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The Spectators
A shocking crime triggers a media firestorm for a controversial talk show host in this provocative novel--a story of redemption, a nostalgic portrait of New York City, and a searing indictment of our culture of spectacle.
Talk show host Matthew Miller has made his fame by shining a spotlight on the most unlikely and bizarre secrets of society, exposing them on live television in front of millions of gawking viewers. However, the man behind The Mattie M Show remains a mystery--both to his enormous audience and to those who work alongside him every day. But when the high school students responsible for a mass shooting are found to be devoted fans, Mattie is thrust into the glare of public scrutiny, seen as the wry, detached herald of a culture going downhill and going way too far. Soon, the secrets of Mattie's past as a brilliant young politician in a crime-ridden New York City begin to push their way to the surface.
In her most daring and multidimensional novel yet, Jennifer duBois vividly portrays the heyday of gay liberation in the seventies and the grip of the AIDS crisis in the eighties, alongside a backstage view of nineties television in an age of moral panic. DuBois explores an enigmatic man's downfall through the perspectives of two spectators--Cel, Mattie's skeptical publicist, and Semi, the disillusioned lover from his past.
With wit, heart, and crackling intelligence, The Spectators examines the human capacity for reinvention--and forces us to ask ourselves what we choose to look at, and why.
Talk show host Matthew Miller has made his fame by shining a spotlight on the most unlikely and bizarre secrets of society, exposing them on live television in front of millions of gawking viewers. However, the man behind The Mattie M Show remains a mystery--both to his enormous audience and to those who work alongside him every day. But when the high school students responsible for a mass shooting are found to be devoted fans, Mattie is thrust into the glare of public scrutiny, seen as the wry, detached herald of a culture going downhill and going way too far. Soon, the secrets of Mattie's past as a brilliant young politician in a crime-ridden New York City begin to push their way to the surface.
In her most daring and multidimensional novel yet, Jennifer duBois vividly portrays the heyday of gay liberation in the seventies and the grip of the AIDS crisis in the eighties, alongside a backstage view of nineties television in an age of moral panic. DuBois explores an enigmatic man's downfall through the perspectives of two spectators--Cel, Mattie's skeptical publicist, and Semi, the disillusioned lover from his past.
With wit, heart, and crackling intelligence, The Spectators examines the human capacity for reinvention--and forces us to ask ourselves what we choose to look at, and why.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published April 2, 2019
About the author
Jennifer duBois
8 books109 followersJennifer duBois is the recipient of a 2013 Whiting Writer’s Award and a 2012 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 award. Her debut novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was the winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction and the Northern California Book Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Prize for Debut Fiction. Jennifer earned a B.A. in political science and philosophy from Tufts University and an M.F.A. in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop before completing a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Her writing has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, The Missouri Review, Salon, The Kenyon Review, Cosmopolitan, Narrative, ZYZZYVA, and has been anthologized in Imaginary Oklahoma, Byliner Originals’ Esquire Four and Narrative 4’s How To Be A Man project. A native of western Massachusetts, Jennifer currently teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 93 reviews
January 10, 2019
I'm between 2.5 and 3 stars.
Both a commentary on the dysfunction incited by the sensational talk show culture of the late 1990s and a meditation on the gay community before and during the AIDS crisis, Jennifer duBois' upcoming book The Spectators is at times beautiful and lamenting, at others meandering and confusing.
Matthew Miller is a talk show host whose show, "The Mattie M Show," is a spectacle. With programs that focus on taboo relationships (including a man and a goat) and routinely feature fighting (a la Jerry Springer), the show becomes a cultural lightning rod, one of those programs that commentators like to point to as a sign that our society is in decline.
When a shooting occurs in an Ohio high school, and it turns out the students responsible were huge fans of the show, Mattie becomes an object of intense scrutiny, as does the show bearing his name. The more his critics debate the show's sensationalism, whether it is staged or authentic, and what its role was in the tragedy, the more people—even those who work on the show—realize how little they know about Mattie.
As Cel, the somewhat disconnected, disenfranchised publicist for the show, tries to figure out who her boss really is and how they might right this sinking ship (if she even cares to), she starts to hear rumors of Mattie's past, as an ambitious politician whose career was met with scandal. Does this explain Mattie's attitude toward the show's problems, or hint at what his next step might be should the show get canceled?
Meanwhile, Mattie's former lover, Semi, a playwright, tells a different story, a story of Mattie in the carefree yet politically tense 1970s in New York City, when he went from lawyer to idealistic politician. Through Semi's eyes, we see how the gay community transformed from one of merriment and freedom to one wracked by the horrors of AIDS, how it affected the culture, politics, relationships, everything.
While there was a link between Semi's relationship with Mattie in the past and the Mattie of current times, quite often it felt like The Spectators was two separate books. The chapters narrated by Semi—some of which felt like they were being told by a Greek chorus of those whose lives were touched by AIDS—were beautifully written, poignant, even emotionally searing at times, but when the narration shifted to Cel and the issues with the show, I started to lose interest.
