while i wait, seemingly endlessly, for subterranean press to send me my damn copy of The Woman Who Married a Cloud: Collected Stories, i will sit herewhile i wait, seemingly endlessly, for subterranean press to send me my damn copy of The Woman Who Married a Cloud: Collected Stories, i will sit here and reflect on older jonathan carroll books and try to get him a few more fans. periodically, i will plop one of these reviews out for my unsung heroes: jonathan carroll and donald harington, in hopes that someone will take the bait.
frequently it works.
this particular book is a good starting point for someone looking to enter the world of jonathan carroll. true - characters from sleeping in flame appear in it, but not in any significant way that will mystify you if you are only going to read this one. also - venasque. venasque is in several of jonathan carroll's books, but every time he is encountered, it may as well be for the first time. he is at once a cipher, and just what he appears.
if that makes no sense to you, you probably have never read jonathan carroll before. those kinds of paradoxes are just par for the course in carrolltown.
his work is woven out of dreams, visions, coincidences and contradictions, parallelisms, mysticism, world mythology and folktales...jonathan carroll does what he does, over and over, but it never really feels redundant. his female characters are always enigmatic and fantastically desirable, there's always going to be a bull terrier, there is usually going to be some sort of porousness between the boundaries of life and death. and he will usually not stick the landing. it's true. he is not great at endings. but because he is uncommonly good with the actual journey part, it doesn't really bother me. his books always feel like he is working through a thought-cycle for his own amusement. they are fiction, but there is an intensely personal tone to his books that is very inviting, and they read like he is having just as much fun with his characters and his socio-philosophical puzzles as the reader.
me, i don't always need a strict writing workshop 101 exposition/action/denouement (yeah, i collapsed it a little - bite me) as long as what i am reading is giving me consistent brainpunches of "oh, that is it exactly" and "ohhhhh - what a wonderful turn of phrase." he has a very fresh take on all the old themes that reads like the final word on the matter. why would anyone reading jonathan carroll ever need to read anyone else trying to make sense of relationships, or grief, or purpose?
and the conversations...his characters frequently have conversations that i imagine leonard cohen would initiate. (and, yes, j.c. loves l.c. - their shared erotic mysticism is no accident) (not that they have ever shared anything erotic. to my knowledge.) their clarity, their insights, their paring down love and death and being to its essentials. even carroll's douchey characters, like harry radcliffe in this one, are startlingly lucid and will frequently have insights that have been silently thrumming along under your skin, and when you read them, they are at once familiar and a revelation.and he is great at just tossing off one-liners, like
- Buying a pair of shoes is one of the most optimistic acts i know, next to falling in love
- Everything you want in life has teeth
- For lunch that day I ate fried mice
and then longer ones:
When you love someone deeply, you know secrets they haven't told you yet. or secrets they aren't even aware of themselves...she was also the person I wanted to share the trivia of my life with, because that too is part of the magic of concern: whatever you live is important to them and they will help you through it.
yeah, i know - a little treacly, but i'm a romantic, what can i say?
and then he will just toss off little stories as asides that illuminate everything he is examining in such a perfect way, that they could stand alone and you would be perfectly content to ruminate on them for hours.
this one is his most overtly biblical - focusing on the tower of babel story, but with his own spin, and a little nod to borges. but it broadens the story into a more universal mythology that is very satisfying and unexpected.
i have no idea if this is a review, but it is an endorsement for jonathan carroll, at the very least. i will go back to waiting by the mailbox.
They flutter behind you, your possible pasts Some bright-eyed and crazy, some frightened and lost A warning to anyone still in command Of their possible They flutter behind you, your possible pasts Some bright-eyed and crazy, some frightened and lost A warning to anyone still in command Of their possible future to take care
when i began this book, i was not thinking, "i shall open the review with lyrics by the english rock band pink floyd, but this song was in my head as soon as the plot started doing its thing, and now it is in yours.
and i am so pissed; i was really looking forward to trashing this book, to show mr. caris o'malley that there are no more free rides on goodreads.com - that even though we have chatted and even shared a review together - integrity is king!! and when that bee takes over, we shall all fall in line. buzzzz
but this was just a really great book. and i am about to give a compliment here that will be staggering, to those of you who know me. ready to stagger? reading this was like getting a surprise new short story by jonathan carroll. (gasp) i know, but it has everything i like about jonathan carroll - the love story is not treacly, but is quirky and makes sense, and all the latter occurrences (i hedge vaguely) are very carrolly - and our caris has zero j.c. books listed, so i am excited to be recommending an author to him with similar preoccupations and maybe he will fall in love the way i did.
the bizarro list is touch and go with me. some of them, i think they just make a list of "shocking" or "offensive" words and toss them in a hat and choose their topics like that: "vagina day care center," "nazi roller coaster," "fetus bowling alley." and it's just a little yawn, like a preteen with a paint sprayer full of naughtiness gleefully let loose on a church. it is overkill, and i mean, who is really shocked by this anymore?
