Forever Overhead

Review: The Bee-Loud Glade by Steve Himmer

2012-02-20T09:00:00.000-06:00

The Bee-Loud Glade
Steve Himmer
224 pages
Atticus Books
Published April 4, 2011

I had some serious misconceptions about this book. The start of the blurb mentioned that the main character of the book worked for a corporation as some kind of marketing blogger that maintained a dozen or more online identities, all aimed at promoting a certain brand of artificial plant. I didn't read the rest of the blurb, I got myself a copy because I thought that sounded amazing.

The Bee-Loud Glade is really about a guy named Finch that loses his corporate job and gives up on life. When he's offered a job by the super-rich Mr. Crane to become an ornamental hermit in Crane's garden, he jumps at the offer.

"Hermits, Mr. Finch. Any respectable estate had a hermit in residence on the grounds. Visible from the windows, in the background as estate holders and their guests strolled the lawn, that sort of thing. Usually for a term of seven years, subject to evaluation, of course. How does seven years sound to you, Mr. Finch?"
How did it sound? I didn't know - it sounded perfect, and it sounded absurd, and it sounded like an elaborate practical joke in which I'd been ensnared. So I just asked, "As a hermit?

The rest of the book is concerned with Finch's life in Mr. Crane's garden. Finch is given an uncomfortable tunic, a cave in which he can sleep and seek shelter, and three meals a day. He must take a vow of silence, stop cutting his hair and shaving his beard, and cease bathing. Mr. Crane occasionally gives him instructions or inserts objects in his life. Finch is instructed to paint, to sit in trees, to meditate, to keep a small garden. He is given a wooden flute until it is taken away and then given back. A river is installed.

Yes, a river. Installed.

There's a certain amount of absurdity in The Bee-Loud Glade, but it fits so cleanly into the world that Steve Himmer has built that it's easy to be like Finch and just go with the flow. There's very little spoken dialog and most of the novel is made up of Finch's internal dialog.

When I had gotten through about a quarter of the novel I started to become concerned about how this hermit story was going to hold my attention for another 150 pages. I had nothing to be worried about because Himmer is up to something here. The Bee-Loud Glade isn't just a silly story about a hermit, but it's about being alone, religion, the absurdity of money and power, the nature of work, the distortion of fame, and the impossibility of true independence. With all of those big ideas, Himmer never gets preachy. He allows Finch naturally grow from a sad, gray little man to a man at peace with life and his surroundings.

The Bee-Loud Glade is Steve Himmer's first novel and I hope there will be many more to come. The writing is light and fun and while full of ideas, it never feels like he's beating you over the head. The ideas are not unique, but the way in which they are presented is fresh and with a dash of humor. I really enjoyed The Bee-Loud Glade and I'm looking forward to seeing what Steve Himmer does next.

Book Source: NetGalley

Bonus Links!

What I'm Reading

2012-02-16T10:00:00.000-06:00

I have been a reading multi-tasker recently. This is a new thing for me since I typically read only one book at a time, but since I've got books in a variety of formats, I've switched up my reading habits. So here's a look at what I'm currently reading and a sneak peak of some upcoming reviews.

Carry the One
Carol Anshaw
I've already mentioned this book once and now that I'm a bit over a hundred pages into it, I can confirm that it's pretty good. It's essentially about a group of people that climb into a car and end up hitting and killing a young girl. The rest of the book is about how these people get on with the rest of their lives. The prose is excellent and it's both funny and sad at the same time. If the rest of the book is as good as this first third then I think this one may end up on a lot of top ten lists at the end of 2012. Published by Simon & Schuster and available March 6th.

The Devil All The Time
Donald Ray Pollock
This one is part of the 2012 Tournament of Books. I don't even know what to say about this. It's really, really dark and full of twisted backwoods people. At the same time it has a lot of heart and I think that's what keeps me from putting it aside. There is so much brutality and violence and sadness but there's also a sliver of humor and some of these characters are so tragic. Most of the book takes places in the 1960's in rural Ohio and Pollock does a fantastic job creating a distinct sense of place. Published by Doubleday back in July 2011. Read an excerpt here.

These next two books are queued up to be reviewed next:

Flatscreen
Adam Wilson
Flatscreen is about Eli Schwartz, a young man who seems to have dropped out of life. Eli is adrift among drug addicts, his divorced parents, various women and his older brother. This is Adam Wilson's debut novel and will be published February 21, 2012 by Harper Perennial.

The Bee-Loud Glade
Steve Himmer
A man named Finch is hired by a man called Crane to be a full-time hermit in Crane's garden. Kind of a modern Walden, but not. The Bee-Loud Glade was published in 2011 by Atticus Books

Mailbox: Varamo by César Aira

2012-02-15T14:32:00.000-06:00

I love it when books arrive in the mail! I had a nice Valentine's Day surprise from the fine folks at New Directions - Varamo by César Aira.

Have a blurb:

Unmistakably the work of César Aira, Varamo is about the day in the life of a hapless government employee who, after wandering around all night after being paid by the Ministry in counterfeit money, eventually writes the most celebrated masterwork of modern Central American poetry, The Song of the Virgin Boy. What is odd is that, at fifty years old, Varamo “hadn’t previously written one sole verse, nor had it ever occurred to him to write one.”

Among other things, this novella is an ironic allegory of the poet’s vocation and inspiration, the subtlety of artistic genius, and our need to give literature an historic, national, psychological, and aesthetic context. But Aira goes further still — converting the ironic allegory into a formidable parody of the expectations that all narrative texts generate — by laying out the pathos of a man who between one night and the following morning is touched by genius. Once again Aira surprises us with his unclassifiable fiction: original and enjoyable, worthy of many a thoughtful chuckle, Varamo invites the reader to become an accomplice in the author’s irresistible game.

Here, have some pictures:

I like the cover

This book is TINY

The content is radically different, but they're the same size

Blog Tag

2012-02-14T21:50:00.000-06:00

Meg over at The Terrible Desire tagged me in this thing and I guess it's only proper that I do my part and keep it going. I'm watching the Grammy's while I do this, so let's do this thing.

*edit* my brain got so tired that I couldn't finish - so the second part of this was finished on Valentine's Day

FIRST - 11 Supposedly Fun Facts that May Or May Not Be True

My favorite writers are David Foster Wallace, Stephen King, and John Steinbeck. And Stephanie Meyer, of course.*
In the mid-late 90's I followed Phish and one night we broke down in Junction City, Kansas. We left the car and took a Greyhound bus to Denver, which was in the middle of the Terry Nichols trial. Since we didn't have a car and had spent our last cash on bus tickets, we were homeless in Denver that night after the show. It was November, very cold and I was jealous of the professional-homeless that were sleeping on the steam-grates. That Phish concert was later released as Live Phish Volume 11. I'm an indie-rock kind of guy these days. That Bon Iver guy that just won the Grammy - I love that guy.
Way back in 1996 I met my future wife at a freshman part. I boogied up next to her and did my best moves - she took one look at me and walked away in disgust. A year and half later I convinced her that I was funny, if not disarmingly handsome, and thus we started kissing on each other. The rest, as they say, is history.
I grew up on the south shore of Massachusetts and was shipped out to boarding school in St. Louis when I was 16. I decided that the Midwest was more my speed and stuck around after finishing school.
I have three kids. Maddox is two and a half and the twins (Camden & Sierra) turn two ~~next~~ this week. The twins are adopted and they've been with us since they were about five months old. My house is super-chaotic and a super-mess, but a lot of fun.
I used to leave notes around my house that said "Brooks is awesome!" My wife would change them to say "Brooks is awkward!" which is probably closer to the truth. When we painted the living room, I painted a big "Brooks is AWESOME" on the wall before I painted over it. If you look at that wall today at just the right angle and in just the right light, you can still faintly see a my message of self-empowerment.
When speaking at a construction technology conference a few years ago, I logged into an application using "brooks is awesome" as my login name. This got a log of laughs (expected) but also branded me as "awesome guy" (unexpected) for the rest of the conference.
The wife and I owned a coffee shop for three years. It turns out that despite the high cost of quality coffee products, it's very hard to make any money. Not recommended unless you hate yourself.
I played french horn in high school and college and I was pretty good at it! I used to play the trumpet pretty well too. I also play the guitar, badly.
I accidently minored in English. I was getting ready to graduate and I looked up the requirements for an English minor and it turned out that I had taken all the required classes - just for fun! A bit of paper-work and I had an instant English minor.
If I come to your house I'll judge you based on your bookshelf. And if not on your books, then your music.

