Indecision, Benjamin Kunkel
Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis
The New, New Thing, Michael Lewis
Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee
Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo
Class Matters, Correspondents of the New York Times
J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace was in so many ways foreign to me, and all the more compelling for it. The first third of the novel introduces us to David Lurie, Professor of Communications at a Cape Town technical university, and chronicles his attempts to satisfy his desires and find sexual release within the constraints of his fifty-something, divorced lifestyle. Unsatisfied by his employment, where he is unable to engage his disaffected students in his deep poetic and literary interests, notably Keats, and perhaps slightly past his prime as a once rakish and successful womanizer, Lurie twice transgresses in what is left of his love life. First, when he accidentally encroaches on the anonymity demanded by the profession of a prostitute he has established a patronage of, and then again when he lures a young student of his into a brief, illicit affair.
The second of these affairs calls the wrath of the university, and in the novel's thematic concerns, a new cultural sensibility, crashing down on his head. Obstinate in his defense, admitting guilt to the act but unwilling to join the parade of his own condemnation, Lurie is forced into the hinterlands, to visit with his estranged daughter Lucy. Where the desires of an old but still virile codger are recognizable but not resonant for me (yet), it is in this visit to Lucy's farm, and the introduction of the cultural tensions specific to South Africa that Disgrace begins to move into deeper, bolder, and more foreign territory.
An event of horrific and gut-wrenching violence pivots the narrative, tenor, and impact of the book sharply - as both Lucy and David fall victim to an attack that is set in high contrast against the historical racial and colonial tensions of the country. In David and Lucy's approaches to coping with this event, as David finds himself further and further estranged from everything he thought he knew, Disgrace explores multiple layers of human conflict: of a man, a Romantic, in a world increasingly un-accommodating of that romance, of the difficulty of creating art in a world lacking in audiences, of men connecting with women, and of fathers connecting with daughters, and of course, against it all, of South Africa convulsing against its own legacy.
The power of the novel will be evident upon a read, and better yet, Disgrace is, for lack of a better word, a bit of a page turner, pushing the reader quickly through the narrative as it evolves from the kernel of one man's dissent with love and explodes into its historical and cultural themes. Completely recommended.
Class Matters, the collection of essays on class in America from New York Times columnists, is thoroughly engaging from start to finish. Tracing the evolution of class in America, mixing statistical analysis on economic standing with perceptions of class, mobility, and privilege, and surrounding those analyses with touching and illuminating case studies, portraits, and anecdotes, Class Matters is a provoking read. Of particular interest, and themes that I hope to return to soon, or the gaps between perception of class and economic standing, the leveling of those material signifiers of class in America as credit has allowed us to buy more things, and those things we buy are more common and more accessible, the binds between class and race, and class and immigration to this country, and class and the urban/suburban divide. Rich in data, analysis, and anecdote, Class Matters was excellent.
Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis is a slim volume that attempts to ask big questions about contemporary post-millenial, globalized and terrorized America. The novel's success is dubious. Chronicling a day in the life (and eventual and impending death) of Eric Packer, a 28-year old buy-you-and-sell-you billionaire, as he tries to cross Manhattan from east to west, Cosmopolis is a stilted, forced narrative that is much more about ideas than characters or plot, and even given that, about ideas that seem hardly as relevant or pressing as DeLillo seems to believe. All in all, disappointing, and even more so in contrast to a novel like White Noise, that managed to create full characters and a compelling narrative while also engaging some of the big ideas of the day.
The twin pairing of Benjamin Kunkel's Indecision and Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero, both novels about lost generations of privileged American youth - in post-millenial New York, and in Reagan's Los Angeles, were devoured over a week-long business trip to Chicago early in the month. I've written about both already, and have nothing further to say about Less Than Zero, which I enjoyed not at all, at any level, and would certainly suggest you spend two hours watching the movie rather than the four hours it takes to read the book, if you are forced to. Kunkel's novel proves a bit more difficult. With a few weeks remove, I find it engaging, pretty smart, and an enjoyable-enough read. But I am still unconvinced of its final value, as the story wasn't that good, the characters were a bit too archetypal of people who aren't really archetypes, and a lot of smart pontificating was force-fit onto a somewhat unnecessary frame. So I am going to have to leave it filed under 'not bad,' although I have a nagging feeling that it deserves better. Or worse.
Michael Lewis' The New New Thing rounded out the month's reading list. While Michael Lewis is one of my favorite authors, The New New Thing was disappointing overall, largely as it served as hagiography of Jim Clark without really understanding or explaining what dynamics drive the successes and failures of innovation in an era, Silicon Valley during the Boom, that seems increasingly consequential, all of the rampant silliness aside. But you can read more about my take on the book over at the other blog.
All in all, a productive month of reading, if there was less of the highest quality work than I would have liked - largely determined by my predisposition to buy slim novels with nice covers, and my binge spending on books when forced into bookstores in airports or on rainy afternoons.
Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis
The New, New Thing, Michael Lewis
Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee
Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo
Class Matters, Correspondents of the New York Times
J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace was in so many ways foreign to me, and all the more compelling for it. The first third of the novel introduces us to David Lurie, Professor of Communications at a Cape Town technical university, and chronicles his attempts to satisfy his desires and find sexual release within the constraints of his fifty-something, divorced lifestyle. Unsatisfied by his employment, where he is unable to engage his disaffected students in his deep poetic and literary interests, notably Keats, and perhaps slightly past his prime as a once rakish and successful womanizer, Lurie twice transgresses in what is left of his love life. First, when he accidentally encroaches on the anonymity demanded by the profession of a prostitute he has established a patronage of, and then again when he lures a young student of his into a brief, illicit affair.
The second of these affairs calls the wrath of the university, and in the novel's thematic concerns, a new cultural sensibility, crashing down on his head. Obstinate in his defense, admitting guilt to the act but unwilling to join the parade of his own condemnation, Lurie is forced into the hinterlands, to visit with his estranged daughter Lucy. Where the desires of an old but still virile codger are recognizable but not resonant for me (yet), it is in this visit to Lucy's farm, and the introduction of the cultural tensions specific to South Africa that Disgrace begins to move into deeper, bolder, and more foreign territory.
An event of horrific and gut-wrenching violence pivots the narrative, tenor, and impact of the book sharply - as both Lucy and David fall victim to an attack that is set in high contrast against the historical racial and colonial tensions of the country. In David and Lucy's approaches to coping with this event, as David finds himself further and further estranged from everything he thought he knew, Disgrace explores multiple layers of human conflict: of a man, a Romantic, in a world increasingly un-accommodating of that romance, of the difficulty of creating art in a world lacking in audiences, of men connecting with women, and of fathers connecting with daughters, and of course, against it all, of South Africa convulsing against its own legacy.
The power of the novel will be evident upon a read, and better yet, Disgrace is, for lack of a better word, a bit of a page turner, pushing the reader quickly through the narrative as it evolves from the kernel of one man's dissent with love and explodes into its historical and cultural themes. Completely recommended.
Class Matters, the collection of essays on class in America from New York Times columnists, is thoroughly engaging from start to finish. Tracing the evolution of class in America, mixing statistical analysis on economic standing with perceptions of class, mobility, and privilege, and surrounding those analyses with touching and illuminating case studies, portraits, and anecdotes, Class Matters is a provoking read. Of particular interest, and themes that I hope to return to soon, or the gaps between perception of class and economic standing, the leveling of those material signifiers of class in America as credit has allowed us to buy more things, and those things we buy are more common and more accessible, the binds between class and race, and class and immigration to this country, and class and the urban/suburban divide. Rich in data, analysis, and anecdote, Class Matters was excellent.
Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis is a slim volume that attempts to ask big questions about contemporary post-millenial, globalized and terrorized America. The novel's success is dubious. Chronicling a day in the life (and eventual and impending death) of Eric Packer, a 28-year old buy-you-and-sell-you billionaire, as he tries to cross Manhattan from east to west, Cosmopolis is a stilted, forced narrative that is much more about ideas than characters or plot, and even given that, about ideas that seem hardly as relevant or pressing as DeLillo seems to believe. All in all, disappointing, and even more so in contrast to a novel like White Noise, that managed to create full characters and a compelling narrative while also engaging some of the big ideas of the day.
The twin pairing of Benjamin Kunkel's Indecision and Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero, both novels about lost generations of privileged American youth - in post-millenial New York, and in Reagan's Los Angeles, were devoured over a week-long business trip to Chicago early in the month. I've written about both already, and have nothing further to say about Less Than Zero, which I enjoyed not at all, at any level, and would certainly suggest you spend two hours watching the movie rather than the four hours it takes to read the book, if you are forced to. Kunkel's novel proves a bit more difficult. With a few weeks remove, I find it engaging, pretty smart, and an enjoyable-enough read. But I am still unconvinced of its final value, as the story wasn't that good, the characters were a bit too archetypal of people who aren't really archetypes, and a lot of smart pontificating was force-fit onto a somewhat unnecessary frame. So I am going to have to leave it filed under 'not bad,' although I have a nagging feeling that it deserves better. Or worse.
Michael Lewis' The New New Thing rounded out the month's reading list. While Michael Lewis is one of my favorite authors, The New New Thing was disappointing overall, largely as it served as hagiography of Jim Clark without really understanding or explaining what dynamics drive the successes and failures of innovation in an era, Silicon Valley during the Boom, that seems increasingly consequential, all of the rampant silliness aside. But you can read more about my take on the book over at the other blog.
All in all, a productive month of reading, if there was less of the highest quality work than I would have liked - largely determined by my predisposition to buy slim novels with nice covers, and my binge spending on books when forced into bookstores in airports or on rainy afternoons.
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