I hadn't actually read anything by Hemingway before; I've just been in love with his "the first draft of anything is shit" line for years. Then I readI hadn't actually read anything by Hemingway before; I've just been in love with his "the first draft of anything is shit" line for years. Then I read The Paris Wife recently and figured it was time to bump up my Literature-with-a-capital-L cred.
And here I go, being all lowbrow.
As far as I can determine, this is a book about a bunch of whiny-ass alcoholics who can afford to be pretentious elite whiny-ass alcoholics in Paris instead of garden-variety peasant whiny-ass alcoholics in Bumfuck, South Dakota. They start out in Paris where they drink and then they go drink in San Sebastian and then they go to Vienna where they drink some more and then they go drinking in Paris again and then they go to Spain and catch some fish and drink and then they go their separate ways because they're finally all sick of each other--still drinking. They have repetitive conversations about nothing, probably because they're always drunk. And did I mention they drink? They drink a lot. A lot. I'm surprised any of them can stand up.
I did try to get into the spirit of it. I was early for work one morning so I went next door to McDonald's and pretended I was reading over breakfast at Les Deux Magots. Très continental. My lips were turning blue in the air conditioning and the toddler at the next table was screeching so I moved to an outside table and pretended I was looking out at the cobblestones of Rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève instead of at that homeless guy on Houser Street. No joy. My Egg McMuffin did not turn into a brioche. My coffee did not turn into espresso, which is okay because I don't like espresso. Jake and Brett did not stop drinking.
I get it, though. I do. This is the quintessential novel about the Lost Generation with all its angst and navel-gazing, its souls seared by war and ennui and its future filled with existentialist despair. All I can say is, maybe if they pulled their heads out of the bottle and thought about something other than themselves and actually did something useful, life might take on some meaning. And I see why Papa's writing style is so universally admired, but you can only drink so much absinthe and drop the names of so many Paris streets before I start to think you're just showing off.
Things I appreciated:
1. Basques, and the fine art of drinking from a wineskin.
2. Trout.
3. The romanticism of bullfighting.
4. Brett Ashley running off with a fine young bullfighter just because she wants to. Women with sexual agency and all that.
Things I didn't appreciate:
1. The barbarism of bullfighting.
2. Pretty much all of the dialogue. It sucks. Maybe it was supposed to, I don't know.
3. Brett Ashley. She has the right to boink a fine young bullfighter if she feels like it, but I still don't like her.
I did finish it, and now I have the frustrating feeling that I'm a failure if I don't get something out of Hemingway....more
Did this book have even a passing acquaintance with an editor?
1. The timeline is wonky. Augustin Sekuler (a spoof on secular? I'll never know) marriedDid this book have even a passing acquaintance with an editor?
1. The timeline is wonky. Augustin Sekuler (a spoof on secular? I'll never know) married his wife in 1885; good. They had two children, great. In 1889, he "convinced [his wife] and the children to secure a suitable New York venue..." Why would children no more than 3 years old have to help with a venue? Furthermore, Augustin disappeared in 1890, and two years before that, in Edinburgh, his daughter Zoe disappeared and was never seen again -- except to help book a venue across the pond a year later, I guess. And the daughter's disappearance happened while her brother, who could have been no older than 2, was left watching her while the mother ran an errand.
2. One historical character is Aleister Crowley, disguised only with the anagrammed name of Carlyle Eistrowe. A historical piece of evidence is a letter from Not-Crowley written in 1889 and far too mature and full of life experience given that Crowley would have been only 14. I'm not sure why Crowley is being at all disguised even if he does turn out to be a villain, as it's widely known he was, to put it bluntly, an evil douche poser. Thomas Edison appears as himself and is clearly depicted as a snaky patent thief.
3. Unfinessed writing. Telling without showing, to the point of presenting parts of the investigation as exposition. Overwritten passages: "...crossing the parking lot of a gas station bathed in the veraman phosphorescence of mercury vapor, he froze in front of the beige-colored Toyota Celica."
