No Dutch Treats

Just read Netherland by Joseph O'Neil. Not sure exactly what all the fuss was about. The NYTBR comparing it to The Great Gatsby, the glowing blurbs on the back cover. I didn't feel it was the masterpiece everyone claimed. It wasn't terrible though. I learned a couple things about cricket and New York.

It is a post 9/11 novel apparently, although I would argue anything written after 9/11/01 is ! (This is a post 9/11 blog by the way.) He can write though and he does say some good things including the following on....you guessed it! 9/11:

“For those under the age of 45 it seemed that world events had finally contrived a meaningful test of their capacity for conscientious political thought. Many of my acquaintances, I realized, had passed the last decade or two in a state of intellectual and psychic yearning for such a moment — or, if they hadn’t, were able to quickly assemble an expert arguer’s arsenal of thrusts and statistics and ripostes and gambits and examples and salient facts and rhetorical maneuvers. I, however, was almost completely caught out.”

I guess my problem with the novel was that the action was too distant to really care about the main interesting character: the Dutch narrator Hans, whose wife and child just left him, writes about this Trinidadian dreamer and hustler Chuck Ramkissoun (sic) in new York City. Some of the observations seem a little too tacked on, as if he had some scraps of writing leftover from his diary that he thought were so wonderful that he threw them in and made Hans say them. So, not unlike Hans, it just meanders along aimlessly until then... it's over. Chuck is always too far away to really care about and Hans is not so interested in exploring his life beyond what he allows.

When Hans finally figures out what Chuck is up too besides cricket and acts all shocked and horrified you want to say "About time! What did you expect?" This is post 9/11 after all Hans!

New York Times Bestseller List, The Prophecy

Sunday October 12, 2008

HARDCOVER FICTION


1. THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE, by David Wroblewski

2. HEAT LIGHTNING, John Sandford

3. THE GIVEN DAY Dennis Lehane

A Picture Speaks a 1000 Words

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Anita Loo's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a bit dated but quite funny. And sometimes she speaks the truth:
"I seem to be quite depressed this morning as I always am when there is nothing to put my mind to. Because I decided not to read the book by Mr. Cellini. I mean it was quite amuseing (sic) in spots because it was really quite riskay (sic)but the spots were not so close together and I never seem to like to always be hunting clear through a book for the spots I am looking for, especially when there are really not so many spots that seem to be so amuseing after all."
From the mouths of babes----or blondes.

In Which Our Heroine (me) Learns a Lesson

Yep, a valuable lesson. Like I just listened to Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife on CD on a long commute back and forth from Springfield and I have nobody but myself to blame. I never liked her book Prep, the narrator and all the characters were very unlikable and so basically then why bother with this? But I did not learn a valuable lesson that time and I listened all the way to the end and now I want to complain about her poor writing, boring undeveloped characters (a thinly drawn and thinly disguised George and Laura Bush) and lack of anything mildly redeeming in it. I think the reason she wrote it about Laura Bush is because she completely lacked the imagination to flesh out a full story or character and just set this on top of Laura Bush so that all the numerous blanks would be filled in with the real story.
But it's like when a friend of yours has a rotten boyfriend who she tells you all the time that she doesn't really like but she hangs out with him whenever he calls and cancels your plans to see him and then expects you to feel sorry for her when he treats her badly and you're supposed to let her complain about it all over again. Umm... excuse me...no complaining allowed if you're still insisting on dating them! Stiff upper lip! I don't want to hear it.
But really I was 3 1/2 hours in the car on the way back back from Springfield and then I had nothing else to listen to, and I never liked her first book Prep and....oh I get it...it's my own fault and you're not going to feel sorry for me. Stiff upper lip. I know! I know!

Requiem, Mass

I am not sure why but I have a very soft spot for John Dufresne and his writing. I've read Louisiana Power and Light and Love Warps the Mind a Little and his writing never fails to tickle me (in Requiem Mass one of the patients in a pysch ward wears a t-shirt that says "I'm not a gynecologist but I'll take a look.")
A synopsis of Love Warps the Mind a Little from the publisher:
"Ever since Lafayette Proulx quit his day job, left his wife, hauled his dog and his Royal portable across town to Judi Dubey’s house, and set out at last to be a fiction writer, his life has been a sordid mess. Judi’s exotically dysfunctional family isn’t all to blame. Sure, the murders are disconcerting. And, yes, Judi’s father’s gone off the deep end. Worse are the vicious rejection letters Laf gets from editors. To top it off, Laf’s falling for Judi at the same time he’s nettled with guilt, is in marriage counseling with his wife, and is writing his long-hoped-for novel. When Judi is diagnosed with stage IV cancer, they both struggle to find the memory that will comfort, the truth that will redeem in a world where everyone suffers some kind of love disorder. John Dufresne, called “a highly readable Faulkner,” will once again take the literary world by storm with this new tragicomic tale."
You get the picture. Anyway Requiem Mass was not his best effort, a brother and a sister growing up with a mentally ill mother and a truck driver father who has a family at every truck stop. The boy grows up to be a writer and this is his memoir which he had started writing as fiction. It made me giggle but it never resonated like Love did. At best it just reminds us how children, no matter how abysmal their parents are, always love their parents.