The Fugitives by Christopher Sorrentino is a sort-of mystery thriller that takes a literary deep dive into identity in today's world, as well as its dance with friendship & betrayal. Sorrentino treats these issues with a prose that is light and fun. Sandy Mulligan is a successful novelist with writer's block. He's a likeable bumbler who leaves his failing marriage & family, and heads for the hinterlands to recharge...and hopefully write. His publisher & editor are hounding him for some progress. He's not making much.
Sandy becomes fascinated with John Salteau, a native Ojibway storyteller who performs at the local library. Sandy is intrigued with the freedom of John's art & process, a sharp contrast to his own stall. However, John does not look like an Ojibway or sound like one. A relentless reporter from Chicago, Kat Danhoff, takes an interest in John, but not as a story teller. She believes he might be a mob courier who fled the local Indian casino with a large pile of cash. She has several interviews with a sharply dressed "consultant" who has a vague assignment at the Ojibway casino. These exchanges are great cat & mouse exercises that thrust the issue of identity further under the lens of the book.
Needless to say, no one in the story is who he or she appears to be. Not quite...Sandy & Kat are exactly who they slowly reveal themselves to be: totally damaged human goods. A doomed affair shakily begins between them. The more we learn about Sandy, the less likeable he is. In fact, my only disapointment with the book, is that in the last few pages this picture becomes quite harsh. This is not surprising, but disheartening none the less. Forget that! The this book is a romp, a fun collision between satire and big existential issues.
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
So Much Blue by Percival Everett
So Much Blue by Percival Everett is a wonderful read: well
written, empathetic characters, and deep insights. The prose moves from brainy to irreverent to humorous with ease. Everett has penned many
books and in different genres. I have read that he might take a genre that he's
never written & dive in, usually with success. In this case, I'm not sure
what genre one would call Blue, but he's written with great humanity about
family, friendship, art and secrets.
Blue is told in the self-deprecating first person voice of
Kevin Pace, a 56 year old successful painter who seems mystified at his success. His
self-absorption keeps him mystified about much of life, which he readily
admits: his marriage, his relationship with teenage children, the art world.
Kevin's candor about this gives the book much of its charm. Many passages
about this are beautifully written. The one thing in his life that Kevin seems
to have a solid footing with is his longtime friendship with Richard, that goes back
to college days.
There are three story lines that are told in alternate
chapters by Pace. Sometimes I'm not crazy about this structure, but in
Everett's hands it works well. In each strand there is a secret that is slowly
revealed. In the present, Kevin is struggling with his relationship with his
wife, Linda, & two children. He is working on a huge painting in a separate
locked studio that he will allow no one to see. This is not well received by
Linda or Richard. They see it as Kevin's aloofness made tangible. Also, Kevin is asked to keep a secret that creates a very difficult situation for him. In his
college years, he accompanies Richard on a search for his brother in El
Salvador, as the country moved into civil war. This becomes quite dangerous
& is evoked with the bumbling foolishness of youth. Kevin keeps a secret
from this trip for over thirty years from Richard & Linda. The third strand
is a bit less fulfilling. It is the story of a brief affair with a much
younger watercolorist in Paris, Victoire. This is affair is a secret, but,
secrets are also revealed for the first time, to Victoire. This seems believable
because Kevin likely feels safe doing it there: they both know that the affair
will end quickly & is so separate from their real lives. In the end, the
three strands intertwine nicely, and secrets are revealed that might help
Richard and Linda strengthen their relationship.
I'm a sucker for books about painters and novelists. Most of
the time I am disappointed, but not in this case. Kevin's bemused attitude
toward the frothy verbiage of gallerists critics, and towards his own success,
is delightful. His reaction is basically: I'm just a painter, I put paint on a
canvas.
If this novel were written by a lesser author, it might have
been three times as long, and not a better book. In an age of unedited 500-700
page novels, I love it when a writer has the chops to tell a story cleanly, &
get the message across elegantly, with no excess baggage. Everett has done this
in Blue, & I highly recommend it.
Friday, June 16, 2017
2084: The End of the World by Boualem Sansal
This is the book that Michel
Houellebecq should have written instead of Submission.That novel and the author were lambasted by reviewers and commentators for anti-Muslim
content, but clearly these critics had not read the book. Submission was
quite tame and barely mentioned Islam until the last 20 pages. The rest was a
cure for insomnia about obscure French philosophers. Please see my blog post. I can't be too hard on Houellebecq, whom I
respect greatly, please see my post on The Map & the Territory. His friend Stephane Charbonnier was murdered along with 11
others by radical Muslims at the office of the satirical magazine, Charlie
Hebdo, on the day Submission was published. A caricature of Houellebecq was on
the cover of the magazine.
2084, The End of
the World was written by Algerian author, Boualem Sansal, at great risk to his life. He poses the story in a
fictitious country, governed by a fictitious religion, after a fictitious
global holy war and conflagration. The fiction approach reminded me of comments by Jackie St.
