There are heroes, and then there are antiheroes. And then there are straight up villains, and Flashman is undoubtedly a villain. His only redeeming quThere are heroes, and then there are antiheroes. And then there are straight up villains, and Flashman is undoubtedly a villain. His only redeeming quality is that he realizes he's a despicable lout and thus achieves a sort of charm in his storytelling, the same way that Martin Amis's John Self in Money endears the reader to his self-aware philandering and drunkenness. Add racism, rape and cowardice to that equation and you've got Harry Flashman. ...more
**spoiler alert** Like everyone else reviewing this book, I have to make the disclaimer that usually I wouldn't read this type of fan-fiction, but The**spoiler alert** Like everyone else reviewing this book, I have to make the disclaimer that usually I wouldn't read this type of fan-fiction, but The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is purt' near my favorite book, and Robert Coover is the type of author I wish I liked more, if only he'd be a little bit more readable and less opaque. So this is basically the perfect book for me. It's the perfectly pitched logical extension of Huck's and Tom's childhood adventures.
Mark Twain famously posted a notice at the front of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: "PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." I don't know if Twain was trying to sidestep any responsibility for writing a very serious and important book, or if he was just making a good joke and trying to trick seekers of a light adventure story into reading something deeper than they bargained for, but this is not a problem Coover's book has.
Huck Out West wears its narrative, allegories, and metaphors like a heart on its sleeve. Huck's Indian friend Eeteh tells stories about Coyote, Snake, and the other gods, and they are always relevant. There are stories that are about stories. Huck Out West is itself an allegory where Tom and Huck represent opposing American values, which is something that could be insufferable if the story itself were not so much fun.
Huck Out West gives Tom Sawyer the chance to become the villain he was always meant to be. Tom is an all-out psychopath, even to the point of patricide. Years after his father went West, leaving Tom and his mother in St. Petersburg, Missouri, Tom searched him out. "I finally found him in Baker City, selling used hats from a little wagon. Some a the hats had bullet holes in them. Warn't a one of them ever been cleaned. They was full a nasty little varmints crawling around. He was living with a fat two-bit whore who weren't no cleaner'n the hats. He warn't NOBODY, Huck! He didn't have no STYLE! He says he still loves Ma, and when I told him she was dead, he busted out crying. He was making me sick. I couldn't stand him. So I shot him. Had to shoot the whore, too, because she was watching. Left town that night. Ain't been back."
This is why I love this book so much. As Huck says, "There ain't nobody alive with more brains and gumption and plain levelheadedness than Tom Sawyer. People love him wherever he goes and want him to tell them what to do, and so he does." Tom is a born cult leader, and he convinced his creator Mark Twain to portray him as the hero, when he's really the villain. Coover realizes what a monster Tom is: he kills his own father, he sells Jim back into slavery because it was convenient, he gazes lovingly at the sight of the largest mass hanging in American history. After Tom tells a story about how he'd defended a group of white businessmen who'd organized a massacre of Indian women and children and gotten them off scot free, Huck is nonplussed. Tom scoffs at Huck's unwillingness to praise him. "Trouble is, Huck, you never growed up. You're still living in some dream of a world that don't exist." And Tom is right. Tom belongs in the lawless Wild West, where might and cleverness make right. Huck belongs to some old world, where there is right and wrong. Huck is content to sit idly in a tent in a gulch, far from women and bathing, but close to a whisky still. But as always, "something happens and then something else happens, and I'm in trouble again."
These are the characters I love to love (Huck) and love to hate (Tom), and I'm thankful to Robert Coover for taking up the mantle of humble fan-fiction writer so I can have a convincing portrait of their adult lives, despite how sad they are.
