I lie in bed and tell myself stories….they prevent me from thinking about the things I would prefer to forget.”
Brill attempts to use the stories as a dam against the flood of memories that threaten to drown him. Those waters swirl with darkness and death which he fears to face. They include the death of his granddaughter’s boyfriend, Titus, in Iraq, his daughter’s divorce, which nearly broke her, and his own wife’s death, which still haunts him.
Brill has moved into his daughter’s home after a drunken car accident left him with a bum leg. His granddaughter, Katya, has dropped out of school and also moved in after Titus’s murder (the details of which we don’t learn until the very end of the book). The house is really more of a hospital, filled with broken spirits trying to avoid the brutal, battering world. The patients serve also as nurses and caretakers for one another, but some of the patients are not interested in healing.
Brill’s storytelling encompasses most of the book. His tale opens with a man waking to find himself in a dark hole, with no memory of how he got there and no way to get himself out. From above, the man, Brill names him Owen Brick, can hear the sounds of war. After spending the night underground, someone comes to fetch him from his hole. Upon surfacing, Brick finds himself cast as a unwilling participant in the fighting of a civil war. Over time Brick discovers an old high school crush, Virginia Blaine, has summoned him to this parallel world in which America is at war with itself after the 2000 presidential elections. Brick, after much disorientation and confusion, eventually receives a mission, to kill the cause of the war, the cause of all this death. A man from Brick’s own world who spends his sleepless nights weaving war stories to entertain himself. A man named August Brill.
The story Brill tells himself, of course, brings him face to face with much of what he hopes to escape. We learn, as Brill’s own thoughts interrupt his narrative and, later, Katya wakes and cajoles Brill into telling the story of his complicated marriage, that Brick serves as a parallel for Brill. Besides how Brick’s name echoes Brill’s own, Virginia Blaine, the woman Brick had a crush on in high school. has the same name as Brill’s first love. Brick’s wife, Flora shares a foreign birth with Brill’s wife Sonia. On a thematic level, the civil war into which Blaine has drafted Brick, mimics the war raging within Brill himself. A war in which he pits his desire to remember against his desire to forget, his yearning to live against his yearning for death, his need for love against his feeling of self-loathing. These conflicts, it seems, are playing out in all the characters.
“As the weird world rolls on.” This becomes Brill’s motto. His daughter, Miriam, is writing a book about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter, Rose, who, after spending her life as “an insignificant, unhappy person” underwent a kind of metamorphosis. Rose experienced a religious awakening, took orders in the Catholic church and became a nun. She spent the rest of her life caring for those dying of cancer. At some point in her life, she had dabbled in poetry, and of all her verse, Brill finds only one line that he likes: “As the weird world rolls on.”
In part, the book serves as a recognition that we must live our lives in the face of enormous tragedy. War, death, divorce. They might stop us from living, but only temporarily. For whether we like it or not, “the weird world rolls on.” The future becomes the present becomes the past. In fact, Auster seems to suggest that our attempts to stand still, to stop our own involvement in life by pulling away or dropping out, are only illusions. The years tick by, we grow older, we pile up more life behind us. At the end of the book, after conceding to his granddaughter’s wishes to hear his life’s story, Brill finds a few moments of sleep. Upon waking, he is hungry for a big breakfast and suggests they all go out. Brill, who has worried over Katya dropping out of school after Titus’s death, encouraging her to return to her studies, now acknowledges that even his own weird life must roll on.
Overall, I enjoyed the novel. Auster writes with a pared down and simple style which comes across as conversational yet elegant. He paces the book well, so you cover its 180 pages briskly, though there are a few speed bumps along the way. The hardest to get over is Brill’s conversation with Katya near the end of the book, in which he acquiesces to her request to share the story of his relationship with his wife, her grandmother, Sonia. The whole section just doesn’t ring true to me. It seems filled with subtly tweaked clichés which fail to come alive. For instance, Brill remembers the exact date and time he first laid eyes on Sonia while walking through the streets of New York City. He fails to make contact but he can’t stop thinking about her, saying “The gods had tricked me, and the girl I was destined to fall in love with…had been snatched away….” Of course though, a month later, he runs into her on the subway after she takes the seat next to him because it was the only remaining one open. Now Auster, from what I’ve been told, often explores the nature of coincidence in our lives, but this just feels lazy and a bit ham-handed. The rest of the conversation has a rehearsed, wooden feel to it, and the back and forth between Brill and Katya remains stiff. Though they seem to have quite the intimate relationship (Katya crawls into bed with her grandfather, she asks about his sex life with her grandmother, wanting specifics, to which Brill responds “The body has a limited number of orifices. Let’s just say that we explored every one of them.”) somehow this closeness doesn’t come through in the dialogue.
