Tuesday, April 2, 2013

New Year, Same Literacy

Mo' Books, Probably The Same Number Of Problems, All Things Considered

Since finishing Infinite Jest over three months ago -- woah -- I've read a few more books and I have a bit of time so I figured I'd grace you with my thoughts on them. I'm actually back in the market for more book recommendations, so if you want to shout at me about a thing I should read, I'm all for it. Maybe something postmodern? I need my fix.
  1. You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers was very, very disappointing. This is the best way I can summarize it: On the cover of the book, there's a liner note with praise from John Leonard of the New York Times. "Entirely honorable and ultimately persuasive," he writes. "Eggers's frisbee sentences sail, spin, hover, circle and come back to the reader like gifts of gravity and grace." Two notes. First: Nice alliteration, dude. Second: There are no frisbee scenes in this novel. None. It's about two dudes, Will and Hand, and their adventure across the world on a mission to give away a bunch of money. They do not play frisbee or any other sport. They drive a lot, get on a lot of planes, and feel guilty about giving money to the very poor, but there's no frisbee. There's a ton of frisbee in A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, though, so it's abundantly clear that they've just taken praise for the other, better book and thrown it on the cover.

    Don't get me wrong: This was not a bad novel. AHWOSG is one of my all-time favorites, though, so to see an author take a dip in quality like that was upsetting. It wasn't as awful as Weezer's truly dreadful post-Pinkerton work (except for Maladroit, which is a good album, and if you don't agree with me then I will fight you in the fuckin' street) but still, c'mon, bro. One cool point was that Hand sort of sounds like (Super) Hans, a character from Peep Show. Eggers takes pains to explain that Hand is blond and Nordic but I couldn't stop thinking of him as a coke-addicted Brit.
  2. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace was a good post-Infinite Jest cooldown. It's still DFW, it still has footnotes, and the first essay is even about tennis; it's just not quite as intense as Hal and the gang. I have nothing but good things to say about this collection: I liked it more than Consider The Lobster, even. Highlights include the essay about fiction in a TV-riddled world (television is post-postmodern, see) for its expounding on IJ's main theme, the essay about the Illinois state fair for its explanation of how terror is terrifying, and the one about the Nordic Luxury Cruise for the imagery of a semi-agoraphobic writer managing forced social events with the elderly.
  3. House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is a contender for Ian's Favorite Book Of All Time. Top 5, certainly. Read it, preferably very soon. It's creepy as hell, has a gripping plot, and the ending basically demands a re-reading of the whole book. There are secret messages in the text, for crying out loud. The one negative was the layout of the print in certain portions. See, it's about a house with a labyrinth in it, and during the particularly maze-y parts, the words on the page are literally arranged in a disorienting way. I had to rotate the book -- sometimes holding it upside-down -- on the T, and I got looks. I understood why it was made that way, but that doesn't make it less frustrating. It's also a pretty sharp satire of academia. And did I mention it's creepy as hell? I only read it at night like twice before deciding it'd be best if I had some time between House Of Leaves and dreamland.
  4. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen is another one on the IFBOAT (haha, another anagram where "Of All Time" forms a new word, like Joelle being the Prettiest Girl Of All Time) list. It's up there. It's about an old couple in the Midwest with now-adult children and their "one last Christmas" together. It's alternatingly hilarious and sad -- I felt pretty awful for laughing at some scenes that (probably) were not intended to be funny, like Alfred's battle with the turds -- and there's tons going on. It jumps around between places and times, too, which is a pretty interesting device. I'm still confused about whether Gary is a sympathetic character or not.
  5. 2 B R 0 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut is super short and free. Seriously, read it right here. It'll take like ten minutes and it's a really cool story. Just do it. Do it!