but there are a few from that list that are more adult, more crafted. and this is one of them. it is hard to go into detail, because it is about 80 pages, and i don't want to ruin the enjoyment, but golly o'malley, this is really good
so. lang. yeah, jessica, i just don't know. you might totally dig this, i didn't. this book is like when people try to tell me that gwyneth paltrow orso. lang. yeah, jessica, i just don't know. you might totally dig this, i didn't. this book is like when people try to tell me that gwyneth paltrow or cameron diaz are hot, and i'm like, yeah, they seem healthy and all their features are in the right places, but i just don't feel a "hot" vibe coming from them; it's just not for me. this book is the same, it is chilly and aloof, as remote as the finland it chronicles. oh, god, gay! but seriously... it is.
maybe this book is really good, to people who like this kind of thing.
i think it is a little flat. the thing is, you can't do everything he is trying to do in a novel of this size, especially if the prose is this spare. you can't have a noir-ish love triangle that leads to murrrderrr, a commentary on the decline of media integrity, side-characters in the form of a crazy sister, an uncle with a boat (seriously - why was he even in there??), a briefly drug addicted son, a couple of ex-wives (only one of which gets any screentime).... yes, i get the fact that the son is meant to be a casualty of "the times" and "piss poor parenting" etc , but jeebus the book isn't even 200 pages. it would have been perfectly fine with only a taut obsessive-love story and call it a night already.
and then.
then it gets all postmooooodern with the inclusion of the "story within a story" conceit and the narrator at a remove from the action who once dated the crazy sister (to what end - no one knows)and who can we trust anyway and blah di blah
no.
and it is just clumsy. like this:
"she slurped and smacked her way through them (crayfish), drinking heroically of the chardonnay, and lang noted that she was one of those who not only ate the tail, but sucked on the head and the abdomen"
yup, food/sex/life voracity for it all, got it
"there was always a strong wind and beyond the shoreline boulders - that were smooth and softly rounded as reclining women's breasts which have not yet been pumped up with silicone"
gack.
and sarita is given such cute and quirky lines to show she is deep and inscrutable, "sometimes i get so sick of opinions that i want to be transformed into a sea anemone or something"
thanks, bjork...
but then there is the occasional line like this, that makes me clench my fists with wanting the rest of the book to fall in line:
"he wondered if anni sometimes felt the way he did, that the thoroughly bilingual person loses her innermost self, that she no longer has a language for her deepest love and her deepest emotions, and that she therefore experiences all words spoken during the act of love as false and wrong, as if she wished there were a language that fitted somewhere in between"
again, all this is being written by an author-character who explicitly says this is an unauthorized account, so why, then, do we care? why isn't it less uneven? for a book this short, there is a lot of extraneous junk cluttering the damn thing up, and it's not like the character is a sympathetic one so when anything bad happens, the reader just thinks, "well,maybe you shouldn't be talking to your woman like that. fair is fair".
maybe i just don't understand the nordic lands. everything i have read from sweden, norway etc - it just sucks to be a lady. even the tough ones who suck the abdomen out of their crayfish still take a lot more shit than i would. from passive aggressive bullshit to straight up violence - come on ladies! women, thou art loosed and all that.
um, is this helpful?? it's not terrible, it's just it is so small, the flaws stand out more clearly. maybe you will think it is awesome. ...more
and as a wonderful birthday present, i am setting aside the proust for a minute, and taking the time to write a dana-requested bit is dana's birthday!
and as a wonderful birthday present, i am setting aside the proust for a minute, and taking the time to write a dana-requested book review! and before you start thinking that i give shitty presents, here is something else i gave her for her birthday:
[image]
it's her crush paul o'neill!! with an erection!! oh, i am so thoughtful...
but this book - let's recover from the levity and put on our serious faces - although it draws from fairy tales and there is a sortof gauze of irreality permeating the story, there is some seriously disturbing violence here. i mean, these are nazis, their ovens aren't in gingerbread houses, and there isn't any way of tricking them into a death-scenario, because there are just too many of them. so this becomes, as the subtitle states, "a novel of war and survival." the focus is how to live within a world ravaged by horrors - first the soviet union, then the germans - poland was a collection of battered individuals, just trying to stay alive. and this is a chronicle of that time, with a superimposed fairy tale of two jewish children, abandoned in the forest by their father and stepmother, in the hopes that they will survive; "passing" as gentiles called "hansel" and "gretel." their story unfolds as the narrative splits to follow the father and stepmother, as well as various other characters impacted by the horrors of a war that doesn't yet know it is over.
this is my go-to book when people ask for ww2 books that aren't about spies. it's a book that isn't very well-known, but should be. and that's where i come in, with my "put down that michael chabon and read something haunting and unknown!!"
i don't want to give away any endings or emotions, so i can't really say much more. there are some upsetting scenes, here, but there is also a whole lot of beauty; a whole lot of tenacity and just enough "fairy tale" to lighten the psychological burden.
happy birthday, dana!
sheeesh, write a review for a girl, and she doesn't even notice. maybe she is too busy with paul o'neill.....
i really wanted my last pre-proust book to be a home run - i figured if i was going to be immersed in one author's work for the entire summer, then i i really wanted my last pre-proust book to be a home run - i figured if i was going to be immersed in one author's work for the entire summer, then i should read something memorable just before it as a springboard to prousting.
didn't happen.
and this review is doubly precious because the Creator may be watching- this is my first review that otis (my new goodreads.com friend - yay!) will be seeing. i imagine this is how the deeply religious feel about their particular deity - the constant scrutiny, the judgment, the pressure to please and impress... here i am, living in your world...