The discussion about media sensationalism and its role in society's crises is certainly a relevant one, yet I didn't feel like the book was willing to stake out a position whether those who foment antagonism or appear to embrace spectacle and falsehood have any responsibility for prejudice, violence, or other actions taken by their viewers or listeners.
Even more frustrating for me was the fact that Cel had very little charisma as a character, let alone a narrator. Much of her interactions with other characters seemed stilted or stammering, and it seemed crazy that a popular show would employ such an inarticulate person as its publicist.
duBois' talent for imagery and emotion was particularly evident in those chapters narrated by Semi and others. There were many passages which I read more than once and thought were almost poetic. Sadly, the book as a whole didn't work for me. I almost wish the whole book could have followed Mattie, Semi, and his friends through the 1970s and beyond rather than get distracted by the whole issue with the television program.
NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com, or check out my list of the best books I read in 2018 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2018.html.
Both a commentary on the dysfunction incited by the sensational talk show culture of the late 1990s and a meditation on the gay community before and during the AIDS crisis, Jennifer duBois' upcoming book The Spectators is at times beautiful and lamenting, at others meandering and confusing.
Matthew Miller is a talk show host whose show, "The Mattie M Show," is a spectacle. With programs that focus on taboo relationships (including a man and a goat) and routinely feature fighting (a la Jerry Springer), the show becomes a cultural lightning rod, one of those programs that commentators like to point to as a sign that our society is in decline.
When a shooting occurs in an Ohio high school, and it turns out the students responsible were huge fans of the show, Mattie becomes an object of intense scrutiny, as does the show bearing his name. The more his critics debate the show's sensationalism, whether it is staged or authentic, and what its role was in the tragedy, the more people—even those who work on the show—realize how little they know about Mattie.
As Cel, the somewhat disconnected, disenfranchised publicist for the show, tries to figure out who her boss really is and how they might right this sinking ship (if she even cares to), she starts to hear rumors of Mattie's past, as an ambitious politician whose career was met with scandal. Does this explain Mattie's attitude toward the show's problems, or hint at what his next step might be should the show get canceled?
Meanwhile, Mattie's former lover, Semi, a playwright, tells a different story, a story of Mattie in the carefree yet politically tense 1970s in New York City, when he went from lawyer to idealistic politician. Through Semi's eyes, we see how the gay community transformed from one of merriment and freedom to one wracked by the horrors of AIDS, how it affected the culture, politics, relationships, everything.
While there was a link between Semi's relationship with Mattie in the past and the Mattie of current times, quite often it felt like The Spectators was two separate books. The chapters narrated by Semi—some of which felt like they were being told by a Greek chorus of those whose lives were touched by AIDS—were beautifully written, poignant, even emotionally searing at times, but when the narration shifted to Cel and the issues with the show, I started to lose interest.
The discussion about media sensationalism and its role in society's crises is certainly a relevant one, yet I didn't feel like the book was willing to stake out a position whether those who foment antagonism or appear to embrace spectacle and falsehood have any responsibility for prejudice, violence, or other actions taken by their viewers or listeners.
Even more frustrating for me was the fact that Cel had very little charisma as a character, let alone a narrator. Much of her interactions with other characters seemed stilted or stammering, and it seemed crazy that a popular show would employ such an inarticulate person as its publicist.
duBois' talent for imagery and emotion was particularly evident in those chapters narrated by Semi and others. There were many passages which I read more than once and thought were almost poetic. Sadly, the book as a whole didn't work for me. I almost wish the whole book could have followed Mattie, Semi, and his friends through the 1970s and beyond rather than get distracted by the whole issue with the television program.
NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com, or check out my list of the best books I read in 2018 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2018.html.
April 1, 2019
There are two main characters in this book, and both of them have odd names – abbreviations that don't quite seem like a thing anyone would really call a person. There's Cel (short for Celeste), which (written down) makes me think of an animation cel, evoking a link to the character's job in TV, and (spoken aloud) sounds like a Wall Street broker yelling across the trading floor, redolent of the early-90s-NYC milieu in which her part of the story takes place. And Semi (improbably short for Septimus), a sexual term and a prefix used to add vagueness: both apt, since his sexuality is key and his narrative shifts between first person singular and plural; when with others, he is absorbed by a chorus of voices. The central figure – the person the others circle – is a man who transforms from an uber-ambitious politician named Matthew Miller to a Jerry-Springer-esque TV host known as Mattie M. These facts alone are enough to tell you how much The Spectators focuses on the malleability of identity. Not just on an individual level, but everything beyond: communities, cities, media, society.
Cel is a new, inexperienced, rather terrified producer on The Mattie M Show when disastrous news breaks: two teenage boys have carried out a school shooting, and the revelation that the shooters are fans of Mattie has caused their motives to be linked to his show. Mattie himself does little to help the situation, giving a car-crash interview that only worsens the controversy; Cel plunges further and further into panic. Meanwhile, in a fluid, fragmented narrative that spans the years from 1969 to the story's present day, 1993, we learn about Semi's history and what connects him to Mattie. These two very different stories eventually converge.