SECOND - Answer these questions from Meg:

Are you a city mouse or a country mouse?
I'm a city mouse living amongst the corn fields of western Illinois. I think that just makes me confused.
Where in the world would you live if you had the choice?
Hawaii. I absolutely hate winter. Also, Austin.
Zombies are attacking, what one book do you take with you when you flee into the wilderness?
Infinite Jest because it's super-long and my favorite book ever.
Do you have any unusual hobbies (e.g., collecting butterflies, building model cars, searching for Big Foot)?
Nope. This book-blogging thing is the closest I've got to a hobby.
What's your favorite book of those you own, based on cover design only?
John Sayles - A Moment In The Sun
What's your favorite Disney character (come on, everyone has one)?
Buzz Lightyear, of course. Innocence + Total Confidence = Best Evs.
What's your favorite comic book character?
Spider-man. I'm so lame.
What is your dream car, and what would you name it?
My grandmother used to name her cars. She had a Volkswagen Rabbit named "Hazel." Look, at this moment, my dream car is one that is reliable and gets decent mileage.
Team Edward or Team Jacob? JUST KIDDING. More seriously, Team Angel or Team Spike?
I have no idea what you're talking about. This is some kind of paranormal erotica, right? Like Spock and Kirk slash-fiction?
What is your favorite piece of artwork (you don't have to own it)?I'm not really an art guy, but whenever I see this thing at the St. Louis Art Museum, I stop and look for a long time. I think it's all the broken glass that I find so interesting.

Anselm Kiefer Breaking of the Vessels
Have you ever performed anything in front of an audience?
Orchestra concerts from elementary school through college. Drama club in high school. I have been known to speak at the occasional conference, but that's a different kind of performance, I guess.

THIRD - Make up new questions

Pets. Tell me their name(s). If you don't have a pet, make up a name.
What book do you love but you are totally ashamed of?
You have the opportunity speak with your best friend from elementary school. What do you say to that person?
Why can't I wear gray with khaki? I think it looks good.
What's the last book you abandoned?
Pick your super-power - super-strength or invisibility
What's the last book that made you shed real tears?
What's your favorite movie?
Ernie or Bert?
The Cat In The Hat movie, starring Mike Meyers - is it a crime against humanity or a feel-good family movie?
What is something you hate doing as much as I hate making up these questions?

FOURTH - Tag people and make them do this thing too
It turn out that because I am so slow that the entire internet has already been tagged and there's nobody left. Unless you're a new site or whatever. I just can't lay this down on anybody and feel good about it. BUT if you want to tag yourself and just answer my stupid questions - please feel free.

As a consolation, I've attached two pictures. One of yrstruly and the other is the actual Valentine's Day card I got from my wife. She is addicted to the lady-crack that is Pinterest. I'm pretty excited about the message this card conveys because I was really getting worried...

Look, it's me!

Actual Valentine Rec'd Today

* - Not True.

In The Mailbox: The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits

2012-02-09T16:51:00.000-06:00

Just arrived - The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits.

Here's the blurb:

From the acclaimed novelist and The Believer editor HEIDI JULAVITS, a wildly imaginative and emotionally intense novel about mothers, daughters, and the psychic damage women can inflict on one another. Is the bond between mother and daughter unbreakable, even by death? Julia Severn is a student at an elite institute for psychics. Her mentor, the legendary Madame Ackermann, afflicted by jealousy, refuses to pass the torch to her young disciple. Instead, she subjects Julia to the humiliation of reliving her mother's suicide when Julia was an infant. As the two lock horns, and Julia gains power, Madame Ackermann launches a desperate psychic attack that leaves Julia the victim of a crippling ailment. Julia retreats to a faceless job in Manhattan. But others have noted Julia's emerging gifts, and soon she's recruited to track down an elusive missing person—a controversial artist who might have a connection to her mother. As Julia sifts through ghosts and astral clues, everything she thought she knew of her mother is called into question, and she discovers that her ability to know the minds of others—including her own—goes far deeper than she ever imagined. As powerful and gripping as all of Julavits's acclaimed novels, The Vanishers is a stunning meditation on grief, female rivalry, and the furious power of a daughter's love

Street date: March 3, 2012 - Published by Doubleday

Review: The Odditorium by Melissa Pritchard

2012-02-09T08:00:00.000-06:00

The Odditorium
Melissa Pritchard
252 pages
Bellevue Literary Press
Published January 10, 2012

Melissa Pritchard's new collection of short stories draws on the deep well of history to produce stories based on characters both famous and obscure. This collection of eight stories, told in a variety of ways, is inventive and satisfying on a number of levels.

I graduated from college in the year 2000 with a BA in History from a teeny-tiny liberal arts school. I've always loved history because I think of it as formalized gossip. You can have all of the primary sources you want, but there's always some wiggle-room in history. There are embellishments and straight-up fictions - some we catch later and others that will probably persist forever. It makes history juicy and somewhat mysterious. Melissa Pritchard takes advantage of the flexibility of history to craft her stories.

My absolute favorite stories from The Odditorium are based on the strangest historical figures. "Pelagia, Holy Fool" is based on a woman named Pelagia, born in 1807 during the reign of Tsar Alexander I who was a Fool-for-Christ. In short, she was so dedicated to God and receiving the Word of God, that she acted as if she was totally insane and lived a hard, filthy life. People came from far away to receive her spiritual guidance, although it was often came across as gibberish.

The story is told as if it is a sermon. A great example is this part from early in the story, which discusses her early marriage before she got turned on to God:

Clap hands over ears, little devils! From this disastrous union, Pelagia bore two sons in quick succession, each of whom perished. Rumors flew through Arzamass that she had first squeezed and smothered the infants between her gargantuan breasts, then flung them, salted and boiled, no better than suckling runts, into Sergei’s favorite pork and parsnip porridge.

Like any good sermon, "Pelagia, Holy Fool" ends with three morals, each a short story that touches on insanity in a different way.

Another fantastic story is "The Hauser Variations," which details the story of Kaspar Hauser, a "feral boy" found on the streets of Nuremberg, Germany in 1828. Each of the eleven "variations" contain a note on how it is to be performed. For example, the first variation is to be performed "in a narrative tone, not too fast," while the second variation is to be performed "with poetic sobriety." The variations shift in tone and voice, making the whole story playful and exciting and amplifying the mystery behind the very strange Kaspar Hauser. The story is a lot of fun - one variation is presented in the form of a play, complete with stage direction.

What I found most interesting about Melissa Pritchard's stories was that I didn't feel like there was really a subtext to any of the stories. I often felt like the emphasis was more on how the story was being told than the actual story itself. This is obvious in "The Hauser Variations," but other stories like the chilling "Patricide" and the stoic "Captain Brown and the Royal Victoria Military Hospital" are each told in a very unique voice and style. The glue of The Odditorium is history and not a cohesive style, where each story is a unique reading experience.

As I read the stories of The Odditorium, I repeatedly looked up the characters on Wikipedia or other online resources. This made the reading rather slow, but also really enhanced my experience. Checking the colorful characters that Pritchard puts on the page against the stark black and white of a Wikipedia entry only enlarged my appreciation of what was being done with the characters and how they were being fleshed out in the stories. Each new story had me trying to work out where the historical "truth" ended and where the fiction began.

