"Some other unhappiness awaits you, though... Something I cannot fathom."
This is Rebecca to her granddaughter Dinah, the narrator. I just realized I l"Some other unhappiness awaits you, though... Something I cannot fathom."
This is Rebecca to her granddaughter Dinah, the narrator. I just realized I like this quote so much because Diamant uses "fathom" to mean not "understand" as a modern-day speaker would, but to "foresee," as Rebecca has clairvoyant powers....more
“My life like an old turnip: several places at once going bad.”
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? is a look back at what the publishing industry euph
“My life like an old turnip: several places at once going bad.”
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? is a look back at what the publishing industry euphemistically calls “young adulthood” by a writer who, during her own years on the young side of adulthood, preferred to dwell on life’s inglorious middle. While Moore refrains from some of the snappier crutches of the genre, she does demonstrate a fantastic ear for the pithy truths of those looking upon the grown-up world for the first time as near-peers.
“Once you had seen enough people go through your register you realized everyone was the same: they looked the same, said the same things; they were all the same.”
Her main character, Berie, is a teenager working at an amusement park in her hometown in upstate New York. Berie unequivocally adores her friend Sils. Berie is a lowly cashier, while Sils’ good looks and confidence have earned her a coveted role as a princess hostess at the same amusement park.
Suffice it to say, Berie and Sils’ friendship does not survive the summer, although there is no outright betrayal such as those that occur weekly on teen soaps. Instead, boys and money and life happen. Looking back, years later, from a lonely dinner in Paris with her husband, Berie sees in her friendship with Sils, despite its hiccups and small hurts, love in the purest form she’s ever known.
The style is quietly autobiographical here when compared with the light farce of A Gate at the Stairs, and yet Berie’s voice is sharper than Tessie Keltjin’s.
“Go placidly. What a crock.”
As a result, Berie’s frustrations and impatience with the start and stop progress of young adulthood cut deeper, in the end, as well....more
Henry Burton—a Democrat too young for Kennedy, unfamiliar with magic—is our entree into the psychodrama-filled world of the Clintonian Jack and Susan Henry Burton—a Democrat too young for Kennedy, unfamiliar with magic—is our entree into the psychodrama-filled world of the Clintonian Jack and Susan Stanton.
Libby Holden—a brilliant but unpredictable friend from the Stantons' activist days—takes us even deeper, hilariously and then tragically embodying the wildest swings of our adoration and disappointment with the Baby Boomer power couple.
Klein in parts of Primary Colors demonstrates a better feel for character ("Her strength in the face of this embarrassment was strange. She was drawing attention to her perfection, which only served to remind people of her husband's imperfection—it was, I realized, a vengeful act"), dialogue, meaningful plot development, a good turn of phrase ("It felt like the quiet scene just before the monster comes"), and literary imagery ("the roadsides were the color of a squeezed fingertip") than many full-time novelists.
However, what makes the underrated Nichols/May film adaptation even better than its source material is that it is an undiluted love story between a nation and the Clintons. Nichols doesn't bore us with a single relationship conversation or scene between Henry and ad guru Daisy—hilariously we just see them in bed together when Henry gets a campaign crisis call. It's a great visual joke—this is just a campaign romance, not to supersede the one between candidate and country.
Reading this novel makes one appreciate their restraint even further as Klein's obsession with the exceptionally stupid love story between Daisy and Henry knocks him two stars. About 40% of the way through the book the Stantons disappear, with Jack, our once "larger than life" politician reemerging every so often as an angry, uncharismatic boss who spouts the profanity-laden obvious.
Instead, we get lots of this:
"...we don't have to talk about it anymore, Henry. Or say any of the words. We can wait till this is over and we can think clearly, but I'm really feeling kind of quivery and gelatinous over you."
There is very little great in Primary Colors the movie that was not lifted directly from Klein's book. You've got to be truly brilliant to have Nichols and May steal from you verbatim. But how could he not see that the real love story was between Henry/America and the Stantons/Clintons? ...more
"You wouldn't think a bug race could be so exciting."
