The new Atlantic has a long article bashing the latest Great American Novel, Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding. Remember Freedom? Last year's Great American Novel? How the book pushers kept claiming that Franzen was the new Tolstoy? Embarrassing, isn't it. The first chapters were interesting, but it fell off pretty fast. To me it was as if he had gotten tired of his characters and hated them but was forcing himself to finish writing the thing, moving them around, putting them through their paces. I wonder how many people bought that novel but did not get all the way through it. I finished it, to the bitter end, and decided it was pretty bad. I'm sure Franzen and his publishers did well financially.
So, I was thinking, "What new novel that I recently read has stuck in my mind? That I really enjoyed reading? "And I realized it was The Odds by Stewart O'Nan. I'm laughing to myself as I recall the silly antics and misadventures of the addled couple, Art and Marion, at the center of this tale. And yet they are completely lovable and convincing, and you root for them to win. I won't give away the ending. I was charmed, really. I love Stewart O'Nan's other novels, too. They are all about decent and bewildered people caught up in ridiculous circumstances not of their making.
I really love his work. Emily Alone has a fine portrait of a woman of my generation. Older, but I'm a pre-Boomer like Emily. I like many things about the Boomers, but I'm really a staid character, like Emily. I don't know why Boomers take the risks in life they do. Even staggering into old age they are always willing to try for that last big prize. Really. I like stability. But Emily gets precious little of that in her life. All this is highly entertaining if it isn't happening to you.
Emily is also featured in an earlier novel, Wish You were Here, which is about the hilarities of trying to keep family together. Of course, as Molly McGhee would say, T'aint funny, McGhee!
Here is O'Nan, being interviewed on the fly.
And here is a sample of his prose from The Odds, on the miseries of what is supposed to be a nostalgic, romantic and perhaps profitable vacation to Niagara Falls, if Art's scheme to win at the gambling tables pays off. Note the impeccable comic timing:
...Ruby Tuesday's and the Great Canadian Midway arcade and the gigantic Sky Wheel and the Rainforest Cafe and the mysteriously named Boston Pizza, toward the crest of the hill, where a block-long model of the Empire State Building lay tipped on its side, King Kong perched on top, gripping its antenna and snarling down at them with unfocused, totemic rage--Ripley's Believe it or Not! Museum. "Wow, " Art said, "It's completely different," stopping on the corner to get a picture.
Art's a person who always gets in the spirit of things and knows how to have a good time, as evinced by his enthusiasm for this garbage. Marion's point of view is different. She has a blister on her foot, for one thing. She says of herself that she is not a fun person. This is all very droll. I am amazed at how skillfully he pulls this off, showing what they are like, what's happened to them, what's happened to Niagara Falls, without causing the reader to despair.
He is just such fun to read!
I am not familir with those books you mentioned. But, guess what, writing a book is easy. Selling it is difficult. And authors are always at the mercy of the critics.
Posted by: gigi-hawaii | April 12, 2012 at 07:05 PM
Just publish on Amazon. You don't even have to leave your computer to do that.
Posted by: Hattie | April 12, 2012 at 07:12 PM
We have numerous Boston's Pizzas in Honolulu. I never thought of them as being mysterious in any way. One is a mile from my house in Manoa. It is run by an Indian family. I was chit-chatting with them one day and I asked the woman on duty about India. "Oh, I'm not from India," she replied. "Never been there. Our family is from Fiji." Okay--live and learn, that's the way of the world.
Posted by: Henry "Hank" Chapin | April 13, 2012 at 12:39 AM
Hank: Funny. I live in the sticks, for sure.
Posted by: Hattie | April 13, 2012 at 12:52 AM
Sounds like the sort of thing I should read. Thanks for the review. And I agree about Jonathan Franzen. I think he writes well, but he is best in short pieces about his own life and experiences. I have enjoyed some of his articles in the New Yorker.
Posted by: Anne | April 13, 2012 at 07:59 AM
Watched the video. I think I might enjoy his books. I am not a big novel reader, sticking to non-fiction 99 percent of the time. But, he sounds like a socio-cultural writer of the common folks? Nice post -- barbara
Posted by: barbara | April 13, 2012 at 08:49 AM
Anne: I did like his earlier book, The Corrections, but I think Franzen has become a self involved sourpuss, and his writing shows it. I thought Freedom was going to be good. I read an excerpt from it in The New Yorker that seemed promising, but the novel was a disappointment.
Barbara: O'Nan's subjects are the left-behind, "downward mobile" white people who have been unable to adapt to postmodern America. They know who they are, but who they are doesn't cut it any more. He says in the clip that his home town of Pittsburgh has been on the downward path for years, but now the deterioration he describes is everywhere. He is able to write about all this without being dreary, and he is on the side of his characters, unlike the more bitter social critical novelists.
Posted by: Hattie | April 13, 2012 at 09:49 AM
Pittsburgh thoughts: {1} I was under the impression that Pittsburgh has had undergone many positive changes. But that may just refer to physically cleaning up the town from the soot-covered days of heavy industrialism. I've been through there and it was not dirty and filthy as it was supposed to have been before. Also, for what it's worth, Carnegie-Mellon University has a top theatre program. (2) August Wilson, the excellent black playwright, took Pittsburgh as the geographical heart of his plays. He had a brilliant approach: each play covers one decade of the 20th Century in the history of blacks in America. The result is ten powerful plays. What a concept! But deterioration is everywhere in those plays from Wilson's black perspective.
Posted by: Henry "Hank" Chapin | April 13, 2012 at 10:57 AM
Hank: My grandfather grew up in Pittsburgh and graduated from Cornell in Ithaca. I've never been to Pittsburgh but did get to Ithaca for my daughter's wedding. It felt very old and chilly to me and rather mysterious. Like early American literature.
A friend of mine's son and daughter in law have moved to Pittsburgh from Portland and become urban pioneers. He is a carpenter and guitarist (I believe) and she is a singer-musician, and they are getting into media there. He is restoring the house they live in and (I assume) getting work in reconstruction of old places. Their son is appearing in local commercials and some sort of remake of Mr. Rogers' neighborhood, which, you will recall, was made in Pittsburgh.
Posted by: Hattie | April 13, 2012 at 11:51 AM
@Hank: Fiji has a sizable Indian population, descendants of laborers brought there in the 1800s.
"Hank: Funny. I live in the sticks, for sure."
Do you mean your neighborhood or Hilo in general?
Posted by: Brandon | April 13, 2012 at 12:16 PM
Brandon: We are out of the loop on a lot of things on the Big Island. But what we have here more than compensates for that lack.
Posted by: Hattie | April 13, 2012 at 02:04 PM
Speaking as a lifelong Hiloan, I agree. The Big Island has, among other things, an abundance of cultural diversity, and many local businesses, so it's not the same as a similarly-sized town in the Deep South or the Plains.
What we need is better medical care and an improved mass transit system.
Posted by: Brandon | April 13, 2012 at 03:00 PM