Domestic Violets: A Heartbreaking Tale of Staggering

When you endeavor to review a novel you enjoyed as much as I enjoyed Matt Norman's Domestic Violets, it's easy to slip into platitudes and/or hyperbole: "I loved this novel more than fat kids love cake" or "This novel reminded me why I love reading...and why I hate work" or "This is a deeply affecting family drama. Matt is a modern-day Tolstoy." But I won't. I promise. Hopefully I can cover all those (maybe slightly exaggerated sentiments) with just this: Domestic Violets is one of my favorite novels of the year. It's very, very good.

Here's the deal: Tom Violet is 35. He's married to a smart, modern woman named Anna, and they have a precocious seven-year-old daughter named Allie. The family lives in Washington, D.C and for the last seven years, Tom has written copy for a soulless management consulting company, and therefore, is woefully unfulfilled professionally. His only joy at work is a hot 23-year-old copywriter named Katie, who may or may not have a crush on him (a crush which he may or may not reciprocate).

But let's back up a second: In the very first scene in the novel, we find out Anna is as unfulfilled in the bedroom as Tom is at work. To put it bluntly (or softly, as it were), Tom can't get it up (which is hilariously ironic; Tom's mother tells us later that the Greeks believed violets symbolized potency and fertility). That same night, after they've tried and once again given up hope of carnal delights, Tom's father Curtis Violet, a celebrated novelist and serial philanderer, swoops drunkenly into the house, announcing that he has finally won his first Pulitzer, completing a grand slam of literary prizes. The sadly funny juxtaposition of the marital "failure" with his father's literary success sets the tone for the rest of this story.

Domestic Violets is Tom's first-person account of his collisions with the trials life. It's part workplace comedy, part brutally honest meditation on the difficulty of marriage (Tom's mostly-happy-but-hitting-a-rough patch marriage is often contrasted with Curtis' several unhappy ones), and part about what it means to have a famous father (especially in a field in which Tom is interested in joining himself — he's been secretly writing a novel for the last five years).

Because Tom is a wise-cracking, self-deprecating, smart ass, it'd be easy to pigeonhole this novel as your run-of-the-mill dude lit. But similar to other novels — like those by Jonathan Tropper and The Financial Lives of the Poets (by Jess Walter) — to which Domestic Violets will reside adjacently on my  categorized shelves, the mix of low-brow comedy with wit, honesty and empathy is what raises this novel from beach read to brilliant.

There are scenes is this book that I don't possess the writerly chops to describe (well, without again resorting to platitudes, like "I laughed, I cried...oh, the emotional ride"). Suffice it to say, a couple times, I literally had to put my hand over the page and reveal a line at a time so I wouldn't accidentally glance ahead and ruin the drama.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll readily admit that part of the reason (maybe most) I connected so well with this novel is that, as a near-35-year-old, self-deprecating dude myself, I felt often like Matt (I'm calling him Matt, not Matthew; he won't mind, I hope) Norman had crawled into my brain, thieved my thoughts, and spilled them onto his pages. Would that I were as clever, honest and funny as Tom (and Matt) are. I can't recommend Domestic Violets more highly.

(A big thanks to Rachel at A Home Between Pages, whose own glowing review first put Domestic Violets on my radar.)

My Top Five Fantastically Filthy (Ban-able?) Books

An entire week dedicated to combating stupidity, censorship and narrow-mindedness? Yes, please!* To celebrate Banned Books Week, many bookish folk are reading from their favorite banned books and posting the videos on YouTube, which is awesome.

But I'm going to do something a little less high-road. What follows is my list of filthy, but fantastic, books that are (and probably at one point have been) easy targets for book banners. Just so we're crystal clear, I'm not AT ALL suggesting that these books be banned. I'm only suggesting that they're easy pickins for the type of people who do try to ban books.

That is to say, if people who tried to banned books actually read or understood good literary fiction, these would probably certainly be near the top of their list. But they don't, usually. So it's a pretty safe bet that some chucklehead in, say, Wakefield, Mass., who, say, banned Harry Potter, probably isn't going to have a good working knowledge of Philip Roth. In other words, he's ignorant of Philip Roth. And isn't ignorance the dominant characteristic of a book-banner anyway?

And, so without further adieu, here is my Top Five Books That Would Be Banned If Ignorant Idiots Had Their Way:

5. Sabbath's Theater, by Philip Roth — Everyone knows about the liver scene in Portnoy's Complaint, but Roth's National Book Award-winning (1995) novel is probably his filthiest. Mickey Sabbath, the novel's 64-year-old sex-tagonist, in one memorable scene, um, chokes the bishop on the grave of his dead wife. And that's one of the more tame scenes.When I finished this novel, I wrote: "I don’t know whether...I’m in awe of Roth, or terrified of him, or just grossed out by how perverted he seems to be." Good times!

4. Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami — This was the first Murakami book I'd read, and after hearing about his ethereal prose and how his novels hinge upon their own metaphysical logic, I was surprised by the sheer amount of sex in this novel. Careful: includes lesbians.

3. Lamb, by Christopher Moore — Lest you think I'd only consider dirty sexual novels ban-worthy, here we have a satiric look at the life of Jesus Christ, told by his childhood pal Biff. If the ultra-religious type gets itchy about Harry Potter, my God, reading (or kids reading, God forbid!) this novel would cause paroxysms of penance prayer on par with news that the Rapture is imminent.

2. Beat the Reaper, by Josh Bazell — There are certainly a lot of options for books that would meet the "way too violent" criteria, but I picked this one, because I loved it, and because it's so-over-the-top violent, I couldn't look away — including a ball-shrivelingly violent ending that will leave you fetal-positioned. I'll let Rachel of A Home Between Pages explain, as she did in a comment on my review: "When I got to the end of Beat the Reaper, I literally sat there with my mouth hanging open, holding the book over my head, going Oahhmaahhhgawd!!!!!"

1. Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, by Tom Robbins — One of the funniest novels I've ever read is also one of the filthiest. It includes some, um, non-traditional, sex with a nun. And that's I probably all I need to say about this novel's gross-out factor. But it's awesome (the novel, not necessarily the fact that it includes nun sex). 
 
What would be on your list? 

*Banned Books Week, if you're unfamiliar, is an almost 30-year-old week-long celebration of books that at one point or another have been, well, banned. Check out this awesome map of censorship activity just in 2010 — 348 just in one year. Ugh!

The Lonely Polygamist: Can Anybody Hear Me?

Golden Richards has chewing gum stuck in his pubic hair, and he has no earthly idea how it got there. It's just one more calamity in the life of this lonely polygamist, who, with four wives and 28 children, has all but lost control. As Udall tells us about halfway through the novel, "(Golden's) very life, including his marriages to his wives, his children, his church position, was none of his own doing." Indeed, his life is a combination of a careful orchestration by his wives of where to be and when, and putting out fires caused by misbehaving kids and a failing construction business. Dude just can't get a moment to himself to relax!

Brady Udall's irony rich (starting with the title!), tragi-comedy novel is a fantastic (if a bit lengthy) read. Believe it or not, Golden is one of the more sympathetically pathetic characters I've read in a while. Will he ever be able to take control of his life? Here's a great detail to illustrate just how much he's been emasculated: His first wife Beverly, who rules the brood, has placed instructional signs everywhere in Old House (where she lives with her litter of 10), most notably above the toilet: "Golden, Please Take A Seat." Poor guy can't even pee like a man.

Really, the gum-in-the-pubic-hair (the reader does know how it got there, and it's hilarious) is a rather inventive metaphor for Golden's life — it's tangled beyond relief. And, other than making a clean break/cut, he has no idea how to extract himself. Despite being surrounded with his family, he's lost the emotional attachment to them, and starts looking elsewhere to relieve his loneliness. 

Compounding the loneliness theme of the novel is the interspersed narratives of two other characters. One is Golden's 12-year-old son Rusty, who is a misunderstood miscreant who tries on his sisters' underwear, steals things from his siblings and generally misbehaves as a sincere cry out for attention. Golden's young and beautiful fourth wife, Trish, also is just beginning to realize the true degree of her own loneliness. She grew up in a polygamist sect and vowed never to live that life herself, but after an abusive first marriage, her mother has convinced her to join Golden's family for security and emotional support. She's getting neither, and she may soon look elsewhere, too?

But this is really Golden's story, and again, it's equal parts funny and sad. This novel had gotten great reviews when it came out last year, but I put it off because I was worried that it might be a "look how bizarre polygamy is" story in which I'd have to keep track of a War-and-Peace-like number of characters. Not the case. Udall doesn't totally ignore the "abnormality" of the Richards clan, mentioning awkward moments for Golden here and there in the community at large, and that Rusty gets teased at school for being a "plyg kid." But it's really a story of how Golden, Trish and Rusty combat their loneliness. And it's really good. Highly recommended!

Reading To Remember, or One More Way Books Are Awesome

Last spring, when I was "stuck" in Berlin, thanks to an unpronounceable Icelandic volcano, I was reading Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind. Now, whenever my eye catches that book where it sits on my shelf, thoughts of that trip immediately come to mind.

But it's not just travel for which this "book/memory association" works. For instance, whenever I happen to glance at Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, I'm reminded of Marquette's surprise run to the Final Four in 2003. The memory of reading that fantastic book and that fantastic few weeks of basketball are permanently intertwined.

