Some of you might remember that a while ago a co-worker foolishly challenged me by saying that only men can write great love stories. Instead of rolling my eyes I decided a gauntlet had been thrown, and I'm now reading all the Pulitzer Prize-winning books by contemporary women authors, in order to prove my co-worker wrong.
First up: "A Visit from the Good Squad" by Jennifer Egan. This is probably the best book I've read in months, if not years, and that's saying something because these days I really don't bother reading anything unless I'm pretty sure it's going to be good. If you care about, say, literacy, you should consider reading this at some point just to remind yourself that language was invented by people smarter than you.
But the Pulitzer Project is all about unearthing love stories, popping the little kernels of romance hidden within modern writing by women, and on this front "A Visit from the Goon Squad" doesn't even remotely deliver. There is absolutely no love to be found anywhere in this story. There's not a lot of sex in this novel either, in case you care. What there is, is casual and violent, and not in a good way.
Most of the characters hate everything in life, including themselves. They're self-loathing hipsters, except that they are too poor and drug-addled to really be hipsters. Part of the book is set in the 70s, so I guess these guys were the ancestors of today's hipsters, back before gentrification made stories like "Rent" obsolete. I always like reading stories about people who stuck it to the man while living under bridges in New York City back in the day, mainly because nowadays cocaine squats and heroin alleys have been taken over by joints like "Dean and Deluca" that unself-consciously sell products that can be described (without irony!) as "artisanal groceries." But I'm digressing.
"A Visit" is really more of a drunken hookup in the bathroom of the bar while high on a random mix of drugs kind of story. The author does not make a positive case for romance, in fact, she pretty much seems not to recommend any kind of interpersonal relationships. The characters are problematic on their own, but the moment they get mixed up in each other's lives the results are kinda like the time I saw a guy wipe out on a black diamond slope at Vail. I got sympathetic angst cramps just reading this.
Fun fact: the chapters are written as short stories and many of them were previously published in the New Yorker and elsewhere, which means I can make this handy little guide to the best and worst:
Best stories:
"Found Objects." This is a story about a girl who steals things from other people. There's also a bathtub, an insanely small New York apartment and a really random sex scene, if by "scene" you mean "allusion." This story is like a tune that gets stuck in your head all day - I could not stop thinking about it.
"Ask Me If I Care." These are some exceptionally troubled youth, but at the same time there's something about their tragic and incessant partying and drug-use that actually makes them universally relatable. I highly recommend this story to any girl who felt like the wallflower at the orgy growing up (didn't everyone? No?) Try this sentence on for size: "In this story, I'm the girl no one is waiting for." Yeah, exactly.
"Xs and Os." (Weird little preview thingy online here.) A really good story about a homeless-ish guy who visits an old friend who has now become famous. Involves a fish that may or may not be diseased but is definitely dead. (Let no one accuse Jennifer Egan of a lack of imagination...seriously)
"Goodbye, My Love." Probably the BEST short story I've ever read in my life. NO joke. Maybe it's because I've spent the better part of the past three years wandering around a lost continent in search of my missing selves (or whatever it is that we call these quests nowadays) or maybe because I kinda get the artistic uncle's need to feel alive again (and incidentally, if we're going to delve into the neuroses of middle-aged men, this is a way, way better whack at it than other stories in this novel) but WHOA! This story is literally about everything: art, travel, loss, theft, time, love, childhood, family, etc. And it is so, so, so good it will make your teeth rattle.
Weakest stories:
"The Gold Cure" (link is to a reading). This story about a middle-aged man's sexual neuroses didn't really resonate with me, and I get the feeling it didn't really resonate with Jennifer Egan either. Other authors have done much more in this very fertile territory.
"Safari." Not sure I buy any of the Heart of Darkness meets Desire Under the Elms meets Wet Hot American Summer meets Encyclopedia Britannica stuff going on here. As I said, sexual neuroses of middle-aged men is NOT Egan's specialty - she gets hung up on the symptoms and misses the cause.
"Pure Language." Lots of people will disagree, but this last sci-fi-ish chapter has too many babies using wireless headsets at crowd-sourced concerts and not enough unique insights into how people's emotional innards function and dysfunction, as it were. Yeah the story is really emotional but it's almost like an afterthought, like when I tried to learn to knit years ago and kept getting bored in the middle of projects and turning out these two-foot-long scarves and pretending that was how long they were supposed to be from the beginning. It kinda feels like Egan needed to end the novel and the Powerpoint slides chapter was just a bit too inchoate.
But really, choosing"bad" chapters in Jennifer Egan's novel is like picking bad recipes out of Julia Child's cookbook or bad performances out of Marlon Brando's ouevre or the least attractive members of the US Men's Olympic swimming team. Even though it is not a romance, I highly, highly recommend this book.
