Tag Archives: American literature

September 4, 2013 · 12:41 am

A Hologram for the King: Shimmered, but didn’t fully form

I love Dave Eggers. In the unabashed, sincere way that would likely be scorned by the irony-lovers of McSweeney’s, I just love him. Since reading *A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius* I’ve lined up for everything he’s written. I’ve found his work playful, smart, (sincere) and wise. I’ve marvelled at his triumphant shifts in genre and narrative voice as he shows naysayers that he’s not (simply) the navel-gazing memoirist of AHWOSG (as it is known), but a writer of robust talent able to shift in mood, tone and voice in ways that marvel only in comparison with his other works (which is to say, each individual work doesn’t read like a self-referential return to earlier works, but rather a reader who has read his past works can draw these comparisons and applaud the dexterity of his craft). 

So it is a tempered criticism I offer of *A Hologram for the King* – one marked by my recognition that I could be (simultaneously) (and unintentionally) holding Eggers to a higher standard *because* I admire him so much OR I could be overly generous because Eggers holds a choice place in my pantheon of favourite authors (a blog for another day, suffice to say John Steinbeck, Margaret Laurence and William Trevor keep him in good company). 

The plot (with *Spoilers*) in a few sentences? Alan, failed businessman, has a last ditch opportunity to make his fortune selling holographic technology to Saudia Arabia. After a series of Kafkaesque bureaucratic failures he succeeds in delivering his pitch, but fails to land the deal when the Saudi king opts to go – as did the rest of American business – with the cheaper Chinese firm. Meanwhile Alan struggles to make sense of his middleage, his failed fatherhood, his frustrated sexuality and his degenerating body: he, like America, is falling apart and ailing. 

It’s a book that masters the Thematic Moment – the repeated realization that the description or the dialogue is meant to be Symbolic and Important and Worth Noting. Case in point a scene where Alan wades into the waters outside the (holographic) city (note the holographic city is in and of itself meant to be Symbolic and Worth Noting) and registers the difference in this water from that of his home. Heady times for one wading his feet. It’s only a complaint insofar as each scene has this predetermined weight that makes the reading feel unnecessarily heavy: we are embarking in each paragraph – willing or not – on something thematically momentous. The end result is that the character, the plot and the scenes do not unfold with nuance or grace, but rather a sort of clumsy seriousnessness that weighs down potential authenticity of charm. 

Still, this is a criticism that recognizes its own limitations. I was frustrated with the lack of “events” in the plot even while I realized the thematic importance of showing the impotence of the narrator (see? am I being overly generous?). I was troubled by the manner in which all other characters read as placeholders for characteristics or affects desired or needed by our narrator (Alan), even while I realized the “holographic” metaphor –  as one meant to remind us that most, if not all of our interactions with other people, institutions, identities – requires the characters to be void of depth or substance. 

So while I can argue the literary merits of the artistic choices, and could write a persuasive essay on the thematic significance of Alan’s tumor, or Alan’s near (but again failed) shooting of a young Arab boy, or the contrasting significance of indoor/outdoor settings – and I’d believe all of this to be true and earnest, the truth is: I just didn’t like the book. 

There, I said it: I just didn’t enjoy it. I wanted, so much, to love it. And I think it has much to recommend it. I think it makes great material for teaching tenth grade English, or American foreign and trade policies. I just don’t think it’s one of much enjoyment. 

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August 13, 2011 · 9:46 pm

Player Piano: Meh.

     In one of the more awkward chapters of my adolescence, my dad started to read me Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, which if you haven’t read before, or if it’s been awhile, you ought to know opens with graphic (literally) descriptions of beavers – animal and otherwise. While I knew enough to be mortified, and my dad knew enough to immediately stop reading, I couldn’t help but recognize something addicting about an author who wrote in such a sacrilegious tone, with such disregard for the pretensions of readers. And so later, under the covers and lit by the hallway light, I read Breakfast of Champions, and decided that Mr. Vonnegut was okay by me.

Now, decades (!, well, a lie, just a decade) later I’ve read Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano, and I’m reluctant to report that it’s… not very good. Not bad! (I’d rather not post at all if it meant besmirching the good name of one of my better, favourite authors) Just, not very good. The novel follows Paul Proteus as he sorts out what it means to be human in the age of machines, and what it means to be smart/wealthy (smalthy?) in the age of mass unemployment and ignorance. His journey (a short one) to the climatic not-epiphany takes us through farming, summer camp, and nights at the bar. His not-epiphany? Art might make us human; hierarchies, while troubling, might ultimately be for the greater good. Always might.

To what do I attribute my dissatisfaction? Well, Paul, despite his ostensible ideological journey, doesn’t evidence any noticeable character change – I’d just as easily believe he swears allegiance to the company as to the radicals (is this the point? maybe…) and the symbols bear down on this reader like too much bread and potatoes.

Why does it still count as not bad? Well, expert in tone, Vonnegut delivers in the first novel the same wry tone you’ll know and love in later novels, as well as the simplest of questions – what makes us human? – explored as it ought to be, through a fiction we recognize as true (enough).

