Tag: american fiction

The Silence by Don DeLillo

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The Silence by Don DeLillo

American fiction

Source – Library book

I have been trying ot pop to the local library a little more, get a few books out not always to read, but to just have them there, as I always look for books that have passed me by or I haven’t heard of when looking down the stacks at the library. I am lucky that Chesterfield has a reasonable library with a good selection of fiction so when I spotted this book by DeLillo, which I hadn’t seen mentioned much when it came out, I had reviewed another book by him on the blog, and when Underworld came out in paperback which would be about 1998 I read it for me that is alongside Mason and Dixon is the greatesrt american novel I had read. But I know Delillo has written some novellas. I  read Falling Man a few years ago. So I picked up his last novella to come out.

Words, sentences, numbers, distance to destination.

The man touched the button and his seat moved from its upright position. He found himself staring up at the nearest of the small screens located just below the overhead bin, words and numbers changing with the progress of the flight. Altitude, air temperature, speed, time of arrival. He wanted to sleep but kept on looking.

Heure à Paris. Heure à London.

“Look,” he said, and the woman nodded faintly but kept on writing in a little blue notebook.

He began to recite the words and numbers aloud

because it made no sense, it had no effect, if he simply noted the changing details only to lose

Jim and his wife are in the plane as all this starts

The premise of this book is framed around a group of people who are due to meet for the Super Bowl for a meal and to watch the match. The story starts in Paris with a set of Guests due that evening. Then the action shows the guest in the apartment waiting for a sudden blackout. A moment that causes absolute chaos, and what we get is the thoughts of the five guests, Jim and his wife are on the flight that is due to take them to the evening. Max, the host for the night, is a man who struggles when his access to the screen he is used to stops. Then we have Diane Max’s wife, who is a calming influence on the night’s events. Martin, a student obsessed with Einstein and the Epitaph of the book, is a nod to this, a quote about World War III from Einstein about how that war would be on tech. That is, the five people are viewed in what would happen if all of the sound tech were wiped out. Our depedency on tech these days.

Let the impulse dictate the logic.

This was the gambler’s creed, his formal

statement of belief.

They sat waiting in front of the superscreen

TV. Diane Lucas and Max Stenner. The man had a history of big bets on sporting events and this was the final game of the football season, American football, two teams, eleven players each team, rectangular field one hundred yards long, goal lines and goal posts at either end, the national anthem sung by a semi-celebrity, six U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds streaking over the stadium.

The superbowl is about to start as all this happens  anbd we see how the guerst react.

I enjoyed this; it is one of those what-if moment books, like Javier Cercas’s in his book Blind spot, the unseen action, like her, what is the unseen when there is a cyberattack that wipes out the tech. We have silence, this is what this book deals with, he has taken the Einstein thought on what world war three may be and thought what would happen in those initial seconds after an event like this. I have seen this idea expanded on in the TV drama Zero Day with Robert De Niro, which follows a cyberattack. So one has the events in the apartment when what Delillo calls the silence happens. I liked the use of the Super Bowl, as it is a time when a lot of American families and friends would gather for an event like this. But also in these days of tech, we would have the tv , the phone, a laptop, social media, all going whilst doing this, what happens when all that suddenly is just a blank screen? I liked the way he saw how the different characters all act in one way or another. But the horror outside is yet to be seen! I enjoyed this book, it reminded me I need to go back and read his earlier novels at some date. Have you read any of his early books? Have you read any other book that looks at an event like this happening?

 

Erasure by Percival Everett

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Erasure by Percival Everett

American Fiction

Source – Library book

I feel I was bound to read Percival Everett at some point in the next year, his new novel due out later this year. James, a retelling of the Huck Finn story from the point of view of Jim, the slave they meet along the way was on my radar like most of his recent books. There are few US writers these days that really grab my attention but his books over the last few years have been ones I have noticed and felt I would read at some point. So when I watched the trailer for American Fiction it made me want to watch that film I had seen it was taken from this book I just had to try it as it seemed a book I would love a look at being a black writer but also what sort of writer publishers may want at a specific time. I was reminded of the song about certain styles and ways the black community is viewed that Spearhead brought out many years ago.

Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison is a writer of dense, obscure fiction.

His latest effort has been rejected by publishers for having little to do with the ‘black experience.’ After a series of personal and professional tragedies, Monk sets out to write a novel loosely inspired by Richard Wright’s Native Son and certain commercial novels of black misery.

Monk has his agent send the manuscript, titled My Pafology (later changed to Fuck), around to editors under a pseudonym. Shockingly (or perhaps not so shockingly), his pastiche-cum-parody (reproduced within the text) is a runaway commercial and critical success. My Pafology is broken up into numbered chapters, the titles of which are spelled phonetically, and traces, in parallel to Erasure, the life of a young black man living in America. However, it deals more explicitly with the violence and turbulence of life in the ghetto, rendered in highly stylized vernacular and dialect.

Monk struggles with his latest book

Erasure is the story of a successful writer, but his books have stopped selling. He is one of those heavy writers with a serious intellect. His books are the sort that gets 5-star reviews in the TLS and then sells ten books. We know the type of writer they are, the sort I have loved. Thelonious Elliot, or Monk as he is better known, has been trying to get his latest book off the ground but to no avail. When he ended up seeing a writer with her Debut novel We Liv in Da Ghetto, I was taken aback by the style of the book she read to firstly The Wire but then to those Seventies blaxploitation films. But this book is a bestseller and lauded as much as Monk Books were. SO he just as a joke really writes a book My pafology about a gangster. As a joke, he submits it under the name Stagg R. Leigh. This is, of course, a nod to the folk song Stagger Lee or Stackolee as it has been called over the years. He is then shocked and dumbfounded at what to do when the book and film rights are sold for thousands simultaneously. What is Monk to do?

Mama look at me and Tardreece and she call us ‘human slough.’ That how it all start up. ‘Human slough,’ she say, ‘You lil’ muthafuckas ain’t nuffin but human slough.’ I looks at her and I’m wonderin what

“slough’ means and I don’t like the look on her face and so I get up from the chair I been sittin in and I walk across the kitchen and grab a big knife from the counter. She say, ‘And what you gone do wif that, human slough?” And I stab Mama. I put the knife in her stomach and pull it out red and she look at me like to say why you stab me? And I stab Mama again. Blood be all on the floor and on the table, drip drip drippin down her legs and my baby sister starts screamin and I says,

‘Why you be screamin, Baby Girl?’

The opening chapter when he writes as Stagg R Leigh

This is a fun book. It was a little different from the trailer, but it is an insightful look at the day-to-day struggles of a writer. it is a satire on the absurd nature of books and publishing. I remember not long after the first book came out from Steig Larsson, it was like every agent and publisher sent people to Nordic countries to sign up for the next Larsson. So when Monk writes his Gangster-inspired novel in the middle of a wave of books like that, it is sold regardless of him as a writer not being Stagg R Leigh. But it shows how fashion rather than style and content can now rule what we read where celebrities write novels or do they (I am pushed to talk about them as I haven’t or will never have an inkling to read a celeb novel, sorry). This is the reason I read books in translation. We get books from countries where this sort of style, fashion, whatever the fuck is popular this week movement is happening, most of which to me seem to involve people holding up piles of books on photos(I mean people that do this every day )  these days anyway personal winge over. This is a sharp satire about publishing and the struggles of writing and being a writer in the modern age of ever-changing Publishing Fashions. If anything, I look forward to reading his other books at some stage. Have you read Percival Everett?

Winston;s Score – A I will be reading him again which to try next ?

