It feels impossible to review this book actually, which was an absolute knock-down fucking wonder, both because it unfolds so tenderly and surprisinglIt feels impossible to review this book actually, which was an absolute knock-down fucking wonder, both because it unfolds so tenderly and surprisingly that to clumsily and haphazardly crash through the plot would do it a great disservice, and also because Colleen is a very old (in time, not age!!) friend of mine and the co-founder of my ladies' graphic novel book club, and if I blurt too much out about how in awe I am of this book, it will probably be hard to look at her normally at our next meeting.
What the hell, how to even navigate all this. Listen: This book is fucking stunning, filled with tweens you want to hug so hard as they drag themselves through their traumas and awakenings. It treats very serious topics with grace and delicacy and treats its characters with respect and kindness even when they are being dicks. It feels extremely of the moment in its treatment of queerness and the forging of identity, even though I know it was some 10 years in the making—just goes to show how marvelously ahead-of-her time enlightened my pal Colleen happens to be. It's messy and complicated and devastating and redemptive, and here I've done what I said I wouldn't, gotten too weirdly rapturous, so I will stop.
But please for heck's sake read this beautiful, beautiful book!!!
Recently my rad friend B and I got into it about Roxanne Gay's Bad Feminist, which I loudly do not like. B argued that it was wrong of me to judge it Recently my rad friend B and I got into it about Roxanne Gay's Bad Feminist, which I loudly do not like. B argued that it was wrong of me to judge it so harshly because I was not taking into account the deep biases I bring to my own reading. I remain unrepentant because those essays are extremely bad, but I do acknowledge that I am only a combination of my life's influences: I grew up solidly middle-class, I am a cis-het woman and a Jew of European heritage, I went to a good liberal arts college, and white American intellectual values are the waters in which I have always steeped. So perhaps when I say something utterly subjective like "those essays are extremely bad," I do only mean that they're bad to me, and if I were a queer black woman like B, raised and taught and influenced in different ways, all my opinions would be completely different.
Be that as it may, I still am me, I still have the same brain and biases, and I will tell you this: Jia Tolentino is exactly everything I fucking love. This book (to me!) is basically perfect—devastatingly smart and endlessly fascinating and filled with essays that work, that interrogate the modern condition from every angle and leave you gasping with new comprehensions. They are deeply researched and wildly illuminating and also even funny, sometimes, when they're not devastating or brutal or so intense you have to put the book down and go take a dazed walk to let your brain synapses cool their firings.
Anyway, you don't really need me to tell you about Jia's brilliance, right? I mean, she's written and edited everywhere, from the Hairpin to Jezebel to now the New Yorker (which excerpted one of this book's best essays: "Losing Religion and Finding Ecstacy in Houston"). As of this moment, her release week, she's on a press blitz so thorough that it's the subject of its own roundups and memes. If you don't feel like scrolling through, find her profiled on Elle, interviewed on the Paris Review, and reviewed on Vanity Fair; see her food picks on Grub Street, her skincare routine on In the Gloss, and her dog on Jezebel. I could go on.
But you're here, so go ahead and listen to me talk about this book some more. To wit: In one essay she writes about how the internet has fundamentally reoriented the truth so that what's important now is only what's important to me ("The everyday madness perpetuated by the internet positions personal identity as the center of the universe"). In another, she dissects the perpetual burden of being an ideal woman in the days of self-optimization, managing to tie together chopped salads ("the perfect mid-day nutritional replenishment for the mid-level modern knowledge worker"), Barre classes ("the rapid-fire series of positions and movements resemble what a ballerina might do if you concussed her and then made her snort caffeine pills"), and athleisure ("tailor-made for a time when work is rebranded as pleasure so we will accept more of it").
She writes explosively about the harrowing history of racism and rape at the University of Virginia, her alma matter, linking the recent ill-fated and retracted Rolling Stone piece about fraternity rape all the way back to Thomas Jefferson and Saly Hemings—in fact, no, all the way back to ancient European "youthful war bands": wealthy young men who donned wolf hides and roved the forests looking for maidens to snatch, until they came of age and went home to find wives. She also writes about "difficult women" in a piece that considers everyone from Kim Kardashian to Madonna to Hope Hicks ("I feel as if feminist praxis has turned to acid and eaten through the floor. It's as if what's signified—sexism itself—has remained so intractable that we've mostly given up on rooting out its actual workings.").
She also writes about the lie of the literary heroine, the history of the conman, the Fyre Festival, her time on a reality show as a teenager, corporate feminism, recoiling at the idea of marriage, and who even knows, everything else under the fucking sun. She is so smart and so savvy and so, so good, and I hope she's already at work on her next collection, because I cannot believe I'll have to go back to reading other people's essays now....more
I slept on Mira Jacob for awhile. I was vaguely aware that she existed, but I felt no particular compulsion to seek out her books. Then I read her essI slept on Mira Jacob for awhile. I was vaguely aware that she existed, but I felt no particular compulsion to seek out her books. Then I read her essays "37 Difficult Questions From My Mixed-Race Son" and "Here’s What I’m Telling My Brown Son About Trump’s America," and before I even finished weeping, I ordered this book.
