Stranger than Fiction: Lives of the 20th Century Novel (2024) by Edwin Frank

 Book Review

Stranger Than Fiction: 

Lives of the 20th Century Novel (2024)

by Edwin Frank

   There was probably no one on EARTH more excited about the prospect of reading Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the 20th Century Novel:  A book pitched at a general reader offering a meandering stroll through some subjective highlights from the 20th century literary canon? Yes please!   Because I was so excited, someone considering reading this book shouldn't be put off by the fact that I ultimately felt disappointed by Stranger Than Fiction.  I certainly appreciated the premise, and enjoyed certain chapters, but on the whole I finished without having added significantly to my thoughts about the 20th century novel. 

   Or maybe it's more the case that the blog format doesn't allow me to do this book justice.  I think to really appreciate Stranger Than Fiction I would have to buy a copy (I checked out the e-book from the library) and really mark it up, make marginal notations, etc.  Then I would need someone to talk about this book with, someone who has read as much as the author.  

   One of the things I did think about after reading was Frank's idea that the 20th century novel was in conversation with itself from the very beginning.  His best illustration of this was the dialogue that publisher/critic/author Virginia Woolf had with James Joyce and Ulysses, a book she did not like.  Here we are, right in the center of the genesis/apogee of the 20th century novel and one major author hates the work of another major author.  

    

Dry Bones in the Valley (2014) by Tim Bouman

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Dry Bones in the Valley (2014)

by Tim Bouman

Susquehanna Municipality, Franklin Forks, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania: 5/27

  Dry Bones in the Valley is another regional police procedural set in the Pennstucky, i.e. the Pennsylvania Appalachians.   Unlike the Amish-country set snoozer from yesterday,  Dry Bones in the Valley is more interesting, if only because of the frequent and animated presence of guns, gun fire and gun play on nearly every page.  It turns out the people in this part of the country really like their guns.  All kind of guns- pistols, rifles and even muzzle loaded muskets, which play an important part in unravelling one of the two murders that must be solved.

   Bouman does an excellent job of evoking this unfamiliar (to me, anyway) part of the country, with plenty of well described walks in different landscapes. There isn't a great deal of tension that the murder victim remains a john doe up until the case is actually solved, which guts many of the emotions a reader might invest in a book of this genre.  There is very little building of the case and then the solving at the end reads like something out of an Encyclopedia Brown book, but still, I did enjoy this relative to other examples of detective fiction in the 1,001 Novels project.

Just Plain Murder (2018) by Laura Bradford

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Just Plain Murder (2018)

by Laura Bradford

Paradise, Pennsylvania 

Pennsylvania: 4/27

   Editor Susan Straight loves herself a regional detective novel, so I wasn't surprised that "Amish Country" is represented in the 1,001 Novels project by, yes, you guessed it, a detective novel set in Amish country.  Straight calls this "an engrossing debut" in her map copy but this was honestly one of my least favorite books in the entire 1,001 Novels project.  The narrator is not the detective himself but rather his girlfriend, a thirty-something who has retreated to Amish country to run a small tchotchke store after her marriage in New York City broke up.   There is less action in Just Plain Murder than your average coming of age book about an underprivileged girl growing up in the urban Northeast- and fewer murders.  When the mystery is finally solved, the reader is likely to be struck by the over-all weakness of the entire book. And so much talk about this sad ladies feelings. 

Juice (2024) by Tim Winton

 Book Review

Juice (2024)

by Tim Winton

  Juice is a well-regarded new novel by Australian author Tim Winton- it hasn't been released inside the US yet, though you can buy an international version on Amazon in semi-bootleg fashion.  I picked up the hardback during my recent visit to Ireland.  Juice is the story of an un-named narrator from future Australia who has been captured by another nameless survivor as he seeks a resting spot with a similarly un-named little girl.  As he sits in his cage, trying to talk his way out of what feels like certain doom, he narrates his past in chapter sized portions, with his interlocutory frequently commenting on his chattiness.  The frame of the story isn't great, but the story itself:  About surviving in the post-global warming north of Australia as a homesteader and agent for an anarchist band of fighters seeking to extirpate the remainders of the old world order, is.

