Michael Chabon: “Yiddish Policeman's Union”Harper Collins 2007
416 Pages
Chabon is one of the writers that Hornby turned me on to. I think i did not think i would like him because it sounded like he had a French name and well... we hate those people. I like it when my instincts are wrong because you often find something new, and they were very wrong here.
Chabon invents a whole new world historically where after world war two when the state of Israel is started that the Arabs and Palestinians push the Jewish re-settlers into the ocean. The U.S. for reasons that are never quite clear through Secretary of State Seward offer the Jews a 50 year homeland in Alaska and 10s of thousands of Jews settle and prosper there. Like any ethnic group this band of wanderers has it’s share of normal people and crazies and the politics of Jewish Alaska are.... convoluted at best.
Our hero and narrator is a detective and he is living post divorce in a seedy hotel where someone else murdered. The investigation of the murder is complicated by the fact that the 50 years is up and most of the Jews are being forced to leave and those that stay are not necessarily welcome or being offered jobs in the new administration AND his ex wife has gotten the job as his boss.
The gentlemen who was killed also was expected at one point in his life to be the chosen one who would lead the Jews to their right place in the world and perhaps bring on Armageddon and the last days. I think Sarah Palin would have been in favor of this. Anyway, it is NOT a murder mystery but is a book deep in relationships and it is beautifully written if slightly long. This guy can just flat out write and like my earlier review of his book “No Map No Legend” this book is a highly recommended read.
Wikipedia has pretty good entry on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yiddish_Policemen's_Union
Among other things it tells me that the book is in pre-production for a film by the Coen Brothers.
*****
Will Self: “Liver”Penguin Viking 2008
277 Pages
OK....I love this guy. It does not make me a bad person but it does make me think a little sickeningly about the things I find pleasure in. Self reminds me of Will Sheff of my favorite band Okkervil River. In a recent Paste Magazine Interview he said:
“What I’m hoping is that people walk away from the songs feeling … a subtler kind of violence,” Sheff says, “that they feel uncomfortable and like a lot of their feelings have been stirred up and they’ve been entertained—but in a way that made them feel a little sick.” read the whole thing at: http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2008/09/river-of-screams.html
I think Self goes for the same thing. This is actually not a novel but a collection of novellas which are tied together as near as I can tell by the following:
1. Alcoholism
2. Liver Maladies (some caused by Alcoholism).
3. The complexity of the human psyche
4. A Soho bar called “The Plantation Club”
The stories are in no small part, beautiful, depressing and creepy. The inhabitants (becuase they spend almost all their waking hours there) of the Plantation Club make you yearn for their demise, timely or untimely. One of Self’s gifts is to display peoples weaknesses and fragility while still making them obscenely unlikable. It is not at all important that the novellas have anything in common. All four of them are well written and compelling. I got a British Hardcover of this and it is beautifully bound with no dust jacker. Very nice.
!!!!!!!!
H.P. Lovecraft: “Call of the Cthulu”Penguin Classics 1999
419 Pages
In reading Jonathan Lethem and Michael Chabon I became aware of the work of H.P. Lovecraft and what a powerful influence he has been on both of their work. Because I am a completist and like to find ways to spend idle hours I decided to check him out. Also becuase I am a Mountain Goats fan and they had a song that really kicked it on their last CD called “Lovecraft In Brooklyn”. The Mountain Goats song paints a bleak picture:
“woke up afraid of my own shadow
Like, Genuinely afraid
headed for the pawnshop
To buy myself a switchblade
Someday somethings coming
From way out beyond the stars
To kill us while we stand here
It will store our brains in mason jar
And then the girl behind the counter asks "How do you feel today?" and I say "I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn!"
----Mountain Goats “Love craft In Brooklyn” 2008.