You wouldn't think a book by a certified genius would be so vapid and tiresome.
The Hundred Brothe"You wouldn't think a bug race could be so exciting."
You wouldn't think a book by a certified genius would be so vapid and tiresome.
The Hundred Brothers is not plotless so much as personalityless. You can see the author trying really, really hard (including having his main character literally piss on the classics), but this book never makes the case for post-modernism, or itself.
An extra star for originality and ambition of the concept.
I recommend, instead, The Mezzanine for droll stream-of-consciousness first-person narration, Revolutionary Road for daddy issues, and The Cabin in the Woods for intelligent deconstruction of sacrifice rites....more
A must read for anyone in the publishing industry who believes they have the magic formula for spotting literary talent. Read this and tell me honestlA must read for anyone in the publishing industry who believes they have the magic formula for spotting literary talent. Read this and tell me honestly that you could have predicted that this author's next book would be The Corrections....more
One thing Le Divorce is definitely not: chick lit. There are abundant moments of spot-on satire and genuine poignance in this novel about American steOne thing Le Divorce is definitely not: chick lit. There are abundant moments of spot-on satire and genuine poignance in this novel about American step-sisters Roxeanne and Isabel Walker adrift in Paris during the divorce of the former from her estranged French husband, Charles-Henri, who has himself fallen in love with a Yugoslavian woman. Le Divorce itself is set during the run-up to the Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990s, and a minor character is a local pundit actively engaged in criticizing France's role in the dispute.
Most of what engages in Le Divorce is in the Walker sisters' complicated and shifting relationship with Roxeanne's lively and sophisticated family of French in-laws, the Persands. The Persands' intimidating bourgeois perfection—the right clothes, the right cheeses, the right opinions—masks a cold and clannish condescension towards the non-French and especially the American. There is a substantial subplot regarding the fate, in the divorce, of a painting Roxeanne brought to Paris as a wedding gift to her husband, now believed to be a genuine De La Tour and of considerable value.
Roxeanne continues to love her adopted family and country blindly, even despite the alarming developments in the second act of the book, even as it is clear that her marriage with Charles-Henri has come to an end.
Le Divorce is a far from perfect novel. It is told in first-person from the view of the younger sister, Isabel, who learns of much of the drama second-hand because she is American and does not learn French until the end. I kept waiting for all the events of the second act of the book, some of them very exciting, to finally arouse Isabel from her southern California-bred apathy and make her feel something strongly for an extended period of time—sisterly indignation, crass gloating, even patriotism—but this never happens. Isabel never quite has the heart to make the case for herself—and by extension Americans—as someone to root for, and she portrays her sister as lovely but a little dim. Consequently, as I assume most divorcees feel, at the end I was not quite sure what it all had meant, but I was glad that it was over....more
There were so many times that I thought that Roth was phoning it in in this book - reiterating his major points over and over again in a way that is jThere were so many times that I thought that Roth was phoning it in in this book - reiterating his major points over and over again in a way that is just not that fun to read.
But then he'll do these things with character and dialogue and scene and individual sentences (not even all the beautiful New Jersey riffing, although that certainly sweetens the deal) that nobody could stumble on by accident. It's certainly not as refined as top-shelf McEwan, but my god.
And then the ending, the last 3 pages in particular, are just glorious, and pull so many more of the pieces together than one would expect from the shaggy prose and almost dreamlike structure.
There are multiple examples on almost every page of Bad Roth/Good Roth, but I earmarked this one:
Phoning it in:
All the trust between them, like all the happiness he'd ever known (like the killing of Fred Conlon - like everything), had been an accident.
This doesn't make any more sense in context. Is the killing of Fred Conlon part of the happiness he'd ever known? And what do accidents have to do with trust or happiness? And what on earth is "like everything" supposed to emphasize or convey?
And then this is followed three paragraphs later by this marvel that just makes the other sentence more perplexing:
He thought she was omniscient and all she was was cold.
