Less - Andrew Sean Greer (2017)

Less won the 2018 Pulitzer prize over The House of Broken Angels and others. There are many Pulitzers to be won. The journalism awards have been well publicized, but there are so many different kinds (posthumous recognition for Flying Houses in 2019 for Criticism?). Actually House of Broken Angels is not listed as a finalist but The Idiot is (I had heard a bit about that) as is In the Distance (I had not heard about that). Maybe they call nominations finalists until there is a winner, and the two runners up become the actual finalists. I didn't read the other "finalists" anyways so no point in comparison, but yes, I found Less more compelling than HOBA. This is probably not the most award-worthy opening to a review but as one should know, we need to talk about the ways we find out about books and the reasons we pick them up. And we like fun facts (such as seeing previous subjects The Goldfinch and The Pale King and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and The Corrections and American Pastoral and Underworld  in prize history).

Less is a character study of Arthur Less, a novelist about to turn 50, who has accepted a series of invitations for various international literary events in order to distract himself from the marriage of his ex-boyfriend of 9 years, to which he was also invited. He travels from his home in San Francisco to New York, Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan. He has to interview a more popular sci-fi writer, attend a prize ceremony, teach a 5 week class, touch up his work-in-progress at a retreat, and write an article on Japanese cuisine. Like HOBA, it's an easy plot to relay. Unlike HOBA, the identity of the narrator is an ongoing mystery, and eventually revealed. I will make no comment on the narrator except that I sort of guessed their identity and felt slightly disappointed. It is a conventional novel after all. It is not a Bad Ending, and I need not append spoilers beneath asterisks to discuss it. Ambivalence is sometimes difficult to justify, and here the ending is ultimately, quite bittersweet and comforting. So this goes into the "highly recommended but not Best Books" category.

You know what I never did with FH was come up with a set formula for a review. Like, pararaph 1 is how i came to read the subject, paragraph 2 is a plot overview, and here is paragraph 3, usually a set up for an excerpt. This is a highly-excerptable book. It's good most of the way through (the only reason it doesn't make Best Books is that it started to lose some of it's energy in the Morocco/India chapters--though the character that turns 50 right before Less is perhaps the greatest portrait) and it seems like the movie rights should have been scooped up swiftly. Movies about writers aren't always great, but I have to believe this could make for a very fun, highly-stylized film. Interesting topic: what are the best movies about writers? Wonder Boys, The Lost Weekend...I digress.

A word should be said about diversity. Maybe it doesn't. But it has been my experience that most people want to read books about people like them. Not anymore. One would believe that now, more than ever, people want to read about people different from themselves, to develop empathy and gain perspective on women, minorities, and other oppressed people (i.e. not cis straight white males). Because this is just a cis gay white male. Here, this is the perfect time for an excerpt:

"Less can think of nothing to say; this attack comes on an undefended flank.

'It is our duty to show something beautiful from our world.  The gay world.  But in your books, you make the characters suffers without reward.  If I didn't know better, I'd think you were Republican.  Kalipso was beautiful.  So full of sorrow.  But incredibly self-hating.  A man washes ashore on an island and has a gay affair for years.  But then he leaves to go find his wife!  You have to do better.  For us.  Inspire us, Arthur.  Aim higher.  I'm so sorry to talk this way, but it had to be said.'

At last Less manages to speak: 'A bad gay?'

Finley fingers a book on the bookcase.  'I'm not the only one who feels this way.  It's been a topic of discussion.'

'But...but...but it's Odysseus,' Less says.  'Returning to Penelope.  That's just how the story goes.'

'Don't forget where you come from, Arthur.'

'Camden, Delaware.'" (144)

This exchange occurs during a brief layover in Paris at a party. It comes from a concerned friend that wants to tell him what everyone says about him behind his back. It's ridiculous and it's meant to be humorous but it functions as a kind of r'aison d'etre for the novel. There is self-hate in Less, but it is not a first-person narrative. There is psychological realism, but it is transmitted through an outside lens. There are suggestions of the identity of the narrator, and if the reader has not figured it out for themselves, it is made obvious in the book's final pages. One could re-read the book to see if it holds up in the same way one could re-watch The Sixth Sense. Still it feels less like a twist that enhances one's appreciation for the story than a device that allows the protagonist to be deprecated without implications of self-loathing.  He's not just obsessed by his exes and his past--he's taking inventory of his life and trying to find a path forward. It still feels like his perspective.

It is not perfect, but it is rightfully lauded for the authenticity of its observations. It's entirely possible that Greer got on Google Earth/Maps and Wikipedia and made up a bunch of stuff, but the extent of the detail makes it seem unlikely. It is the "travelogue novel" par excellence. It is also "literary fiction" to an ironic extreme.  And there are many classic passages:

"A truth must be told.  Arthur Less is no champion in bed.

Anyone would guess, seeing Bastian staring up at Less's window each night, waiting to be buzzed in, that it is the sex that brings him.  But it is not precisely the sex.  The narrator must be trusted to report that Arthur Less is--technically--not a skilled lover.  He possesses, first of all, none of the physical attributes; he is average in every way.  A straightforwardly American man, smiling and blinking with pale lashes.  A handsome face, but otherwise ordinary.  He has also, since his early youth, suffered an anxiety that leaves him sometimes too eager in the sexual act, sometimes not eager enough.  Technically: bad in bed.  And yet--just as a flightless bird will evolve other tactics for survival, Arthur Less has developed other traits.  Like the bird, he is unaware of these.  

He kisses--how do I explain it?  Like someone in love.  Like he has nothing to lose.  Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person.  Only now, only you.  There are some men who have never been kissed like that.  There are some men who discover, after Arthur Less, that they never will be again.  

