Better Late Than Never, Unless You Have To Read My Drivel

Let me just say that I am thrilled to be out of the literary morass of the '70s, '80s and '90s. I was excited to be reading Steinbeck, excited to be reading The Winter of Our Discontent, a legitimate classic, and double-excited that my wife didn't force some Timothy Leary/Ken Kesey Generation of Love crap down my gullett. Hurray for dodging bullets!

Anyway, like Monique wrote over a month ago (sorry to our loyal throngs), TWOD was just an outstanding book, without a doubt the best we've read in our little challenge thus far. I had a little trouble getting into it at first, possibly because the bulk of my reading is done in 10-minute increments while sitting on the pot. But by the time I got 30 pages in, I was hooked. I found myself eating a lot more fiber. Get it? Yeah, you get it.

I have a bit of a fictional man-crush on the protagonist, Ethan Hawley, the latest patriarch of a crumbled New England aristocracy. He's fallen on hard times, having lost the last of the family fortune in a failed grocery business, where he now works for the new owner, an Italian gentleman who is constanly referred to by your choice of ethnic slurs. Ethan's lovely wife and children keep asking him when they're going to be rich again; the town whore has her sights set on him; and his best friend is about 250 pages away from drinking himself to death. Basically, things are at their worst, but Ethan is still able to conjur lots of biting sarcasm and pithy quips. My hero.

The book revolves around Ethan's attempt to regain his family's prominence, and the moral depths to which he is willing to sink to do so. Ethan is a veteran of World War II, and when his convoluted plan is about to take flight, he says that he hopes he can act now as he did in the war: quick, decisive, merciless. He says that having killed men in the war didn't mean that he was a killer, only that he had done what needed to be done. And unlike Monique, I found myself saying, "Rob the bank! Rob the bank!" Because I honestly believed he could do it.

As Ethan plots his success, others around him do the same. His teenage son, Allen, wins an essay contest that he hopes to parlay into television gameshow fame. His is the easy way, which, Allen says, is the only way to do it. Why waste time with hard work if you don't have to? Ethan's daughter, Ellen, has her own nefarious plans regarding Allen's success. Ultimately, Ethan realizes that the fast way is the wrong way. Fortuitously, he doesn't get that until after he's back on the road to prosperity. Or is he? Yeah, he is.

As in all of Steinbeck's writing, the characterization is phenomenal. There wasn't a single character who I could find fault with. Everybody was believable, well-written and well-developed. But that's why Steinbeck is Steinbeck, and I write a half-assed blog about books other people wrote.

Likewise, the plot is remarkable. Again, the buildup is a bit slow for my taste, but overall the storyline is taut and crescendos wonderfully to the climax and denoument without ever wandering or releasing tension. It's really more a storycable, a strong, sleek steel storycable.

Well, that's that. Soon I'll be coming out with a review of Kon-Tiki. Or not.

April by Monique

April was The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck.

I loved this book. I devoured it. I could not stop reading until I was done and then I felt sad and let down because I wanted more.

Steve will do a wonderful summary, I'm sure. Steve's a better writer than I, and I feel kind of tarded when I read his summaries and then read mine. I think he's second guessing his choice of mate. After my embarrassing emotional vomit brought on by my review of Breathing Lessons, he's never really looked at me the same.

So, I will just say that I truly enjoyed the book. I think it's an absolute classic. The book, although written in the sixties, touches on themes relevant today (the economy, immigration, class, addiction, crime and poverty). I felt drawn in, connected to and emotionally invested in the lives of the Hawleys, especially Ethan, the main character. I found myself rooting for him in my mind and I find myself mentally shouting things out to him, "Don't rob the bank!"

What can I say, I'm a huge dork....

Northern Lights

I caught up, and finished February and March's book, and then steamrolled over Steve and finished April's book. Steve is jealous and whiny about it, but I can't help that I read faster than he does.

Soo, Northern Lights. Man, I gotta say, I was expecting so much more. Tim O'Brien is on my short list of favorite authors, and The Things They Carried and If I Die in a Combat Zone are def. two of my all time favorite books. I don't even really enjoy "war" books, but they are just so beautifully written that it's hard not to fall in love with these books.