4. I was (trying to) read an e-book, and one part said, "On his way to the airport, he made a stop at the xxx(illegible)xxx, and two streets down..." PROOFREAD THE GODDAMN ELECTRONIC SCANS. I will NEVER stop bitching about errors in e-books because nobody can be bothered to double-check and fix things. NEVER. And just in case it reads that way on purpose...
...there are also parts in the Notes that are gibberish, and footnotes that look like Chinese hanzi and Wingdings drank too much ouzo and had a love child. I'm not sure if these are scanning errors or a secret code or if they're just something artsy-fartsy that I don't get, and don't want to, because I'm kinda lowbrow that way. But I suspect this is trying to pull off something like Marisha Pessl's Night Film (which I read all the way through against my will and which annoyed the shit out of me) or Danielewski's House of Leaves (which I found too pretentious to get more than 75 pages into). Not for me.
Final verdict: It seems like it could be an interesting story, but life is too short and my TBR pile is too high for purple prose and various confusions....more
This would have been five dazzling stars if not for some stylistic gripes.
The first is in the floor, such as "He sat down in the floor" or "The water This would have been five dazzling stars if not for some stylistic gripes.
The first is in the floor, such as "He sat down in the floor" or "The water spilled in the floor." The first couple of times I thought they were typos that are annoyingly typical in e-books, but then I noticed its consistent use. Google tells me this is a colloquialism local to North Carolina. I can appreciate dialects, but I dislike stumbling over things and this one is, to me, nonsensical. If something is "in the floor," I think it is inside the goddamn floor, like soaked-in liquid or ground-in dirt. It's the difference between in the ground and on the ground, or on the bed and in bed. This was as annoying to me as Laura Lippmann's Baltimoreon colloquialism "I am a police."
My other gripe is about McCarthy's disdain for apostrophes. Googling around, I read that he dislikes "cluttering up the page with unnecessary marks." Excuse me, but when you omit apostrophes in can't and won't and we'll then you're using the entirely wrong goddamn word, and the apostrophes are hardly unnecessary clutter. McCarthy's language is poetic and lyrical and beautifully archaic at times, and it interrupts a truly mesmerizing flow when I have to go back and reread the phrase or sentence because it doesn't make sense as written. It's like rearranging the furniture with no warning and no lights, so someone trying to walk through a familiar room keeps stubbing toes and barking shins on things that are not where everybody knows they're supposed to goddamn be. Artsy-fartsy literary pretensions like this are, um, pretentious.
Other reviewers were also irritated by the lack of quotation marks around dialogue. I suspect for McCarthy it's more of what he deems "unnecessary clutter," but Margaret Atwood uses this device to particularly good effect and it didn't bother me here.
Now that we're past my gripes, all I can say about this book is -- wow. I mean, wow. I cannot remember ever reading a book as bleak and hopeless. His use of language lends an eerie beauty to the endless gray desolation of his post-apocalyptic world. There isn't much plot to this setting- and character-driven story, and there doesn't need to be. The deceptively simple repetition of days and nights and ash and cold and hard-won survival and persevering love is where its power arises. It's stunning.
If you are a fan of dystopian fiction, this book is not to be missed. Perhaps the style choices will not irritate you as they did me....more
Pretty sure I've stumbled across another book that was written to impress other writers. I'm such a lowbrow.
I've read six chapters of nothing but detaPretty sure I've stumbled across another book that was written to impress other writers. I'm such a lowbrow.
I've read six chapters of nothing but detailed descriptions of everybody's designer clothing, and the ridiculously expensive booze they drink and the upscale food they eat, a comparison of high-end business cards that reads disturbingly like a dick-measuring contest, and constant anxiety about not getting a good table at whatever pretentious and overpriced yuppie bistro is the latest cool place to be. That's it. Four pages of the parade of top-end products that makes up his morning grooming routine and another two pages of all the crap from Hammacher Sclemmer in his kitchen. There seems to be a fixation with videotapes; I'm guessing porn will play a large part later on. Every woman is either a "hardbody" or is not, and they are all interchangeable. He can't remember one person from the next, always mixing up names and faces, and I can see that as a symptom of the pathology at play here, but he does it with music too and it really really annoyed me when one of the best rock and roll songs of all time, "Be My Baby," was not properly attributed to the Ronettes. I'm ready to throw the book across the room.