Even more mystical: his touch casts a curious spell.  There is no other word for it.  Perhaps it is the effect of his being 'someone without skin' that Less can sometimes touch another and send the spark of his own nervous system into theirs.  This was something Robert noticed right away; he said, 'You're a witch, Arthur Less.'  Others, less susceptible, have paid no attention, too intent on their own elaborate needs ('Higher; no, higher; no, HIGHER!').  But Freddy felt it as well.  A minor shock, a lack of air, a brief blackout, perhaps, and back again to see Less's innocent face above him, wreathed in sweat.  It is perhaps a radiation, an emanation of this innocence, this guilelessness, grown white-hot?  Bastian is not immune.  One night, after fumbling adolescently in the hall, they try to undress each other but, outwitted b foreign systems of buttons and closures, end up undressing themselves.  Arthur returns to the bed, where Bastian is waiting, naken and tan, and climbs aboard.  As less does this, he rests one hand on Bastian's chest.  Bastian gasps.  He writhes; his breathing quickens; and after a moment he whispers: 'Was tust du mir an?' (What are you doing to me?) Less has no idea what he is doing." (113-114)

The novel is well-paced and the prose flows elegantly, though at times it feel as if the word "Less" comprises an unusually high-percentage of its total number of words.  The scene near the end that takes place on a video call is a strikingly beautiful, as is the final scene.  There is more to admire in it than many others.  You could do far worse than this for a summer beach book.  I would recommend it especially for that occasion, or any international travel.

Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer (2011)

Now Annihilation is a movie that recently came out with Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tessa Thompson and Oscar Isaac and was directed by Alex Garland, who had previously done Ex Machina.  My dear friend and previous contributor Juan J. Perez suggested that I see it (he saw it twice) and then took this out of the library and we decided to write dueling reviews of it and record a podcast.  I think it's going to be great.

Suffice to say, for the written element of this review, I have mixed opinions on the book, which is often the case.  I am, however, more lukewarm on it than most of the books I come upon by myself.  It is often strange and unsettling and obviously scaled to be written as part of a larger trilogy rather than its own thing.  That said, I do think the Area X trilogy (which Juan has purchased and I would likely ask him to address on the podcast) is likely a stronger work, taken as a whole, rather than the individual part that is Annihilation.  However, what makes this book is interesting is how far it differs from the film.  They are textbook examples of how a novel can be completely transformed (sometimes improved upon) by a film adaptation.  There are elements of the film that are an improvement upon the novel.  Tessa Thompson, for example, does not exist in the novel, so far as I know (she is perhaps closer to the Anthropologist than the Surveyor), and her performance is one of the highlights of the film.  Jennifer Jason Leigh is also fantastic, as she is always is (the same could be said for Natalie Portman).  Yet I would like to see a version of Annihilation where Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the Psychologist as portrayed in the novel.

A note on plot: Annihilation concerns itself with an expedition to a highly-contaminated zone known only as Area X (in the film it is referred to as "the shimmer"). The landscape is framed by a lighthouse and a structure that the main character (the Biologist) believes is a tower, but that snakes underground and is believed to be a tunnel by other members of the expedition.

These are the Anthropologist, the Psychologist and the Surveyor. There is also the Biologist's husband. There are only 5 characters in this book, and one of them is quickly dispatched.

In a nutshell, the team crosses the border and they explore the area and they all end up getting killed (in a manner of speaking). The book is mostly intriguing as an exercise in the sci-fi/mystery hybrid genre. Do not go into it expecting The Sun Also Rises. The Biologist is very robotic. Actually most of the characters are robotic. 

The most affecting parts of the book take place in the past, as she recalls her life with her husband, before and immediately after he returns from Area X. The book is also at its strongest when it unravels the mystery of just how many expeditions have been sent into Area X and over how many years.

It feels unsatisfying because the reader does not really get to the bottom of the Southern Reach, the shadowy government agency responsible for organizing the expeditions to Area X. It feels a lot like the mk ultra experiments from American history and the conspiracy from Stranger Things. 

But do I really want to know? As I've said these types of books are generally not my preferred genre, though 25 years ago, I would have been much more excited by it. (Sphere was a favorite of mine growing up).  Still the alien life form in this book is not as clever as Sphere, though it has an element of intelligence with the Crawler, which scrawls a continuous message in vines, snaking through the tower/tunnel (as opposed to the lighthouse).  Most of the novel takes place in those two places, and the wilderness between, which I believe was said to be influenced by the Everglades.  The writing is generally good, and there are definitely a number of words that I had never heard of before, but sometimes it feels like he's just showing off by using those.  When reading this, you always feel like you're trying to figure something out, or solve the mystery.  The best parts of the book, however, are about the relationship between the Biologist and her husband, such as here, where she is describing being out at a bar with him and his friends:

"Reality encroaches in other ways, too.  At some point during our relationship, my husband began to call me the ghost bird, which was his way of teasing me for not being present enough in his life.  It would be said with a kind of creasing at the corner of his lips that almost formed a thin smile, but in his eyes I could see the reproach.  If we went to bars with his friends, one of his favorite things to do, I would volunteer only what a prisoner might during an interrogation.  They weren't my friends, not really, but also I wasn't in the habit of engaging in small talk, nor in broad talk, as I liked to call it.  I didn't care about politics except in how politics impinged on the environment.  I wasn't religious.  All of my hobbies were bound up in my work.  I lived for the work, and I thrilled with the power of that focus but it was also deeply personal.  I didn't like to talk about my research.  I didn't wear makeup or care about new shoes or the latest music.  I'm sure my husband's friends found me taciturn, or worse.  Perhaps they even found me unsophisticated, or 'strangely uneducated' as I heard one of them say, although I don't know if he was referring to me.
...
'Ghost bird, do you love me?' he whispered once in the dark, before he left for his expedition training, even though he was the ghost.  'Ghost bird, do you need me?' I loved him, but I didn't need him, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be.  A ghost bird might be a hawk in one place, a crow in another, depending on the context.  The sparrow that shot up into the blue sky one morning might transform mid-flight into an osprey the next.  This was the way of things here.  There were no reasons so mighty that they could override the desire to be in accord with the tides and the passage of seasons and the rhythms underlying everything around me." (72-73)

In short, for me the book is at its best (though the dialogue is oddly flat in a way) when it stays more grounded in the real world.  Descriptions of the fantastic are sometimes beautifully rendered, yet I remain strangely personally unaffected.  I don't need to extemporize about my lack of passion for mystery or sci-fi or fantasy novels because this isn't the place to do it.  It's a book I would definitely recommend to anyone that saw the movie if only to shed light on the meaning of what happened--even though the novel and the movie are completely different.  Plus Jennifer Jason Leigh would have been so much more awesome playing this Psychologist.  She hypnotizes the group by saying "consolidation of authority," though the Biologist is immune because she has already been "contaminated" by Area X:

