#19 - Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife

OK, folks -- lest you think I'm getting too full of myself with these highfalutin literary pretensions, I (ahem) almost forgot to mention another book I slipped onto a recent library stack: Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, by Linda Berdoll (Naperville, IL: 2004). Yes, it's another continuation of Pride and Prejudice, which I swore I was done with; yes, it's more than a little on the steamy side; yes, the Amazon reviews were pretty darned dreadful.

Jacket summary: "This sexy, epic, hilarious, poignant and romantic sequel to Pride and Prejudice goes far beyond being a Jane Austen sequel. It's Tom Jones meets Jane Austen meets Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, with essence of Scarlett O'Hara and the Wife of Bath thrown in.

Every woman wants to be Elizabeth Bennet Darcy -- beautiful, gracious, universally admired, strong, daring and outspoken -- a thoroughly modern woman in crinolines. And every woman will fall madly in love with Mr. Darcy -- tall, dark and handsome, a nobleman and a heartthrob whose virility is matched only by his utter devotion to his wife.

Their passion is consuming and idyllic-essentially, they can't keep their hands off each other-through a sweeping tale of adventure and misadventure, human folly and numerous mysteries of parentage.

The book was self-published in 1999, with more than 10,000 copies sold. Here is what some readers are saying about Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife: 'Pure pleasure...this book is so much fun I recommend it heartily.' 'Wow, Darcy! I could not put it down.' 'Tremendous-I didn't want it to end!'"

My own take: Poignant and hilarious may be stretching it a bit, but the book was most certainly sexy, and had enough funny moments to make me laugh at least as much as it made me blush. And I knew what I was getting into with the R-rated pieces; an old friend who adores P&P recommended this one, with the warning/ advertisement, "Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth have a lot of good sex." While I'll agree that the commentary on both parties' intimate endowments got a bit silly, they were almost made up with by one scene in which Elizabeth and Darcy are engaging in some pillow talk on the subject. In response to Darcy's remarking that his, er, estate is a bit larger than average, Elizabeth teases him, noting that she has no frame of reference, "Are you large enough to be put on display in Piccadilly?" OK, I've forgotten half the quote, and maybe you had to be there, but it was amusing.

In short, no, this isn't a book for Austen purists; if that's you, reading the back cover should clue you in straightaway. And the beginning is a lot stronger than the end, which tends to drag a bit. If you enjoy reinterpretations/ continuations of classic stories, and aren't a stickler for 100% accuracy, this will entertain you for a weekend or so.

#18 - Pygmy

Now this was a surprise. A chapter or 2 into Chuck Palahniuk's Pygmy (New York, 2009), I almost gave up. This was my first of Palahniuk's books -- I've never even seen the movie based on Fight Club -- so all I'm going on here is a vague sense from reviews and such that his work is dark, disturbing, gritty, et al. And initially, the disjointed language and brutal violence (in the second chapter, the protagonist sodomizes a bully in a public restroom) put me off.

Jacket summary: "'Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater ______ area. Flight ______. Date ______. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc.'

"Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and bldnc in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism. Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughly indoctrinated littlekiller, who hates us with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire of an American xenophobia that might, in fact, be completely justified. For Pygmy and his fellow operatives are cooking up something big, something truly awful, that will bring this big dumb country and its fat dumb inhabitants to their knees.

"It's a comedy. And a romance."

I'm glad I stuck with it. It is violent, disorienting, and disturbing, but it's also scathing and funny. With the exception of the aforementioned "clear-yellow" bully (and later, school shooter), Trevor Stonefield, few of the characters merit a proper name. He describes his host family thus:

"For official record, host father present as vast breathing cow, blowing out putrid stink diet heavy with dead slaughterhouse flesh, bellowing stench of Viagra breath during cow father reach to clasp hand of operative me. From tissue compress rate of father fist, bone-to-cow ratio, host father contain 31.2 percent body fat."

