Staff Picks Archive
- July 2008 (3)
- May 2008 (1)
- January 2008 (1)
The Savage Detectives
Reviewed by Matt
Towards the end of this last spring, Roberto Bolano's name was getting tossed around left and right by reviewers and critics from all the major and minor forums, from NPR and Harper's down to the Internet minions. For once, I'll have to concede to the hype. Bolano, a Chilean who vagabonded much of his life through South America, Mexico and Europe, ultimately dying in Spain of liver failure at the age of 50, considered himself to be a poet above all else. But man, did he write some mean fiction! Though the workers of this word industry have compared him to both Borges and Cortazar, I'd say that Bolano was a different beast altogether.
The Savage Detectives, the most recent of his novels to come out in translation, is a sprawling melancholy web that contains a broad cast of memorable characters (hormonal post-pubescent poets, flamboyant Mexican aesthetes, schizophrenic architects, Trotsky's granddaughter, ex-ballet dancing prostitutes, etc.) and few staggering prismatic shifts in narrative perspective. Where Borges has his head stuck in an ideal geometric maze and Cortazar has great wafts of Europe following his trail, Bolano has his feet firmly on Mexican soil and embraces its world of crooked politics, petty violence, promiscuity, mezcal haze, dope-addled reverie and scatological thought. The main thread through the novel is the tale of two young drug-peddling poets and their search through the Sonoran desert for a lost poetess whose sole published work they found in a dusty obscure avant-garde literary journal. The bulk of the book is a kaleidoscope off of that central kernel and goes out in every which way, both geographically and historically. Great stuff.
Also be sure to check out By Night In Chile, about a priest who moonlights as a literary critic who advises Allende while trying to prevent pigeons from destroying Europe's ancient churches, and Distant Star, about an elusive skywriting poet whose art has a sinister bent. All of it is wonderfully fantastic. Forthcoming is a translation of Bolano's unpublished final work, 2666, that sprawls even more over the course of some thousand plus pages. Watch out, Pynchon! http://www.thesavagedetectives.com/
Eat, Pray, Love
Reviewed by Sierra
God help me, I'm really enjoying this book, even though saying so makes me feel like I've just confessed to reading an entire year's worth of US Weekly instead of doing anything useful for the universe. Not to imply that Eat, Pray,Love is at all as shallow and meaning-free as good old US Weekly, but it is awfully popular, isn't it? And now I'm glad that everyone and their mother is reading it, because it's rife with the kind of emotional slapstick and self-deprecating wisdom I appreciate in my lady sages (although if Annie Lamott were any less of a kind-hearted human being, I can totally imagine her calling her lawyer up and demanding the immediate return of her quirky style and offbeat humor). Here's the one life-changing lesson I've learned from this book so far: I'm a giant snob, and I stand before you humiliated by my judgmental ignorance and determined to never again condemn a book simply because Oprah and eight kazillion other people think it's brilliant.
Netherland
Reviewed by Tony
Just finished "Netherland" and wanted to jot down a few impressions.
One is that I enjoyed reading this novel very much. O'Neill's
descriptive powers are awesome and images he creates linger on. The
title "Netherland" refers to Holland, where the narrator [and the
author] grew up, and also to New York State, which was the former
Dutch colony "New Netherland." But "Netherland" also means literally
"low land," as in the French term for Belgium and Holland "les pays
bas." This is the nadir of Hans van der Broek's life: his lawyer wife
has taken his son back to her parents' home in England, fleeing NYC in
the wake of the 9-11 attacks. [Her criticisms of the U.S. response to
these attacks are severe.] Hans wanders the island of Manhattan, lost
in his reveries of his childhood in Holland and his failed marriage,
until by chance he's reunited with an old beloved hobby from his
youth: the game of cricket. Thus enters the transitional figure Chuck
Ramkissoon, who leads Hans through a world so different from his own
that Hans is forced to confront himself via memories of childhood, his
mother, and his marriage to Rachel and to an ultimate decision to re-
take his life. A great read!
Stoner
Reviewed by Tony
Ever wonder why the most eccentric teachers were precisely the ones who inspired you the most?
I have to admit that when a friend first recommended this "novel from the sixties about a teacher in a university English department," with the title "Stoner," I had an image of Elliot Gould in sideburns and army camo jacket lighting up a joint with dazed, anti-war students and/or hippies.
Originally published in 1965, this novel was a sleeper classic. Not as well publicized as books by contemporary writers (Salinger, Mailer, Heller, Roth, Bellow, et. al.), Williams' novel is rather a calm, but emotionally powerful, finely detailed portrait of a gentle academic soul from an earlier generation.
Writing in the clean, spare, down-to-earth voice of the Midwest, Williams gives us what he calls "an escape into reality," that reality being the teaching career and complete adult life of Professor William Stoner: his overarching love of literature and teaching, a loveless marriage, and his struggles in not-so-benign Academia. Portraits of the novel's minor characters are also sharply drawn, like Stoner's emotionally frigid wife, Edith, or his nemesis, Hollis Lomax, the hunchback head of the English department with matinee idol face.
Besides Stoner and scholarly writings on Renaissance poetry, John Williams published two volumes of his own poetry and three other novels, each in a totally different setting and genre: the 1973 National Book Award-winning Augustus, Nothing But the Night, and even a western called Butcher's Crossing.
Personally, after reading Stoner, I am eager to "discover" his other novels. Williams' use of language is superb in its clarity and not to be missed.
Warning: Skip the novel's "Introduction" by John McGahern until after reading the novel. It's a plot-spoiler, totally misplaced and near-superfluous.
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