Another aspect of the novel which left me unsatisfied was the ending to Owen Brick’s story. Upon reflection, though, this may be the point, as Auster seems to suggest that so many things in our lives end sans satisfaction- Miriam’s marriage, Titus’s life, the American presidential election of 2000. I suppose all this harkens back to the title. When it comes to how things will end, man is truly in the dark. Because our futures remain hidden by time, we all live in ignorance. We can tell ourselves stories to keep our fears at heel, but eventually the present becomes the past as it gives way to the future, and our ending is revealed-regardless of whether it’s the one we’ve been telling ourselves or not…
20 Thursday Nov 2014
Posted Random Thoughts, TV Reviews
inWith just four more episodes left, another Aaron Sorkin television serious will soon finish its short lived run. With The Newsroom, Sorkin returned to familiar territory by taking us behind the scenes of a TV show a la Sports Night and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. In fact, one might say that The Newsroom serves as a second iteration of Sports Night, just with a bigger budget and on a more forgiving network (when it comes to ratings). However, with The Newsroom, Sorkin takes on CNN and FoxNews instead of ESPN. So, inherently, the stakes are higher.
But, unfortunately, The Newsroom has found only a small viewership and limited critical support. In part, because some people view the show as a rehash of old Sorkin tropes, while others have complained the Sorkin’s writing is too didactic, preachy and liberal. This last slight has somewhat dogged Sorkin’s television work since the beginning, though critics have grown less forgiving throughout the years. However, where Sports Night was considered a critical darling despite its low viewing numbers, The Newsroom has not been as well received. Critics praised Sports Night for its “…intelligent dialogue and a willingness to grapple with thorny issues…” (Barry Garron, The Hollywood Reporter) where as The Newsroom has been called a “blend of arrogance and contempt” (Glenn Garvin, The Miami Herald). So what happened?
First, I must admit that, though a Sorkin junky, my favorite of Sorkin’s four forays into television remains The West Wing. Though the show contains many of the same elements found in The Newsroom or Sports Night, the political setting furnishes a level of drama and importance that even The Newsroom fails to sustain. Also, shockingly enough, the major traits of Sorkin’s characters, intelligence and arrogance, sincerity and idealism, seem more believable, and perhaps just more bearable, when applied to politicians. And though Sorkin always presents his characters, no matter their occupation, as extremely dedicated and obsessive workaholics, it means more when that characters are running the country as opposed to running a late night comedy show. Also, that heightened level of urgency kept some of Sorkin’s bad habits, such as his tendency to create ridiculous relationships for his characters, at bay. In fact, Sorkin limited his temptation in The West Wing to incorporate his usual work place love affairs which feature so prominently in Sports Night, Studio Sixty and now The Newsroom (C. J. and Danny aside). Yet, he still managed to craft highly individualized characters for whom I cared a great deal.
All this said, I still think The Newsroom is one of the best things on TV. Now, TV critics (like Emily Nussbaum of the New Yorker) tell me I think this because I’m an effete liberal elitist who holds up Sorkin’s shows while decrying, and generally not watching, everything else on television. That I like watching Sorkin because it makes me feel smarter than everyone else. Maybe. I suppose those might be the same reasons given for someone who watches The Daily Show or The Colbert Report (which rarely receive such harsh criticism from the mainstream media). It seems that few critics believe that someone just might watch Sorkin to be entertained. However, I would like to offer three simple reasons why I continue to watch and enjoy The Newsroom, and why I hope Sorkin’s recent comments about leaving TV forever turn out to be a severe exaggeration!
