The Norman and the Dead

I finished The Naked and the Dead last night. Some of my Mailer fears were confirmed. I didn't really enjoy it on the whole. I thought Mailer's simple-language style wasn't particularly evocative and was pretty boring when stretched over 700 pages. I did like the character sketches that gave background on the characters, both because of the way they were written and because they provided welcome respite from the overly detailed war narrative. I've read about similar military mismanagement issues in a much funnier book and actually quit on a recent televised presentation covering some of the same areas. So what you're left with after removing all of those parts is a lot of "he doesn't know any better/it was another time"-style racism. I'm still holding out hope that I'll enjoy The Executioner's Song since it's about an issue in which I'm actually interested and is often favorably compared to one of my favorite books, In Cold Blood.

Also, John Updike died. Meaning that Pynchon, Joseph McElroy, Howard Zinn and Bob Spitz are the only living authors left on my list. Watch out fellas. It also means that John Irving is the only one left alive to fight against the literary scourge (his opinion, not always mine) that is Tom Wolfe.

Next Up, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the Unites States.

Them's Fightin' Words

Look at that crusty bastard. I'm not sure I have much a chance of liking Norman Mailer - The Person.
1) He's dead, so we couldn't have much of a productive conversation.
2) By all accounts he was a miserable asshole anyway.
3) He was a bit too stabby and punchy.

I've read The Armies of the Night and thought it was ok. I was a little annoyed by the third person, "The Author does this..., The author does that..., The author stumbles around drunk and pissing on things." The book also now falls in the "THE 1960s WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT DECADE EVER!!!" genre, which, as Hunter Thompson (and time) have pointed out isn't really true.

Mailer does pop up in some of my favorite places so I thought I'd take another shot at him (he's dead and can't fight back) with The Naked and the Dead, hoping that, when he wrote it in 1948, he wasn't seasoned enough to have an ego. I started it Thursday and so far it's taken me a little while to 'get into.' I like the cut away character sketches and maybe as I read more of them I'll be able to distinguish the soldiers in conversations on a deeper level than "Mexican Guy," "Noo Yoork guy," and "Jewish Guy." But maybe there isn't a deeper level, Mailer was just an asshole and Zombie Mailer will come back and punch me for saying so.

Bonus Video: (Extremely Shirtless) Mailer fighting Larry Sanders' Boss (starts at 1:33)

I guess all of these book previews will have to feature a fight video. I hope James Joyce and Flann O'Brien had an old fashioned Irish brawl at some point.

Toothbrushes?

I finished Infinite Jest on Wednesday. It was obviously entertaining and readable enough for me to finish in just a couple of weeks, but I can't say it was as life changing for me as it seems to be for others. There are plenty of great scenes and some observations about human behavior (most notably during the AA meetings) that are dead-on and probably some more things I missed. I could never really separate the story from the author (maybe that's part of the point) and how much it seemed that he split the 300 voices in his head into individual characters and spread them across 1000+ pages. I'd say it was definitely helpful to have read DFW's non-fiction to understand his style and his interests before embarking on this very good brain dump. In summation, this book hurt my brain (in a good way) and my back (in a bad way).

Games, Challenges, and Contests

After reading a very long introduction and play-by-play of a "game" of Eschaton -- the Infinite Jest tennis students' game that seems like a horribly nerdy combination of dungeons & dragons, Model UN, mathletes, and tennis drills -- I'll stick with Calvinball.

It seems like as appropriate a time as any to bring up the other personal reading challenges I have inspired. I've soundly outread my mom the last two years (this year I was awarded a handsome monkey bookmark for my victory) so when I explained my project to her she had to think of a personal challenge of her own. She decided, quite appropriately for a fourth grade teacher, that she would finish four of the series of children's books that she's begun but never finished: A Series of Unfortunate Events, Harry Potter, Little House on the Prairie, and The Chronicles of Narnia. I made her add the slim, totally readable, Michael Chabon book that I gave her a few years ago. Never wanting to be left out and desperate to reintegrate to Continental US Society after a year in Alaska, my sister has pledged to read 100 books, at least 45 of which will be sad lady books. I'm like the Johnny Appleseed of stupid, self-regulated, Jones family reading challenges.

Update: 300 and 101

300 pages (and 101 endnotes) into Infinite Jest seemed like a decent place to update my Big Book Project status.

I'm enjoying the book so far. When a mere 40 pages in, I naively explained to my friend Pete that, unlike most post-modern craziness, the book didn't contain obscure references. 260 pages and one 8.5 page fake imdb entry later I can safely say this is not the case. I get 2 of every 3 movie/director references and assume some others are fictional. I like the tennis jargon but think that the junior tennis academy students in the book are already better than I am, and if we ever played each other in a fictional universe where the years sponsored by specific products, they would beat me soundly.

I'm not as into the exhaustive prescription drug talk which tends to make me not care whether the drugs are real or not. It does seem to have moved past some of that into the more enjoyable rehab/psychological disorder discussions (which my sister may enjoy as a prospective substance abuse counselor).

It's also odd that Post-Modern fiction, with its free-wheelin', break-down the literature traditions, and narrative structure reputation seems to have conventions of its own that pop up in the book. The frequent shifts in time, setting, and narration are similar to what I've read by DeLillo and the goofy-named, intellectual weirdos are part of Pynchon's thing. Right? Good thing I like that stuff. (It should be clear from this half-assed comparison that I wasn't an English major).

I'll let you know how it's shakin' out in another few hundred pages.

Preview: Infinite Jest

Recently I've watched two different film versions of Hamlet: Laurence Olivier's from 1948 and Kenneth Branagh's from 1996. Seeing Hamlet reminds you that every single band name, song lyric, movie, common phrase, and book title is related to Hamlet in some way. The title for David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest comes from a line in one of the most famous scenes (Act 5, Scene 1, pictured above):

HAMLET: Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio - a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."

Alas, poor Wallace. I hadn't read much of his work other than the stray New Yorker story or graduation speech before he died in September. Since then, I've read and enjoyed his non-fiction essays in Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. He analyzes actual facts, feelings, and experiences in such mind-f**king depth that I'm a little afraid of what will happen in his 900+ page work of fiction (not to mention the 96 pages of endnotes). Armed with two bookmarks, I'm jumping right in...tomorrow.

Bonus - Enjoy this video from Charlie Rose in which David Foster Wallace talks a bit about Infinite Jest and obviously hurts Jonathan Franzen's feelings (particularly from 11:00-14:00).

The suggestion that someone was "not delightful" was quite a slight in the 1996 long-haired author community.