Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Frank Bascombe’s back with his look at the world of books, a great Monday morning read. Check it out...
The Academy Awards have finally been given out and sadly the only thing that kept me awake was waiting for the best actor category, although it was nice to see Tim Robbins win. Sean Penn finally picks up an overdo Oscar the only person left is Marty and maybe Jeff Bridges, though I’m sure that I’ve forgotten someone. Do we really need to give LOTR eleven Academy Awards? I guess so. Sure it was epic, sweeping, and historic. It’s wildly overachieving but ultimately a fairy tale, not Oscar fodder, typically. Peter Jackson, deserving, sure, but a “Clean Sweep” (as everyone’s favorite hack director belched to close the show) was unnecessary. Oh well. You could use the same descriptions for ‘Gangs of New York’, but Marty is still empty handed. Plus his movie isn’t nine hours long. Ultimately a herd of incredibly talented people were awarded for their hard work and rightly so. Which leaves me wondering, if the movie is so good, so awarded, so blessed with excellence, why wasn’t the cast awarded with statues as well? I’m sure all of the LOTR fanatics will flood my mailbox with piss and vinegar, but it’s a curious question all the same. If you’re still interested…
IT’S NOT A SECRET IF I DON’T TELL ANYONE
You Remind Me of Me byDan Chaon
Ballantine
A few years ago I stumbled across a manuscript of short stories by a then unknown writer which left me completely blown away. A few months after reading it, this author was nominated for the National Book Award for the book. ‘Among the Missing’ is a collection of stories that deftly describes modern man and the human condition. It plainly and with a smattering of cinematic charm displays countless glimpses into domestic life, as we know it. All told with a heart breaking minimalist style that was forged so successfully by Raymond Carver. Those stories (and his first collection, ‘Fitting Ends’) were the basis of my interest in Dan Chaon, author of the forthcoming novel ‘You Remind Me of Me’.
You’ll be hard pressed in these days of “mega” publishing to find a voice in the literary form more powerful than that of Dan Chaon. He’s become an accomplished sculpture of sentences, scenery and brings life to those nameless and forgotten small towns of America. Some where in the Midwest, (does it matter?) sit the two central figures of this Cane and Able story. Mom wasn’t practicing the oldest profession in the world, but she wasn’t auditioning for the convent either. Chaon toggles back and forth between the younger versions of Troy Timmens and Jonah Doyle through the first few chapters bringing snippets of their lives into full view. Troy is raised with the scent of marijuana surrounding him. He grows up in the world of getting “high”, which follows him for the rest of the story and on into adulthood with the penalties that are attached to enjoying a life of enjoying of the “bud”. Jonah on the other hand is enjoying an insular life of private games and interior dialogues. This is where Chaon shines the brightest. Jonah is a child experiencing the foibles of low self-esteem and at the same time seems to be relishing the solitary exclusions it provides. With out much warning he’s attacked by the family dog and chewed to near death and ultimately left severely scared for life. This disfigurement follows Jonah through his trip to find his lost brother. Chaon draws the line carefully between Jonah and Troy, slowly, to reveal their adoptive starts in life. At one point or another these characters both look around and wonder aloud a few key points. Who am I? Why am I here? Where did I come from? Can a man with no past, actually be a man? Jonah cares more than Troy, whose busy selling drugs to anyone who’ll buy, while his infant son looks on. Troy’s drug addled wife has left him to raise their son while she disappears into anonymity of addiction. Troy’s got that aching feeling rumbling in the back of his mind that this life is no way to raise a child, and when the law catches up to him, he thinks it aloud over and over again.
Chaon uses the much-avoided technique of non-linear story telling to bring an added confusion and excitement to a story that glows with intentional detailing. What’s most exciting about this story telling style is the use of interior and exterior monologues. Cinematically it’s frowned on as a crutch. There were no real monologues in 21 Grams and its brilliance is beyond compare (Sean Penn did say a few things). Imagine a movie told in an out of order sequence but with hours of interior dialogue that only the characters themselves could hear. Personally, this style is a breath of fresh air to the novel form, one that hasn’t been used enough, recently. His earlier award nominated collection ‘Among the Missing’ and most of this book were shepherded to the shelves by one of the stars of the New York editorial world; Dan Smetanka. Who should be thought of in the same breath as Gary Fisketjohn at Knopf and Jonathan Gallasi at Farrar Straus & Giroux. The speed and quickness of Chaon’s prose is proof positive that a strong willed and talented editor is backing the book up. Chaon provides a plethora of clarity to this story while driving the characters to an eventual collision. This book is a few months away but I implore you to seek it out. It’s rare when a big time publisher launches a literary talent into orbit, but if you can, look into the sky and be one of the first to see Dan Chaon’s career take off.