Friends, it is unbelievably, jaw-droppingly fantastic.
I am going to say something crazy, but even after a week of retrospection, I believe this is the best book I've read since The Goldfinch — which we all know I loved so much that it ruined me for all the rest of books forever. And yet! Though this is not so much like Tartt's masterpiece, it had the same deeply immersive pull, gave me the same charged, magnetic feeling that whatever I was doing was utterly irrelevant compared to getting back onto the couch (or the stoop, or the subway, or the line for the ATM) and inhaling this book into my blood.
So. Here is the story of Amina Eapen, first-generation Indian American living in Seattle and working as a wedding photographer after a Bad Thing happened that upended her photojournalism career. We join her as she receives a call from her Ma in New Mexico, who obliquely suggests that something is up with Dad — so obliquely, in a way so out of character for this intensely overbearing mother, that Amina pretty much drops everything and flies home lickety-split to figure out what's going on.
From there the story runs on parallel tracks, going backward in time and eastward in space to Amina's childhood and her last-ever visit to India, where there was a Great Family Blowout that would ultimately lead to tragedy; and forward into the next few months while we figure out what's up with dad, and on the way learn everything about this incredible family, their hopes and fears, their tears and triumphs, their deep though often staggeringly badly expressed love for one another, the lengths, both uplifting and detrimental, to which they will go to keep each other close.
This is a book made up of moments, beautiful crystalline moments like so many strung marbles — moments of tenderness, of rage, of joy, of camaraderie, of despair. The time Amina and her father build a janky slingshot called a Raccooner. The time Amina's narcoleptic brother falls asleep at the wheel and nearly rolls them onto a rushing highway. The time Amina runs into a disliked girl from high school at the mall years later and has the most cringingly awkward conversation. The time an aunt catches Amina and her brother smoking on the roof and heaves herself, pendulous bosom and all, right out the window to join them. The way a young Indian cousin reacts when Amina's parents bring him Nikes from America. The way the Eapens' patched-together "family" of other Indian Americans solves every problem by cooking astounding amounts of food for one another. The way they all talk, with this perfectly crisp Indian-British English, all full of Chee!s and Nah?s and "one" instead of "a" and so many funny bits of bilingual slang. The way we revisit onto our children the sins visited upon us by our parents, and the ways, a generation later, these mistakes can ultimately be (at least somewhat) rectified.
Also, to be clear, this is a book full of devastations. There are deaths and fires and cancer and mental unravelings that are as harrowing as the gorgeous parts are gorgeous. I cried many times over the course of this saga, and while typically that kind of sorrow would have made me quit a book forever, by then I loved these characters SO MUCH that I was there for it, I would never leave them in their times of tragedy, I would hold their hands and hold their gazes and follow them, as they followed one another, heads held high, into whatever abyss awaited us.
I don't know what else to say. This was simply a marvel, pitch-perfect family saga full of the most complexly human characters trying and failing and trying again to love each other, to save each other, to be there for each other no matter how much it takes from them to do so. I love this family and this book so much I, cannot believe I don't get to read about them anymore. ...more
This is one of my favorite books of all time and to prove it, I named my dog Prufrock.
I wanted to put a picture of him here for you SO BAD that afterThis is one of my favorite books of all time and to prove it, I named my dog Prufrock.
I wanted to put a picture of him here for you SO BAD that after stoically refusing for a million years, I finally opened a Flickr account so I upload my pix on GR.
So here is a shot of the time the cutest dog ever did the cutest thing ever and I actually died.
So listen. Look. I am a READER, right? I mean, I read all the time, everywhere, every day, a book a week. But most of the time the book I'm reading isSo listen. Look. I am a READER, right? I mean, I read all the time, everywhere, every day, a book a week. But most of the time the book I'm reading is a dull throb beneath my fingers, a soft hum behind my eyes, a lovely way to spend a bit of time in between things as I meander through my life. You know? It's something I adore, but softly, passively, and often forgetfully—very nice while it's happening, but flitting away quickly after I'm on to the next.
And then sometimes there is a book that is more like a red hot fucking coal, a thrum nearly audible whenever I'm close to it, a magnetic pull that stops me doing anything else and zings me back so strongly that I just want to bury myself in its tinnitus at all times—five minutes in line a the bank, two minutes in the elevator, thirty seconds while my coffee date checks her email—gorging myself with sentences and paragraphs until the whole world recedes and shrivels into flat black-and-white nothing.
This, this, this is one of those books. It's a book that bracingly reaffirms my faith in literature, making me endlessly astonished by its power and poise and brilliance. I know I am constantly chided for hyperbole, but this is truly one of the greatest books I've ever read.
