An Across-the-Pond Book Bonanza

I don't know about you, but the Man Booker Prize is one of my favorite literary prizes. The reason: I'm a mostly American-centric reader, and so the Booker nominees (see below for a short description of what the prize is, if you're not familiar) are usually authors I'd never heard of, thus opening an entirely new world of literary possibilities, already vetted by some pretty prestigious peeps (well, presumably — I've actually never heard of any of the Man Booker judges). 

My next three reads — Room, by Emma Donoghue (which I started over the weekend); C, by Tom McCarthy; and Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray (who is actually Irish) — were all on the Man Booker longlist this year, and I've never read (or even heard of) any of those three writers until the longlist came out over the summer. The winner was actually Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question, which sounds okay, but I'm not getting a speeding ticket on my way to B&N to pick it up. (Additionally, after much prodding from the peanut gallery, I finally read David Mitchell a few months ago — The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which was also a Booker longlister. Wasn't my favorite book ever, but not terrible.)

In the past, I've found some stuff from across-the-pond novelists I'd never have heard of had they not wound up on the Booker list. Some I really liked — Sarah Hall (The Electric Michaelangelo) — some were a tad dull — Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss). In both of those cases, I vividly remember being in a bookstore and picking them up on a whim, hoping to "get in on the ground floor" of a novelists not many of my fellow Americans may have heard of. Isn't one of the best book dork feelings recommending books to others that they end up loving?

Anyway, here's a (not at all inclusive) list of other British/Irish authors I've enjoyed: Ian McEwan, Ken Follett, Zoe Heller, Zadie Smith, Colum McCann and Nick Hornby. And here's a list of the best British writers since 1945, from The Times (London). There are several on here I've always meant to read, but haven't: Salman Rushdie, VS Naipul, AS Byatt, John Fowles, etc., etc.

Who are some of your favorite across-the-pond novelists? Anyone obscure or up-and-coming you'd recommend? 

The Man Booker Prize aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The Man Booker judges are selected from the country's finest critics, writers and academics to maintain the consistent excellence of the prize.  The winner of the Man Booker Prize receives £50,000 and both the winner and the shortlisted authors are guaranteed a worldwide readership plus a dramatic increase in book sales.

On the Occasion of Finishing Gravity's Rainbow: A Conversation With Tom Pynchon

It's finished. I can tell you that much. And not to be melodramatic, but it really does feel like the end of an ordeal. Finishing Gravity's Rainbow is the hardest literary thing I've ever done. And, frankly, one of the least pleasant. But that doesn't mean there isn't some fun to be had. Because writing a traditional review of this book would be an exercise in futility on the scale of trying to get an interview with the famously reclusive Thomas Pynchon himself, here's this instead: A combination of the two.

What if Pynchon really cared what people — me specifically — think about his novel? What if he wanted to figure out if he'd succeeded? (Let's pretend he doesn't know he's won the National Book Award in 1974.) What if there were an opportunity for a reader (me!) to spout off to Pynchon about his frustrations with the book? So, what follows is an imaginary conversation between Tom and me about my experience reading the most difficult book I've ever read.

Thomas Pynchon: So, why did you decide to read Gravity's Rainbow?
Me: Well, Tommy, in my mind, there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who have read Gravity's Rainbow, and those who haven't. I used to be in the latter category, now I'm in the former. It feels good, I can tell you that. But to answer your question, it's been a book I've always wanted to read, especially after David Foster Wallace cited it as one of his influences. It's been on my shelf for years. And when I blogged in March about my one to-be-read book, I realized GR was mine. So, I started.
TP: You started in March? And just finished now?
Me: Yep, I started in late March. It took me literally an entire baseball season to read this thing. Six months. It even went to Berlin and back with me — so that was fun, to be in the city where part of the novel is set. But, yeah, it took awhile.
TP: I've already gotten the sense that you weren't much a fan. Any chance the inordinate amount of time it took you to read my book contributed to your dislike?
Me: Oh, I don't doubt that's true. Through the guidebook I had to help me along the way, I understood that, as a prototypical example of the post-modern, there was no linear narrative, and ideas, characters and literary devices circled back and forth and danced around each other. When I remembered and understood a connection, I was thrilled. But more often than not, I'd forgotten how one or two of the 142 (it seemed) characters were related and what each of their stories were.
TP: Yeah, I'll grant you it's a difficult novel from that standpoint. And purposefully so. But what else made it difficult for you?
Me: Well, Tom, it seemed like fairly frequently you took explicit pleasure in aggravating your readers, solely for the purpose of aggravating them. David Foster Wallace, in regards to the difficulty of Infinite Jest, once explained that you had to toe a fine line between aggravating readers and giving them enough that was entertaining and understandable so that they'd keep reading. He admitted his editor was a big help in this. Where the heck was your editor? Where was the voice of reason that could've told you that 20 pages relating the story of a lightbulb named Byron that has nothing to do with the rest of the narrative is a poor idea? To me, your book is 80 percent reader aggravation and 20 percent entertaining. I mean, I do understand that readers of GR are not supposed to understand everything the first time through; that many of the sections/jokes/references/connections are better understood with a second read. But if you piss off a reader so much during a first read that he'll never go through a second time, haven't you failed?