Overall The Odditorium is a rewarding read. Spending time discovering the historical figures put new light on the characters, illuminating clever details and embellishing Pritchard's own embellishments. Some of the characters I encountered in The Odditorium will stay with me a while and other's will fade back into the shadows of history, but I'm glad they got to come out and play for a while.

Recommended? Yes

Book Source: Provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Why I Review

2012-02-05T22:57:00.002-06:00

Over at The Blue Bookcase, Ingrid posted about why she reviews and how her reviews have changed over time. It got me thinking about what made me start to blog more and why I decided to start reviewing the books that I was reading.

About eight years ago I was traveling between St. Louis and Minneapolis every week. This went on for three years and during that time I did a lot reading in airports, airplanes, hotels, cars and public transportation. Sometime in the second year I bought a moleskin notebook and started taking notes about the books that I was reading. I did this mostly to keep track of the books I'd read and to capture a general impression of the book.

When GoodReads came along, I started tracking what I was reading, but not really reviewing anything. I liked having a pretty list of all of the things I'd read along with a star-rating. I'd followed a few book blogs on and off, but never thought it was something that I could do or that I wanted to do.

Last year for Christmas, my wife surprised me with a Kindle. For the past four or five years, I'd read fewer and fewer books, mostly due to the small business we ran and then later because I became a parent. I still read a few books a year, but it was nothing compared to the volume I used to consume in my younger years. But this Kindle changed everything! I read the first book within a week. And then another and another and another. I found myself wanting to keep track of everything I was reading and I started looking around for places to talk about these books. That's when I started reading a lot of book blogs.

I started trying to write about the books that I had read. These first reviews weren't great and I was working out my voice as a writer and reviewer. There are several unpublished reviews that read a lot more like something Alice, Meg or Amanda would have written. It's a fun (and funny!) way to write, but in the end it wasn't me. Since then I've just worked to honestly talk about what I've read and the voice has just sort of matured and become its own thing.

But why do I review? I review because I like to have my opinion out there in the world. I review because I love the discussion with other readers that agree and disagree with my assessment. I review because I love the community that I've entered. Finally, I review because it forces me to think critically about books. I love books and I want to have a thoughtful relationship with the books that I read.

I've noticed a few things about the books I've reviewed. For the most part they've been pretty good and even the books I didn't like so much weren't all that bad. They have all been fairly well written. The quality of the prose of just about everything I reviewed was pretty top-notch. I've also fallen in love with the smaller indie presses like Atticus Books, Bellevue Literary Press, New Directions and Melville House. I've become very publisher-aware - and that's a good thing!

I've loved writing on this blog and having the opportunity to share my reviews with all you. I've enjoyed meeting new people (hi Mary Beth!) and becoming part of a community of readers and writers. Thanks to the readers and the commenters for reading this blog and thank you to the authors and publishers for getting these great books out into the world.

I've two reviews in the pipeline for next week! Stay tuned!

Finally, here's a silly picture:

New(ish) Arrivals

2012-02-02T08:00:00.000-06:00

I don't typically do a Mailbox Monday type of post, mostly because I don't get a lot of books! But I've gotten a few since Christmas, so I figured we could do some show and tell and I could tell you all about them!

First is The Odditorium by Melissa Pritchard, published by Bellevue Literary Press. You may remember that two books I loved last year - Tinkers and The Sojourn were also published by BLP. I've really been loving this short story collection. All of the stories are based on historical figures - which means lots and lots of running to Wikipedia for me! And if you look at the picture, you'll notice that I've stuck tabs in the places where I want to do further research! The reading has been a little slow on account of the research, but I've really enjoyed it and I've learned a LOT! The Odditorium is available NOW. My review is here.

Also from BLP is Inukshuk by Gergory Spatz. I started this one a few days ago and it's pretty great so far. Here's the blurb:

John Franklin has moved his fifteen-year-old son to the remote northern Canadian town of Houndstitch to make a new life together after his wife, Thomas’ mother, left them. Mourning her disappearance, John writes poetry and escapes into an affair, while Thomas, isolated and bullied, withdraws into a fantasy recreation of the infamous Victorian-era arctic expedition led by British explorer Sir John Franklin. Artistically gifted yet dangerously obsessive, Thomas gives himself scurvy so that he can sympathize with the characters in the film of his mind—and is almost lost himself.

A poignant tale of the vulnerability of adolescence interspersed with powerfully evoked scenes of the legendary Franklin crew’s descent into despair, madness, and cannibalism on the Arctic tundra, Inukshuk offers readers a modern family drama as well as a compelling historical adventure.

Sounds pretty cool, right? Inukshuk will be published in June of 2012. In the meantime, read an excerpt here.

Carry The One by Carol Anshaw has got a lot of buzz leading up to it's release date. Here's the blurb:

Carry the One begins in the hours following Carmen’s wedding reception, when a car filled with stoned, drunk, and sleepy guests accidentally hits and kills a girl on a dark country road. For the next twenty-five years, those involved, including Carmen and her brother and sister, connect and disconnect and reconnect with one another and their victim. As one character says, ‘When you add us up, you always have to carry the one.’

Through friendships and love affairs; marriage and divorce; parenthood, holidays, and the modest tragedies and joys of ordinary days, Carry the One shows how one life affects another and how those who thrive and those who self-destruct are closer to one another than we’d expect.

Even if it's only HALF as good as the early reviews have indicated, I think Carry The One may be one of the best books published this year.

Published by Simon & Schuster, available March 6, 2012.

I won Three Ways of the Saw by Matt Mullins, published by Atticus Books, in a giveaway on Twitter. Atticus has been on a roll recently. They published The Great Lenore, which I reviewed earlier this year and also The Bee-Loud Glade, which I've almost finished. Both of those books are beautifully written and Atticus has joined my list of small publishing houses to watch.

Always gritty, often cruel, yet quietly insightful, this jagged chain of vignettes is for readers who try to hold their thoughts together with duct tape while never quite grasping the things they just can’t seem to name.

Um... yes please!

Three Ways of the Saw will be published on February 29, 2012.

So there they are, all stacked up. Expect reviews of all four of these in the coming months. Thank you so much to Bellevue Literary Press, Atticus Books and Simon & Schuster for providing these review copies!

Norwegian Wood Read-Along: THE END

2012-01-31T17:28:00.000-06:00

Norwegian Wood Read-Along
THE END

I'm participating on Reading Rambo's Norwegian Wood Read-Along.

People, I am behind. Excuse me. The reading was completed on time but the blogging... the blogging just wasn't coming to me and the job and the kids and all that sort of overtook me and so now here we are with my first post in a while and also the last post of the read-along.

Let's just get right to it - the Toru and Reiko sex scene was totally out of the blue and weird and full of literal wrinkles. I don't really know what to say about it other than it was really the only time that I got annoyed with the book. I'm sure that if I dig into the meaning of their sexy-time then I can come up with some justification for it, but I don't really feel like it and I'm happy feeling smug over my WTF reaction.

Through the last few chapters we had Toru continuing to disengage with the world and his community. He moved out of the dorm into his ~~shack~~ cottage, stopped speaking to Midori, said goodbye to Nagasawa, drinks whiskey and writes to Naoko. He just dives head-first into this with the illusion that Naoko is going to eventually move into the cottage or some other place with him. His world gets shaken up from time to time by Midori, but it's not until he realizes that he loves her that the illusion begins to show some cracks until it finally shatters with Naoko's death. I guess the sexy-time with Reiko is suppose to represent some kind of closure for Toru, but it doesn't really work for me.

But can we talk about the very end? The last section rescued the book. Please forgive me, I need to quote it in full:

I TELEPHONED MIDORI. “I have to talk to you,” I said. “I have a million things to talk to you about. A million things we have to talk about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.”
Midori responded with a long, long silence—the silence of all the misty rain in the world falling on all the new-mown lawns of the world. Forehead pressed against the glass, I shut my eyes and waited. At last, Midori’s quiet voice broke the silence: “Where are you now?”
Where was I now?
Gripping the receiver, I raised my head and turned to see what lay beyond the telephone booth. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.