 

Big Sur by Jack Kerouac

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Big Sur by Jack Kerouac

America fiction

Source – personal copy

I had looked down the list of books from 1962, and I had quite a few on my shelves, so I decided rather than buy in books I had before for some other clubs. So this is a reread, a rare reread, but I read it in my teens, and I think I may have reread it when I got the current copy I have of this book it. I was a hge fan of Kerouac, but I tried last year to read a copy of On the Road I had been sent. Honestly, I just couldn’t get into it. I often hear people talking about books feeling different at various readings and ages, but I wonder if we grow out of writers. I think Kerouac is a writer a lot of males in their late teens fall in love with his sense of adventure and rule-breaking appeals at that age. His books are largely autobiographical, and this is the same with this book which followed three visits he had made to a cabin in Big Sur. He maybe managed to catch him as a writer with drug issues as, over the three visits to the cabin in the woods, he seems to have become more drug-addicted, and his sanity is drifting.

“And in the flush of the first few days of joy I confidently tell myself (not expecting what I’ll do in three weeks only) ‘no more dissipation, it’s time for me to quietly watch the world and even enjoy it, first in woods like these, then just calmly walk and talk among people of the world, no booze, no drugs, no binges, no bouts with beatniks and drunks and junkies and everybody, no more I ask myself the question O why is God torturing me, that’s it, be a loner, travel, talk to waiters, walk around, no more self-imposed agony…it’s time to think and watch and keep concentrated on the fact that after all this whole surface of the world as we know it now will be covered with the silt of a billion years in time…Yay, for this, more aloneness

I like this description of Big sur and the effect on him.

Jack Duluoz, who is basically Kerouac himself, is a beat writer starting to gain success as a writer and the pressure that follows that so much. He decides he needs to escape the city, and his friend Lorenzo (Lawrence Ferlinghetti) has a cabin in Big Sur, so he heads up there. He is trying to capture the sense of solitude and nature (I felt he was trying to do a  Walden in a way back to nature and clear his mind after the first visit we follow him back to the city, but this is a man who is starting to fray at the edges his drinking is increasing and mental health is suffering as he deals with his friend Cody and his wife Bily who is struggling with her own mental health issues. As his mind starts to drift, he goes back, but the other visit, the sense he got on the first visit is gone in fact, they make him worse this is a man struggling with the bottle and the pressure of fame. In a way, this may be one of the first novels that deals with celebrity, as Kerouac is writing about his struggles with the bottle and his own sanity at times.

Any drinker knows how the process works: the first day you get drunk is okay, the morning after means a big head but so you can kill that easy with a few more drinks and a meal, but if you pass up the meal and go on to another night’s drunk, and wake up to keep the toot going, and continue on to the fourth day, there’ll come one day when the drinks wont take effect because you’re chemically overloaded and you’ll have to sleep it off but cant sleep any more because it was alcohol itself that made you sleep those last five nights, so delirium sets in ― Sleeplessness, sweat, trembling, a groaning feeling of weakness where your arms are numb and useless, nightmares, (nightmares of death)… well, there’s more of that up later.

This quote aout drinkers remind me of my 20s I drank to much and now rarely drink but had times like these.

Like most of his novels, he wrote this book in a few days on a roll of paper like he did On The road. He wrote this book in ten days, and there is a sense of a man struggling with fame and addiction. This is maybe the start of his downfall. He died seven years after writing this book in the early sixties, but this was maybe his last great novel, although I do love his later novellas. Now I found this okay I wasn’t as connected as I was in my twenties. I feel now it is a great portrait of fame and the price of fame but also about escaping to nature to recharge all ring true these days. I had watched the film of this a few years ago, but I remember it being a middling film as there seemed to have been a few films around the beat writer in a few years. Have you read This Kerouac or any of the others he wrote?

Winston score – B the price of fame and its effects on your mental health captured in the early days of celebrity.

Fox 8 by George Saunders

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Fox8 by George Saunders

American fiction

Source – Library

I wanted to throw a few contemporary writers in English into the mix, so I started with George Saunders I saw this at the Library, and I have always loved books with an animal narrator as a kid from Watership Down, wind in the Willows, for example.  I often wonder why so few books are written for adults with Animals as the narrator. So when I saw this in the library, I had intended to read his Booker-winning Lincoln in the Bardo as I heard many people describe Saunders as a clever writer and a clever use of language, and I had wanted to read him for that reason.

