The Best of Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl is known for his bangin children’s books: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Gremlins, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The BFG, etc. He never shied away from “adult” themes because he respected children by challenging them with sophisticated and nuanced concepts. I wasn’t allowed to read James and the Giant Peach when I was younger because it said the word ass and I’m still bitter about it. More like James and the Giant

Roald Dahl’s children’s stories are cool but I had no idea he wrote adult lit too until I came upon a collection of short stories at Powell’s City of Books. Powell’s, located in Portland, is the largest independent bookstore in the world. It’s truly a city of books and if you’re ever in Portland, you should live there for the day.

My collection, The Best of Roald Dahl*, contains 25 short stories organized chronologically by publication (from Madame Rosette in 1945 to Claud’s Dog in 1953). You’ll find no happy endings here, but hey, a happily-ever-after is borrrrrrring. If you love a dark, macabre finale like me, you might also enjoy Flannery O’Connor’s Everything That Rises Must Converge.

The downside to a collection where every ending is a twist is that you’ll paradoxically come to expect the unexpected; however, despite the fact that you know it’s going to end poorly for the characters, Dahl manages to suck you in and root for them. 

I highly recommend this particular collection because it includes the majority of his published adult short fiction. My favorites are Lamb to the Slaughter and Pig. The Best of Roald Dahl receives 5 out of 5 camel humps. If you’re interested in the short story format (personally, it’s my favorite route to meet an author for the first time), check out my previous reviews of short story collections: Girl With Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace, Self-Help by Lorrie Moore, Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut, Like You’d Understand, Anyway by Jim Shepard, Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami, In the Valley of the Kings by Terrence Holt, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, Tenth of December by George Saunders, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005 edited by Dave Eggers, and The Best American Short Stories 2013 edited by Elizabeth Strout. Just to name… a zillion.

*Roald Dahl. The Best of Roald Dahl. New York: Vintage Books, 1978. Print.

The Gospel According to the Son

            I grabbed Norman Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son* off of a Housing Works bookshelf a few years ago, and I’m just now getting to it because it’s a tiny little nugget and I forgot about it. Housing Works is a non-profit that supports people with HIV/AIDS. They have several NYC locations, but their bookstore café in Soho is particularly cool (lots of seating, lots of books, lots of coffee, lots of good causes, lots of inspo).

            Norman Mailer caught my eye because I’ve known him as this eccentric, prolific, outspoken, Pulitzer Prize winning founder of The Village Voice who absolutely could not keep a wife. He married six times. He stabbed his second wife at a party, nearly killing her. The party resumed and he went on to marry four more times.

            I’m drawn to religious books because of my upbringing. Religious fiction? Sign me up. For those who are offended easily, let me stop you right here. Fiction can be a useful tool that helps readers think differently and creatively about a subject. Fiction is a thought experiment! If your religious beliefs are so fragile that you can’t test them every now and then, then what’s the point of having a brain?

            That being said, The Gospel According to the Son won’t test your beliefs much. It’s Jesus’ autobiography, starting with him as a child and moving through his teachings, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. The concept certainly has promise, but the writing is dry and unimaginative. Having some prior knowledge of the Gospels is helpful, but you’ll notice there is very little (if any?) overt deviation from the Bible, and if I wanted to read the Bible, I would…read the Bible. Mailer’s Jesus notes that the Gospels are rife with exaggeration, and he clarifies what went down by stripping out extraneous, embellished details. Still, that’s not exactly a productive use of artistic license.

            Mailer even continued to treat women as second rate in his rendition. I’m like oh, a biblical story that reemphasizes the patriarchy, HOW UNIQUE.

            Overall, The Gospel According to the Son feels like an opportunity wasted. If Mailer had turned the novel in as a book report, his teacher would have flagged it for plagiarism. The most inventive aspect of the book is the brief portrayal of a young Jesus who is scared and partially in denial, just like any of us faced with large responsibilities. Like ones in which humanity’s salvation rests upon our shoulders. 

            If you're interested in religious fiction that's actually creative, check out The Bible According to Spike Milligan. If you're interested in religious nonfiction that tests the bounds of conventional religious interpretation, check out Zealot: The Life and Time of Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel According to the Son receives 2 out of 5 camel humps.

*Mailer, Norman. The Gospel According to the Son. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997. Print.

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.