Note: My main disappointment is Coover's underutilization of Jim, who barely appears in the book. (Admittedly, Jim was given the short shrift by Twain as well, so this is a continuation of the tradition.) He's possibly the most tragic character in the book; he's dragged away from his wife to go out West on another of Tom's quixotic adventures and promptly sold into slavery. Then he's bought and freed by some crazy missionaries and Huck runs into him on wagon train as a cook. "Hurray! I think. Jim's going to have a purpose in this story! But, Huck leaves and I think surely Jim will show up again, but he doesn't. He doesn't get an end, he just becomes a memory, which I suppose is how life works, but it's not how the story was supposed to work.
Also, just one more quote that I wanted to fit into my review but I wrote it and then it didn't have a place. But it perfectly sums up Tom's nihilistic worldview:
"A hundred years from now, you and me'll both be dead and forgot and people'll still be killing each other. This is OUR killing time."
"If it is, everything just don't seem to mean nothing, that's all."
"Don't nothing MEAN nothing, Huck! How could it? Two and two don't MEAN four, they only IS four, that's all. I worked out a long time ago that, no matter what you do or think, you DIE and it's all wiped away. Your brain rots and your thoughts, wants, loves, hates, simply ain't no more. Others may borrow your thoughts, but you won't know that, you're gone like you never was. What we got is NOW, Huck, and now is forever. Until it ain't. So, you can't worry over nothing except putting off the end a your story as long as you can, and finishing it with a bang. Bekase nuffn doan mattuh, as old Jim would say, no SAH!"
A fun, little book that satirizes the Biblical period from Adam&Eve to the flood. Cain is the reader's Durante degli Alighieri, cursed to wander EarthA fun, little book that satirizes the Biblical period from Adam&Eve to the flood. Cain is the reader's Durante degli Alighieri, cursed to wander Earth like so many rings of Hell. Saramago is the recording angel, baffling in his dissimilarity to the author of Blindness. Funny and unexpected....more
It's rare that I feel indifferent about a Paul Auster novel. They inspire in me either wonderment or intense dislike. The New York Trilogy changed theIt's rare that I feel indifferent about a Paul Auster novel. They inspire in me either wonderment or intense dislike. The New York Trilogy changed the way I read books. Travels in the Scriptorium remains one of the few books thrown by my hand. While Timbuktu didn't quite muster up enough feeling to risk pulling my arm out of socket once again, it certainly falls on the terrible side of Auster's work. Really, it's strange to me that this is even a book he wrote. It's so un-Auster-like. There are no red notebooks full of strange cryptographs, no nameless characters spying on the nameless protagonist. Paul Auster himself, nor any of his doppelgängers, make any cameos. It's just a simple picaresque about a dog who understands everything humans say to him, but is incapable of communicating back. And what the reader is left with is a strange mush of un-Auster-like sentimentality....more
Pynchon takes his readers on a wild ride. We attend a party on an abandoned cruise ship. We witness an assassination in Cairo. We hunt alligators in tPynchon takes his readers on a wild ride. We attend a party on an abandoned cruise ship. We witness an assassination in Cairo. We hunt alligators in the sewers beneath New York City. We time-and-space travel to 1904 Namibia to witness the Herero Revolt and ensuing genocide. Florence, Italy to watch an ill-conceived attempt at stealing Botticelli's Birth of Venus. We study atmospheric radio disturbances with a crossdressing German lieutenant. The list goes on...
The characters are as diverse as the book's settings. I counted more than 160 of them, all with truly bizarre names. There are our protagonists (as far as this book has any protagonists; it's really an ensemble performance), Benny Profane and Herbert Stencil. Then there's Pig Bodine, Pappy Hod, Fergus Mixolydian, Fausto Maijstral, Father Avalanche, etc.
And thematically, V. is puzzle. It's hard to pin down what this book is really about. There's a lot about yo-yoing, which is a drifter's kind of lifestyle. (Dude, I just spent the year after I graduated college just yo-yoing up and down the coast, bra.) There's a lot about fathers and sons. If there's one major plotline in the book, it's Stencil's search for the mysterious woman V., who is somehow connected to his father, and it's kind of unclear if she's even a woman; perhaps she's a place or just an idea. There's the idea that all the major world events are connected in a heinous plot born out of some deviant mind. And there's that creeping dread of the inanimate that shows up from time to time.