TP: I suppose that if I cared what my readers thought, I might concede that. But isn't it pretty clear that I don't? I mean, there are sex scenes where people eat poop in there!
Me: Yeah, you're definitely right about that — there is some really, really sick stuff. S&M, incest, pedophilia, beastiality...and lots and lots of just normal sex. I'm not easily offended, but a lot of that goes back to my earlier point about reader aggravation: Was all that necessary?
TP: Probably not, but it was fun to write! Haha. Okay, so we're sort of circling the main thrust (hehe..) of the novel. What's your take there?
Me: Well, let's see: So our main character, inasmuch as there is one, is American serviceman Tyrone Slothrop, hanging out in London in 1944 as German rockets rain down on the city. He has an unusual condition whereby he gets an erection in the spot a rocket is going to land, before it lands. I learned from my guidebook that this notion of backwards cause and effect is called hysteron proteron. This is a common theme throughout the novel, and occurs frequently. So Tyrone goes to France, and is taught about rockets. But he's paranoid that he's being manipulated. So he escapes into the Zone (war-torn Germany) to look for one particular rocket and find out about his affliction for himself. He has many adventures in many different disguises. Does many drugs. Has much sex. Between this loose narrative, a huge cast of characters on both sides of the war all converge is some way or another on the rocket. And everything from Kabbalistic mysticism to incredibly detailed rocket engineering are discussed along the way. That about cover it?
TP: Very, very basically, yeah. You should read it again.
Me: Okay, I'll get right on that — right after I win the lottery, pitch in the World Series, and swim around the world.
TP: You're laying the sarcasm on pretty think there, fella. Okay, so what will be your one, enduring memory from reading this novel?

Me: Well, other than how difficult it was, I will definitely remember Tyrone. And I'll remember some of the jokes. But I think I'll always remember the drug-induced hallucination near the beginning of the novel in which Tyrone perceives himself to be flushed down a toilet. Specifically, I'll remember the line that leads off that section: "You never did the Kenosha Kid." That line in particular is a good representation of the novel as a whole. It would probably makes sense in some inside-joke context if I read the novel again, but on a first read, it was just an interesting line that left me searching for meaning...and not finding it. 
TP: Well said. So, are you going to try any of my other books?

Me: Hey, thanks, Tommy. Well, I have Against the Day and Inherent Vice on my shelf. Maybe anyone reading this (if they're still with us) could chime in about the relative quality of those novels?
TP: Okay, I have to go see a man about a horse.
Me: Alright, take care fella.

Oh The Glory Of It All: Parents Just Don't Understand

Near the end of Sean Wilsey's hilarious, engrossing coming-of-age memoir, Oh The Glory Of It All, he explains that "A memoir, at its heart, is written in order to figure out who you are." But there are other reasons, too — like outing your evil stepmother as a gold-digging, morally barren ho-bag; like creating a tribute to your dead father, who wasn't always your biggest fan; and like illustrating how different rich people are than we normals.

Rich people are interesting. Crazy people are interesting. And rich, crazy people, like Sean's parents and step-mother, are absolutely fascinating! It all starts with the divorce. Sean's mother and father are the prototypical rich, San Francisco socialites. And their split and the almost immediate re-marriage of his father to another San Francisco socialite, Dede, send shockwaves both through San Francisco society and Sean's delicate rich-kid life. (Random note: Dede's ex-husband then married Danielle Steele, who previously had been having an affair with Sean's dad.)