The book is so much more than this, though, and to reduce it to its main plot points is unfair. In particular, Semi's narrative is a splendid thing in its own right, an alternative history of New York, a rumination on the AIDS crisis that's both sensitive and painfully direct. Ultimately, it flows into/becomes the culmination of his life's work: an epoch-defining play with the same title as this novel. If Semi's story is the book's heart, Cel's drives the plot, her interactions with Mattie adding crucial urgency. The Spectators is at its weakest when it takes Cel away from Mattie and delves into her past: her narrative can't compete with the depth and power of Semi's; the stories from her childhood are underdeveloped. Yet the book as a whole is wonderfully captivating, even when it meanders.
The Spectators doesn't quite hit the emotional high notes Cartwheel did, but it's an altogether better book: richer, wiser, more carefully stitched together. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed The Great Believers, The Animators, A Reunion of Ghosts – epic, heartbreaking novels that take the reader on a journey; books with characters so vibrant you can barely believe they're not real.
I received an advance review copy of The Spectators from the publisher through Edelweiss.
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Cel is a new, inexperienced, rather terrified producer on The Mattie M Show when disastrous news breaks: two teenage boys have carried out a school shooting, and the revelation that the shooters are fans of Mattie has caused their motives to be linked to his show. Mattie himself does little to help the situation, giving a car-crash interview that only worsens the controversy; Cel plunges further and further into panic. Meanwhile, in a fluid, fragmented narrative that spans the years from 1969 to the story's present day, 1993, we learn about Semi's history and what connects him to Mattie. These two very different stories eventually converge.
The book is so much more than this, though, and to reduce it to its main plot points is unfair. In particular, Semi's narrative is a splendid thing in its own right, an alternative history of New York, a rumination on the AIDS crisis that's both sensitive and painfully direct. Ultimately, it flows into/becomes the culmination of his life's work: an epoch-defining play with the same title as this novel. If Semi's story is the book's heart, Cel's drives the plot, her interactions with Mattie adding crucial urgency. The Spectators is at its weakest when it takes Cel away from Mattie and delves into her past: her narrative can't compete with the depth and power of Semi's; the stories from her childhood are underdeveloped. Yet the book as a whole is wonderfully captivating, even when it meanders.
The Spectators doesn't quite hit the emotional high notes Cartwheel did, but it's an altogether better book: richer, wiser, more carefully stitched together. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed The Great Believers, The Animators, A Reunion of Ghosts – epic, heartbreaking novels that take the reader on a journey; books with characters so vibrant you can barely believe they're not real.
I received an advance review copy of The Spectators from the publisher through Edelweiss.
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February 6, 2019Leaving unrated as I'm putting it aside. Just not connecting with the story the way it is written.
March 16, 2019
As a fan of Cartwheel, I was very excited to see a new title from Jennifer duBois. At the center of the novel is Matthew Miller, a gay NYC attorney turned Maury Povitch style talk show host. In alternating chapters, we hear from Semi, a playwright and Mattie's former lover, and Cel, a pr flak for the Mattie M show. Matthew's earlier life, before and during the AID epidemic is seen through Semi's point of view. In the present, as seen through Cel's world, Matthew's television show is at the center of a huge news story about a Columbine style shooting by two teenage boys.
To say this book took on a lot would be an understatement. It attempts to tackle the AIDS epidemic AND the coarsening of American culture and tie them together through these three characters. For me, it didn't really work. The storyline narrated by Semi that addresses the AIDS epidemic was far superior, and I think this book could have been so much better had it maintained that singular focus. Chapter 19 was beautifully written, and I think it represents what duBois can really do with her writing. She has an incredible vocabularly and can write in a poetic, but very fresh, way that makes you really think. This book doesn't spoon feed the reader a thing, and in some ways that is very intellectually stimulating.
Unfortunately, the portion of the story about the shooting, the blaming of the show, and Cel's attempt to handle it, was very dull. None of the three characters is really as fully developed as they need to be to stir empathy in the reader, but Cel's was the one that seemed especially flat.
If only the book had tightened its focus and kept it squarely on gay life in NYC and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic, it could have been something more special. If all the chapters were like chapter 19, it would have been a five star read for me.
To say this book took on a lot would be an understatement. It attempts to tackle the AIDS epidemic AND the coarsening of American culture and tie them together through these three characters. For me, it didn't really work. The storyline narrated by Semi that addresses the AIDS epidemic was far superior, and I think this book could have been so much better had it maintained that singular focus. Chapter 19 was beautifully written, and I think it represents what duBois can really do with her writing. She has an incredible vocabularly and can write in a poetic, but very fresh, way that makes you really think. This book doesn't spoon feed the reader a thing, and in some ways that is very intellectually stimulating.