1. Idealism: Sorkin’s characters suffer from extreme cases of idealism. Sometimes that idealism lies hidden beneath a protective layer of cynicism and arrogance, but eventually germinates and becomes the character’s driving force. It’s not a simple or naive form of idealism, but something with which the character must struggle. In Sorkin’s behind-the-scenes shows like Sports Night and The Newsroom, characters must pit their ideals against cold realities like ratings and profits, where in The West Wing idealism competes with political capital and winning elections.
Critics complain that Sorkin’s idealism turns to syrup. That it comes across as didactic and preachy. And I won’t deny that Sorkin’s characters often rise up on soapboxes to give rousing monologues and stinging soliloquies. But this merely reflects the landscape in which they exist. Sorkin gives his characters strong beliefs, powerful communication skills, and readily available bully pulpits. Do we imagine that Billy O’Reilly or Barrack Obama only orate via their public personas? I seems to me that what the critics might find disingenuous is the fact someone’s off camera personality might be as passionate and prone to pontification as their on screen selves. That all politicians and newsmen aren’t merely paid actors, and when the lights go down, they could care less about causes and what’s right. But part of the charm of his characters comes from the fact that they, with all sincerity, love what they do, believe that what they do has importance, and want to do it as best they can. But I’m sure that can come across as being self-important.
Sorkin’s characters face the status quo and decide to rail against it in the name of integrity and righteousness (or what Sorkin haters would refer to as self-righteousness). His shows make me ask myself in what do I believe and what am I willing to do in support of those beliefs. His characters seek to make the world in which they find themselves better. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
(Sidenote: In writing this post, I read several critics complain that Sorkin believes his audience to be stupid and in his arrogance, writes down to them. At the same time they essentially call those who like and defend Sorkin’s work stupid for not seeing his flaws or how he manipulates them. Sorkin. It seems you either love him or hate him. But I must ask why, if you hate his work, must you also hate those who enjoy it?)
2. Dialogue: Sorkin is best known for his dialogue. Rapid-fire is one of the more common descriptors of what Sorkin does. It moves. Fast. But to lay the specialness of Sorkin’s writing on the shoulders of mere speed is to miss the point.
Sorkin’s magic lies in the pacing of his words. The beats and the rests, the changes in tempo. Anyone can write words and ask people to repeat them quickly, but few can create music. At least, that’s what Sam Waterston, from The Newsroom, calls it. He says that “Aaron writes the music of American speech.”
Sorkin first wrote for the stage. After years of theatre going and earning his BA in musical theater, the echoes of Edward Albee, Jason Miller and Shakespeare ricochet all through his work. Sorkin seems to recognize that his job as a writer isn’t to create true verisimilitude or to recreate how people actually speak. Instead, he attempts to capture the essence of American patter, its rhythms and meters. Many have said that Sorkin is a romantic not a realist, and this applies to how he renders his characters’ dialogue.
Some criticize Sorkin for his use of big words (as sign of arrogance some say, though I suspect it merely reflects that the characters he creates are well educated and well read). However, Sorkin’s dialogue works wonders with small words. “Okay.” Perhaps one of the most ubiquitous words in the Sorkin universe. Yet he uses it masterfully, to slow down a monologue, to provide a beat, to encompass a character’s entire reaction to some circumstance. Each time “okay” pops up in his dialogue, it does different work. Sorkin doesn’t need big, polysyllabic words (yes, I know okay is polysyllabic, but it’s not big) to compose his verbal symphonies.
I know some people hate “Sorkin speak.” One critic actually said is nauseates him. I for one can be happy to turn on The West Wing, close my eyes, and just listen, tapping my toes to Sorkin’s music.
3. Humor: Aside from Sports Night, most classify Sorkin’s shows as dramas. And even Sports Night didn’t fit the traditional sitcom mold (for instance, Sorkin fought to remove the laugh track). However, all of Sorkin’s writing integrates a humor that achieves laugh-out-loud levels of funny.
I often have trouble explaining what makes it so funny. Sorkin doesn’t write your typical sitcom kind of jokes. He doesn’t have to dip into the extreme or the crass to make us laugh. In fact, many complained that in Studio 60, when it came to Sorkin’s attempt to write “traditional comedy,” too many of his sketches fell flat (though, to be fair, one might argue that Saturday Night Live’s sketches often suffer a similar fate). Though he often harkens back to the screwball comedy (Sorkin is nothing if not nostalgic), Sorkin’s humor comes organically from his characters, their interactions and their dialogue. It happens on the level of the word, the sentence. He weaves it throughout the fabric of his shows so that they are often as funny as they are moving or thoughtful.
