Book 8 : Empire Falls - Richard Russo

I'd always loved to read as a kid, but after I dropped out of college my interest in books waned. 5 years ago I spent a few days in my aunt's home in northern California. She has bookcases in virtually every room and 1,000s of books in all. I hadn't read a book in probably 3 years when I stayed there, but one night I was having trouble sleeping and grabbed a book at random. The book I picked was Empire Falls and I sat up for 5 hours that night reading it.

Not only did this book make me fall in love with literature again, it was responsible for my goal to read all the Pulitzers. After reading this book the first time, I devoured everything that Russo had written, loving all of his work except Mohawk, his 1st book, whose story was re-told again much more compellingly in Nobody's Fool.

Over the years I re-read this book twice and made my brother, his wife and Sara read it. I recommended it to everyone I could think of, being convinced that it was one of the most accessible examples of award winning literature.

I decided to re-read it again this year, as I hadn't read it since I'd begun my 'official' Pulitzer reading goal. I was shocked at how disappointed I was.

The writing is trite. He writes from several different 1st person perspectives throughout the book and he does a terrible job writing women. It was written in 2000 and he has a 16 year old girl unironically calling her boyfriend a 'hunk' and feeling guilty after having held hands with him the movie theater.

There's also some weird internet stuff going on that was really glaring to me. I realize that in 2000 not nearly as many people had the internet as they do today. However, technology had advanced enough that he should have been able to do some simple research to avoid looking like a fool when he discusses, 'installing an e-mail server' on his computer and describing IMing as 'typing keyboard to keyboard'.

The story takes place in a former mill town in a small town in Maine. The town of Empire Falls has become impoverished and everyone is just trying to make ends meet. It's a fairly average story of an average family. However, with about 50 pages left Russo felt the need to insert this bizarre plot line involving a boy murdering his grandmother and then shooting up the local high school. It was really out of place and didn't serve the story well.

I don't know why I enjoyed this book so much the first time and not at all this time. It appears as though my tastes have changed.



6/10
YTD:
Books read : 8
Pages read : 2,166
Currently reading : Rabbit Redux - John Updike & Steal This Book - Abbie Hoffman

Book 7 : Woodstock Nation - Abbie Hoffman

As previously mentioned, I've been roped into reading 4 books by Hoffman. This was no better than Revolution for the Hell of It and was likely even worse. Mostly just dull re-tellings of drugs that were done. Very little politics. Nothing quotable.

I had a hard time even taking notes on this, I was so bored with it. But, I made a promise and a promise I shall keep.


2/10
YTD:
Books read : 7
Pages read : 1,683
Currently reading : Empire Falls - Richard Russo & Rabbit Redux - John Updike & Steal This Book - Abbie Hoffman

Book 6: Revolution for the Hell of It - Abbie Hoffman

Unfortunately, I agreed to read 4 books by Hoffman to help a friend of mine who's writing a thesis on him.

This book was ridiculous. The writing was uninspiring, gimmicky and the man basically has nothing to say. He doesn't believe in anything, doesn't support any movement. Or, at least he didn't went he wrote this book. I am not looking forward to the next 3.

However, the book was quick and there was one chapter I enjoyed about the 1968 Democratic Convention wherein Hoffman claims to have hung out with Dylan in Lincoln Park (though by all other accounts Bob Dylan was not here during that time).

There were a few quotes that I liked okay, though now that I'm re-reading them it's likely they just stood out in relation to the rest of his terrible writing.

"Media is free. Use it. Don't pay for it. Don't buy ads. Make news."

"The headline of the Daily News today reads BRUNETTE STABBED TO DEATH. Underneath that in lower case letters: "6,000 Killed in Iranian Earthquake." I wonder what color hair they had?"

"And so you ask, "What about the innocent bystanders?" But we are in a time of revolution. If you are a bystander, you are not innocent."

2/10
YTD:
Books read : 6
Pages read : 1,584
Currently reading : Empire Falls - Richard Russo & Woodstock Nation - Abbie Hoffman & Rabbit Redux - John Updike

Book 5 : Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote

I read In Cold Blood a few years ago and it changed the way I choose books. Before then, I'd never had any interest in non-fiction. It was through Capote that I realized that a good writer could make even the worst subject matter interesting and engaging. I had a similar experience when reading The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer last year.

That said, I can't say that I get much enjoyment from Capote. He was clearly an immensely talented man who wrote complicated and believable characters, even when they are doing unbelievable things. However, he doesn't really move me. I don't feel a personal connection to his characters, nor do I tend to care greatly about them.

When I finished this book I didn't feel accomplished, grateful or contemplative. I simply shut the book and moved on to the next one. I think Capote is better left for me to read when I'm trying to avoid overly affecting books.