Probably it's a result of the endless march of mediocre books that plague the publishing industry these days—self-pub and traditional; I'm holding the major presses hella accountable too—but a book like this, so full and deep and flawlessly constructed, is just such a shock, such a pure clear joy. Every element is fucking perfect. Every element, truly! The plot, the characters, the pacing, the tone, all the little details, so so many tiny details, all perfectly, astonishingly slotted into place; the patois and the slang and the dialogue and the descriptions, oh my god the descriptions, from a smile to a chandelier to a mood; even the goddamn chapter epigraphs, which, who even reads those? But they're perfect, she's perfect, this book is just a knock-down, drag-out wonder.
And it covers so much ground, with no shortcuts: from the Upper West Side moneyed elite to gambling addicts in the suburbs of Vegas, from a Lower East Side drug den for decadents gone to seed to the charming Christmastime streets of Amsterdam. Nothing is two-dimensional: if a characters restores furniture, you will learn so goddamn much about wood and veneers and myriad adherents; if another is a sailor, you will feel the wind in your hair and the goddamn spray of surf on your cheeks.
Philosophy, art history, baccarat, heroin. Proust, childhood bullies, Russian drug-dealers. The cut of a jewel, the play of light through a crooked blind. The way a small dog remembers someone it hasn't seen in ten years. The way the very rich handle mental illness in the family. The way a teenage boy feels after taking acid for the first time. The bonds between people that last a lifetime, many lifetimes. The power of art to change a life, to change a million lives; the immortality of a work of art and the line of beauty that connects generation after generation of appreciators. How it feels to be always and ever in love with the wrong person—and how perfect and perfectly flawed she is, or he is, all the same. The way people age. The way people cling to each other at the wrongest of times, in the unlikeliest ways. The way people talk, my god, there is a Russian character (probably the best character in the book) who learned to speak English in Australia and you can really hear that fucking incomprehensible accent, the hitch of verbs mis-conjugated in just the right ways, the tossing out of slang words in four different languages, so casual and so perfectly apt. The way a life is made of recurrences, circlings back and back, openings out and out and out.
What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted—? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all that blandly held common virtues and instead straight toward a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster? If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to run away? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Or is it better to throw yourself headfirst and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?
Five stars, five hundred stars, five million. ALL THE GODDAMN STARS FOR DONNA TARTT FOREVER. ...more
This is one of the most intense books I have ever read. But it's almost like it isn't trying to be intense; it's written in these short little snips—aThis is one of the most intense books I have ever read. But it's almost like it isn't trying to be intense; it's written in these short little snips—a quote here, a paragraph there, a page and a half next—flowing from subject to subject, at a constant remove, an increasing-then-releasing philosophical distance, twisting in and around on itself (what a perfect cover design, BTW), yanking you into and out of its intensity so many times that it leaves you breathless.
This is Nick Flynn's memoir of co-producing a movie based on his previous memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. So it's a memoir of a memoir of a memoir. Which, I don't really think that's ever been done before, has it?
And the original memoir—to give the briefest, most reductive summary—is about Nick's time, after his mother's suicide, of becoming an alcoholic and drug addict, of living alone on a boat, of working in a homeless shelter for years until the day that his father, whom he hasn't seen in like a decade, wanders in in search of a room. It then proceeds to catalogue several years in the lives of Nick and his father (delusions of grandeur, a frightening mess, often psychotic and abusive and always unstable). Dad getting kicked out of the shelter (again) for being psychotic and abusive and unstable, Nick finding Dad sleeping on the street in the snow, Nick finding Dad a apartment, Dad crumbling and crazying further, Nick stumbling through his own erratic love life and consuming addictions, on and on and on.
Here is the question that this book asks, that the writing of this book and the living of its story forced the writer through: What would it be like to watch a movie being made of your life?
For most of us: disassociating and megalomaniac probably, in turns.
But what would it be like to watch a movie being made, say, of your mother's suicide and your dubious self-distancing from your father's dissolution? What if you had to not just watch Julianne Moore read your mother's suicide note and then shoot herself in the chest, but then give her notes on the tone of her voice, the quaver in the hand with which she holds the pen, the gun? What if you had to listen to the cruelest, most damning things your father ever screamed at you spew forth from the mouth of Robert De Niro, after bringing him to visit the shelter you once were complicit in kicking your father out of? What if you had to tell the props mistress what the pipe you used to smoke crack out of looked like, to hold its replica in your hand, after years of being clean and sober? How could you live through reliving the rawest, most harrowing moments of your life, your deepest sorrows actualized before you, take after take after take?
Does that give you some small idea about the intensity of this book?
And that's not all, not by a long long way. The book is also a thematic triptych, with the two other prongs being 1) an endlessly unspooling meditation on psychological and physical trauma and the recovery from same, with quotes and asides from literature, from history, from philosophy, and 2) the history of a glass-blowing family whose life's work was to make, out of glass, all the flowers in the (then-)known world—many of which are still on display in a museum in Boston where Nick's mom used to bring him as a child.
Around and around and around.