Midori and Toru's relationship had always been sort of one-sided. As I said before, Toru just sort of reacts to whatever is going on around him without ever really being fully present. As the book ends, Toru is snapping to reality. He tells Midori that there are a million things he wants to talk about. "I want the two if us to begin everything from the beginning." When I imagine this scene, Toru is excited and happy ready to explode with joy. Toru! Who never does anything but mope and follow girls around! But it's Midori who is cautious and asks where Toru is NOW. Toru is in a new place, he's in the moment, he's PRESENT and ready, but he realizes that he NEEDS Midori. Everything else is out of focus and unimportant. As the book closes, he's calling out to Midori, calling for her to pull him from this dead place that he's been wallowing in and into life.

We don't know how it turns out. It's left pretty open and there's a part of me that likes it left hanging out there. I like to think that Midori tells him that she loves him and they have a wonderful and exciting life together. I like to think that after being adrift and separated from life, Toru finally finds joy and that Midori finds stability in Tory.

Final thoughts? I liked Norwegian Wood a lot. It's not a prefect novel, but I fell in love with most of the characters and I was pulling for them to find whatever it was that they were each looking for. There are other Murakami novels that I've liked better, but Norwegian Wood is still among his best.

Norwegian Wood Read-Along: Chapters 5 & 6

2012-01-17T09:57:00.001-06:00

Norwegian Wood Read-Along
Chapters 5 & 6

I'm participating on Reading Rambo's Norwegian Wood Read-Along.

Apologies for the rambling nature of what you're about to read. There was lots of stuff to process in this section and I'm sure I'm leaving out a great deal. So with that said, let's get going.

We begin with the long-expected letter from Naoko in which she explains the "facility" where she's staying and invites Toru to come and visit her. Toru, who really seems like he's just happy to have something to do, hops on the first train in the morning to the Ami Hostel.

In order to reach Naoko, Toru must embark on a Journey that involves a long train ride, a bus and then a short hike deep into the mountains near Kyoto. (On this trip we see our first reference to a cat which, like ears, is kind of a Murakami hallmark.) When he arrives he is sent to find the weirdly wrinkled Reiko, who turns out to be Naoko's roommate.

Reiko explains that the situation at the Ami Hostel:

"Well, first I have to tell you about this place," said Reiko, ignoring my question. "The first thing you ought to know is that this is no ordinary 'hospital.' It's not so much for treatment as for convalescence. We do have a few doctors, of course, and they give hourly sessions, but they're just checking people's conditions, taking their temperature and things like that, not administering 'treatments' like in a regular hospital. There are no bars on the windows here, and the gate is always wide open. People enter voluntarily and leave the same way. You have to be suited to that kind on convalescence to be admitted here in the first place. In some cases, people who need specialized therapy end up going to a specialized hospital."
...
"Just living here is convalescence," she said. "A regular routine, exercise, isolation from the outside world, clean air, quiet. Our farmland makes us pratically self-sufficient; there's no TV or radio. We're like one of those commune places you hear so much about."

There are two things here that remind me of 1Q84. There's a part of 1Q84 where Tengo goes to visit his father in a sanatorium for a bunch of days and it reminded me a lot of this section of Norwegian Wood. Tengo and Toru both take a long train ride to a remote part of Japan to visit someone in hospital-like situation. They both end up in a place that feels separated from the outside world and both of them have a strange sexual experience. Part of this section of 1Q84 was printed in The New Yorker as "Town Of Cats" and Tengo refers to this place as the Town of Cats. From this point forward, I'm going to refer to the Ami Hostel as the Town of Crazy.

The other thing that reminded me of 1Q84 is the whole communal living/farming thing. There are two cults in 1Q84 that live out in a remote area and do a lot of farming and are very secretive. And then a goat dies and the Little People crawl out of the dead goat's mouth and... well, I wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone.

So anyway, Reiko is weirdly wrinkled and she's got this two-part story about how she got herself to Crazy Town that involves a unnaturally pretty teenager tricking her into some lesbian sexy-time.

We learn more about Naoko and her relationship to Kizuki. They were together since they were three years old and had found some kind of completeness in each other. We learn that Naoko's older sister committed suicide at age 17 and that she often considers suicide herself.

“I feel like Kizuki is reaching out for me from the darkness, calling to me, ‘Hey, Naoko, we can’t stay apart.’ When I hear him saying that, I don’t know what to do.”

Look, Naoko is VERY SAD and has TROUBLES but she has Reiko as a sister/mother figure and seems to be doing better. Tengo gets to understand Naoko better maybe understand new things about himself and most importantly, get snapped out of his funk.

When Tengo comes back from the Town of Crazy he is startled by all the noise and dirt and unappealing people in the Real World.. If someone that's mostly sane finds the real world jarring after a very short stint in the Town of Crazy, how is a more delicate person like Naoko going to survive outside of that insular world?

Finally, hand-jobs. Murakami loves to bestow hand-jobs on his characters. Like a benevolent father, Murakami is all "Tengo, you have been a good boy, here's a handy."

Review: The Great Lenore by JM Tohline

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000-06:00

The Great Lenore
JM Tohline
204 pages
Atticus Books
Published June 15, 2011

I kept seeing this book mentioned. It was on Twitter and then another blog mentioned it and then I ran across it on Atticus Books' website. The reviews were mostly positive and the premise interested me so I got myself a copy and read it in a single day.

Now, I'm a parent of three small children. I have a two-and-a-half year old son and 22 month-old-twins (boy and girl). My life is hectic and usually my only reading time is right before going to sleep or early on weekend mornings. But somehow I managed to squeeze Lenore into a single Saturday. I stole away from my family for brief moments to grab five pages here and there until finally, after everyone had gone to bed, I finished it.

The story takes the form of a memoir, narrated by Richard, a newly famous novelist. Preparing to begin his second novel, Richard's friend Sandy offers him the chance to spend the winter in Sandy's family home on Nantucket. Once he arrives he quickly becomes integrated into the neighboring Montana family and becomes tangled in the complicated relationships of one Lenore Montana, deceased.

This is the Montana clan: Momma Montana, who reminds me of a fake Paula Dean, Mr. Montana, the money-obsessed patriarch, the genius slacker-stoner Maxwell, the not-quite-good-enough-and-kind-of-an-asshole Chas, beautiful sister Cecilia and finally Jez, the impeccable young business associate of Mr. Montana. And let's not forget Chas' wife, Lenore.

Lenore, according to everyone that knows her is the perfect woman.

He talked about how, when you were with Lenore, you always felt like you were the only thing that mattered to her, like you were the single most important person in the world.

Lenore cared about people, he said, in a way you hardly ever see -- she cared about each person as an absolute individual. Lenore could be around someone for a week, or less, and understand them in ways no one else ever had before.

Lenore touched something inside you, Chas told me. Everything about her, it was all so intangible, so indefinable. But when you met her, you understood. You knew you would never meet another person quite like her, no matter how long you lived.

Everyone loves Lenore and they can't stop talking about her because she just recently died in a plane crash. Or, at least, everyone thinks she died in the crash. Days before her funeral, Lenore shows up at Richard's door and asks him to hide her while she watches how the Montana family reacts to her death. In the meantime, Richard learns about Lenore's very complicated relationship with the Montana's and despite his best efforts, gets dragged into the drama.

I grew up on the south shore of Massachusetts and I went to Nantucket three times in my youth. It's not a big island - almost 49 square miles. Common folks like myself could only access the island via ferry and it takes about two hours to travel from Hyannis on the southern coast of Cape Cod to Nantucket. It's a small, exclusive place and it's just out there in the ocean, isolated. In the winter months, the island population drops dramatically and I'm sure it gets pretty lonely out there.