"Her demeanor more assertive than just a moment before, the psychologist said, 'You will retain a memory of having discussed several options with regard to the tunnel.  You will find that you ultimately agreed with me about the best course of action, and that you felt quite confident about this course of action.  You will experience a sensation of calm whenever you think about this decision, and you will remain calm once back inside the tunnel, although you will react to any stimuli as per your training.  You will not take undue risks.
'You will continue to see a structure that is made of coquina and stone.  You will trust your colleagues completely and feel a continued sense of fellowship with them.  When you emerge from the structure, any time you see a bird in flight it will trigger a strong feeling that you are doing the right thing, that that you are in the right place.  When I snap my fingers, you will have no memory of this conversation, but will follow my directives.  You will feel very tired and you will want to retire to your tents to get a good night's sleep before tomorrow's activities.  You will not dream.  You will not have nightmares.'" (22)

Much of the pleasure of the text comes from peeling back the layers of mystery that envelop Area X.  The ending to Annihilation is somewhat anti-climactic, necessarily as it sometimes must be for the opening segment in a planned trilogy.  The ending of the novel is perhaps more satisfying than the movie, because the reader does not feel that someone has pulled over something on them quite the way the viewer may at the ending of the film.  The film is much more ambitious than the novel in many ways, but in a way I found the novel more appealing in its presentation.  That said, as compared to other films, Annihilation is in a class above its peers; the novel is not really something that distinguishes itself within the medium (apart perhaps from its genre-fiction-subsets).  It comes across as a kind of fever dream that is very intriguing and beautifully portrayed, yet ultimately somewhat hollow and manufactured for its positioning as part of a larger work.

Unwifeable - Mandy Stadtmiller (2018)

Unwifeable is a memoir by Mandy Stadtmiller.  Stadtmiller was a recent guest on the WTF podcast.  I probably would not have read the book if I had not heard the episode. The episode effectively functions as a preview of all the most shocking moments in the book, and is a tour de force.  I highly recommend either listening to that episode or reading this book.

I would describe Unwifeable as post-chick lit.  It's still chick-lit, but with an edge of insanity.  It's about basically trying to find Mr. Right at age 30 and beyond, post-divorce.  Stadtmiller cuts a striking figure, and achieves a sort of grandeur in her commitment to fearlessly revealing all of the sketchy details of her romantic life.  She made her living as the weekly writer of a column about dating in the New York Post.  She writes of how she learned to develop boundaries in who she wrote about--her family didn't like when she wrote about them.  The only part of this book that feels a little underdeveloped is the story of what happened in her marriage, which is perhaps out of respect for her ex-husband.

There is a ton of gossip in this book that will satiate basically anyone, though it takes a certain person to want to read it.  There has always been a literary tradition of writing about one's romantic life, but few will do it without the disguise of fiction.  There is something pure and beautiful about writing truthfully on the subject of how fucked up of a person you are, and how you have tried to be better, and Stadtmiller deserves praise for many sections of the book.  She is, however, shameless about name-dropping, and sometimes her funny secret stories about celebrities tend to cheapen the proceedings.  Still it's very amusing to read about her dates with Aaron Sorkin and Keith Olbermann and her pseudo-romances with Moby and Hannibal Buress.  Perhaps the book will be adapted and Andy Dick, Gerard Butler, Courtney Love, Marc Maron, Joy Behar, and John Mayer can all play themselves in Player-like cameos.

There was, however, one glaring typo:

"'Mandy, you are a Kashmir Sapphire,' he writes, 'The famous sapphires of Kashmir are mined from a remote region high in the Great Himalayan mountains of northwestern India.  Lying at an elevation of approximately 150,000 feet.  These sapphires are so beautiful and rare.  Today with the exception of estate sales, fine Kashmir sapphires are virtually unobtainable, mute testimony of the degree to which they are coveted.  They are often categorized as a conundrum gem.  They form an exclusive class of its own.  And once they are cut, they make a beautiful jewel.'" (187)

Perhaps because this is such a beautiful passage, the typo feels more unforgivable.  I did look it up because I started to doubt my knowledge that the highest point on earth is Mt. Everest and that is somewhere just over 27,000 feet.  There is no place at 150,000 feet but the ionosphere.  It should be 15,000.  This, however, is an e-mail from a friend of hers, so perhaps the mistake was preserved.

Around halfway through the book, she references a movement preaching brutal honesty as its core, after being assigned a story on it:

"The piece is ostensibly about a new TV show centered around the concept, and will include an interview with the founder of the movement, Brad Blanton, and then a first-person documentation of my attempts to be 'radically honest.'
But it is Brad Blanton who blows my mind.
I talk to him on the phone, and he is unlike anyone I've ever interviewed.  He will literally tell you anything you want to know--including if he wants to have sex with your sister, the fact that he's let a dog lick peanut butter off his balls, even how much money he makes.  This is the theory of radical honesty.  He calls 'withholding' the most pernicious form of lying.  That is when you try to abide by the mores of polite society by not saying things like that you want to fuck someone's sister.
'Whenever something occurs in the world, there's always what occurred and then there is the story about what occurred, and then there is the meaning made out of the story about what occurred,' he tells me in explaining why most communication--filled with all of its half-truths, twisted perceptions, and withholdings--is so problematic. 'Most people stay lost in the meaning made out of the story.'
It's true.
I don't think about reality: 'I got divorced.' I think about the story I tell about it: 'My ex-husband betrayed me.'  And the meaning I attach to that: 'I am unlovable.  I am unwifeable.  I am a failure.  I am not worth it.'
Brad also forced me to look at some painful truths about my own anger and discomfort.  He tells me that you should just say what you are thinking about someone.  I tell him that I hate when strangers start talking to me about my height.
'So if someone says, "God, you look tall," do you get offended by it still?' he asks me.
'I don't get annoyed,' I say, 'It's just boring.'
'Well, boredom is anger and you haven't expressed your anger sufficiently to all those people who ask you about being tall,' he says.  'You still have a lot of resentment about people--and probably some resentment about being tall.  So when someone says, 'What's it like being so tall?' just say, 'Fuck you!  Eat shit and die!  And I resent you for saying I'm so tall."'
I crack up.  'Then I would appear like this easily hurt social leper,' I say.
Then he reveals the real key, the real magic of what he is preaching.
'You're worried about how you would appear, see?' he says.  'That's what you think your identity is.  It doesn't matter how you appear.  You'll appear differently in another half a minute anyway because people's registry of how you appear changes very dynamically.  For a while, you appear to be a leper of some sort, and a little while later you'll appear to be someone who's very brave and willing to talk about things honestly.  Later on, you'll appear as a kind of person to be trusted because you're not going to be withholding.'" (150-151)

