2011, Seedpod Publishing

Filed Under: Literary, Humor, Short-Run.

Here’s a pretty good set up for a short story: Wicker, a down-on-his-luck hitchhiker trying to get to Vegas, scores a ride from Edna, a senile retired school teacher looking for the Pacific Ocean. There’s plenty of comic potential in the contrast of characters, but more than that there’s an opportunity to explore the strange ways that people use one another, taking turns lending direction and meaning to each other’s lives, helping and being helped, exploiting and being exploited.

Scattershot is what happens when you stretch that premise into a rambling novel by adding an irrelevant subplot about Edna’s unhappy son, Andrew, and refusing to see her senility as little more than a punch line. She bumbles along, always certain that she’s doing just what she means to be doing, never doubting, never angry, never afraid, ready to follow Wicker wherever he thinks they should go. The problem is, once he loses his bankroll in Vegas, Wicker is just as aimless as she is.

After that, all the aptly named Scattershot has to offer is the impulsive leading the senile with the sad tagging along.

Don’t get me wrong: Scattershot doesn’t have much to offer before the story gets to Las Vegas either. Wicker has a few misadventures hitchhiking. Edna goes shopping. Andrew commutes in rush hour traffic. Nothing significant happens. It’s just that until that point, at least one of the main characters has a singular drive that gives the novel a sense of semi-coherence: Wicker needs to win some money to buy his few earthly possessions out of hock, including a wooden box holding his mother’s ashes.

It might almost be enough to make Wicker likable, or at least pitiable, if he ever actually seemed to care about his stuff, not to mention his mother’s remains. Instead, Wicker wins the money he needs, then loses it, then arranges to borrow it from Edna, then finally has a chance to make some money of his own, and (spoiler alert) he still never follows through on the plan to buy back his belongings. It turns out his stuff is just important enough to get him to go to Vegas to do some gambling; after that, he makes a few phone calls and forgets the whole thing.

So Edna doesn’t really care where she goes, and Wicker stops caring halfway through. What about Andrew? He seems intent on finding his mother, but that doesn’t stop him from taking time out from the search to ruin his marriage and cruise the strip in a rented Mustang convertible, sad and angry. He also contacts the police and hires a private detective, though nothing ever happens as a result of either, and Andrew’s too distracted with his marital problems to worry about whether or not the authorities are doing their job.

I might have been less frustrated by this book if I didn’t think there was a good idea buried somewhere beneath all the extraneous plot elements. When Edna first picked up Wicker, I felt a glimmer of hope. I saw how different they were and how desperate, and I thought maybe this could work. I still think it could, but as a 10-20 page short story. Right now, Scattershot is a 260 page collection of characters without motivation and incidents without plot. The closest the novel comes to a saving grace is the writing, which isn’t good but inoffensive; it never impresses but rarely grates the nerves either. Until Goodwin and his editors decide to take a chainsaw to the manuscript, and then run it through a dozen more rewrites, you can definitely pass on this one.

.

[A review was requested and a review copy provided.]

Author: Patton Oswalt

2011, Scribner

Filed under: Memoir, Humor

Get it at Powell’s

Anybody familiar with Patton Oswalt’s stand-up comedy career knows the man can spin a good yarn. His act is peppered with seemingly unrehearsed tangents, thoughtful wordplay, and absurdist ramblings that could be cobbled together and written down to form, at the very least, a collection of cracked-out short stories.

Oswalt’s success as a comedian relies on his ability to acutely observe the human condition and his willingness to root around in his own neurotic life, but it’s always a question whether the funnyman’s gift can function within the confines of a page as well as atop the stage in a dimly lit club. Oswalt answers well: the man can write, and his debut book, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland is hopefully the first of many more to come.

