June 2008 Archives

While good, Amulet just isn't as amazing (or genre-defining) as The Savage Detectives. These days I'm a little less into the first-person stream-of-consciousness slightly-unreliable/delusional rant, a category into which this novel definitely falls. So I admit it's personal preference. The main character in Amulet, Auxilio Lacouture, the self-proclaimed "mother of Mexican poetry," recalls important events from her life, spiraling around the week(s) she spent hidden in a university bathroom when the military took over the campus.

There's a lot in this book that I didn't quite grasp the first time around. I think it would require me to read it at least one more time (if not two or three) to piece all the events together and understand how they fully impact each other. However, I didn't enjoy the book quite enough to go through that process.

There are a couple of funny stories about this book.

1) I left it in a hotel room while on a business trip and had to read the last thirty pages while standing in a Barnes & Nobles. That's the less funny/interesting story of the two.

2) I pre-ordered this book from Amazon.com after having read a short story by Rivka Galchen in the New Yorker. I hardly ever finish reading the short stories in the New Yorker, not even the ones by authors I love. I loved her story, however. I loved it enough such that I (a) finished reading it, (b) checked out the author bio in the front of the magazine, (c) saw that she had her first book coming out soon, and (d) pre-ordered that book from Amazon.com. But then, AFTER having pre-ordered it, I re-read the description and thought to myself, "This book concept sounds very familiar. Eerily familiar. As if I've heard someone describe it to me before." So I sent an e-mail to a friend of mine and asked her, "By any chance, are you friends with Rivka Galchen and did I meet her at a holiday party in NYC thrown by your in-laws two years ago?" And, sure enough, I had met Rivka Galchen at the holiday party thrown by my friend's in-laws two years ago, and at that party Rivka Galchen described to me the novel she was writing.

Anyway, the book is excellent, and it's excellence has nothing to do with the fact that I met the author briefly at a party two years ago. I'm looking forward to reading more by her in the future.

I suppose I should write an actual review, but my blog hasn't really been up to reviewing books lately. It's hardly been up to tracking the books I've read.

You can read Galchen's New Yorker short story, The Region of Unlikeness, on the New Yorker website.

Having enjoyed Post Office, I picked up the next Chinaski book by Bukowski. I bought it in New Jersey when I went to visit my father for his birthday.
I'm not sure if it's supposed to a continuation/prequel to Post Office, or if it's just the same character imagined in a different life. I suppose I could look it up, and probably will at some point, but I don't really care. I also enjoyed this book (and read it in a day).

I left my book in a hotel room, and so, with nothing to read, I entered the airport bookstore with the slim hope that they would have something available that I could stomach. I picked up Bukowski's Post Office, as he is an author I've been meaning to read for a while. I loved it. It's a drunken view of a man's life in the postal service, but unlike so many other books that follow drunken, nihilistic, foolish characters, this one is actually good.

Here's the common problem books of this nature typically have: The protagonists are just buffeted along by whatever happens to fall in front of them. They are driven by dunken randomness and never take real action. An example of this is the book I now realize was obviously 99% influenced by Bukowski, For Fuck's Sake by Robert Lasner. (I read it last September but did not review it.)

Post Office, however, does not fall into that trap. Even in the lowest moments of his drunken stupors, Henry Chinaski is a character of action. He does things with a purpose, even if his purpose is to scrimp together enough money to buy more booze. He is the one making the choices in his life, and not the random hand of an author pleased simply to watch a character stumble forward. You have to love Chinaski.

My biggest problem with the book: My plane was delayed and I finished reading it before I boarded my flight! So I had nothing to read on the four hour trip home.

The Zuckerman Project is COMPLETE!

I finished Exit Ghost and can finally start reading something from a different author!

Exit Ghost returns to the style of the earlier Zuckerman novels. I read some reviews that called this a "new" style for Roth, as if because of his advanced age he was attempting to write more quickly, but really I think these books are much more in line with the earlier novels.

At some point I will write a large essay about my experience with the series.