I only just closed the book minutes ago, so forgive me if I'm still reeling, still catching my breath, still parsing my overflowed emotions. I haven't yet gone back to reread all the gorgeous sentences I underlined, all the brain-twisting paragraphs I circled for return and reflection, all the heart-rending pages I dog-eared to quote from while trying to explain what a fiercely horrifying and spectacularly affecting book this is. I don't think I can go back in just yet. I will soon, I suppose, once the shimmer has worn off—but for now I'm going to go ride my bike around in the dark and try to process....more
Book #7 for Jugs & Capes! read a cleaner version of this review on CCLaP!
pre-read: I ordered this online and it arrived today -- not in a padded envelBook #7 for Jugs & Capes! read a cleaner version of this review on CCLaP!
pre-read: I ordered this online and it arrived today -- not in a padded envelope, as is customary, but in a big-ass box. I should have understood then, but not until I sliced the box open did I realize just how massive this thing is. Good grief! I read on the subway, for heaven's sake; I need my books to be portable! So obviously I took a steak knife and some old Vice magazine covers and DIY'd it into three somewhat more manageable volumes. I haven't had to do that since Infinite Jest!
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post-read: Here is something that I have never thought about before: what is the onomatopoeic rendering of a sword pulled fast out of its...what is it, scabbard? Give up? It's SHING! I mean, of course it is, right? But who knew?
That was my first roundaboutly clever way of saying omg omg omg Jeff Smith is a fucking genius.
Here is my second, and it involves a visual aid: Just prior to the below panel, Bone has been told (by several people) that "winter comes on fast in these parts." Then what happens? This:
[image]
Yeah. Jeff Smith, man. Fucking genius.
Now I will talk about the book itself. As with a handful of amazing books I've read lately (The Instructions, for one; also Raising Demons), if you'd given me a plot synopsis before I'd started, I probably would not have been particularly inclined to pick this up. A trio of strange smooth androgynous bone creatures accidentally become part of an ancient war between the Dragons, the people of the Valley, and the God of the Locusts, and go on a quest to find the Crown of Horns, dodging Rat Creatures and Ghost Circles, aiding and abetted by by a sexy young farmhand and her ornery grandmother? Um, no thanks. I hate it when regular words get elevated via random capitalization.
But this, man, holy fuck. This is unquestionably and irrepressibly riveting, engaging, fascinating. There's an awesomely compelling plot, solid mythology and history, terrific characters, an amazingly vast scope, fantastic art, a pitch-perfect balance at all times between pathos / humor, action / explication, dialogue / art, cute animals / bloody swordfights... Man. Wow.
A couple other things. In college I took a course on Lord of the Rings, and one of the things we discussed was how the language of the trilogy subtly reinforces the path of the books from sort of light middle-grade fantasy in the beginning to a high-art, mature epic by the end. I would say a similar thing happens in Bone, where it starts out all kind of silly fun and games, but the book and the plot and the characters all elevate and expand as things proceed, opening and blooming into this vast, mature epic scope.
Also, not only does this book pass the Bechdel Test (with flying colors), it's basically all women. The hero is a woman. Her great teacher is a woman. [Small by cryptic spoiler:] Even the villain is a woman! In addition -- this I didn't come up with myself; thanks Jugs & Capes girls -- there is basically no romantic subplot. How often does that happen in fantasy? I'd say close to never. But here, our heroine Thorn is way too busy being brilliant and strong and savvy and kicking ass and saving the fucking world to bother with something so trivial as whom to kiss. Yeah!
Okay okay, enough. But jeesh, what a brilliant, spectacular book. Who cares that it's too big to carry anywhere? Who cares that it's written for kids? Who cares that it's epic fantasy? It's just fuckin' stunning. ...more
Also: this is my second review for CCLaP, and my first in a year-long series reviewing graphic novels. W00t!
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This is the fibook #9 for Jugs & Capes!
Also: this is my second review for CCLaP, and my first in a year-long series reviewing graphic novels. W00t!
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This is the first in an essay series I'll be doing for CCLaP called "Jugs & Capes," where I look at graphic novels from a girl's point of view. I'm not going to say a "feminist" point of view, because I think that's a complicated word, one which any thinking woman has a complicated relationship with. And as I haven't got any kind of background in gender studies or feminist theory, I don't feel comfortable talking about what feminists think of this book or that one. I do, however, feel quite comfortable talking about what I think about something, so in this series I will happily do just that.
Asterios Polyp is a lush, fascinating, complex book. But it's that brilliant kind of complex which can be enjoyed on many levels, like Lolita, say, or The Metamorphosis, where, if you'd like, you can derive great enjoyment from the story on the surface, without doing a whole lot of delving. Or, if you're so inclined, you can peel back layers and study the symbolism and wordplay and big ideas, thus gaining a fuller, more multifaceted understanding of this deeply layered text.
We meet Asterios Polyp in the middle of a lightning storm. He is rumpled and exhausted, lying in bed in his luxurious but extremely messy apartment, watching what we assume to be pornography (we hear what is being said, but do not see the picture). Then a blinding flash of lightning illuminates the entire page, and we see that Asterios's building has caught fire. He makes a desperate search of his rooms, grabbing a few small items--a lighter, a pocketknife, and a watch--and dashes out into the storm. Over two lurid pages, we watch his apartment burn.
