Something Happened

              Catch-22 is the GOAT. Vonnegut is the GOAT. I figured that the combination of these two GOATS would create a beautiful baby GOAT that bleats an appropriate amount. You see, Joseph Heller published Catch-22 in 1955; then, he published Something Happened* in 1974. Kurt Vonnegut reviewed the novel for The New York Times shortly thereafter. I’ll smuggle the link elsewhere in this review because I’m petty and I want you to read mine first. I have a hump rating system and he doesn’t, just sayin.

              Something does happen in Something Happened, but not until page 524/530. Vonnegut says it’s structured like a suspense novel and he’s not wrong. The first 524 pages consist of the stream of consciousness complaints of a middle-aged man, Bob Slocum. The tone and content does not change--just variations of a rotation of grievances. He lives in Connecticut with a family that he despises, and works in NYC at a nice job with a nice paycheck that serves as an adequate, albeit tedious, escape from his woes at home. IMO, Bob is clinically depressed—undiagnosed, because executives at his company are not supposed to see therapists, as it would imply unhappiness. Instead, we're his therapists, and he tells us in meticulous detail how he hates everyone and everything. 

              Unlike Catch-22, which is simultaneously dark and hilarious, Something Happened overemphasizes the dark and misses out on the hilarity. Personally, I believe that life is hard and *shit happens* every day to remind us of that; but, we can rely on comedy to ease suffering. Black humor and satire are the best! They're realistic and smart about the struggle, looking pain dead in the eye and laughing. Something Happened leads down a road that is brutally honest, and I appreciate that, but I don’t want 500+ pages of it without a few laughs. Vonnegut agrees that it’s “overly long”—and you can read that for yourself here. Something Happened receives 2 out of 5 humps.

*Heller, Joseph. Something Happened. New York: Dell Publishing, 1974. Print.

*Vonnegut, Kurt. “The New York Times Book Review” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 06 Oct. 1974. Web. 15 Aug. 2018.

Girl with Curious Hair

            I was curious about Girl with Curious Hair* because I am a straight up David Foster Wallace (DFW)-apologist after reading Infinite Jest. I wanted to know if his talent applied to an 1,000 plus page novel as well as stories as short as a page and a half. It does…sometimes.

            The collection consists of ten stories, two of which are particularly impressive. “Little Expressionless Animals” gives us a fictional backstage pass to a season of Jeopardy! with a contestant who can’t be beat. DFW shows us a quirky Alex Trebek via conversations with his therapist and now I can’t look at Trebek the same. The eponymous “Girl with Curious Hair” peeks into the mind of a sociopathic assumedly straight-laced Republican lawyer who has dark relationships with punk rocker friends. These contain obviously intriguing characters, and I could have read hundreds of pages about them.

            Other stories are less exciting. His last and longest story, “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way” is a piece of metafiction that is honestly very hard to follow. This move isn’t a first for DFW. He wore many hats and it’s clear how much research he put into his subject matters. I like that Infinite Jest isn’t wholly accessible, but “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way” does not speak to me. Perhaps it will for you.

            DFW had a tendency to write consistently verbose characters no matter their background or education. I really like that style, and I think it makes him completely unique as a writer. He’s not succinct and he doesn’t want to be. He says, “Nunn manufactured an unarchitectural and spontaneous entryway in the bay window of the front of T. Rex’s spread’s Big House” instead of “Nunn broke down the door” (Wallace, 138). That’s his m.o., take it or leave it.

            Not a single story in Girl with Curious Hair “ends” in the conventional sense. He leaves us with ellipses; haunts* me with ellipses in some cases. I selfishly want resolution in my stories and it’s a hard pill to swallow when you’re forced to set down characters you’ve become attached to. Girl with Curious Hair gets 4 out of 5 camel humps.

*Wallace, David Foster. Girl with Curious Hair. New York: Norton & Company, 1989. Print.

Choke

            If you’re looking for a one-way ticket to Depravity, check out Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. Palahniuk labels his work “transgressive fiction”, a genre featuring characters who feel oppressed by society’s norms, so they renounce expectations in radical, illicit ways. Think American Psycho.

