I had willfully and successfully avoided Benjamin Kunkel's Indecision since its publication, until a rainy day in late July where I ducked into a Barnes & Noble to avoid getting too wet. Suckered in.
There, having set my alibi, and allowing for a few more swipes, I can say that it wasn't half bad - and a success in that it was entirely recognizable. From its characterization of twenty-something aimlessness in an increasingly forgiving New York City (the unnecessary and aging spectre of 9/11 non-withstanding), to its portraits of the beer and pot, and occasional pharmaceutical indulgent (some self-medicating, some prescribed), to workplace boredom, underemployment, and the legacy of being over-educated, under-employed, with too-high expectations and too-low tolerance for the bill-paying mechanics of life, well, friends were indicted. Some fleetingly, through one telling detail or another, and some completely and damningly. So there it is, well done.
Heavy touches do exist, starting with the overbearing Wittgenstein quote that sets the novel (hopefully a joke in itself), the 9/11 reference, the pathetic father and son scene, and the Westchester-Bennington-Middlebury solipsism of the whole affair - which lays the mostly sympathetic Dwight at the bored and unsympathetic feet of class antipathy. All of this is, of course, entwined the novel itself - as it both succeed at and suffers from being too smart. But Kunkel has the saving grace, neatly referred within the narrative itself, of recognizing that a short book is always better than a long one, that a short, good book is better than a long, good book, and a short, bad one a godsend. So Indecision is slim, and also a quick and compelling read. You might get bored reading about your friends, you might be interested reading about your sons. Having finally paged through the novel, I think it is worth your time.
Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero is another matter. Another author I have been avoiding, another book purchased on the same fateful rainy afternoon. What a moment of weakness.
Less Than Zero has four things going for it. First, Ellis wrote it when he was 21, if the author's note is to be believed. Which is impressive. Second, you can imagine that Rip is James Spader and Julian is Robert Downey, Jr. Which makes the characters more fun and less horrible. Third, I generally give thumbs up to books that start with rock lyrics, certainly over philosopher's quotations. Fourth, the Vintage Contemporaries paperback edition is beautiful. Slim, neatly bound, white with a fading sepia-toned photograph of Los Angeles disappearing into a smoggy haze, and then into the eggshell white of the cover itself, with a barely visible raised-type title.
Beautiful, but vapid. Like the characters in the novel. Dysfunctional and unlikeable. The Michiko Kakatuni quote on the cover is baffling, "One of the most disturbing novels I've read in a long time. It possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality."
Maybe I was just too young, but were people in the Reagan eighties really that awful? That the rich and young in LA were constantly coked-out, alternately rapists and forced into prostitution, dropping out of prestigious colleges to model or deal drugs, bored and boring, vain and stupid, strung out, wrecking cars and lives, with absentee parents, absentee siblings, and absentee friends? If so, I guess that Less Than Zero is successful in documenting that awfulness. But my guess is that the novel is a bit of glam and a bit of fancy, and that the revolting sheen is as much for pleasure as for insight. And if we're not damning the children of Reagan's eighties specifically, but just of Los Angeles, California, and the mythical west, broadly, well, Nathanael West and Joan Didion (among others) did it better, more artfully, more realistically, and more brutally, and Less Than Zero is deeply indebted, in content, structure, and style to both. So while I won't mind putting the beautiful design object that is the paperback version on my shelf, I can't recommend it, and don't plan on diving further into the Ellis body of work.
There, having set my alibi, and allowing for a few more swipes, I can say that it wasn't half bad - and a success in that it was entirely recognizable. From its characterization of twenty-something aimlessness in an increasingly forgiving New York City (the unnecessary and aging spectre of 9/11 non-withstanding), to its portraits of the beer and pot, and occasional pharmaceutical indulgent (some self-medicating, some prescribed), to workplace boredom, underemployment, and the legacy of being over-educated, under-employed, with too-high expectations and too-low tolerance for the bill-paying mechanics of life, well, friends were indicted. Some fleetingly, through one telling detail or another, and some completely and damningly. So there it is, well done.
Heavy touches do exist, starting with the overbearing Wittgenstein quote that sets the novel (hopefully a joke in itself), the 9/11 reference, the pathetic father and son scene, and the Westchester-Bennington-Middlebury solipsism of the whole affair - which lays the mostly sympathetic Dwight at the bored and unsympathetic feet of class antipathy. All of this is, of course, entwined the novel itself - as it both succeed at and suffers from being too smart. But Kunkel has the saving grace, neatly referred within the narrative itself, of recognizing that a short book is always better than a long one, that a short, good book is better than a long, good book, and a short, bad one a godsend. So Indecision is slim, and also a quick and compelling read. You might get bored reading about your friends, you might be interested reading about your sons. Having finally paged through the novel, I think it is worth your time.
Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero is another matter. Another author I have been avoiding, another book purchased on the same fateful rainy afternoon. What a moment of weakness.
Less Than Zero has four things going for it. First, Ellis wrote it when he was 21, if the author's note is to be believed. Which is impressive. Second, you can imagine that Rip is James Spader and Julian is Robert Downey, Jr. Which makes the characters more fun and less horrible. Third, I generally give thumbs up to books that start with rock lyrics, certainly over philosopher's quotations. Fourth, the Vintage Contemporaries paperback edition is beautiful. Slim, neatly bound, white with a fading sepia-toned photograph of Los Angeles disappearing into a smoggy haze, and then into the eggshell white of the cover itself, with a barely visible raised-type title.
Beautiful, but vapid. Like the characters in the novel. Dysfunctional and unlikeable. The Michiko Kakatuni quote on the cover is baffling, "One of the most disturbing novels I've read in a long time. It possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality."
Maybe I was just too young, but were people in the Reagan eighties really that awful? That the rich and young in LA were constantly coked-out, alternately rapists and forced into prostitution, dropping out of prestigious colleges to model or deal drugs, bored and boring, vain and stupid, strung out, wrecking cars and lives, with absentee parents, absentee siblings, and absentee friends? If so, I guess that Less Than Zero is successful in documenting that awfulness. But my guess is that the novel is a bit of glam and a bit of fancy, and that the revolting sheen is as much for pleasure as for insight. And if we're not damning the children of Reagan's eighties specifically, but just of Los Angeles, California, and the mythical west, broadly, well, Nathanael West and Joan Didion (among others) did it better, more artfully, more realistically, and more brutally, and Less Than Zero is deeply indebted, in content, structure, and style to both. So while I won't mind putting the beautiful design object that is the paperback version on my shelf, I can't recommend it, and don't plan on diving further into the Ellis body of work.
1 comment:
Watch it again for Owen Wilson's uncredited cameo....spooky' 20 years since I saw it in the theatre and I was only watching it to see how far RDJ has come and boom...there's Wilson
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