Stone Arabia Is or Is Not

by Weston Cutter

            Taking in Dana Spiotta’s Stone Arabia was a weird experience—not only was it hugely praised and hyped, but it was p’d+h’d in the immediate wake of Egan’s crazily great Goon Squad, and since both books share some concerns—specifically music and questions and struggles regarding authenticity—I figured all the chatter must’ve meant that Stone Arabia was even better than Goon. Which, of course, maybe, was the wrong way to approach this book, because I thought Goon was one of the best books I’ve read in the last ten years and I’m guessing almost nothing will (to me) hold a candle in comparison for some time.

The essentials first: Stone Arabia features middle-aged Denise and her brother Nik, he a genius/recluse type—imagine Daniel Johnston without brain trouble, or imagine a sort of Chilton/Brian Wilson character. Nik at least capable of crafting great pop songs, and had a chance, in the late 70s/early 80s, to maybe have a shot at recording a record with a major label, though this should be made fully clear: Nik was never Some Next Big Thing, About to Blow. He was a local (this is all in Los Angeles) player who made compelling of-the-moment music and attracted label interest, and he chose, instead, to snub them for reasons that might be considered something along “artistic integrity” lines.

(I know this is all convoluted and dicey; trust me when I say the book’s organization’s similar).

Nik, 49 in 2004, the year the book’s happening in (also the year of the Abu Ghraib photos), has spent his life making music for himself and chronicling a “fake” or “other” life—the Chronicles (one’s got to assume a nod to Dylan [one of the odd bits of fun in Stone Arabia is tracking the little tells and nods toward other musicians, different legends]) each cover a year and in each Nik gathers the faked and manufactured evidence of this parallel life—one in which he’s legendary, in which the records got made and were subsequently released for purchase and loved, in which his artistic genius is recognized. None of those aspects overlap with his actual real world life: he lives above a garage, works at a bar, is in shit health and getting worse from the drinking and smoking. He makes music, yes, but he burns individual copies for families and friends and he makes the sleeves by hand.

So, that’s Nik. His younger sister, Denise, is the novel’s narrator (though she’s not: the book jumps from third to first person 28 pages in and switches back to third roughly the same at the book’s end; a reader’s sure welcome to ask why the switch but should be appraised this reviewer’s got no satisfactory answer for the switch), and she’s Nik’s biggest fan. Biggest fan of his music, of him as a brother, and she’ll come close to financial ruin to support him in his quest, in his attempt to live this very protected life (the only checks I remember her writing in the novel were those with horrific interest rates, those ones provided by credit cards). Denise and Nik’s mother’s memory’s deteriorating, and Denise spends long stretches thinking about memory and aging and the slow demise and failure of the body. Also, Denise has a daughter, Ada, and a boyfriend, Jay, neither of whom ever come close to feeling like real characters (and, in fact, Jay feels worse than not real: he feels like a cruelty, a joke—he brings Denise Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light™ gifts on their get-togethers, and the reader’s again sure welcomed to wonder if these are given and received smartly ironically or what).

Again: apologies for how this is coming off. What’s weird is that I’m glad I read Stone Arabia, and I’ll be thinking about it for some time, but I’m not sure I liked it, nor am I sure it succeeded in doing the things I most enjoy books for doing. For instance: that third to first person switch 28 pages in? What happens is that Denise claims to basically be hijacking the narrative, which move is a sort of correlative with Nik’s decision to hijack the narrative of his own life and craft the Chronicles. Okay, the reader’s thinking, fine, there’s resemblence and echo. Or: Denise is (like all of us, like who isn’t) someone who spends her news-gathering and -reading time and energy skimming, surfing in lieu of going deep, but then she gets incredibly taken by the story of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and the story of tragedy befalling Amish communities. A canny reader might try to connect these characterization dots, find a way to fit the tragedies Denise is taken with and by into her life, yet even if you find space for them to connect, the question still hangs, as it does about the hijacked narrative thing above: Why is it being done?

Ultimately, Stone Arabia is a book about siblings and dreams, and it’s great in exactly that capacity. However, Stone Arabia seems also to be a book that’s trying to do several other more high-minded po-mo things, and it comes off, to me, as cold, as a miss. Please know: I love me some high-minded po-mo stuff, particularly in fiction—one of the reasons I so loved Goon Squad was because of the PowerPoint chapter, which I thought was as moving and gorgeous as anything I’ve seen in a long time. I can’t remember feeling much moved, ever, by anything in Stone Arabia: the book ultimately feels more calculating than I enjoy my fiction to feel.