JM Tohline does a great job capturing that sense of isolation. There's never anyone else on the beaches and Richard doesn't really see anybody except the Montana family. Even with all of the commotion going on next door, the sense of loneliness is deep and it feels like it's in everything, everywhere. Richard drinks Hemingway quantities of whiskey and falls asleep at the computer but never writes a word. It made me think a bit of Jack Torrance in The Shining - banging out words that never amount to anything. Richard spends more type re-typing Poe's "Lenore" than producing any actual work of his own.

I can't finish this without mentioning The Great Gatsby. The book's title is a reference to Gatsby and there are a number of references throughout the text. The easy reference is that Richard is Gatsby's Nick Carraway, Jez is kind of a stand-in for Jay Gatsby and Lenore is, of course, Daisy. There's also a car accident and someone actually does die. But The Great Lenore stands on it's own, even without the Gatsby references. As the author remarked in an interview:

As things stand, I believe the creation of Lenore owes as much to the likes of Hemingway, Joyce, and Steinbeck – and modern writers such as McEwan and Tartt – as it owes to old Fitzy himself.

The writing has an nice, easy flow and Tohline easily wrapped me up in his story of missed opportunities and lost love. Tohline builds anticipation for the finale throughout the book, but it does start to feel a little heavy-handed near the end. Yes, yes, I get it. Big Event coming up. Right, I get it. But that's my biggest gripe with this story and it doesn't really diminish the quality of the work.

Remember a month or so ago when we were all talking about what literary fiction we might recommend to someone who isn't into literary fiction? Well, The Great Lenore is definitely on that list. It reads like a page-turner, but the writing is so smooth and almost poetic at times without ever feeling like a chore. It's a book that draws you in and holds you close.

I'll leave you with this quote:

I think of the finished product - how we hold it and feel its texture while we dive within its pages. How we sometimes read a book in a single, exhilarating sitting.

For those of us whose lives are too busy to allow for single-sitting reads I think of how a book accompanies us on the subway, or how we keep it in our car. How we sit in bed at night and burn through the pages until we're ready to fall asleep. I think of that fortunate fraternity who is lucky enough to have found someone to love - how that someone lies beside you with their body curled and their eyes closed, saying, 'Darling, please, turn out that light. Please, I'm ready to fall asleep.' And how you say to them, 'Just one more section, sweetheart. Just one more chapter.' And your love signs, and you rest your hand on their back, and you continue to turn the pages until you can't keep your eyes open one more minute.

Recommended? Yes
Book Source: NetGalley

Tournament of Books 2012: The Shortlist

2012-01-11T12:21:00.000-06:00

It's my favorite time of year - The Morning News 2012 Tournament of Books has begun! I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am about this. I wait all year to see the short list and then I read like hell to finish as many of them as possible. Last year I didn't do so well, but I found some really amazing books like Skippy Dies by Paul Murray. The official judging doesn't begin until March, but until then you can start reading the books you missed last year:

Here's the shortlist with books I've read in bold:

Nathacha Appanah, The Last Brother
Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
Teju Cole, Open City
Helen Dewitt, Lightning Rods
Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers (my review)
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot (my review)
Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding
Alan Hollinghurst, Stranger’s Child
Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (my review)
Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
Michael Ondaatje, The Cat’s Table
Ann Patchett, State of Wonder
Donald Ray Pollock, Devil All the Time
Karen Russell, Swamplandia!
Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

Salvage the Bones, Swamplandia!, The Art of Fielding and The Tiger's Wife are all on my TBR list, so I should probably start plowing through those posthaste. I've been interested in Open City so this is a good excuse to read it and I've heard great things about State of Wonder.

Powells.com is a sponsor of the Tournament of Books and a bookseller that I absolutely love. If you're interested in buying any of the books listed above, please consider using Powells.com. I've created a 2012 Tournament of Books "bookshelf" that has links to each book here. Using that link will support a great bookseller and also earn me a few dollars of store credit so I can keep buying fantastic books. Thanks!

Do you follow the Tournament of Books? Which ones have you read and which ones are you looking forward to reading?

Norwegian Wood Read-Along: Chapters 1-4

2012-01-10T13:34:00.000-06:00

Norwegian Wood Read-Along
Chapters 1-4

I'm participating on Reading Rambo's Norwegian Wood Read-Along. If you're interested, go ahead and sign up! We just started reading and I'm sure you can catch up if you want to join.

I have so much to say. I hope this stuff makes sense.

The first thing I want to point out the Murakami newbies are the references to ears. Murakami's fiction is littered with references to the shapes of people's ears. I have to assume that he finds a special beauty in ears. In these first four chapters there were four references to female ears.

The second thing I want to point out is the reference to Western music and literature. Notice that Toru never reads or really consumes any kind of Japanese or Eastern media. It's all Western music and authors. There are references to Japanese authors, but Toru seems to have nothing but contempt for these writers. Western music is a staple of Murakami's work. Murakami himself once owned a jazz club and has said that he take a lot of inspiration from Western music.

Norwegian Wood doesn't have any alternate worlds or shadowy figures or other fantastical elements that are prevalent in Murakami's fiction, but I did feel like each of characters that Toru spends time with seem to inhabit their own reality. Scenes with Naoko feel distant and muted and melancholy whereas the scenes with Midori have a certain brightness and color.

I love all of the characters - except Toru. He's just so bland and sad. But I don't hate him, I just want to pick him up, give him a hug and move him forward. Dude needs help.

But I'm not sure what it says about me that I'm finding myself thinking less about Toru, Naoko and Midori and more about Storm Trooper. This kid built a nice room for himself in my head and he's been hanging out and trying to get me to recognize how important he is to understanding Toru.

Let's start with his nickname. He has no proper name, just Storm Trooper. Given that Norwegian Wood takes place in the 1960's, this isn't a reference to the Star Wars films but rather to the stormtroppers of Nazi-era Germany. The sturmabteilung were a paramilitary part of the Nazi party that were commonly called "brown shirts" since they typically wore a brown shirt as their uniform. The stormtroopers were known for their blind, fierce allegiance to Hitler and the Nazi party and often carried out acts of violence against competing political parties.

Storm Trooper in Norwegian Wood awakes to the raising of the national flag and the nation anthem and then he does the Radio Calisthenics, dresses in exactly the same outfit and goes about his day. All of his actions have a certain militaristic quality, from the atypical cleanliness of the room to the all-or-nothing approach to the Radio Calisthenics. Toru is slightly annoyed by this, but he conforms to the cleaning schedule and choice of posters on the walls. He almost seems to like it.

Toru becomes known for rooming with Storm Trooper. Funny stories about his roommate become Toru's bridge to connecting to other people. It's his thing. But I couldn't help but notice that Toru never really says anything. He tells his stories about Storm Trooper and that's about it.

Storm Trooper seems to signify the last remaining vestiges of old Japan in the youth culture and it's no surprise that after the university protests and riots over the summer, he doesn't return. Toru attends all of his classes, but he doesn't respond to the calling of his name when attendance is taken. He walks out on protests and thinks of the protesters as "assholes." He is alone in every way, maintaining Storm Trooper's habits, working and attending class. He's perpetually outside of and separated from the culture that surrounds him.

I've got some other thoughts on how Naoko represents his old busted life and Midori represents the new hotness and that the stuff going on at the university is kind of like a macro version of his relationship stuff, but I don't think I've got that all worked out yet - plus there's so much story to go!

One more thing is that Toru is only really able to communicate well with Kizuki (dead) and Nagasawa (sex machine) as a sort of catalyst. He's kind of adrift otherwise.

Final quick thought - in the other translation of Norwegian Wood, Storm Trooper isn't called "Storm Trooper" - he's called "Kamakazie" instead.

Review: The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan

2012-01-09T09:03:00.000-06:00

The Last Werewolf
Glen Duncan
304 pages
Knopf
Published July 12, 2011

Literary genre fiction was supposedly a big thing in 2011. Colson Whitehead's Zone One, Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers, and Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers were all examples of literary writers dipping into the murky dank waters of horror, westerns, and post-apocalyptic landscapes. Critics acted as if this was the first time this had happened

Jacob Marlowe is the last living werewolf and his days are numbered. He's being tracked and hunted by an organization called the WOCOP (World Organisation for the Control of Occult Phenomena) and frankly, Jacob doesn't really care. He's two hundred years old and he's just plain tired.