Sean's childhood and adolescence becomes a mess of under-parenting and over-schooling — he goes through three high schools, literally escaping from the third one, which is a cult-like, brainwashing place called Cascade. His father disowns him, his mother is furious, and Sean's on his own.

Sean's complicated relationship with his parents is the underlying theme of the memoir. His mother wavers back and forth with a strange version of love, and totally using Sean to advance her own agenda. His horrible stepmother Dede never misses any opportunity to flat-out tell Sean what a screw-up he is, and what a disappointment he is to his father. But nevertheless, through all his misbehaving, and despite the fact that his father wants nothing to do with him (Dede's influence!), he still desperately seeks his father's approval.

What's most interesting about the book is about how Sean changes in the reader's eyes several times throughout the memoir. He starts off as a "character" for whom readers have this incredible sympathy because of his horrible parents. At one point, his mother suggests that she and Sean kill themselves together, ostensibly to avenge the divorce! But then he becomes your typical rich kid brat — he's cruel to his boarding-schoolmates, he has no concept of consequences, and he does things for no other reason than to be a jerk, like throwing fruit at cars off the balcony of his mother's 30th floor penthouse. It's not until an arrest and a deal to attend a school in Italy that he finally has the experiences necessary for him to mature, and finally graduate high school at age 20. Then, throughout the last third of the book, we're squarely on his side as he battles Dede and grows into manhood.

This book came out more than five years ago and has been on my shelf most of that time, but it recently showed up on Jonathan Franzen's list of "Four Overlooked Books," so I finally took it down. I loved it! It's absurd at times (Sean is SURE he's going to lose his virginity to his step-mother Dede. But that's before he's SURE he hates her more than any other human in the world.) It's hilarious in a sarcastic, smart, but also understated way. (Sean relates how angry his mother was when she lost to Elie Wiesel for the Nobel Peace Price — "When it was announced that Wiesel had won, Mom, crushed, threw the pyramid (a glass desk ornament) into a mirror." I literally laughed out loud after reading that scene.) And it's even often sad and affecting, especially near the end as Sean relates his father's death. It's a long book, but definitely worth a read. (And you can get it on Amazon for $6 right now!)

What's On Your National Book Award Shortlist?

It won't be long before we're inundated with year-end best-of-2010 lists. I'm not complaining — I think they're great fun — I'm just sayin'. But with the National Book Award (NBA) nominations, a de facto "best of 2010" list, due out next Wednesday (Oct. 13), I wanted to put out a few guesses about the noms.

First, a few notes:
1) The nominations are being announced by Pat Conroy. That's funny. That'd be like Keanu Reeves presenting the nomination for the film that wins the Oscar for Best Picture. What? That happened this year? The world's going to hell in a hand basket, I tell ya. (You kids get off my lawn!)
2) Lady T over at the terrific pop culture blog Living Read Girl posted about her NBA noms earlier this week. Check it out — it's a good read! (Preview: The Passage is one of her picks!)
3) Last year's five nominations, more so than any other year I can remember, were really obscure novels not many people had read, or even heard of. The prize ultimately went Let The Great World Spin, by Colum McCann — a book that once I got around to reading, became one of my favorites of the last few years. But if the trend toward obscurity continues, trying to guess at the nominations is really an exercise in futility. 

That said, here's who I'd nominate:
1. Bloodroot, by Amy Greene — When I reviewed this book back in April, I predicted it'd show up on this list, so I'm hoping Conroy proves me a prophet. 
2. Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen — Yeah, it'll most likely be there.
3. Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes — I haven't read this huge Vietnam War novel yet (it's on my shelf), but even people who don't normally like war novels have raved about it. Here's a well-written review by the Reading Ape. And another by Patrick at The Literate Man. The novel has 311 reviews on Amazon, 235 of which are five-star. (This is my guess for the winner.)
4. Nemesis, by Philip Roth —  Just out this week, the novel has been pretty well-reviewed. Finally, Roth's back! So after a publishing a few so-so novels in a row, maybe Nemesis will earn Roth his 453rd (or so) literary prize.
5. The Instructions, by Adam Levin — A long-shot, to be sure, but I'm guessing this 1,024-page novel may get a nod because it's long, obscure and no one's read it — sort of like any William T. Vollmann tome, one of which actually won in 2005 (Europe Central).

So, what books would you nominate? Anything totally off the beaten path you've read and loved in 2010 that you think has an Obscurity Factor chance? 