"Host mother present as blinking chicken, chin of face bony sharp as beak, chin tucking and swivel to turn, never still, chicken mother say, 'Look at you!' Face exploded in silent screaming of wide-open lips and teeth, pointy tongue, eyebrows jumped into chicken forehead. Bony claws of chicken mother, gripping each this agent's hands, mother lifts to spread arms too high on top this agent head."

"Host brother only pig dog, cradled on both hands, apparatus of black plastic with pig dog dancing thumbs making buttons beep. ... On pig dog breath, the stink of Ritalin. The pollution stench of model airplane adhesive and frequent masturbations. Underneath ... reek of secret blood, latex rubber, and fear sweat."

"For official record, only host sister look rewarding opponent. Host sister, stealth cat. Cat of night, silent but eyeing all happen."

While we do learn, from his corporate ID badge, that the patriarch's name is Donald Cedar, Pygmy refers to them from here on only as "breathing cow father," "twitching chicken mother," "pig dog brother," and "cat sister."

I've read other books whose narrators are about as vile and contemptuous, and usually, I don't like them much. To some extent, I didn't really enjoy Pygmy either -- it's not that sort of a book -- but I did appreciate it. The plot itself (what is this cataclysmic Operation Havoc Pygmy and his fellow operatives are planning, and will they be successful?) is interesting enough, but what makes the book worth reading is Palahniuk's acerbic skewering of so many rituals of American culture, particularly those common to middle and high schools. As he describes a "student mating ritual located darkened sports arena of education facility,"

"During mating ritual cloaked dim interior arena atop floor of basketball wood, against din of music encourage premature random sexual reproduction, pig dog brother make finger straight to indicate females ranked along opposite wall. Across distance, give introduce. Assembled females of middle school, could be rowed for execution firing squad, eyeballed by youth males."

Pig dog brother then regales Pygmy with a long list of crude adolescent terms for breasts that's both thoroughly obnoxious and completely in line with what I remember of middle school: "hooters ... knockers ... balloon bombs ... butter bags ... Rib cushions ... party pillows ... chesticles ... Blouse bunnies ... fun bags ... lactoids ... speed bumps ... Milk makers ... devil dumplings ... flotation devices."

The silly, superficial, and hedonistic nature of U.S. culture seen through Pygmy's eyes is the book's central theme. Blinking chicken mother is obsessed with vibrators, to the extent that no other battery-powered applicance in the house is safe, and she comes to Thanksgiving dinner with one, er, secreted on her person. Following in her mother's footsteps, Cat sister's prize-winning science project is the Bliss 2.0, which she introduces as "the next generation in complete happiness." Pygmy, on the way home from a school function, muses that he "encounter frequent memorial honoring American battle warrior, great officer similar Lenin. Many vast mural depicting most savvy United States war hero. Rotating statue. Looming visage noble American colonel. Courageous, renown of history. Colonel Sanders, image forever accompanied odor of sacrificial meat. Eternal flame offering wind savory perfume roasted flesh." And his translation of the "idiot nonsense [songs]" and "insane garbage lyrics" performed by the middle school's compulsory Junior Swing Choir had me in stitches (especially after the half-second pause it took me to translate each tune's title):

• "precipitate remain pummel head of operative me. Complain how both feet too large size for sleeping mattress."
• "past visited arid landscape aboard equine of no title"
• "yearning for location on top arched spectrum of light wavelengths created by precipitate"
• "dangle in side-to-side motion from distant solar body, next convey illuminations of lunar body to domicile contained in glass vessel"
• "Stalk cereal corn grown height comparable eyeball of pachyderm."

Nowhere is Pygmy's contempt for U.S. culture clearer or funnier than in the Model U.N. chapter, where he sees through an outsider's eyes just how shallow and insulting is his hosts' understanding of world cultures and international relations.

This bright-sided, hypersexed picture of public education contrasts sharply with Pygmy's of his own upbringing, which is as extreme in its collectivism as the U.S. seems to be in its individualism. Two scenes in particular stand out here, though both were so over the top that what should have been chilling and gruesome just seemed overdone. In one, a teacher drowns and grinds up a lab rat to underscore the inevitability of death; in another, Pygmy and his classmates' progress in a parade is briefly interrupted when comrade Oleg is forced to kill his hysterical parents (who can't help leaping from the sidelines to embrace their long-lost son, thus interfering with the solemnity of the occasion).