At this time, Grate Leeder grew kwite sad. It was like he grew too sad to leed. And wud sit for hours staring into spase. It woslike Grate Leeder blamed himself that we had lost are Forest in which we had always lived since time in memorial. But we did not feel it was his fawlt. It hapened so fast, who cud have been grate enough to stop it? (I for sure did not know how to stop it. Once I snuk into the bak of a Truk and stole there hamer with my mouth. I know it is not gud to steel but I was so mad! But me steeling that hamer did not even slow them down. They must have had other hamers?!

Anexamplw of Fox 8 chatting to the Grate leader and how Saunders uses language.

So Fox 8 is narrated by Fox 8. As he says, he is a fox that has learned to speak Yuman from sitting outside a window as a mother reads to her kids. This a view of the Human world from that of a Fox and how they view us humans or, as he calls us, Yumans as a species. It is also a commentary on ecosystems and how we are ruining the foxes’ homes, and we see Fox 8 talk about his own home. This large wood had its heart cut in half as they develop a grand estate with a Mall or Mawl as he finds out when it is up from a Dog he chats to and tells him it is a Mawl as we see fox 8 wander through the Mall looking at how the Humans shop etc. he chats to the Grater leader around the events and the estate and the Human and its effects on the foxes.

Just then, a very Yung Yuman, a meer Todler, todled past with a smile of possibly thinking we are Dogs. There in her hand, we noted: some fud! It looked gud and smelled grate. It is a Bun! All of the suden, we desided to enter into a Fare Deel with her, whereby we wud share her Bun, by us taking it.

But then, quik as the wink, she is intaken into the Mawl, with one hand in the hand of her Mother and, in the other hand, our Bun!

And before we knew it, we too, lerd by her fud, had been intaken into FoxViewCommons, rite threw their Dore!

As he looks to see what the Mawl is all about I loved the use of langauge and his voice

This is a clever short story. It took me about an hour to read. I love how he gives Fox 8 a voice and uses language, and we know what happens through his eyes and the Yumans he sees in his world. I was primarily reminded of the great STUDIO ghibli film Pom Poko which used Magical Racoons instead of Foxes as through their eyes, we see how the Urban sprawl of Tokyo ripped apart their homes and natural habit, and this is the same type of narrative a world of Malls and estates replaces there familiar woods I said in the intro I wonder why we see so few animal narrators in adult fiction as we are seeing the natural world devastate around our treatment of the land and constant expansion and urbanisation;. Saunders has been very playful with the voice of Fox8. It hits the right key. You have him as a laid-back sort of drifter of a fox. He is a dreamer of a fox. This is a clever fable about the loss of habit told through their eyes. Have you read this or any other books by George Saunders?

Winstons score – B – A solid little story around the environment and our effect on it told from nature’s  perspective

 

Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck

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Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck

American fiction

Source – personal copy

I am on to the second choice for this weeks 1954 club and I go to America and John Steinbeck . I have long been a fan of Steinbeck I like of Mice and men at school and then in may 20s I read a few more then I decided to slow down and leave some for the rest of my life so as I turned fifty the other week it seemed right to cover him again in fact it was 2010 when I reviewed the Pearl from him here so maybe it is time to read a few more of my tar from him this jumped out as it was the follow up to my favourite book from Steinbeck Cannery row.What Sweet Thursday(the title is a reference to an old names for the days of the weeks so it is sweet Thursday after Lousy Wednesday and before Waiting Friday ). As we catch up with Doc  after the war as he returns to his home on cannery Row and sees a changed row but in some ways it is just  the same

Doc was philosophical about it.He whiled away his free hours with an unlimited supply of government alcohol, mad many friends and resisted promotion. When the war was over, doc was kept on by a grateful government to straighten out certain inventory problems, a job he was fitted for since he had contributed largely to the muck-up . Doc was honourably discharged two years after our victory.