A word of warning: those expecting a light-hearted, funnyman’s romp may want to browse further along in the humor section of their local bookstore. Make no mistake, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland is a very funny book, but like Oswalt’s stand-up, the laughs come from a dark and truthful place. The book is a series of autobiographical essays, broken up from time to time by less serious “filler” material (a satirical wine tasting menu, punch-up notes on a fictional, idiotic comedy, etc). The essays detail Oswalt’s childhood and adolescence in the Washington D.C. suburb of Sterling, Virginia, his rocky road to a successful stand-up career, and his life in the entertainment-biz bubble of Los Angeles.

Nowhere in the book’s criminally short 192 pages does Oswalt forget that he’s a comedian. However, couched within tales of suburban wage-slave woe lurks a clear agenda. These memoirs are written with the express warning that our lives are miserably short, and becoming inert or satisfied with mediocrity is a criminally self-destructive act. Oswalt unflinchingly exposes his feelings towards those middling souls he has encountered on his journey to artistic fulfillment (equal parts contempt and heartache), but Zombie Spaceship Wasteland never feels angry or didactic.

In a chapter titled “Peter Renfola,” Oswalt discusses his complicated relationship with a mentally unhinged uncle, who, despite his own personal failings (or perhaps because of them), helped the author see past the neighborhoods he was born into. In a pivotal scene, Uncle Peter reads young Patton “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe:

…he read it like a little kid discovering it, making a poem about adult regret and loneliness seem like the greatest thing to a kid who thought coolness acted like the Fonz, sounded like Kiss, and rode a motorcycle like Evil Knievel.

It’s through passages like these that Oswalt brings new life to common coming-of-age memoir tropes. He continues:

Uncle Pete was the first one ever to heave open the gates that sealed ancient pages and make me suspect there were worlds within and without the world I was in. That there were worlds outside of the time I was living in. All of this he carried against his will, in his head. But unlike the other adults, with their resentments and their anxiousness or anger, he seemed eternally, uncontrollably entertained. I really envied him.

As the chapter concludes, the disparity in potential between the worlds raging in Uncle Pete’s head and his own insubstantial lot in life grows, affecting the young Oswalt most profoundly when he is informed of his favorite relative’s demise.

At this point in my life, I’d traveled over a fourth of the planet…I was still hungry to travel and move and create and connect—and I always will be—but I’ve got to admit something. There’s a little bit of Pete in me…I still don’t agree with spending a life the way Pete did, but I understand it and respect it. Who knows how many lives have been saved and villains vanquished by those who sat still?

Simultaneously conversational and elegant, Oswalt’s voice engages at a level that’s both persuasive and informative. Describing one of many revelations that led to his exodus from Virginia, Oswalt writes:

It’s only now, as I write it, on another coast, that I see what the time in the echo chamber of the ticket booth did. There were future musicians standing at the back of Fugazi shows, watching the band and the crowd and drinking in the pulsing thrum. They galvanized their identities while, at the same time, they bled faceless into the crowd, the band, the walls, and the memory of the evening. The book and the cassette tape—they did the same thing for me. People will find transformation and transcendence in a McDonald’s hash brown if it’s all they’ve got.

Encapsulated in these sentences is the overriding theme of Zombie Spaceship Wasteland: inspiration comes for us in the smallest of ways, and we have the power to self-start and improve our situation beyond our meager beginnings. While the memoir trope of “if I did it, so can you!” is as tried and true as they come, Oswalt’s examination feels fresh and encouraging, and in uncertain economic times, fledgling creative minds may find solace, and yes, inspiration, in the author’s words.

Similar reads: On Writing, by Steven King; Fargo Rock City, by Chuck Klosterman

Author: Patrick Somerville

2010, Featherproof Books

Filed under: Literary, Humor, Sci-Fi, Short Stories

Get a copy at Powell’s.

I know the pain of reading a book that’s been called “funny” because it offers nothing else, and I know how genuine comedy needs nothing else to captivate. And so I take it very seriously when I say that Patrick Somerville’s story collection, The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, is hilarious.