Unfortunately, the portion of the story about the shooting, the blaming of the show, and Cel's attempt to handle it, was very dull. None of the three characters is really as fully developed as they need to be to stir empathy in the reader, but Cel's was the one that seemed especially flat.
If only the book had tightened its focus and kept it squarely on gay life in NYC and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic, it could have been something more special. If all the chapters were like chapter 19, it would have been a five star read for me.
December 22, 2018
I really wanted to love this book. The description sounded fascinating, and I had a gay uncle who lived in NYC in the 70s and 80s before dying of AIDS, so some of the subject matter was particularly near and dear to my heart (for example, I loved The Great Believers). And yet... this book did not do it for me. I absolutely hated the first half. HATED it. If I hadn’t agreed to review it, I 100% would have abandoned it, and even still I barely managed to force myself through it. It was so long and slow, and the writing just didn’t resonate with me. It seemed very... self-conscious? Overwrought? Like the author was extremely aware of the literary devices she was using and the implied subtext she wanted her readers to infer, and was too heavy-handed in her approach. Things did pick up in the second half, and I specifically appreciated her coverage of the AIDS crisis in New York, but even then the writing style just did not speak to me, and I had a lot of trouble figuring out what the point of it all was and how all the different pieces fit together. The second half was definitely light years better than the first half, but overall the book felt tedious to me, and the topic is interesting enough that that shouldn’t have been the case. This just was not the book for me.
Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the ARC.
Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the ARC.
January 16, 2019
Holy pretentiousness. I think I looked up more words in this book than I have in the past year, which really distracted from the otherwise solid story.
March 31, 2019
The Spectators is not sloppily written, but it is not well-written, either. The biggest complaint I had with the writing itself was the ostentatious insertion of thesaurus-worthy vocabulary (or as duBois herself puts it, "SAT prep words") when such vocabulary is wholly unnecessary and even detrimental to the integrity of the whole.
This is an ambitious novel, but doesn't pull off everything it promises, not by a long shot. I found Semi's narrative the more intriguing of the two. Chapter Seventeen was particularly poignant. Semi was the most skillfully developed character. Mattie M and Cel's developments both felt like afterthoughts, not least for the fact that Cel especially was only more fully fleshed out quite late in the plot.
The author must have at some point read both The Medium is the Massage and Society of the Spectacle. Her own commentary on the cultural and economic significance of spectacle is nowhere near as incisive as either Debord's or McLuhan's.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an advance reading copy of this book.
This is an ambitious novel, but doesn't pull off everything it promises, not by a long shot. I found Semi's narrative the more intriguing of the two. Chapter Seventeen was particularly poignant. Semi was the most skillfully developed character. Mattie M and Cel's developments both felt like afterthoughts, not least for the fact that Cel especially was only more fully fleshed out quite late in the plot.
The author must have at some point read both The Medium is the Massage and Society of the Spectacle. Her own commentary on the cultural and economic significance of spectacle is nowhere near as incisive as either Debord's or McLuhan's.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an advance reading copy of this book.
February 22, 2019
I adored this novel--it's the most moving, smartest book I've read in ages. It's one of the rare dual POV books where I loved each voice and plotline equally: Semi's beautiful lyricism about New York and his circle of friends in the 70s before the community is devasted by the AIDS crisis as well as during and after, and Cel's wry humor and insight into the world of 90s trash TV talk shows. At the heart of the book is Mattie M, Semi's former lover and Cel's current boss, and we join our POV characters in only being spectators, watching Mattie but never getting inside his head. It's an amazing exploration of the levels of spectating, what it does to both the viewer and the viewed. Jennifer duBois is the rare, rare writer that can break your heart, make you laugh, and make you see aspects of the world in new ways, all at the same time.
August 5, 2019
Smart, lively, and beautifully plotted, The Spectators is a must read for anyone who is curious about spectacle and the role it plays in shaping our understanding of reality. Truly a timely book, and of a piece with the mastery of duBois' work in the past.
February 24, 2019
I loved this book! I really connected to both narrators and loved diving into the history of the AIDS crisis as well as getting deep into Cel’s brain and history. I really loved Cel as a character, especially. The book was a tense, compelling moving read. There is one scene toward the end, which I won’t spoil now, that made me cry for ages. I recommend it to anyone!!!
November 23, 2018
Dang, check the vocabulary on this one! Imagine that Jerry Springer was actually a brilliant, nuanced individual with a background in law and gay rights. Stick him in the AIDS crisis. Enter school shootings. Shake until well-mixed and then serve onstage in an off-Broadway production. Really good, moving, entertaining, profound.
June 11, 2019
The magic trick of this book is that it’s clever but not bloodless. For what it’s worth, the Semi sections were my favorites— the prose there had me floored.
February 7, 2020
This book was quite a conundrum for me to read. There were some major good points and some major bad points. Ultimately, I can’t say that I liked the book because it felt like a really big missed opportunity that failed to deliver on much of what it promised.