Doc returns a couple years after everyone else

It opens and says how the war had an effect on Monterey and cannery row in either small or large parts this include Doc who was drafted as a sergeant in a vd section. He’d left an old friend in charge of his western Labs but when he returned he found it run down covered in mildew. he then discover the shop owner opposite we has changed but Mack is still there and they drink. what follows is Doc settling back into the row and seeing how the world of the row has change slightly since the end of the war. then a few chapters in we see Suzy arrive on a Greyhound bus her arrival which sees her end up on the row and at the Bear house where people notice doc seems to like here and this leads to them teaching her to drive and try to get her and Doc together bring him  some happiness but there is more to Suzy and we see what happens.

When a girl named Suzy got off the greyhound bus, she looked up and down the street, fixed her lipstick, then lifted her beat-up suitcase and headed for the Golden Poppy restaurant. Suzy was a pretty girl with a flat nose and wide mouth. She had a good figure, was twenty-one , five-feet five, hair probably brown(dyed blonde), brown cloth coat, rabbit sin collar, cotton print drsss, brown calf shoes(heel taps little run over), scruff on the right toe.She limped slightly on her right foot. Before she picked up the suitcase she opened her brown purse of simulated leather.In it were mirror, comb with two teeth missing.Lucky strikes, matchbook that said “Hotel Rosalie, San Francisco , half a packet of peppermint life savers. eighty five cents in silver, no folding money, lipstick but no powder, tin box of aspirin, no keys

Suzy arrives but she is a little down on heel her self

 

I loved cannery row the way Steinbeck caught those with no hope so well and made us feel pathos with them as characters so with Docs return after the war we capture those years between the end of the war and the baby boomer years. As we see how the war years has made some people not return and other let go and other come to the row. I said when I reviewed Simenon book set in America three bedrooms in Manhattan has a parallel in another way it follows a man falling from bed to bed and this is the row trying to find Doc a woman. Then Enter Suzy newly arrived from San Fransisco  and we see what happens when Suzy and Dc are pushed into trying to start a relationship. But as ever the `row has a nasty twists and turns to their lives.Steinbeck is great at conveying those lives on the edge of the society those we don’t always see in other books the gritty underworld of those just getting by where needing a microscope as a man of science shows how tough life is for even Doc. But what also comes across the brotherhood of the Row when Mack tries to teach suzy to drive or the way the rally round to try and get doc and Suzy together in air to help there friend feel whole.Have you read Steinbeck have you a favourite book by him ?The second stop on this weeks 1954 club and next we will be off to Italy.

Winstons score – A a gem of a story a great follow ups to Cannery row.

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman

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Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

British/American fiction

Source – personal copy

I am rarely tempted by a new book in English but this book grabbed me when I saw pictures of this huge book I was interested in what it was about any way Lucy Ellmann had written a number of books since the late ’80s. She is the daughter of two writers and is married to a writer and has taught creative writing. She had all her earlier books published by a big publisher. But when this book was finished and described to her usual publisher They turned it down. It was picked up by the small publisher Galley Beggar Press. I mean a thousand-page modernist novel that has no plot and is a stream of consciousness eight sentences that makes up the book.

I wish I had nice handwriting, the fact that i also have a few of her favourite sweaters, but that’s about it, beside the stuff she gave me, like some books and stuff, ups, fedex, rolex, X-ray, and my old patchwork quilt that was always on my bed as a kid, the  fact that it’s reall falling apart now, the fact that Jane Austen no longer exists and only ever existed briefly, not long enough to finish  Sandition, tragedy, enormity, Bronx cheer, Graduation Gowns, Choir Robes, paper owels, humdinger, Uber, Lyft, biege countertop, the fact that some people work for Uber and lyft at the same time.

One passage where she admires her moves handwriting then drifts off to something else in her mind.

The book is narrated by a housewife she is from Ohio and that is all we really know. Well, we learn more like she has her own baking business that she runs from her home.  What follows in the book is her thoughts that flow and drift from here to there lists words jumping from words that sound alike. These lists I loved as she had a thought an old productor some such and then from that word jumps to similar words. It then goes to the state of Modern America Trump gaining power. Writers she likes Laura Ingalls her of little house fame and then she references Anne Tyler especially her book The Accidental tourist which maybe of all her books captures modern American life as it follows a family recovering from the loss of a son to a shooting. The book is full of America but also her family from the title that relates to an event in her youth involving her sister. Then she worries about her own four kids in Trump’s world. It is hard like many books of this length, to sum up the world of this book as it is more about the internal mind than the external world and how her thoughts run and that is so difficult to capture.

