A Doubter's Almanac: Empathisizing with Tortured Genius

The trope of the troubled genius is a fairly common one, and it's what Ethan Canin is concerned with in his fascinating, immensely readable new novel A Doubter's Almanac. But what elevates this above the traditional "troubled genius" story is how Canin asks his readers to really parse their own feelings about how to react to a troubled genius, especially when that genius is, to put it bluntly, a spectacular asshole.

But what are the root causes of his assholery? Why does he behave the way he does, treating everyone around him as mere objects to serve his greater good? Does it matter? After all, if empathy is truly walking a mile in someone else's shoes, and seeing the world through their eyes, that must apply to someone who is gifted, but gauche, just as much as it does to someone who is troubled, but not gifted. Right? You may not completely agree as you find out just how horrible this guy is. You may not want to try to understand him, or much less, forgive him  But it's an interesting exploration.

Our Philip Rothian protago-villain here is a mathematics genius named Milo Andret, who, as an undergraduate earns a modicum of fame by solving a nearly half-century-old topology problem. (One of the highlights of this novel is Canin's ability to convey just enough information to help his reader understand the basics, but without getting bogged down into byzantine details.) Milo parlays this success into a professorship at Princeton, and turns his attentions and considerable talents to another problem. But he soon gets bogged down with booze, affairs with married women (and one with a sweet but sad unmarried woman), and being generally quarrelsome and cantankerous (even though he's still in his mid-30s).

Milo, like many geniuses, is constantly disappointed with the world, generally, but also most other people specifically. He's like a cross between Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces and John Nash from A Beautiful Mind. For Milo, "There is no joy in God's creation," Milo's doctor explains to his son at one point. "No pleasure in sunlight or water. No pleasure in a good meal. There is no pleasure in the company of friends. There is nothing. Nothing that might assuage the maw." That sounds like a justification for everything bad Milo has done, and at some level, it is. So, do we buy it?

The second part of the novel switches gears to the perspective of Milo's son, filling in the blanks of Milo's time descending to rock bottom at Princeton and how he got to be an assistant professor at a small college in Ohio. Milo's son Hans is just as intriguing a character as Milo. Will the sins of the father be repeated by the son?

This big brick of novel (550 pages) absolutely flies by. Canin is just a great, smooth storyteller, in the vein of other great storytellers like John Irving and Richard Russo. And this is just a helluva great story — even if it makes you mad at times. Some of these characters are just much better people than I could be when presented with such an axe-wound-sized asshole as Milo. But overall, I loved it — it's highly recommended!

The Lost Time Accidents: Time Is a Sphere

Time isn't a straight arrow, nor is it a flat circle (sorry, McConaughey) — rather, the "chronosphere" is just that: a sphere we're all trapped in. But what if the sphere could be traversed, manipulated, emerged from? If the past is memories, the future is dreams, and the presents slowly recedes into the past only due to the passage of time, what if all it took to navigate within the chronosphere is the human mind, well trained? If this sounds like the stuff you and your buddies talked about at 3 am after getting high in your dorm room, that's nearly the exact effect of reading The Lost Time Accidents, John Wray's new crazy, smashingly smart novel. But this is also a really funny novel — stopping just short of zany, but often with one-liners and scenes worthy of more than just a snort.

There are three stories at once. A guy named Waldy Tolliver is writing his family's history. He's been "excused from time," meaning he's stuck at 8:47 EST in presumably near-present day. He doesn't know why or how, and neither do we. We just accept it. 

The second story is the history Waldy is writing, and this is the meat of the novel — his great-grandfather, Ottokar Toula, living in a small town in Moravia at the turn of the 20th century discovers the secret to the universe — the Lost Time Accidents — but before he can tell anyone, he's hit by a car and dies. His two sons, one evil (Waldemar, for whom our stuck-in-time-biographer) is named, one good, Kaspar, both spend their lives in dramatically different ways trying to discover what their father had figured out. The story moves through the generations of the family, to Kaspar's son, Orson. Orson has a different relationship with family legacy, deciding to forgo physics to instead to write low-grade sci-fi. The ideas in one of his novels accidentally launches a Scientology-like cult called the United Church of Synchronology. 

Finally, the third story is our narrator/biographer telling us the story about how he met a beautiful woman named Hildegard Haven at a party before he got stuck in time. He then proceeds to carry on a scandalous (Mrs. Haven is married after all), wild romance with her, leading up to his becoming stuck in time.