This story most likely informs Stadtmiller's r'aison d'etre, which is, reveal everything in the hopes of helping others with what you've learned along the way.  In this case, she goes on to freak out at a department store clerk for her "shitty attitude."  Apart from this immediate implementation of radical honesty, the entirety of the book is an exercise in the practice, and is all the more worthwhile because of it.

Now only because we've also recently reviewed a memoir that included a Courtney Love anecdote, some excerpt must be included from the section detailing Stadtmiller's friendship with Love, and the ultimate redemption she appears to be experiencing in the culture.  As a student of bankruptcy law, however, I must include what I consider another typo:

"'I'm broke, Courtney,' I say. 'That's why I'm basically stuck at the Post, even if I wanted to leave.  Because I need the paycheck.  I'm barely surviving in New York.  I'm even thinking about doing bankruptcy.'
'Do Chapter 7 if you do it,' she says, without missing a beat.  'Chapter 11 is so pedestrian.'
I have no idea what this means, but she's got a bunch of gold records on the wall, so I'll take her word for it.
'You know, I used to be really broke when I was young,' she says.  'But then I started chanting 'Nam-myoho-renge-kyo,' and within two months I had two million dollars.  I'm serious.  Don't fuck around.  It's the only thing that really works.  Here, let's chant.'" (244-245)

Now it's possible that Courtney Love is referring to actual Chapter 11 business reorganization bankruptcy as pedestrian, but I believe she meant to say Chapter 13.  Granted she does have substantial business holdings but I would not characterize Chapter 11 as pedestrian.

There is not much else I think I can say about this book.  I wrote a note to myself to find an excerpt about "crazy impulses" but that is basically what this entire book is about, also: going through crazy impulses in your 30's and trying to find a piece of stability in this life.  In this case the story has a happy ending, and Stadtmiller appears to have moved her life in a more positive direction.  Yet how can we end reviews of memoirs?  The story is not over and life continues after the memoir.  The book is written in a very conversational tone and its 300 pages flow swiftly.  It will not necessarily go down in history as a classic of the genre but I have to believe that most people will find the majority of it entertaining, and perhaps even eye-opening.

The House of Broken Angels - Luis Alberto Urrea (2018)

The House of Broken Angels is another one of the last several books to be recommended via the New York Times Book Review podcast.  One week, they discussed the novel in the segment about what they were currently reading.  The next week, they had Urrea on as a guest.  The novel sounded intriguing enough so I decided to check it out.  Was it good?  Yes.  Will it make the Best Books list?  No.  Would I recommend it?  Yes.  I have to say yes.  I was about to say "sort of" or "maybe" but I remembered how I was going to compare it to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao favorably.  It is somewhere between that and One Hundred Years of Solitude.  It is not as stylish as either, but it is more reader-friendly than both.

After the book, Urrea adds an author's note which says that while this story is not 100% true, perhaps 95% is true.  There are no Angels, but it does appear to be based off the occasion of his mother's funeral and the last birthday of his dying brother.  It would seem like Little Angel is his stand-in, and Big Angel is his older brother.  

Big Angel and Little Angel are actually named Miguel and Gabriel, I think, but they also say that their father forgot that he had already used the name.  In any case, Big Angel is about 70 or so and dying of cancer.  He is certainly the main character along with Little Angel.  

There is also Perla (his wife), Minnie (his daughter), Cesar (his brother), Lalo (his son), and to an extent other family members La Gloriosa (sister-in-law, mother to Guillermo, who was killed alongside Braulio), Braulio (oldest son, who has a ghostly presence in the novel), Don Antonio (father, who appears as an actual ghost near the beginning of the novel), Marco (Cesar's son), Giovanni (Lalo's son), Ookie (neighbor, who appears to be developmentally disabled), Mama America (mother), Mary-Lu (sister-in-law) and other husbands and wives.  At times it feels like every character has to have "their section" and the novel lapses into a sort of mock-ironic limited third-person perspective.  While the reader is reminded of certain details at several different points, it is still difficult to summarize the overall thrust of the characters' arcs.  Suffice to say, it is about Big Angel gathering everybody together at his house for his birthday party.  Even though it feels a little contrived, there is a great climax at the end of the novel, and there are other shorter, wittier parts, such as the jokes Big Angel tells to his grand-kids.  

The strongest element of the novel are the phrases in italics, sprinkled seemingly randomly throughout, meant to itemize his gratitudes:

"rain" (85)

"marriage

family

walking 

working

books 

eating

cilantro" (64)

"Blade Runner

more time

more time

more" (231)

This is also probably the first book to reference Guardians of the Galaxy and the deaths of Bowie and Prince.  It is very "of the moment" and its legacy value is, therefore, diminished.  This is not always the case, at least in the example of the output of "the brat pack." Yet they wrote about what was young and hip in a way that Urrea only seems to caricature.  While this is a very good book, it is by no means perfect.  The writing is good and solid, even while the dialogue tends to feel padded, or like it doesn't tend to advance character or plot.  In this case the sin is forgivable.