Pygmy skewers the hypocrisy of American religion, too, though I had mixed feelings about how this was executed. On one hand, I loved Palahniuk's description of a contemporary Midwestern megachurch, and enjoyed Pygmy's possibly-deliberate mistranslation of Reverend Tony's title as "Devil Tony." On the other, for a book whose strength lies chiefly in making us see the familiar with new eyes, a lecherous minister seemed a little trite.

My other quibble with the book -- this feels almost obligatory, but I have to say it -- is that a significant chunk of the plot turns on Trevor falling in love with Pygmy after the aforementioned brutal rape. Yes, I know this is supposed to be over-the-top, satirical. Yes, I know scenarios where rape leads to love have a long literary history, even including one of my own favorite guilty pleasures (GWTW, natch) among them. I still didn't like it. Moreover, I thought the whole idea of Trevor's unrequited love was unnecessary; he could just as easily have shot up the Model U.N. for some other reason. Interjecting this ridiculous, almost-slapstick note into the story detracts from a piece I found far more intriguing: the money Pygmy stole from Trevor, mentioned throughout the book, as an unsavory metaphor for the roots of American wealth and power: "thick layer of paper bills smear stained blood, fecal, seed, sweat, stinking saliva, a fortune typical American cash money."

#17 - Songs for the Missing

And this one pretty much lived up to expectations. Songs for the Missing, by Stewart O'Nan (New York, 2008) isn't the first families-of-missing-teens book I've read (see The Local News, for one), but it's definitely one of the best -- probably because it neither wraps things up neatly, nor does the usual tug-at-the-tear-ducts stuff you might expect.

Summary: "An enthralling portrait of one family in the aftermath of a daughter's disappearance. 'It was the summer of her Chevette, of J.P. and letting her hair grow.' It was also the summer when, without warning, popular high school student Kim Larsen disappeared from her small midwestern town. Her loving parents, her introverted sister, her friends and boyfriend must now do everything they can to find her. As desperate search parties give way to pleading television appearances, and private investigations yield to personal revelations, we see one town’s intimate struggle to maintain hope and, finally, to live with the unknown. Stewart O'Nan's new novel begins with the suspense and pacing of a thriller and soon deepens into an affecting family drama of loss. On the heels of his critically acclaimed and nationally bestselling Last Night at the Lobster, Songs for the Missing is an honest, heartfelt account of one family's attempt to find their child. With a soulful empathy for these ordinary heroes, O'Nan draws us into the world of this small American town and allows us to feel a part of this family."

A good, solid read. In addition to Kim's parents and sister, Lindsey, we also see how her disappearance reverberates in the lives of her boyfriend, J.P., and her best friend, Nina. Certain small details are handled especially well: J.P. and Nina's guilt, first at not telling and then at telling the police about Kim's connection to a skanky, 30-year-old drug dealer (no, he didn't do it); the Larsens' inclination to both overprotect Lindsey in the wake of her sister's disappearance, and shelter her from too much direct involvement with the search; their struggle to visit and explain things to Roger's elderly, nursing home-bound mother; the over-the-top cheesy memorial buttons and songs that flow from the community; the local crazy lady (doesn't every town have one?) whose obsession with the case ultimately leads to an important discovery. If I had a book club, this would be a good book club book.

#16 - All the Sad Young Literary Men

This one was better. Not perfect, but better. All the Sad Young Literary Men, by Keith Gessen (New York, 2008).

Summary: "A charming yet scathing portrait of young adulthood at the opening of the twenty-first century, All the Sad Young Literary Men charts the lives of Sam, Mark, and Keith as they overthink their college years, underthink their love lives, and struggle through the encouragement of the women who love and despise them to find a semblance of maturity, responsibility, and even literary fame. Heartbroken in his university town, Mark tries to focus his attention on his graduate work on the Russian Revolution, only to be lured again and again to the free pornography on the library computers. Sam binds himself to the task of crafting 'the first great Zionist epic' even though he speaks no Hebrew, has never visited Israel, and is not a practicing Jew. Keith, more earnest and easily upset than the other two, is haunted by catastrophes both public and private -- and his inability to tell the difference. At every turn, at each character's misstep, All the Sad Young Literary Men radiates with comedic warmth and biting honesty and signals the arrival of a brave and trenchant new writer."