    Winton combines a well-researched understanding of homesteading in the wastes of Australia with a decent grasp of human emotion and a vision of far-future life that sounds extremely plausible.  Great horrors are hinted at but rarely described, rather Winton produces a survival narrative punctuated with episodes of astonishing violence- a savvy combination that had me wondering if Juice had been purchased by Apple/Netflix/HBOmax for a tv version before it even came out in the US.  It's not hard to imagine the events of Juice being transferred to the American southwest or a post-global warming great plains- one of the critical episodes even takes place in the well-described Utah wilderness.   American fans of clim-fic would be well advised to watch for the American release, sure to be forthcoming, or even pick up the semi-bootleg foreign editions for sale at Amazon right now.

She's Always Hungry (2024) by Eliza Clark

 Audiobook Review

She's Always Hungry (2024)

by Eliza Clark

   I'm pretty sure I read about She's Always Hungry in the Guardian, though it also got a great capsule review in the horror column of the New York Times book review which called it one of the "best collections of the year, horror or otherwise."  I agree with that assessment and Clark reminds me of one of the wave of Latin American authors- Mariana Enriquez. Samantha Schweblin and Fernanda Melchor- who use horror motifs to write what is essentially literary fiction in a scare-suit.  I really enjoyed listening to this Audiobook- particularly those stories narrated by the Author herself, where she comes across as a mix between Sally Rooney and R.F. Kuang.

    Unusually for a short story collection, they all landed with me. That tells me that Clark is very good at getting herself into and out of set-ups without leaving the reader confused (too little information) or bored (too much).  Highly recommend this collection and excited for whatever comes next from Eliza Clark(English)

Old School (2003) by Tobias Wolff

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Old School (2003)

by Tobias Wolff

Pottstown, Pennsylvania 

Pennsylvania: 3/27

   The way the Pennsylvania picks for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America are arranged geographically, there is a heavy concentration inside the triangle of Philadelphia, Lancaster and Allentown, weighted towards Philly.  There's are no picks from the entire Northwest quadrant of the state, and then a smattering of titles between Philly and Pittsburgh.   Old School, set at a prep school, is located smack in the center of the eastern triangle of titles and it is also notable because Tobias Wolff, is, astonishingly, the first author to be selected twice in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of American project.  Wolff, of course, is already in the 1,001 Novels project representing New Jersey with another school (university) set title, The Final Club.

   I actually enjoyed Old School- I picked it out because it was available as an Audiobook selection- because it involves real life authors visiting this fictious school and thus engages with popular-American literary culture circa the late 1950's early 1960's, as witnessed by a student at the school- the narrator.  The Final Club (1990) and this book were written a decade apart.  If you look at his Amazon Author page, this book is his third top title and The Final Club is out of print, so.  

   I really liked reading/hearing about Ayn Rand and Hemingway as characters, and the thoughts that these characters had about them, although there is nothing ground-breaking as far as actual insight goes, it makes the prep-school centered plot less insufferable than it would have otherwise been (see my review of The Final Club.) 

Language City (2024) by Ross Perlin

Audiobook Review

Language City (2024)

by Ross Perlin

    I hesitate to out myself as a fan of language and languages given the lack of broad audience appeal for this sort of contact.  I'm not a die hard language guy, and I'm not a specialist in the field but I have a general interest in the study of languages that extends beyond engaging with Duolingo (Spanish, Chinese(Mandarin) and Irish).   I checked the Audiobook of Language City, written by a linguistic scholar for a general audience, after I read the New York Times review.  It wasn't a rave, but the subject matter and the idea of hearing this book, rather than reading it, made me go for it.  

   Language City is narrated by the author, a linguistic scholar with ties to... I think... Columbia University, in the field of ethno-linguistic preservation studies.   Certainly, with the exception of the recounting of certain preservation related field-trips to the foothills of the Himalayas, Language City is New York, and the idea of the book is to give a mixed view of the past and present vis a vis New York being the absolute apogee of world linguistic diversity.   Some the chapters are about hardcore linguistic preservation efforts with which the author is utterly engaged and other chapters, the chapter on Yiddish, for example, is more about the history of languages in the New York City.  

   I enjoyed Language City  as an Audiobook, because, as I suspected, Perlin himself has recordings he himself made on these different languages, and listening to the Audiobook allows the reader to hear those recordings, instead of just reading about them on the page.  Add that as an exhibit to the ongoing "Are Audiobooks actually as good as written books/do they count?" debate. 