but - book:
when i flipped through and saw that it was written as a series of dated entries, i naturally assumed they were diary entries, fictitiously but historically-plausibly attributed to a member of the party. but they're not. it is broken down like that simply to give a chronology, so you get things like this: May 16 - prairie travel. May 17 - Sunday. Traveled nonetheless. May 18 - Prairie travel. May 23 - prairie travel. May 23 - prairie travel.
i was so bored, that if richard rhodes were here, i would have made a stew out of him.
the whole first part is like that - it reads like a dull nonfiction timeline with no characters to hold on to, and then in the second part, it changes to having some characters given thoughts and dialogues, but by then, i was already pissed at the book, and each dated passage contains three different perspectives of people in three different locations without giving any real transitions, and i kept forgetting who was where, probably because i wasn't given a chance to "know" them in that introductory part - i had to keep stopping and trying to remember how many kids each person had, etc. this book should have pleased me more: it has survivalist elements, man against nature, and cannibalism. so why was it so freaking dull? the thing is, if i want to read nonfiction, i will bloody well read nonfiction, sir. don't trick me into reading it. in fact, richard rhodes, i am going to go out and buy the new nonfiction book about the donner party because it looks like good narrative nonfiction, and not some hodgepodge of the two.
but this is not a complete waste of a book, it just wasn't what i was expecting, so i was disappointed. despite most of the writing being perfunctory, there are a couple of gorgeous passages that just make me angrier because of what could have been:
He watched his wife and the 3 Murphy women and the children eat the stew. The had eaten hurriedly and hungrily before but now they dawdled over their food. Played with it with their spoons as if it was too hot. Toyed with it but not because it was a toy. They toyed with it because it had become precious to them. He felt the urge to do the same. To study each chunk of meat as it floated in his bowl. Look at the way the fibers were arranged. The patterns of the melted fat on the snowwater. The veins that ran like tunnels back into the meat. The smell that made his stomach ache. People shouldn't have to feel that way about food. Food shouldn't be that important.
(that was when they still had some meat - he isn't talking about people-meat there)
two donner-facts i did not know before starting this book: 1) that both of the donner brothers were over 60 when they started their journey. that is some serious balls. i mean, neither of them made it,true, but it is still impressive - their gumption. and 2) at one point there was a real need to eat the dead bodies because there was literally nothing else. but as the snow thawed and released some stockpiles of beef that had been inaccessible before, and the bodies of ponies etc, the survivors chose to continue to eat the human corpses, claiming that beef was "too dry". makes me wonder what i am missing out on, with my boring old beef meats.
so i am not taking it off of table - people can decide for themselves; the "banished from table" shelf is only for books i truly hated - this one just kind of bored me.
so this is a book written in finnish, translated into french and then translated from that into american, so who knows what kind of stno moomins here!
so this is a book written in finnish, translated into french and then translated from that into american, so who knows what kind of stew i just read. whatever flavor it was, i liked it, but i can't help but wonder how far removed it was from the original. to complicate things further, to me it feels very eastern european, in tone and subject matter - it just feels gombrowicz-y or like a somewhat wackier kundera or kafka. just in bits, though. and i usually ignore translator/tion issues simply because i have to. i figure there is no way i will ever learn every language, or even one language, really,but at my last book club meeting, we were reading a story by heinrich boll which i liked, but when i grabbed someone else's book with a different translation, i liked theirs a lot more. (i have since ordered the "good" translation from abe.com you will no doubt all be pleased to know)
i liked this little book, although i am sure i did not grasp every ounce of import from it. i feel like it must have allegorical qualities that i am just reading right past, with my weak understanding of finnish mores.
however.
i personally love the word howl.
HOWL HOWL HOWL
and if i weren't afraid of having the authorities called in to my home to remove me, i would give in to my primal howling urges always and howl whenever i was sad. like this miller. the one from the title, who howls.
and this is what would happen to me: they would take away my mill and make me live in the wilderness! and eat boiled bacon!! that is no way to treat bacon.
you want to root for the underdog, or i usually do, but this underdog is kind of a dick. he's not a sweet man pushed outside of society like edward scissorhands or powder or whatever - he's kind of an asshole. and sure, it could simply be the manifestation of some deeper psychological or chemical imbalance easily treatable with modern medicine, but i'm no analyst. to me, he is just kind of an asshole who when he feels frustrated, destroys the property of others. man, if he dumped my barley in the river, i would want him locked up too.but he lives in a town of assholes, too, so their singling him out seems hypocritical. but i guess it's a case of containing the most obvious asshole and feeling a sense of accomplishment to the greater good of the community.
i liked this book, especially the ending, but maybe i will learn me some finnish in my spare time and read it in the original.
archipelago's existence means good news for book-as-object fetishists and bad news for kindle/nook/robo-reader or whatever i-pad machine is happening archipelago's existence means good news for book-as-object fetishists and bad news for kindle/nook/robo-reader or whatever i-pad machine is happening right now, no matter how fun and swooshily elegant they make the hand gestures look.
archipelago just makes gorgeous books. they make books you want a windowseat for; to curl up in with an oversized mug of tea and a blankie and a single cookie on a gold-rimmed plate, more for show than sustenance. thick, textured paper, sophisticated european-style covers - mmmm....
fuck you, kindle.