So it seems like my point with this review would be to say that this is a big, complex, difficult book. But what I'd actually like to say is that this is a fun, lovable book that will grab you and won't let you go until you've read every word. Sure, you have to be the type of person who doesn't mind a challenge to fully enjoy it, but if you are that type, if you like David Foster Wallace or William Gaddis (there is a straight line drawn from Gaddis to Pynchon and from Pynchon to Wallace), then this could very easily be your next obsession.
Note: When you read this, it's imperative to keep a written character list. Minor characters often reappear later to assert themselves as major characters and it would behoove you not to forget them. Enclosed in this spoiler is my dramatis personae if you'd like to take a look. (view spoiler)[Benny Profane: discharged from the Navy, been working as road laborer for a year and a half and traveling, Catholic father, Jewish mother, born in 1932
Beatrice: barmaid, sweetheart of Benny's Navy ship, USS Scaffold
Beatrice Buffo: owner of the Sailor's Grave, calls all her barmaids Beatrice
Ploy: engine man on the minesweeper Impulsive, always picking fights, tried to kill himself after the Navy took all his teeth out, sharpened his new dentures and and bit Beatrice's butt
Dewey Gland: Ploy's friend, sings Benny a song for being a PFC (Poor Forlorn Civilian)
Pig Bodine: a "miasma of evil", AWOL from the Scaffold, saves Winsome from jumping out the window to kill himself, was saved from radar radiation by Profane
Morris Teflon: switchman at the coal piers, takes pornographic photos and sells them to sailors, let's Benny and Pig and Paola and Dewey stay at his apartment
Rachel Owlglass: her Daddy gave her an MG and she drove it recklessly, Profane met her when she hit him with it; works as an interviewer/personnel girl at a downtown employment agency, somehow also interviewed Profane for a job without recognizing each other
Da Conho: Benny's chief at Schlozhauer's Trocadero, a crazy Zionist, had a machine gun he kept at the restaurant
Duke Wedge: Benny's bunk mate, tried to sleep with Rachel but she wouldn't do it
Patsy Pagano: got hit in his stomach by an SP's nightstick at the New Year's Eve party
Tolito, Jose, and Kook: Puerto Rican kids who woke Benny up on the subway to dance for money
Angel: Kook's brother, hunts alligators
Josefina/Fina Mendoza: Kook's sister, invites Benny to come home with her, works for Winsome, loved by the Playboys gang, tried to give her virginity to Benny
Mr. & Mrs. Mendoza: Angel's and Fina's parents
Geronimo: Angel's friend
Mr. Zeitsuss: Geronimo's Angels' boss at the alligator hu
Shale Schoenmaker: plastic surgeon, knows something about V but denies it, was an airplane mechanic during WW1, inspired to become a plastic surgeon when his hero fighter pilot Evan Godolphin becomes disfigured, impregnates Esther
Irving: Schoenmaker's assistant and mistress, he gave her a new nose and freckles
Trench: his other assistant, a juvenile delinquent
Esther Harvitz: is in debt to Schoenmaker for plastic surgery, Rachel's roommate, gets pregnant with Schoenmaker's baby, Winsome says she "pays to get the body she was born with altered and then falls deeply in love with the man who mutilated her" and she sees nothing wrong with it
Slab: of the Raoul-Slab-Melvin triumvirate, Rachel's lover, obsessively paints cheese danishes, tries to convince Esther to get an abortion, Winsome calls him a "painter, whose eyes are open, has technical skill and if you will 'soul', but is committed to cheese danishes"
