currently: Jorge Luis Borges
There are some stunningly stunning passages in White Noise. Here, a brief sampling:
"Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we need them, we depend on them. As long as it happens somewhere else. This is where California comes in. Mudslides, brush fires, coastal erosion, earthquakes, mass killings, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves whatever is gets. Californians invented the concept of lifestyle. That alone merits their doom."
"For most people there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is."
"...it is possible to be homesick for a place even when you're there."
I would even edit that to nostalgic for a place even when you're there. I miss Bavaria already.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
applause, acclaim, and first pages
currently: Don DeLillo
There is a specific pleasure to beginning a book about which one knows nothing and being instantly taken in by it. Themes, motifs, even plot have only barely begun to emerge; what I am relaxing into is the deep satisfaction of a story well told. More on White Noise later, I predict.
Meanwhile, I continue to stew over the general approbation for the works of Michael Chabon. I've only read Wonder Boys and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but I was not favorably impressed by either. Perhaps I wouldn't be so disparaging of Chabon's particular brand of pop-lit were it not for the fact that I sense he deeply wants to be taken seriously. After all, the backdrop of Kavalier and Clay is WWII and the Holocaust. But the Holocaust is not taken very seriously in this book - I don't mean to suggest it's mocked, merely overlooked, for the most part, overshadowed by the titular characters and their titular adventures. When the book does deal with Death, it deals with the Bitter Irony of Death, the Tragedy of Existence, etc., in a heavy-handed and self-serious way that made me grind my teeth more than a little. To be frank, I've been stewing over it off and on since December. To be franker, I think Chabon should get out of the fiction business, and into the screenwriting world where he so obviously belongs and even more obviously longs to be. The two novels I've read are over-plotted and under-written. His prose is indistinguishable and undistinguished. He spends a great deal of time describing people's physical appearance and accoutrement, but they do not stay in the mind's eye. I cannot call up a single one of them. While I feel one of the main reasons Zadie Smith has so often been called Dickensian is the tangibility of her characters, Chabon's are more like paper dolls that he dresses differently for each chapter.
I suppose I could just quit getting all hot under the collar about it. But I wonder when our idea of literature (he did get the Pulitzer*) adjusted to mean the stringing together of unusual, entertaining episodes, and stopped requiring depth? Or original style? It's not that I think Great Literature can't also be entertaining - quite the contrary, I think it should. But I also think it should offer so much more. I think my real grump about Chabon stems from the immense disappointment I always feel when my vast, towering hopes for a writer new to me are crushed by the writer's works.
Mr. DeLillo, my fingers are crossed.
*on the other hand, a quick glance at the past winners suggests that I would have much to discuss with the judges
There is a specific pleasure to beginning a book about which one knows nothing and being instantly taken in by it. Themes, motifs, even plot have only barely begun to emerge; what I am relaxing into is the deep satisfaction of a story well told. More on White Noise later, I predict.
Meanwhile, I continue to stew over the general approbation for the works of Michael Chabon. I've only read Wonder Boys and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but I was not favorably impressed by either. Perhaps I wouldn't be so disparaging of Chabon's particular brand of pop-lit were it not for the fact that I sense he deeply wants to be taken seriously. After all, the backdrop of Kavalier and Clay is WWII and the Holocaust. But the Holocaust is not taken very seriously in this book - I don't mean to suggest it's mocked, merely overlooked, for the most part, overshadowed by the titular characters and their titular adventures. When the book does deal with Death, it deals with the Bitter Irony of Death, the Tragedy of Existence, etc., in a heavy-handed and self-serious way that made me grind my teeth more than a little. To be frank, I've been stewing over it off and on since December. To be franker, I think Chabon should get out of the fiction business, and into the screenwriting world where he so obviously belongs and even more obviously longs to be. The two novels I've read are over-plotted and under-written. His prose is indistinguishable and undistinguished. He spends a great deal of time describing people's physical appearance and accoutrement, but they do not stay in the mind's eye. I cannot call up a single one of them. While I feel one of the main reasons Zadie Smith has so often been called Dickensian is the tangibility of her characters, Chabon's are more like paper dolls that he dresses differently for each chapter.
I suppose I could just quit getting all hot under the collar about it. But I wonder when our idea of literature (he did get the Pulitzer*) adjusted to mean the stringing together of unusual, entertaining episodes, and stopped requiring depth? Or original style? It's not that I think Great Literature can't also be entertaining - quite the contrary, I think it should. But I also think it should offer so much more. I think my real grump about Chabon stems from the immense disappointment I always feel when my vast, towering hopes for a writer new to me are crushed by the writer's works.
Mr. DeLillo, my fingers are crossed.
*on the other hand, a quick glance at the past winners suggests that I would have much to discuss with the judges
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