Comedy clearly serves as an inspiration and draw for Sorkin. Just look at some of the actors with whom he’s chosen to work: Matthew Perry, D. L. Hughley, Simon Helberg and now Olivia Munn. Some say Sorkin doesn’t create characters, just ideas in clothing, but I think the best comedy comes from character, and if I’m right, perhaps Sorkin handles character creation with more deft that one might first realize.
Bonus for Writers: Another joy of watching Sorkin, for me, comes from the fact that the man is a writer’s writer. His shows are all about writing. They hold discourse on the creative process: the difficulties, the obsessions and manias that revolve around writing and being a writer. Dan confronts writer’s block on Sports Night, Sam skips a date to “nail” a trivial birthday message on The West Wing, and Matt constantly battles the clock to write his sketches each week in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. For Sorkin, writing is a war waged with words. He loves language, and he constantly rises to its defense. Though The Newsroom doesn’t deal with the process of writing as much, he constantly deals with language. For instance, during the second episode of the third season, Leona bemoans the shift in meaning which has occurred to the world literally. As an crotchety English teacher, I cheered her sentiments.
So, I admit it; I am an Aaron Sorkin fan. I know his work has flaws, the his scripts repeat and plagiarize themselves, that his story telling can be lazy, that his lead characters serve as thinly veiled versions of himself, that, like Hemingway, his writing style can become parody, that his female characters are often insane. Still, with all that, I’d rather watch any Sorkin show over much of what’s on network television. I that makes me an ignorant, arrogant, self-righteous, American-hating blowhard, well, then so be it.
18 Tuesday Nov 2014
Posted Interview
inBuy: Amazon, Whiskey Creek, Goodreads
Adam’s Site: http://adamleonardauthor.com
Interview with Adam Leonard, author of The Rift Riders (Originally appeared on my WITF blog June 11, 2012)
From time to time, I hope to highlight teachers who have interests that both inform their teaching, but go beyond the walls of their classroom. The first such piece profiles Adam Leonard, a Lebanon area art teacher, who, in the hopes of inspiring teenage boys to read, wrote his first novel.
I hope you enjoy and I look forward to hearing your comments!
*****
Many, upon hearing a group of teenage boys discuss their antipathy toward reading, might bemoan the apathetic state of teenagers today. They might just shrug their shoulders, unsurprised by such comments and go about their day. But not Adam Leonard, an art teacher at Cedar Crest High School. He realized that the boys didn’t hate reading per say. These boys saw the world of books as an alien landscape, perhaps even a hostile one, meant for others, but not for them. The books their English teachers, such as myself, forced them to read failed to provide a hospitable environment to grow their interest. Popular books of the moment, like Twilight or Harry Potter, spoke to audiences that didn’t include them. They wanted to read, Leonard thought, but they did not think any books existed that were meant for them.
So Leonard decided, after his initial disappointment, to attempt to write a book that would appeal to the average teenage boy. The result: a tale of action, suspense and fantasy entitled The Rift Riders (Summons of the Song, Book 1).
The book follows a group of friends, Jimmy, Boltz, Shane, Dylan, Vicky, and Diana, as they travel from our world into the fantastic realm of Nereus, a world inhabited by strange creatures and unknown dangers. Throughout the course of the novel, these young men and women are forced to make life changing decisions, face their fears, and defy a myriad of challenges. The book interweaves adventure, fantasy, Greek mythology and romance (just a little) into a gripping read that, according to one Amazon reviewer, is “…able to grasp the world of a teen boy’s imagination perfectly.”
In the interview the follows, I asked Adam about his inspirations, processes, and views on the book world today.
Me: Did you consciously choose to write a novel for young adults? What drew you to this genre?
Adam Leonard: Yes, I actually was writing a story for 4-5 specific teens I had in class at the time who I was shocked to learn had never experienced the joy of reading a book that they liked. It is hard to get a fifteen year old reluctant reader to appreciate antiquated writing that is above their reading level and deals with subject matter that is not interesting to them. I wish there were more teen-centered stories on high school reading lists.