i mean, you can read them on a kindle:
Plants don't drink coffee. They don't like coffee, and neither do flowers and trees. Birds don't like it either. My aunt told me. I do. Sometimes I don't breathe while i drink my cafe con leche. One whole mug. It's a big mug. I down the whole mug every morning, without taking a breath. That's a record of mine. Maybe I'm the only one in the world who holds that record.
but, see, if i read that on a kindle, (shudder to think), i would automatically impart a robot voice to it, and it would lose the charm of the child-narrator. it would sound more like stephen hawking, and it would be unavoidable.
but the book is great; i love the child-logic of the part narrated by tomas:
Then there are insects. Insects are 200 million years old. My cousin Ines told me that. Ines knows a lot about insects. Maybe Ines knows more about insects than anyone in the world. Insects are: butterflies, beetles, and dragonflies, and they are 200 million years old. That's why insects are so small, because they are very old. Old people are also often smaller than young people. They are not smaller than children, because children are the smallest people of all. Especially just after they've been born. But old people are also very small, compared to young people. Piedad is an old lady i know. And she is very small, because she is old. My aunt told me Piedad is eighty-two years old. And insects are 200 million years old. That's why they are so small.
i think that is charming. but if you don't, the book isn't all like that. it is the story of a family, with different parts of the story told in different characters' voices. this is another part i liked, BUT I DO NOT ADVOCATE THE PRACTICE:
Every time Mateo went to the library to steal books he brought some cardboard in his pocket. Something bright; red cardboard, or neon green or yellow. And Mateo would leave the cardboard on the shelf he'd taken the book from, and write: "I've stolen this book." Then he'd write the author's name, the title of the book, the publisher, the year it was published and, if he had time, the ISBN too.
also kudos for not saying "ISBN number", which i do all the time, but i cringe inside while it is happening.
dunno - this book is charming, and i love that this publisher exists to give me books from distant lands that other publishers are not making available, even though it is one of those publishers that i own about 30 books from, and have read only a fraction.
but - do - go - support, etc... it's the weekend - read a book.
stuart ross is a nice man with crazy hair who lives at the anvil press booth at the small press fair and always makes me buy more books than i had intended. he also wrote this book.
this is a really fun collection of absurdist stories that only occasionally stray into the "too absurd for me" camp. occasionally i am baffled by the appeal of the absurd, but that is just me and my personal taste, and most of these stories were wicked fun.
standouts in the collection include: remember teeth which is my very favorite and gives me chills the way that urban legend does; you know the one.the suntan feels very latin american-y magical and is probably my second-fave. the ape play is repetitive nonsense that is irresistible and retarded in the best possible way. like lancelot link written by a drunk child. letter to heidi fleiss reminded me big-time of something neal pollack would write, and i like neal pollack. the more abstract pieces reminded me of borges, who i do not like, but if you are going to not be liked by me, you might as well do it by reminding me of borges, because then most people will like you, is my advice. i have no idea what elliott goes to school is about, the ending puzzles me.language lessons with simon and marie made me laugh out loud several times, and i love it like crazies. i think i want to reread that one right now. the engagement is a pretty perfect way to end the collection; i mean, there are a lot of excellent stories here, and i tend to avoid short stories when i can, so it is saying something from me, this.
incidentally, it is awkward reviewing books by authors with whom you have shared beers and booktalks, and i am grateful that this book doesn't suck.i read this collection in my head in his voice, picturing him in his canadian house, staring off into the distance at the canadian landscape while he chews the end of his canadian pen and searches for the most appropriate canadian word to finish his canadian sentence.
and i liked it.
incidentally, "i cannot be dislodged" is my new mantra. i did not have an old mantra, but this is my new one, regardless.
i would love for someone to invent "book-luminol" that would allow me to spray my entire collection from an over-the-shoulder-leafblower/ghostbusters i would love for someone to invent "book-luminol" that would allow me to spray my entire collection from an over-the-shoulder-leafblower/ghostbusters type contraption thing and then all the good books would glow, using whatever algorithm netflix is using now that is supposedly the best thing math has ever done. that way, i wouldn't have to read crap, even crap i mistakenly bought thinking it would be good.
this is why:
i could not decide what to read, so i decided to do the old "close my eyes and point" method. and the finger chose Love in Idleness, and i was like "whaaaaa?? i own this??" so i decided to go to goodreads.com and see why i would have bought it. and of all my seven kajillion friends, only one of them had rated it, and it was elizabeth and she gave it two stars. so i said- "i'm not reading this garbage!" (not her review - the book -, although i didn't read the review either because it said it had spoilers, so i thought it best to leave it for now) but so then i decided to try again, even though the method was already compromised. but no one saw, so it didn't count. this time the stupid finger chose Cows; a book i know i do not want to read. i flipped through this one time after i had already paid for it, and once i came to the passage of the couple having sex in the split-open corpse of his mother i said, "yeah, not my thing." then the finger picked a book that is, like, number three in a series i have not yet started. so i gave up on my finger (twss) and chose this book with my eyes wide open.
this is a good book. this book would glow if i had my book-luminol.