This book is told in two points of view and multiple timelines. Each chapter is titled with the narrator and the years it covers to make it easier to follow along, until the last chapter which was very confusing. It covers a span from the 70s to the 90s and discusses a lot of serious topics. It talks about the AIDS crisis in the gay community. It covers school shootings. It covers the new freak show of our era, trash TV. It covers public reaction to all of the above. It was a very ambitious novel and didn’t quite pull it off.
**Mild Spoilers Alert**
Our first narrator is Semi, which I thought was an innuendo until the author piped in that it’s pronounced like semi-truck and then I wasn’t really sure what it was supposed to be because I have always heard that pronounced with a hard I sound. But I’m getting off point. Semi was a great narrator. He was the former lover of Mattie M, back when he was a local politician and lawyer with his eyes on the mayorship of New York. I loved hearing about his love story with Mattie and I loved hearing about his perspective on the AIDS crisis. My only complaint is that I didn’t actually learn anything about Semi as a person. He told his story through the stories of his friends, So while I enjoyed his narration, I didn’t feel like I got to know him at all since he was hiding his truth behind his friends.
Cel is the narrator for much of the portion of the book that covers the school shooting and ensuing chaos, She is the publicist for the Mattie M Show. To be quite frank, I have no idea what she was doing in this novel. She didn’t have a single ounce of personality and rarely spoke more than a fragment of a sentence at a time. Her back story was confusing so I couldn’t even get emotionally involved in that aspect of her story. I also have no idea how or why the show hired her as a publicist. She doesn’t like the job and she doesn’t even seem to know how to do the job. Most of her story is making snarky one liners at other staff of the show, complaining about her job to her friends, and watching TV in bars. She doesn’t do anything.
The first 125 pages of the book are largely useless. If I was the editor, I’d have scrapped them entirely. It is mostly Semi talking about his friends and Cel trying to avoid doing work. We only get into the meat of what the novel is supposed to be about about at page 130 and then it started to get awesome. After that point, I was completely invested and thought the novel was making some very profound points.
What I got from the novel is that television and news events are the new blood sport of our day. Whether we’re watching a trashy reality TV show, watching a play about some emotionally charged event, or watching news coverage on a tragedy. We are not actually watching the thing. We are not actually interested in the thing itself. It doesn’t matter how it begins. It doesn’t matter how it ends. The truth doesn’t matter either. The point is that we’re watching it. As the book says toward the end, we’re an audience, watching an audience, watching an audience. I was a little stunned at how profound I found this book based on how badly it began.
Then we got to the ending and it disappointed me again. In the end, the author decides to give us the truth. Give us the truth about Mattie M and Semi. I was so disappointed that I wanted to stop reading. We just spent approximately 200 pages telling the reader that the truth of these things was irrelevant. I was just another audience, watching an audience, watching an audience. So then if these things don’t matter, why are you insisting on telling me?
Maybe, in the end, I read too much into the book. Maybe the author didn’t actually intend to make any profound and philosophical points. Maybe she didn’t think she could resist giving me the final pieces of the puzzle. But, regardless, it damaged the book for me.
Read this and other reviews at Written Among the Stars
This book is told in two points of view and multiple timelines. Each chapter is titled with the narrator and the years it covers to make it easier to follow along, until the last chapter which was very confusing. It covers a span from the 70s to the 90s and discusses a lot of serious topics. It talks about the AIDS crisis in the gay community. It covers school shootings. It covers the new freak show of our era, trash TV. It covers public reaction to all of the above. It was a very ambitious novel and didn’t quite pull it off.
**Mild Spoilers Alert**
Our first narrator is Semi, which I thought was an innuendo until the author piped in that it’s pronounced like semi-truck and then I wasn’t really sure what it was supposed to be because I have always heard that pronounced with a hard I sound. But I’m getting off point. Semi was a great narrator. He was the former lover of Mattie M, back when he was a local politician and lawyer with his eyes on the mayorship of New York. I loved hearing about his love story with Mattie and I loved hearing about his perspective on the AIDS crisis. My only complaint is that I didn’t actually learn anything about Semi as a person. He told his story through the stories of his friends, So while I enjoyed his narration, I didn’t feel like I got to know him at all since he was hiding his truth behind his friends.
Cel is the narrator for much of the portion of the book that covers the school shooting and ensuing chaos, She is the publicist for the Mattie M Show. To be quite frank, I have no idea what she was doing in this novel. She didn’t have a single ounce of personality and rarely spoke more than a fragment of a sentence at a time. Her back story was confusing so I couldn’t even get emotionally involved in that aspect of her story. I also have no idea how or why the show hired her as a publicist. She doesn’t like the job and she doesn’t even seem to know how to do the job. Most of her story is making snarky one liners at other staff of the show, complaining about her job to her friends, and watching TV in bars. She doesn’t do anything.
The first 125 pages of the book are largely useless. If I was the editor, I’d have scrapped them entirely. It is mostly Semi talking about his friends and Cel trying to avoid doing work. We only get into the meat of what the novel is supposed to be about about at page 130 and then it started to get awesome. After that point, I was completely invested and thought the novel was making some very profound points.