So, my goal was to write a book for the reluctant teenage reader, a book with short chapters and a very fast pace that would keep their attention. I snuck in themes I thought were important as well like: staying true to yourself, doing the right thing, and redemption (not giving up when you fail and making up for past bad decisions).
Me: In your dedication, you thanked two of your former students, Zach Francisco and Amanda Martin, for “helping me think like a teenager once again.” In what way did these two influence your writing?
AL: Well, the characters in The Rift Riders are based on myself and friends of mine, so it was easy for me to imagine what they would do in certain situations, but my mindset was based in the 1980s. Zack helped me with finding things that were too outdated or sounded “off,” and Amanda suggested I add romance to the story, which I hadn’t even considered previously.
Writing for teens is easy for me because I am a high school teacher and am around teens all day.
Me: Did you set out to write a fantasy novel? And why did you include Greek mythology so prevalently? Specifically, what was the allure of the story of Odysseus?
AL: I remember being fascinated by movies like Jason and the Argonauts and the Sinbad movies as a kid. I remember reading the Odyssey in school and thinking that the writing was hard to read but the story was so cool. I think teen guys want to escape to other worlds; they want to read something that puts them into scary situations and gets their blood pumping. I was into Stephen King in high school. I liked his cynical attitude and his characters’ sarcasm and gritty realism. Girls like to read books based on romance and high school clicks and the unfairness of it all. Guys spend all day waiting to get out of high school and the last thing they want to do is read a book after school about being in school!
So, I thought I would write a story about a bunch of guys who get pulled into a world that spawned Greek mythology. I wanted to put a new spin on the origin of Greek mythology but still retain the characters and integrity of the original tales.
Odysseus is the original super hero. He fought monsters, the living dead, and even the gods! He was sarcastic and clever as well. Greek myths were so complex, the good guys didn’t always win, there was horrific violence, but also humor and irony, and stories of great love and sacrifice. They have it all.
Me: How did you create the descriptions and names for such fantastic creatures as bisoprope, saurs, and kakons? Did you have to do any research to creature your world of Nereus?
AL: Yes, I wanted to stay true to the original concepts and characters of the original tales. I had read a lot of Greek mythology in college and grad school and was familiar with many myths already. My wife, who is an English teacher, especially likes Greek mythology so we have a lot of mythology books around the house.
I wanted to use classic Greek creatures as well as create some new ones of my own invention and also play around with new interpretations of old monsters. For the ones of my own creation, I created names for them that were based on Greek words, so “bisoprope” means “two faces,” “saurs” mean lizards, and “kakons,” means evil ones. The world of “Nereus” is based on Greek mythology, Nereus (Νηρεύς) was the eldest son of Pontus (the Sea) and Gaia (the Earth), so this was appropriate for my creation of a world that had sentient creatures that lived in both the Sea and on land. And the “Sirens” were actually a combination of the original Greek idea of a Siren combined with the outer appearance of the Greek creature called a “gorgon,” Medusa being the template.
I tried to channel my inner Ray Harryhausen (He was the creator of the Claymation monsters for all the old Sinbad and Jason and the Argonaut movies).
Me: How long have you been writing?
AL: I have enjoyed writing stories since I was a little kid. I have always enjoyed writing funny stories or ones that have a twist at the end. I still have a Christmas story I wrote in 6th grade that is told from the perspective of a pig, who you find out is headed to the slaughter house and reveals himself to be a canned ham at the end of the story.
Me: How do you approaching writing? What’s your process like? How do you find the time?
AL: You will never “find” time; you have to “make” time. I have a tiny ASUS netbook that is use to write wherever I happen to be. I love it
For big scenes or chapter ideas, I like to close my eyes in bed or while taking a bath and just imagine the scene and characters. I can usually get most of the chapter planned out in my mind in this fashion.
When I am brainstorming multiple chapters or bigger plot arcs and how multiple plot lines will interact and build I always outline, because there are so many events and characters at play it is easy to get confused and make mistakes. I also like to keep a general timeline for the whole book to keep everything straight.
Me: How does writing compare with your other artistic endeavors such as painting and sculpture?