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s dog was called Jack, the fact that i keep thinking I see the abominable snowmanmoving between those trees down there, a bigfoot, just behind the bushers, gully the fact that ben would be thrilled, the fact that I should photograph it, but of course I don’t have my phone, that that if I had my phone I would be in this mess freezing to death in the wilderness, the fact that I am always forgetting my cell, the fact that it’s so silly not to have it with you at all times, the fact that the people on the planes in 9/11 made good use of theirphone, the fact that I bet every American has carried their cell phone with them since 9/11

Another digression from Laura Ingalls to 9/11 in four lines.

Everyone knows this book as I was discussing one twitter when a friend ask me what I thought of it as they had been put off by the hype and I could connect with that but the thought of a thousand-page book that tries to grapple with the scary world that is modern America. Well for me this remind me in tone at times to Thomas Bernhard as it has at times a similar feeling in the tone of her words if he had been a midwest American housewife this would have been how he wrote even the lack of paragraphs and long sentences are something that Bernhard used in his books. I was pleased when I read that she had given Bernhard to her husband to read many years ago. When it made the Booker shortlist I knew I had to read it I had already got it as a fan of really long novels it was one that grabbed me and showed that small publishers are great at taking chances she describes how she actually added 30,000 words in one edit of the original manuscript how many large publishers would allow that to a large book get larger. I was reminded of Sergio de la Pava struggle to get his Naked singularity like this another huge modernist work that in another way wrestles with the world that is modern America. Ellmann tries to grab what life is like for a middle-aged woman struggling to get by the changing of focus in the female roles with in the world the rise of Trump and does it in a wonderfully poetic and thought-provoking book.

Lost Empress by Sergio De La Pava

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Lost Empress_HB.jpg

 

Lost Empress by Sergio De La Pava

US fiction

Source – review copy

I don’t often review non-translated titles these days. But there is maybe one writer I would always review it would be Sergio. Naked singularity was a great slice of modern America the madness and chaotic world of the legal system. So when I saw this book took two more uniquely American themes. That of Sport, which for me as a none American has always fascinated me the way the stats to these sports become such an integral part of the sport. Also, the nature of Franchise in sport is an American idea that I hope doesn’t creep into UK sport. The second thread is Prison the overcrowd privatize nature of American jails is also a trending coming over here.

Legless woman runs out of time

A Bronx woman, who a decade ago lost her legs following a vicious assault by her boyfriend, was killed yesterday in the apartment of that same man, when he savagely beat her to death using one of her prosthetic legs.

Miranda Johnson, 39, apparantly crawled on he belly to dial 911 during the assault, but was then unable to speak into the line provide any information. 911 operator 7744 was unavailable for comment, but her inability to procure the information is beinf viewed ad a proximate cause of the tragedy.

One of the 911 calls, this had a slightly dark humour to it.

The book follows two lives. Nuno DeAngeles An inmate of Rikers Island that has been locked up apart from Dia who is the Love of Nuno life. But she Dia is the deputy of the other main character Nina She is the daughter of a wealthy sports team owner and had been running the Dallas Cowboys where she had to lead them to a number of championships. But when her father passes, she is only left with a small indoor football team the Paterson Pork.he arrives there and we see a glimpse of Paterson a town famous for the poems of Wiliam Carlos Williams and the recent film from Jim Jarmusch set there. So when her brother no in control of the Bigger Dallas cowboys gets greedy and causes a lockout of all NFL games. She tries to attract the crowds to watch the less popular Indoor game. Then we have Nuno who is a criminal that is on the ladder each time he commits a crime he is going up the ladder of the scale of crime so he wants to escape the prison to get to the money that he sees will get him back to Dia. These three lives are a slice of the various class and worlds in Modern America. Nuno is wanted to avenge a death of a young boy and this is why he has to get free to avenge a mistake in the justice system.. He is a strange character he asks for the books the Tunnel in Spanish and Man without qualities in German when first in prison. Add to this a third storyline some different items like 911 logs, pamphlets. Then we have a thrilling climax but I leave that to you to find out.