And while there’s a lot more to this collection, the nature and tone and quality of its humor is what makes it great. Unlike the straining, jesterly comedy of “comic novels” like The Sheriff of Yrnameer, Somerville’s humor doesn’t compromise the writing or the story, but only ever adds to it. For example, this passage, from the perspective of a young exisentialist trying to understand the world, who decides to go to church:

Suddenly there I am, sitting in a pew. Everyone stands up and sings from the book and I stand up with the book and move my mouth and pretend. I can feel the waxy lipstick smeared on my lips. So many sounds come out of us. We try to use our magic and tear open a portal that leads up to the center of the universe. We are attempting to speak to its core. We try for a few minutes, then sit down.

That’s not just a funny line, it’s an aching character looking for salvation where she should be looking for it, wanting it desperately, and being denied. Denial is a big part of the comedy here. Somerville doesn’t let anyone—not even himself—get away with anything. Like this moment, when the title of the collection comes up, and gets undercut immediately:

“I make models of little boys and sometimes their fathers making models of the solar system.”

…

“So you make the universe in miniature in miniature, then,” he says.

“No,” I say. “I make the solar system in miniature in miniature. But that’s close.”

When the young church-going woman from above talks to the priest after the service, he leaves her with this:

He nods, then squints across the room. “Not all those who wander are lost,” he says. He’s still squinting. I wonder if he’s practiced this squint—a squint-stare off into the metaphysical distance. I’m realizing he’s kind of handsome. But then again, it might just be that he cares about something.

“What is that?” I ask. “Did Jesus Christ say that?”

“No,” he says. “Bilbo Baggins said that.”

This humor comes not from a desire to entertain others, but from a need to relieve pain. Somerville’s characters are desperate and often facing down death or at least, as one character says, “a key moment in all lives—when the optimism of your dreams becomes stupid.”

It’s clear that Somerville has ambitious goals for this collection. In his acknowledgments, he says, “This book is an attempt at answering a handful of worrisome questions.” While there are a few quick stories that seem more like jokes—like the one about the alien spaceship captain who hits a wrong button and accidentally blows up the planet he was assigned to make contact with—the majority of these pieces use far-fetched premises and satirical characters in order to drill down into the deepest layers of human insecurity.

And so the awkward conversations a businessman has with his colleagues, with a waiter, with everyone—they are not awkward and funny to amuse us readers, they are awkward and funny because that’s the by-product of the businessman trying to stifle his aching loneliness any way he can. Because it’s that or get furious at the world, and his anger has already cost him his wife and son.

Here’s a passage from a story called “Hair University,” about a pair of balding friends:

“I’m a Norwood Six, Danny. Six.” He sips his soda dramatically. “Don’t talk to me about dangerous.”

He’s recently explained the Norwood Scale to me. Basically—and I’m assuming this was all thought up by a man named Norwood—there are varying degrees of baldness, and along the continuum are Norwoods 1 through 8. There’s even a 3A, which denotes, I believe, a very specific pattern of hairline-regression combined with crown-thinning. Different enough from Norwood 3 to get its own subcategory. Not unlike how you might measure cancer. What are you? I’m a Norwood 4. I don’t know whether this Norwood hung, shot, or drowned himself.

These two are not clowns, their lives are not comedies. The narrator jokes because he takes it so very seriously, and the prognosis is so very grim. One of these men is literally about to risk his life by undergoing a dangerous procedure because he just can’t stand being bald. It’s deeply comic and deeply tragic at the same time.

Interestingly, the last story, “The Machine For Understanding Other People,” is Universe’s least funny and its longest, at nearly 70 pages, but also quite possibly the best story of the collection. It’s a story about a weird contraption—like an old-timey diving helmet attached to a dowsing rod—that allows the wearer to understand other people on a deeply personal level (thus the title). It features the weakest Somerville joke by far (“says the messenger, whose name is (unfortunately) Dick Ball”), and yet it’s captivating in a way that none of the other stories can match.

Partly, it’s so good because its length allows its characters to develop more complexities, and partly because Somerville does not allow any of these stories to spin out a literary wishy-washy nothingness—they all drive hard toward the horizon. For instance, this last story features a woman who inherits billions of dollars and the assignment to make the world a better place; she starts by dumping 200 million dollars in gold bullion into the ocean, to create jobs for treasure hunters.