What I got from the novel is that television and news events are the new blood sport of our day. Whether we’re watching a trashy reality TV show, watching a play about some emotionally charged event, or watching news coverage on a tragedy. We are not actually watching the thing. We are not actually interested in the thing itself. It doesn’t matter how it begins. It doesn’t matter how it ends. The truth doesn’t matter either. The point is that we’re watching it. As the book says toward the end, we’re an audience, watching an audience, watching an audience. I was a little stunned at how profound I found this book based on how badly it began.
Then we got to the ending and it disappointed me again. In the end, the author decides to give us the truth. Give us the truth about Mattie M and Semi. I was so disappointed that I wanted to stop reading. We just spent approximately 200 pages telling the reader that the truth of these things was irrelevant. I was just another audience, watching an audience, watching an audience. So then if these things don’t matter, why are you insisting on telling me?
Maybe, in the end, I read too much into the book. Maybe the author didn’t actually intend to make any profound and philosophical points. Maybe she didn’t think she could resist giving me the final pieces of the puzzle. But, regardless, it damaged the book for me.
Read this and other reviews at Written Among the Stars
August 15, 2019
The Spectators rocked my world and reminded me of what novels can do. From the opening chapter in which Semi narrates what it was like to be gay—before gay existed--in 1969 (“We sip from glasses streaked with grime and, it turns out later, hepatitis. We stare at boys with hip huggers and teased hair; we stare at boys in stage make up who do not necessarily work in the theater”), the phenomenal details and language made me feel utterly a part of the book’s eras and subcultures. As I read on, it became a search to understand personhood (who are we really, underneath it all?), how eras relate to each other, how and who to be in the face of history. The Spectators is a smart as hell literary masterpiece about how ultimately, we can’t skirt our job which is to make meaning out the trials of we’re living through. I need novels like this, novels that make me see myself and the world differently (and which I stay up all night reading for sheer pleasure). This is a work of devastating wit and wholeness, and I was felt a sense of loss upon reaching its final page along with the realization that The Spectators changed me for the better. Don’t miss out on this one.
May 28, 2019
Thank you NetGalley and Random House for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book. I made the mistake of reading reviews before I started this one, which gave me an impression of this book, that me unsure I wanted to read this. I am glad I decided to continue reading, because I really enjoyed this one. This takes place on two timeline with two main characters. The earlier timeline, is about a gay man living in NYC pre-aids epidemic and hoping well into the epidemic. The second timeline is later and works real shows how media works. The two stories do intertwine in the last portion. I thought it was well written and I only enjoyed this more as I continued the story.
August 26, 2019
I read this eagerly, enjoying the prose, the characters, and the juxtaposition of decades, but after I finished I had to think. I decided it wasn't as good as I thought it was while reading it. I'm not sure I understood what her goal was or if there was one.
Tracy was reading The Great Believers at the same time I was perusing this, and I find it interesting that two white women wrote novels dealing with the gay male community in the seventies and eighties when the AIDS crisis ravaged the community. I loved, loved, loved Makkai's novel and felt I got its themes and why she chose the stories she did. I don't feel that way about The Spectators.
Tracy was reading The Great Believers at the same time I was perusing this, and I find it interesting that two white women wrote novels dealing with the gay male community in the seventies and eighties when the AIDS crisis ravaged the community. I loved, loved, loved Makkai's novel and felt I got its themes and why she chose the stories she did. I don't feel that way about The Spectators.
June 15, 2019
This novel provided me with a strange reading experience. I could appreciate the story - the look at spectacle, as well as the version of New York City with the rise of AIDS provided by Semi - one of the two narrators, and I could appreciate the language employed with myriad words I've never seen outside of a dictionary, and I could appreciate the research and intelligence that went into this, but ultimately it left me cold. I never fell into the world of this novel at all.
July 1, 2024
I couldn't decide between a 4 or 5 star rating. Each character and relationship felt so painfully real and their stories had me on the edge of tears at times. I just wish that it didn't end so abruptly and that I cared more about Cel and her backstory. Definitely not everyone's cup of tea and there were way too many words that I did not understand, but I enjoyed it. I also respect that the book was exactly what it says in the description, which may seem obvious but is not always true.
Want to read
January 25, 2019The Spectators is a story of something I failed to connect with. Too many obscure words with not enough engaging story line equals disaster. Unfortunately, I skimmed through this one. Definitely not my type of material. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.
January 17, 2020
Excellent author...usually. This is three hours I will never get back. Yes I kept reading the book hoping it would get better.
April 17, 2019
I could not stop reading this timely and urgent novel. The prose is stunning, and the story even more so. Anyone who is interested in media, mob mentality, public shaming/reckoning, the creation of a persona, projection, audience, politics, hell human-beings, pick up this book!