After this dramatic introduction, we begin to get to know Asterios. He is an architecture professor, but a "paper architect," meaning that none of his designs have ever been built. He has always been something of an aloof genius. He had a twin brother who died in the womb, and who will be our narrator throughout the book. He was married to a sculptor and fellow professor named Hana.
Asterios stands in the rain for a little while, watching his apartment burn, and then he goes to the Greyhound station and buys a ticket that costs everything he has in his walled. He rides until he gets to a small town, where he takes a job as a mechanic, and rents a room from his boss, a big man who lives with his voluptuous wife and their pudgy son. Asterios settles into small-town life, building a treehouse with his boss, discussing spirituality with his boss's wife, going to see a local band in a local bar. Everything he does is tinged with melancholy, with regret. Asterios is clearly running away from his past, but also trying to make some sense of it. The story opens out and out, in short vignettes, the present interspersed with flashbacks, dreams, and meandering philosophical asides.
Everything about Asterios Polyp is dense, and slow, and meticulously planned and executed. It is easily the most beautiful graphic novel I've ever seen. Each vignette has a specific palate, most using only two or three colors at a time--in fact, it isn't until the book's very last chapter that Mazzucchelli uses full four-color spreads--and there is no black in the book at all. Each character's speech is written in a unique font, one which is clearly representative of that person's personality. The story itself is full and rich, the characters multifaceted and real, and everything is augmented and reified by frequent digressions, both visual and described, on perception, human behavior, physics, philosophy, mythology, spirituality, metaphysics, and on and on.
The whole story is, of course, unraveling the mystery of Hana.
Early on, during an aside, Mazzucchelli presents a random group of people, each drawn in a different style and color, as a visual representation of how unique every person is. In the group (we find out later) is Hana, rendered in swirling, shadowy pink, and Asterios, in stark, angular blue. This turns out to be a running motif, and later, during Asterios and Hana's first meeting, his blue outlines begin to fill with pink haze, and her pink shadows become outlined in blue, until they both have nearly the same appearance. Much later, when they begin to argue, their realistic forms melt back into these elementals, he once again empty and blue, she returning to unbounded pink, demonstrating that, no matter how close two people can become, they are always, at heart, fundamentally strange to one another. This is of course terribly difficult to describe, and is a superb argument for the supremacy of the graphic novel form in this book.
On that subject, I will briefly describe another small section, one of the novel's most famous. It is an eight-page spread, with almost no words. The traditional panel structure is abandoned, in favor of three somewhat parallel rows of small boxes. The rows in the middle tell a consistent, simple story, wherein Hana has lost the puff of a Q-tip inside her ear, and has a mild panic until Asterios removes it with a tweezer. Above and below this throughline are a constellation of tiny instances of Hana's corporeal life: brushing her teeth, clipping her nails, shaving, vomiting, eating, dressing, undressing, masturbating, snoring, drinking, crying, laughing, leaving, smiling. It is one of the most stunning, affecting ways to render the memory of life's unnoticed moments, Asterios recalling Hana in all of her physical glory, beautiful and rumpled, joyful and sick, hungry and dirty. It is so humanizing, so plaintive, so shockingly mundane that it elevates Hana to something of a mythical plane. It's something that could never be done in prose, and to me it is the beating heart of the novel--echoed and augmented later by a pitch-perfect, harrowing, devastating, wordless dream sequence, which is rendered as an intricate dance opera.
I've read criticism of this book that takes the opposite view of the Hana montage, accusing Mazzucchelli as reducing her to a plot device, used merely to represent Asterios's development and emotional journey. But I think that's an unfair claim. Hana is a fully developed character--as is the book's whole supporting cast, most of whom are generally more sympathetically than Asterios himself. Certainly Hana is slightly romanticized, but this is a story told through a man who is desperately longing for the life--and the woman--he once had. I don't believe romanticization is inherently reductive, and I don't believe that Hana's character was secondary or subservient to Asterios's.
There is so much more to say about this dense, gorgeous, intricate book, but I've run out of space and steam. I couldn't recommend it more highly, though; this and Fun Home are the most astonishing graphic novels--and among the most astonishing books of any kind--I've ever come across. ...more
Third read, Nov ’17: My god, I love this book so much it makes me feel kind of crazy.
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Nov ’10: Karen & I went to see Adam Levin read last night andThird read, Nov ’17: My god, I love this book so much it makes me feel kind of crazy.
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Nov ’10: Karen & I went to see Adam Levin read last night and he was great, not to mention ridiculously cool & nice. He is also the second author I've met who hugged me when he found out I was his copyeditor (Deb Olin Unferth, who is also fantastic, was the first). As if I could have liked him more! Shit you guys, read this fucking book already and make the man rich & famous.
also: for anyone still on the fence about trying this -- especially those with whom I've lost reliability because I so overly effusively love everything -- check out this essay compiled from the Rumpus Book Club discussions. It's very detailed and measured and illuminating, although a bit spoilery.