There is a lot of sexual material in the book, yet most of it seems rather plain and hackneyed, and alternative lifestyles tend to be dispatched for shock value and knee-jerk disgust.  Then again this is a novel about a patriarch and a family that tends to start birthing children at a young age.  One vague plot hole that seems inadequately explored is daughter Minnie's status as a grandmother.  I could be totally wrong about this but I swear it was mentioned just once and never exactly spelled out.  I did find this:

"Minnie's oldest son was a sailor and told her that in Portland there was some kind of voodoo donut shop.  Like, you could bu a coffin full of donuts.  Crazy hippies.  The boys on his ship were all tweaked about bacon-wrapped maple bars.  She wished she could get some of those.  Her man would love them."  (106-107)

Other criticisms may be leveled at this novel, and while it is far from perfect, it is beautifully orchestrated, and crystallizes a narrative structure that feels unique.  Surely something similar to the "party novel" has been done, yet I cannot recall any at the moment.  In this case, a big family reunion, with the narrator flitting between characters like a butterfly.  Aside from that, it is often profound, concerned as it is with the Important subject matter that is death and dying:

 "Big Angel was turning seventy.  It seemed very old to him.  At the same time, it felt far too young.  He had not intended to leave the party so soon.  'I have tried to be good,' he told his invisible interviewer.
His mother had made it to the edge of one hundred.  He had thought he'd at least make it that far.  In his mind, he was still a kid, yearning for laughter and a good book, adventures and one more albondigas soup cooked by Perla.  He wished he had gone to college.  He wished he had seen Paris.  He wished he had taken the time for a Caribbean cruise, because he secretly wanted to snorkel, and once he got well, he would go do that.  He was still planning to go see Seattle.  See what kind of life his baby brother had.  He suddenly realized he hadn't even gone to the north side of San Diego, to La Jolla, where all the rich gringos went to get suntans and diamonds.  He wished he had walked on the beach.  Why did he not have sand dollars and shells?  A sand dollar suddenly seemed like a very fine thing to have.  And he had forgotten to go to Disneyland.  He sat back in shock: he had been too busy to even go to the zoo.  He could have smacked his own forehead.  He didn't care about lions, tigers.  He wanted to see a rhinoceros.  He resolved to ask Minnie to buy him a good rhino figure.  Then wondered where he should put it.  By the bed.  Damned right.  He was a rhino.  He'd charge at death and knock the hell out of it.  Lalo had tattoos--maybe he'd get one too.  When he got better." (61-62)

Meditations on death tend to remind one not to take life for granted.  Certainly, it is often a miserable ride.  Yet there are also good parts and things to be thankful to have experienced.  It seems like most of the bad stuff happened to Big Angel in the early part of his life, and once he became a father, and lived with Perla as husband and wife, it was overwhelmingly a very happy one.  It could have been a better novel, I think, but he seemed to have lived his life well, if his goal was to heavily populate his birthday death party with family.  Not all of us would like to have the same life as Big Angel, yet few of us could hope to have so much to look back and smile upon.

Philip Roth - 1933 - 2018

2 giants in 2 weeks, in their mid-to-late 80's. I don't write obituaries for everyone, but I try to write them when I think I can speak properly to their import. In the case of Tom Wolfe, I wasn't familiar enough with his oeuvre to say anything of substance. The New York Times Book Review podcast briefly addressed his passing and while I had intended to do Bonfire of the Vanities and maybe The Right Stuff (one day), their comments seemed to indicate that Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is his seminal work. So maybe that will have to come first. 

Wolfe will be remembered for "New Journalism." What will Roth be remembered for? Not winning the Nobel Prize. He was a Nobel Prize-level writer. I think he will be remembered for demarcating the line between toxic masculinity and horniness. Among other things.

Recently, there was a very scandalous book published that apparently details an affair with a fictional stand-in for Roth. The author admitted that she did, in fact, have an affair with Roth, and not all that long ago. Roth was also recently in the New York Times for an e-mail exchange checking up on him, after all the #metoo revelations, to get his take on the finer points of male desire. He had been retired from his occupation as a novelist over the past several years. 

I read Everyman over 10 years ago now, and that seemed to be his comment on retirement. Indignation still came after (as did The Humbling and Nemesis). American Pastoral was the best. I still haven't read everything. 

Here I've only written about American Pastoral and The Professor of Desire. Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint should be re-read. Both are essential. People have said The Plot Against America is prescient and/or prophetic. I want to read that and Sabbath's Theater.

It's hard to do better than Roth. That is the only thing of substance I can say here, and I'm not even sure that qualifies as substance. 

We wrote about Salinger eight years ago. Salinger was silent for years. He practically hadn't published anything since Roth had first published. They were 14 years apart in age. I consider them equals. They're two of the best 20th century American writers to have lived. Surely there are many great writers that nobody knew about. They both relayed truths rarely spoken, yet often felt. 

Roth's prolific career is a work of art on its own, and this writer is not so deeply familiar with it that an authoritative tone may be struck. Suffice to say, this entire site is filled with instances of exhortations to read so-and-so and while I do truly try to be careful not to overwhelm the casual reader, everybody knows that Roth was a true modern master (in the same way that I know Bellow was, though I haven't read him). He's in the Pantheon. Our world is rapidly evolving and one expects a similar change in the way we consume literature, as well as our expectations of how we expect to be transported by it. So maybe there will be a new literature, and Roth is a relic from a bygone era. History has shown that writers will be remembered if their words can stand up to eternity. Roth is not Plato and he will likely not be referenced by Westworld-types of entertainment 2,000 years from now. Roth may not even be Hemingway. I see many parallels with Vonnegut in terms of output and cultural relevance. Vonnegut was not seriously rumored to win the Nobel. Both were zany, though Vonnegut was zanier. People will inevitably compare him to Wolfe if only for their sense of timing. They were true writers. They made their living off writing their books. Roth was popular, but never commercial. One hopes that writers such as him may still exist and prosper. 

The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway (1926)

Back to back best books. Of course The Sun Also Rises is a classic of 20th century American literature, but has anyone read it lately?  I'm afraid to google it to see a a bunch of reassessments.  For me, it holds up.  It's flawed, it's imperfect, but it is also impossibly beautiful.  We haven't reviewed any books by Ernest Hemingway, only one about Ernest Hemingway, and that is probably one of the worst posts ever on Flying Houses (actually I don't think it's that bad, but it is extremely pretentious and off-putting).  I'll try to do better, here.

This is a quick little book.  67,707 words.  250 pages with fairly sparse print per page.