For what it’s worth: I’ll admit to having a hard time with fiction lately—I finished a bit back one of the fall’s big anticipated novels and loathed it, felt it disconnected and causeless. Let me be real clear: Stone Arabia is, according to damn near everybody, a fine and powerful and stellar work of art. Perhaps. It is also, according to this reviewer, the story of middle-aged siblings trying to make their way and their peace with their lives, but that story’s unfortunately bedecked with bunches of other asides which ultimately feel cutesy or insignificant or both. Still: read the thing. I’m probably wrong—seriously, everybody everywhere loves this book (you think I’m kidding? Check out five part this roundtable at EChampion’s Reluctant Habits)

Parental Discretion is Advised

by Jeremy Griffin

I’m not usually one to get freaked out by a book. I think the last thing I read that truly frightened me was Stephen King’s novella “The Mist,” and that was when I was like fourteen.

So it’s saying something that just a few nights ago I had a nightmare about Emma Donoghue’s Room. Narrated by five-year-old Jack, the story–as the title suggests–takes place in a single room (for the first half, at least), in which Jack has spent his entire life, oblivious to the notion of a world outside, other than the bizarre images on his television–and even these he doesn’t necessarily connect to any larger concept of Others. Jack shares the room with his Ma, who was imprisoned there years prior by Old Nick, a shadowy character whose late-night visits require Jack to hide in a cabinet so as not to be seen.

Most of my friends with children refuse to read Room, which I think is understandable. To be sure, the book is horrifying in a way that actual horror novels are not. There are no monsters or demons or wicked other-worldly creatures. In fact, for the first half of the book, there’s really no one other than Jack, Ma, and Old Nick–that is, if you don’t count the items in the room that Jack has come to view as petlike specimens (Stove, Fridge, Rug, Bed–you get the idea). Donoghue’s treatment of the room as its own self-contained world–which it literally is to Jack–makes the story more palatable for readers, who might otherwise be turned off by the idea of reading a book with such strict setting parameters, while also reinforcing the sense of grim isolation.

Of course, the book is not without its flaws, though ironically many of these are the very same things that make it such a fascinating read. For instance, the voice: try to imagine a narrator who, aside from being five and obsessed with Dora the Explorer (who he doesn’t intuitively realize is a cartoon), has never had any interaction whatsoever with anyone other than his mother. On one hand, you could make the argument that the story has to be told from Jack’s perspective because the real impact rests in his obliviousness. But on the other hand, this lends itself to some overly cute narrative tricks, particularly once Jack and Ma have escaped (half the story takes place outside of the room, so I’m not giving anything away here):

“In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time. Even Grandma often says that, but she and Steppa [Jack's step-Grandfather] don’t have jobs, so I don’t know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well. In Room me and Ma had time for everything. I guess the time gets spread very thin like butter over all the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there’s only a little smear of time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit.”

Jack’s naivety, while largely responsible for the story’s emotional impact, does begin to get a bit saccarine, too innocent to really carry the authority that a narrator needs. Still, I think this is forgivable, given the bravado required to write something so daring. Moreover, Donoghue skirts all of the psychological/legal thriller crap that would otherwise come along with such a book and instead sticks to the characters, Jack and Ma and the few figures we meet “Outside.” It’s a story as elegant as it disturbing, something that very few established authors in the horror and thriller genre(s) are able to pull off.

The Kids Aren’t Alright

by Jeremy Griffin

If you’ve been following along over the past couple months, then you know that I’ve been indulging a kind of pre-30 quarter-life crisis by focusing on books with adolescent/teenage protagonists. Sad and a little creepy? Yes. But a bit more rational than getting something pierced and going down to Buffalo Wild Wings to pick a fight (though I haven’t those things out yet).

This time around, we’ve got Ben Dolnick’s You Know Who You Are, a freakishly good read for fans of coming-of-age stories (except don’t call them coming-of-age stories, not unless you write made-for-Tv flicks for Lifetime). Our protagonist is Jacob Vine, the youngest member of his ostensibly normal family–at least, as normal as any of us might hope. While Jacob begins the story as a child, the death of his mother and his relationship with a young woman from a well-to-do family catapult him into an uncertain adulthood, where he bumbles through the very common but nonetheless intriguing rites of figuring out just who the hell he is. Add to this an older brother–Will–whose transformation into a self-loathing theater geek provides a brillian contrast to Jacob’s character, and you’ve got a crisp, well-crafted story with stunningly vivid characters.

To call Jacob the black sheep  of the family, as the NYT’s Nicholas Kulish has, might be an overstatement; sure, he’s awkward and confused and his lack of impulse control is mildly disgusting, but no more than any other teenager. I suspect that what Kulish meant is that Jacob perceives himself as the black sheep, an outcast, a generally bad fit into any social system; at least this seems to be the case (his burgeoning rebelliousness is enacted in a wonderful scene involving middle school art classroom). To be sure, this is sort of the defining sentiment of the teen years, the secret desire to not be understood so that you may continue to complain about being misunderstood. And Dolnick nails this flawlessly.

What’s most important here is that Jacob isn’t a cartoon. None of the characters are (with the possible exception of Marick, a childhood friend of Jacob’s). That’s saying something for a book whose evocative power requires readers to revisit their own annals of pubescent discomfort, to laugh at the notion that they, too, were once people who trolled their parents’ bookshelves for any illicit reading material that may have shed some light on the ominous matter of sex, and who once regarded school dances as legitmate social events. And still, never once does Dolnick settle for the cheap laugh, the gimmick, the schtick that makes books of this nature such a gamble. It’s funny, sure, but not in that uber-charming David Sedaris way. Rather, You Know Who You Are is funny because, as nearly all of us have discovered from our own personal coming-of-age sagas, the only alternative is to throw up your hands and cry over the tragedy of it all.

Further Updates + Elsewheres

by Weston Cutter

Just for the record: CBooks has (geographically) moved this past year, in fact just this past month, hence the paucity and quiet. Things’ll be coming back sortly, be appraised. Of course, the speed with which this place gets back to more regular posting depends a bit on where else time’s being drawn with other work, of which there’s been a bit lately. Meaning:

Still going strong at the Kenyon Review, with posts here and here (both basically reviews, with digressions).

I reviewed Paul Maliszewski’s fantastic Prayer and Parable for the Mpls Star Trubine; I’ve been waiting for this book since 2003, and was thrilled to finally get the whole thing, and the review for the Strib’s short because they’ve got word-counts to consider and everything, but, really, you should be reading this book pronto.

(Maliszewski’s one of those ‘experimental’ writers whose work’s fundamentally driven by non-character engines—the scenario, the world of the story, dictates the eventual shape of the story as much as anything else. In this he’s lots like Helen DeWitt, whose Lightning Rods is coming this October and is fantastic. I’d be curious who else writes like this, this almost Borgesian way, in which schema/systems are as critical for book movement and heft as anything else [Barthelme, obviously, too][Danielewski's great in HoL, and, sure, his other stuff's systems-based, but don't pretend it's good writing—he's gone so far that the system/rules now dictate everything; reading him feels like listening to someone sing individual notes with perfect clarity for exactly 1 minute at a time and expecting thunderous applause for technical mastery].)

For what it’s worth: Blake Butler’s done some amazing stuff recently at HTMLGiant, not least putting up his submission list from 2006-2008. I’m personally interested in such a thing because 1) I like Blake and his work and 2) it was through a submission that I met the man. I have nothing exciting or sexy to say about what he posted, but when it went up I felt like it was just so fucking yes I didn’t know where to begin. Maybe this: Blake’s one of the younger writers it seems like lots of folks talk about, at least right at present this year, and I happen to mostly loathe some of the other younger writers getting press lately, and Blake’s response to people giving him attention seems one of the most generous and good things he could possibly do: he showed the work involved, what things too, the costs. Way too many younger writers are convinced that there’s some magic involved in securing an agent and a pub deal and etc., and I’m sure there are folks who’ve had different experiences, but shit is it a good public service of Blake to put up exactly how many submissions it took him—in just a two year period—to get to where he’s now got. If more writers owned up to this I think we could demystify the shit out of the whole snarky business (and I’ll note that this post is ironic in the extreme given Blake’s earlier piece: one’d think that writers should be those least inclined to flex any jealousy muscles, given that we all know the fucking insane amounts of work that go into getting things out and published. I’ll also submit that the line “Poets are the most jealous type of artist” might be the single fucking stupidest sentence I’ve read in a year, if not more).

Hot Damn

by Weston Cutter

            Unfortunately, I didn’t (despite the buzz) read Adam Ross’s Mr Peanut on its release last year, which meant that when I got a copy of his collection, Ladies and Gentlemen, I didn’t tackle it with the haste and hunger it deserved. Let my mistake serve you: read Mr. Ross’s books as soon as you possibly can—I can’t personally recommend Mr Peanut, but it’s damn near impossible to imagine, after reading the stories, that Ross’s novel can be anything other than fantastic.

Here’s what happened: I picked up Ladies and Gentlemen and flipped to the collection’s middle story (there are seven)—”In the Basement.” The story is a lot of things: the characters are deeply real, jumping from the page faster than you can believe (and, to Ross’s credit, the characters’s realities seem effortlessly created: nothing’s better than reading someone who makes it look easy [there's a whole long digression available here about how great Ross is at these moves. The way this stuff shakes out for me ends up being about good background detail, good ancillary/periphal stuff that makes the rest of the story feel more real; tossed-off detail that doesn't *matter* to the narrative at hand, but which, if solid enough, enriches the story tremendously...think, maybe, of the difference between eating a tremendous meal in a shit hole restaurant with people screaming all around you vs eating it in your favorite conceivable spot]), and it’s compellingly dark, but not too much so (if the majority of Carver’s stuff’s like 10 out of 10 on the dark scale, with 1 being blinding sunlight and 10 being the creepy shadow-on-shadow of industrial plants at night in bad areas of town, Ross’s stuff’s like 6-7, mostly), and it’s ambiguous in generative ways, and it’s just gorgeously, massively well-written (I just finished a novel that I’ll be reviewing elsewhere this fall and the book, fundamentally, didn’t work for me—the characters were never really likable, and there were large digression on abstractions which weren’t compelling and felt like they were there exclusively to impress or lend a serious air to proceedings—but it is so well written: there were times I’d feel myself frustrated by the various aspects that seemed to be pushing me away from giving a shit, but then the writing itself would gain traction and I’d continue. It brought up this whole idea of compelling writing vs compelling idea, and the balance the best fiction demands [and sets up an odd metric, I think, for readers: if the idea's a 10 out of 10 and the writing's just a 6, I'd say keep going, and ditto if the numbers were transposed, but what about a 7/7? Is that enough? This isn't just rhetorical or theoretical: had I not been reading the book to review it, I'd've set it aside]).

Note Carver, too: “In the Basement” takes the form of the classic old Carver mold, two couples hanging out, friction staticky in the air, a long story told from one to the other couple, undercurrents swirling and sensed-at if not overtly articulated. Ross does this stuff perfectly, though his stories almost always feature wealth and its interstices in places of Carver’s blue-collar humpers.

Anyway, I read that story first, and left the collection to the side for a week or two, and then came back, picked up where I left off, and was just knocked on my ass by “When in Rome,” a story of brothers and regret and not connecting and all the good heavy-duty stuff one comes to fiction to receive. After “When in Rome,” I took the rest of the book in a night. It’s hard to overstate how good the book is: these are real characters in here, folks prone to the same delights and delusions and self-evasion we all have to confront, in ourselves and those we bother allowing proximity to our real wants, daily. The book is, yes, on the darker side of things, but not out of anything that feels like mercilessness: from the woman considering some maritally-destructive moves in the title story to the sophomore (=wise fool) in “The Suidice Room” who, in one night, discovers that defining moments, contrary to what one of the characters claims, aren’t chosen, but are things which happen to us, the characters in these great stories are being tested (or are choosing to test themselves), which testing, given that this is life, almost always involved having to look closely at things one might otherwise wish to ignore or, at least, not pay exceptionally pointilistically-sharp attention to.

All this theoricizing is just empty flailing, of course: Ladies and Gentlemen stuns and works wonders and I absolutely dare any reader to dip into it and not just tear through the thing in one night. Warn your spouse or bedmate before you begin the thing, though: the night’ll be longer than you think.