December 8, 2013
In thinking about my absolute favorite books of 2013, I need to mention In the House Upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell (Soho), Mira Corpora by Jeff Jackson (Two Dollar Radio), and Spectacle by Susan Steinberg (Graywolf). These are the ones that have lingered most acutely in my memory and which I find myself turning back to again and again. My interviews with these three authors are linked below.
One poetry chapbook I absolutely loved was Orthorexia by Kristin Sanders (Dancing Girl Press) and the literary magazine I keep thinking about was issue 88 of Glimmer Train, which included Laura Van Der Berg’s stunning “Antarctica” and the debut story by my former student Michael Deagler, “Etymology.”
While there are still so many promising 2013 titles on my to-read shelf, probably too many, I also catch myself looking forward to what 2014 will bring: Chris Abani’s The Secret History of Las Vegas (Penguin), Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State (Grove), Kyle Minor’s Praying Drunk (Sarabande), Richard Powers’s Orfeo (Norton). It should be another wonderful and inspiring year.
My interview with Matt Bell for Tin House is here.
My interview with Jeff Jackson, also for Tin House, is here.
And my interview with Susan Steinberg for Hobart is here.
December 1, 2013
I really enjoyed this book a great deal. So much fun to read. My review ran in the Miami Herald on 12/1/13. And in keeping with the spirit of the novel, I have embedded a secret message in my write-up. And because this book comes shrink wrapped (there are tons of lavishly designed goodies tipped in) I left my copy at my local indie bookshop so potential readers can read what they’re in for.
Even the most jaded critic would have to admit that S. accomplishes some inventive things that few novels have even attempted. This collaboration between fiction writer Doug Dorst and filmmaker J. J. Abrams — as well as a number of gifted designers and editors — has resulted in an audacious literary achievement that calls to mind Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Chris Ware’s Building Stories and even Charles Portis’Masters of Atlantis. S., however, takes the interactivity and paranoia of those books to a whole new level.
Realistically, a sensible summary of this novel is next to impossible. Please bear with me. In the fictional world of S., a reclusive novelist named V. M. Straka has engendered a vast field of scholarly study, a cult-like international following, and a murderous secret society or two. These groups, of course, overlap. Much of the joy of reading S.derives from following a trail of clues and solving (or attempting to solve) a series of mysteries along with the characters.
V. M. Straka’s seafaring novel Ship of Theseus — which is reproduced here in its entirely — contains any number of coded messages. His translator F. X. Caldeira has, in his footnotes, provided clues that clever readers can piece together in order to get at Straka’s hidden meanings. Something like a secret decoder ring — technically, it’s an Eotvos Wheel—is included to help us along.
In the margins of Ship of Theseus there’s a handwritten conversation between two readers, Jen and Eric, who are passing the book back and forth while they collaborate on solving Straka’s (or is that Caldeira’s or Abrams’s and Dorst’s?) puzzles. Their budding relationship provides the emotional core of this beautifully dizzying project. Jen is a college student hoping to graduate, but to do so she’ll need to pass a class taught by a lackey of Eric’s nemesis, the Straka scholar who got him kicked out of school. The mystery and their flirtation continue on a number of seemingly extraneous objects that have been tipped into this lavish book, including a map, a note written on a napkin, postcards, and a clipped out newspaper obituary. It’s all very elaborate.
Novels don’t typically reach off the page quite so literally. Given its immense complexity, S. probably only exists due to the star power of Abrams, who has successfully revived the Star Trek movie franchise and is now at work on a new series of Star Wars films. Brilliantly conceived and perfectly executed, the book harkens back to a golden age of storytelling. In doing so it also solidifies Abrams’ standing among the great creative visionaries of our time. Both as literature and as a physical object, S. is a profound and tremendous work of art.
November 21, 2013
On Tuesday Nov. 19, I had the opportunity to interview the great Robert Stone on stage at the Free Library of Philadelphia. The podcast of our conversation is available here.
It was twenty years ago when I first read Robert Stone. My one and only creative writing class as an undergraduate, co-taught by Madison Smartt Bell and Elizabeth Spires, took place at Goucher College during the fall of 1993. That semester, I was assigned to read Children of Light and since then that novel (as well as Dog Soldiers and A Flag For Sunrise) has been a vital part of every moment of my adult writing life. There is no author who has influenced me and my writing more than Robert Stone. No exaggeration. (The other other artist whose work has affected me as much is Terry Gilliam.) When I wrote “Brooking the Devil,” which at the time was going to be the beginning of Extraordinary Renditions, I went back to Stone’s best first chapters. The resemblance between the opening of my novella and the opening of Dog Soldiers is not subtle; the homage was deliberate. Getting to speak with him about his new novel, Death of the Black-Haired Girl, was an experience I will always treasure.
Before the event started and then again after it ended, Stone and I sat on stage for quite a while to chat. He needed to catch his breath. I told him that Children of Light remained my favorite of his novels. He was a bit surprised and he told me that it was his favorite as well; he called that one his “lost child.”