As you've likely noticed by now, I typically post my favorite quotes from the books I review. However, there was nothing in this book that was quotable. That isn't to say that the prose wasn't tight as hell - in fact that's mostly the problem. For a work to be quotable out of context, it needs to relate to greater truths in life rather than simply to the story that's being told. Capote doesn't do this, which, again, isn't to say that he's not an amazing writer. He simply doesn't let a word into his work that isn't completely necessary and relevant to the story.

7/10
YTD:
Books read : 5
Pages read : 1,486
Currently reading : Empire Falls - Richard Russo & Woodstock Nation - Abbie Hoffman & Rabbit Redux - John Updike

Book 4 : Gilead : A Novel - Marilynne Robinson

Although it's probably happened before, I can't think of another book that's ended with me feeling as though I'm a wiser person.

Gilead : A Novel by Marilynne Robinson is one long letter written from a father to a son. This letter was written over a period of time that wasn't specified but felt like a matter of 5 or 6 months.

The father writing this letter is a Reverend in his late 70's. It is written to his son, who is a small child. The Reverend has been told he has a heart condition and limited time. He is driven to write this letter by the terrifying thought of his son growing up and never really understanding who his father was. He starts out intending to share some of the lessons he's learned throughout the years but it turns into something much more personal.

This book is about forgiveness, understanding and the revision of history. Through the months the Reverend is writing this letter, he's faced with a ghost from the past he probably would have rather not seen before he died. We slowly learn the details of this mystery man as the Reverend comes to terms with the fact that, despite his faith, he has never been quite able to forgive him.

There were many things about this book that were compelling to me. First of all, there is a lot of religious business going on here. Although I believe there is no god (which, for the record, is different from not believing there is a god) and do become enraged by religious folks who do terrible things, I am not put off generally by religion. In fact, I have seen it do a lot of good for people.

That said, as he started quoting scripture I was concerned that I'd go through the entire book feeling preached at. Luckily, this wasn't the case. Instead I was fascinated as this man of the cloth admitted to all of the questions he had about his faith, the things he didn't understand and recounted in detail the great philosophers he'd studied (and agreed with), most of them atheists.

There was a particular memory the Reverend shared involving a trip he took with his father when he was a boy. They traveled through the drought ridden prairie of Kansas, by foot, during the Depression. For months they walked with no shoes, no food and no water. All to get to the Reverend's grand-fathers grave. It was extremely moving and almost brought me to tears at several points.

On a personal level, I was really struck by the writing style. I am typically a fan of very powerful prose that is aggressive and hits me over the head with strong metaphors and cynical outlooks on life. When I work on my own short stories or edit my novel, I've constantly got it in the back of mind that while I love the things I write, I will never write on the caliber of The Greats, I will never write profound and moving prose. I accepted that long ago and have focused on simply improving my craft as much as I can, without getting caught up in what I can't be.

This book, however, is the closest I've seen to a writing style similar to my own. While this book won the Pulitzer and I have no delusions that's in my future, it is heartening to know that even with limited dialouge and tight, simple prose, a work can be incredibly moving.

I hope I remember the lessons I learned in this book for the rest of my life.

9/10
YTD:
Books read : 4
Pages read : 1,359
Currently reading : Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote

"Our dreams of life will end as dreams do end, abruptly and completely, when the sun rises, when the light comes. And we will think, All that fear and all that grief were about nothing."

On being judged : "If a few people did make remarks, I just forgave them so fast it was as if I never heard them, because it was wrong of them to judge and I knew it and they should have known it."

"It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don't know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it."

"There's a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn't really expect to find it either."

"If someone came to the house and found me writing, generally he or she would go away, unless it was something pretty important. I don't know why solitude would be a balm for loneliness, but that is how it always was for me in those days."

"Thanks God for them all, of course, and for that strange interval, which was most of my life, when I read out of loneliness, and when bad company was much better than no company. You can love a bad book for its haplessness or pomposity or gall, if you have that starveling appetite for things human, which I devoutly hope you never will have."

Book 3 : The Great American Novel - Philip Roth

I have no idea how I feel about this book.

On one hand, there were several extremely quotable sections of this novel. It was also a book by my favorite author about my favorite sport (baseball) and was a scathing satire on McCarthyism (one of my favorite things to satirize).

On the other hand . . .

First of all, the Prologue was 50 pages long and extremely boring. It started off with these weird literary techniques (about 3 pages of alliteration, as one example), which were later proven to have been necessary to set up the plot. However, if I didn't know Roth was a genius and would eventually make it work my while, there's no way I would have made it through those 50 pages.