Indeed, what I realized is that my bookshelf has become a virtual travelogue / diary / database of memories. Of course, memory is associative, so it makes sense that this would be the case. I just never really consciously considered it before.* It certainly doesn't work for every book (I'm not some sort of literary Rain Man. Sadly. 'cause that'd be awesome!), but when I look at many of the hundreds of books on my shelves, I know what I was doing, where I was reading, what was happening in my life at that time. It's kind of awesome. Actually, it's really awesome! 

And here's what I also realized: I love technology and gadgets and such, and yet I still haven't bought an e-reader. The main reason I haven't is not because I'm opposed to reading electronically (I'm not), or because I like the "feel" of physical books (I do), or that I like collecting my books (I really do.) No, the main reason is that I'd lose this "book memory" phenomenon that only comes from glancing through physical books ensconced in their permanent home on my shelf. That, I'm not willing to give up.

So I'm sure this "book memory phenomenon" isn't unique to me. How does it work for you? Do you ever spend an afternoon just staring at your shelf and reminiscing?

*The funny thing is, this whole idea — or at least the reason it crystallized into enough of a coherent idea to write a post about it — came as I was watching the movie Limitless this weekend. If I could have one Super Power, it'd be to remember and connect any memory anytime I wanted. C'mon, that would be cool, right?

How Has Blogging Changed Reading Habits?

Last fall, I had one of those rare moments when I finished a book and wasn't sure what to read next. So I went to my shelf, fixed it with my most withering glare, and hoped a book would present itself. It did. Sean Wilsey's memoir Oh The Glory Of It All jumped right out. That book had been high on my priority list for a long time and I'd just read an article in which Jonathan Franzen had recommended it.

"But," said the red literary devil who popped up on my right shoulder (and who bore a striking resemblance to Nic Sparks), "this is an obscure book, such that when you blog about it later, you probably won't get as many readers/visits/pageviews."

That's when the white literary angel (sporting a du-rag and long hair) popped up: "And but so, read what you want, dude. After all, fiction is what it means to be a f#$%ing human being — even though that book's a memoir. You know what I mean, though. Oh, what a f#$%ing mess." So I did (though I was still reeling a bit by the amount of cursing the angel did). And Wilsey's memoir was great!

The point here is this: Blogging has changed my reading habits in a number of ways (at least five, as you'll see below), but it hasn't changed my fundamental philosophy on choosing books: I'm gonna read what I want. I'm not going to feel pressure to read what's popular or what other people think I should or what will get the most pageviews. I know, bold statement, that. But I think it's important. (And just so we're clear, I'm literally patting myself on the back right now.)

That said, there are several ways my reading habits have changed since I started The New Dork Review of Books in October 2009 (yep, creeping up on two years). Thankfully, they're all positive. Here there are:

5. I read a lot more — I covered this earlier this spring in a post about GoodReads. My greater reading pace has borne out so far in 2011, too. I'm probably going to eclipse by a wide margin the number of pages read last year — which was by far and away the most ever.

4. I've been motivated to read my bucket-list books and authors — Last year, I took down Gravity's Rainbow. Being able to tweet, periodically blog, and receive encouragement about that chore is pretty much the only thing that kept me sane enough to get through it. This year, so far, I've read Gone With The Wind, Anna Karenina, and I'm 11 percent done with War and Peace. That rules. Also, I finally read Haruki Murakami. Twice. That also rules.

3. I've read more indies and other books I'd never have heard of — One of the biggest unexpected benefits of blogging about books is getting free books. I'm still really particular about accepting books for review, but I have a few times, and as a result, read books I might never have heard of. Two examples: Kapitoil, by Teddy Wayne, and Fight For Your Long Day, by Alex Kudera. Reading the latter led to one of my favorite blogging experience so far: The conversation with the author about how he viewed book bloggers. Also, other bloggers' recommendations have expanded my reading horizons widely. But that's a topic for another post.

2. I've read with greater attention and more depth — I mean, you have to, right? Nobody wants to look like an idiotic jerk when they post a review. So I try hard not to. Secondly, and it's hard to avoid being totally unoriginal here and saying something like "I've gotten more out of my reading," but, I've gotten more out of my reading. I use little post-its to mark quotes in books ('cause writing in books is a mortal sin) and reviewing those quotes when I go to write a review or reaction really does jog memory and help solidify connections between themes, characters, etc. I never did that before I started blogging.

1. Frankly, reading has never been more fun — Of course it is. And of course, reading being more fun isn't necessarily a changed habit. But what would this list be without more fun? The reason reading's been more fun is that I know for sure I'll have someone with whom I can discuss the book. And, as solitary as reading is, it's a million times more enjoyable in a community. Cheers to this community!

(For those curious about why there's that weird logo at the top of this post, this week is Book Blogger Appreciation Week — a fairly cool five-day back-pat to all things book bloggery.)