August 25, 2023
solid 8
i was a little bit confused at first but it was my bad; i should have reread the summary sooner. interesting characters, also the way everything is described made it so easy to immerse myself in the story. good read, although heartwrenching at times.
i was a little bit confused at first but it was my bad; i should have reread the summary sooner. interesting characters, also the way everything is described made it so easy to immerse myself in the story. good read, although heartwrenching at times.
November 14, 2018
Read in prepub. Due out April 2019.
Really liked this book. Juxtaposes the gay liberation years (and the looming AIDS crisis) against the halcyon days of trashtalk TV to perfect effect. The book examines the way secrets can either destroy you outright or eat away at you to the same effect; the difference between having ideals and actually acting on those ideals; guns and who is responsible for gun violence; and much more.
Would be a great book for book groups. While you're waiting for this book to come out, I would recommend her last book, Cartwheel about a foreign exchange student in Buenos Aires accused of murder.
Really liked this book. Juxtaposes the gay liberation years (and the looming AIDS crisis) against the halcyon days of trashtalk TV to perfect effect. The book examines the way secrets can either destroy you outright or eat away at you to the same effect; the difference between having ideals and actually acting on those ideals; guns and who is responsible for gun violence; and much more.
Would be a great book for book groups. While you're waiting for this book to come out, I would recommend her last book, Cartwheel about a foreign exchange student in Buenos Aires accused of murder.
June 19, 2020
About the author: Ms. DuBois is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop. That would explain this totally forgettable attempt at poignancy, complete with thinly stretched metaphors and obscure vocabulary words that bring metaphysical attention to their obscurity. Side note: Why do straight white women keep writing novels about gay men of color? Their lack of authenticity is glaring.
April 21, 2019
Holy ... cow, can this girl write! Thank you, Jennifer duBois, for writing a novel that’s as intellectually stimulating and thought provoking as it is entertaining. And who can’t afford to add a few new words to their vocabulary?
April 24, 2019
As many reviews have noted, duBois seems to have written two different books, slammed them together, and then painted the book with a good coat of SAT words. While the premise seemed promising, the author did not deliver.
May 28, 2019
This book was quite slow to begin with, and only picked up 3/4 of the way through. Even then it wasn't like a big climax. The vocab is also distracting at times as it's like the characters (mainly Semi) have swallowed a thesaurus. Important themes but could have been more enthralling at times.
March 28, 2019
I very much enjoyed Jennifer duBois book Cartwheel, which I listened to during a summer clean. I loved the points that are made about arrogant, entitled American teens, although I remember it being a little wordy. The Spectators is about a Jerry Springer-ish talk show that must face its role in a school shooting -- something very timely, unfortunately, even though the book takes place in 1993.
Some parts of the book were ok, but for the most part I felt completely disconnected from this story. This is partly because the narration alternates between two characters who don't really know what's going on. Cel is a publicist (sort of -- she doesn't know what she's doing) for The Mattie M Show, which is hosted by the mercurial Mattie M, an older man who was once on the fringes of New York City politics. Cel is awkward and uncomfortable with herself after her unusual upbringing. She doesn't really like her job, although she doesn't want to quit, she doesn't know what to say, but she's bored with keeping her mouth shut. She's a frustrating mess of a girl, the kind of person I would have nothing to do with after five minutes of (non) conversation. Her third person narration of the story is alternated with Semi, an former lover of Mattie M, who has spent the past decade watching all his friends die of AIDS complications. Semi is almost as mysterious as good old Mattie M since he hides his story behind his friends stories, and his escapades in 1970s NYC are obscured by the escapades of his friends, who are the Greek chorus of Semi's chapters.
If the story had focused on one narrator, or a different narrator, or added narration from other characters (I would have loved Luke's POV) I might have liked this book better. I think it was trying to be too much. It was making a point on our culture of TV, from the trashy talk shows of the early nineties, to the constant news cycle of CNN. It was making a point on violence in our culture, and how desensitized we are about it. It was making a point on the AIDS epidemic, and how devastating it was to the gay community. It was making a point on grief. It was making a point on art. On politics. On caregivers. On humanity.
But ultimately I don't know what this book was about, and I couldn't tell you what point it was trying to make. I could sort through the SAT vocab and the levels and levels of meaning, but to be honest, I don't have the interest. I was just disappointed with this book, but I would love to read Cartwheel again.
Some parts of the book were ok, but for the most part I felt completely disconnected from this story. This is partly because the narration alternates between two characters who don't really know what's going on. Cel is a publicist (sort of -- she doesn't know what she's doing) for The Mattie M Show, which is hosted by the mercurial Mattie M, an older man who was once on the fringes of New York City politics. Cel is awkward and uncomfortable with herself after her unusual upbringing. She doesn't really like her job, although she doesn't want to quit, she doesn't know what to say, but she's bored with keeping her mouth shut. She's a frustrating mess of a girl, the kind of person I would have nothing to do with after five minutes of (non) conversation. Her third person narration of the story is alternated with Semi, an former lover of Mattie M, who has spent the past decade watching all his friends die of AIDS complications. Semi is almost as mysterious as good old Mattie M since he hides his story behind his friends stories, and his escapades in 1970s NYC are obscured by the escapades of his friends, who are the Greek chorus of Semi's chapters.