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Oct: Ooh, I just found out that this book is on the shelves now, so I feel like it's okay to expand my review a smidge.
First I will say again: holy moly, this is fucking stupendous. Totally unlike anything I've ever read before. it's the story of Gurion Maccabee, a ten-year-old Hebrew scholar and brilliant, brilliant boy, whom many of his friends (and also some grownups) believe is the messiah. It's absolutely steeped in Jewish philosophy, which believe me, I would have considered a huge turnoff if someone'd told me that that was what I was getting into, but it is just fascinating the way it's done here. (n.b.: I'm not anti-Semitic or anything; I'm a Jew by birth myself, but I just don't tend to gravitate toward religiously expounding books.)
Anyway, Gurion's dad is a fallen Chasid and his mom is an Ethiopian Jew who was a sniper or secret agent or something in Israel, and dad has taught Gurion to be an intense scholar and mom has taught him to be a serious fighter. The parents are thrilling characters, sexy and brilliant and terrifically fun. But most of the story actually takes place at Gurion's school, a last-resort school for fuck-up kids, because he's been kicked out of three other schools in a row for inciting and participating in serious violence. The whole book is written sort of as his scripture, as he rallies and trains his troops, then foments and carries out the Gurionic War against those who would keep down the Israelites with draconian rules and unjust punishments. The kids in the school, and especially Gurion's inner circle, are just amazingly complexly realized characters, so full and fascinating and devastating and fucking real. His girlfriend Eliza June and his best friends Benji (a gentile and a thug and in his own way even more brilliant than Gurion) and Eli (a beautiful and terribly sad transfer student and scholar who is it turns out so strong)... oh god, they are just so goddamn good.
I may have mentioned that the book is over a thousand pages, so obvs I've told you basically nothing at all so far. But each character is a wonder. The dialogue is phenomenal. The theology, rather than being a pedantic distraction, is thrilling. The scope is massive. I don't even know.
Obvs it's impossible to describe truly unique works of literature, and obvs I've done a bad job. But I am sad to say that I also think the promo copy does the book a bit of a disservice by name-dropping DFW and Philip Roth. I mean, it's like they went, "Uh, the book is really long and weird...compare to DFW! And it's super-Jewy...compare to Philip Roth!" Not to say that there isn't maybe a little something to the comparisons—it is long and weird and super-Jewy—but that just seems lazy to me. Adam Levin is his very own brand of insanely awesome, is all I mean.
Anyway, fuck. I'm getting shivers just thinking about this book. I can't wait to read it again.
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June: Holy shit, you guys, this one is going to blow your fucking minds. Brilliant, sprawling, edifying, invigorating, devastating, dreamlike, utterly unique, just totally spellbindingly spectacular.... It's over a thousand pages and still too short. I don't even know what to say....more
I'm too tired to organize my thoughts into coherent paragraphs, so instead here's a numbered list thingy, sorry if it's lacking in artistry.
1. I'm aboI'm too tired to organize my thoughts into coherent paragraphs, so instead here's a numbered list thingy, sorry if it's lacking in artistry.
1. I'm about 99 percent sure I've read this before, but I can't remember much of anything about it. When I went to my library to find something else today, this just leapt off the shelf at me, so.
2. Not many books seriously grab you with the first five or ten pages; this one had me riveted by the end of the first paragraph.
3. Jim Dodge –- like Pynchon, though most of you don't believe me –- is so electrifyingly fun to read. Something amazing just shines through every paragraph.
4. Re: 2, that first amazing chapter? It involves a sixteen-year-old pregnant orphan breaking a nun's jaw. If that doesn't make you want to run out and get this book, don't bother reading the rest of this review.
5. I'm going to call this book mystical realism. I think this is distinct from magical realism because the first three quarters of the book is totally grounded in the consensus version of reality (that's good, right? I got it from Atmospheric Disturbances). But even when it veers into the mystical/magical, it's a shift that is wholly believable because of all of the mystical shit that went on before.
6. Since you probably don't have any clue what I'm talking about, I'll do a quick summary. This is the story of Daniel Pearce. He is the kid who the woman in points 2 and 4 is pregnant with. He grows up in a totally loving and wholly unorthodox environment, as his mom sort of runs a safe house for outlaws (but the honorable kind, the fascinating and brilliant and good kind). Everything is cool until mom is killed when Daniel is fourteen. After that he is taken in by the people for whom his mom ran the safe house: AMO, a loose network of alchemists, magicians, and outlaws. He falls under the tutelage of a series of incredible men and women, who each teach him various amazing skills (meditation and waiting, safecracking, drug and sex appreciation, poker and gambling, disguise, and finally vanishing). You realize that he is amassing the lessons he will need for the quest he's about to embark upon, on which he will both search for his mother's killer and steal a six-pound round diamond from the CIA.
7. I was going to say that this is a bildungsroman, but then I checked Wikipedia, and I guess it's actually a künstlerroman. Regardless, it's a sensational story of an incredible journey undertaken by an amazing hero and populated by a stunning array of fantastic supporting cast members.