i was checking out other reviews of this, and someone complains about the similarity of voice in this book, even though it is told through many many characters' perspective. and that's totally valid, that is a weakness to this novel. however, i don't really care about that if the story is good. and this one is. this isn't a story about individual characters, it is just the opposite - it is about echoes and parallels and the plot is a densely woven mass of details and repetition and omission. and, eventually, irene dos santos. the story itself is totally captivating, as it meanders through time and family tree and reality and unreality to a more or less satisfying conclusion (i say that, and it sounds bad, but it is an ambiguous ending and i am not totally sure how i feel about it - i think certain things, but they become impossibilities with the conclusion, but then again, in latin american magical realism, nothing is truly impossible, yes??)
anyway, i liked it. i did have to go back and reread parts of it to get all the reverberations, but i was happy to do so. i look forward to reading more by this author.
okay, i am going to pretend i am queen of the universe and i am going to set some ground rules, the first of which is that if you are an author, and yokay, i am going to pretend i am queen of the universe and i am going to set some ground rules, the first of which is that if you are an author, and you publish a book knowing full well it is going to be the first part in the series, you MUST make that EXPLICIT somewhere on the cover. because i can't go reading a whole book only to find that the resolution is actually a gateway into another whole story, i can't.
this just made me more aware that donald harington loved sea of poppies and he died before the second and third books in the trilogy were published. this is the saddest thing i can think of, and it makes me confront my own mortality. and i can't have that, either.
fortunately, i didn't love this book the way he loved sea of poppies. i expected to like it in a light breezy way, and that's what it was for me; a light, fun diversion. i mean, who doesn't love anthropomorphism, right? tailchaser's song is one of my all time favorite books, and watership down is great etc etc. this one was lacking in the "species-specific language/glossary" that i liked so much in those other books, but it still had some great illustrations of wolf behavior, so i learned a thing or two, and the central character was complex in a good way - not overly heroic or role-modelly; a flawed wolf struggling with her role in her society, and her relationship with the "other" - humans.
and what would a novel be without a poetry-spouting, comic relief raven?
so. this book.they tell me that this is the first magical realism novel.ever. i disagree, but then me and "they" have always had differences of opinioso. this book.they tell me that this is the first magical realism novel.ever. i disagree, but then me and "they" have always had differences of opinion.
this just doesn't scream "magical realism" to me. sure, there are elements of the genre within, but they are elements that magical realism shares with the gothic romance, which this book feels more like to me. so there, take that, "they"!!
i may spoil some developments here with my callous distinctions, but that is a warning and you can do what you like from here on out. ima try not to, but i am in a mood, so discretion is not currently a priority.
so, there are prophetic dreams and visions. there is tragic, mysterious death, there is secret family history,there is a crumbling ancestral home, there is a form of mistaken identity, there are inheritances and marriage and secrets revealed and maybe-ghosts. i mean, mary stewart much?? this is pretty much textbook gothic, not magical realism.
also, there are bees and mist. in fact, all i could think about the whole time i was reading was Of Bees and Mist, which was very similar, very similar indeed. i am squinting at you, setiawan! you need to explain why your book also relies so very heavily upon fairy tale elements and seeeeecrets and, oh yes, bees and mist. j'accuse!
this is a fine book, if you ignore the psychological and emotional torment our heroine undergoes at the hands of her husband/sister's widower, and the very convenient wrap-up. but, then, if you are reading this as gothic romance, you pretty much expect that sort of thing.
this is pretty much why i read, to find a book like this amongst all the three-star so-so's. and it wasn't love at first sight (which might make tyes.
this is pretty much why i read, to find a book like this amongst all the three-star so-so's. and it wasn't love at first sight (which might make the experience even better; i didn't love winesberg, ohio right out of the gate either) - i had some reservations from the first page, when the poetic quality of the language seemed forced and i wasn't going to deal with 200 pages of: "three halt haggard houses formed a kneeling rank on the far creekside...", or "Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes..." but except for a few instances of striving-to-be-musical prose (heidi klum would say "we question your taste level" and brad becker would say "i'll taste her level"), this is utterly gorgeous, and is already on my mental hall of fame list.
of course it brings up a list of names in my head - they are unavoidable comparisons: ron rash, cormac mccarthy, castle freeman jr, - people who write about misbegotten people deep in the hard-lined appalachian/ozark regions without romanticizing the harsh realities of survival. but it's more than that. woodrell has created a sort of ozarkian godfather story with its unspoken rules about loyalty and power and family above all else where people live and die by deeply embedded codes of honor. even the supporting characters here speak volumes and any one of them could stand alone in their own novel.
but the action centers around sixteen-year old ree. she of the milk skin. and this character is, i think, what everyone is thinking they have found in that dragon-tattooed salander, who i found cartoonish. ree is a sixteen-year-old girl who is genuinely hard, not just clinically affectless. she is resourceful but not, god help us, plucky. she is pissed off but not in an anarchic teenaged way. she is no wide-eyed innocent, but she isn't psychotic, either. she's just a human surviving within her inherited power system, raising her two little brothers and caring for her mad mother, sacrificing her love and dignity without regret, but with necessary resignation. yet she does show emotion, even though it is a luxury in her situation. every scene she has with gail is understated, but packs an emotional wallop. (yeah, i know, i hate that expression and i'm not sure why i used it. blame the heat)
this is no morality tale, it is just a slice of a life that is happening, unsung, in america. it's too short a book for me to say much about without rooning it for everyone, but i loved it like crazy, and will have to get all his other, out of print, books into my hands...
