1 year ago
What I learned from Joan Acocella’s review of Paula Fox’s News from the World: Stories and Essays in the New Yorker:
- She is the author of six critically acclaimed novels, all of which were out of print until the mid-90s.
- She is the daughter of an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter and a nineteen-year-old Cuban-American woman
- She wrote the Newbery Award-winning novel The Slave Dancer, which I read in eighth grade, along with 22 other YA novels.
- She experienced a significant literary revival after being praised by Jonathan Franzen in “Perchance to Dream,” a landmark essay on realism versus postmodernism.
- She is the grandmother of Courtney Love.
2 years ago
Buffalo Lockjaw is the debut novel of Greg Ames, a short story writer and contributor to McSweeney’s, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007, Open City, The Sun, and failbetter.com. Ames is also a native of Buffalo, NY, where much of the novel takes place.
Ames’ novel can be broken into three major parts. The main plot concerns James Fitzroy, a man in his late-20s/early-30s traveling home for Thanksgiving, and also to assist in his father’s move from his home now that James’ mother has been admitted to a nursing home for early onset Alzheimer’s. James deals with his mother’s illness in two ways: contemplating assisted suicide and getting hammered. The introduction of a the first aims to ground the text by centering the drama on a controversial subject; however, James never seems serious enough (he carries a book entitled “Assisted Suicide for Dummies”) to wring much from this internal conflict. Much stronger are the straightforward scenes between James and his mother, which are heartbreaking and touching.
The other plot concerns James’ primary coping mechanisms, casual sex and booze, which inject a vigor into the story that’s lacking during the more domestic moments, and effectively positions Ames’ protagonist as a man who must grow up before his destructive habits grow too entrenched. James’ hometown friends and latest sexual conquest sometimes verge on caricature, but they’re still entertaining, and I sometimes found myself plowing through the more “serious” sections in search of new adventures among the city’s picaresque population of beautiful bohemians and working-class townies.
Also somewhat cliché are the novel’s third major section: dramatic monologues from “average” Buffalonians (i.e. bartenders, die-hard sports fans, etc.) scattered throughout the text. Though none come across as “real,” they effectively represent various “types” common in the Queen City, and their speeches are fun to read. They also provide the novel a sense of place that’s sometimes absent in contemporary fiction, although the conceit to include the monologues could’ve used some more polish: We learn early on that James once fancied himself an “urban ethnographer” (despite a well-established youthful distain for higher education) and rides about town blaring interview tapes on his car stereo.
Overall, I recommend Buffalo Lockjaw. The assisted suicide question gives the novel a relevant “hook,” but it’s the relationship between James and his ailing mother that actually grounds the drama. (Strangely, however, I couldn’t help but note that the novel’s plot and setting resemble the 2007 film, The Savages, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney search for long-term care facility for their ailing father.) The scenes between James and his friends, and the speeches from locals, are not quite unrealistic, but entertaining.
Lastly, on a personal note, I had the unique experience of reading this book while also home for the holidays. In my case, Christmas and New Year’s. In fact, I welcomed 2010 from an apartment in Buffalo, not far from the Elmwood Avenue neighborhood in which much of Ames’ novel is set.
Buffalo Lockjaw is also the first book I’ve ever purchased and read on the Amazon Kindle App for iPhone. I’ve grown used to reading on a screen this past year, but I still think it’s a testament to Ames’ prose that his is the first e-book I’ve been able to complete on the device.
2 years ago
15 Books
There’s a new book meme on facebook: “Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you.” I thought I would share my picks, with some personal reflections and annotations:
1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald:
The story of one man’s tragic desire for a women he loved and lost. Also a tale of crime, wealth, romance, ambition, and mythic self-creation. In short, a mash note and Dear John Letter to the American Dream. I first read this senior year of high school for a teacher who was a meticulous close reader, and who helped me learn that short novels can still be long on big ideas and grand themes.
2. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides:
A lyrical ode to five mysterious young sisters, narrated through the haze of time by men once enthralled by their unattainable beauty. Eugenides’ prose is so lush that you can almost feet the heat of hormones and summer nights that saturate the novel.
3. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot:
A tale of loneliness and fateful resignation as told to T.S. Eliot by his alter-ego, an anonymous clerk-like persona named J. Alfred Prufrock. First lines: “Let us go then, you and I,/ When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherised upon a table…” Opens with a quotation from Dante’s Inferno, in the original Italian. Read the whole poem.
4. The poems of Lord Alfred Tennyson:
Tennyson’s lush evocations of English history and Arthurian myth stir a longing for a British Empire that never existed, as well as presage doom for his nation’s future, even as he wrote at the peak of England’s economic power and cultural influence. Read the Lady of Shalott.
5. The essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson:
The sage observer of America’s ascent to Tennyson’s oracular vision of his nation’s impending decline, Emerson’s essays tell you everything you need to know about America’s sense of self-reliance, openness to experience, and “manifest destiny.” Also, Emerson’s transcendentalist love of nature helped open my eyes to the beauty of our own environment.
6. A Separate Peace by John Knowles:
The story of two British school chums who must learn to overcome grief in the face of tragedy. Simply a beautiful and affecting story.
7. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh:
Also a tale of male friendship at a top-flight English Boarding School. Waugh savages “modern culture” but also infuses his humor with a sense of moral indignation and deep-felt emotion. The book teaches the value of friendship and loyalty, as well as reveals the ways in which an unaccepting society can ruin its most promising “bright young things,” merely by refusing to accept them as they are. Gay rights advocates should tout this book as a relatively sympathetic portrayal of homosexuality in time before such truths could be discussed openly. It also holds a special place in my heart as the story I brought on my first trip to Europe, including England.
8. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy:
Another tale about how unfair and illogical social mores can crush youthful promise and beauty. Also ravishingly well written, with lush evocations of Hardy’s beloved Dorsetshire County. Nor is it as didactic or artificial as his follow-up work, Jude the Obscure, Hardy’s last novel before his decision to devote the rest of his life to poetry.
9. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne:
Beautifully and eerily written by one of America’s greatest novelists. This book tackles the puritanical roots of our nation’s past through the tale of a woman “more sinned against than sinning.” I first read this in 10th grade and return to it every couple of years. Although it’s not short, the story’s rich language and characterization make each page fly by surprisingly fast every time.
10. Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville:
An enigmatic short story about a timid bank clerk who “would prefer not to.” A puzzle of tale, in which it’s teller undergoes a more profound change than its seemingly eponymous protagonist.
11. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James:
Another narrative puzzle, about a young governess terrorized by unseen forces. Either a tale of psychological horror or a ghost story, depending on who’s reading it. James’ ability to sustain an almost unbearable level of suspense throughout a story in which almost nothing happens, at least in a literal sense, earns him the tile of “The Master.” Despite the sometimes airless prose, I tore though the story cover to cover upon my first encounter with the novella.
12. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton:
Simply a devastating short tale. I defy anyone who’s ever read it not to be haunted by the tragically bleak conclusion.
13. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov:
The strangely beautiful and disturbing story about a debauched, disdainful and deceptively handsome European man’s sexual (and emotional) obsession with a prepubescent American girl. Nabokov hit for the fences in this book, counting on his lyrical prose and subversive humor to overcome his reader’s discomfort with the subject matter, and he succeeds. The narrator and ultimate anti-hero, Humbert Humbert, charms his readers against their will in a story that bounces erratically around the American landscape, and ultimately reveals the equally unsettled nature of two tortured souls. Also a book I return to year after year, each time coming away with some new insight or interpretation of the story.
14. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett/ The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame/ The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams:
This triumvirate of children’s books is one of the earliest sources of my abiding love for British literature. The first is a beautiful literalization of the secret worlds children create for themselves; the second a lush and whimsical depiction of friendship, loyalty and the ultimate need to venture forth into the wider world; and the third a gorgeous paean to childhood and the inevitable sacrifices required of growing up.
15. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien:
I was first read The Hobbit as a child and continue to count it among my favorite books to this day. A work written by an Oxford Don during stolen moments of creative invention and private reflection, it reminds us that literature always offers us a means to escape and enhance our daily lives, no matter what our age, and that even the most stayed adults, or tiniest creatures, can make a big difference by putting pen to paper… or a small hairy foot to the road.
(Photo from sublime)
2 years ago
Gimme Moore
Among the many crimes committed by the ill-fated 2003 adaptation of Alan Moore’s steampunk masterpiece, “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” one of the worst was the decision to demote Mina Harker, the heroine of Bram Stoker’s novel, “Dracula,” from the authoritarian leader of graphic novel’s rag-tag band of fictional Victorian badasses to just another face in the overblown cast’s maddening crowd. Sean Connery’s turn in the role of Alan Quatermain might have seemed like a casting coup, but the film’s creators ultimately hamstringed themselves by hiring an actor whose fame forced the wrong character into center stage. Mina’s transformation from an 19th century “angel of the hearth” to a physically, and sexually, vigorous “new woman” is only suggested in the novel—partly by her mastery of the typewriter, a new technology, but also by a climatic chase scene in which she’s required to run through a snow-covered forest toting a rifle given to her the vampire hunter, Dr. Van Helsing, himself fated to become the subject of a rotten movie adaptation. In Moore’s alternate universe, however, the transformation is complete. One look at her in the cover art on the latest installment in his iconic comic series, “LXG, Vol. III: Century, No. 1: 1910,” arms akimbo, sword in hand, supporting characters shrouded behind her voluminous skirts, leaves no doubt about who really wears the petticoats in this family.
I read this comic last week, and while it offers a cracking good time, including a revenge plot starring the daughter of Captain Nemo and a wild goose chase involving Jack the Ripper, “Century 1910” contains little compared to the first two installments in the LXG series. The story feels too much like the first chapter in a longer work. Each narrative strand seems to build towards something larger, then end abruptly. Many characters are introduced and later recede without warning. The next issue is supposed to be set in the 1960s, and the final installment in modern times, but when half your characters are immortal (Mina, who’s almost a vampire; Orlando, who’s limitless life is as unexplained as his shifting sex, as per Virgina Woolf’s enigmatic depiction; and Quatermain, reinvigorated by the Fountain of Youth on a trip to the Americas), Aristotle’s rules about the unity of time and place need not apply. Hopefully Moore’s simply moving the pieces in preparation for a spectacular narrative checkmate; if not, it’s his faithful readers who’ll turn out to be the pawns in this story.
