sat, 31-mar-2007, 14:41

the road

the road, cormac mccarthy

Books Acquired

  • Jim Crace. 1999. Being Dead.
  • Dave Eggers. 2006. What Is the What.
  • Kazuo Ishiguro. 2005. Never Let Me Go.
  • Cormac McCarthy. 2006. The Road.
  • Tom McCarthy. 2005. Remainder.
  • Scarlett Thomas. 2006. The End of Mr. Y.
  • Dave Eggers. 2002. You Shall Know Our Velocity.
  • A. L. Kennedy. 2005. Paradise.

Books Read

  • David Mitchell. 2004. Cloud Atlas: A Novel.
  • Zadie Smith. 2000. White Teeth: A Novel.
  • Cormac McCarthy. 2006. The Road.
  • Dave Eggers. 2006. What Is the What.
  • Scarlett Thomas. 2006. The End of Mr. Y.
  • Tom McCarthy. 2005. Remainder.

I haven’t decided if I really like the Hornby format or not. I like that it provides a nice monthly summary of what books I’ve read and picked up, but a month is a pretty long time to remember enough about a book for me to adequately say what I think about it. The books I didn’t like so much sort of fade by the time the end of the month rolls around.

Cloud Atlas

I had a hard time getting into this one, mostly because the first (and last) story in the book wasn’t very compelling for me. The concept of the book as a set of mirrored and weakly connected stories through time (the pattern is abcdefedcba) was kinda cool, and Michell does a great job at switching genre from one story to the next. The problem with the book, however, is that once you’ve seen the structure and appreciated the skill involved, how does it really add to the novel as a whole? I didn’t find much in the way of an overall theme that connected the stories together, so it was easiest to just read the book as a set of six short stories, split in half. As such, I really enjoyed the middle three, and especially liked the replicant’s story (e) and the language she used (AdV for TV, Corpocracy for the government). Hopefully not as prophetic as it seems at this moment.

White Teeth

I’m really not sure what all the excitement was surrounding this book. The characters behaved in really strange ways, many of them weren’t fleshed out at all (Archie, Clara, Irie, specifically), and I thought Smith could have done a lot more with the "experiment" of sending Millit back to India while Magid stayed at home. Maybe the point was that it doesn’t matter? I did enjoy the Iqbal’s and their relationship seemed the most formed, realistic, and humorous.

The Road

Now that Oprah has selected it for her Book Club I probably don’t need to go on and on about this one, since everyone and their brother will be reading it now. But in case a nod from Oprah is a negative for you, let me say that this is a stunning work of prophetic fiction. I was amazed at how clearly I could picture (and still can several weeks later) the places and action from the book. It’s not the world we live in now, but it’s uncomfortably close. You won’t soon forget it.

Like this reviewer from the California Literary Review, I read it in one sitting. I didn’t fix myself a stiff drink afterwards, but I understand the sentiment expressed in the review:

I read this book in one take late at night and immediately headed downstairs to kick up the fire and drink some bourbon. I was cold, chilled emotionally, stunned, awe-struck by McCarthy’s words. I mentioned The Road to a singer/songwriter friend and all he could say was “That one put me off my feed for a few days.”

“Put me off my feed” is such a great expression.

what is the what

what is the what: a real, sewn hardcover

What Is the What

If The Road is an all too likely post-apocalyptic nightmare, What Is the What is the all too real nightmare of so many places in the world right now. The surprising thing about this book for me was that despite all the horrors Valentino lives through and recounts during the book (boys getting eaten by lions and crocodiles, villages burned and pillaged, slavery, starvation, years and years of boredom waiting to leave the refugee camps, etc.), the book isn’t at all depressing. The voice Eggers gives Valentino (presumably his real voice) is so matter of fact, and at the same time somehow optimistic and funny that the book was a genuine pleasure to read.

A quote from page 200 of the hardcover:

It was a broken world, I knew then, that would allow a boy such as me to bury a boy such as William K. [Note: They’re seven years old when William dies of starvation on the way to Ethiopia]

One other note: the hardcover is published by McSweeney’s, and is a real hardcover with sewn sections and everything. The last hardcover book I bought that wasn’t just a paperback with hard covers pasted on, was the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of The Brothers Karamazov, published by the now defunct North Point Press (oh yeah, and the books by Edward Tufte, published by Graphics Press). I plan on buying more McSweeney’s books, if for no other reason than to support the idea that a $20 - $30 hardcover really should be a well-produced, durable book, rather than a cheap paperback styled to look like a hardcover. Like Against the Day, they’re not doing numbers right, and the looped characters (lower case d, q and p especially) look a little funny, but other than that, it’s a really nicely produced book.

the end of mr. y

the end of mr. y: bad body font

The End of Mr. Y

I had high hopes for this one, and I really enjoyed it for awhile. But some of the exposition was too drawn out, almost like Thomas was trying to teach us something by leading the character to a conclusion through a dialog with another character that already had the idea. As the book progressed, I also grew more and more tired with the fantastical aspects of the book. One very interesting idea I’d never though about was that if the uncertainty principle governed the first particle of the universe before the big bang either God observed it, causing it’s state to be known and triggering the big bang; or there was no observer, the particle’s state at the time was governed by a probability function, and the big bang happened at any and all of the infinite states the particle could have been in, resulting in a multiverse. So: God or multiverse? My vote is for the multiverse, including the World Without Shrimp.

I also got a nasty stomach flu right in the middle, so some of my bad feelings might be because my reading was forcibly interrupted for several days in the middle of the book.

It is a book of ideas, though, and this means that I will probably enjoy her other books. I’ve got PopCo in my queue, and I expect I’ll like that one more because it appears to dispense with the fantastical.

Also: terrible typography. The body font was horrible. What’s next, Comic Sans or some Brushscript font? Give me Minion, Garamond, Sabon, Caslon or something actually designed for easy, comfortable reading. Not something designed for decorating someone’s Christmas newsletter or part of a ransom note.

Remainder

A lot to like, especially the idea that re-creating events in every detail could make living the event more real than the first time around because you can consider the events more carefully as they’re happening again. Sort of like forcing the eternal recurrence without dying. Unfortunately the main character is a sociopath, and as the book progressed, he became harder and harder to understand or figure out what the hell he was thinking. Maybe he thinks he’s become the Nietzschen Übermensch, but as interesting a concept as that is, I wouldn’t want to meet him, and reading a book from inside his head wasn’t very enjoyable.

tags: books 
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