The book was broken down into several portions. Some were details of the various players on a fictional team that played for a fictional third league (The Patriot League). The book took place during World War II and as such the best players in baseball were off at war. That left a mostly interesting and hilarious cast of characters playing for the big leagues. This ranged from the 15 year old pitching ace, to the one legged catcher to the one armed right fielder to the midget pinch-hitter who was never once thrown a strike. There were also portions of the book that traveled as far as Africa to tell bizarre stories of missionaries and cannibalism.

While a lot of these stories were interesting and mostly amusing, there was no point to them. It began to feel a bit tedious and I was left wondering if it was going to be tied together at all or just end as a disjointed series of mostly pointless (though funny) stories of escapades on the road.

The last 50 pages or so really redeemed this book for me, which is why I gave it a somewhere between 6-8 out of 10 rating. Without the last 50 pages it would safely have been a 6.

In these last few sections, we learned who the narrator was (well, we knew all along that his name was Word Smith, we just didn't know why we should care or how he was related to the story, beyond him being a sportswriter). There was also, finally, a linear plot that I was able to follow. There was all kinds of great weird Russian spy stuff, including Russian spy schools and organizations with acronyms like SHIT, TWAT and CACA. There was also a rousing speech given by one Mr. Word Smith to the House Un-American Activities Committee that was particularly hilarious.

I feel like this book was an experiment for Roth. He tried some interesting things and I'm just not sure how I feel about them. I've read about 10 of his 20+ books now and his story telling strengths were certainly not apparent here.

However, the book was affecting. I spent about an hour after I finished it going back through it and putting the pieces together. I'd like to read it again and if I weren't already in the middle of another book I'd probably have just started it again immediately after finishing it.

Which, I suppose, is a pretty good indication that I felt pretty good about the damn thing.

Somewhere between 6/10 and 8/10 (sounds like a 7/10 to me)
YTD:
Books read : 3
Pages read : 1,112
Currently reading : The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow

"America?" said Gamesh, smiling. "Roland, what's American to you? Or me, or those tens of thousands up in the the stands? It's just a word they use to keep your nose to the grindstone and your toes to the line. America is the opiate of the people."

- - -

"Now obviously, in peacetime a one-legged catcher, like a one-armed outfielder (such as the Mundys had roaming right), would have been at the most a curiosity somewhere down in the dingiest town in the minors - precisely where Hot had played during the many years that the nations of the world lived in harmony. But it is one of life's grisly ironies that what is catastrophe for most of mankind, invariably works to the advantage of a few who live on the fringes of the human community. On the other hand, it is a grisly irony to live on the fringes of the human community."

- - -

"But of course you must remember, fans, the turning points in our history are not always so grand as they are cracked up to be in the murals on your post office wall."

- - -

"But they don't deserve to be winning!"
"And who does in this world, Roland? Only the gifted and the beautiful and the brave? What about the rest of us, Champ? What about the wretched, for example? What about the weak and the lowly and the desperate and the fearful and the deprived, to name but a few who come to mind? What about losers? What about failures? What about the ordinary fucking outcasts of this world - who happen to comprise ninety percent of the human race! Don't they have dreams, Agni? Don't they have hopes? Just who told you clean-cut bastards own the world anyway? Who put you clean-cut bastards in charge, that's what I'd like to know! Oh, let me tell you something. All-American Adonis : you fair-haired sons of bitches have had your day. It's all over, Agni. We're not playing according to your clean-cut rules anymore - we're playing according to our own! The Revolution has begun! Henceforth the Mundys are the master race! Long live Glorious Mundy!"

Book 2 : The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz

This book could have and should have been much better than it was.

The blurb on the back promised me it was a tale of an "overweight ghetto nerd, a New Jersey romantic who dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien, and, most of all, finding love."

From other reviews I'd read, I knew that there was plenty of geeky Simpson's quotes, D&D playing and Harry Potter and Doctor Who references. While I'm not a fan of any of these things, I am a fan of people who are a fan of them. I was definitely intrigued and looking forward to reading it. However, it fell incredibly short of my expectations.

First of all, it's not about Oscar Wao. The narrator, who we eventually find out is Oscar's sister's boyfriend, tells the tales of several different people. Some portions of the book take place in New Jersey, others in the Dominican Republic and they span several generations. This book is rich in Dominican history, which could have been a huge selling point for me - especially because there was a lot of Cuba stuff going on in a portion of the story. However, instead of making this history a part of the text, the author used footnotes. Long, tedious, boring footnotes. Footnotes so long that they sometimes took up several pages a piece. Oscar's portion of the story was really only about 10% of the book, which was unfortunate, as his was the most compelling story.