It's the story of a group of expatriate Americans in Paris, and their stay in Pamplona for the fiesta in the early 1920's.  It opens up with a portrait of Robert Cohn, one-time collegiate boxer and writer.  He is friends with Jake Barnes, a newspaper reporter with an injury from World War I.  Jake is also friends with Bill (I can't remember his last name) who is a writer and makes his entrance in the novel telling a very colorful story with many n-bombs (I realize this may be an offensive term, I apologize), though he does not seem to be a racist.  Actually he is portrayed as more of a beatnik type character, a precursor to Sal Paradise or Dean Moriarty.  All of these characters, in a way, are precursors.  The Lost Generation gives way to the Beat Generation...

There is also Lady Brett Ashley, and her fiancee, Mike (I can't remember his last name).   

Everyone is in love with Brett.  Eventually she hooks up with a young matador, Pedro Romero, who is 19.  The group drinks a lot, and they talk about bullfighting.

There is such a force of style in this book that the reader cannot help but be hypnotized.  That was the overall impression for me this time around.  The book is extremely dialogue-heavy.  Sometimes the dialogue is brilliant, and other times it feels unimaginative and clunky, as if the same scene is playing out over and over again: Jake & Co. get drunk and talk about how they all love Brett. 

Her entrance in the novel is notable because of the commentary from Jake on her companions.  The first time it went completely over my head, but this time it seemed pretty obvious they are supposed to be a bunch of gay dudes: "I was very angry.  Somehow they always made me angry.  I know they are supposed to be amusing, and you should be tolerant, but I wanted to swing on one, any one, anything to shatter that superior, simpering composure." (28) Also, the casual way he describes a prostitute he sort of picks up is charming and humanizing.

The real drama of the novel comes between Mike and Robert Cohn.  Mike gets very drunk in almost every scene and he usually says really inappropriate things:

"'Breeding be damned.  Who has any breeding, anyway, except the bulls?  Aren't the bulls lovely?  Don't you like them, Bill?  Why don't you say something, Robert?  Don't sit there looking like a bloody funeral.  What if Brett did sleep with you?  She's slept with lots of better people than you.'
'Shut up,' Cohn said.  He stood up.  'Shut up, Mike.'
'Oh, don't stand up and act as though you were going to hit me.  That won't make any difference to me.  Tell me, Robert.  Why do you follow Brett around like a poor bloody steer?  Don't you know you're not wanted?  I know when I'm not wanted.  Why don't you know when you're not wanted?  You came down to San Sebastian where you weren't wanted, and followed Brett around like a bloody steer.  Do you think that's right?'' (146)

So there is this love triangle story that is complicated by Romero, and Jake--though truly, the heart of the novel is the love story between Jake and Brett.  Could it be described as a love pentagon?  Bill is the only character that is not romantically linked with Brett.

Ernest Hemingway is a romantic figure, particularly in his associations with Paris.  Both The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast are essential literary documents, particularly for any American traveling to Paris (and perhaps Spain).  There is a certain feeling in the work that makes the reader feel powerful.  The words have an import.  Sometimes, this style masquerades itself and masks otherwise unimaginative dialogue.  Usually, Hemingway's style is best served by the way his characters describe their surroundings, rather than the dialogue that is recorded.  Occasionally, dialogue is elevated to high art, as in the famous closing lines of the book, arguably the greatest ending of all time:

"Down-stairs we came out through the first-floor dining-room to the street.  A waiter went for a taxi.  It was hot and bright.  Up the street was a little square with trees and grass where there were taxis parked.  A taxi came up the street, the waiter hanging out at the side.  I tipped him and told the driver where to drive and got in beside Brett.  The driver started up the street.  I settled back.  Brett moved close to me.  We sat close against each other.  I put my arm around her and she rested against me comfortably.  It was very hot and bright, and the houses looked sharply white.  We turned out onto the Gran Via.
'Oh, Jake,' Brett said, 'we could have had such a damned good time together.'
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic.  He raised his baton.  The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
'Yes,' I said. 'Isn't it pretty to think so?'" (250-251)

I mean really, that's what The Sun Also Rises is about, right?  The ending.  Perhaps it is not the greatest but it should be in the top 5 for 20th Century American fiction.  A Farewell to Arms would also make that list.  Hemingway is a great writer of endings.  There are a lot of "problematic" aspects of this novel that might otherwise keep it out of the pantheon of Great Books, but the ending makes up for everything.  Despite its flaws, the novel paints an indelible portrait of a time and place, such that the reader is transported there as if they had lived it themselves, and any novel that successfully achieves such a lofty goal as that demands to be read for generations.  From what I understand, Hemingway and Fitzgerald have not receded from their post as the greatest 20th century American writers, or their reputation as that.  In The Sun Also Rises, perhaps more than any of his other works, Hemingway lives up to his status as a literary icon.

Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements - Bob Mehr (2016)

My first exposure to Paul Westerberg came when I was about 9 when my older sister would play "Dyslexic Heart" (and to a lesser extent, "Waiting for Somebody") off the Singles soundtrack.  She introduced me to Pearl Jam and the Smashing Pumpkins and Vanilla Ice.  She did not introduce me to the Replacements but she gets tremendous cred for this. 

About 9 years later I met a girl at NYU my freshman year, which is when I met the most girls, which is when many of us would try to turn our crushes on to bands we liked in the hopes that they would say they liked them too and it would signal that we liked each other without being too awkward. One of the bands she told me to check out, in passing, was the Replacements, downloading "Can't Hardly Wait" from Audiogalaxy for me. Now I had seen the movie Can't Hardly Wait and actually liked it even though I thought I wouldn't, but the song didn't pop out at me.

A couple years later I read Our Band Could Be Your Life and became vaguely interested in the Replacements. Some other friends seemed to like them too, so we'd put on Let It Be or Pleased to Meet Me when we'd hang out. Another friend burnt me CDs of "All for Nothing/Nothing for All" (a greatest hits/rarities collection) and Stereo/Mono by Grandpaboy, the then-current Westerberg solo project. I thought they were all fine, I liked them, but still, they weren't my favorite band or anything.

A couple years later, I'd buy a CD copy of Tim and get Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash from a friend.

11 years later I read Trouble Boys and now terribly regret missing them play in Chicago a few years ago.

