The Part About the Blog

Another free "first reads" book; another unfocused, multi-sentence review. This time it's Roberto Bolaño's 893-page murder epic 2666.

There's probably no way I would have read this book had it not been mailed to my house free of charge. I'd passed it over at the library and half-heartedly listened to or read others' thoughts. I'd been turned off by the cavalier poets of The Savage Detectives and dry, repetitive "humor" of Nazi Literature in the Americas. It seemed to me Bolaño treated literature like some bad ass X-Games sport, which, as much as I love it, it ain't. (Incidentally, neither is cooking, sorry Bobby Flay and Anthony Bourdain).

Here, despite the book's length, Bolaño has dialed back the things that annoyed me (or at least split them up and distributed them amongst a greater number of characters). The first book focused on obsession and passion as the 4 critics pursued, as academics do, the creative spirit in the least creative of ways. From there 2666 spirals into an exploration of madness (Amalfitano), anchorless paranoia (Fate's trip an aimless binge in Santa Teresa), and eventually death ("The Part About the Crimes"). In those areas, 2666 seemed like a more serious Mexican cousin of Gravity's Rainbow, with some of the lawless dread of Oakley Hall's Warlock or the show Deadwood. The fifth book ended well but I thought that going back to WWII to start was too much of a reset and some of the life stories of people Archimboldi encountered reminded me of the parts of Bolaño books I don't like.

Bolaño, like Jonathan Lethem, is able to make his fictional artists seem familiar and also fits in some shout-outs to his favorites (here: David Lynch and Marcel Duchamp).

I suspect a little bit of the overwhelming praise of this book is due to the Entourage/30 Rock effect (critics/industry folk like things that explore their own world), and "the Part About the Critics" and the mystical "Archimboldi" himself definitely feed that, but there's plenty to enjoy here. Good work dead guy.

Mason & Dixon & Update

Most recently read and most impossible to summarize, Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. Structurally it's similar to Barth's Sot-Weed Factor in that it's a post-modern novel written in an 18th century style. Pynchon went all out with random capitalization and olde-tyme spellings. Overall, it's a good book about friendship through shared circumstances, but it shines in its craziness. The book includes a talking dog and a mechanical duck that carries grudges. It also includes these two ridiculous anachronisms:

- An Englishman, just returned from a trip to Italy is eager to introduce his pubmates to a fantastic new dish he discovered there (pizza). Unable to find dough, tomato and cheese, they made do with stilton cheese, anchovies, and "ketjup," on a loaf of brown bread. Que delicioso!

- Friggin' Popeye: "That is, 'I am that which I am,' " helpfully translates a somehow nautical-looking Indiv. with gigantick Fore-Arms, and one Eye ever a-Squint from the Smoke of his Pipe.

Pynchon continues his infatuation with silly names for the non-historically accurate characters, particularly the narrator Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke. Also, I bet you didn't know George Washington had a black, Jewish slave chef. I liked the book and there's a lot more where that came from but my brain has been taxed enough already. I'm gonna go read some Calvin & Hobbes.

I'm almost done so here's an update to make this post look longer:
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1,079p) 1.14.09
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (721p) 1.26.09
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn (729p) 2.3.09
Rabbit Angstrom by John Updike (1,516p) 2.16.09
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (776p) 3.7.09
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (704p) 3.14.09
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1056p) 3.22.09
Ulysses by James Joyce (768p) 3.29.09
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (720p) 4.5.09
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (819p) 4.18.09
The Beatles: The Biography by Bob Spitz (992p) 5.2.09
The Early Stories: 1953-1975 by John Updike (864p) 5.3.09
The Complete Novels (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, and The Dalkey Archive) by Flann O'Brien (787p) 5.19.09
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (853p) 6.3.09
The Recognitions by William Gaddis (956p) 6.24.09
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (706p) 7.8.09
Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (773p) 7.23.09
The USA Trilogy (The 42nd Parallel 8.5.09, 1919, and The Big Money) by John Dos Passos (1,144p in 3 volumes)
Women and Men by Joseph McElroy (1192p)

The Short Story

If reading all of these long books has had any effect on me, it's given me a better appreciation for short stories. I've enjoyed a few smaller collections this year including Wells Tower's debut Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned which fits somewhere between Elmore Leonard and Raymond Carver on the dude-tastic short story scale (a highly scientific scale graded in terms of alcohol content, Tower is about 70 proof). In the context of this project it's amazing what Tower can squeeze into 15-20 pages.