Love Monkey by Kyle Smith
William Morrow
I’m not sure who impresses me more, Kyle Smith or his alter ego, Tom Farrell, both blend effortlessly into one another on the page of this auspicious debut, ‘Love Monkey’. Much ink has been spilled over the last few weeks about a recent literary craze I call, “Dick Lit”. Melissa Banks, Candace Bushnell, and all those Bridget Jones hopefuls beware. Your day’s of owning the “to shy to admit it” girls are over. Actually move over and make room for the other perspective. Kurt Wenzel and Kyle Smith seem to share the same review whenever their respective books are mentioned. I’ve not gotten to Mr. Wenzel’s latest, but his first, ‘Lit Life’ was a brilliant start to what I hope is a long career. (I wrote a few reviews for his wife’s website, which sadly up and vanished in the middle of the night like a fart in a blizzard). Why do people lump these books together? Why automatically assume that the world of literature needs to be pegged with a “type” of book, or even a theme? Richard Price wrote ‘Ladies Man’ years ago; it came and sadly went away, but not to be forgotten. The guy gone crazy “on the inside” lived a new life at the hands of Nick Hornby, and John Cusak brought it to it’s human form. ‘Ladies Man’ should be made into a movie, Cusak would be great in the lead role, but then so would Edward Norton, either of these leading men could inhabit the part. Since Cusak is out to lunch with Joe Roth and the Julia Roberts, that leaves Norton, who knocked Monty “25th Hour” Brogan out of the park.
“Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my shame friends.”
That line never gets old.
I always seem to grab onto a cinematic character when trying to identify with the one on the page. Sure, we need a hero, and he comes in an odd shape in ‘Love Monkey’. Tom Farrell works like the lap dog he is at the ‘Tabloid’, a local New York City newspaper. He’s editing something and it’s not that clear if he really cares, so neither does the reader. What’s more important to Mr. Farrell is his amount of “lap time”, increasing it, filling his dance card, browsing the local talent, or to put it bluntly, getting laid. Actually it’s all Tom thinks about. Happily this walking erection isn’t as single minded as he lets on to be, he’s consumed by the media he spends his day paddling through. Another motif that’s sprung up among men in their middle thirties, lately, is that love for all things “pop” in culture. Kyle Smith spends the first couple of chapters of this book wondering why he can’t play certain R.E.M. songs aloud on his CD changer any more. They’re all associated with one girl or another, (sorry for the generalization, Nick Hornby did it better in ‘High Fidelity’). There’s a girl, there always is, and Tom is desperate for her, longs for her, and spends the entire book obsessing over this objection of beauty. Why? She’s a vapid uptight bitch. Who cares about this girl? Really. Tom Farrell is 1,000% more interesting than this girl will ever be. She’s a trophy and that’s my only conclusion to why we spend so much time with her. Tom spends a lot of time with some really and I mean really great people. Rollo, ( a Tabloid co-worker) is described as a drunk, to put it mildly, by Mr. Smith. The part about drinking you under the table is inspired. Another side bar character that’s drilled into the peripheral of Tom’s life is Shooter. A trust fund baby with a masculine prowess the likes of which you’ve not seen since Jack Nicholson in ‘Five Easy Pieces’. Sure this story is sugar coated, if you compare it with Bridget Jones and the herd of unnecessary “chick lit” that’s flooded our shelves over the last few years.
Kyle Smith sums the modern urban male is one quick flash of brilliance. ‘Love Monkey’ does borrow heavily from Nick Hornby and Richard Price’s early work, but is that a crime? The only thing that’s vexing to this reviewer is the fact that other critics have taken Mr. Smith to task for his glossy chapters on 9-11-01. This is a New York story about a man on a mission to sooth many things, his obsessive, controlling and ritualistic, insecure behaviors. He’s endearing on top of it, much like Nathanial Fisher. Why take him to task for not bringing the entire tone of the book to a grinding halt with serious chapters about that tragedy. Sure its casual, even callous, but in the end Tom Farrell just wants to be happy. I was sad to leave this nutty caricature; his future looked bright when I closed the book, then I heard the crack of the spine and noticed that it had separated itself from the book entirely. It would be nice to have a book, especially a first edition such as this, on my shelves in pristine shape so that when the day comes that Kyle Smith really hits his stride, I’ll have this to treasure. If a representative from William Morrow publicity would be so nice to send me a crisp unbroken copy of this book, I would die a happy man. If Kyle Smith is cruising the web and stumbles on this review, (the book jacket hints that he spends all day on his computer) then get off your ass and sign a copy and send it to me, I paid good money for this book.
I can be reached right here.
Thanks, Frank. Great work, as always.
"Moriarty" out.