Sometimes I read a book and I finish it and I just go, "Fuck.....best books." At least I did with this. It's the most epic book I've ever read about a band (Everett True's Nirvana is in similar territory, but this is a greater labor of love). It's nearly 500 pages.  I'd heard about it when it came out, and I knew Pitchfork had put it on a year end best list or something, but I figured I'd get around to it eventually.  In this case it was because of listening to an episode of The Best Show that had Bob Mehr and "Replacements Steve" on.  There it was lauded as one of the best books ever written about rock and I have to concur that it really is quite an experience to be taken in.   

It opens up with the scene of guitarist Bob Stinson's death in 1995, and circles back to that point almost 400 pages later.  Deep biographies of each band member emerge, generally starting with the origins of their grandparents.  After getting into trouble with the law and shuttling in and out of several homes for troubled youth, Bob Stinson starts learning how to play music as an outlet for his anger.  He truly had a horrific childhood, marred by a father that left and a stepfather that abused him psychologically, physically, sexually, verbally, and emotionally.  This stepfather was his brother Tommy's birth father.  Tommy is about seven years younger than Bob, and Bob essentially forces him to learn how to play bass so they can play in a band together.  Tommy is like 10 or 11 when they form their first band, and he is like 12 when Paul Westerberg and Chris Mars join them and the Replacements are formed.  

This book is much more about Paul Westerberg than Tommy Stinson.  It is arguably more about Bob Stinson than Tommy Stinson.  Several themes emerge, foremost amongst them the band's obsession with alcohol.  Almost every rock band is affected in some way or another by the excesses of alcoholism, but they take it to another level.  There are a lot of outrageous scenes in this book.  A story about a really legendary, insane show (where Bob Stinson misbehaves incredibly) is told in Our Band Could Be Your Life and not repeated here, signalling that Mehr has certainly digested those source materials and given the reader something they haven't read or heard about before.  That kind of attention to detail and audience is one of the reasons it belongs on the Best Books list.

This could be a really long review if I wanted it to be but I'll just say what this book meant to me.  It made me listen to Don't Tell a Soul and All Shook Down.  I am glad for the former, and sort of indifferent about the latter.  This is my ranking of Replacements albums:

Pleased to Meet Me 
Let it Be
Tim
Stink
Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash
Hootenanny
Don't Tell a Soul
All Shook Down

I don't want to get into all my justifications for this, but it colors my experience because the only real stories about the band I knew came from Our Band Could Be Your Life, and stopped after Let it Be.  The recording of Pleased to Meet Me is one of the highlights of the book, and I think it cements the album's place in the band's oeuvre.  It's such a short album and it's so densely packed and represents every style the band would run through in its time: loud fast punk, ballads, attempted pop singles, and genre experiments.  

So it got into that, and it also referenced the heavier demo version of "Kiss Me on the Bus," which is now on the Tim expanded edition, and is significantly more awesome than the album version.  It tells of how they came to jam with Tom Waits in a studio sometime in about 1990, partying late into the night (unfortunately there is no tape).  It tells of celebrity encounters with Keith Richards and Tom Petty and their rivalries with Husker Du and R.E.M.  It tells of Peter Jesperson.

Peter Jesperson is the unofficial "fifth member" of the Replacements, though he never played.  He is co-founder of Twin/Tone Records which put out all their albums through Let it Be (basically the first half of their career).  He tours with the band and cheers for them in the crowd and parties with them and manages them.  He develops his own drinking problem, and the chapter detailing his breakdown that led to rehab is another highlight (or perhaps "lowlight" is more appropriate).  Recently the only critique I had for a book was mentioning the same thing twice, with the second time acting as though the first had never happened.  This is probably an editorial oversight (and a nitpicky thing to criticize).  Many may not mind such repetitions, as they tend to freshen one's impressions.  Yet they stand out to me as a thing that is easy to fix, and a clear example of addition by subtraction.  In this case, it only happens once, and it's about the last time Tommy Stinson and Paul Jesperson speak for very many years:

"When he showed up at the bar, it was just Paul and Tommy there.  
'One thing I remember was Tommy, he was smirking a little bit before Paul dropped the bomb,' said Jesperson.  'He was sitting there like, "I know something you don't know."  We were so tight, and had been such close friends.  I harbored a really deep resentment towards him after that.'" (214)

Then much later:

"Much as the pain of being booted out of the 'Mats' inner circle lingered, Jesperson had been hard-pressed to totally avoid the band.  By the time of Don't Tell a Soul, he'd built back up a tentative friendship with Paul Westerberg.  However, he remained estranged from his former 'little brother' Tommy Stinson.  He simply couldn't shake the image of Stinson's smirking face that day at the Uptown when they'd dumped him.  'I held a grudge against Tommy for a long time because of that,' said Jesperson.  (392)

This is a pretty soul-shattering event and this supposed editorial oversight may be forgiven where (as here) the language is not identical.  It's a significant betrayal and it bears reiterating 170 pages later.  If it had been a few pages later, it might be less forgivable. 

My favorite phrase to come out of the book is "putting himself on the line emotionally" to describe what Paul Westerberg was not willing to do:

"The next day, at the band's hotel, Rieger got into a heated discussion with Westerberg, telling him: 'This car-crash mentality is something you have to move away from.  You write these amazing songs.  Why are you sabotaging your own songs?'
Rieger's platonic ideal of a performer was Bruce Springsteen: someone who wrung emotion out of every lyric, put himself on the line with each show, and gave 100 percent night after night.  That's what he wanted out of the Replacements.
'I'm not giving you a hundred percent,' replied Westerberg.
It had become his refrain, practically a mantra, during Please to Meet Me.  When Westerberg said it to Jim Dickinson, it was a question of trust; as he acted it out with the record company, it was a matter of insecurity.  But as he spit out the words again to Rieger, it went far deeper.  'I can't mean it every night,' admitted Westerberg, meeting Rieger's eyes. 'I just can't fuckin' mean it every night.'
Westerberg viewed performing, as he did everything, in stark black-and-white terms.  He could live with drunken insouciance or bored incompetence, so long as it was real.  What he couldn't do was fake it.  And he wasn't willing to put himself on the line emotionally.  'For him there was no middle ground,' said Rieger.  'That's part of the reason people gravitated to him as an artist.  It was all or nothing.'" (277)

On the podcast episode that may or may never be released, I talked about how this book did not mention a specific outrageous concert mentioned in Our Band Could Be Your Life and I read the short excerpt of it from that volume we were discussing.  And I also talked about some of the things in here, like lighting their money on fire and throwing toilets out of tour buses.  So perhaps one mention of that before the end will be in order.