8. The book is introduced by Thomas Pynchon.
9. Jim Dodge has a spectacular writing style, combining totally believable dialogue with amazing characters and plenty of beautiful description. As I said earlier, there's a certain kind of author who you can tell just had so much fun writing that you can't help but be just as enthused to read it.
I finished this book ages ago, but alas I have not had time to do up a proper review. It was spectacular, though. More soon, I swear.
*******
Reasons wh I finished this book ages ago, but alas I have not had time to do up a proper review. It was spectacular, though. More soon, I swear.
*******
Reasons why I already adore this book, even though I'm less than fifty pages in:
1. As I learned from bookfriend Brian, the other edition has a photo of a man on the cover, which it turns out (unbeknownst even to him) is Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snickett, a.k.a. my boyfriend.
2. The chapter titles are, depending on your preference, either twee and pretentious or quirky and adorable. Example: "How long a heart attack takes over three hundred feet, how much a spider's life weighs, why a sad man writes to the cruel river, and what magic the Comrade in Chief of the unfinished can work."
3. The author in his back-cover photo looks just like that shrieking gay guy from American Idol who should have won but didn't, except a little less manufactured goth and a little more hipster adorable.
4. There is already a character who is in love with a river, another who wants to be Comrade in Chief of unfinished works and things never being over, and another who is called Auntie Typhoon because she moves so fast and with so much energy....more
Oh really, I don't know what to say. This book is magnificent, just magnificent, and this close to unbearably sad, most of it. The stories are incrediOh really, I don't know what to say. This book is magnificent, just magnificent, and this close to unbearably sad, most of it. The stories are incredible, incredibly moving. The book itself is as gorgeous as the stories. The illustrations (minus one or two artists) are beautiful, and beautifully compliment the stories. The thick pages and fuzzy cover and big type and pretty pictures... it all combines to really force you to savor every aching minute of each shockingly great story. And I don't even like hardcover books! And I hate short stories!
It's late, I'm tired, and you probably already know whether you are going to love this book so it's not like I need to convince anyone. But good grief I loved this book. I already want to read it again. And again and again, any time I want to be a little sadder and a little more hopeful....more
I... well, I have to admit that I don't exactly know what to say here. This book was so good. So... so haunting and lush and aching and gorgeous and aI... well, I have to admit that I don't exactly know what to say here. This book was so good. So... so haunting and lush and aching and gorgeous and atmospheric and devastating and suddenly, at times, shockingly sweet and wonderful and redemptive and pure.
I don't want to tell you about the plot, except to say that it provided the perfect shadowy structure on which to hang these beautiful, amazing, outsidery characters. And I don't want to tell you about the characters, because they're too lovely for me to tarnish by synopsizing them here. And I know, I know, that everyone thinks I'm too gush-y, too overly adulatory and all-forgiving and consistently amazed, to be taken seriously when I give a glowingly exuberant recommendation.
So what do I do? I want to write something that makes everyone dive for this book immediately. But I want to do it without giving anything away, without cheapening the staggering inventiveness, the like-nothing-else-ever-ity of The Boy Detective Fails.
I actually finished the book days ago and have been trying to come up with a way to do this review ever since. I haven't come up with it yet. Maybe at some point I will, and then I'll update this to say the cleverest, spot-on-est things, the secret magic words that will make you all click open a new tab and buy this book right now, so you can shudder too, and gasp too, and fall in love with it too.
Until then, I guess you'll have to take my wide-eyed, hyperbolic but earnest word for it....more
I've said before that Vice at this point has been so cool for so long that it's almost no longer cool to admit to liking it. But as I have also said bI've said before that Vice at this point has been so cool for so long that it's almost no longer cool to admit to liking it. But as I have also said before, I. Don't. Fucking. Care. Vice is sheer and utter genius. There is no amount of irony or hipsterism or band-wagonry that could make me stop loving it.
So after the DOs and DON'Ts book, I just had to put this back in the bathroom. And how-lee shit, I forgot how mind-bogglingly incredible it is. After an interview with the three of them at the beginning, which reminds you just how scummy, scuzzy, drug-addled, and amazing they all are, we are right into "The Vice Guide to Eating Out." (No, kids, we're not talking about going to restaurants.) I realize I may be hazing into flaggable territory here (although I think it would be wrong to talk about Vice without getting filthy), but the advice given is so good, so clever, so dirtily, dirtily brilliant.... well, let's just say it kinda makes me want to find a lady to try it out on.
I will try not to detail every single article as I go through this masterpiece, but c'mon. The next one is "The Vice Guide to Sucking..." well, you know....more
There are no words to express how much I adore this schadenfreudian orgy, or my undying devotion to Vice magazine and Gavin McInnes, even though he isThere are no words to express how much I adore this schadenfreudian orgy, or my undying devotion to Vice magazine and Gavin McInnes, even though he is clearly a dangerous, drug-addled, unbelievably mean prick, and did you hear that Vice finally kicked him out? Which is totally fucked, since he was one of the founding members and all that. Anyway, this book makes me HOWL with amazement, every goddamn time I read it. Please go buy it, then you'll understand.