I've also dipped my toe (which is attached to a stolen fake leg) into the Southern, Catholic waters of Flannery O'Connor's short stories. I'm reading them sparingly so as not to get an Updike-ian overload. So far they all have unique, striking images that makes them easy to distinguish. When talking about them with friends it was a challenge to match up the element (false leg, serial killer, etc) with the excellent titles. I look forward to reading the rest but according to this entry, O'Connor believed her greatest accomplishment was teaching a chicken to walk backwards. Sadly no youtube footage exists. Thanks again to the decidedly un-Southern, un-Catholic girl who recommended O'Connor to me!

On the other side of the short story coin I recently tried Thomas Pynchon's short story collection, Slow Learner. After reading two Pynchon books this year and being interested in his new detective novel, I was curious to see what he had done in his early stories. I should have kept driving without stopping. Pynchon warns you of as much in the introduction where he basically explains that the stories are hack-y crap. Thank god for the DC Public Library and their help in weaning me of book purchasing. It's also kind of a strange meta-joke for a reclusive author to release an admittedly bad story collection which his nerdtastic fans will snap up solely because it has a 20 page personal intro wherein said recluse tries to covince you not to read (or at least not to judge him on) the stories that follow. Well played Lit Nerd King, well played.

If only I were a Mad Men character I could be writing my own short stories to submit to such fine publications as this:

Cartoon Dog, Bear or Cat

I finished Gravity's Rainbow over the weekend and the only thought I've been able to come up with is a description of the author in the Achewood patois.

Pynchon: The dude is just bursting with elements.

This is probably more of a Ray Smuckles comment (though lord knows why he's reading post-modern fiction) as all of Cornelius Bear's books are leather-bound.

..and I'm OK

I passed the halfway mark of Gravity's Rainbow on my train ride home today. I am enjoying it, but I'm having a tough time getting through it and motivating myself to pick the book back up. The "main plot" (if there is one) is constantly pushed aside in favor of dense digressions into random, mostly fictional European towns, myths, and weapons. The digressions themselves are mostly good, but I rarely remember what the hell was going on in Slothrop's quest each time I pick it up.

I can say that I really don't like the "silly songs" throughout. I guess they remind me too much of the higgledy piggledy/double dactyl crap that always seems so damn forced and only amusing to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me..." commentators. Silly songs should be sung (see above), not shoved into otherwise funny WWII postmodern fiction.

Gravity's Brainblow and Update

I'm forty-some pages into Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and I'm ready to declare it one of the hardest books I've ever read. The sentences are very complex and often require multiple passes to get any idea of what the hell's going. I'm enjoying the "absurdity of war" tone that reminds me of one of my favorite books, Catch 22.

Luckily, some nerds have created an entire wiki site for the book. Unfortunately, most of the contributors wish they were Thomas Pynchon and the annotated guide is less than helpful. Most of the annotations don't explain the book's many references, merely point out inconsistencies and errors in someone else's critical companion book. Nerds.

The one piece of worthwhile Gravity's Rainbow interweb ephemera is Zak Smith's collection of Illustrations of Every Page of Gravity's Rainbow (see page 26 above). It also reminded me that I've completely abandoned my illustration blog. Complete Illustrated Sot-Weed Factor anyone?

So far I've finished four of the books in my project. I hope to actually finish before the end of the year and resume my regularly scheduled reading.

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (819p)
The USA Trilogy (The 49th Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money) by John Dos Passos (1,144p in 3 volumes)
The Recognitions by William Gaddis (956p)
Ulysses by James Joyce (768p)
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1056p)
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (721p)
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (704p)
The Complete Novels (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, and The Dalkey Archive) by Flann O'Brien (787p)
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (776p)
Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (773p)
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (720p)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (853p)
Rabbit Angstrom by John Updike (1,516p)
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1,079p)
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn (729p)
Women and Men by Joseph McElroy (1192p)
NEWThe Early Stories: 1953-1975 by John Updike (864p) NEW