My take (really, a pretty quick one this time): Annoying characters, but I still mostly liked it -- chiefly because I think Gessen knows they're annoying, and wants us to laugh and roll our eyes at them. (Actually, Keith, from what we see of him, is fairly sympathetic; Sam and Mark, not so much.) Beautiful downtown Syracuse, NY makes a less-than-flattering cameo, as Mark's temporary Elba for most of his graduate hears (he's in a doctoral program at SU), and while it's not my favorite city, either, I initially got my feathers riled about yet another Downstater thinking there's nothing north of Westchester save depressed downtowns and toothless rednecks ... but, um, Gessen was a student at Syracuse himself at one point, so I guess he's got cred.

Anyway, digression aside, it was sometimes hard to keep Mark's and Sam's plot lines (and occasionally, love interests) separate, but again ... I'm going to assume that was deliberate. I don't know that it's a great book, or that it'll be worth reading in 10 or 20 years, but if you're familiar with the "obscure humanities scholar" type or even academic/ intellectual pretensions in general, you'll probably get a few chuckles out of AtSYLM. Best to read it once you're well past, and not still in the thick of, your angst-ridden early 20s, though.

#15 - Brideshead Revisited

All right, true confession time. The (for me) slower-than-usual pace of book bloggage this year probably has something to do with my being gainfully re-employed, true -- but only something. A large part, I fear, is this quixotic goal I ran up the flagpole, once upon early January, about using my speed-reading prowess for good and reading The Classics this year.

Well, gentle friends, it ain't gonna happen. Not as I'd imagined it, anyway. There's still plenty of literature that's, er, stood the test of time, and I do still plan to spend at least some of my time seeking it out in the library's wayback stacks, instead of just being led astray by all the new fiction I have to pass to get there (and yes, these are the bibliophile's equivalent of candy in the checkout line at the supermarket). But sometimes, you read a classic, and you aren't sure what to think: Was it significant in its time and place, but far less so now? Is it just plain the-emperor-has-no-clothes boring? Or do you Just Not Get It? Well, that's about what I thought of Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder, by Evelyn Waugh (Boston, 1999).

Summary: "Captain Charles Ryder, stationed at Brideshead, recalls his boyhood associations with the odd but charming members of an English noble family." That's all. Even the venerable library site couldn't find much more to say about it, I guess.

My slightly longer summary: We open with a fairly anemic frame story, set in the English countryside during WWII, in which the now-adult Captain Ryder is stationed in an army camp he recognizes as being near to or perhaps even on the grounds of Brideshead -- an old friend's family estate, which has since gone to seed. This leads him to remember his first visit to Brideshead years earlier. Back then, he was a college student recently befriended by Sebastian Flyte, a hard-drinking, teddy-bear-carrying, eccentric younger son of an upper-class family that, frankly, had seen better days. Somehow, even though it's not clear Ryder likes Sebastian or the others of their set all that much, he becomes a frequent guest at Brideshead, where he meets the rest of the Marchmain family: reclusive Bridey, the eldest son; earnest if plain youngest daughter Cordelia; and the lovely Julia. The Marchmains are Catholic, which is apparently a big deal for them, even though none save Mrs. Flyte attend Mass regularly, and Mr. Flyte has been living in Italy with a mistress for years.

