Literary Lollapalooza, December Edition

This month I complete an entire year of monthly book reviews. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, I have made it through the entire year without missing (completely) a month. It’s December and that means that this year ends and we welcome a new year to come. This is how I spent my December reading…

This is Literary Lollapalooza, December Edition.

Books Acquired:

Fiction: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall, Alive in Necropolis by Doug Dorst, Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff, The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction selected by Joyce Carol Oates and Christopher R. Beha, and The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories edited by Daniel Halpern

Non-Fiction: Ripped by Greg Kot, Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street by Michael Davis, Drunkard: A Hard Drinking Life by Neil Steinberg, The Stanislavski System by Sonia Moore, and Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown

E-Books:

Books Borrowed:

Currently Reading: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, McSweeney’s Mammoth Book of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon

Books Read This Month: God is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr., The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris


Reviews of This Month’s Books:

God is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr.

God is Dead is not as depressing as it sounds. Wait. Strike that. God is Dead is not ALWAYS as depressing as it sounds. In fact, at times it is blisteringly funny. What could be funnier than Colin Powell talking shit in his best Samuel L. Jackson voice? God has died and the world has crumbled into chaos.
Wait…that’s not funny. Except that it is. In Currie’s exceptional first novel he displays a knack for the absurd that rivals Vonnegut. God is Dead is not so much a novel as it is a collection of short stories based around a theme. The theme: God comes to Earth in the form of a woman, raped and beaten to near death in Darfur. God dies alone and lonely in a God-forsaken land. What follows is at turns a hilarious satire, a gut-wrenching exploration of loss of life and the loss of faith, and a vision of what happens when the world falls apart and is then rebuilt, by people too damaged to make good decisions.
Each chapter is really a different short story. Each one takes a different character as its protagonist, and each story takes place at different points along the timeline. One story may take place before God has died, or even concurrently, others happen after God has died and reason no longer holds sway. But some of the most twisted tales take place in a post-God future, post-chaos, where man has rebuilt the world so that parents are forced to attend therapy sessions to remind them of how unremarkable their children are.
This is extraordinary writing. And the imagination on display here is something truly exciting to see in a young writer. The worst thing I can say about this is that it is uneven to say the least. The quality of the stories collected that are collected here is uneven to say the least. For instance, the first story, in which we learn that Secretary of State Colin Powell is tired of being Bush’s bitch and is ready to make a big bold move, is hilarious and as close to South Park cartoonism as you can get. But there is a chapter/story involving a high school graduate who encounters terror at the height of her innocence and possibility that is absolutely staggering in its death-defying, high-wire tension. And another story about a group of college buddies that begin to stand around the kitchen shooting one another because it breaks up the boredom of drinking themselves to death, leaves one gasping for a little warmth. However, there are times when you feel Currie has taken his theme to extremes, begging to be taken seriously when they are laughable and ludicrous.
Lastly, every dog of this very short collection is worth the absolutely dizzying heights that some of the stories reach. This is fearless writing, and some of these stories are breath-taking in their horror and heartbreak. Overall, a fittingly chaotic tome of what may happen if God did, in fact, come to Earth and die.
This one is MUST reading for those few stories that took my breath away. If you aren’t interested, but still want to have your world drop beneath your feet, let me know and I’ll mail you photocopies of the best stories. As a friend, I owe you as much.

The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind

I picked this up as an ARC (advance reader copy) in the back room at Borders because I thought it looked interesting. I knew that Goodkind was a respected author of Fantasy novels, and while I’m not really a fan of that genre, this promised to be more sci-fi than fantasy, based on its slick contemporary marketing and its “real world meets another world” plot.
After reading such ground-jarring fiction as I just had (see above), I needed a diversion. This seemed to fit the bill. Also at this time I experienced a bit of a life change when I swapped jobs between my full-time and part-time jobs. After a year or more of having Borders as my day job, with a built-in hour lunch break everyday which guaranteed good reading time I switched it for a full-time gig with the Studio Theatre which has prime hours, but I lose my hour of reading time in exchange for an on-the-clock break in which I eat as quick as I can and get back to business. Thus, I have much less reading time built into my day, which explains why it took almost the entire month for me to finish this 500 page novel.
That, and the fact that it is quite simply, poorly written. The truth is that while the story is good and the characters are likable, this is piss poor writing. The prose is clunky and clumsy. I spent so much of the novel rereading what I already knew that I wanted to send a letter to Mr. Goodkind containing only the definition of the word “redundant”. I can’t tell you how many times I read how uncomfortable the main character felt because he felt uncomfortable about being uncertain. I just at times wanted to scream, “STOP SAYING THE SAME THING THREE TIMES IN A ROW!” Look, I get why the character doesn’t trust mirrors. You needn’t explain it every single time you bring it up.

Now, of course, I’m being overly harsh. I did enjoy this novel. I completed it and even took great pleasure in completing it. However, I doubt that I will ever read another book by this author. And while I enjoyed the journey, it was so filled with cliché and predictable moments, that I do not feel any need to read anything else involving this world or these characters. A sad state of affairs as there are two other “Nines” novels in the works.

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

Then We Came to the End should have been a simple, funny and forgettable “work novel”. By all description it comes as across as “a bunch of funny things that happen to us and our co-workers while we are at the office” type of book. Something that we can read, and nod, and chuckle because we recognize ourselves, and isn’t it so true? This book manages to be THAT book and then blows your mind because it becomes so much more. Forgettable? Hardly.
The story follows the working lives of a bunch of advertising copywriters and graphic designers, from the heady days of excess when everyone was padding their retirement portfolios, into the harsh reality of an economic downturn when the question is not will I get laid off, but when? Following the inter-office exploits of these discontented cubicle workers as they struggle to keep their jobs in a terrifyingly competitive advertising firm, it is at turns hilarious, heartbreaking, and even shockingly suspenseful.
In Ferris’ debut novel, he takes the banal and derivative idea of the office novel and infuses it with warmth, life, anger, regret and a solid emotional heart. Then We Came to the End is as big and bold a debut novel as you can expect to read. Written in the “corporate we” the story doesn’t have a single protagonist but a group of protagonists that function as a team, even when they want to tear each other’s throats out. It is a rambling tale that feels like an office gossip story, full of tangential rants and amusing sidebars, somehow circling back around to the story at hand. It is venomous in its honesty about inter-office relationships: the way that we hate the tics and foibles of our coworkers (those stupid jokes, that awful hairdo, the foul body odor) as well as the acknowledgment that teamwork unites (as well as creates resentments). Like life, it is messy and complicated, and funny and terrible, and despairing and hopeful. In the end we look back with fondness, recalling the good times we shared and the people we never see anymore and hardly ever even think about.
Then We Came to the End is a big, sprawling, warm-hearted and touching comic satire. And the recent financial crisis makes this tale (from 2007) all the more relevant. And then check out the interactive and fully-integrated website set up by the publisher (it even includes a floorplan which highlights the person’s name when you mouse over their office.) Just Google the title you’ll find it. Fun stuff indeed!

And then we came to the end. Of the year. Wow, how time flies! I’ve read a great many different things this year, and next up I’ll decide the 10 best things I’ve read all year. And in January I’ll kick off a whole new year of reading.

Stay tuned and keep reading!
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