i don't think i will ever read finnegan's wake. when i was fifteen or so, i went on a trip to england, and i was reading the bell jar on the plane andi don't think i will ever read finnegan's wake. when i was fifteen or so, i went on a trip to england, and i was reading the bell jar on the plane and throughout the trip. it was a fun trip, one that boosted my confidence and independence in a variety of ways, and when it was time to go, i was wandering around the airport, with a bit of leftover english currency in my pocket, and i saw finnegan's wake in the airport bookstore (which i doubt they sell in american airports, i'm just going to mention here). cocky after my recent adventures, i thought to myself -sure, esther-bell-jar doesn't understand this book, but i bet i will! i am the cleverest of all fifteen-year-old girls!!
turns out i am not, and it was a perplexing plane ride home. (why is there musical notation???, is this even a word?????)
when i was a senior, i had a teacher who was discussing the book (but not making us read it), who gave us some advice. he said to just treat it like what it was on the first go-round. just read it like a dream and power through and let it all wash over you, and do not slow down and do not stop to question it. i never returned to finnegan's wake - i like dubliners and portrait, but i can't be bothered with the big ones yet. i don't mind being intellectually challenged (although my recent school-related readings would seem to suggest otherwise) but i do not like being intellectually mocked. stuff it, joyce, i say (for now)
but so all of the above was just to say i think the "power through" method is appropriate here, for this book. i want to respect the author's decision, like chris cleave's on little bee to not give away plot points on the book's cover etc. and i will only suggest that this book be read as a journey through a situation that is painful and emotionally charged and is also a very timely story, judging by many recent publications. there is some beautiful writing in here, and if there were a couple of things that snagged in my mind as inconsistencies, it doesn't matter, because the message is the same.
maybe this summer, joyce... but proust gets finished first.
sorry, i wrote this first thing in the morning and after my shower i am thinking more clearly. i want to stress here that this book isn't difficult the way finnegan's wake is. i read it through once and then i had some questions and i read it a second time, without slowing down to question, and the second read-through was more rewarding, is all.
I like to make displays at work. It's what I do. And they are usually for small presses, or books Sex dungeon sold!
Wanna hear a boring story? No? TFB!
I like to make displays at work. It's what I do. And they are usually for small presses, or books with arresting covers, or just shit that is going to get lost on the shelves otherwise, but if "they" see it, "they" will buy it. It is not hard to sell books, as long as you have an angle. Mine is to cater to the impulse buyer through their WTF bones.
Holloway House was an amazing publisher putting out early urban fiction in the sixties and seventies. Pimps, guns, drugs, hookers... just awesome books with covers like this:
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and this: [image]
and this: [image]
And all priced from the past, at $2.95 to $5.95. And I got a ton of them in to the store; throughout the years I have cleaned out the warehouse, and now we can get no more. And I put up the Holloway display because it is good to display books that are $3.95 and have titles like "Deadwood Dick" and "Ain't Got Time To Die" and "Pimp City". It's a no brainer - they are cheap, they are hilarious, and they make for an impressive display when viewed all together.
But I would never read any of them.
They are just for amusement's sake. And in fact I wish I had bought more of them for myself, because now they are completely ungettable, except for the sad handful we have left on the display. The best ones are gone forever, and there is somehow no record of the covers on the entire Internet.
Sucks, right? (Actually it doesn't, because now there are pictures for them, so you can see how awesome they truly are, but I don't feel like altering this entire review to reflect the excitement of their appearance on Goodreads.com)
But so in sorrow over the death of Holloway House, I decided to put up an Eraserhead Press display. Still cheap, still outside of the James Patterson reader's radar, and they also make for an arresting display, just with more amputations and blood and fetuses.
But I would never read them. They are just for amusement's sake.
But then this author contacted me on Goodreads.com and I had to confess that I had his book on the endcap, and then he sent me fun coloring books and a duckie rape whistle, and I felt like I had to read it, with some trepidation.
I always thought that the bizarro stuff was seriously transgressive, judging by the covers (hold your admonishments, please) and the titles. And I loathe the transgressive in fiction. It just bores the shit out of me. Part of it is the serious emotional disconnect I experience when I read - I do not fully engage as a reader, I am always aware of the process of reading. It is why I rarely cry and am never scared by reading. And it mostly sucks - I would love to cry and scream and be as emotionally invested as I am in my own life. But alas. So but the point is that the transgressive shit bored me because I am not shocked by it, so the whole intention is undermined.Even high lit transgressive shit like Bataille and de Sade - they put what into whosewhat? Oh, okay, another day at the office, maybe keep some antibiotics on hand. Shit, I thought de Sade was boring when I was in high school, when everything was sexually exciting, especially whatever fell outside the norm (not that I have ever had sex, because I am a virgin - hi dad!!)
Is there a point?? No?? Yes!
So the point is, I ended up liking the book. End of review.
