No Pictures: So Many Ways To Spend The Hours

 

Joseph Anton
By Salman Rushdie, 2012

This one is tough, but before I get to that: man, people don't like this guy! I can't remember the last time I read a book that earned such visceral, unsolicited negativity--subway, bookstore, polite conversation. "I would never read something like that" is a response you expect to certain kinds of YA genre stuff and absolute trash like the Turner Diaries, but I heard that phrase twice, both times from people who are about as liberal as you can be before you can't leave the house for fear of hurting the grass with your feet. So much venom! The book itself is actually pretty engaging for a good long run, as you watch the balancing act of a ridiculously nerdy guy trying to maintain a normal life while being surrounded by men of supremely intimidating violence. Moving around from lair to lair, trying to keep a relationship going (he's terribly unsuccessful, more on that in a second), trying to remain creative, trying to be a father...it's an unusual existence, living in secrecy and under protection, and one that doesn't normally receive this kind of documentation. Eventually, however, the interest wears off and becomes a repetitive novelty, and its right around that point that Rushdie's failings as a husband (and his pettiness as a jilted lover) feverishly pick off what enjoyment is left, all while there's still pages to go. He doesn't deserve an ounce of what happened to him, but it's not like any sane person was making that argument in the first place.

Both Flesh And Not
By David Foster Wallace, 2012

This collection of essays is as up and down as you would imagine for a book produced by the editorial brainiacs who put out the call for "whatever hasn't been reprinted in a book before". You're going to get off on some of them (the Terminator 2 and Federer pieces) while wishing others had been reworked when Wallace was older (the enfants terrible piece has some great stuff in it, and would have benefitted immensely from acknowledging the direction Bret Easton Ellis' career has taken). Others--the review of math books, for example--will be as difficult to get through now as they were when they were written. It seems besides the point to mention that this is a book for Wallace fans only, but what the hell: consider it mentioned.

Mr. Peanut
By Adam Ross, 2010 

The most unheralded and best of the meta-hybrid novels, Mr. Peanut takes a whole bunch of things that would be twee and unmoving anywhere else--like a book that incorporates an old television show's plot, internet computer whizzes who don't understand love, unholy idealizations of gorgeous woman, and an tricky you're-reading-what-they're-writing shtick--and turns out one of the most intense and unsettling books about masculinity and long-term relationships I can think of. It's so contemporary that parts of it already feel a little dated (you probably need to have grown up having seen The Fugitive and fuzzily remember the dot com boom for certain parts of this novel to really kick your ass, but that's possibly untrue), but that's part and parcel of a book that zeroes on so intensely on the nature of a few men and their relationship with the women they've been with the longest: they have to be grounded in a present, and the present goes stale immediately. There's stuff in here that isn't easy to handle, and that's why its weird novelistic take on being a crime/horror thriller works to its benefit--its a lot easier to acknowledge what you're doing wrong if the message gets delivered via a talking banana.

Eagle On The Street
By David A Vise and Steve Coll, 1991

Could've been better, honestly. It seems like Coll and Vise at one point considered having this be about how SEC chief Shad's personal life kept him off the reservation, which might have worked (gross as it might be) and if that had been combined with the disturbing spousal abuse going on at the enforcement level, there was a general thesis that the various 80's banking scandals--which arguably set the groundwork for today's financial dificulties--was directly tied to the collapse of personal relationships and the emotional chaos that ensued when a bunch of guys tried to buck up and go to work despite the fact that they were emotionally unfit. That thesis would have made for a pretty interesting (albeit massively difficult to research) book. Instead this is just a collection of facts and anecdotes, pieced together by chronological order. It's an interesting collection of footnotes, but there's not enough of a book here.

Brotherhood of War: The Lieutenants
By W.E.B. Griffin, 1982

Lovely melodramatic trash set amongst military types, a book that's most specifically interesting in the way it concerns itself almost wholly with absurdly perfect coincidences (one of which involves an affair of the heart), while able to acquit itself as knowledgeable mostly because of its hyper detailed background.

Brotherhood of War: The Captains
By W.E.B. Griffin, 1982

It's sort of incredible that the guy got two of these out in one year, but then again, I had a hard time closing the door on Craig Lowell myself. Everybody calls one dude "the little Jew" to themselves, immediately, even when they aren't being portrayed as bigoted. Is that what you do? All the blacks are "very big, very black." This was the one where I started to feel like the guy who wrote these churned them out in one sitting.

Brotherhood of War: The Majors
By W.E.B. Griffin, 1983

This one doesn't even have a war in it, just some part where a few of the major characters get shot down in Indochina and have to kill their way out. Instead, the book chooses to follow the Army's off-model decision to arm helicopters, which violated an agreement they had with the Air Force, who Griffin paints as being somewhere between an indignant ROTC unit and a club of mentally handicapped Cub Scouts. The best parts of this one are the parts with the sex, as Griffin gets to tell in detail the story of alcoholic marriage sex and the umpteenth first-time-for-both-of-us two minute stuff. "Are these still your favorite teats" is a line. That's a line. Good line! 