Live long enough and nothing is news. “The News” is “the new things.” That’s fine, until a hundred years go by and you realise there are no new things, only deep structures and cycles that repeat themselves through different period details. I’m with Yeats and his gyres.

Of course something happens and Jacob suddenly has something to live for and then lots of action follows.

The Last Werewolf is a strange book that combines some truly fantastic writing with a sub-par YA-grade writing. This book is rife with literary references; There are mentions of literary figures, famous books and locations with literary significance throughout the book. The first quote in this review is actually pretty indicative of how Duncan inserts literary references into his prose. The mention of "Yeates and his gyres" is in reference to William Butler Yeates, his association with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and his experiments with automatic writing. Near the end of the novel, Jacob is reading American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis, which is a book about a serial killer that contains a lot of violence and sexual content - essentially the same stuff that makes up The Last Werewolf. The big difference between the two is that American Psycho didn't have all of the hand-wringing, brooding, and self-pitty that fills the pages of The Last Werewolf.

The writing is impressive and Duncan is good at slipping in some winking literary references, but the werewolf novel is really the most simple of all the types of gothic novels. The whole concept of man's inner-beast is so literally illustrated in the character of the werewolf that there isn't really anywhere else to go with the idea. There isn't much room for subtlety and so the naturally you have to go for the unsubtle which, in this case, includes lots of references to erections and anal sex. I don't really have a problem with it, but it just seemed out of place and maybe that's why so many reviews mention it. It just gets so porn-y.

I enjoyed the writing and I liked making note of all the literary references. Duncan is obviously smart and well-read, so it's just so hard for me to understand how he ended up with this book. When I got to the end and realized that he had set up the (strong) possibility of a sequel I was so disappointed. It just reinforced my opinion that he was trying to write a Twilight or some other YA-type series for the more literary crowd.

The Last Werewolf was not at all my thing. The pacing was poor (the first 100 pages are slog) and the plotting was worse. Even the excitement in the action scenes wasn't enough to keep me engrossed. Maybe this book wasn't written for me or maybe I'm being too hard on it, but I just can't recommend it to anyone.

When you can watch the alchemy that turns morons into millionaires and gimps into global icons, where’s the thrill in men who turn into wolves?

Rating: 5/10
Book source: purchased

Literary Blog Hop: Research

2012-01-07T08:30:00.000-06:00

It's that time again. Once again I'm participating in the Literary Blog Hop, hosted by The Blue Bookcase. This month's question is this:

Do you like to supplement your reading with outside sources, like Sparknotes, academic articles, or other bloggers' reviews? Why or why not?

I typically don't look at any outside sources while I'm actually reading the book. Once I'm finished and I've got a good feeling for what I want to say about the book I'll jot down some notes, write my quick GoodReads review, and then I'll run out in the internet and see what everyone else thought. This is the research for my review.

Typically I'm looking for a few things:

Some ideas on how to summarize the plot if it's particularly tricky.
Verify that I basically understood the book and that I didn't miss any Big Ideas
If I can find an academic article then I'm all over that like white on rice
Author interviews for that extra bit of insight.

I don't think I've ever read a Sparknote(s). Is that like CliffsNotes?

I have to be a little careful with this stuff because I don't want to be too influenced by what anyone else has to say about a particular novel. There are those times when I'm not sure what I want to say in a review and that's often because I missing some kind of context. For example, in my review of Georges Simenon's The Train, I spent a lot of time reading interviews and hunting down the original New York Times review. Only some of that research made it into my review, but it gave me the confidence to write about it.

What about you? Do you supplement your reading with outside sources?

Review: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

2012-01-06T08:02:00.000-06:00

The Sisters Brothers
Patrick deWitt
336 pages
Ecco Press
Published April 26, 2011

As it turns out, I love westerns. I especially love westerns with wonderful covers. Go ahead and click on that image, make it big and just soak it in. This was probably my favorite book cover of 2011.

But it's not all about covers and pictures. There were words on the pages between those pieces of cardboard. The words were nearly as good as the cover. Apparently I'm not the only one who thought so since The Sisters Brothers was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Eli and Charlie Sisters are a murderous pair of hired killers that have been sent by their boss to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On their journey, the brothers run into wide cast of characters and leave death in their wake.

We see the action through the eyes of Eli. He is the more introspective brother, less interested and certainly less enthusiastic in killing than his brother Charlie. But despite Eli's "aw shucks" persona, he is as deadly as his brother. Most importantly, Eli loves his brother and balances Charlie's boozing and recklessness with his quiet sadness.

I felt two things at once: A gladness at this turn of fortune, but also an emptiness that I did not feel more glad; or rather, a fear that my gladness was forced or false. I thought, Perhaps a man is never meant to be truly happy. Perhaps there is no such a thing in our world, after all.

The Sisters Brothers is a picaresque novel (look it up) and the brothers find themselves in a variety of situations, some bizarre and some heart-breaking in their own way. In fact, the more I think about it the more I see the book as collection of stories that make up the brothers' journey to San Francisco. It flows smoothly, but like all good yarns, each story could stand on its own.

I can't even begin to say how much I love this book. Since we're always hearing Eli's thoughts, it's as if the entire book is an endless dialog between Eli and the reader. And you can't help but love Eli and want him to find happiness and peace. I've seem The Sisters Brothers compared to True Grit and I guess it does share some similarities in tone. But there's also something so original about this book that transcends genre and forces itself into your head. These are my favorite kind of books.

I had highlighted so many parts of the book that I'm having a hard time picking just one more to illustrate the tone and humor in the writing. I guess I'll leave you with this example of deWitt's ability to be funny even as he splashes his scenes with violence.

“What was that noise?” he asked.
‘That was a bullet going into you.’
“A bullet going into me where?’
‘Into your head.’
‘I can’t feel it. And I can’t hardly hear anything. Where’s the others?’
‘They’re lying next to you. Their heads have bullets, also.’
‘They do? Are they talking? I can’t hear them.’
‘No, they’re dead.’

Rating: 9/10
Book source: purchased

Norwegian Wood Read-along: Introduction!

2012-01-03T08:05:00.000-06:00

Norwegian Wood Read-along
The Introduction

I'm participating on Reading Rambo's Norwegian Wood Read-along. If you're interested, go ahead and sign up! We haven't started reading yet and the more the merrier!

I first discovered Murakami when I was given a copy of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle a few years ago. The friend that gave it to me was often recommending or giving me books by foreign authors and there had been some successes and some failures. I wasn't sure what to think about this Murakami character. Japanese literature just didn't appeal to me at all, but I decided to go ahead and try it anyway and I'm so glad that I did because I loved it.

I immediately read Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and loved that as well. I started reading Murakami's short fiction that was featured in The New Yorker. I read A Wild Sheep Chase and then got crazy and ordered the rare Hear the Wind Sing off of eBay. Then I read Kafka on the Shore and despite everyone else loving it, I was disappointed. Last year I read 1Q84 and again I was disappointed by a Murakami novel. I'm hoping that reading Norwegian Wood will restore my faith.

My favorite thing about Murakami's writing is how it all feels like a dream world. Anything can happen and often anything does happen!

I don't know much about the plot of Norwegian Wood, but I did some basic research on the book and found that the translation that we''ll be reading is by Jay Rubin. It was originally translated into English by Alfred Birnbaum (who also translated much of Murakami's older work such as A Wild Sheep Chase and Hear the Wind Sing) in 1989 but re-translated by Rubin in 2000 for it's first publication in the UK and America. Rubin also translated the first two books of 1Q84 and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

The other thing I learned about Norwegian Wood was that it was Murakami's big breakout success in Japan and the book that really put him on the map. It was also a departure from the Murakami's usual weirdness in that for the most part, the novel stays pretty grounded. So there's a good chance you won't see Colonel Sanders popping up as a character.