AL: Art and writing are very similar to me in many ways. Both are creative outlets of expression and can be very personal in a special way. Both allow you to communicate ideas, stories, and messages directly into the mind of people you may have never met and can even transcend time and space. I am always fascinated to read writing written in first person where the author, though perhaps dead for centuries, speaks directly to YOU, as if he is sitting beside you. Art can communicate messages and feeling through time and space as well and can make their creator’s feelings and thoughts about certain things immortal in a way.
Sculpture and writing for me are just plain fun. I enjoy doing them both. They relax me. I enjoy sculpting and writing about strange and creepy things like monsters as realistically as possible. So I guess there is some overlap there as well. I think that self doubt and self consciousness in both areas are the kiss of death for the creator, and I have learned to just make and write what I enjoy regardless of how I think it will be received. Just do it, worry about it later, or even better, don’t worry about it at all! Art and writing are both extremely subjective: some people will understand you and your work, and some people will always NOT get you and your work… so there is no sense trying to please everyone, because you will fail. The best you can do is to please yourself and know that someone out there will understand and enjoy your work. (The rest can suck lemons!)
Me: Could you talk about the publication process? Did you have an agent?
No. I was querying agents and small publishers and I got accepted by a small publisher first and went with them (they do not require an agent). Once accepted by a publisher, it generally takes a full year until it will be available for purchase. It is a VERY SLOW process!
I have some other books I am working on and when I finish them I will submit the manuscript to agents again because it would be best to be able to publish through the largest publishers who will market your book more thoroughly.
Me: What advice do you have for would-be-writers?
AL: My advice would be to write for yourself. Write things that make you laugh and that you think are exciting and interesting. Take all the constructive advice you can get and ignore ALL the negative stuff. And lastly, get your work out there for people to read and enjoy! This is a new and exciting time for writers because there are so many avenues to pursue to get your writing published and read by others! Explore all your options and don’t get discouraged…even Stephen King got rejected dozens and dozens of times before he was finally published!
Me: Your book appears in both physical and electronic forms. How do you feel about e-books and the future of publishing?
AL: I am definitely a bibliophile and actually recently began collecting antique books and first editions, but publishing is changing and there is no going back to the way things were. I have a Kindle and buy books all the time for prices that range from free to $10. You just can’t beat free! And why pay $25 for a novel that you can get digitally for $4? Plus, I like to switch back and forth between books on my Kindle- it is so easy- a whole library and instant access to just about any book in the world in one small, lightweight, easy to read machine.
Most of my book sales have been as eBooks, and now with libraries and even school libraries going electronic, I think eBooks are the future for sure. They have already outsold printed books nationally as a whole and will most likely continue to do so. As textbooks go digital in schools as well, the newer generations won’t have the fondness for the printed book that many of us of older generation have.
Me: Lastly, Rift Riders ends with the promise of a sequel. Your website indicates that this second work is well underway. What can we expect for Jimmy, Boltz, Shane, Dylan, Vicky and Diana this time around? When might fans be able to purchase the new book?
AL: I plan to finish the sequel this summer and hopefully it will be available to readers for the Fall of 2013 or Spring of 2014. The guys go to HELL literally in the sequel… you will be shocked to discover how the skeletal ferryman, Charon (Grim Reaper in Western culture), became a living corpse!
I encourage everyone to read The Rift Riders. Also check out Adam’s website at http://adamleonardauthor.com.
17 Monday Nov 2014
Posted Book Reviews
in
Publisher: Hogarth
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 292
ISBN: 0770437850
Publication: 2010
Translator: Sam Garrett
Buy: Amazon, Powells, Goodreads
***(Spoiler Alert)***
I have often argued that a book doesn’t need likable characters for it to be entertaining or good. Herman Koch’s “The Dinner” puts that theory to the test. By the end of “The Dinner,” the results of the meal are mixed-at best.
“The Dinner” is narrated by Paul Lohman over the span of a five course meal, inclusive of aperitif and digestif in a fancy Amsterdam restaurant. Paul shares this meal with his wife Claire, and, to his great displeasure, his brother, Serge and his brother’s wife Babette. Paul expresses his dissatisfaction from the get go. Had he his druthers, he would not be eating at this pretentious establishment, chosen by his Prime Minster-to-be brother, but at the “ordinary people” cafe across the street. In fact, Paul, if he could help it, would rather not be spending time with his brother at all.
