Summer reading

Self-indulgent? Sure. But I've certainly posted less readable things on this site, and what's an unread blog for but self-indulgence? So just sit tight and keep your mouth shut.

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
Perhaps more important as a statement than a novel, this is certainly the book you'll want to pick up if you want to see the word "cunt" over and over again in a number of unusual ways. The book is a first person narration spoken by repressed Jew Alexander Portnoy to his therapist, who never speaks. Like every Roth I've read, it seems to me his talent lies in describing things everyone already knows in nice ways. Which is not meant to be a complete slight. He does have some interesting perspectives--the novel is often read as a response to criticisms that his early work wasn't Jewish enough--and I feel that he gets away with ideas bordering the clichéd because he's so damned good at describing them. So if you haven't heard enough about repressed Jews with overbearing mothers feeling trapped by society, then this would be a great choice. Otherwise, it's not so essential, nor is it Roth's best (he's written many novels and I've only read three, but right now I'd give that honor to The Human Stain).

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell is the master of the New Yorker nonfiction essay. He's so good at it that if I could make one criticism of him, it's that his tricks and style can almost be too predictable because he seems to know exactly what he's doing and what he wants to do with it at all times, like writing so well and being so bright bores him. A small criticism, though, and his New Yorker archive is always good for a read when there's nothing else to do. This style finds its way into Blink as well, with mixed results. It makes the book thoroughly engrossing, but I had difficulty figuring out exactly what his thesis was. In some instances, "thin-slicing"--the term Gladwell uses for describing our ability to instantly differentiate between relevant and irrelevant information and come to a quick conclusion about something--should be trusted, like when certain art critics were able to instantly recognize that statues purchased by a museum were a fraud without being to accurately describe why. At other times, however, like in the case of Amadou Diallo, it leads us astray. He seems to suggest that the best way to take advantage of thin-slicing is practice. But to me, this doesn't explain why people develop these ablilities without being able to explain how they were developed. Still, the book is full of anecdotes and never dry. If you're looking for good nonfiction, pick this up and try to make more of it than I did.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
Albee's classic play is one of the best things absurdist theater has to offer (the best is Waiting for Godot, the work of Eugene Ionesco is also essential, as is Albee's Zoo Story). The play takes place over one long night among four colleagues of a small university, and is full of viciousness, humor and horror. Though it is classed (by the teacher of my modern drama course anyway) as a part of American realism--and there is something to this--Albee's absurdist roots are strong, as questions of language and authorship, hallmarks of the movement, are vital to the play. This is pretty great.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
I wouldn't call this my favorite Pynchon novel--that would be V.--nor is it the one I'd recommend to someone who had never read him--make sure you know what you're getting into by starting with the relatively tiny The Crying of Lot 49--this is still an unquestionably astounding work. Weighing in at a healthy 750+ pages, its scope is huge. It begins, more or less, with an American in London in World War II who begins to notice that the locations of his sexual liasons are hit by German rockets within two weeks of his having been there. It's very funny and, like the best of Pynchon's work, the conspiracies and organizations that hang ominously over his characters are perfectly constructed and imagined. For all the hundreds of pages that whiz over your head or make you wonder why Pynchon bothered including them--depending on your generosity--there are truly astounding moments that will blow you away. Pynchon, originally an engineering physics major at Cornell, loves anthropomorphizing scientific and mathematical phenomena, which often provides for some of his best moments. But the greatest tragedies and heroics are when his characters come the closest to these conspiracies, as when Slothrop realizes he is both baited and bait--and then follows his own bait off the ship that was carrying him towards some answers. The best passage introduces us to the German scientist Pökler. He is working on the rocket while his daughter is being kept in a concentration camp. His superiors allow her to visit him once a year, but every year, it seems he is given a different daughter, a suspicion he cannot act upon because the only thing worse than this would be if he were given no visits at all. He believes he is being kept alive and he feels powerless to control his own fate, so he sits in a field exactly where the test rocket is set to land and he waits to see if someone will blink, and if he will be able to see it. Highly recommended.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Often mentioned alongside Catch-22 because it is also a postmodern World War II comedy. Though when people mention it alongside Catch-22, it is usually to say "That Slaughterhouse-Five wasn't as good as Catch-22." And it certainly isn't, but then, as Joseph Heller himself kind of pointed out, what is? Well this is interesting, but it really isn't close. There's a lot of strange sci-fi stuff going on, which gives Vonnegut opportunity to say some nice things about the nature of memory, time, death and so on, but this really undercuts the power of the scenes of the firebombing of Dresden, even if the character who expounds these views is meant to be viewed as a nut (this is an open question, though I believe there is evidence that he is). Or maybe the motto "So it goes" is meant to show the horror of becoming desensitized to death. Either way, the book can be compelling, but it is also full of some annoying tactics. The one sentence paragraphs--a problem that also plagued Heller's Something Happened--often read less like a postmodern comment on war and more like a hackneyed sports column. Still a pretty good book.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Utter garbage. I hated this book. It represents everything that's wrong with literature since 1980 or so. I don't care what these pathetic yuppy New York bohemian trash eat or wear or do or feel. I hate all of them. Remarkably, even the ones who live in suburban Philadelphia are pathetic yuppy New York bohemian trash. And the only characters who aren't, of course, are the backwards and borderline evil midwestern parents. Of course, there are kinds of reconciliations to be made, because ultimately that's the kind of garbage book this is. Someone needs to tell a whole generation of writers of whom Franzen is my representative today that nobody cares about your life and you should stop trying to disguise it with laughably transparent techniques and just write the weepy self-pitying self-glorifying autobiography you really want to write so we can all not read that. Guess what! There's a struggling New York writer in this book! And guess where Franzen lives! And guess where he grew up! That's right! The midwest! Who could have guessed. I have no idea how this book was so acclaimed.