I was expecting Northern Lights to be not as great, yet somewhat great. Glimmers of greatness, at least. I was bored and I felt like I missed something. I felt like there was a chapter that I skipped that would have provided more of a back story to tie it all together. I just didn't "get" it and when Harvey died in the forest, my first thought was, "What the fuck, Cotton?" Or something like that. It just irritated me for some reason. Then when Paul gave him CPR and brought him back, I was even more irritated and was just over it at that point.

There didn't seem to be a plot. Everything was hinted at, yet never developed. I wanted to like it, really I did. Before I read this book, I would have left my husband for Tim O'Brien. Now, not so much...

Northern Lights a la Steve

It's about time I get first crack at reviewing one of these books. In the past, Monique has used up all the good words, leaving me few options except "cramhole." Now it's Steve's turn to shine!



Tim O'Brien made his bones as a writer with his works about the Vietnam war, producing the classics If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato. Northern Lights is O'Brien's second book, and his first attempt at fiction. I have read all of O'Brien's other books, with mixed feelings. I found that his writing on Vietnam is riveting, but his other material is not my cup of tea. Some of it feels dated, some is overly ruminative and frankly, some of his later books just bore me. None of his peace-time work excites me at all. So I was interested in Northern Lights, because I thought it might be a good mix of war stuff and civilian stuff.

The blurb on the back of our copy states that the:

"core [of the book] is the relationship between two brothers: one who went to Vietnam and one who stayed home. As the two brothers struggle against an unexpected blizzard in Minnesota's remote north woods, what they discover about themselves and each other will change both of them forever."

This led me to believe that the mass of the book would concern said blizzard. Interesting, no? Possibly crazed vet stuck with peacenik brother in a snowstorm. What's going to happen? Well, I enjoyed that part of the book, which lasted from page 165 to page 313. Roughly 150 pages of good, tense, nail-biting reading. Although the snowstorm didn't actually hit until about page 190. Still not bad.

But the blurb didn't mention the other 210 pages of relationships and love triangles and daddy issues, all of which were alluded to, written of obliquely and left to me to figure out. I generally like that kind of book, but I didn't find O'Brien's characters compelling, except for Harvey, the Vietnam brother, and Addie, Harvey's girlfriend.

Northern Lights focuses on Paul Perry, and much of the book is dedicated to Paul's murky relationship with his doughty wife, Grace. Paul is noncommittal about Grace. He seems satisfied with her, but not especially impressed. He acts as if he wants more, particularly upon Harvey's return from war, but is helpless to enact that change. Paul is often passive-aggressive toward Grace, and O'Brien makes a lot out of Paul's friendship with Addie, the young, exotic librarian/town whore, who falls into Harvey's arms while Paul hems and haws about his own attraction to her.

My recurring complaint about this book begins here. Paul's problems with Grace are never fully examined. They are vaguely alluded to, the results laid out without a reason. O'Brien mentions several times that Paul's father did not fully approve of Grace, but we're never told why. I don't mind reading between the lines; I'm not an idiot. But I looked between the lines, and found the writing to be Latin, or possibly Esperanto.

Paul is similarly apathetic about his government job in the small, dying town of Sawmill Landing. He fell into the job and doesn't enjoy it, but it's his now, and he does it well. He just doesn't really want it. A lot like his wife.

The book begins on the day of Harvey's return from Vietnam, where he lost an eye. We discover quickly that Harvey was the town hero before he went to war, and that he was also his father's hero. Known around the town as "Bull", Harvey was a star athlete and outdoorsman, and basically could no wrong in the small, cloistered community of Sawmill Landing.

Harvey is an intriguing character to me. Because he spent his youth in the limelight, he expects and is given accolades upon his homecoming. The only problem is that Harvey mainly wants to be by himself. He alternately keeps himself hermitted away in his bedroom and demands attention. At any rate, he sinks into alcoholism.