Paul Lohman is a deeply bitchy narrator. He spends the majority of the book criticizing everything and everyone. The only two that escape his capacious complaining are his wife and son (mostly). His appetite seems not to be for the food in front of him, which, of course, he finds lacking in both quality and quantity, but for any faults, real or imagined, he might find in others. And he has a habit of institutionalizing his criticism, turning what he finds distasteful within an individual into a stereotype with which he paints vast swathes of the populace, whether it be his countrymen, politicians, administrators, or the homeless. When it comes to passing judgment, Paul’s findings are final. One of the best examples of Paul’s distaste for others comes when we discover he has been put on leave from his job as a history teacher for suggesting that his students think about the good that comes from war, considering how many assholes die.
“How many of your classmates would you be pleased not to see return to their desks tomorrow morning? Think about that one member of your own family, that irritating uncle with his pointless, horseshit stories at birthday parties, that ugly cousin who mistreats his cat. Think about how relieved you would be – and not only you, but virtually the entire family – if that uncle or cousin would step on a land-mine or be hit by a five-hundred- pounder dropped from a high altitude. If that member of the family were to be wiped off the face of the earth. And now think about all those millions of victims of all the wars there have been in the past…and think about the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of victims who we need to have around like we need a hole in the head. Even from a purely statistical standpoint, it’s impossible that all those victims were good people, whatever kind of people that may be.”
As the evening unfolds, we discover the dinner is no casual affair but has a purpose. Serge has summoned Paul and his wife to discuss an issue involving both their children (each has a son-plus Serge and Babette have adopted an African boy named Beau). Through flashback, Paul reveals that his son Michel and Serge’s son, Rick, killed a homeless woman they stumbled across in an ATM. Neither has been identified as suspects, but do to video footage which airs on TV, this could change. Paul spends a good chunk of the book trying to rationalize his son’s behavior, at the same time revealing his own violent streak (like the time he hit his brother in the face with a frying pan) which stems from some unidentified genetic disease. Michel argues that they didn’t mean to hurt the vagrant woman, but their laughter, caught on camera, as they threw things at her (a discarded desk chair, bags full of garbage and finally an empty can of gasoline and a match) make these boys less than sympathetic. Paul decides, after confronting Michel, that this will be their little secret. However, due to Michel’s and Rick’s continued violence, videos posted online, and a supposed blackmail attempt by Rick’s adopted brother, Paul finds the secret more difficult to keep than he suspected.
And now, at this dinner, his brother Serge announces that not only does he know about what happened, but that he plans to force his son to turn himself in after he himself pulls out of the campaign for Prime Minister.
For Claire and Paul, everything boils down to family. To them, family means more than the dead homeless person, Serge’s political career, or anything else. However, Paul and Claire get to decide how one defines family, and in the end, Beau doesn’t make the cut. Quite frankly, Serge doesn’t either.
But, at it’s core, this book is really about a family of sociopaths. Though we never learn what Paul’s “condition” is, we do know it is genetic, and that, according to Paul’s therapist, had his parents had a prenatal test done and discovered this condition, they would have been advised to abort him. Paul spends much of the book worrying about whether his son has the condition, though whether he does or not seems irrelevant when Paul offers lessons in violence like when he threatened to beat a shop keeper with a bike pump or when he beat and threatened to throw Michel’s principal out of a window. The surprise comes when we learn that Paul’s wife, Claire, also has no fear of getting her hands bloody to protect her son and prefers her husband unmedicated and volatile.
There are no redeemable characters in this novel. That’s not Koch’s point. And again, generally, I have no problem with that. However, we spend the entire time in Paul’s head, listening to him criticize and bitch and rationalize and generally think horrible thoughts without a single character ever passing any kind of judgement on him. It becomes tiring. At times I had to put the book down just to get away from Paul. I steadily lost interest in him as the book went on. Though I find this book infinitely better than “Twilight” it did remind me of the torture I felt trapped inside Bella Swan’s incessant narrative whining. And because Paul spends so much of his discontent on pointless things, like his food or the pretentious manager and his ever pointing pinky, the narrative often drags. You have the sensation of being trapped at a Thanksgiving dinner table with your grumpy aunt who spends the entire meal bitching about how she never gets to go anywhere, no one comes to visit her and how Mexicans are taking all the good jobs. You reach the point in the dinner where you become hopeful that she’ll choke on a stray bone from the turkey. Perhaps that’s Koch’s goal-to release your inner Paul.