Next up: March, by Geraldine Brooks.
First up: "A Visit from the Good Squad" by Jennifer Egan. This is probably the best book I've read in months, if not years, and that's saying something because these days I really don't bother reading anything unless I'm pretty sure it's going to be good. If you care about, say, literacy, you should consider reading this at some point just to remind yourself that language was invented by people smarter than you.
But the Pulitzer Project is all about unearthing love stories, popping the little kernels of romance hidden within modern writing by women, and on this front "A Visit from the Goon Squad" doesn't even remotely deliver. There is absolutely no love to be found anywhere in this story. There's not a lot of sex in this novel either, in case you care. What there is, is casual and violent, and not in a good way.
Most of the characters hate everything in life, including themselves. They're self-loathing hipsters, except that they are too poor and drug-addled to really be hipsters. Part of the book is set in the 70s, so I guess these guys were the ancestors of today's hipsters, back before gentrification made stories like "Rent" obsolete. I always like reading stories about people who stuck it to the man while living under bridges in New York City back in the day, mainly because nowadays cocaine squats and heroin alleys have been taken over by joints like "Dean and Deluca" that unself-consciously sell products that can be described (without irony!) as "artisanal groceries." But I'm digressing.
"A Visit" is really more of a drunken hookup in the bathroom of the bar while high on a random mix of drugs kind of story. The author does not make a positive case for romance, in fact, she pretty much seems not to recommend any kind of interpersonal relationships. The characters are problematic on their own, but the moment they get mixed up in each other's lives the results are kinda like the time I saw a guy wipe out on a black diamond slope at Vail. I got sympathetic angst cramps just reading this.
Fun fact: the chapters are written as short stories and many of them were previously published in the New Yorker and elsewhere, which means I can make this handy little guide to the best and worst:
Best stories:
"Found Objects." This is a story about a girl who steals things from other people. There's also a bathtub, an insanely small New York apartment and a really random sex scene, if by "scene" you mean "allusion." This story is like a tune that gets stuck in your head all day - I could not stop thinking about it.
"Ask Me If I Care." These are some exceptionally troubled youth, but at the same time there's something about their tragic and incessant partying and drug-use that actually makes them universally relatable. I highly recommend this story to any girl who felt like the wallflower at the orgy growing up (didn't everyone? No?) Try this sentence on for size: "In this story, I'm the girl no one is waiting for." Yeah, exactly.
"Xs and Os." (Weird little preview thingy online here.) A really good story about a homeless-ish guy who visits an old friend who has now become famous. Involves a fish that may or may not be diseased but is definitely dead. (Let no one accuse Jennifer Egan of a lack of imagination...seriously)
"Goodbye, My Love." Probably the BEST short story I've ever read in my life. NO joke. Maybe it's because I've spent the better part of the past three years wandering around a lost continent in search of my missing selves (or whatever it is that we call these quests nowadays) or maybe because I kinda get the artistic uncle's need to feel alive again (and incidentally, if we're going to delve into the neuroses of middle-aged men, this is a way, way better whack at it than other stories in this novel) but WHOA! This story is literally about everything: art, travel, loss, theft, time, love, childhood, family, etc. And it is so, so, so good it will make your teeth rattle.
Weakest stories:
"The Gold Cure" (link is to a reading). This story about a middle-aged man's sexual neuroses didn't really resonate with me, and I get the feeling it didn't really resonate with Jennifer Egan either. Other authors have done much more in this very fertile territory.
"Safari." Not sure I buy any of the Heart of Darkness meets Desire Under the Elms meets Wet Hot American Summer meets Encyclopedia Britannica stuff going on here. As I said, sexual neuroses of middle-aged men is NOT Egan's specialty - she gets hung up on the symptoms and misses the cause.
"Pure Language." Lots of people will disagree, but this last sci-fi-ish chapter has too many babies using wireless headsets at crowd-sourced concerts and not enough unique insights into how people's emotional innards function and dysfunction, as it were. Yeah the story is really emotional but it's almost like an afterthought, like when I tried to learn to knit years ago and kept getting bored in the middle of projects and turning out these two-foot-long scarves and pretending that was how long they were supposed to be from the beginning. It kinda feels like Egan needed to end the novel and the Powerpoint slides chapter was just a bit too inchoate.
But really, choosing"bad" chapters in Jennifer Egan's novel is like picking bad recipes out of Julia Child's cookbook or bad performances out of Marlon Brando's ouevre or the least attractive members of the US Men's Olympic swimming team. Even though it is not a romance, I highly, highly recommend this book.
Next up: March, by Geraldine Brooks.
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