Think Fight Club. 

 

            And while you’re thinking of Fight Club, you’re basically thinking of Choke. Although the plot is wildly different, the basic sentiment and writing style is very similar. You have characters proclaiming emptiness of the soul and vapidity of their fellow man; they want to feel something meaningful by any means necessary. In Choke, the main character turns to a convoluted performance: choking on a regular basis, claiming that by doing so, he gives the people who save him purpose and strength. He also turns to sex, which leads to an addiction, graphically described. He also turns to his love-hate relationship with a mom who is an abusive schizophrenic on her deathbed. There’s a lot of weird shit going on. He’s “Alive and unwell” (Palahniuk, 14).

            When I first read Fight Club, I thought Woah, this guy really has some things to get off his chest. It is funny but also genuine in its critiques of society; his writing style conveys the amusing absurdity in a way that I had never read before. When I got to Choke, the funny critiques were still there but the newness had worn off. Palahniuk sort of sabotaged his own work—perhaps his own contribution to Project Mayhem. That being said, it isn’t bad; it has its own unique moments of satire and its own unique insights into a messy, vulgar world. Choke receives 3 out of 5 camel humps.

*Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: First Anchor Books, 2002. Print.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

            As we celebrate America, let’s also celebrate an American hero: Jerome David Salinger, aka J.D. Salinger. I mean, this mug looks like it could have settled the frontier for sure...

            Most people know him as the author of The Catcher in the Rye; however, we’re going to focus on the fictional Glass family, which he almost exclusively wrote about following the success of his first novel. I reviewed a Glass family banger, Franny and Zooey, a couple of years ago. Now, we’ll turn to Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction*, two novellas that were featured in The New Yorker in 1955 and 1959, respectively.

            Both stories are written from the point of view of Buddy Glass, the second oldest out of seven children. The Glass family is full of precocious little nuggets but somehow Salinger manages to tow the line and prevent his characters from reading like pretentious assholes. Instead, they write straight to your soul. Buddy addresses readers directly, brings us along for a story, and vulnerably lets us peek into his psyche. Having read multiple Glass family stories now, I can conclude that Salinger is the original Seinfeld in that he makes books about nothing. He captures the idiosyncrasies of daily life and mundane dialogue and brings them to our attention. Side effect: entertainment, insight, empathy.

SERENITY NOW!!

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction receives 4 out of 5 camel humps.

*Salinger, J.D. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1955. Print.

Fates and Furies

           Lauren Groff: Do less. Her third novel, Fates and Furies*, a National Book Award for Fiction finalist, is hype, hype city.

            Here comes a very minor spoiler—honestly, I’m doing you a favor: the main character is floundering career-wise. He gets hammered at a party and instead of passing out like he usually does, he stays up and tries writing for the first time. He wakes up to an ecstatic wife who discovered he miraculously wrote a brilliant play overnight. He doesn’t remember. He has drunkenly stumbled into a lucrative career path like most people stumble into a 24-hour diner.

            Full stop. This is lazy, unrealistic writing. This is The Art of Fielding all over again.

            Unfortunately, the book thinks very highly of itself. She builds tension but the payoff isn’t worth it. The whole thing reads like there’s some giant reveal, but the surprises are improbable or uninteresting. Fates and Furies has Gone Girl vibes with less of an outright, singular twist. It follows two people who get married in spite of their secrets and complex backgrounds. Love knows no bounds blah blah blah.

            So, I don’t like the plot, but I do like aspects of the writing. Groff does some cool things with brackets and, as an omniscient third-person narrator, she paints a full picture and has some creative leeway with the disclosure of information (what we know vs. what various characters know). However, I quickly grew weary of the characters and came to the conclusion that I don’t care who knows what.

            Another redeeming factor (and perhaps the most surprising feature of the novel): it’s borderline erotica!

Okurrr, don’t hate it. But seriously, she doesn’t shy from the juicy bits. Fates and Furies levels out at 2 out of 5 camel humps.

*Groff, Lauren. Fates and Furies. New York: Riverhead Books, 2015. Print.