The thing is, I think I get it. I've heard enough to know it's about a brilliant young financial wizard on Wall Street in the late eighties who is also a serial killer. This endless blahblahblah of conspicuous consumerism is a clever device, really, the soulless clutter of day-to-day life playing up the soulless rage that comprises the mind and heart of our torturer murderer. But it's a veritable slog to try to read. ...and she's wearing a wool-crepe skirt and a wool and cashmere velour jacket and draped over her arm is a wool and cashmere velour coat, all by Louis Dell'Olio. High-heeled shoes by Susan Bennis Warren Edwards. Sunglasses by Alain Mikli. Pressed-leather bag from Hermès. This for every single person who enters the narrator's line of sight, including doormen and cocktail waitresses, this endless haute couture word vomit. It does echo the greed and shallowness of killing, the young hotshot moving through the world of junk bonds and leveraged buyouts and coke in the men's room, twenty-six years old and pulling down two hundred grand a year, so why not reach out and take all the Wurlitzer jukeboxes and $850 gazelleskin wallets you want? I'm picking up desensitization as a gimmick here. Our impeccably dressed killer is a shark in more ways than one, and don't try to tell me that anyone who aspires to Wall Street isn't a predator of sorts.
But...it's boring. This might have worked brilliantly for me as a short story or a novella, but as a full-length novel it is simply tedious. I'm already skimming at page 57; no way am I slogging through 400 pages. Dnf-ing....more
This book is very simple and short for packing such an interesting punch.
It is a small collection of anonymous photos donated to MOMA of...girls standThis book is very simple and short for packing such an interesting punch.
It is a small collection of anonymous photos donated to MOMA of...girls standing on lawns, with poetic blurbs from Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) and paintings of the photos by Maira Kalman. And that's all it is. You can read the whole thing in ten minutes, and that's meandering.
But wait. Such intrigue. I turn the page, then turn it back, look more closely, study it. Who are these girls, these women? What would someone think of the pictures in my mother's endless boxes of pictures that have me standing on one lawn or another? I would be as anonymous as any of the women in this book. It's an interesting way to see yourself, with no context whatsoever, without knowing that was me before my initiation into the clique-ish Job's Daughters and not a prom, without knowing how much money my mother spent on that beauty parlor hairdo, without hearing the screaming argument as I furiously dragged a brush through it, ruining it because I hated it so. Or without knowing how badly my stomach was knotted as I posed before that first day of school in a new town full of strangers. Without knowing how desperate I'd been to be invited to that birthday party I was on my way to, without knowing how many hours I'd babysat to earn the money for that dress I was posing in, without knowing that lawn was lovingly watered and trimmed by my grandfather and felt like velvet to bare feet, without knowing who loved me enough to want to preserve me at that moment and said, "Stand over there. Let me get a picture."
A moment in time, sliding over the surface only. But what was the moment, exactly? Who was behind the camera? It's hard for me to remember, after all these years, and you don't know at all. I'm just a girl, standing on a lawn. I could be any girl. That could be anybody's lawn, anybody's camera. The lack of context is what gives these photos their depth, their potential to be any story you want them to be.
It can be difficult to see these sorts of snapshots as art, or this book as a literary pursuit at all. I think people tend to view photography as the red-headed stepchild of the arts, not taking it quite seriously, especially once cameras became readily available to the common person with no sense of the artistic whatsoever. I fear this has only increased as cameras have proliferated to the point where one can be found in almost anyone's hand at any given time. Selfies are almost offensively ubiquitous -- or are they? Are they another art form, a reflection of the fluidity of art and of our culture? Artist Dylan Neuwirth would say so, judging from his "Just Be Your Selfie" exhibit, recently seen at Tacoma Art Museum and in Seattle's Occidental Park.