As mentioned above, Harvey sort of stumbles into Addie. Paul's do-nothing approach to the mutual attraction between him and Addie forced her away from him, but being the town whore is what made her take up with Paul's brother. Seriously, who does that? In high school, we had a name for girls who messed around with the brothers and friends of boys who didn't like them as much as they wanted. That word, as you may have guessed, was whore.

But I digress. While Paul balefully observes, Harvey forces his relationship with Addie to be serious. This leads to a lot of familial double-date nights, which nobody but Harvey really wants, but the Bull gets his way. Grace goes along with it gamefully, while Paul and Addie continue to jab and retreat, and Harvey drinks and rolls his dead eye around.

Without detailing every part of the book, let me just say that Addie does some more whoring around, then Harvey shows some chinks in his armor, and next thing you know, Paul and Harvey are lost in a blizzard while cross-country skiing. As I said, this is the good part of the book, tension-wise, and it does cause the brothers to discover things about themselves, as promised.

They do a lot of soul-searching and hashing out their daddy issues. Again, a lot of things are sort of left in the air to make up your own mind about, although not so much as with the Paul and Grace situation. Then Harvey dies. Whaaaaa?!?!?! Don't worry; against all odds, Paul saves the day, gets them out of trouble and Harvey is forced to acknowledge Paul's usefulness. After that, Paul becomes much more decisive about things, Addie takes off to the big city, and everybody is more or less happy. Except Harvey. Oh well.

I like Northern Lights mainly because the theme is easy to pin down. Paul is a wishy-washy nancy boy his entire life. Whenever he is confronted with a decision, he sits on his hands until the decision is made for him. When Paul is unhappy in his marriage and has Addie on his line, he just waits for resolution, hoping either Grace will let him off the hook, or Addie will tear him off the hook. Instead, Addie just drifts away, and rubs it in Paul's face to boot.

Paul's job is more of the same. He putts along at his stale work until he is informed that his office is being closed. Then, instead of being proactive in finding new work, Paul decides to take a little time off to think about it. He's pushed in multiple directions by his wife, brother, even passing acquaintances, so no decision is ever really made.

But after Paul gets a little self-worth, he suddenly works everything out for himself nice and neat. The best part is that Harvey, given circumstances that would knock most men down a few pegs, barely feels a draft. He doesn't really work anything out, but at least he has a grudging respect for his big brother, and he's not dating the town whore anymore, so that had to be some weight off his shoulders.

I'm not thrilled with an ending that presents Paul as completely transformed over a matter of a week or two, but I'm glad that nobody else is that squared off. Harvey is still an unrepentant alcoholic without direction, Grace is still a fearful little titmouse, and Addie's tramping around in St. Paul. That rings true to me, because, as we learned in Breathing Lessons, nobody ever really changes all that much. And I would have been perfectly happy with Paul changing a little, taking more control of himself, and showing the possibility of more change; I just didn't care for his total makeover because of a snowstorm.

I was probably more impressed with Harvey as a character than I would have been if another author had written it, because I feel like there must have been some of O'Brien himself in Harvey. It's a little window into the heart of a damaged veteran that I appreciate. But I think O'Brien comes up short in some of his characterization, particularly with Grace and Addie. Perhaps he just didn't have room to explain them as well as he might, or perhaps, like me, exploring the female mind is like making out with a cow's stomach full of lime Jell-O. Get it? No? Exactly!

All in all, I enjoyed Northern Lights; I may even read it again someday. But I've been spoiled by Tim O'Brien's Vietnam oeuvre, and was hoping for a little more from this, at least partially because I secretly hoped that his recent fiction is bad because he has aged. I think O'Brien is best when he writes close to home, and when he slips into fictionalization, he can get sometimes sort of go off the grid. I think Northern Lights is pretty close to home for him, but because it was mainly a work of fiction, O'Brien had to do a lot of guess work about characters and plot that hurt the book in the end. At the end of the day, I'll probably just re-read The Things They Carried.

Cram Your Snide Comments Up Your Cramhole

Contrary to my wife's petty prognostication, here is my review of February's book. Ahem...

What was it called? Breathing Lessons? Hmm. Intriguing. As I recall, the title was cleverly based on the 27 words devoted to one of the protagonists taking her former daughter-in-law to her Lamaze classes. Way to make that extra effort, Anne Tyler.