Somehow, mostly off-camera, Sebastian descends into full-fledged alcoholism, which leads to his expulsion from university and (when they try to keep him from drink, though the rest of the family indulge in moderation) on-and-off estrangement from his family. Ryder carries a torch for the inscrutable Julia, which seems (ahem) interesting in light of her physical resemblance to brother Sebastian. However, she is promised and ultimately married to an aspiring politician, so he contents himself by marrying another classmate's sister, and building a fairly successful career producing architectural paintings of old British manor houses -- usually, because their owners are about to tear them down or sell them, and want some memento to hang on to. An unexpected shipboard reunion, coupled with nasty weather and an epidemic of seasickness, sees Ryder and Julia literally thrown together, consummating their attraction even though Ryder's seasick wife is in the cabin next door. Despite apparently being one another's true love, family pressures and good old-fashioned Catholic guilt make Julia decide at the last minute to remain with her less-than-appealing husband, although Ryder has no such qualms about leaving his own wife, Celia.

So, um, yeah -- I think I just didn't get it. I think this may fall into the "doesn't stand the test of time" camp, or at least, doesn't resonate with someone like me who's neither of that time and place nor particularly familiar with it. The reported closeness of Ryder and Sebastian's friendship (mostly evidenced by Ryder or Sebastian telling us what great friends they are, and by the frequency of Ryder's visits to Brideshead), coupled with Sebastian's flamboyance, initially seemed homoerotic to me, but I ultimately dismissed the thought; nothing ever comes of it, so perhaps this was just how you behaved as an upper-class Brit in the '20s and '30s. What I couldn't overlook, however, was that Sebastian was so darned unlikeable. Sure, I guess if you like that sort of thing, he might be one of those people who's great fun to party with, but I just couldn't get past wondering why on earth Ryder seemed so spellbound by him (or by Julia, for that matter). And Ryder, while not as actively obnoxious, wasn't particularly compelling or interesting, either.

In short, not a favorite of mine, and not something that will inspire me to seek out more of Waugh's work. Rent the DVD, to see if Jeremy Irons and John Gielgud can make it more interesting? Perhaps.

#14 - Jim the Boy

My 14th book of the year was Jim the Boy, by Tony Earley (Boston, 2000).

Summary: "Tony Earley made his debut with Here We Are in Paradise, a superbly understated collection of (mostly) small-town vignettes. He returns to the same terrain in his first novel, Jim the Boy, setting this coming-of-age story in a remote North Carolina hamlet. The year is 1934, and like the rest of the country, Aliceville is feeling the pinch of the Great Depression. Yet neither Jim nor his mother nor his three uncles -- who have split the paternal role neatly among themselves since the death of Jim's father a decade earlier -- are feeling much in the way of economic pain. Indeed, if you stuck a satellite dish on the front lawn, the story might be taking place in the New South rather than the older, bucolic one.This isn't to suggest that Earley is deaf to social detail. Indeed, there are all sorts of wonderful touches, like the decor in Jim's classroom,with its 'large, colorful maps of the United States, the Confederacy, and the Holy Land during the time of Jesus.' But Jim the Boy is very much the tale of a 10-year-old's expanding consciousness, which at first barely extends beyond the family property. Earley has a real gift for conveying childhood epiphanies, like Jim's sudden apprehension of the wider world during a trip in Uncle Al's truck: 'Two thoughts came to Jim at once, joined by a thread of amazement: he thought, People live here, and he thought, They don't know who I am. At that moment the world opened up around Jim like hands that, until that moment, had been cupped around him; he felt very small, almost invisible, in the open air of their center, but knew that the hands would not let him go. It was almost like flying.' The simple lyricism and anti-ironic sweetness work mostly to the book's advantage. There are times, it's true, when Earley sands his prose down to an unnatural smoothness, and we seem to be edging toward the sentimental precincts of a young-adult novel. But on the whole, Jim the Boy is a lovely, meticulous work--a song of innocence and (eventually) experience, delivered with just a hint of a North Carolina accent."

My reaction, in a nutshell: Appreciated it on a literary level, in that it was well-written with (cough) luminous prose and what have you, and much of the description, both of landscape and emotional states, was understated and lovely. Not enough of a plot for me to really love it, though.

Catching up, again

It's been 6 weeks now, and I just may be smoothly back in the 9-to-5 groove again. The job's pretty good, the commute is unbeatable ... but after 6 months of being able to smell the roses, even if I couldn't afford to buy them, it takes time to change the routine. In other words, I've still been reading quite a bit these last few weeks, but not blogging about it.