What the hell is Paterson, New Jersey anyway? That the pork are based there is close to happenstance. Their original owner, Marion Bent, a highly respected Mobster who was dogged by constant rumors that he had ties to egtimate buisness, had essentially exhausted what little community goodwill there wasfor his Edison Emperors.One night, or early morning, under the cloak of darkness(a cloak that was entirely unnecessary as no-one really cared), he loaded all Emperor chattel, most of which had already been heavily lienedon, into several company trucks whose acquisition involved more broken thumbs than Bent’s nearby littlest league catchers Camp nd translorted everything north into the welcoming arms of the then-Mayor of Paterson

How the team arrived at Paterson could never see an English fooball team moving town but who knows it has happened once !

I used to want to try the great American novel and over the years have read books that fall into this category. From Moby Dick through the Great Gatsby, Herzog the rabbit books the epics of Norman Mailer. I only fell down of Infinite Jest which is a shame as this book has a sports theme like that one did. But I did read Underworld which for me was the great American novel of the later 20th century and for me, Sergio is writing books that capture the Trump world of America the overblown nature of sports is shown here. The nature of the world were sports is overblown run by money. I was reminded of the film Idiocracy where the sport has become primitive and overblown over time. Nina shows how sports are run and when her team isn’t on tv it is unknown outside New Jersey she tries to get the contract to fill the void left by the lack of NFL. Then we Have Nuno and his prison his trying to help his cousin who had lost his son and felt justice hadn’t been done. Again like in Naked singularity bring the cracks in the US legal system to light like the myriad of podcasts that have appeared since Serial first came out a few years ago. When books capture the Zeitgeist of the time they may be called the great novel of that time and maybe this is what Sergio is doing in his books. This has a lot of threads and isn’t at the time the easiest to follow but if you want easy you’d not be reading this blog or trying a 600 page novel about indoor football in New Jersey and a prison break from the unbreakable Rikers Island!!

Winstons covers 4 Infinte fail ?

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infinte jest

Todays cover is one of those rare failed to reads for me. I was struck by Jonathan’s post here. Where he spoke about failing and trying again which is something I didn’t do with Infinite Jest I tried a few summers ago when there was a mass reading called the Infinite summer which I tried, but stuggled when Wallace start on about tennis , I have mention this before call this a silly scarred childhood of watching wimbledon after school at a family friends house when I would rather be at home or even outside. Lets face it Tennis in those days was a bit drawn out, any way this book was already in my mind after watching the trial to a forthcoming film The end of tour which is about a long interview he gave when a fellow writer joined him on the later stages of the tour for this book .The end of tour looks great what do you think ?

The Midnight swimmer by Edward Wilson

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the midnight swimmer

The midnight swimmer by Edward Wilson

American fiction

Source review copy

Edward Wilson own life reads rather like a novel when you read his bio ,he has served in Vietnam with special forces got a bronze star and ,when he left the army he decide not to return to the us but settled here in the UK and since has been a teacher in Suffolk .He has written a number of other novels .

Catesby hated his office in the bowels of the Olympic Stadium ,Berlin .There were no windows and no – gemutlichkeit .It was the German word for “cosines “,but the full sense of glowing warmth conveyed by the expression was untranslatable .It was funny ,though Catesby ,that the germans ,who valued Gemutlichkeit so highly , constructed buildings that completely destroyed it .

I choose this passage  as it mention words and translation !