Paola Maijstral: Rachel's roommate, was a barmaid, Benny got her and Rachel connected, separated from her husband, grew up in a sewer in Malta
Pappy Hod: her husband, in Valletta with Fat Clyde
Herbert Stencil: born in 1901, raised motherless, seeking a woman named V he found mentioned in his father's journals, possibly his mother, worked as a spy during WW2
Sidney Stencil: his father, never talked about his wife, died in 1919 during the June Disturbances in Malta, questioned the Gaucho in Florence, was searching for Hugh Godolphin when he met Victoria, who came to the consulate to tell them about Hugh and Vheissu
Margravine di Chiave Lowenstein: left by Stencil in 1946 so that he could seek V
Hugh Bongo-Shaftsbury: former resident of Stencil's apartment, son of an Egyptologist Sidney Stencil knew (initials are BS: intentional?), shows up in a Horus costume to Victoria after the Austrian consul party
Chiclitz the munitions king and Eigenvalue the physician: Stencil wants to talk to them about V
Fergus Mixolydian: an Irish Armenian Jew, the "laziest living being in Nueva York", Winsome says he "takes money from a Foundation named after a man who spent millions trying to prove thirteen rabbis rule the world" and he sees nothing wrong with it
Raoul: writes for television, Winsome says he "can produce drama devious enough to slip by any sponsor's roadblock and still tell the staring fans what's wrong with them and what they're watching, but he's happy with westerns and detective stories"
Melvin: plays liberal folk songs on guitar, Winsome says "Melvin the folk-singer has no talent. Ironically he does more social commenting than the rest of the Crew put together. He accomplishes nothing."
Debby Sensay: groupie of the Whole Sick Crew
Brad: a fraternity boy, meets Esther at the WSC party
McClintic Sphere: saxophonist at the V-Note
P. Aïeul: cafe waiter and amateur libertine in Alexandria
Eric Bongo-Shaftsbury: father of the apartment owner, killed Porpentine
Porpentine: one of Sidney Stencil's colleagues, killed by Eric Bongo-Shaftsbury, had a bad sunburn that looked like leprosy
Mr. Goodfellow: Porpentine's partner, in love with Victoria, gets in a fight with the Arab on the train
Victoria Wren: on a trip with her father in Alexandria, Goodfellow is trying to seduce her away from Bongo-Shaftsbury, became estranged from her father when he discovered her affair with Goodfellow
Sir Alastair Wren: Victoria's widowed father
Mildred Wren: Victoria's younger sister
Evelyn: Victoria's Australian uncle
Yusef: an anarchist, working at the Austrian consulate
Tewfik: a young assassin Yusef knew, the only person he could think of who had faster reflexes than
Meknes: leader of the kitchen force at the Austrian consulate
Count Khevenhüller-Metsch: the Austrian consul, Porpentine's alter ego
M. de Villiers: the Russian consul, Goodfellow's alter ego
Maxwell Rowley-Bugge: aka Ralph MacBurgess, likes young girls, moved to Alexandria after he was busted with a ten year old
Alice: the ten year old girl who got Max/Ralph busted
Lepsius: German with blue glasses, meets Porpentine, Goodfellow, and Victoria in the Fink restaurant in Alexandria, has recently come from Brindisi, says he will see them again in Cairo
Waldetar: a Portugese train conductor on the Alexandria-Cairo express
Nita: his pregnant wife
Manoel, Antonia, Maria: his children
Gebrail: a poor man in Cairo, his farm was overtaken by desert, now a carriage driver, drove Porpentine and Goodfellow around (or maybe Portpentine and Bongo-Shaftsbury?)