Pictures of girls standing on lawns are going to be few and far between before very much more time passes, and that's a shame....more
There may be a great story here, but I can’t find it in all the Writing with a capital W.
It’s not my general lack of interest in reggae, Bob Marley inThere may be a great story here, but I can’t find it in all the Writing with a capital W.
It’s not my general lack of interest in reggae, Bob Marley in particular, or Jamaican politics and gangs in the 1970’s; one reason I read is to learn new things. It’s not the violent and oppressed world and the unflinching use of the language of that world; another reason I read is to travel to other worlds. It’s not just the lengthy cast of characters, although a helpful list is provided. I’ve read plenty of books with tons of characters and factions and managed to keep track of who’s who. I can even read books that would have me sympathize with criminals or other unlikable characters; those can, in fact, be awesome.
But combine all of those things, then fold in a disjointed, stream-of-consciousness writing style and extensive use of often drug-addled gangsta-speak and Jamaican patois for almost 700 pages, bouncing in seemingly random fashion from one thing to another with no apparent connection. My eyes are glazing over. I made it to page 74, well short of my 100-page rule, and I can’t even tell you what’s happened, or to whom. It feels like it was written to impress other writers rather than to tell a story. I can't handle the boombacloth* thing.
*Boombacloth, bumclot, or variations thereof: Think "bum" and "cloth;" a cloth for wiping one's anal area or for menstrual bleeding. Used by Jamaicans in place of "fuck" or "fucking." My only takeaway from this utterly impenetrable volume....more
Next time I’m stuck with nothing but a Marisha Pessl book to read, I’ll just kill the hours by picking my toes instead.
“...the territory between two pNext time I’m stuck with nothing but a Marisha Pessl book to read, I’ll just kill the hours by picking my toes instead.
“...the territory between two people who were once soul mates but were no longer was akin to…”
and
“I noticed the wicks were still smoldering orange, three orange pinpricks in the dark.”
and
“I swore I heard a man's dull, prolonged moan.”
and
“...grabbed the black iron grating over the arched window and began to climb. ..hoisted himself higher, dangling there. ..”
By page 27, the way this writer italicizes everything for no apparent reason had become very annoying. For me putting up with that, the book owed me phenomenal.
It did not put out.
“ ..his shoulders were rising and falling, as if he was out of breath. “
Is that so I know what I need to pay attention to? I don’t need the help. I can read. And if I’m not bright enough to figure it out for myself, well, that’s what the denouement is for.
“A human shadow had just moved directly behind it, though, as if sensing we’d spotted it, it froze.”
Reading this is what I imagine it would be like to listen to a narrator read all 600 pages in a singsong tone. Is it for want of an editor who knows what italics are for? Or is it some artsy-fartsy thing I don’t get because I’m a philistine? Don’t care. Annoying as hell.
And purple prose? It doesn’t get much more purple than this. “[Men] melted and sweated and went weak in front of her like a bunch of idiot iced teas.” Just awful.
So while the story is badly over-written with its endless italics and clumsy metaphors, it manages to be under-written at the same time. There was a lot of potential for surrealistic creepiness but it never got there. There is no tension. We just traipse from here to there, find out this, find out that, oh, look, another clue conveniently lands in our laps so now we’ll go over here, but there is no sense of urgency. It could have been pruned of 200 pages and not lost a thing. By around page 350 I was weary of the whole tedious mess, but was stuck with nothing else to read, which is admittedly no one’s fault but mine. Long before I made it through the acid-trip-hexagon-coffin scene, which should have been wonderfully Kafkaesque but was merely another slog, I was anticipating those fucking italics even where there weren’t any, but at that point, I’ve got 100 pages left, might as well finish the thing and find out the unrealized premise behind it all. Right?
Wrong.
I’m around 60 pages into the denouement - seriously, another 25,000 words to tidy everything up and finish it off, that’s how tiresome this book is - and I’m still not sure I’ll finish it. I just don’t care. ...more
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