Book Reviews

"Super Sad True Love Story', Gaty Shteyngart, 2010

Gary Shteyngart's new novel is precisely what it was promised and expected to be; hip, ruthless, dystopian, and highly satirical. Shteyngart's smart, razor-sharp social commentary recalls early Tom Wolfe, and his unorthodox, deliciously ambiguous prose sometimes reminds one of Pynchon or Kerouac, who also sought to define an era that was both exhilarating and terrifying. To compare 'Love Story' to '1984' is too easy, 'Love Story' is exactly that, a classic, almost sappy love story set amidst a crumbling America where people communicate almost exclusively through Iphone-like 'Apparati', and human plight has been reduced to 'credit', 'media', and 'retail'. The truly scary aspect of this book is how plausible, even preemptively omniscent Shteyngart's predictions seem; flying to Seattle from Boston recently, I almost had a little panic attack, watching both my seat-mates completely tuned out of reality and into their toxic trio of Iphone, Ipad, and Ipod. Shteyngart's downfall, perhaps, is that while his linguistic gymnastics and social prophesy make for a smart take on the classic beach-read [I had no problem inhaling 200+ pages in one sitting], he fails to transcend the shallow, narcissistic universe the characters of 'love story' reside in. His attempts at creating some sort of character diversity outside the schlubby but lovable Lenny and emotionally-damaged yet beautiful Eunice fall short somehow, always ending up feeling like a peripheral caricature, a quick stereotype of people who fall outside the New York 'fast crowd' that form Lenny and Eunice's world. Lenny is painfully self-aware, almost 40 and ridden with intense guilt, guilt at failing his parents, guilt at being average and Jewish, guilt at not creating more meaning out of a downward-spiraling America. Eunice, on the other hand, is the product of a technology and sex-crazed generation, seemingly embracing the mindless hedonism and nanosecond attention span of her peers. The idea, of course, is that their comically mismatched love can transcend all this awfulness, but the reality falls somewhat short, trapped in the mundane, bourgeois details of their daily lives. 'Love Story' is beautiful in that it is so complete, so viciously critical of the 'post-literate' mess this country already seems doomed to become, that one cannot help becoming absorbed in Shteyngart's world, his equal treatment of the urbane and the extraordinary, our daily trials somehow amplified into a modern-day genesis.

'In Youth is Pleasure', Denton Welch, 1944.

I recently overheard an NPR segment where William S. Burroughs was posthumously quoted as having predicted that literature of substance was in effect becoming a closed circle, as the only real readers were other 'lit' writers. How fitting then that one of Burrough's perennial favorites, the tragic and precocious young Brit Denton Welch, is often cited as a 'writer's writer'. The appeal of his major work, 'In Youth is Pleasure', is not the subject of his writing, which varies from mundane to almost comically predictable, but in his prose, his indeterminately beautiful syntax. Often he brings the reader to a standstill, paused on some deliciously introspective observation, a window into Welch's sad, myopic youth, truncated abruptly by a near-fatal bicycle accident at the age of 20. In a way, the accident was gruesomely fortuitous for modern literature, as is prompted Welch to forgo his previous artistic aspirations and turn to writing. 'Pleasure's obvious downfall is it's thinly-disguised autobiographical nature, yet Welch manages to save his work from the trap of narcissism in his almost painful self-awareness and droll British satire. One feels almost subversive reading Welch, like a mischievous older sibling who has discovered a secret diary or journal and knows the consequences make reading it that much more exciting. 'Pleasure' is an account of the summer holiday of a singular, enigmatic 15 year old misfit, Orvill Pym, who vacillates between deep self-loathing and intrepid fortitude, his adventures largely personal, or otherwise insignificant to the unlikable, popular siblings and schoolmates that form his constituency. In the end, 'Pleasure' falls into it's own trap, its obsession with the mundane and predictable details of an uncomfortable adolescence, yet there is something chillingly resonant in Welch's description of his youth, a universal wisdom that appeals to both the blockheaded jock and the pretentious art star, a sense of limited time, of simple experience, that pulls at one's heartstrings.

'Kafka on the Shore', Haruki Murakami, 2002.

To risk heaping more of the prodigious and fully-deserved praise onto Murakami's 'Kafka on the Shore', I will start with the fact that it is long, difficult, and confusing. That being said, 'Kafka' has cemented whatever doubt existed as to Murakami's dominance in modern literature, Japanese or otherwise. Blending his signature mastery of the metaphysical, the suspenseful, and the ordinary, Murakami weaves an addictive tale of the prenaturally wise and experienced Kafka Tamura, a 15 year old runaway from the Tokyo suburbs, and his quest to escape a gruesome Oedipal prophesy. In a highly competitive and often indiverse genre, 'Kafka' manages to break lose from the trap of becoming another insistenly predictable SciFi paperback. Perhaps Murakami's greatest attribute as a novelist is his ability to integrate page-turning, patently-addictive character developments with layer upon layer of intricate sub-plot, novels with novel, giving the reader the rare opportunity to experience his work how they want. While somewhat short of the mass-audience appeal of 'Wind up Bird Chronicles' or 'Norwegian Wood', 'Kafka' remains luminary and singular unto itself, insistent and uncompromising in its mind-bending prose. The ability to lose oneself in a novel so completely and unexpectedly shines as Murakami's major accomplishment, and the obvious silliness of a man who talks to cat's and comically predictable character developments are forgiven. In the end, one cannot help being absorbed in Murakami's dreamworld, where ancient Japanese wisdom and post-modern wit defy the stale pop culture machine, beckoning the reader to explore a universe of subtle anachronisms and layers of meaning piled high on each new page.