(By the way, the American-less Nobel streak is officially at 17 years. Some Peruvian guy I've only vaguely heard of but never read won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Congrats to you, Peru!)

Awash in Great Fall Books: A Top 10 List

More so than any other time in 2010, I feel like there is quite the collection of new, intriguing literary fiction hardcovers out (or about to be out there). Maybe it's a function of publishers waiting to release their "serious fiction" books until after the summer beach-reading season. Maybe it's because we're on the cusp of literary awards season (National Book Award noms: Oct. 13; winner: Nov. 17;  Man Booker announced: Oct 12; Nobel in Lit announced: about 2nd week in Oct; National Book Critics Circle award winner: Jan 22., 2011) is approaching. Or maybe it's a freakin' coincidence. But, at any rate, it's gonna be a great fall and winter for reading.

What's on your radar this fall/winter? Here's a Top 10 list (in no particular order) of books on mine right now:

10. Skippy Dies — There have been positive review 'aplenty regarding this 600+ book, whose main character is actually killed off...in the title! I'm excited to learn how Irish author Paul Murray can keep us interested for so long, when we already know the ending. The novel is about the day-to-day lives of boys at a boarding school school in Dublin.

9. Nemesis— Philip Roth's new novel comes out tomorrow! ...and there was much rejoicing. It's a slim novel (much like his last few) about a polio outbreak in Newark in the mid-1940s. Sounds pretty typical Roth. And here's a rare interview with Roth in the LA Times.

8. Great House — Sadly, Nicole Krauss' follow-up (and sequel?) to her fantastic The History of Love has been pretty well pooped on by critics so far. Entertainment Weekly calls it "loftily conceived, ultimately confounding." Hey, Debbie Downer, shut it! I'm still excited about it...

7.The Instructions — I saw this shelf-bending, 1,000+ page McSweeny's-published book at B&N yesterday, and had to damn near knock myself out to resist the temptation of making a rather expensive impulse buy. The back cover blurb says Adam Levin's novel "combines the crackling voice of Philip Roth with the encyclopedic mind of David Foster Wallace." Maybe it's just marketing, but if that's even 12 percent true, I'm in! Need to start saving...

6. To The End Of The Land — Here we have the prototypical winter read. David Grossman's novel about a woman who wanders around Israel, hoping to avoid bad news, is dense and slow-moving, by most accounts. But if you read The New Yorker profile of Grossman, and were as fascinated by it as I was, then this novel is a must-read.

5. C — Tom McCarthy's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel establishes him as "a contemporary champion of the experimental novel and heir to the postmodern stylists of the late 20th century," according to the blurb. That's certainly intriguing, but even more so — and also amusing — is the fact that on the same day it was shortlisted for the Booker, Michiko Kakutani wrote sort of the book review equivalent of a yawn in the NY Times. Not sure about you, but a bad (or even indifferent) review from Kakutani is actually a plus in my book.

4. Fall of Giants — This is the ginormous first novel in a Ken Follett-penned trilogy traversing the 20th century. It's also another prime example of a target by the moronic whiners who feel it necessary to leave one-star reviews on a novel to protest its e-book pricing — a vast majority of the 136 one-star reviews on amazon are to cry about the $19.99 Kindle pricing. Nothing gets my blood boiling more than these idiots who denigrate what is probably a great novel (most reviewers who are actually reviewing the novel itself speak positively about it) because they're unwilling to shell out a few bucks to read it. Seriously, shut up.

3. You Lost Me There — How could you not be intrigued by a novel written by a fella named Rosecrans Baldwin?! But the concept is even more intriguing: A comedic, some say Tropper-esque, look at the unreliable memory of a neuroscientist and Alzheimer's researcher.

2. Room — A creative premise — a boy who's lived his entire life in a single room — combined with dozens of overwhelmingly positive reviews combined with some big-name blurbs (Audrey Niffenegger, Michael Cunningham) combined with a Booker Prize shortlisting all make Emma Donoghue's new novel extraordinarily intriguing.

1. Washington: A Life — Let's end with a big 'ol winter-reading biography. Ron Chernow, who several years ago brought us the brick of a biography of Alexander Hamilton, returns with an equally outsized look at George Washington's life. If you're not intrigued by George Washington, go back to Russia, comrade!  ;)

Any of these stick out for you? Read any of them? What's on your list these days?