Naturally, all the stories converge (to a singularity?) and I was riveted in the second half of this novel to see how it'd all work out, to see if the various characters would truly solve the mystery of the Lost Time Accidents (if there actually is a definitive solution). From how to deal with the "grandmother paradox" (if you travel back in time and kill your grandmother, don't you cease to exist? But then how could you have traveled back in time to kill your grandmother? You don't exist!) to the "Patent Clerk" (Einstein, but the family hates him, because he just barely beat them to discovering relativity) and dozens of other head-trippy ideas in between, this is a novel that is a refreshing, inventive new take on the tried-and-true time-travel novel.

If you're a fan of David Mitchell's head-warping stories, you likely won't be disappointed here. Despite the length, and some sagging of interest in the first half, this is a terrific novel if you're in to stories that are more than just a bit out there.

When Breath Becomes Air: Where Shall Meaning Be Found?

We all know we're going to die, it's just a matter of when. So when that "when" becomes more sure or sooner than we'd thought — when it's not some nebulous future time we'd rather not think about — why then is it harder to find meaning for life? After all, nothing has changed — death is still inevitable. But that question of finding meaning in the face of sure death is the central question of When Breath Becomes Air, the devastating, but must-read book by Paul Kalanithi, and his wife, Lucy.

You know the story, Paul, a brilliant neurosurgeon is diagnosed at age 36 with terminal lung cancer. And this book is struggle to come to terms, to put his life in order, to leave a legacy (this book, but also a daughter), and to try to puzzle out what it all means.

It's as much an intellectual memoir as it is one about his life, his education, his residency, and his struggle to be a good doctor. Kalanithi is a fascinating man — curious and engaged with the world, a deep reader (he has a Master's in literature!), and with a profound respect for people. One of the best sections of the book is Kalanithi's argument, even a scientist and intellectual, not to dismiss the metaphysical — whatever that means to you, God, love, other "things" not possible to be proven by science.

I know many readers will shy away from this because it's difficult. It certainly is difficult — simply put, it's 220 of the saddest pages I've ever read (especially the 20 pages of epilogue written by his wife Lucy after he's died). But I'd encourage you to read it despite that. It's a perspective-changing, life-affirming book (ironic, I know, for a memoir about death). I'd also encourage you to read what novelist Ron Currie, Jr., wrote about the book on Facebook. It's a perfect encapsulation of why it's important to read this book, as well.

City On Fire: Grid of Connections

City on Fire, Garth Risk Hallberg's much ballyhooed debut novel, is simultaneously way, way too long (it clocks in at 900+ pages) and not nearly long enough. Here's how that's possible: It felt too long because there were times, especially in the first few hundred pages, when I struggled to convince myself to pick up it again. But then as the novel gains momentum at about the halfway point, it's as riveting as any thriller. And what's more: Hallberg is an absolutely enthralling writer. Even when I was bored by the seemingly superfluous background info on one or any of the multitude of characters, I still appreciated how smooth and elegant he is to read. And that's why, in addition to the fact that this is a story that could've continued for several (dozen?) more years exploring the lives of these characters (most of whom I now really miss), I could've read several hundred more pages of this prose.

It's a truly great novel, a rather awe-inspiring accomplishment for a debut. Here's the deal: It's New Year's Eve, 1976, and we swing all around New York City to be introduced to a variety of characters, punks and detectives, Blue Bloods and anarchists, devious businessmen, teachers, journalists, and artists. The novel itself is plotted around a shooting in Central Park on this fateful New Year's night. So the novel is ostensibly a murder mystery, but of course, so much more. Hurdling to a conclusion the following summer, the night of July 13, 1977, the famed New York City Blackout, the novel forges a series of connections, both coincidental and not, between this cast of highly fascinating people.

The enduring image in my head as I spent nearly a month with this book was of the writer as a builder — each little chapter (and there are 94 total) fills in a gap of the story, like a brick in a wall, slowly building the complete mural or portrait on that wall. Hallberg also gives us "interludes" between each of the seven sections of the novel. These are awesome. From a punk's fanzine to a journalist's Truman Capote-esque investigative article, these set pieces add to the fullness of the portrait and are a joy to take in. That's not always the case for strategies like this — often they feel like distractions.