For “The Dinner”, I stayed for dessert, but barely, and in the end, I still found myself asking whether that last course was good enough to make the rest of the meal worthwhile.
17 Monday Nov 2014
Posted A Vlog with Jon, Book Reviews
inPublish: Knopf
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 274
Publication Date: 2010
ISBN: 9780307592835
Buy: Amazon, Powells, Goodreads
(Review originally appeared in the Lancaster Sunday News on August 18th, 2013)
Though Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “A Visit From the Goon Squad,” might be considered experimental, Egan’s theme is ages old.
Time is the goon of the title, the real main character of the book. Time stalks through each chapter, wreaking his havoc.
The backdrop of the music industry serves to highlight this tension. Popular music, a creature born of a specific moment in history, quickly and continually passes into irrelevance. This becomes a perfect metaphor for our own existence, our own attempts to stay connected to the now.
The novel suggests that time can strip us of worth, meaning and livelihood, but only if we roll over for the goon. Only if we allow ourselves to be relegated to the vast basement of time, looking at old photographs, reading old letters.
The novel doesn’t condemn the past, but it does reject the notion that the past contains the best and worst of what we are.
Egan’s novel is simultaneously new and classic, befitting its theme. It may be another novel about time, but it’s not just the same old thing.
The book contains 13 “interlocking narratives,” each a self-contained vignette of crisis. Each chapter focuses on a different character or set of characters who are all related to one another in some way.
The central characters are Bennie Salazar, a record producer, and his assistant, Sasha, but this is misleading, as there are several chapters in which these characters don’t appear.
Also, time shifts from chapter to chapter, moving forward by a year or two, then plunging 20 years into the past, only to conclude in some unknown dystopic future, not too distant from our own.
These structural and stylistic abnormalities enhance the reading experience. It’s like reading several different novels within a single book.
Whether she’s using second person point of view or writing a chapter in PowerPoint, Egan’s prose remains rich and evocative. Her paragraphs continually build toward powerful last lines that catapult the reader forward. She manages to connect disparate ideas in surprising and fulfilling ways again and again.
As the book reaches its conclusion, you understand why this is a novel and not just a collection of connected short stories.
17 Monday Nov 2014
Posted Book Reviews
inPublisher: Harcourt Brace
Format: Paperback
Pages: 260
Originally Published: 1979
Translated from Italian by William Weaver
ISBN: 0156439611
Buy: Amazon, Powells, Goodreads
(Review originally published in August 3rd edition of the Lancaster Sunday News)
“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. “
So begins the journey into the labyrinthine story — stories really — that the Italian author has prepared for his reader in “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler.”
The novel begins with “you,” “the reader,” settling down to read the book. However, just as the story gets good, the reader finds he has a defective book that provides only the first few pages of novel.
And thus begins the reader’s quest for the rest of the tale, in which he soon enlists a woman, known as the “Other Reader.”
Each time the reader thinks he’s found the rest of the tale, he’s actually discovered an entirely different work of fiction, as incomplete as the first.
The chapters alternate between the second-person narrative of the reader in search of a complete novel, and the beginnings of each new, fragmentary text he finds.
Calvino attributes each opening to a different author, and each is written in a different style, with its own characters, setting and plot. Each is simply a sliver of story, never to possess an ending.
The novel as a whole is an ode to and meditation on the act of reading. Throughout, Calvino explores and celebrates the different modes of and motivations for spending time with books.
Even the shards of each story splintered throughout the text seem aware of and acknowledge the awesome power of the reader.
Calvino rewrites Descartes famous maxim, “I think, therefore I am,” as “I read, therefore it writes,” privileging the reading over the writing.
In fact, the real hero of the novel is you, the reader.
In a time when the death of the book seems imminent, when the Pew Research Center reports that almost a quarter of Americans do not read, Calvino reminds us of the deep satisfaction that comes from surrendering yourself to a good book.
His character, “the reader,” travels great distances and risks many dangers — all in pursuit of the end of a great story.
12 Wednesday Nov 2014
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29 Wednesday Oct 2014
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