Well I was a bit nervous as this is the third in the series of novels ,but it did work as a novel in itself .The book features Catesby ,he is a spy but not in the Bond mode ,no for me he fell between Smiley and Harry Palmer a rough diamond a working class lad that has grafted his way to the top ,but is no man’s fool ,Any way this is the start of the sixties, a world where lady chatterlys lover trial  is happening ,Profumo is unmasked  here in the UK .In america JFK and his beautiful wife have come to the white house ,Vietnam is brewing in the background and of course the is Fidel Castro in the background .Anyway Catesby is set on a mission that could stop the cold war falling further down the rabbit-hole into total chaos .This sees him go from Washington to Cuba .He has to meet a Russian who may have something to tell him  ,along the way he meets the Russian’s beautiful wife .He has a message to go from east to west .All this is happening in October 63 just before the events that shock the world in November 1963 .

Dallas . 22 November 1963 

They wanted to blame it on Havana .That’s why the fall guy .Lee Harvey Oswald , was told to become a member of the fair play for Cuba committee and to make a big show of handing out Pro-Castro leaflets .The truth was otherwise .The gang still wanted Cuba back and that was one of the reasons Kennedy had to die .

An interesting after word near the end of the book .

Now I don’t read many thrillers so being offered this book was a chance to go back to my past growing up we had a lot of thrillers in the house my father is a huge thriller read and I did read a lot in my late teens ,the ones I tend to remember had like this an enigmatic outsider at the heart of the story .Catesby is an outsider a man who has outgrown his working class roots ,but has it seems never felt totally comfortable in the world that surrounds him .I always felt he was a bit more sympathetic to the Russians than other character I have read like Smiley or Harry palmer .In fact at times I was reminded of the admiration Jack Ryan had in the hunt for reed October for the Russian he was trying to find . The world Catesby lives in is one that as history has shown if one wrong move had happened at this time the world we live in would be very different . So if you like fast paced intelligent thriller this is one for you .

Have you a favourite character from thrillers ?

Vox by Nicholson Baker

~ winstonsdad ~ 16 Comments

Vox by nicholson baker

source – review copy

I was very lucky to get sent the four new reissues from Granta of Bakers work which is good as I ve only read a couple of his book .Nicholson Baker is an american writer he writes both fiction and non fiction and is known for stream of consciousness writing and his voyeuristic style at times ,he got a ba in philosophy from Haverford college .

Vox was Nicholson’s fourth book and was published in 1991 ,the book is a shortish novel at only 167 pages long .the book focuses on two characters that are on the telephone on a telephone chat line ,they decide to go to a private room to chat one to one ,the book is that one to one chat ,things start slowly then as the two open up the conversation and subjects get sexier and sexier ,as they talk about their encounters and dreams .This is  not a story if you turn red at steamy scenes on tv as it goes into close details of what they want to do in the bedroom ,so as we find out what Jim and Abbey like we feel a bit like a voyeur or an old stasis agent listening into something private that maybe we shouldn’t be listen to but can’t hang up and in a way its the same for Abbey and Jim as they’re paying a lot for doing this as it is a charging chat line there on .

“what are you wearing ?” he asked.

she said “I m wearing a white shirt with little stars,green and black stars ,on it ,black pants ,and socks the colour of the green stars ,and a pair of black sneakers I got for nine dollars .”

“what are you doing ?”

“I m lying on my bed ,which is made .That’s unusual thing .I made my bed this morning .A  few months ago my mother gave me a chenille bedspread,exactly the kind we used to have ,and I felt bad that it was still folded up unused and this morning I finally made the bed with it ”

The opening of the book and you jump in the middle of the conversation

As you can see Baker’s style is a little different to many writers you don’t get any intro ,no here you jump straight in .So what did I think I loved it ,ok at times the sex scenes described are very sexy and made me go red but it is a book you just want to keep reading like being on the bus and sat behind people as there having a juicy conversation about people you don’t know but you just want to sit there and catch it even if you miss your stop .The book is also more famous for supposedly being the book a Monica gave a very famous Bill ,now if that story is true I had no doubt Bill knew what was on Monica’s mind after reading this book it wouldn’t be a book you’d give to the other sex without expecting a reaction  from the person you had given the book too .the book has a wonderful new cover from Village green design that have done the four new covers for these books .