But slowly we learn about how all these characters are connected, and how solving a crime, in many ways, is like real life in that it's a "grid of connections" that brings the meaning to the mystery. The fluidity of time is also a hallmark for Hallberg, and certainly one of the reasons he chose the structure he did — constantly moving back and forth from real-time action to background info. Also, there are lots of birds — symbols for many things, which you can puzzle out for yourself if you decide to take on this challenge.

In sum: Yes, this is a novel that's worth the time. But if you start it, commit yourself to finishing it! The majority of the lukewarm reviews on this novel are readers who didn't finish it. This, to me, is a travesty. You don't get the full portrait otherwise — it's like judging the Mona Lisa by only seeing a sliver (to borrow a sentiment from this fantastic Atlantic piece). It's a battle that may wear you down at times, but a rewarding one in the end. 

Winter Reading: Four Mini-Reviews of Great Books

I went on rather a bookish hot streak over the long holiday break — four pretty great books in a row. Let me tell you about them!

The Book of Unknown Americans, by Cristina Henríquz — Let's start with my favorite of the four — this multi-narrator novel about immigrants from several Latin American countries who all live in the same apartment building in Delaware is as timely as it is heartbreaking.

Alma has came to the US from Mexico with her husband Arturo to enroll their daughter Maribel, who suffered minor brain damage after an accident, in a special school. Arturo, a successful contractor in Mexico, picks mushrooms to make ends meet. Mayor, our other narrator, is a shy awkward teenager, whose parents immigrated from Panama when he was a baby. Soon Mayor and Maribel form a connection, even as both their parents struggle to make ends meet during the great recession. Scattered throughout are the stories of others in the apartment building who all came to or stayed in the US for different, but noble, reasons. Ultimately, the point is this, as expressed by the landlord of the building, a man who himself came from Paraguay: "I know some people here think we're trying to take over, but we just want to be a part of it. We want to have our stake. This is our home, too." Or, as dramatically put by another immigrant from Mexico, as if speaking directly to any backwards racist Trump supporter: "We're the unknown Americans, the ones no one even wants to know, because they've been told they're supposed to be scared of us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might realize that we're not that bad, maybe even that we'd a lot like them. And who would they hate then?" I loved this book — it's a novel that every white American should read, and consider carefully; an extremely important book.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, by David Shafer — This is a fun, fast globe-trotting thriller about a secret cabal called The Committee that is plotting to take control of all the world's personal data, and then sell it back to only those who can afford it. But this thriller, told from the perspectives of each of three main characters, is really good because it's the rare thriller that focuses more on its characters than it does its break-neck plot. The stories of a  bad ass woman named Leila, who works for an NGO in Burma, a down-and-out trust fund hipster in Portland, Oregon, and a douchey, full-of-shit self-help author (who happens to be a drunk) all converge to create a fascinating contemporary (and cautionary) tale about privacy and the Internet. This is a great book for a plane trip or a sunny beach vacation — smarter than your average thriller, but still a quick, engrossing read.

The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro — This book is NOT a great book for a plane trip or sunny beach vacation, but it's still a great novel. Ishiguro's imagery, metaphor, and layers of meaning are utterly fascinating here — there's just so much to unpack, it's the kind of novel if you read 15 times, you'd discover something new each time. On the surface, it's a story about a couple, Axl and Beatrice, in medieval England who set off on a quest to find their son. There are dragons, and Sir Gawain, and a mysterious mist that robs people of memory. This novel's an allegory of the highest order — with intimations to our own time about war and its effects (especially on children). It took me awhile to talk myself into reading this, but I'm really I glad I did. Ishiguro is a master.

If you want to read more on this book, check out this super insightful review from RoscoeBooks bookseller Emily.

The Improbability of Love, by Hannah Rothschild — This was a bit of a deep cut and a little outside my reading comfort zone, but I really liked it — Rothschild's debut novel (published Nov. 2015) is the story of an über-valuable lost painting (said painting sometimes narrates its own story at times, which, you just kind of have to deal with) and how an early-30s London woman who has been jilted by her husband finds it in a junk shop, not realizing what she's purchased. Things go a little crazy from there. The novel's been billed as a sort of satire of the uppity art world, and it certainly is that — it's often really funny. But it also has elements of art-world thriller, as well as some serious meditations on the meaning and value of art and its ability to inspire.