Windeye
By Brian Evenson, 2012

I've always been a fan of reading sentences where people describe a genre as being "calcified", but I've also become keenly aware in the last ten years that too many of the opinions I held were ones I purchased without consideration for their accuracy, and one of those opinions is that there's nothing to be found in the horror genre that can't be better found elsewhere. To give myself an out, I'd lay part of that on the generally accepted criticism that what we now label as horror is actually better known as a more grand guignol variation on thriller, and it's the existence of something like Windeye--which could unironically be called "Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, But For Serious Adults"--that puts all those psuedo-shit to bed. This isn't a vehicle for slice of life black humor or page-turning timekilling, it's a collection of work that does its best to remind one that the word "unnerve" shouldn't be thrown atop every random book that has a dead kid in it. Windeye fucks with ones sense of safety and sanity, it's a book that worms itself into your skin. The collection of stories here share mostly a similarity in tone, and yet they function as a piece, and by the close, you just want to walk in the sun, away from the world that Evenson creates. This is absolutely great writing--unique, intelligent and predatory. Highly recommended.

The Day of the Jackal
By Frederick Forsyth, 1971

An intensely researched book whose detail will broadcast its journalist author's day job before one is halfway through the first chapter, Jackal is a book that both celebrates its classification as Airport & Waiting Room Classic while annihilating the categories implied ease of read. It whiles away the time, sure, but Forsythe's never-ending stream of hypen-heavy upper class names and governmental hierarchies joined with the impeccable taste of our titular assassin are going to demand more of the reader's concentration then the latest let's-slice-up-some-kids from James Patterson and Co. The reward is undoubtably worth whatever re-reading a redeye back-pedaler demands--Day of the Jackal is so easily a classic of the thriller genre that it's easy to start sneering at the word literature, eyefucking whatever imagined border guards are keeping the henpecked Claude Lebel and his monstrous counterpart from the ranks of throat-clearing English study. Then again, considering how miserably dumb that category has gotten--Tana French, anyone?--it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for Forsyth to have gone up to the majors already. Your move, Harold Bloom.

Blood Meridian Or The Evening Redness In The West
By Cormac McCarthy, 1985 

One of the greatest books ever written, or at least, that's what everybody says. It's true, but it's still a phrase that feels extreme to write, as it's essentially raw meat for the internet, a red cloth waved in the face of a well hung bull. It's also a well chewed over subject, with teeth marks from some of the smartest people who've ever written about literature, and thus the temptation to toss off a description is almost impossible, especially when the tosser can still wince in memory of the hyperbole that flowed when he first wrote about it (on Myspace, to spur the embarrassement further) while envying the opportunity to read the Judge's speech again, for the first time. The garden of war grew from the field of blood, and there's no purge that could ever cleanse this land. If this isn't hell, it should be.

The Postman Always Rings Twice
By James M. Cain, 1934

Some of the tightest writing ever put down, The Postman Always Rings Twice beats the tar out of you for just a little over 100 pages, but it's a heavy book nonetheless. A drifter and another man's wife--there's only so many ways that story plays out, and Cain concocts one that's as nasty as it is romantic. I don't know about anybody else, but I never wanted to be a Raymond Chandler character, and I never wanted to meet a Jim Thompson one. But I'm pretty sure that I don't get that luxury of choice with Cain--these people are us, through and through.

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Comments

[JaneanPatience]

I read Day of the Jackal 19 years ago as part of a module on the Thriller at Sussex University. That job's done.

[Jeet Heer]

These are terrific mini-reviews. Someone said this earlier and I think it's true that you're true critical metier might be writing about prose. One thing I noticed is that these are all pretty much guy books -- real Dick Lit. Might want to balance things out with some Jane Austen or Mavis Gallant.

[Jeppe]

I'm not sure when this reviewing of "regular books" started happening, but god dammit if it isn't engaging.
The bit about Blood Meridian couldn't be more on-the-nose. Keep it up.

[Aaron]

I also really enjoyed this, and will seek some of these books out. I don't mean to top from the bottom, but if you want to follow Jeet Heer's advice, some other female writers of possible interest: Iris Murdoch, Anne Beatty, Mary Gaitskill, Jennifer Egan.

Why do people hate the Rushdie? Aside from ayatollahs, I mean. I missed a memo.

[tucker stone]

Jan-that's awesome. What were the other books in the module? And what is a module? I don't understand British schools.

Jeet--Thanks! I do have a lazy, "Dick Lit' focus at times, but I will say that my favorite new books were both by women--the Elliott Holt I mentioned to you on twitter, and the Rachel Kushner book. And the Annual Austen re-read is in January. Mavis Gallant though--total blind spot. I'll look into that.

Jeppe-Thanks!

Aaron--the book I don't think they hate, I think they just hate him. And he's kind of annoying, I get that. I didn't really ask though. It wasn't an actual conversation, it was just passing shots.