Joan at a reading from her book, My Sisters Made of Light, which is about honor
crimes in Pakistan, please see my post. She is a lawyer and former judge, with a focus on family
violence. She did much research in Pakistan about honor crimes against women
and was going to write a non-fiction account of this. She was advised to put
the information in the form of a novel to protect the people she had
interviewed. They told her that their lives would be at great risk if she wrote
a documentary account. So, it seems that to keep his head attached to his
shoulders, Sansal sensibly made his story completely fictitious. Reading
between the lines, it could portray life in many countries today, including his
home Algeria. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism after the assassination of
President Mohamed Boudiaf lead Sansal to begin writing at the age of 50. 2084 won the Grand Prix of the French
Academy in 2016. Sansal won the Prix du Roman Arabe in 2012. However, the prize
was withdrawn because he spoke at the Jerusalem Writers Festival. He has won other
literary prizes in France & Germany.
The story of 2084 occurs in Abistan, a country ruled by a religion based
on the Gkabul, a holy book transmitted to Abi, the Messenger, by Yolah, the
iron fisted God of this religion. The story follows the life of Ati, a poor
soul buffeted by powerful & violent religious forces. He lives a simple
life of poverty, keeping his head down, like most of the population.
Individual thought, non-religious learning, free will and memory are forbidden. Time begins in 2084, the year the Gkabul was written, there is no history before that. Their lives
are heavily leavened with fear of being tagged by neighbors or various moral
authorities for transgressions against Abi and Yolah. This would take one
quickly to a stoning in a stadium. Ati is unaware of most of the things we take
for granted in life, from the concept of freedom to free will. The people are ignorant of any world beyond Abistan, and there might not be one.
The topic of 2084 is grim, but
the prose is often light and satirical, sometimes comical. It was heroic for Sansal
to write it, and it is well worth a read.
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Days Without end by Sebastian Barry
This comment was tricky to write. Usually my book blogs come
pouring out, since I only write about books that I enjoyed. I did enjoy Days
Without End, but this is a complicated one for me. I bought this book because I
think that Irish author Sebastian Barry is one of the finest living wordsmiths
in the English language. Please see my post On Canaan's Side. But, I had two hesitations.
The book is written in "cowboy dialect", for lack
of a better word. I have difficulty reading novels in any sort of dialect. Second,
much of the book is set during the American-Indian Wars and the Civil War, and
neither is my cuppa java. But, Barry did not disappoint. The dialect prose was
often wonderful, without being over-written. I was struck that Barry's use of
this language also gives the reader great insight into the mind of the mid-19th
century immigrant, regarding nature, friendship, and the manner in which people
related to one another. This aspect was often quite striking. The voice of the
novel is in the first person of immigrant Thomas McNulty.
The novel opens as Thomas, a young, starving, illiterate Irish orphan,
and a new friend, John Cole, find refuge in a minstrel show in a mining town.
The hook is that Thomas is dressed as a girl, a theme that recurs throughout
the book. Thomas and John Cole become lovers and life long friends. This is
slowly revealed in the story, concealed there as they concealed it in their
lives. Their time in the army, another way to avoid starving, occurs first in
the far west. The military's treatment of native Americans is frankly
described, without being gratuitously violent. This was a hard life, often
cold, still hungry, and frequently not quite sure about what they were ordered
to do.
The Civil War brings them back into the Army, and again, a brutal life. The plot loops back to their Indian days, in a terrible, but
believable twist. The aftermath of this brings Thomas to an unfair judgement.
The resolution of this incident left me with a deep exhale. Barry is not just a
great wordsmith, he spins deeply human stories.
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Michael Chabon's Moonglow
Somehow I missed Michael Chabon's dozen novels and Pulitzer Prize. I know now that this is my loss. His most recent novel, Moonglow, is a delight to read. It is a cross between a novel and "speculative" biography. It reads like great story telling. Theoretically, it is the life story of his normally taciturn grandfather told from his deathbed. Some is real, and much is undoubtedly from Chabon's fertile imagination. I don't care if this came from his grandfather, his uncle, or Chabon's own noggin. I read this as fiction and it's wonderful.
There are powerful hooks for readers of Chabon's age, or any age: from his grandfather's love of rocketry and the future of space travel, to the difficulties of loving complicated people. There are fun footnotes, and more information than I ever dreamed of about our nation's favorite rocket hero, Werner von Braun and his dirty Nazi secrets of the slave labor Mittelwerk V-2 factory. There is also an often humorous dose of well deserved existentialism after his grandfather's experiences in World War II. Do not fear, while WW II is an important back story, it is a small part of the book. The novel is really about passion, love, hidden truths and lies, selective revelation, and protecting love. This is all told with compassion and humor.
You don't need childhood memories of rockets and dreams of spaceflight to enjoy this book. It is great storytelling all on its own.
There are powerful hooks for readers of Chabon's age, or any age: from his grandfather's love of rocketry and the future of space travel, to the difficulties of loving complicated people. There are fun footnotes, and more information than I ever dreamed of about our nation's favorite rocket hero, Werner von Braun and his dirty Nazi secrets of the slave labor Mittelwerk V-2 factory. There is also an often humorous dose of well deserved existentialism after his grandfather's experiences in World War II. Do not fear, while WW II is an important back story, it is a small part of the book. The novel is really about passion, love, hidden truths and lies, selective revelation, and protecting love. This is all told with compassion and humor.
You don't need childhood memories of rockets and dreams of spaceflight to enjoy this book. It is great storytelling all on its own.
Sunday, March 26, 2017
All the Dead Yale Men by Craig Nova
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