Hahah no but it's good stuff. Mostly absurd; if you like Barry Yourgrau and Marc Leyner you will probably dig it, if you aren't a snooty reader of George Saunders, you will like it as well. They are short, they are funny, (although the first part of the James Brown-auction story was crushingly sad, even to me), and if he sells enough books, he gets to write another one. And he's a nice guy with a family to feed and terrible penmanship. I mean, come on, take a ten dollar chance.
yay!! my suspicions have been confirmed - i am officially not a book snob! i oscillate between thinking i might be a little bit of one, and that any fyay!! my suspicions have been confirmed - i am officially not a book snob! i oscillate between thinking i might be a little bit of one, and that any forays i may make into teen fiction or silly bodice rippers that involve byron in some way are just accidents; flaws... on goodreads.com, i feel mostly like the dummy of the bunch, which is a totally comfortable and understandable place for me to be. but then at work, and in my readers advisory class, i feel like the biggest book elitist of all time. because they are all talking about their romance novelists and their chick-lit and cozy mysteries and COME ON!! these are future librarians!! one of the biggest no-nos in librarian school is to respect the patron and not look down on their reading choices, but it doesn't say anything about not judging your peers. so i do. and i felt like an asshole when they asked what i was reading, and i mumbled "oh the third part in this really complicated norwegian trilogy about television and what makes up the catalog of a life, told without a linear narrative, and no, it's good - it's like proust". blank faces.
but this book i really loved, and i was reading the reviews of it today here on goodreads.com, and so many people hated it for its lack of characterization or weak narrative but i honestly didn't notice anything like that in this. i noticed it big time in under the dome, but i thought this book was really fun, and had something interesting to say, which i did not think w/r/t mr. king. sorry, dude. i am very basic - i want a story told to me. do it whatever way you need to - be as roundabout as kjaerstad or proust, be as straightforward as steinbeck, but tell me a story and make it unique.
and i thought this story was great. it's about a woman unexpectedly pregnant by a man not her own, who returns to her hometown to figure out what to do about it, and then becomes preoccupied with her own family history (i.e. - who's her daddy??). did i mention her town has a lake monster? well, it does. and that is awesome.
i thought, when i was reading it, that it was a wonderful book, particularly a wonderful woman's-book, that covers motherhood, yes, but also the mother-daughter dynamic, sexual complications, nostalgia and rage. all good lady-feelings. dunno, i liked it, but i also like some zombie books - make your choices.
so officially not a snob, but still will never read harry potter...
all of you booknerds who like discovering and championing forgotten authors like MacDonald Harris and are all holding hands reading pri have decided.
all of you booknerds who like discovering and championing forgotten authors like MacDonald Harris and are all holding hands reading proust together, this should be your next read. because he is too under-read, and your energies should be used for good, and he is actually very similar to proust, in a lot of ways, but just more fun overall. a lot more action, but the same spirally, drifting writing.
i am floating this review FOR NO OTHER REASON than as a call-to-arms. come on, booknerds, answer my challenge!
so i embarked upon "trilogy month" with some trepidation; what if i hate the writer and then i am forced to continue slogging through the rest of the books because of my self-imposed need to follow through on things i start?? but - hey - this time it is smooth sailing.
like, seriously smooth. in my supreme arrogance, i have complained several times on here about why writers don't just write the things i want to read, and why i am forced sometimes into reading unsatisfying books. well, someone has been reading my mail. this is exactly the kind of book i like to read - meandering plot, callbacks, repetition (but not aggressive-repetition like that other norwegian monstrosity, Melancholy) for clarity: these are things it is like: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, arrested development, Magnetic Field, fanny and alexander. these are things i thought would be good for the same reasons this book is good, but didn't work for me: The Arabian Nightmare, House of Leaves, Hopscotch.
basically, the book revolves around two basic and oft-repeated questions: "how do the pieces of a life fit together?", and "when do we become who we are"?? and this book, ostensibly posing as a murder-plot-driven book, seeks to explore these ideas. every segment builds to the brink of release and answers and closure, only to loop back again as though the plot itself were reminded of another bit of minutia that applies to the story at hand and then weaves back and forth in time and splits tales up into wanting and wanting and wanting more. unlike the calvino, there is release and return, though, so for all the winter's night haters, this should suit you better.
and, yes, there is a magical penis involved and lots of farcical, forrest gump-like sex (by which i mean his knack for falling into bed with every norwegian woman who will later go on to be well-known, famous, or otherwise influential in the norwegian realm, not dopey and soft-spoken). jazzle finds the sex creepy, i think it is funny. they are over-the-top sex scenes that sometimes read like sara barron's 12-year-old porn: "so i am lying on top of him and he is humping me so hard im nearly flying off him. then i take his pienus and rub my face and in it. then i grab it in my two hand rub it all over." (sic.)
i mean, it's better than that,obviously, but in its convenience and pizza-delivery-boy spontaneity and irrepressibility it sometimes reads a little comical to me. all these horny, liking-it-on-top norwegian broads foaming at the mouth for him and his magical penis. i mock, but i love, too.
this just barely escaped a five-star from me. it certainly started out that way, but i think there were a few bits, some pieces of a life that maybe could have been shaved down a little. but that just leaves a little room to grow, as i begin the second part.
high points are the story of red daniel, the entire character of nefertiti, and the fact that he thinks the number 6 looks like a hard-on. i look forward to the rest of the trilogy, because i still have burning questions...
jonathan carroll's books are like gourmet jellybeans. even his shittiest flavors are better than most regular jellybeans, and who doesn't like jellybejonathan carroll's books are like gourmet jellybeans. even his shittiest flavors are better than most regular jellybeans, and who doesn't like jellybeans? (alfonso claims that only white people eat jellybeans, which is untrue, but it's such an odd racial stereotype i feel compelled to add it here).