Beyond the frequently bizarre details, the universal throughline here is that Somerville’s fiction grows from characters. When those characters are funny (and even when they aren’t), it works because he never cracks jokes just to get laughs. In Universe, the characters are experiencing the most important, exhausting, nerve-wracking moments of their lives, and when they’re funny, that humor comes from the teetering precipice of the abyss.

Turns out the edge of the abyss can be pretty hilarious.

Similar Reads: CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, by George Saunders; Museum of the Weird, by Amelia Gray; The Knife Thrower, by Steven Millhauser

1997, Riverhead

Filed Under: Short Stories, Literary, Humor

George Saunders has one of the most recognizable writing styles today: zany, staccato, silly-serious. He is a well-known contemporary author, a regular with The New Yorker and a recipient of the MacArthur genius grant. There are some really great stories in here, emblematic of his work as a writer, and it’s awesomely entertaining to boot.

On the surface, Saunders’s stories seem downright wacky. In this collection you’ll find a 440-lb man picked on by his boss at a raccoon-disposal service, a historical reenactment village stalked by a murderous caretaker, and a post-apocalyptic picaresque novella. It would be easy to confuse the bizarre scenarios with allegory, and indeed, his stories are highly satirical. But rather than attempt to convey a lesson about obesity, corporate responsibility, or civil rights (respectively), etc., as could be easily inferred, the stories poke fun at us (Americans, mostly) through the tone and delivery.

Here’s a nice example of the world Saunders’s characters inhabit:

The Gleasons are regulars. They’ve got a tidy nest egg that allows them to patronize us three times a year. Mr. Gleason’s an undertaker. When the first wave of mass death swept over the Northeast he got rich by inventing the Mobile Embalmer. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of chemistry could preserve a loved one on the spot, and for a fraction of the cost associated with traditional methods.

The problem that arises in reading a collection of Saunders stories–this is true of all three–is that things begin to feel a bit repetitive. Namely, many or most of his stories take place in mundane-cum-absurd businesses overrun by anarchy. Things get out of control and a semi-likable doofus narrator tries to navigate the world Saunders tears down around him. They are endlessly imaginative and entertaining stories that he creates, yet they lose their freshness quicker than those of Saunders’s many contemporaries.

Still, the writing can be excellent:

We ran. We ran to the train tracks and lay on our backs, sick in our guts as the guiltless stars wheeled by. After no dance would we look up at them happily now. Norris’s soul whizzed through the highgrass. Chills broke out on my arms.

I strongly recommend any fan of short stories who hasn’t read Saunders pick up one of his collections immediately and jump right in. You’ll love it; Saunders really is a genius. I would also recommend taking your time with it. Taken on their own, almost any of these stories would indicate this book as a candidate for a Great Read, yet the collection as a whole I did not designate as such. His stories are best taken one at a time, rather than piled into a collection.

Similar Reads: Pastoralia (Saunders), In Persuasion Nation (Saunders), Welcome to the Monkey House (Vonnegut) 40 Stories (Barthelme), The Museum of the Weird (Gray)

2010, Quirk Classics

Filed Under: Sci-Fi, Humor

At least one of the following statements is true: 1) The “literary mash-up” genre had its flash-in-the-pan moment with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and is no longer interesting. 2) Ben H. Winters isn’t very good at writing literary mash-ups. I’m pretty sure the second is true, but I wouldn’t fight very hard if you argued for the first or both.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies worked because it altered and made grotesque a beloved classic. It read like the original, with some additions and alterations applied. This book, much like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, is a full rewrite, and feels like one written in a hurried, formulaic manner. In a lot of ways they remind me of those abridged classics they sold at Scholastic book fairs for $5 when I was in elementary school but with robots, or sea monsters included. This would have been awesome then. I don’t think it’s coincidental that the author of PaPaZ didn’t stick around to write more. I don’t have it on any authority, but I’m guessing he realized Quirk looked a lot more like people going to cash in than a legitimate publisher.