Anyway, here's the readalong schedule:

January 10th: Chapters 1 through 4
January 17th: Chapters 5 & 6
January 24th: Chapters 7 through 9
January 31st: Chapters 10 & 11

Here are the intro posts from other read-along participants:

FINALLY - if you're interested in more Murakami, I suggest joining the 2012 Murakami Challenge!

Review: Hellboy: House of the Living Dead

2011-12-30T09:02:00.000-06:00

Hellboy: House of the Living Dead
Mike Mignola
Illustrations by Richard Corbin
56 pages
Dark Horse Comics
Published November 29, 2011

Does this count as a graphic novel? If it does then it's my first.

I don't really know a lot about Hellboy outside of what was in the movies, but I really enjoyed this. The story takes place in 1956 when Hellboy went missing in Mexico for five months. It turns out that he became one of those Mexican wrestlers (a luchador). One day after a match he is approached by a mysterious stranger who invites him to wrestle his boss's "champion." Hellboy isn't interested until he finds out that a girl's life is on the line. He travels with the stranger to meet the boss and the champion and then it gets crazy.

The champion, as it turns out is a sort of Frankenstein monster with super-strength and an unholy ability to take a punch. After the monster Hellboy has to deal with a werewolf, a vampire and some kind of evil ghost-ladies-vampire ladies. Once the action starts it really doesn't stop until the final page.

Look, I don't know much about these graphic novel things, but I thought this was pretty good. The comically nightmarish art of Richard Corbin really worked beautifully with the story by Hellboy creater Mike Mignola. A bit of research tells me that this is a sequel of sorts to another story, Hellboy in Mexico (collected in Hellboy #11: The Bride of Hell and Others), which was also a collaboration between Mignola and Corbin.

I've read this twice now and the first time through I mostly paid attention to the story, but the second reading allowed me to pay closer attention to the backgrounds and the subtle emotions in some of the character's faces. I'm coming to understand how a graphic novel can provide some of the same emotional depth as a traditional novel. This may have been my first experience with a graphic novel, but it won't be my last.

Rating: 7/10

Book Source: NetGalley

Review: Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto

2011-12-29T12:41:00.000-06:00

Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto
Gianni Rodari
192 Pages
Melville House
Published December 6, 2011

I'm not even sure where to start with this. Have you ever read something and really, truly enjoyed reading it but still left you with the lingering feeling that you've missed something? That there's a hidden subtext or a grand statement that you've completely failed to notice? That's how I felt reading Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto.

The story is this: Baron Lamberto is "an exceedingly elderly gentleman (he is ninety-three years old) who is very wealthy (he owns twenty-four banks in Italy, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, and so on) and invariably ill." Lamberto and his butler, Anselmo, come across a cure that involves hiring six individuals to repeat the baron's name over and over. The idea being that "the man whose name is spoken remains alive." Lamberto eventually begins to pull a Benjamin Button and ages in reverse so that after a while he is an energetic young man.

But what is a book without conflict? There's the arrival of Lamberto's soda-addicted nephew Ottavio, who conspires to hasten his Lamberto's demise so that he may inherit his uncle's vast fortune. There is also a group of bandits, called the 24-L (because all of the bandits are also named Lamberto) that take the baron hostage. And then there's the twenty-four bank managers that convene to try to negotiate with the bandits, only to be confused by fact that their ninety-three year-old boss looks a lot different these days.

Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto was first published in Italian in 1978 as Twice Upon a Time there was a Baron called Lamberto or The Mysteries of the Isle of San Giulio and was Rodari's last book (he died in 1980). This is the first time it has appeared in English in an excellent translation by Antony Sugaar. This Melville House edition also contains some wonderful illustrations by Federico Maggioni.

I don't know much about children's books. If Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto is a children's book then it's like the Pixar of children's books. There's a lot of silliness and lots of fun details. For example, there's a section that lists the locations (and the elevations of the locations) of all of the international journalists that have come to cover the hostage crisis. At one point the journalists are shouting questions at the grandchildren of the man that operates the ferry between the mainland and Lamberto's island. One of the questions is "How much is three times eight makes twenty-four?" For the kids this is just silliness, but for adults there's a certain amount of familiarity in how modern media spectacles play out.

The language is a lot of fun too. I giggled out loud when I read this section about the twenty-four bank managers:

They get to their feet as one man, bid the mayor good day, walk down to the town square, climb back onto their tour bus, followed by their twenty-four shadows and their twenty-four personal secretaries. The driver quickly conveys them to Miasino, where their secretaries have rented for them a seventeenth-century villa, with eighteenth-century frescoes, nineteenth-century paintings, and twentieth-century electrical appliances.

The whole time I was reading Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto, I was thinking about what an amazing translation it is. The language is incredibly precise and I had to run to the dictionary a few times. It's so rare that a translation doesn't feel at all like a translation - it all felt so natural and perfect.

As I said above, I did have a nagging feeling that I was missing something. Rodari makes a few explicit references mythology a few times (the ferryman Duilio's nickname is Charon) and I kept wondering if there was more there that I just didn't see.

Overall the writing is excellent and the story is fun and surprising. The story is told in such a joyful way and I felt like Rodari was winking at me the entire time. The illustrations are a lot of fun and add to the playful elements of the book. It's the kind of book I can definitely see returning to when my kids are older.

Rating: 8/10

Book Source: purchased

Review: The Train by Georges Simenon

2011-12-27T17:00:00.000-06:00

The Train
Georges Simenon
144 pages
Melville House Press
Published July, 2011

How often do you buy a book because of it's cover? All of the books in The Neversink Library look amazing and have these simple silhouettes over a muted color. The covers are both simple and beautiful and that's what initially drew me to The Train. I downloaded a sample and decided that I needed to read this book immediately.

The Train was first published in French in 1961 and later translated into English by Robert Baldick in 1964. It tells the story of Marcel Féron as he and his family flee their home in Fumay, France as the Germans begin their invasion of Belgium on May 10, 1940. As the title suggests, there's a train involved.

Marcel's pregnant wife and daughter are placed in a passenger car of the train while Marcel ends up in boxcar with the other men. Sometime in the night, the train is split up and Marcel finds himself en route to La Rouchelle and the car with his wife and daughter have disappeared. Along the way Marcel meets a mysterious woman named Anna with whom he develops a deep relationship.

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I began The Train. I had done some research on Georges Simenon before starting the novel and learned that he wrote over 500(!) novels during his lifetime. There's an excellent Paris Review interview in which Simenon says that he typically spends 11 days writing each book. This worried me a bit. I couldn't imagine how Simenon could turn out anything of quality in only 11 days? But I loved those first few pages so much that I went for it anyway.

The experience of reading The Train was really a treat. One of my favorite writers is Steinbeck and I felt a certain closeness to The Winter of Our Discontent while reading The Train. I checked and saw that both were published in 1961 - so maybe there was something in the air, maybe it was just the essence of the time captured on the page. A sort of post-war, pre-cultural revolution vibe, I don't know. I felt a similarity there regardless.

I've been thinking about Marcel a lot since I finished The Train. He has a good life with his family before the invasion. He is a good man who, like many who are caught up in war, found himself adrift and no longer in charge of determining his own fate.

I had just lost my roots. I was no longer Marcel Feron, radio engineer in a newish district of Fumay, not far from the Meuse, but one man among millions whom superior forces were going to toss about at will.

And in all of this confusion he finds Anna, who seems to somehow be completely in his head and always knows what he's thinking, how he feels. In all this confusion and chaos he finds joy, love and passion.

When asked what themes or "problems" that Simenon has tried to tackle in his fiction, he answered:

One of them, for example, which will probably haunt me more than any other is the problem of communication. I mean communication between two people. The fact that we are I don’t know how many millions of people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely impossible between two of those people, is to me one of the biggest tragic themes in the world. When I was a young boy I was afraid of it. I would almost scream because of it. It gave me such a sensation of solitude, of loneliness. That is a theme I have taken I don’t know how many times. But I know it will come again. Certainly it will come again.