Girgis: carnival clown in Cairo by day, burglar by night, witnesses Porpentine fall out of a window while trying to spy on Goodfellow and Victoria
Hanne Echerze: waitress at the German bierhalle in Cairo, Lepsius's lover, although she doesn't love him anymore
Boeblich: owner of the German bierhalle
Varkumian: pimp, had a conversation with Porpentine at the bierhalle
Evan Godolphin: a pilot during WW2, Schoenmaker's hero, was disfigured when he was shot in the face while in the air (the inspiration for Schoenmaker's profession)
Captain Hugh Godolphin: his father, a professional adventurer, meets Victoria in Florence and tells her about his travels to Vheissu, was also in Africa and got stuck at the Siege Party when he was trying to gather a crew for a South Pole expedition
Pike-Leeming: went with Hugh to Vheissu, now "incurable and insensate in a home in Wales"
Halidom: a surgeon, gave Evan Godolphin an ivory nose, silver cheekbone, and a parafin and celluloid chin (allografts)
Zeitsuss: the alligator sewer boss
VA "Brushhook" Spugo: 85 years old, keeps track of alligator sightings on a map
Dolores, Pilar: friends of Angel and Geronimo
Delgado: vibes player in the band Angel, Benny and Fina see, is getting married tomorrow
Bung: the alligator hunter foreman
Father Fairing: believed humans would die and rats would take over, so he converted all the rats in the sewer to Catholocism, his favorite rat was named Victoria (second incarnation of V)
Manfred Katz: Zeitsuss's predecessor
Roony Winsome: executive for Outlandish Records, smokes "string" (a kind of tobacco), tries to commit suicide but Pig delays him until the cops are able to catch him in a net when he jumps out the window and then is taken to Bellevue
Mafia: his wife, a novelist with a cult following, Winsome says she "is smart enough to create a world but too stupid not to live in it. Finding the real world never jibing with her fancy she spends all kinds of energy - sexual, emotional - trying to make it conform, never succeeding."
Charisma: his friend
Fu: other friend
Lucille: 14 year old girl Benny met out partying with Angel and wants to screw
Dudley Eigenvalue: dentist, does work for the Whole Sick Crew for free, anticipating that they will be powerful in the future
Clayton "Bloody" Chiclitz: of Yoyodyne, a defense contractor
Signor Mantissa: depressed Italian, trying to steal Botticelli's Birth of Venus from a museum by hiding it in a tree, friend of Hugh Godolphin
Cesare: his friend, pretends to be a steamboat
The Gaucho: helping Mantissa, wears a wideawake hat, Venezuelan revolutionary who formed the Figli di Machiavelli
Cuernacabrón: the Gaucho's lieutenant
Gadrulfi: a florist, Mantissa's Judas tree provider, the English Foreign Office thinks it's an alias for Evan Godolphin
Salazar: Venezuelan Vise-Consul in Florence
Ratón: Salazar's chief
Angelo: one of the Gaucho's captors
Major Percy Chapman: from the English Foreign Office, captured the Gaucho in Florence to interrogate him about Vheissu
Demivolt: Sidney Stencil's coworker at the foreign office, offered him the chance to talk to Victoria but he said no
Covess: Sidney's chum in diplomatic school who went rogue and tried to recruit locals to invade France
Moffit: takes orders from Sidney at the Foreign Office in Florence
Ferrante: Italian neo-Machievellian secret policeman, assigned to the "Venezuelan problem"
Vogt: Austrian who runs the secret police headquarters
Gascoigne: black man who works for Vogt
Borracho: night watchman at the Figli di Machiavelli's garrison
Tito: makes a living selling dirty photos to soldiers
Oley Bergomask: works at Anthroresearch Associates, Rachel tells Benny he might hire him as night watchman, studying radiation absorption in humans
Knoop: comm officer on the Scaffold, Pig's partner in crime in transmitting dirty stories over the teletype machine, also busted Pig for stealing radio parts
Potamós: Scaffold cook
Kurt Mondaugen: engineer at Peenemunde, told Stencil the story of chapter 9, in 1922 was in Africa studying atmospheric radio disturbances, got stuck at a "Siege Party" for 2.5 months during a rebellion, where he meets Vera Meroving (V), thinks that the sferics are a code that he tries to break