Obviously a major problem is that Merry is not a real character so much as a deus ex machina, but sometimes the Merry stuff still works okay. The way that the Swede still idealizes Merry in her childhood years to the end and can't let her become an adult person separate from him and his hopes for her say so much about The Troubles of American Parenting that continue today.
On the macro level, I found that the symbolism worked better when I thought of Merry less as representing the Baby Boomer generation (she really isn't a classic Boomer) than as all of the bad things that America - whether through complacency, corrupt leadership, or some combination of both - gives birth to and that "don't hang together" with the amber waves of grain fantasy of the American Pastoral.
Another thing I noticed is that it has a similar basic structure as Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. We get a taste of the major outlines of the story at the beginning from the view of an outsider. Then, piece by piece, the author fills in the outlines, revealing just how wrong our initial perception was. Although I liked Freedom and I loved a lot of American Pastoral, I'm still not sure I find the structure all that fascinating or revealing....more
About three-quarters of the way through The Secret History, I was dazzled—16 years after it was written, this is still such a mature, complete novel, About three-quarters of the way through The Secret History, I was dazzled—16 years after it was written, this is still such a mature, complete novel, written in careful, lovingly detailed prose, about the relationship of character and aesthetics to murder and death.
Then, in the last 100 pages, my reservations about the book from its first 100 pages resurfaced: Tartt's baroque and wooden characters and dialogue and bleak and humorless vision of humanity (although this stretch of the book is also paradoxically peppered with most of the book's laugh-out-loud deadpan moments) make (to use a mixed-metaphor I read online once) "awfully weak tea to hang your hat on." The tense and punishing final series of turns is all very Greek and gothic (and not in that cuddly Eugenides way) but at the end of it all I found myself wanting wisdom a little friendlier, more familiar, and fresh....more
Michael Cunningham is a deft and muscular writer, and I loved his characters in this book and the sympathy he displays for the kinks and weaknesses inMichael Cunningham is a deft and muscular writer, and I loved his characters in this book and the sympathy he displays for the kinks and weaknesses in their personalities. Clarissa Vaughn's New York is one of those rare fictional New Yorks that perfectly captures the city's unique combination of sweeping grandness and everyday existence (because it is the everyday details that makes New York life grand!!).
I guess I am a greedy reader, though, because I wanted more......more
Caitlin Macy is a smart and savvy young writer, but in The Fundamentals of Play she strives for a tone that her material unfortunately just can't carrCaitlin Macy is a smart and savvy young writer, but in The Fundamentals of Play she strives for a tone that her material unfortunately just can't carry. The Great Gatsby in the internet age this is not. However, reading it, one hopes that in five years Macy bangs out her version of Tender is the Night. I would love to read a great novel about the American marriage in the internet age....more
I liked most of the stories in this collection a lot, and I looooved "The Dentist." One of the best short story endings ever.I liked most of the stories in this collection a lot, and I looooved "The Dentist." One of the best short story endings ever....more
The short story is no longer the commercial storytelling medium that it was in its heydey, but the c
“There are the notes. Now where is the money?”
The short story is no longer the commercial storytelling medium that it was in its heydey, but the copyright page of Birds of America is strong evidence that the short story system can still work incredibly well as an incubator of literary talent and new work. The publisher writes:
Eleven of these stories were originally published in slightly different form in the following: Elle: ‘Agnes of Iowa’; Harper’s: ‘What You Want to Do Fine’ (originally titled ‘Lucky Ducks’); The New York Times: ‘Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens’ (originally titled ‘If Only Bert Were Here’); The New Yorker: ‘Beautiful Grade,’ ‘Charades,’ ‘Community Life,’ ‘Dance in America,’ ‘People Like That Are the Only People Here,’ ‘Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People,’ and ‘Willing’; The Paris Review: ‘Terrific Mother’
Widely considered Moore’s strongest book to date, Birds of America benefited from Moore’s collaborations not just with her Knopf editor Victoria Wilson, but with an additional eight talented periodical editors, including George Plimpton and Bill Buford.