Basically, the plot is a love story with some robot jokes tossed in. Anna Karenina and her android, Android Karenina, leave their life with Anna’s stodgy cyborg husband and begin a love affair with the dashing Count Vronksy. In addition to the original love and betrayal, there are plenty of robotic distractions, such as the rather confusing nomenclature:

…a Roman numeral for class type, a function-designation, and an indication of model. Hence the I/Samovar/1(8) is a Class I device, designed to steep and serve tea, model number 1(8).

The whole thing feels so cookie cutter. Nothing creative and fresh is added. Instead Winters just swaps things for other things with robot-sounding names. At least in SaSaSM there were some epic sea creature battles which were at times used in humorous juxtaposition with the dry, romancing conversations. Here things are blander and less original. In SaSaSM, going to London for the social season was replaced with a trip to the undersea station. Here, going to St. Petersburg for the social season is replaced with a trip to the space station. Frankly, the routine is stale.

I recently read Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith, the author of PaPaZ. And while not a great book, it did a solid job of remaining interesting by pastiching styles–in this case horror/action and historical biography. That same creative blending of genres was exactly what shined in PaPaZ. This lacks that; it’s a retelling of the basic plot and characters, just dumbed down and altered without being improved. This is why I choose option 2 from earlier. PaPaZ kept intimate with its source material: it was written to be a send-up. This is a tired rehash.

There’s a new one of these coming out in May, The Meowmorphosis, which I wrote about yesterday. I shouldn’t have read this; I won’t be reading that. Instead of a bug, Gregor Samsa will turn into a cat. Ugh. Talk about babytown frolics.

Similar Reads: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Grahame-Smith) is good. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (Winters) not so much.

2010, Grand Central Publishing

Filed Under: Historical, Horror, Humor

Seth Grahame-Smith is the same guy who wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and it shows. This is a good thing, PPZ was excellent–a great mix of classic literature and zombie mayhem. The transition from “literary mash-up” to fake biography was a wise move–the Quirk books after PPZ have been disappointing. I lamented that Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (review) wasn’t as good because it was too inventive, and not true enough to its source. But basically I figured that Winters just wasn’t as good as Grahame-Smith. I’m currently about halfway through Android Karenina, also by Winters, and while it’s not all that good either, I’m realizing it’s not so much the author’s lack of talent but lack of novelty: a truly good horror/literary mash-up probably will only work once.

This book is not a drastic departure from its predecessor but it manages to feel fresh. ALVH is made of the same essence; I’d call it respectful parody. This novel is written in the manner of a biography, as if Lincoln’s secret journals fell into Grahame-Smith’s lap. It works well. (He said in an author interview he was inspired to write this because he found it curious seeing a bunch of Abe Lincoln bios sitting beside Twilight on a bookstore bestseller shelf.)

Here’s the basic gist of the story. Young Abe learns of vampires from his drunk father, whose own father was sucked dry by a vampire. Later, his first love is killed by one of the superhuman bloodsuckers. The years go on and Abe commits his life to the eradication of vampires. His motivations are explained further, and incorporate actual historical events and characters, but I won’t spoil them. His work in law and politics provides him plenty of cover for nighttime vampire hunts, whether traveling with a circuit court, campaigning, etc., he always finds some time to hunt out the blight. He mostly uses his father’s trusty axe. In short this book is actually what it purports to be, a story about an Abe Lincoln who is pretty badass.

He’s also kind of a dick, but, interestingly enough, a just one. I found this interesting mostly because it’s kind of the impression I already had of the real Lincoln. (I’ve never read a Lincoln bio, so my knowledge is basically a mix of Discovery Channel documentaries and remnants of 5th grade social studies class). There’s a good reason Lincoln biographies are so popular: even on the surface, actual Lincoln seems like a multifaceted character. He’s tender (namely from the stories of his, er, close relations with fellow soldiers), a hero emancipator, a calculating military leader, and gentle and down-to-earth Honest Abe. When you add to that a determination to rid the world of a race of maneaters one ax hack at a time, you’ve got yourself a complex character.