H. Barkhausen: first heard the radio disturbances in WWI
Foppl: farmer who throws parties that Mondaugen attends, volunteers to let all the Germans stay at his house while the rebellion goes on, calls it the "Siege Party", everyone stays for 2.5 months
Willemstad van Wijk: leader in the African community
Abraham Morris: leading a rebellion, destroyed Mondaugen's antennae
Jacobus Christian, Tim Beukes: Morris's followers
Sergeant van Niekerk: insulted Abraham Morris, incidentally starting the rebellion
Vera Meroving: another instance of V, from Munich, met Mondaugen at the Siege Party, has an artificial eye with a watch in it, talked about Vheissu with Godolphin, poses as the Bad Priest in Malta, see below
Lieutenant Weissmann: Vera's "companion", accuses Mondaugen of being a traitor because he thinks the sferics are a code from the enemy, crossdresses
Hedwig Vogelsang: a sixteen year old singer/dancer at the Siege Party, Mondaugen's crush
Andreas: a rebel that Foppl was keeping in his basement and torturing
Schwach, Fleische: Mondaugen's comrades in his dreams of 1904
Sarah: African woman that Mondaugen rapes and keeps prisoner in his house in his 1904 dream, she drowned after trying to escape
Matilda Winthrop: runs a whorehouse in Harlem where Sphere goes to meet Ruby
Ruby: Sphere's whore, wants to visit her ailing father far away
Sylvia: another whore there
Murray Sable: race car driver
Fausto Maijstral: Paola's father, wrote the chapter with his confessions, studied to be a priest but had to give it up when Elena had Paola, revealed to be Stencil Sr.'s son
Elena Xemxi: Fausto's wife, Paola's mother, died in a bombing
Maratt: Fausto's school chum, studied politics
Dnubietna: Fausto's school chum, studied engineering
Father Avalanche: persuaded Elena to return to Fausto after she went to Dnubietna
The Bad Priest: Avalanche's opposite, preaches to the children, Vera in disguise, is trapped by a beam during a bombing and all the children steal her false eye, false feet, a gemstone belly button ring, Fausto let her die there
Carla Maijstral: Fausto's mother
Saturno Aghtina: lived in the sewers in Malta with his wife, Elena and Paola
Tifkira: Maltese merchant who hoards wine, Fausto and Dnubietna drank some of it together while bombs fell
Patrolman Joneš, Officer Ten Eyck: arrest Mafia, Charisma, and Fu while they're playing Musical Blankets for disturbing the peace (but also maybe because of something Winsome said while talking to a doctor in Bellevue)
Hiroshima: a radioman on board the Scaffold, helped Pig steal radio parts to sell
C. Osric Lych: commander on the Scaffold, gave Pig a break when he got caught stealing the radio parts
Groomsman: "crab-ridden", another of Lych's sailors saved from dishonorable discharge
Hanky, Panky: the girls that Groomsman and Pig visited on days off
Gino Profane: Benny's father
Neil: Profane and Stencil witness him beating up a plainclothes cop who was trying to catch him soliciting homosexual sex
Melanie l'Heuremaudit: in 1913 France, fifteen years old, ran away from boarding school in Belgium, was molested as a child by her father, her mother is off touring Austria-Hungary, works in M. Itague's theatre company, Mlle. Jarretiere is her stage name, is the submissive in an affair with "V. in love", died during a performance when she was impaled by a pole; she was supposed to wear a chastity belt that would have protected her
M. Itague: owns a theatre company
Satin: Russian choreographer
Porcepic: Russian composer, a fictionalized Stravinsky
Gerfaut: playwright
Kholsky: "a huge and homicidal tailor", leader of a group of Russian expatriate socialists
"V. in love": 33 years old, a "sculptress acolyte from Vaugirard", another instance V., her name is unknown, has an affair with Melanie, she is the dominant one
Sgherraccio: a "mad Irredentist", ran off with V. after Melanie died
Flip, Flop: girls Profane and Pig party with in DC
Iago Saperstein: found Flip and Profane sleeping on the steps of a Masonic temple, invite them to a party
Howie Surd: drunken yeoman, American sailorp
Fat Clyde/Harvey: super skinny, American sailor, goes out on liberty with Pappy Hod in Valletta
Tiger Youngblood: "spud coxswain"
