 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Short Book reviews by junior allen 01/01/2003, 6:49pm PST | ||||
 |
 |
|||
| About a year or so ago I started up a literary criticism zine called THE GAME. Frankly, it was heavily influenced by OMM – I liked the way Chet and Eric talked about games and thought something similar might be done for books.
The zine petered out for the same reasons most zines do – it was a fucking pain in the ass. It’s not enough to just write something: you also have to proof it, lay it out, print it up, bind it, and distribute it. Fuck that. The material inside was pretty good, though, and I’ll post some of it here. The back of THE GAME had short book reviews, and I decided from square one to review every goddamn thing I was reading, whether or not it was recent, or anyone knew the title. I understand why magazines and newspapers focus their reviews on new titles, but if you think about it, it doesn’t replicate most people’s reading habits. Does anybody really go into a bookstore and scream for “the newest books?†Maybe they’re looking for the newest Tom Clancy or Danielle Steele, sure, but “the latest romanceâ€? “The most current thriller?†I doubt it. Most people are just looking for a good book, period. They wander into Borders and see Haggard sitting beside Hemingway sitting beside whoever; Raymond Chandler and Michael Connolly are on the same table. For them it’s all one big pot. Which is great, that’s the way it should be. I also decided not to segregate genres. Nowadays I read most action/adventure fiction of various hues: that’s because I’m trying to write an action/adventure novel. But normally I read just about anything that looks appealing, like most people who aren’t dressing up like Klingons or posting to rec.arts.sf.written. Anyhow, these are the best of the short reviews. Some of the stuff here’s out of date now. Oprah quit her bookclub shortly after Jonathan Franzen made a big production of sneering at it: I suspect collusion. Donna Tartt eventually came out with her second book – I don’t know what that’s like, but Ms. Tartt herself, judging from recent photos, looks like hell. (She looked kind of snooty-hot in the jacket photo to SECRET HISTORY.) If nothing else, I hope I turn somebody onto Ross Thomas. junior allen For Caltrops: Short Reviews Pat Conroy – The Prince of Tides (Bantam) This is a Southern book! You can tell because the writer gets weepy about the South every fourteen pages! There’s a lot of talk about the race issue! It’s the same shit you’ve heard six million times! Nobody ever talks about the heat! But it gets hot down there! Maybe if somebody wrote a book about the humidity they’d say something original on the fucking subject! But this book isn’t really about race, so that makes it unique! It’s about dysfunctional families! That’s pretty original! Maybe he’ll get on Oprah! Everyone who writes about dysfunctional families gets on Oprah! Wait, maybe it’s not that original! There’s a psychiatrist here! She gets to fuck a patient, but he’s not really her patient! So that makes it okay! That’s pretty original! They’re both married, too! But it’s okay! It’s a warm nurturing kind of adultery! That’s not so original but what the fuck! They made a movie of this! It sucked! Even Nick Nolte couldn’t save it! When Streisand’s your love interest you’re in trouble! There are other Conroy books! They’re all just this bad! But people buy them! Because they’re Southern books too! People will excuse all sorts of horseshit if it comes from the South! Don’t you make that mistake! Pete Dexter – Deadwood (Penguin) In the old days, if something like this crossed an editor’s desk, more likely than not the editor, a big fat balding guy working on his third wife and his second myrocardial infarction, would call up Dexter and say something like: “Hey, Pete? Do you mind if I call you Pete? Read Deadwood and it starts off pretty good, kid, but you see, you kill off your hero, Wild-Bill-friggin-Hickok no less, a third of the way into it and nobody’s going to want to finish the fucking thing after that. It’s like reading a Batman comic where Robin’s the hero. Who gives a shit about Robin, huh? So gimme a rewrite in six weeks and try to keep Wild Bill alive this time, huh?†And if Dexter wanted to eat he’d do as he was told and we’d have a good solid Western, no small thing, really. We live in lesser times, unfortunately. Points off because I always screw this guy up with Pete Hamil, who I think was there first. Change it to Peter, asswipe. Thomas McGuane – Panama (Penguin) I had hopes that this would be based on Van Halen’s excellent song “Panamaâ€, one of the high points of the band’s career. When I learned it featured a rock star as a protagonist I was even more psyched. Unfortunately, this guy’s a glitter rock fag, and he spends the whole book pissing and moaning about the pointlessness of it all. David Lee Roth didn’t believe in pointlessness. He believed in BOOZE and PUSSY, the eternal verities. That’s why “Panama†will be remembered long after Panama is forgotten. Ann Beattie – Park City: New and Selected Stories (Vintage) Chockfull of Ann Beattieâ„¢ goodness! Actually, as much as I hate this book/author, I highly recommend that everybody run out right now and steal a copy of it. Because everybody needs at least one representation of “Jesus, things used to be better in the Sixties†in their collection, right? It’s an important sub-genre. Personally, I’m sticking my copy between my representative “cats who solve mysteries†volume and my “Victorian s&m porn†volume. Ross Thomas – The Money Harvest (Vintage) Not as good as his Porkchoppers, which