If the story had focused on one narrator, or a different narrator, or added narration from other characters (I would have loved Luke's POV) I might have liked this book better. I think it was trying to be too much. It was making a point on our culture of TV, from the trashy talk shows of the early nineties, to the constant news cycle of CNN. It was making a point on violence in our culture, and how desensitized we are about it. It was making a point on the AIDS epidemic, and how devastating it was to the gay community. It was making a point on grief. It was making a point on art. On politics. On caregivers. On humanity.
But ultimately I don't know what this book was about, and I couldn't tell you what point it was trying to make. I could sort through the SAT vocab and the levels and levels of meaning, but to be honest, I don't have the interest. I was just disappointed with this book, but I would love to read Cartwheel again.
August 20, 2019
I consider myself well read and in possession of a reasonable vocabulary, but I found myself using the dictionary function on my reader to look up the meaning of a word every few pages. It was not as though the author was padding the novel with verbose descriptions or overwrought dialog--every work I referenced fit appropriately. Consequently, I learned some things reading this book.
Often when the writing itself grips you, it takes you away from the story line. You re-read the sentence or paragraph because you want to savor the description or get the meaning just right. But this story stands on its own and draws you right back in. duBois manages to take issues of today's social media blitz and transport them back into the 1980s where their roots can be traced.
We follow a sensationalizing talk show host (ala Jerry Springer or Maury Povich), Mattie, through the decades that have shaped him. The story alternates narration between one of Mattie's early gay lovers and his current media staffer. We follow NYC through the early '80s AIDS epidemic and come forward socially and politically into the ubiquitous television coverage that spawned our present day social media epidemic. This is examined through the dissection of a mass murder, bringing focus on a crisis to which we have become jaded, as the reader notes the thirty year old problem we are still dissecting today. Lots of introspection here: inciter, perpetrator, audience, jeering onlookers, complacent viewers. A book that still bothers me days after I finished it...that's my definition of a good read.
Often when the writing itself grips you, it takes you away from the story line. You re-read the sentence or paragraph because you want to savor the description or get the meaning just right. But this story stands on its own and draws you right back in. duBois manages to take issues of today's social media blitz and transport them back into the 1980s where their roots can be traced.
We follow a sensationalizing talk show host (ala Jerry Springer or Maury Povich), Mattie, through the decades that have shaped him. The story alternates narration between one of Mattie's early gay lovers and his current media staffer. We follow NYC through the early '80s AIDS epidemic and come forward socially and politically into the ubiquitous television coverage that spawned our present day social media epidemic. This is examined through the dissection of a mass murder, bringing focus on a crisis to which we have become jaded, as the reader notes the thirty year old problem we are still dissecting today. Lots of introspection here: inciter, perpetrator, audience, jeering onlookers, complacent viewers. A book that still bothers me days after I finished it...that's my definition of a good read.
Read
August 13, 2020Started but didn't finish this, and I didn't care enough about the book to give it a real star rating, so I'm just leaving a short review so I can remember this in case I pick the book up again.
I had a really hard time getting into this. The writing was okay but seemed kind of detached, and I didn't feel any sort of connection with the characters in here. I was intrigued by the idea of the setting being a Jerry Springer-ish show where anything goes and the history of the host behind the show, but the execution of this did not work. The characters were flat, the writing was okay but didn't have any sense of urgency, and I felt completely disconnected from the story. The prologue was written in a literary-esq style where it felt like I was supposed to be swept away by the writing, but it actually just seemed dull. I continued reading, hoping that it'd get better (after all, a lot of prologues feel unnecessary and different from the rest of the story), but it felt pointless instead of poignant.
I think this was supposed to be some commentary on life and humanity, but it didn't affect me at all and I didn't enjoy trying to keep reading this, so I gave up. Reading other reviews, it seems like this is hit and miss with readers - some loved it, others felt like me. Funny how some books are like that.
I had a really hard time getting into this. The writing was okay but seemed kind of detached, and I didn't feel any sort of connection with the characters in here. I was intrigued by the idea of the setting being a Jerry Springer-ish show where anything goes and the history of the host behind the show, but the execution of this did not work. The characters were flat, the writing was okay but didn't have any sense of urgency, and I felt completely disconnected from the story. The prologue was written in a literary-esq style where it felt like I was supposed to be swept away by the writing, but it actually just seemed dull. I continued reading, hoping that it'd get better (after all, a lot of prologues feel unnecessary and different from the rest of the story), but it felt pointless instead of poignant.
I think this was supposed to be some commentary on life and humanity, but it didn't affect me at all and I didn't enjoy trying to keep reading this, so I gave up. Reading other reviews, it seems like this is hit and miss with readers - some loved it, others felt like me. Funny how some books are like that.
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