Lazar: "the deck ape"
Teledu: tries to pee out the bus window
Leman: "red-headed water king", bad drunk
Tourneur: ship's barber, kept Leman from throwing a rock through a window
Elisa: barmaid, Paola's friend
Johnny Cantango: Scaffold's damage control assistant, feels responsible for messing up the propeller
Pinguez: steward's mate striker, got sick at a bar
Falange: snipe, Pinguez's buddy
Baby Face: another sailor
Antoine Zippo, Nasty Chobb: took over the bandstand at the Union Jack bar
Sam Mannaro: corpsman striker
Dahoud: SP along with Leroy
Leroy Tongue: midget storekeeper, gets on Dahoud's shoulders and hits people with a nightstick
Cassar: pawnbroker in Malta, pointed Stencil to a girl with the glass eye with the clock inside, who claimed she threw it into the sea
Aquilina: tells Stencil about Mme. Viola
Mme. Viola: hypnotist who bought the glass eye in 1944, Stencil leaves Valletta to find her
Brenda Wigglesworth: American traveler Profane meets after Paola and Stencil leave him
Generally when reviewing books with a unique structure, I try not to dwell on that structure, in order to get to the meat of the book. In this case, tGenerally when reviewing books with a unique structure, I try not to dwell on that structure, in order to get to the meat of the book. In this case, though, the structure is the meat. Mostly, at least. If you don't enjoy the curiousness of this book and can't see its value as a unique object in itself, it's unlikely that the content of the text will win you over. In other words, if you don't buy into the gimmick, you're not going to like the book. So in this case, I'm going to get the content out of the way first and then talk about the structure.
There are two teenagers, Sam and Hailey. They meet and go on a cross-country road trip together. They party a lot. They have sex. They get into scuffles. They are menaced by The Creep. They drink jars of honey for sustenance. That's really about it.
Both Sam and Hailey get their own narrations. They relate their tales in a stream-of-consciousness, slam-style epic poem. They have a peculiar Nadsat-like vocabulary, referring to their bracelets or watches as Leftwrist Twists; they have myriad euphemisms for sex or driving or drinking their potted honey.
You read about the same events from Sam and Hailey's perspectives concurrently, but they also appear to be separated by decades. On each page there is a date stamp along with a newsreel sort of thing that gives you an idea of where in time the narrative is taking place. For example, shortly after meeting each other, Sam and Hailey find themselves on the lam from Them and steal an idling car. In Sam's version of events, they steal a Ford 999 Racer in 1902. According to Hailey, it was a Shelby Mustang in 1966. (Consistency is not an object here. The Racer in a few pages becomes an Oldsmobile Roadster, the Mustang a Pontiac GTO. Who is driving depends on who is telling the story. The time shifts on a page by page basis, so even though one scene starts in 1902, it may end in 1904.)
Compare a typical example of each's corresponding narration (pages 60):
Sam:
Hailey's turn at the Wheel, sure. Blobbling the curve, beefing a ramp. Shuddering gas & stamps beside a skydrenched Shenandoah ridge Rat Snakes histing: —Aspire! A Woodchuck crying: —Go wider for a higher course! So I take over. Take off. Fly. Wings, wind & prop. And hot air. Drifting lazily. Landing for a query: —What's your burden, Giggles? —Dirty Shoes. A Chump. Chewed over I'm cutting em loose. You? —Jam up! Cutting em loose too. Hailey laughs, and greedily tonsils my staff, clumsily nipping, mirthy rewards finally overslipping her lips.
And Hailey:
Sam's turn at the Wheel then. Spishing the shoulder, just missing a ditch. A marauding hitch & glitch to Front Royal for Rockytop. Shagbark Hickory crying: —Higher! Spring Larkspur histing: —Aspire for a still wider cruise! So Sam's left hand flies kites, planes and balloons, drifting waywardly. —What's your bag, Pixie Boy? —Johnny Law, The Man Racing to tag me for dodging zee draft. You? —Jam up! Dodging zed too. Sam laughs. Impulsively I headwork his lap, teething his shaft, a rashshuck for the gobblurt I lobfast to the dirt.