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July 18, 2011 · 11:01 pm

A Gate at the Stairs: Sort of unbelievable

                I say “sort of unbelievable” not because any of the events in A Gate at the Stairs are unbelievable, but rather because there are sentences in this book, full paragraphs really, that so capture some essence of the world or of worldly experience in ways that would be, well, unbelievable, were they not regularly happening. Each page, each paragraph offer up gems – what is it when gems are not rare, but simply precious? – that left me feeling like I had been punched (such accuracy in describing (my) human experience does feel, for whatever reason, visceral) and hugged (such palpable beauty cannot but feel like an embrace?).

Suspending (however difficultly) my adoration of the descriptions in the text, the plot and characters are closer to pretty good than to outstanding. The protagonist, Tassie, does not always behave in ways I might expect her to, and I suppose this might be meant to get at the unpredictability of human behaviour, and yet, it didn’t feel like a reasonable level of variability, and more an unevenness in character development. (SPOILER: This was particularly the case in the scene when Tassie climbs in the coffin – while her decision to do so allows for a captivating description of Robert and a thoughtful meditation on grief and uncertainty, her action does not properly align with Tassie as we know her. This sort of “surprise” character decisions extend to secondary characters like Sarah and Edward, and are, for this reader, distracting and disappointing (as the text is otherwise… brilliant).

I sat for a few minutes with the conclusion of the book. I felt at the point that Mary-Emma leaves that the book ought to end with her departure. My sense that the book could have concluded there asked me to reconsider the central themes and foci (yeah! foci!) of the novel: was the book to be about the relationship between Tassie and Mary-Emma or about the relationships Tassie has (and ignores) more generally? Given that the book does *not* end with Mary-Emma’s departure we must give credit to the latter idea that this is a book about Tassie and her interactions with the world – with her family, with her roommates, with her ridiculous (and poorly constructed) boyfriend. If that’s the case I might have liked fuller, and earlier, development of her relationship with her family. Except that perhaps the poignancy of the conclusion might be lost had she “attended” to her family better. Ah… let it be that I am unsettled by the conclusion both for the material it contains and for its impact on how the rest of the novel reads.

I’ll suggest reading this book because of its forceful beauty in capturing the essence of moments, places and people. With the caveat that the plot and character may leave you frustrated – not because they are (in any way) bad, but because they are only very good.

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March 24, 2011 · 4:06 pm

Freedom: Undecided, but all signs point to ‘no’

               I can’t decide whether I liked Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. The irony of my indecision is not lost on me, an irony that arises from the book’s central preoccupation: how does too much ‘freedom,’ or the demand to have ‘freedom’ (to make choices, mostly) ensure our collective and personal unhappiness? So I give you my reasons for enjoying the book and for feeling frustrated with it, and will pass to you the supposedly empowering, yet wholly unbearable, freedom to decide for yourself.

I appreciate Freedom for its unambiguous political position. The novel clearly sets out its agenda: capitalist, neo-liberal policies are destroying the planet and making people unhappy and unhappier. Though I found myself frustrated by how needlessly repetitive this message became as the wanton destruction caused by entitlement and greed frames the actions and relationships of each character and all of the plot. I’m all for thematic clarity, but such singular thematic focus is a bit… exhausting.

The male characters are compelling. Walter, Joey, and Richard make difficult choices, develop complex moral and intellectual positions, and change through their experiences and relationships. The male characters are rich and believable. The women? Not so much. Long deabte with M. about why/whether the gender of an author bears any relationship to their ability to write compelling characters of a different gender. General consensus at the end of the conversation is that it ought not to matter – there is nothing inherent about a genered experience that precludes imagining that experience – but that, in some novels, it does matter. And in Freedom the women are alternately flat and predictable (Connie and Jessica) or so underdeveloped that their decisions are surprising, their actions inexplicable, and their motivations wholly unknown (Patty). Patty’s character frustrated me the most, as a good part of the novel is her autobiographical voice, and yet despite her own portrayal of her life and her decisions she remains defined by one character trait – her competitiveness – that does little to explain her actions. It’s unclear whether Patty is a smart woman or not, whether she loves Walter at all (despite her earnest insistence that she does, nothing in her autobiography or actions suggest why she might love him, or evidence this love), what makes her a ‘good’ mother, or how she (didn’t) manage(d) the transition from star basketball player to suburban wife.

This last point on Patty’s transition recalls another difficulty I had with the novel: critical plot events take place in the gaps between chapters and the impact these events ought to have on characters are missing because they aren’t narrated. Lalitha’s death for instance, Patty’s injury, Joey’s conversion to democratic and ethical business practices… these events that we are told are crucial in our characters’s developments are absent, and so too are the character reactions; thus, the supposed changes the characters experience read as changes we are told about, rather than witnessing.

The best scenes are those that abandon the didactic tone and allow characters to behave ‘freely,’ and in so doing to announce to the reader their intentions and positions without unnecessary exposition: i.e. Walter’s hunting of the neighbourhood cats, Joey’s watch business, and Walter’s no smoking campaign.

Freedom successfully highlights the contradictions of a neo-liberal society, the dangers of living in communities that privilege the individual over the collective and protect and reward individual capital accumulation at the expense of the common and environmental good. Thematic questions aside, Freedom is a bit of a bust. Characters act for inexplicable reasons that require heavy-handed narration and overly repetitive symbolism (I’m inclined to think it’s 550 pages might easily have been cut to 300 without losing its political impact). Read it yourself; you’re free to decide.


 

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