Then, of course, there’s the Civil War. Real life politics are twisted and threaded into the book’s vampire plot with a fairly skillfully. In Grahame-Smith’s history, the rich whites down of the South wanted slavery to remain primarily as part of a bargain with the vampires (to eat the slaves and spare the wealthy whites). This works pretty well for a plot. I had a bit of a problem in that it trivialized a bit for me the emanipation of slaves. Granted, a large part of the real emancipation was motivated politically and economically and not a moment solely motivated by human rights. But the added vampire plot changes this balance even more. Abe’s much more interested in removing the vampires than saving their food, no matter the skin color. I thought it could have been done better, but this is work of humor, not historical reportage.

So while it’s humor and not the type of book you’d pick up for great literary depth, the writing is good.  It reads convincingly enough like a professional biography. The action and horror scenes, as I’m sure you’re dying to know, are pleasingly gruesome and campy. If you read PPZ or you think it sounds awesome, you’ll like this book. If you read Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter in my post title and we’re intrigued at all, then you’ll like this book. It’s quick and fun and bloody, plus maybe you’ll learn something about our 16th president and his undead-slaying prowess.

[The review is of the unabridged audiobook version.]

Similar Reads: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Grahame-Smith), Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (Winter), The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (Ackroyd)

I nearly missed out on this book for the same reason I miss out on a lot of books, movies and music: If too many people like something, part of me starts to think it must suck. I don’t know why, but if more than three people, or any one person on television, recommend something I start rolling my eyes. Maybe it’s because I think that if something appeals to everyone it must be so watered-down and vanilla that people with no taste at all can enjoy it. The point is, I’m usually wrong and miss out on cool things. For this reason, I heard about A Confederacy of Dunces long before I read it. A friend demanded I read Confederacy repeatedly, and after finally reading it, I’m ashamed to say how long he badgered me before his recommendation took. So if you haven’t read this book for the same reason, do yourself a favor and get a copy. You won’t be sorry.

This book is hard to categorize, or even sum up, which may be why it’s hard to recommend. It’s nearly plotless, and the main character, Ignatious Rielly, is one of the most obnoxious characters in literature. Here’s a brief except from the opening scene, where a police officer asks the conspicuous and elephantine Ignatious for identification at a shopping mall. To which Ignatious replies:

“Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capitol of the civilized world?” Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. “This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, Antichrists, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft. If you have a moment, I shall discuss the crime problem with you, but don’t make the mistake of bothering me.”

This short exchange tells us everything about the character, and this book. Ignatius has a ready list of “degenerates” -everyone from Antichrists to litterbugs and lesbians- a group in which, although he repeats it moments before beating the same police officer with a roll of sheet music and lute string, he does not recognize himself. It is his arrogance and self-delusion which drive this novel and, ironically, what makes him so sympathetic.

Describing the attraction of watching someone like Reilly is as difficult as describing the novel. A Confederacy of Dunces is a throw-back, the same as its protagonist: There is no real plot-arc, no meta-fictional devices, and it is not tied to any celebrities or historical event (except perhaps, now, the cannon of pre-Katrina New Orleans literature, the same as The Moviegoer, whose author saved this novel from oblivion). Trying to apply the Heroe’s Journey Template to this novel would be as absurd as Ignatious -which, along with the curse, might explain why it has never been filmed. It is a picturesque series of events, loosely connected, involving charters so weird in their own unique ways each seems entirely real. Reilly is the first character we meet, but his supporting cast often steals the show, and upstaging a giant, bellowing, arrogant anachronism is no easy task.

I think anyone who recommends this book does so urgently, as I do, and so the mania can seem off-putting. So here’s a link to the book on Amazon. Please don’t buy it there. Instead, go into the “Look Inside” function and browse the first few pages, then buy it at a local book store when you can’t stop reading. Do it right now. Before you miss out on something cool.