In what's more or less the correct order, the books I've read since you saw me last have been ...
#13 - Roots: The Saga of an American Family (30th anniversary ed.), by Alex Haley (New York, 2007).

Summary (from my favorite public library's web site, as I returned the book weeks ago): "One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots galvanized the nation, and created an extraordinary political, racial, social and cultural dialogue that hadn't been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book sold over 1,000,000 copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130,000,000 people. Roots opened up the minds of Americans of all colors and faiths to one of the darkest and most painful parts of America's past. Roots also fostered a remarkable dialogue about not just the past, but the then present day 1970's and how America had fared since the days of slavery. Roots: The 30th Anniversary Edition will remind the generation that originally read it (and watched the miniseries) that there are issues that still need to be discussed, and to introduce to a new and younger generation, a book that will help them understand, perhaps for the first time, the drama and reality of what took place during the time period."

My reaction: I liked it. Yes, I'm aware of the controversy about how much of the story was true and how much was (ahem) "inspired by actual events," and tagged it as nonfiction with some qualms. Frankly, though, the book works well even as just a novel, and its impact on public sentiment and popular culture are undeniable.

Just in case there's anyone out there who's even tardier than I am about reading the book, and isn't familiar with the story, it begins in the late 1700s in the Gambia with the birth of a "man-child" called Kunta Kinte. Proportionally, Kunta's boyhood and coming of age get a tremendous amount of air time here, compared to how quickly entire generations seem to pass later in the story, but I think I understand this. If you'll forgive the analogy, it reminds me of what Margaret Mitchell did at the beginning of Gone With the Wind: thorough, painstaking description of a way of life that, once the events of the story get underway, can't possibly be the same again. In Kunta Kinte's case, this transition comes when, while a teenaged man-boy, he is kidnapped by toubob slave traders and, after a horrific trans-Atlantic voyage that kills almost half the human cargo, sold to a Virginia plantation owner.

Some years later, Kunta comes to respect and eventually marry Bell, the cook on "his" plantation. The couple have a daughter, who Kunta names Kizzy (which means "stay put" in his native tongue) in hopes that she'll grow up with them and not be sold away. Heartbreakingly, when their otherwise as-good-as-they-get master discovers that a) Kizzy, now 15, can read and write; and b) more importantly, she's used this knowledge to help another young slave escape, these hopes are thwarted. Kizzy is sold south to a far-away plantation in the Carolinas, where she learns in brutal fashion just what her new owner, Tom Lea, bought her for. The product of her rape is a son, George, who, in time, rises to a favored position in his own master's household as an unparalleled breeder and trainer of fighting cocks (hence, his nickname, "Chicken George.")

George is rather a ladies' man, and (of course) ultimately falls for and marries the one woman he can't get any other way: the devout, beautiful Matilda. Together, the two raise a large family of their own (or rather, Matilda raises them, as George seems to be either traveling to cock fights or preoccupied with who knows what else more often than not), including one son, Tom, whose training and skill as a plantation blacksmith serves him well in the uncertain post-Emancipation South. Tom, his wife Irene, their 8 children, Chicken George, and a handful of neighbors strike out for new territory, opting to try their luck at real freedom, rather than simply hiring on as sharecroppers somewhere. According to Haley, it's Tom and Irene's granddaughter, Bertha -- daughter of their youngest child, Cynthia -- who ultimately marries Simon Alexander Haley, and becomes his mother.

The book's almost 900 pages long as is, but I guess my only real complaint is that later generations of Kinte's descendants and Haley's forbears, after Kizzy and George, seem to get short shrift. George and Matilda, and then Tom and Irene, both have such large families that, with decades passing by in only a page or 2, it's hard to keep track of who's who. I would have liked to know more about Tom and Irene, Cynthia, and even Bertha, and how their lives were affected by the lessons and stories Kunta had passed on to Kizzy and then (presumably, through George and Tom) down to them.