Isn't that fun? Have some fun with this book. Don't take it too seriously. Enjoy it. ...more
This is a really fun, well written picaresque in the spirit of Huckleberry Finn, the story of a young man on a quest from Arkansas to Belize, trackingThis is a really fun, well written picaresque in the spirit of Huckleberry Finn, the story of a young man on a quest from Arkansas to Belize, tracking his wife who R-U-N-N-O-F-T-ed with his car and her lover. One may recall the wonderful voice of Mattie Ross in Portis's True Grit; Ray Midge is the same sort of wonderful....more
Recommended if you like the following sentence: "I pumped my codpiece at the duke and tried to force a fart, but my bum trumpet could find no note."Recommended if you like the following sentence: "I pumped my codpiece at the duke and tried to force a fart, but my bum trumpet could find no note."...more
Here we have the notorious Chicago May, criminal mastermind, prostitute, con artist, pickpocket, et cetera, etc., &c. She left Ireland in 1890 [image]
Here we have the notorious Chicago May, criminal mastermind, prostitute, con artist, pickpocket, et cetera, etc., &c. She left Ireland in 1890 for America, taking with her all of her family's assets and entered into a life on the edges of society. She romped around the World's Fair in Chicago. She married and divorced a lieutenant, taking much of his money with her. She ran off with lover Eddie Guerin in a Bonnie & Clyde-style spree, stealing several thousand dollars from an American Express office, for which she spent her longest stay in prison.
Chicago May's life has the makings for a great story. The problem is that the facts are incredibly minimal. Nuala O'Faolain does the best to spice up the story by making it a meta-biography. She parallels May's emigration to America with her own. But most of the book is speculation. Nearly every sentence began "I imagine May..." or "May might have..." Being a fiction person, this doesn't bother me, but this must be a nightmare for someone looking for a tightly written, fact-based biography.
I liked this book. I wanted to love it, but I just liked it. It's episodic, and the problem with episodic novels is that you're always comparing the oI liked this book. I wanted to love it, but I just liked it. It's episodic, and the problem with episodic novels is that you're always comparing the one you're reading to the last one, and in this book the best episode comes right at the beginning: The Battle Royal is an amazing and terrifying story, and it contains all the rest of the book, so as I read the rest of it, I felt the same things I had already felt, but to a lesser degree.
So The Battle Royal is great, as is the episode with the incestuous family, and the paint factory, and the riot, but those bits with the communists are kind of boring. Those speeches and labor meetings were always my least favorite part of Steinbeck, too.
It can also be frustratingly on the nose. The invisible man carries around a briefcase that he got from some white men who used him—literal baggage—and carries symbols of other black men's identities around in his pockets. When he's got a pimp's sunglasses, a link from a chain gang member's chain, the contents of a Sambo piggy bank stuffed into his pants, he complains that his pockets are getting too heavy.
At the same time, though, it obfuscates its main point, which is that all of the forces (not just white forces, but mainly white forces) in society rob the black American of identity and self, and to discover one's true self he must divorce himself from society. It's a call for individualism. Our protagonist is basically free of characteristics, because everyone is piling on their expectations. A white college trustee calls the narrator his destiny; the communist leader wants him to be a cog in the socialist machine; a white nymphomaniac wants him to be a big black rapist; the proto-Black Panther wants him to be a weapon in the fight against whites. The point is crystal-clear everywhere except for the parts where Ellison tries to lay out his philosophy. The novel is bookended by two manifesto-like chapters of what it means to be an invisible man, and I question the necessity of these. Ellison should have trusted his narrative to do the job, because in attempting to explicate his point, the manifesto confuses matters by introducing a bunch of talk about truth and light and a bunch of hooey that's really tangential to everything the book already has going on.
I know I'm complaining a lot, but I liked it. I just didn't love it, and I was hoping I would. You come to a book like this with a lot of expectations and it can be hard for anything to live up to such a reputation....more
Christopher
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