Anyway, the book focused on a married couple, Ira and Maggie, and a trip to a funeral. Some stuff happened, but mainly I was struck with an enduring image of two 50-somethings trying to do the nasty in a widow's bedroom. Icky.

Tyler divided the book into possibly three or four sections, most of which were written from Maggie's POV. She certainly was whiny. As Monique pointed out, Maggie desperately wants everyone she meets, every single person, to be happy. But the lengths she goes to to achieve happiness for others is both beyond the realms of believability and shockingly annoying. Maggie has her nose in everyone's business to the point of pushing them away. Lucky for her, she has Ira to show her the errors of her ways, and shoulder the horrifying responsibility of being married to her.

For his part, Ira is detached from everything around him. He plays a lot of Solitaire, and wants nothing more than to go to the funeral of his wife's friend's husband, then turn around and go back to Baltimore, where he can run his frame shop and feel beholden to his father and idiot sisters. Ira, I get. His children disappoint him, his father crushed his dreams of med school and his wife is an overwrought simpleton. So he doesn't sweat the small stuff, and he takes care of the things he's supposed to take care of, and he lives completely within himself. Three cheers for self-reliance!

Speaking of Ira, the one spectacular facet of the book was Tyler's depiction of Ira. I generally think that female authors do a crappy job of writing male characters. In most chick-lit, men are hurriedly scribbled down, painted with as many broad stereotypes as possible, so the good-looking guy is always good, and the bad guy is transparently so. Cads! It's possible that male authors are just as guilty of the same activity when writing women; I wouldn't know.

But Anne Tyler did surprising justice to the male gender when she concocted Ira. Everything about him rang true to me, except for his subconscious whistling of songs apropos to every moment, without his knowledge. That's a bit asinine. But overall, Ira was written like a real male, good and bad.

I'm not in love with the book. I would have preferred some Jay McInerney or Bret Easton Ellis for the '80s. I did not cry at any point, except when I tried to sleep the night after I read the geriatric make-out scene. Ewwww. Nasty. It was fairly predictable, and offered little character growth. The secondary characters were all two dimensional, and neither one was the intriguing fourth dimension, or even the silky-smooth Fifth Dimension. Personally, I either didn't see or can't remember any revelation at the end of the book. Everyone is still basically in the exact same place they were at the beginning of the book, despite 300+ pages of Maggie's finagling. Maybe that's the point: nothing really changes except our skin condition. Huzzah for my revelation!!

Breathing Lessons...Monique's Review

I finished February this weekend--finally. Also, I bought April's book, and I'm about 50 pages into March. Yay for me!

So, Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler. It took me about 100 pages or more to really get into the book. Overall, I enjoyed it. I actually cried at the end of the book, as it was a revelation of sorts.

I went into the book thinking it was about marriage, but it was about marriage, family, children. I found that much of the book resonated my own personal experiences. I found myself thinking of my first marriage and how it just was destined to fail. I found myself wondering if monogamy is really natural. At one point in the book, the main character says that she fell in love with her husband again, which was "convenient." I guess that's really what it's all about: falling in love again, and hoping it's with the person you married.

The book made me cry because it hit home with some themes I've been wrestling with in my own life lately. The main character, Maggie, wants so badly for everyone to be happy. She engineers these moments and tries to engineer relationships and it never works. It always just causes more trouble. It's not malicious--she truly just wants everyone to be happy. She wants to have this great happy family with these happy family moments.

It hit home and hard. When I was little, my family was not a happy family. We still aren't. I don't really think that my brothers like me, or each other, and I'm not sure my parents really like us all that much either. As a girl, I would watch movies with big, happy families and I just wanted that so much. I wanted big family gatherings where the families played games, and talked and had family traditions and stayed up late talking and having family talent shows. I wanted a family with a cabin in Vermont and that met there every Christmas and sat around the fire laughing and drinking cocoa. I wanted a big Italian family that got together every Sunday and had huge weddings. In my head, I imagine my family get togethers will be the same. A couple years ago, I had this elaborately planned Christmas. I took time off work so that I could do the necessary cooking and cleaning and baking. Well, my brother and his wife went to California and my other brother could not have cared less and barely showed up. My parents don't live in town and it's just not a priority for them. I was crushed. Really.
And I do it every freaking holiday. I write menus. I plan games. And it never happens. When my family does get together, some of us don't even talk to each other and it's awkward and pointless. And every single time, I'm crushed. Steve has gotten to the point where he just dreads it because he knows I will sink into some weird holiday related depression and either be a raving bitch or a crying mess.

