Prancis Bookmarks

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Bad Review, A Zillion Years Later

I recently finished A Frolic of His Own and looked up reviews on the excellent Gaddis Annotations, which featured one from the Times Book Review:

Other obstacles seem gratuitous, even perverse...[T]here seems little excuse for subjecting the reader to 50 pages of verbatim, tiresomely repetitious testimony in one of Oscar’s legal depositions.

While I can imagine that a lot of people did find the deposition scene tedious—all they want is blood and gore and her hand unbuttoning his trousers—I am really astounded that the reviewer thought there was "little excuse" for the scene in question.

It's not "one of" Oscar's depositions, it's the only deposition in the novel. It happens early on: the two lawyers in the scene appear for the first time, in their only scene together, and the whole remainder of the plot refers back to this encounter as the reader learns new things about each of them. And it's not the testimony that's repetitious, but the lawyers' constant objections and rebuttals, which take on a Laurel and Hardy type quality.

In any case, I think the deposition scene is literally essential to the novel.

Literary Mashups?

I was thinking the other day that it would be cool to get some Project Gutenberg texts, typeset them nicely in some free document processor, make a cool cover image and then put them up for sale at one of those digital print-on-demand sites. Or even just have a series of classics printed up for your personal library. There must be people doing stuff like that, right?

And then I was wondering, does anyone take advantage of any of the copylefted or public domain texts out there and actually modify them significantly? Like adding a whole bunch of illustrations, or even changing the plot or removing characters. Instead of trying to ban Huck Finn from school libraries, conservatives should be publishing their own rewrites where Huck does the right thing and turns Jim over to the authorities.

Anyway, keep an eye out for my upcoming masterpiece, 10,000 Leagues Under Ulysses, featuring stills from Lady Frankenstein.

Wow

Found this review of The Recognitions:

When carefully and thoughtfully read a rich bounty of rewards awaits the attentive reader. I have had many intimate moments with this work when, perhaps sitting in a coffee shop, I'll be involved in a particularly frustrating piece of dialogue and I'll laugh out loud at Gaddis' razor-sharp eye for the frailty of human interactions...

Too perfect. I suppose furious masturbation does technically qualify as an "intimate moment."

Razor-sharp eye indeed.

956 Pages!

I just put The Recognitions on hold at the library this week. I was aware Gaddis was "difficult," but I guess the comparisons I'd heard to Pynchon had me picturing something along the lines of Crying of Lot 49, lengthwise, for his first novel. But it is not so.

Making Your Kids Read

Via Bitch, PhD, a graphical essay by Alison Bechdel on compulsory reading. I sort of have to dispute her conclusion: kids who read a lot on their own are indeed put off anything that's made compulsory (or such was my experience, anyway). But parents who "want [their] children to read something" are by definition not talking about kids who read a lot on their own.

I think some kids just won't read unless you make them, so in that case, if you think reading is important for its own sake, you don't have much choice but to "put it on a list." Or alternatively, rethink the importance of reading except as a means to an end.

Just to Note

I did read James Wood's Book Against God, and then enjoyed the entirety of the review I had put off reading. I see what Wyatt Mason means about how it might be more valuable to draw attention to less visible good fiction than to knock down well-publicized but less good fiction. But on the other hand, you have to give Wood credit for leading by example, and doing it (and doing it) well.

Thick Erections

By happy coincidence, I was in the process of reading The Corrections just as Harper's contributing editor Wyatt Mason posted his three-part account of an event with Jonathan Franzen discussing his novel with critic James Wood.

The first part recounts their conversation on the state of the novel and the extent to which Franzen had succeeded in balancing challenging fiction with readable narratives, concluding with Mason asking about the role criticism plays in Franzen's work as a novelist. The second begins with Franzen's response that it does play a significant role, and then Mason follows up by wondering why more writers of fiction don't engage with critics directly. (Relevant footnotes here to Wood's review of The Corrections and Mason's review of Wood's first novel, The Book Against God.) And the third part addresses the idea that critics do not engage with contemporary fiction, leading to the introduction of Mason's essay arguing that there is plenty of intelligent criticism being written. Which I gather is a running theme of Mason's.

Anyway. I enjoyed it all. With the exception of the Book Against God review which I mostly skimmed until I get a chance to read the book. No spoilerz.

The Wrecking Crew

Last Friday, one of the political bloggers I read mentioned and recommended John Albert's memoir, The Wrecking Crew, about being an LA heroin junkie getting his life together, playing amateur baseball with a bunch of similarly troubled thirtysomethings. It was a quick read, and reasonably engaging if not actually very well written. I wish there had been more baseball and less name-dropping, but maybe at least the latter just comes with the LA territory. The emotional content is also pretty trite. I wouldn't really recommend it, and comparisons to Trainspotting are really overstating the book's quality.

100 Bullets

A couple weeks ago, my friend Steve lent me his collection of 100 Bullets trade paperbacks, and I've been reading one every couple days. The third volume, Hang Up on the Hang Low, is based around the story of a Philadelphia thug first seeking to avenge himself on, and later forging a relationship with, his absentee father. It explores some pretty interesting themes about fatherhood, loyalty, responsibility, and what it means to be an adult.

In the story, the appreciation of baseball features pretty prominently as emblematic of the broader generation gap between the protagonist and his father. Meeting his son as an adult, the father very early invites him to a Phillies game, and then calls his son's lack of interest "un-American," an opinion later echoed by the father's employer. Race relations and class differences are recurring themes in these books, and the father and son's differing preferences in athletics are further used to show how they choose to identify themselves. The final baseball-related plot point has the protagonist completing his journey by literally following in his father's footsteps as a freshly minted baseball fan. Not incredibly deep, but hey, it's a comic book.

I don't really have much to say about it, but I thought it was neat. And I do recommend the series.