In case you haven't seen this book or the magazine, I just want to give you a taste of it. I realize that it's a little silly without the photos, but I will try to describe.
WARNING: If you are easily offended, please fuck off to another review.
* DON'T [a pic of a skinny girl in real low jeans, viewed from behind, with the whole top of her thong undies showing:] The only guys that are into thongs are the guys that still think girls don't poo. The rest of us are like "get your fucking shit rag out of my face lady." Why don't you wear some used tampons as earrings while you're at it??
* DO [pic of a clean-cut guy in a black v-neck sweater over a pink button down:] Now we know what Outkast were talking about when they said "so fresh and so clean." You almost have to be a virgin to rock a matching pink belt and tie, but he's probably not. He probably gets a bananas amount of blow jobs.
* DON'T [pic of a guy in a jaunty hat, biting his bottom lip & looking upwards:] Professional dancers have got to go. They're always wiggling around like they have to go pee, even when they're at the dinner table. Then "Ring My Bell" comes on and they lean over going, "I don't know how you can sit still like that." Get the fuck away from me, snakey man.
* DO [pic of a cute girl with red terry-cloth shorts & a cut up black t-shirt:] These 70s high school shorts are going to be the death of all Western males this summer. Terry towel ones, Howe lee sheet. Can you invent some split crotch ones so we can do it without you taking them off?
* DON'T [pic of a chubby guy in a red t-shirt with a yellow lightning bold on it, holding a tiny white dog:] Guy, The Flash was the fastest man alive. You're a fat pig with a faggy dog. Get a shirt with food on it or something. Right now you're a parody of how slow you are.
*DO [umm, girl in a weird face-hood, all black clothes but white gloves, and a cardboard stereo hanging around her neck:] You know when you get really baked and you do a funny dance around the living room that makes your sister laugh so hard she pees herself? Some people like that moment so much they decide to do it forever.
* DON'T [woman listing dangerously, prob about to fall over:] Not since the alchemists has one group of people tried so hard to defy science. Dear junkies: You cannot sleep standing up!
This really is one of my all-time most favorite book ever. Or wait, that can't be true. Can that be true? It might be true. Should I hate myself if that's true? I don't think I care....more
This is one of those books that actually changes the cadence of your thoughts as you read it.... The author's voiWhat a surprising and terrific book!
This is one of those books that actually changes the cadence of your thoughts as you read it.... The author's voice is so intensely urgent, so fervent and sure. Vim is the boy I would have been (and was!) in love with in high school....more
This is another book that makes me want to go back through and knock down all my five-star ratings, so it can be in a class all its own. Honestly and This is another book that makes me want to go back through and knock down all my five-star ratings, so it can be in a class all its own. Honestly and truly one of the most astonishingly beautiful things I've ever read.
Autonauts of the Cosmoroute is a memoir of sorts. Cortázar (the most devastatingly brilliant author of modern times, if you didn't know) and his wife Carol decide to spend thirty-odd days living on the highway connecting Paris to Marseille (for a local reference, it seems rather like the New Jersey Turnpike), in their red Volkswagen van named Fafner, going to two rest areas each day. They set up camp (as it were) at each one, finding the best picnic table at which to write, eat, talk, and lounge in the sun, taking time to explore the wilds of each locale. It's written as a travelog, with a list of how many shops, bathrooms, trees, waste bins, etc., etc., etc. can be found in each, and they include things like the temperature, which direction Fafner faces, and what they eat each day.
If this sounds a little childish and silly, that's exactly the point. Cortázar is a literary icon, an undeniable genius, but here we see him only as a man, a boyish man at that, impish and gleeful and silly, and his wonderful wife the same. It is just these two people, relishing the strangeness of the world in which they've decided to live, and the sheer joy of one another's company. It is absolutely stunning to witness the immense sense of wonder that they bring to even the most mundane endeavors, how much joy and love suffuses each of their days. This book encompases so much more than insipid handles like memoir or essay; it is a love story to each other, to friends, to every day, to the amazement that is the world. I realize I may have hazed into corniness here, but this book is like nothing else. It's like spending a month in a van with two of the most fascinating, happy, brilliant people you'll never be lucky enough to meet.
If I could, I would send a copy of this book to everyone I have ever loved, and everyone who needs to be reminded of how thrilling the world can be.
I guess I'm a little too young to have known better... What I though I knew of Peanuts was the tired, same-ten-or-so punch lines of this strip in the I guess I'm a little too young to have known better... What I though I knew of Peanuts was the tired, same-ten-or-so punch lines of this strip in the Sunday Washington Post in the '90s. I always thought it was pretty stale and insipid.
When I read this collection, however, I was blown away. These early strips are punchy, bitingly clever, hilarious, and mean -- a clear predecessor to Calvin & Hobbes, my most beloved comic strip ever. Highly impressive....more
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