you know how there is some music that no matter what mood you are in, it just happens to be the right music?? jonathan carroll is like that for me. he's just...wonderful, like a new crush you can't stop gushing over. he's definitely a high fabulist, but in the best sense of the term. let's compare: better than graham joyce, more charming than millhauser, slightly less ambitious than robertson davies, but always always entertaining. i would name-drop alasdair gray, but so few people have read him, it's not even worth it. stop reading this review and go read lanark, already...
jonathan carroll can be summed up in two words: death and dogs. not your gritty noir alsatians snarling over an abandoned corpse, but generally affable dogs involved in some way in a character's meditations or experiences with death and what comes next: bull terriers who are either sentient or symbolic, but are carroll's literary stamp as recognizable as any of lynch's recurring visual details/tics.
carroll has a few major themes; mostly ideas of life and death and karma and the afterlife and man's responsibilities to man and woman and ghosts and film. they are philosophical/moral/spiritual journey stories but in a playful, not didactic way. "spiritual journey" should in no way conjure up images of coelho, redfield, or martel. take those thoughts to go, please.
land of laughs is a really good introduction to jonathan carroll. the ending? shrug, not the best, in my opinion. but it honestly does not matter, because it's such an incredible story throughout. his endings are pretty consistently weak, but it almost becomes an adorable quirk, like when kids can't say "spaghetti" or something that people think it is cute when kids do.
at the end of the day, he is just a good storyteller, and like the opening credits for amazing stories, isn't that the foundation our littry appreciation should be built upon?
long live donald harington (12/22/35 - 11/07/09) yeah, i just found out. that's two of my favorites in as many years. why can't i fall in love with rolong live donald harington (12/22/35 - 11/07/09) yeah, i just found out. that's two of my favorites in as many years. why can't i fall in love with robots?? donald harington was by far the most under-appreciated author i have ever championed. and his relative obscurity is both puzzling and offensive to me. what are people reading, if not this? and why? what's the point? harington was the most effortless storyteller i have ever read. he created an entire town and filled it up with characters that were interesting and astonishing and full of life and depth and reality and magic. his writing never had any vanity to it - it seemed he was writing for the sheer joy of creating these people and directing their lives and presenting them the way kids do when they play with dolls. i have never been bored reading a harington book. i have never glossed over a descriptive passage, i have never wished he would wrap it up. his writing is enchanting - it is pulsating with vitality and novelty and specialness- and everything builds and reflects and echoes and even when he would take risks to amplify the magic or the postmodern flourishes, i never felt jarred or impatient. and everything i am saying is coming across as clichéd and that is the last thing a man like this deserves. but you understand, i am not mourning one man; i am mourning an entire town. i am mourning characters i have fallen in love with over the course of fifteen books - all of stay more has fallen into a hole in the ground, and because he once made me an honorary citizen, i'm in there as well. and i'm sitting here bawling and listening to warren zevon and janis ian and this leonard cohen song i haven't been able to listen to in ten years because it made me cry too hard, because i'm already sad, right?? and i'm just a nightmare mess over this. maybe i will actually review the book-part tomorrow. for now - this is just a sorrowful eulogy.
on second thought - no - you can read the books yourselves - you don't need me to potentially ruin it. go - enjoy.
what do i have to do to sell this book? i put it on table, and nothing. i make a lovely endcap just for archipelego books, and nothing. why won't you what do i have to do to sell this book? i put it on table, and nothing. i make a lovely endcap just for archipelego books, and nothing. why won't you believe me? isn't it pretty, with its van gogh painting planted atop rich purple textured paper? and read the back: blurbs!! from people i have never heard of, but they are blurbs!! well, i have heard of publishers weekly, but they compare these stories to robert frost or bob dylan, so i don't know if they can be trusted. but i know i can be. these are more like o henry or thomas hardy on a gentle day. they are mostly very short - under 10 pages - but they all have those snappy endings that cause laughter or empathy or both. they are cleverly written and also have shades of mark twain in them (does it help if i name-drop?) c'mon, is it the afrikaner thing? there's a little racial inequality here, but if i can gloss over it, so can you! is it cuz he killed his stepbrother? because - glass houses, guys. we've all had those days. just read the book. i want someone else to have read it. i said please.
this is the closest thing to a one-size-fits-all book that i've ever come across. whenever someone asks me for "something good," "i don't know, just wthis is the closest thing to a one-size-fits-all book that i've ever come across. whenever someone asks me for "something good," "i don't know, just with a good story," "whatever," i just give them this. even when they are much more helpful with what they are looking for—i give them this. and i have had a number of people come back and tell me how much they loved it, and do i have anything else like it. that's the problem. i don't. there are shades of it in other books—millhauser, harington, carroll. all are amazing authors who have elements of what is successful in this book in them, and are probably better authors overall, but this book has something i'm not able to pin down that just makes it so satisfying and engrossing. and he has not been able to do it again. stay far far away from Veronica, because it is not good. The Bestiary started out very good, but was not even close to the way this book gives the shivers. this book is strong on all fronts: character, plot, style. it's a book i definitely need to revisit, and i think a good book for fall. and if you buy it from union square this month, lesley can win her own staffie!
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