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
Instantly one of my favorite books. It's hard to give a concise summary of the book that isn't wildly innaccurate because its scope is large. Augie narrates the first twenty or thirty years of his life, starting in Chicago where he bounces around from job to job and girl to girl, but always driven by a resistance to anything and everything. Not an annoying resistance, but just a resistance to stay in one place for too long. If it sounds tiring, then it's only my inability to summarize it well. The book really is wonderful. Bellow's imagination is spectacular, and the cast of characters in this book is astounding. The best moments are when Augie is given a glimpse of himself by the surprisingly large number of would-be geniuses and philosophers he runs into over his life. It can almost be ridiculous how many people have deep and important things to say to Augie about his own personality and life, but you can easily put this aside with the beauty and the humor of the advice they give and the way it is presented. And the book has its share of nuts as well, who keep you on your toes. Bellow really is a great writer, there's no doubting that, and I don't know if I've ever read an author who does first person narration better. From the funny to the poignant and simple--like when he describes a beautiful moment with a girl he is in love with years after the fact and then ends the chapter with "I assumed we'd get married when the divorce came through." Enough superlatives? Read this.

Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
When I opened this book and saw that it was told in the third person, I felt like crying. The two things Bellow does the best are giving his characters self-knowledge from unlikely oracles and creating an unforgettable voice for his protagonists. The first is there, at least a bit (its more of a novella than a full-fledged novel), but the second isn't. Not that it isn't for a reason. It would be inaccurate to say this book couldn't have been written in the first person, but it certainly would have been very different. The book is good, but disappointing. It's a lot drier without the dynamic voice of Augie March or the great Henderson the Rain King. Still pretty good, though.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis
If you've heard anything about this book and still haven't decided to read it, then I don't know if anything I can say will get you to do it. Seriously, though, read it already. An absolutely fascinating look at the Oakland Athletics front office, following Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta, mostly as they try to field a winning team with a tiny payroll--and succeed. It's been said many times that this book is great even if you don't like baseball. I love baseball, so I couldn't tell you for sure if this is true, but I believe it because I could barely put it down. Of particular interest are Lewis' descriptions of other owners. There's Omar Minaya, now Mets savior but then GM of the lowly Expos, who quivers and wrings his hands when Beane tries to get him to send a trade with the Red Sox through him so he can get a Red Sox prospect or two out of the deal (Beane and DePodesta drool over Kevin Youkilis throughout--thank God that didn't go through). Then there's Steve Phillips, the bumbling GM of the Mets (now ESPN analyst), who never seems to know what he's doing. Very funny, very smart and very interesting.

Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed
A funny story about racial identity and spontaneous art set during the Harlem Renaissance that is recommended--but I would rather talk about Reed's superior Flight to Canada. It is set in contemporary America with the Civil War raging and Lincoln the President. It tells the story of Raven Quickskill, a runaway slave turned poet. It is hilarious from the start--Raven's poem, which opens the novel, is a satire of the language of the plantation and his slaveowner Massa Swille's conception of the slaves, which is later contrasted with the very eloquent poet himself. Meanwhile, Swille tries to get him back while Raven tries to make it to Canada and to freedom. It is a fascinating and terribly funny examination of racial identity as Raven's friends and fellow former slaves all adopt different strategies to survive as individuals--from cynically adopting their stereotypes for personal gain to buying guns and hiding from everyone. The bumbling President Lincoln, kind of an opportunist and kind of dumb--is another highlight. Mumbo Jumbo is good too, but I can't recommend Flight to Canada enough. My second favorite book ever, I think, behind Catch-22.