is one of the great American political novels, and the final “twist†ending is about as surprising as a headache after a drinking spree. But it’s still solid – and the plot, which revolves around a rather hapless scheme to make a lot of money quickly, is so enticing it was later ripped off by a famous Hollywood movie. (I’ll give you a clue – nah, fuck that, I’ll just tell you. Trading Places.) There’s all sorts of persistent rumors about Thomas and the CIA – I don’t know how true they are, but you do get the feeling that this motherfucker knew things about how the world worked that you and I don’t. His cynicism seems hard-won, if that makes any sense. Highly recommended. Stephen Becker – The Blue Eyed Shan (Random House) Commits the cardinal sin of historical novelists – too much time educating the reader, not enough time entertaining the reader. If I wanted to learn about the daily lives of hill tribes I’d be reading National Geographic, asshole. Gimme blood, gimme sex, gimme suspense and good dialog and action and while you’re at it, gimme some more sex. Maybe some comedy in between the sex. As long as you don’t detract from the sex. Of course, the critics creamed their jeans over this one. Stick with his vastly superior Chinese Bandit. Eric Ambler – The Light of Day (Ballantine) The problem with heist novels is that the structure is so predictable. By definition something has to go wrong, because there’s nothing interesting about success, right? “They robbed the bank successfully and lives happily ever†– you wanna read that? Therefore, all the planning stuff which all of these books focus on is a waste of time – because both the reader and the author knows that some incredible fuckup is gonna come out of the blue and ruin everything. If these novels work, they work because of the style/language. The best authors realize the essential problem and try to engage the reader in other ways. It’s like a magic trick – you try to charm the reader so he/she doesn’t notice the bullshit enacted in front of you. Truthfully, I haven’t read any 100% classic heist books – though the best Westlake/Stark books come close to it, I suppose. This one relies heavily on Ambler’s amusing protagonist, Arthur Simpson, a middle-aged conman living in Greece who gets in over his head pretty damn quickly. Simpson’s “woe is me†patter carries the book most of the way, but runs out of steam right before the big climax, which is kinda not the best time for the energy to flag. It’s worth a look, but it’s overrated and doesn’t hit the high points that Ambler’s classic Thirties spy novels did. Edward Bunker – No Beast So Fierce (Dell) Duller ‘n dirt. Just because you’re an ex-con, that doesn’t mean you know how to fashion a tight narrative. William Styron, of all people, likes Bunker, which is good enough reason to stay away – I mean, honestly, would you trust a hardened ex-con’s opinion of William Styron? E. Phillip Oppenheim – The Great Impersonation (Collier) The guy you think is a fake? Actually turns out to be real! Philip Kerr – Berlin Noir Trilogy: March Violets, The Pale Criminal, A German Requiem (Penguin) Ridiculously overrated hardboiled PI trilogy set in Nazi Germany before (and then just after) the war. While the unusual setting works for the most part in March, Pale Criminal feels far more genre-bound, and Requiem is just tedious. Oddly didactic as the series wears on, too, which is strange – like anyone needs convincing that Nazism was a bad idea? Hunter S. Thompson – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Vintage) Reread this recently and it was an unpleasant experience. I discovered (1) the book is far less funny than I first remembered it being and (2) Hunter’s really a faggy hippy, once you get beneath that whole rum-and-Nembutal haze. Best encountered when you’re fourteen and have just tasted your first beer. Donna Tartt – The Secret History (Knopf) And yeah, verily, I say unto thee that there once was an over-hyped group of young writers much like the McSweeney’s crowd, that they were named the Brat Pack, after a bunch of over-hyped young actors who were omnipresent in the 1980’s, that the leading light of the group was one Jay McInerney, who, behold, once wrote a book that was quite popular, mainly because he said “you†instead of “I†or “heâ€, and that McInerney begat Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote many semi-popular vulgar books, and somehow Tama Janowitz fits in here too, and there were many rumors that she was once a guy named Tom, and Ellis begat Tartt , who wrote this one pretty good novel and then faded off into the sunset. I say unto thee that this book may seem a bit precious and overwritten, but verily, if thou wouldst venture into the upscale world of New England finishing schools, behold, thou wouldst find that Tartt’s depiction is pretty true to form, albeit overly focused on a particular subset of that world, the Pretentious Pseudointellectual. One warning wouldst I give: on peril of thy soul, avoid the “Acknowledgements†page, for therein Tartt thanks somebody named “Binky†and pretentiously drops Italian, and these are blasphemies in the Eyes of the Lord. John Le Carre -- A Perfect Spy (Signet) Carve about three hundred pages out of this bloated monstrosity, tell about 1/2 the story through other viewpoint characters, and you have a classic on par with SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD. Editors are supposed to tell their writers this stuff, that's why they get the big bucks. Next time I'm fucking billing. |
||||
 |
 |
|||
|
Short Book reviews by 01/01/2003, 6:49pm PST  Re: Short Book reviews by 01/01/2003, 7:25pm PST |