God's Pocket (1983) by Pete Dexter

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

God's Pocket (1983)

by Pete Dexter

Devil's Pocket, South Philadelphia Pennsylvania 

Pennsylvania: 2/27

       Still finishing up the last chapter in print, but I'm on to the next chapter in Audiobook, and I actually enjoyed God's Pocket, which is about a South Philadelphia construction murder who is murdered on the job (deservedly so, many would say) and the consequences in its aftermath.  Pete Dexter is a newspaper columnist turned novelist, most known for winning the National Book Award in 1988 for his novel Paris Trout.  His last novel was published in 2009, and I'm guessing he is retired given his lack of recent publishing activity.   The most interesting aspect of this book for me is the character of the urban newspaper columnist- a role which had quite a run in the 20th century as an arbiter of urban intellectualism in many US cities but which has (sadly?) fallen by the wayside. 

      I thought God's Pocket would be a good Audiobook because of the working-class, Philadelphia accents, and I was not wrong.  At a little over six hours, it made for quick listen and it gave me the thought to go look up the 2014 movie, which starred Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Disturbance (2020) by Phillipe Lançon

 Book Review

Disturbance (2020)

by Phillipe Lançon

  Phillipe Lançon is a French journalist who was injured during the Charlie Hebdo Islamicist shooting.  Basically, he had the lower half of his face shot off.  Disturbance details his recovery. I actually hadn't heard about Disturbance until I read Houellebecq's latest novel, Annihilation, which involves a similar kind of situation with a severe facial trauma.  Houellebecq's narrator/protagonist references Disturbance repeatedly and after finishing Annihilation it occurred to be that Disturbance might well be the better book and indeed, it was. 

   Lancon narrates his excruciating tale with the kind of sang-froid and aplomb that a reader expects from a member of the French intellectual class.  Yes, he had the lower half of his face shot off by an Islamicist angry about a cartoon but that won't stop him from thinking and philosophizing his was out of his situation- close to a year of surgery and rehabilitation often in circumstances of constant, excruciating discomfort.  A typical reader could only imagine, but thanks to Lancon, they do not have to. Rather, you get every detail- and Disturbance is not a short book- along with equally contemplative musings about the people around Lancon- his girlfriend, his ex, his family, the surgeon. 

Polostan (2024) by Neal Stephenson

 Audiobook Review

Polostan (2024)

by Neal Stephenson

   Neal Stephenson is probably my favorite author of popular/genre fiction.  He doesn't aspire to literary fiction status, but he is a genuinely inventive writer of  popular fiction, whether it be in his science fiction past or his thriller/dystopia/historical fiction present.   The thing about Neal Stephenson novels is that the reader is never bored by the ideas or the action, even when his books extend to lengths well beyond what is standard in the book industry.  Cryptonomicon, his representative on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list, has a 40 hour plus length Audiobook edition.   Unfortunately, someone has gotten wise at his publisher because Polostan arrives as a clearly marked "Volume 1" of something called the "Bomb Light" cycle.   I'm assuming that the entire cycle is centered on the protagonist of Polostan: Dawn Rae Bjornsen, a plucky with a capital p early 20th century Communist/Anarchist of mixed Russian/American ancestry.  

   This book essentially sets up her backstory:  An early childhood in post-Revolutionary Russia, girlhood in America with her Russian-agent Dad during the Great Depression and then back to Russia after a series of adventures as a young woman.  The "present" of volume 1 finds her held captive by Russian intelligence as they evaluate her potential use as an agent.  Polostan uses a series of flashbacks as Dawn is vetted by the predecessor of the KGB.   Even knowing this going in, I wasn't angry, since it is, indeed, a chore to take on a thousand page novel, as is usually the case with Stephenson.  

  It's hard not to consider the impact of English writer of speculative fiction China Miéville, who is well known for introducing Marxist-Leninist/Communist/Anarchist themes into his speculative fiction, on Stephenson's choice of theme.  Stephenson is firmly in spy/espionage/thriller territory here, there isn't a single whiff of science-fiction in this book.  A reader might be advised to wait for whatever film/tv edition this series generates before reading the book.