I really felt like Simenon gave Marcel a gift in Anna. There was never any confusion between the two of them. Anna truly understood Marcel and he had the same understanding of her. If Simenon felt that "complete communication" was impossible then he gave Marcel the ultimate gift, the ultimate happiness. Thinking about The Train in the context of communication, the book really opens up because you see how a radio communication opens the novel, the breakdown of communication on the train and the slow re-building of communication in the refugee camp.

I read a lot of really great books this year and The Train certainly ranks high among them. The writing is simple but elegant and the story is beautifully constructed. I wasn't expecting to love the book as much as I did, but I'm glad that I got on the train with Marcel and got to see where it took him, if only for a short while.

Rating: 9/10

Book source: purchased

And Now A Word From David Foster Wallace

2011-12-26T08:35:00.000-06:00

Part of a series of posts entitled And Now A Word From...

David Foster Wallace in an interview in Arrival:

I spent a lot of time as a volunteer in a nursing home in Amherst last summer. I was reading Dante's Divine Comedy to an old man, Mr. Shulman. One day, I asked him where he was from. He said, "Just east of here, the Rockies." I said, "Mr. Shulman, the Rockies are west of here [Phoenix]." He did a voilà with his hands, and then said, "I move mountains." That stuck with me. Fiction either moves mountains or it's boring; it moves mountains or it sits on its ass.

This interview happened in 1987, nine years before Infinite Jest. I'm currently reading a upcoming collection of interviews with Wallace and this item just jumped off the page because I feel like it really captured where Wallace was with his writing at the time. The Broom of the System had just been published and he wouldn't finish Girl with Curious Hair for another year. Over his career Wallace steadily decreased the fireworks in his own writing in an effort to get at that capital-T Truth that "moves mountains," and I find it really interesting to think about how Wallace's concept about what it took move mountains changed over time.

Vollmann's Rising Up And Rising Down

2011-12-21T23:59:00.004-06:00

Over at biblioklept the claim was made that nobody actually reads anything by William T. Vollmann and that nobody actually owns the multi-volume, 3,000+ page complete Rising Up And Rising Down. I mentioned in the comments that I do, in fact, own the whole thing (although I haven't read even a page of it). I was challenged to produce pictures to prove my ownership (along with today's newspaper - but I don't get a newspaper so we're just going to have to pretend the newspaper is there.)

A few years ago we had a freak incident in the middle of the summer that resulted in the first few volumes sustaining some minor water damage. You can see it in the pictures of volumes five and six.

So please excuse the poor pictures taken from my BlackBerry in the storage room of our basement...

A Year In Reading - 2011 Mega-Post

2011-12-21T17:08:00.001-06:00

clicky-clicky to embiggen

Total Books Read: 24 25
Published in 2011: 11 12
Published Before 2011: 13
Translations: 4
Part Of A Series: 5
Prize Winners: 2
Total Pages: ~~8,759~~ 9,084

The Top 6 7
Because five isn't enough and ten is too much

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray - A boarding school novel that brought back memories of Infinite Jest and my very own personal boarding-school memories. This is a beautiful novel that reminded me what it was like to be young, confused, angry and in love.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer - I shed real man-tears. Do I need to say anything more?
The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides - This year's Freedom wasn't quite what people expected from the author of Middlesex, but The Marriage Plot was satisfying in its own way.
Tinkers by Paul Murray - The prose! Oh the prose! The most beautifully written thing I read this year.
The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak - This is a perfect little novel about cultural identity, war and family. This is the new book that I recommend to everyone.
The Slide by Kyle Beachy - Oh you've never heard of this? One of my favorite post-college-reality-smacks-you-in-the-face books of all time. Highly recommended and not just because it takes place in St. Louis.
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt - A Deadwood-esque western that's beautifully written with an excellent story.

The Complete 2011 List:
Ordered by date completed

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Speaker For The Dead by Orson Scott Card
The Slide by Kyle Beachy
Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
Remainder by Tom McCarthy (review)
Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson
Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Children Of The Mind by Orson Scott Card
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (review)
A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin (review)
The Magician King by Lev Grossman
Mile 81 by Stephen King (review)
Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolaño (review)
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (review)
20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill (review)
The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides (review)
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (review)
Tinkers by Paul Murray (review)
420 Characters by Lou Beach (review)
The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak (review)
The Train by Georges Simenon (review)
Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto by Gianni Rodari (review)
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (review)

updated 01.06.2012

And Now A Word From Georges Simenon

2011-12-19T13:03:00.000-06:00

Part of a series of posts entitled And Now A Word From...

French writer Georges Simenon, in conversation with The Paris Review in 1955:

...when a novel is finished I have always the impression that I have not succeeded. I am not discouraged, but I see—I want to try again. But one thing—I consider my novels about all on the same level, yet there are steps. After a group of five or six novels I have a kind of—I don’t like the word “progress”—but there seems to be a progress. There is a jump in quality, I think. So every five or six novels there is one I prefer to the others.

Simenon wrote nearly 200 novels during his lifetime.

Our review of Simenon's The Train should be hitting the site in the next few days...

Review: The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak

2011-12-16T09:30:00.000-06:00

The Sojourn
Andrew Krivak (author's website)
Bellevue Literary Press
192 pages
Published May 2011

Two in a row from Bellevue Literary Press. I've never really paid much attention to who publishes what until fairly recently and the thing I really love about these guys is that they're part of the NYU School of Medicine and that most of what they publish are non-fiction books relating to medicine. But there are these two books: The Sojourn and Tinkers, two works of literary fiction that they've published and both books have been recognized for excellence in some way. Tinkers won the Pulitzer Prize and The Sojourn was on the National Book Award short list.

I hate writing plot summaries, so let's just use the jacket copy: "The Sojourn is the story of Jozef Vinich, who was uprooted from a 19th-century mining town in Colorado by a shocking family tragedy to return with his father to an impoverished shepherd’s life in rural Austria-Hungary. When war comes, Jozef joins his cousin and brother-in-arms as a sharpshooter on the southern front, where he must survive a perilous trek across the frozen Italian Alps and capture by a victorious enemy."

The Sojourn is about war on every level. The personal wars that we wage against ourselves, the wars within a family, wars within a groups of men and war at the global level. And what keeps coming to me after reading this amazing little book is that all of these wars are based on necessity. Sometimes we need to go to war against ourselves so that we can be free of history and the weights that others have hung around our necks. Jozef literally caries his anger and aggression with him in the form of his adopted brother, Zlee. And when Jozef finds himself without Zlee, his anger vanishes and he is forced to experience a sort of baptism by starvation, exhaustion and brutal war.

Once he comes out of the war, Jozef finds himself a prisoner of war where he is alone with himself, left to sort through the baggage of war and loss. His post-prison journey provides the opportunity for rebirth and a chance to find redemption.

"Ghosts are not the dead. They are our fear of death. Tell yourself, Jozef, not to be afraid."
After a time I asked "What is left to be afraid of?"
And he said, "The possibility that a life itself may prove to be the most worthy struggle. Not the whole sweeping vale of tears that Rome and her priests want us to sacrifice ourselves to daily so that she lives in splendor, but one single moment in which we die so that someone else lives. That’s it, and it is fearful because it cannot be seen, planned, or even known. It is simply lived. If there be purpose, it happens of a moment within us, and lasts a lifetime without us, like water opening and closing in a wake."

I loved The Sojourn so much. The writing is gorgeous and I can see why this was put on the short list for the National Book Award. The scenes that book-end the war are beautiful and full of color while the war section is bleak, brutal and unforgiving. The book ends with redemption and hope and not in a way that seems saccharine, but very real. I highly recommend reading it for yourself.

Rating 9.5/10

Have you read The Sojourn? What did you think?

Book source: purchased