The podcast episode arguably centered around the Replacements as an excuse for me to talk about this as well.  And I mainly talked about how the book made me reassess Don't Tell a Soul and gain a deeper appreciation for (read: no longer completely ignore) it.  My guest said that he preferred All Shook Down and I told him I disagreed.  This was perhaps the highlight of the episode.  I do think he is wrong about this.

The book goes some pretty unseemly places and that is probably why it categorizes itself as unauthorized.  This precisely the problem my guest referenced about Azerrad's earlier "authorized" biography of Nirvana, Come as You Are (still a pretty good book from what I recall).  I believe we agreed that Everett True's Nirvana was the superior book.  We also talked about the ways in which Paul Westerberg was similar to Kurt Cobain.  Now I think that Kurt was a big Replacements fan as well (though they are hardly cited as an influence along any of the same lines as Melvins, Black Flag, Black Sabbath, Pixies, Wipers, etc.) and I do believe this book captures the one and only meeting between them.

Actually, there are 3 pages that reference Cobain and this first one had a better first-ever meeting story, with Prince:

"Although seemingly polar opposites, Prince's and the Replacements' sense of showmanship had a common root.  'We experienced the same weather and a lot of the same things growing up,' said Paul Westerberg. 'Minneapolis audiences are mighty reserved, and learning to command an audience in a place where people are notorious for being quiet will either make you a wallflower, quiet artist, or it will make you a really boisterous, aggressive, or flamboyant, which is what it did for both of us.  I really think a lot of his flamboyance came from the suppression of the place that we live.  It's a cold place to live in more ways than one.'
The 'Mats genuinely admired Prince.  On one occasion, Tommy Stinson was watching Prince perform from the wings at First Avenue while standing next to Ric Ocasek of the Cars, who were also at their pop chart zenith that year.  After the Purple One peeled off a breathtaking Hendrix-like solo, then danced his way across the stage and into a leg split, Tommy slapped Ocasek on the back hard, pointed at Prince, and said, with a measure of Minneapolis pride, 'Let's see ya top that, buddy!'
Prince was rumored to have lurked in the shadows at some of the Replacements' shows at First Avenue, but it was in the bathroom of a club in St. Paul where Westerberg finally ran into him.
'Oh, hey,' said Westerberg, seeing the dolled-up singer standing next to him at the urinal. 'What's up, man?'
Prince turned and responded in cryptic fashion: 'Life.'" (152-153)

Actually it is Bob Stinson who becomes fixated on Kurt Cobain, not Paul Westerberg, and it is true that they perhaps have more than a few things in common.  But there are definitely a ton of parallels with Westerberg.  The excerpt probably says everything that need be said:

"Pundits would suggest Nirvana had picked up the proverbial torch that the Replacements had fumbled away.  'Cobain sings and writes about romantic complexities and youthful apathy with much of the intensity and insight of...Paul Westerberg,' wrote Robert Hillburn of the Los Angeles Times.  'Cobain, indeed, could be the Paul Westerberg of the 90's.'  But Westerberg thought they had little in common: 'I guess I wore a plaid shirt, and yes, I played real loud,' he said, 'but Nirvana sounds to me like Boston with a hair up its ass.'
Cobain and Westerberg would cross paths just once, in late 1992, in San Francisco.  Westerberg was in town recording, Cobain was there producing an album for the Melvins, and they were both staying at the Triton Hotel.  One evening they rode up an elevator together in awkward silence, exited on the same floor, walked to neighboring rooms, then shut their doors without acknowledging one another.
Days later, Westerberg would dash out a song called 'World Class Fad' ('You wax poetic about things pathetic, as long as you look so cute/Don't be sad, you're a world class fad') that many, including Cobain, interpreted as a diss.  'I never respected Kurt Cobain enough to write something about him,' said Westerberg.  'Maybe he felt he was a world class fad.'" (404)

That seems like a harsh choice of words, but okay!  In any case, this is a great book if you want to justify all sorts of bad behavior to yourself, if, for example, your ex is in the process of replacing you, and you think about the nature of your replacement, and the Replacements, and what it really means to be faithful.  Infidelity is casually strewn about without major drama, though there would also be divorce. There was one passage I wanted to excerpt.  But actually I couldn't find it, and it's probably for the best because its not a very appealing thing to highlight unless you get excited by the idea of two guys deciding to make out so they can follow through with a partner-swap more readily.  There are certainly better things to highlight.  From the very beginning, Flying Houses has endeavored to only excerpt the most beautiful writing from each book it documents, and perhaps we have lost sight of that lodestar over time.

Suffice to say, incredibly bad behavior has its place in the lives of the pantheons of culture.  Few bands today could do what the Replacements did in the 80's (and 90's) and get away with it. Notably I remember it being mentioned that Robert Christgau gave Stink an A+.  Here is just one quick example of how they lived:

"The band's first vehicle--the Chevy van financed by Tom Carlson--quickly wore out.  They replaced it with a beat-up Ford Econoline that they dubbed Otis, after the drunk on The Andy Griffith Show.  It didn't take long for the 'Mats to turn it into a second home, ripping out its seats and staining the interior with beer, trash, and urine.  (The band was constantly pissing out of the step down to the side door, which came to be called 'the trough.') Its walls were soon marked with all manner of lewd graffiti and inside jokes.  Westerberg insisted that an image if the van's guts adorn the back cover of Let It Be:  'To give people a sense of what life with us was like,' he said. (144)

There's little more I could add to the topic, so we'll leave it there.  Give yourself a good couple weeks to finish this, though it also reads very quickly.  It's hard to find the time to read a lot these days.  Easier to listen.  Give the Replacements a listen and if you're not interested at all, maybe you won't care at all about the book.  Or don't listen to them at all and just trust me when I say this is a great book and give it a chance and then give the Replacements a listen and totally alter your interpretation of them.  This book may be long, and at time obsessive, but I think everyone who encounters it will acknowledge that it is a great achievement and that they will never think about the band the same way after reading it.  In a good way.