This book was also written in Spanglish. Now, I speak a bit of Spanish. I've taken around 5 years total and lived only a few miles short of the Mexican border for more than 4 years. I can have a basic conversation, though I'm incredibly shy about it. But this? This was full on paragraphs in Spanish, many of which I believe were incorporating Dominican slang. Besides which, Mexican Spanish differs from Dominican Spanish.

I've read many books before that use a foreign language in dialouge, but are always sure to make it clear what's being said by the context around the other language. This wasn't the case in this book, and it made some parts difficult to understand.

Another problem with this book was the narrator. There was absolutely no consistency in his voice. He'd be narrating along, eloquent and well-spoken and out of no where would start with his ghetto speak. The author tries way too hard to make his narrator appear to be 'hip' but it falls flat with me. The first paragraph of the first chapter is as follows :

"Our hero was not one of those Dominican cats everybody's always going on about - he wasn't no home-run hitter or a fly bachatero, not a playboy with a million hots on his jock."

Then only a few sentences later he's narrating like a literate person. It was distracting and pointless, in my opinion. He also used the word, 'nigger' a lot which, ugh, I just hate. I realize that it can be used effectively and is sometimes necessary when describing certain situations or when telling a story that takes place in a certain time period. However, it felt gratuitous to me in this book.

All of that said, there were some redeeming things about this book. The story was solid, though I think it would have been better if it had been a more linear story, as the jumping around from person to person and decade to decade was a bit jarring to me. The last 10 pages were beautifully written, tight and made me wonder why he couldn't have written the entire novel with the same style.

It was definitely told in an original way, and I give Diaz credit for trying out several interesting literary techniques. However, I don't think he was quite successful.

Overall, it wasn't one of the best Pulitzers I've read, nor was it the worst. The pace was quick; there was never a moment where I was tempted to skip ahead (except during the foot notes, some of which I did skim). I don't regret reading it, it wasn't a chore to get through but I won't be reading it again.

6/10
YTD:
Books read : 2
Pages read : 696
Currently reading : The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow

Book 1 : The Stone Diaries - Carol Shields

The Stone Diaries is broken up into 10 chapters, each corresponding with a portion of Daisy Goodwill's life. The first begins in 1905, the year of her birth, and continues through ~1995, the year of her death. Most of the chapters are narrated from a 3^rd person perspective, but by Daisy herself, except for a few that are composed entirely of letters and newspaper clippings.

I loved this book as soon as I began. We begin by learning about Daisy's parents at the time of her birth, who are both dynamic and interesting characters. I did have a problem with the constant descriptions of how fat Daisy's mom was, only to flip through to the middle of the book, see a picture of the woman and realize that she was really only about 20 pounds overweight. This was in direct contradiction (in my opinion) of the way she was described, which included a detailed description of her husband, 'falling into' her 'folds of flesh'. She was also supposed to be so fat that she when she gave birth she, nor her husband, had any idea that she was even pregnant.

As the story progressed I started to get confused. As Daisy, the protag and narrator, grew older and started contemplating her youth and her first marriage, some of the things she was talking about didn't happen, or happened differently. At first I thought I simply wasn't remembering things correctly. As I went on though, I realized that the story was simply written from her point of view as she aged. The older she got, the more warped her memories were and the more some details were completely forgotten while others were exacerbated.

When I finished this book I was left feeling completely satisfied. This was partially a result of the fact that it began the day she was born and ended the day she died and thus everything was completed resolved by the end. However, it was also partially due to Carol Shields' ability to tell a compelling story.

The only problem I had came with some perspective issues. As I mentioned, most of the book was told from a 3^rd person perspective, but was narrated by Daisy herself. However, occasionally she would slip in some parenthetical information in the 1^st person. I found this to be distracting and unnecessary.

I realize I've left out almost all description of the plot. While there is nothing particularly compelling or interesting in the plotline (girl grows up, marries boy, boy dies, marries other boy, has children, other boy dies, works for newspaper, etc.) the lack of fresh plot ideas doesn't take away from the beauty of this book. For me, it was enough to spend a few days with an average woman and view her entire life through her eyes.

All in all, I'd rate this an 8/10. I read this because it's one of the Pulitzers I hadn't read yet, and one of the interesting things about this particular book as it relates to the other Pulitzers is that it's the first one that is really primarily geared toward a female audience.

"The odd thing about the pictures that fly into Daisy Goodwill's head is that she is always alone. There are voices that reach her from a distance; there are shadows and suggestions - but still she is alone. And we require, it seems, in our moments of courage or shame, at least one witness, but Mrs. Fleet has not had this privilege. This is what breaks her heart. What she can't bear. Even now, eighty years old." Carol Shields - The Stone Diaries


YTD:
Books read - 1
Pages read - 361
Currently reading - The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz