2 posts tagged “brock clarke”

The first two books I read in November were The Best American Comics 2008 and A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley.  My reviews for those two books can be found here.  This post covers the rest of my book-related activities for the month.

BOOKS ACQUIRED:

• The Lottery and Other Stories--Shirley Jackson
• Stories in the Worst Way--Gary Lutz
• So Long, See You Tomorrow--William Maxwell
• Parade's End--Ford Madox Ford
• The Railway Children--E. Nesbit
• The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil--George Saunders
• #$@&!: The Official Lloyd Llewellyn Collection--Daniel Clowes
• Peepshow: 1950s Pin-ups in 3-D--Bunny Yeager

BOOKS READ:

Knockemstiff--Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock is from the real town of Knockemstiff, Ohio.  His first book is a series of 18 short stories featuring a group of interrelated characters from the town.  Most of the characters have issues.  There are alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes, and down-on-their-luck losers.  Most of the individual stories are worth reading, but I came away from the book with a feeling of disappointment.  My complaint about Knockemstiff is that it didn't feel like there was any progression to what I was reading.  With the exception of the first and last stories, just about everything in this book could've been read in any order.  I usually don't have an issue with that in a short story collection, but this book featured related characters and I think it would've been more powerful if the book had been designed in a way that it told a larger story.

I don't even know what that means.  Maybe I'm just jealous of Donald Ray Pollock because I wasted a good chunk of my life trying to write a similar book about a group of interrelated losers from Ohio.  Pollock actually finished his book and it's far better than anything I could've ever come up with.  (And I just ended the previous sentence with "with".  I think that's against the rules.  And I just started a sentence with "and".  I'm pretty sure that's against the rules, too.  I actually did that one twice.  Dang.) 

What We Won't Do--Brock Clarke

One of the highlights of Brock Clarke's collection was a story called "She Loved to Cook but Not Like This".  The last line in the story was:

And since I was lonely and scared of repeating myself and sick at the thought of telling, revising, retelling this story of my life, I promised to never tell it again, and this is the last time.

Of course, Brock Clarke later went on to rewrite and expand this short story into the novel, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England.  I wish he'd taken his own advice and worked up a different story.  The novelization isn't anywhere near as good as the story he adapted it from.

My favorite story in this collection was probably "Plowing the Secondaries".  It's about two reckless brothers who drive around town plowing things with their snowplows other than snow.  "Up North" was also a highlight.  Like Glen David Gold's "The Tears of Squonk", this story deals with a town that decides to hang an elephant after a circus-related mishap.  Gold's story is the better of the two, but Clarke's has a great last line (also the last line in the collection) that really packs a punch.

Overall, I'd say that Brock Clarke is a much better short story writer than he is a novelist.  If you feel like reading some of his work, I'd recommend you start with this collection.

The Baron in the Trees--Italo Calvino

Sometimes a book's title provides a better synopsis of the book than any reviewer ever could.  This is one of those cases: The Baron in the Trees is about a baron who lives in the trees.  As a boy, the character gets into a fight with his family over having to eat snails for dinner.  He climbs up into a tree to sulk and decides to stay there.  Fortunately for him, there are a lot of trees nearby and he can climb from his tree to the others.  In this manner, he's able to move around the town and the countryside.

Years pass and the Baron stays up in the trees.  He manages to lead a full life up there.  He has a pet dog.  He reads books.  He makes friends and has adventures in the war.  He even has relationships with some of the local ladies.

This was my third Italo Calvino book.  I liked it a lot more than Invisible Cities, but not as much as If on a winter's night a traveler.

The Enchantress of Florence--Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children is one of my all-time favorite books, so I thought I would give his latest a try.  I read it over the course of a week or so, and can honestly say I wasn't able to follow it very well.  I enjoyed it, but I really didn't know what was going on half the time.  I was at about page 150 before I finally figured out who the titular character was.

As best I can tell, The Enchantress of Florence is about an Italian who shows up at Akbar's imperial court with a strange story to tell.  I'm not going to go into much more detail than that because I gave/lent the book to someone and I don't want to spoil things for her.  Let's just say that the book is full of mystery, magic, four giant albinos from Switzerland, and about a hundred characters taken from the real world historical record.

This is one I'd really like to read again.  My concentration was off and it deserved better from me. 

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil--George Saunders

I read this novella on a plane trip from Seattle to Cincinnati.  It's a political satire about the residents of a tiny country named Inner Horner.  The country is so tiny that only one of its residents can be there at a time.  The rest have to wait in a containment zone in the surrounding country of Outer Horner.  An Outer Hornerite named Phil gets it into his demented little brain (which keeps falling off) that the Inner Hornerites are evil and deserve to be exterminated.  He usurps the presidency of Outer Horner and then uses his new-found powers to attack the helpless Inner Hornerites.

But wait...Outer Horner is itself entirely surrounded by a country called Greater Keller.  Will the Greater Kellerites sit back and let Phil disassemble the Inner Hornerites?  Will they let Phil's unprovoked aggression stand?  Or will they ATTACK!!?!

Oh, and the "people" in the book are made out of tin cans, ball bearings, and blinking lights.  You figure it out.

#$@&!: The Official Lloyd Llewellyn Collection--Daniel Clowes

This is just another Daniel Clowes collection.  I'm not a big fan of his Lloyd Llewellyn character, but I thought I'd buy this one anyway because it was only $8 and I'd never seen it before.  I think it's out-of-print.  I also really liked the cover art (different than the one shown here).  It features Lloyd and a woman who looks like she could have been an early prototype for the Enid character from Ghost World...if Enid had been an incredibly tall, busty gal with crooked teeth.  Very strange cover art.  As far as the stories go, they were alright.  My favorite was "Crawl, Worm!"  In that one, Lloyd lusts after a lady and she rewards his attentions by biting off his fingernail and turning him into a worm.  You know, the usual.

Peepshow: 1950s Pin-ups in 3-D--Bunny Yeager

This is really just a picture book, but I'm including it here because it's fun and I did actually read the intro (really, I did).  As the title would suggest, this book is a collection of photographs of pin-up models from the 1950s.  Each picture is printed twice and when the "reader" looks through a pair of fold-out glasses, the images appear in 3-D.  I found this strange little volume at Half Price Books while looking for books about Bettie Page.  She actually makes two appearances in Peepshow, so I'm glad I found it.  I just hope no one saw me looking in the nude photography section.

CURRENTLY READING:

• Stories in the Worst Way--Gary Lutz

[NOTE:  These book posts usually feature little pictures of each of the books over on the left side.  Unfortunately, Vox isn't working well for me tonight and I am sick of fiddling with it.  Vox will let me have either the little pictures or spaces between my paragraphs, but not both.  I have opted for spaces between the paragraphs.  Maybe next month's post will have pictures, but no spaces.]

BOOKS ACQUIRED:
In Persuasion Nation--George Saunders
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England--Brock Clarke
The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books--J.Peder Zane (editor)
The Pillars of the Earth--Ken Follett
Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York--Gail Parent
Geek Love--Katherine Dunn
Nights at the Circus--Angela Carter
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower--Marcel Proust

BOOKS READ:
When You Are Engulfed in Flames--David Sedaris
David Sedaris has better books out there, but this one is still worth reading if you're a fan.  A couple of the essays are so absurd that I have a hard time believing they actually took place.  Take "Solution to Saturday's Puzzle" for instance.  Does a throat lozenge ever really accidentally fly out of someone's mouth and land on the lap of someone they'd just been fighting with?  Oh, and the person with the lap lozenge just happens to be sleeping.  Maybe that stuff happens in David Sedaris's world.  It doesn't happen in mine. 

My favorite essay is the last one in the book.  At over 80 pages, "The Smoking Section" is also the longest.  In "The Smoking Section", David Sedaris shares the story of his long history with cigarettes and smoking.  Just when it's about to get too boring and navel-gazy, he and Hugh fly off to Japan in the hope that a change in environment will help David kick his addiction once and for all.  The writing about Japan is the highlight of the book and up there with the author's best.

The Coen Brothers: The Life of the Mind--James Mottram
This book had been sitting on my shelf since 2002.  I finally got around to reading it this month when I decided to rewatch all my Coen brothers movies and rank them.  Well, this book didn't add anything to my enjoyment of the movies.  Simply put, this was one of the worst non-fiction books I've ever read in my life.  It was full of factual errors and poorly-written sentences.  I think I'll share my favorite of each.

My favorite factual error can be found on page 41, where the author claims that Raising Arizona was filmed "over ten weeks in the early part of 1996".  That's an interesting tidbit considering that it was released in 1987.

As far as poorly-written sentences go, try this one on for size.  It can be found on page 149 in a synopsis of The Big Lebowski:

Once more encountering the blue VW, the Dude chats to its occupant, a private eye named De Fino, hired by Bunny's parents, The Knutsons, to find her, following her disappearance a year ago.

Who writes like that!?  This book never should've been published.  I can't believe I wasted my time reading it.

The Book of Yoga--Christina Brown
I read The Book of Pilates last year and enjoyed it.  It provided a lot of good information that helped me get into the practice.  I thought I'd have similar success with the same publisher's The Book of Yoga.  Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.

I had three problems with this book.  First of all, it tried to get me in touch with my "inner light".  I'm sorry to inform you, but I don't have an inner light.  The only thing I have inside me is blood and guts and whatever I ate for lunch (two turkey dogs, bun, raspberries, water).  This book also assumed I was a woman.  It kept telling me which poses to avoid while I'm menstruating.  And finally, the book wasted too much time at the end talking about chakras.  Don't get me started on the chakras.  They're a load of crap if I've ever heard one.

Despite my issues with the book, it did feature good photographs to go with each of the poses.  Although my yoga instructors sometimes disagree with me, I think it's important to see what the poses are supposed to look like.

McSweeney's #10--M-----l Chabon (editor)
This volume is subtitled McSweeney's Mammoth Treasure of Thrilling Tales.  It features 20 short stories, most of which aren't even slightly thrilling.  I'm not really complaining, though.  Although there were definitely some duds in this collection--has Rick Moody ever written anything worth reading?--there were at least six or seven excellent stories.

My favorites were The Tears of Squonk, And What Happened Thereafter by Glen David Gold and Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly by Dave Eggers.  The former tells the tale of a circus elephant who has a tantrum during a parade and the events that led up to it.  The latter is about a group of tourists who hire dozens of sherpas to guide them up Mount Kilimanjaro.

The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books--J.Peder Zane (editor)
As the title would suggest, this book consists of writers listing their top ten favorite books.  The editor got 125 authors to respond with their lists.  The first half of the book consists of the 125 lists; the second half features synopses of all 544 titles mentioned by the authors.

I've only had The Top Ten for a few weeks, but I've already bought three books as a result of reading it.  In addition, I added about 50 other books to my list.  The Top Ten only cost me $7.48 to purchase, but it's going to end up costing me a lot more than that in the long run.  Stay away from this book unless you have a lot of disposable income sitting around.

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England--Brock Clarke
The protagonist in Brock Clarke's latest novel is a man named Sam Pulsifer.  As a teenager, Sam accidentally burned down Emily Dickinson's house and killed its two occupants.  He spends a decade in prison and does his best to forget about his crime and start a new life upon his release.  He goes to college, marries, and gets a job as a packaging engineer.  Things are going well for Sam until the son of his victims shows up and the homes of other authors start burning down.

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England features a great premise and title, but fails miserably to live up to either of them.  I'd heard negative things about this book, but decided to give it a try when I learned Brock Clarke would be reading at my local bookstore.  I read the book and was so utterly disappointed in it that I almost didn't bother walking the mile to hear the author speak.  I ended up going, though, and found that Brock Clarke is somehow even less engaging as a speaker than he is as an author.

If you would like to read a book full of characters who don't even slightly resemble real people (especially the female characters), then you should definitely try An Arsonist's Guide.  Otherwise, read 300 pages from a better book.  It won't be difficult to find one.

Would You Please Be Quiet, Please?--Raymond Carver
I needed something good to take out the bad taste left in my mouth by Brock Clarke's book.  I turned to Raymond Carver's first collection of short stories.  You really can't go wrong with Raymond Carver.

The Best Pet of All--David LaRochelle (story) Hanako Wakiyama (art)
The Best Pet of All is a children's book about a boy who wants to get a pet dog.  His mother won't let him, but says he can get a pet dragon if he can find one.  The boy looks around and eventually finds a dragon hanging around in the local drugstore.  Well, it turns out that a dragon doesn't make a very good pet.  It eats spaghetti out of the bathtub and stays up all night listening to records.

CURRENTLY READING:
Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York--Gail Parent