(The one story in Birds of America not listed above, “Real Estate,” was published in The New Yorker in August 1998, as part of the book’s public roll-out.)
These collaborations seem to have brought a welcome discipline to Moore’s work, deepening the end result. What was once “merely” clever has become wise, and what was merely striking has become clear and true.
Dave Eggers in his review in Salon summed up Moore’s concerns best, somehow capturing both the darkness and tongue-in-cheek humor of her vision in a single bulleted list:
Moore’s stories are about these things: • Longing • Suffering • People mistakenly dropping babies on their head in such a way that the baby dies • Depression, or at least life’s way of sort of stalling at middle age • Depression, or at least life’s way of sort of stalling during that period just before middle age • Depression, or at least life’s way of stalling at any age at all, really • Marriages and affairs that are hopeless but serviceable, like a scratchy, Army-issue blanket • Creature comforts in the face of unfaceable pathos • Lives that would warrant suicide if the owner could find the inspiration • Friends who make you laugh • Easy puns • At least one person per story with cancer • Perhaps a child with cancer, too
There are other writers who successfully tackle similar material, are funny, and are also better (or at least more consistently good) than Moore at other fundamentals like character development, social commentary, and plot. As part of the argument for reading Birds of America—its contemporary setting—fades with time, one is forced to consider the overall value of the offering here. Birds was a standout book of 1998, sure, but should this be included among the stories that students of the future use to access Clinton-era America in the way that students of today access the Gilded Age via Fitzgerald and Waugh?
It doesn’t take much time browsing through the book with this question in mind to surface ample evidence that the correct answer is a resounding ‘Yes.’
Take the subtitle of what is perhaps Moore’s most iconic work, the Bill Buford-edited “People Like That Are the Only People Here”: CANONICAL BABBLING IN PEED ONK.
The urination- and pig-sound-looking “Peed Onk” is, we find out, what people embedded in the world of Pediatric Oncology call Pediatric Oncology because, presumably, they must say the words that mean “the treatment and study of tumors in children” so often that they have shortened the phrase for convenience and also have become numb to it. Moore, by including it in its most juvenile and ridiculous incarnation in the subtitle and then revealing its horror halfway through her story, very effectively calls attention to the increased jargonization of everyday American language, and by extension the increased commodification and conformity of everyday American life.
Peed Onk, like much of modern progress, is a double-eged sword, something that Moore explores explicitly in the coda to “People Like That,” whose tacked-on feeling is deceptive. Indeed, the coda, with its perplexingly anti-social message, is perhaps the point of the story. The character known as The Husband asks the character known as The Mother what she thinks about the other brave Peed Onk parents as they leave Peed Onk with child in remission in tow:
“‘Don’t you feel consoled, knowing we’re all in the same boat, that we’re all in this together?’”
Surprising The Husband and the reader, The Mother replies in the negative:
“‘Let’s make our own way,’ ... ‘and not in this boat.’”
Conformity (even in the context of the courageous endurance to be found at cancer bedsides) equals death. That’s as fierce of a rallying cry for the survival of iconoclasm, and iconoclasm as survival, as anything Frank Sinatra crooned.
Lorrie Moore: American as a flipped bird. Who knew?
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PREVIOUSLY:
These stories shouldn't work. They are riddled with twitchy wordplay and characters without clear motivations, who seem to revel in their own mediocrity or other middleness (middle age, middle America).
My favorite story in this collection is about a childless woman who accidentally kills her friend's baby, accepts her boyfriend's spontaneous marriage proposal in order to accompany him to an academic retreat in Italy, and then gets lots of massages. And it is somehow hilarious, brilliant, romantic, heartwarming, and a page-turning read.
I can't promise that it's everyone's cup of tea, and I know it isn't, but I've found plenty of re-read value in this book, as well as wisdom about relationships and enduring crisis. ...more
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