That evening, I made sure to tell Stone knew exactly how much his writing has meant to me. I quoted the opening of Children of Light–that “aqueous light on the blue-white ceiling”–and he recited it along with me. We were both a bit misty eyed when it came time for him to go upstairs and meet his admirers. “You’re the best, Bob,” I said on my way out the door, and it’s true. Robert Stone is the best.
November 17, 2013
At Night We Walk in Circles is one of my absolute favorite novels of the year. My review ran in the Miami Herald on 11/17/13.
The timeline of Daniel Alarcón’s masterful new novel is organized the way our memories are, which is to say not at all. Or, more likely, there is probably some inner logic at work here, but it feels as natural and uncontrived as it is ingeniously constructed. Alarcón ferries back and forth in time with such alacrity that rather than feeling dizzy or confused he allows us to revel in the ways that our past — personal and national — affect our present.
The uncommon majesty of At Night We Walk in Circles should come as no surprise. The Peru-born Alarcón’s debut, a story collection titled War By Candlelight, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway prize in 2006, and his first novelLost City Radio turned up on a number of best-book-of-the-year lists. This one could easily to do the same.
At Night We Walk in Circles features a down-on-his-luck actor in his 20s named Nelson who has taken on the responsibility of caring for his widowed mother and whose girlfriend is going to have another man’s child. If there’s a dominant theme to the book, it has something to do with parenthood and responsibility, but much to his credit Alarcón is not interested in spoonfeeding us any easy moral epiphanies.
Nelson’s life gets even more complicated when he seeks out his idol, an infamous dissident playwright named Henry Nuñez. In his younger days, Henry had landed in a notorious prison after his drama The Idiot President was performed by a guerrilla theatre troupe Diciembre. The two of them, along with a colleague, decide to reform Diciembre, and they travel across the nation — an unnamed Andean land with certain similarities to Peru — in a revival of The Idiot President. Things do not go especially well.
The tour takes them to the town where the senile mother of Henry’s former cellmate and lover Rogelio lives. She has not been told of her son’s demise. Under some coercion, Nelson is forced to take on a role he hadn’t planned on, and the effects are staggering.
“It was as if in the process of becoming Rogelio, he’d completed some mystical erasure: Nelson almost ceased to exist, temporarily, though it would eventually be seen as a prelude to a more serious kind of erasure.”
The repercussions bring about an end to the tour, but rather than tying the various plotlines into a neat bow, Alarcón continues to raise the stakes to the very end. The result is a sterling novel about the manifold ways that the uneasy relationship between art and politics so often disrupts individual lives. At Night We Walk in Circles is a brave, thoughtful and astute novel. Elegant in its construction, it feels perfectly suited to bring Alarcón’s tremendous talent to a wider audience.
November 3, 2013
I enjoyed James Franco’s debut novel quite a bit. My review ran in the Miami Herald on 11/3/13.
Confusing the thoughts, opinions and flaws of a book’s narrator with those of his creator is never a good idea — even when they share a name. In his debut novel Actors Anonymous, actor/filmmaker/scholar James Franco revels in such pseudo-autobiographical confusion. (His first book, a collection of stories, appeared in 2010.)
There’s a character here named James Franco who bears a striking resemblance to his famous namesake, but here that postmodernist sleight of hand reminds us that we’re all acting, all the time, in the roles we’ve come to think of as ourselves.
A 12-step series of chapters — made up of stories and poems, anecdotes and aphorisms and the requisite screenplay — follow the basic formal model of a self-help book. Each section is about a struggling actor or someone dealing with the burning desire to be someone else, even if just for a few minutes. The conceit is a smart one that asks us to consider many sorts of addiction: drugs, alcohol, sex, attention and adoration.
In addition to Franco, the characters include a former drug addict who has taken a job at McDonald’s, where he practices his goofy accents at the drive-thru window; a young man trying to find his place amid his peers in some Los Angeles acting classes; and a college freshman super excited to meet James Franco at a Starbucks. There’s a meditation on celebrity here that no one else could have written.
The chapter titled “The Sass Account” stands as not only a highlight of the book but as potential classic of postmodernist storytelling that calls to mind David Foster Wallace’s magazine essays (the best writing of his short life) in the use of footnotes as a sort of accompanying harmonic voice. In Franco’s case, an unnamed actor called The Actor is responding in writing to an unflattering profile in a glossy magazine. That episode continues later in a complex and brilliant section in which a number of characters interact in tremendously fun, meta-fictional ways.
Overall, Actors Anonymous is a lively book full of graphic sexual violence and sensitive introspection. The preface of the novel informs us that “There is usually an ingredient of self-hatred that underlies actors. This hatred manifests in different ways, sometimes it is so buried that it is virtually unnoticeable, but don’t be fooled, it’s there.” While that insight isn’t particularly original, it does speak to the sadness beneath the glamorous surface of this engaging novel.
Franco’s hard work and talent have earned him a tremendous platform, and it would be great to see him use it to take even greater literary risks. That said, Actors Anonymous succeeds on its own unique terms, but it also gives us every reason to eagerly anticipate what Franco will write when he steps even further away from his own comfort zone.