So, Maggie's elaborate stories and plans just made me sad all over again.

The book was also about miscommunication and how we think we are telling our spouse something, and they interpret it as another and it's just a horrible cycle. This is obviously why so many marriages fail, and a problem that causes marriage counselors to stay in business.

Overall, I enjoyed it. It wasn't the best book I've ever read, but it was a quick read.

Steve will probably never post his review.

March

Okay. I admit it. I'm totally lame. I didn't read March either. I can't help it. My job doesn't afford me much free time, and when I do have free time, I usually either sleep or read something totally brainless, like US Magazine.

Steve read it. He's good like that.

I did start reading February's book and March's book....

Will I finish them and finish April's? Who knows. I do have a couple big trials coming up, so I'm guessing that means I won't finish them.

It's sort of sad. I used to read all the time and just loved it. I loved opening a book, bending the spine back, and starting the book. I loved the sort of sad feeling of finishing a great book. Then I went to law school, and had to read non-stop. I still read non-stop. My day is made up of doing two things: reading and talking. Really, that's being a lawyer in a nutshell. When I get home, I'm so tired of reading, that I can't do it. I can read Perez Hilton, but that takes no energy. I like that.

The reading challenge is becoming less about reading books to talk about with my husband and more about just reading at all.

February's Pick, or Why Monique is Too Lame to Read

Well, February's pick ended up being Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons. Turned out that the book I originally picked was over 1000 pages long, and that was against the rules.

Steve said, "You didn't check before you picked it?" It's like he doesn't know me at all....that would have required more attention than I have to give to such mundane details.

So, I had to find a new book from the eighties. As anyone who lived in that time period can attest to, the eighties were a time of bad fashion, bad music, and even worse literature. Really--don't take my word for it, check out a list of bestsellers from that decade. Yuck.

I basically just picked one that had decent reviews. Then Steve read it. I didn't.

In my defense, I did a trial in February that was, in words of the judge, "Soo bad. The facts were soo bad. I found myself wondering what you could possibly argue." I also prepped another trial that sucked out of me much of my desire to do criminal defense...but that's a story for another place and another time.

I didn't read it. Steve did. He'll post.

Onto March. We are both very excited about March's book. Tim O'Brien is one of my all time favorites, and I think Steve thinks he's okay, too. He wrote one of the most moving books I've ever read: The Things They Carried. If I Die in a Combat Zone is also good. March's pick is Northern Lights, Tim's first book.

Steve's Review

Let me preface this by saying that my reading time is limited, beause I only read on the toilet. Sorry I took so long.

I'll start by agreeing with Monique that the layout of the book was annoying. It is vaguely textbook-like, in size and format, with distracting little made-up definitions to help assimilate and comprehend the oh-so-complex thought processes of my generation. Does anybody remember Sniglets? They were "words that aren't in the dicitonary but should be," compiled into shiny, bathroom-reading volumes that filled my stockings for several years in the late 80's. For example: Cheedle -- the orange residue left on fingers after eating Cheetos or some other cheesy snack. See? Great, isn't it? Anyway, Generation X is full of things like that, only more culturally significant.

I also agree with Monique that the dialogue was affected and self-important, reminiscent of the slacker films of the early 90's, such as, um, Slackers. Also, Coupland refused to italicize entire words, opting to place the emphasis on individual syllables, so we know precisely how to read the words. Possibly because he's Canadian. Sadly, Mr. Coupland, Strunk and White are not Canadian.

I did enjoy most of the stories written into the novel. I generally like short stories better than novels, if they are well-written. I think it's the mark of a good writer to be able to convey the same point in 5000 words that another writer makes in 200,000 words, and Coupland did that several times. I appreciated Coupland's minimalization in the stories, using a relatively barren narrative, but still eliciting feelings from me.