I thought this was something I needed to do, to read, to explore. From my perspective I was clearly wrong. Lovecraft did not really write a lot of books. He was a pulp writer for magazines and that resulted in a lot of short stories and novellas. These have been put together in various collections all of which start with a short biography of the guy and other then the fact that he lived with his aunts, liked to write letters and hang out with Robert Howard (Conan The Barbarian Creator) he did not seem compelling. I did find out from the biography that he was almost paralyzed by xenophobia and when he lived in Brooklyn found himself totally alienated and despising the mass of society.... and especially minorities and strangers. Though this might have gotten him a cabinet position with the Bush administration it seems an unhappy life. Here is the Wiki on him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hp_lovecraft.
“Call of the Cthulu” is the main story in a group of novellas and never having read him before I was amazed at how relentlessly black all of his characters and prose are. There is no joy. There is not even a fake smile. His characters amble through these barren historical and imaginary landscapes and ultimately get to glimpse ultimate horror or ultimate evil before suffering grizzly death or a life a s a recluse from being scarred by what they found out.
It is not much different from being a lawyer.
You do not need to read Lovecraft’s stuff. better to read about him.
%%%%%%%
Ethan Canin: “America America”Random House 2008
458 Pages
This was a beautiful book. Canin has long been a favorite of mine. I distinctly remember reading his book “Blue River” while I was taking the Missouri Bar Exam. The night before I was reading and finding comfort in his prose before spilling my guts on the exam the next day. My memory is of course totally suspect in that I took the Bar Exam in 1987 and the book was not published until 1995. So much for my bogus memories.
At that time Canin was new and had not really developed his style but since that time he has cranked out several books to universally critical acclaim. He is good and this book is just simply GREAT. It is a Richard Russo type effort set in upstate New York in a thriving, dying, thriving, dying town. A rich and political family adopts a lower class but hard working young man. He becomes acquainted with the ways of the rich, and their daughters. he gets sent to prep school and then to college while working around their house.
During this period, set in 1972 the family is supporting a Presidential Candidate who is running as a Democrat against Mc Govern, Muskie and Humphrey. It looks like he is going to win but there is a scandal and our narrators benefactors are right in the middle of it. Throughout the book as he benefits from the families largesse and connections there is always a sense that he is being used (and perhaps abused) in ways we do not understand.
He grows to be the local newspaper editor and attempts to adopt a protégé in much the same matter and the book is a retrospective as he tells her the story which begins looking back from the funeral of the politician. The book is heartwarming, heart wrenching and achingly well written. If you love the myth of American politics it is a must read, or if you just like someone who really knows his way around language and storycreft. Do not miss this one. It also would make a great gift for anyone you know who reads.
&&&&&&&&
Kurt Vonnegut: “Armageddon In Retrospective”Putnam 2008
233 Pages
I continue to be very sad that this guy is dead. There is a picture of him on the back of the dust jacket taken by one of his kids or grandkids in front of a door and surrounded by some flowers with boat tennis shoes on. He looks simpatico.
The great thing about Vonnegut is that he was never simpatico. He was questioning, tortured, profoundly disillusioned with humanity and especially government institutions and yet.... he still found a way to love, raise a family and produce some beautiful, beautiful books. Even through disillusionment, depression and despair he always loved people, while seemingly despising what people, especially groups of people, especially groups of people organized as governments.
this book is really just a collection of his wartime writings. Vonnegut was a late arriver in Europe in WWII and was almost immediately captured by the retreating and declining german Army. He was put to work cleaning the streets of Dresden which the allies had left alone because it had no military factories but in the waning days of the war, for one reason or another the Allies, the U.S. decided to firebomb it and level it. He gives that experience the whole book in “Slaughterhouse Five” and his stories here all dance around it. His experiences in the war, as a prisoner, as a survivor of the firebombing and as a liberated prisoner are what make up these stories. All fiction heavily colored by his own experiences.
The stories are short and easy to read and are a sweet glimpse into a young author. the forward written by his son is as revealing as anything written about the man. Families and people are complex and beautiful. War sucks and is dehumanizing. Always. Simple messages by a sweet, brilliant, confused man.
No comments:
Post a Comment