But aside from the short stories, the tone of the book was unbearable. According to a blurb on the back of the book, Cosmo called Generation X, "A modern-day Catcher in the Rye." I agree, in that both books involved whining protagonists who are perpetually unhappy with their lot in life and refuse to accept any of the blame for it. The point of Generation X seemed to be that our parents made the world unlivable, and anybody who tries to live and work in this horrible world we inherited is a simplton deserving of unmitigated contempt.

Essentially, if you have a job that pays a living wage, have kids, own a house, drive a decent car, live in a city, live in a suburb, live on a farm, wear new clothes, wear stylish clothes, smoke, don't smoke, travel in Europe, don't travel in Europe or have non-vintage furiture, you should want to die. If any of that doesn't make you beg for death, then you actually deserve to die.

Again, everything pointed to how badly the previous generation screwed us over. None of the characters had a functional relationship with their families, and there was a great deal of pity spread around for unhip parents who didn't understand how unhip they were.

I'd like to take a second to point out that every generation, probably from the beginning of time, has had to deal with mistakes made by the prior generation, and the human race is still here. Is having to drive electric cars to save the environment worse than being drafted into Vietnam? Is Vietnam worse than the depression worse than the Civil War worse than the Plague? Each of these events had a huge effect on the following generation. I doubt that the first guy to catch the bubonic plague from his friendly household rat said on his deathbed that he was glad his generation had it easier than his parents'. But there were probably unemployed waifs all over Europe, dressed in secondhand cod pieces, who sat around drinking ale and complaining about how hard they had it. "Forsooth, fair Marion, I dost had to take a job at Sir Arthur's stable! I hate my dad, I sweareth! Hey, dost thou have an oozing lesion?"

While reading, I sometimes got the feeling that Coupland was poking fun at himself, at least a little. I'd like to believe that, but I really don't. Ultimately, he's very serious about his self-righteous anger, and his disappointment in everyone who is unwilling to give up their possessions and jobs, and live in the desert smoking clove cigarettes.

I'm just saying, okay, Douglas Coupland, you hated your job and couldn't afford a house. Welcome to adult life. Work harder or accept your future. Granted, you found a way around that by writing a mediocre book that expresses the bitchy fears of a lazy generation that had everything handed to it, so good for you. But seriously, am I bad because I'm (usually) employed and like driving a car that runs? Evidently.

Monique's Review

I finished the book last week. Trial prep has kept me from posting my review, but I have a few minutes today:

Overall, I disliked the book. I actually hated it at first. The definitions in the margins were distracting and annoying. The drawings and the definitions made the book feel dated (which it is) and that just made me feel old.

My take on the book is that Generation Xers are miserable. They feel that they are the first generation to suffer the effects of high divorce rates, and the fact that most of us won't be more successful or make more money than our parents did. The characters all seem to have a longing for the fifties. Our parents grew up in two parent households. Divorces were rare amongst our grandparents. Our fathers grew up knowing that if they worked hard and went to college, they'd get great jobs and have more, be more, do more than the previous generation. Our parents took jobs with companies and stayed there for years, moving upward.

Then we came along. Most of us grew up in broken homes, or homes that should be broken, they are so beyond repair. We grew up knowing a college degree didn't mean much, it was just a step towards the now necessary graduate degree. Most of us won't work for the same company for years, and will scramble to have any sort of retirement. We have to worry about nuclear war (according to the author), the environment, and social security being there to pay our bills. We feel a sense of lethargy from all of this pushing down on us, leading us to be slackers--that cliche from the nineties.

I feel this, I really do. I've been there. I'm paying out the ass for my student loans for law school and I sure as hell don't feel upwardly mobile. But something about the book just made Gen-Xers seem whiny, annoying, and lazy.

I often felt like I was reading a book written by Ethan Hawke's character from Reality Bites. And that annoyed me--a lot. So, while it was an okay book, I didn't really enjoy. I'm looking forward to next month's pick and hoping I enjoy it more.