I don’t want to ruin a streak, so just as pretty much everyone who has chosen a book has said: “I loved this book!” I mean, really loved it. Since I finished reading it, I’ve evangelized it to everyone who mentions any of the following: books, reading, Barnes and Noble or awesomeness. Or pretty much to anyone who uses words, really. I probably could have finished it in just a few days, but I forced myself to dole it out in smaller pieces and took the better part of a week because I didn’t want it to end. (I’d be interested if anyone else did this, or if I was just being weird.) To me, the most powerful thing about the book was that since I finished it, it has made me very aware in the real world of the different clichés he used to make his own book popular. This does make me a more skeptical consumer of popular culture, which I won’t necessarily value-judge as good or bad. But in fairness, I’d also say that the good that came from reading this book is that it has encouraged me read more than I have in years (I’ve finished three books since I started this one).
I liked a lot about How I Became A Famous Novelist (or HIBAFN). I thought the book managed some sharp criticism, impressively covering all aspects of the writing business. It takes on everything from MFA programs, literary criticism, the business of the publishing industry, the sometimes-ridiculous nature of genre fiction, the editorial process, the mass-reading audience and even Hollywood and a few more that I’ve probably neglected to list here. Additionally, this is one of only a few books that had me laugh out loud while reading. (Yes, I LOLed.) I think the funniest parts of the book were the asides-- the excerpts from other books, the faux NYT best-seller list, the fake reviews of The Tornado Ashes Club and things like that. But like any good criticism, it was so funny because it was so true.
What I didn’t like about the book? Honestly, I didn’t like that Hely felt we needed to learn lessons by having Pete constantly doing the wrong thing. We’re set up from the beginning to see Pete as a kind of anti-hero, a slacker who is only self-interested, skating by doing the very minimum… but I really wanted him to succeed with his master plan. There were many times when I was like “Man, I would have kept it together if that was me.” Now granted, if Pete didn’t mess up all the good he created in the first half of the book, I suppose there wouldn’t have been a very interesting second half. But I kind of felt let down when Pete wasn’t awesome at Polly’s wedding, when he screwed up the Television interview and when he gets pwned at the literary debate. This is probably my own fault for identifying too closely with the main character, but I am also curious if others were looking for that atavistic pleasure of being the badass Pete thought he was going to be when he set out to write the novel.
I wanted to open this section up for general discussion about HIBAFN, or any of the questions above. Further discussion to follow.
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I'm very glad I read this book (and every other book so far, book club), so good choice, Kevin.
ReplyDeleteI'll just bullet my thoughts:
--Great opener. So many books take so long to get to a character's essence; not here. A simple trip to work did it, and did it well.
--I wonder how long it took Hely to write this. Besides the story (which is solid enough), there's so much addenda and, I'll say it, ephemera, in HIBAFN--the best-seller lists, the essays from Pete's work, the fictional epigraphs. Hely's clearly got some skill writing in genre.
--I was especially smitted with the List of Bestseller Ideas on page 90. "A CIA agent discovers the Chinese are secretly training an army of genetically engineered dragons."
--Admit it, you kinda want to read The Tornado Ashes Club. Such a powerful ending.
--The Hollywood director interlude felt half-assed in its derision, which sucks because, given Hely's showbiz background, I was expecting him to give it the same two barrels he'd leveled at the publishing industry. Weed eyedrops is an authentic touch, though.
--Why do the wedding as a list, when it was set up as a much bigger crux? I wanted to relish every terrible detail. Climax fail.
To answer, I read it cover to cover on a Friday.
To comment directly, I had never read Johnny Got His Gun before I "assigned" it, nor will I have read the book I'm choosing once we wind down on Hely. I'm in this for the joy of discovery, of discussing a book that's fresh to all our eyes. But that's just me; you do you.
Book club hugs,
The Luckiest Polack in Chicago
One reason I really like our book club is because it forces me to read things that I either A) wouldn't have read had someone not forced me to, or B) had never heard of. This book falls in the B) category, and I'm glad you introduced it to me, Kevin, because it was so much fun to read. And although I enjoy laughing and probably need to do it more often, I tend to gravitate away from funny books for some reason.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question about my process of reading HIBAFN, I read
it over the course of a weekend about a month ago. Thus, I'm struggling with uber-specific commentary on the novel since the details are already a bit hazy in my memory.
BUT, I do remember thinking that I really enjoyed watching Pete crash and burn - both for the comedy of it and for the fact that I really enjoyed watching the swarmy little bastard get what he deserved. (Actually, it was probably much, much more than he deserved, but whatevs.) It's not that I didn't like Pete Tarslaw, but his is the personality type that tends to rub me the wrong way. He thinks that everyone but him is stupid and artificial and contrived, but rather than create something of actual merit he becomes consumed with proving how ridiculous he thinks everyone is being. On one hand, I really liked Pete's observations of the book industry from a place of satire, but I feel that had Pete been a real person in my actual life then I would probably think he was a bit of a douche who only wrote a good bad novel because he secretly knew he wasn't capable of writing a good novel. When will folks learn? You never end up looking good when all you can focus on is trying to make others look bad...
I loved this book. I can say this now about 4 of the 7 books we've read, which is a pretty good average. Also, I think it's the first book we've read that actually was published in the year that we read it and that also gives it a nice place in our book club, meta-style, which is appropriate. My initial thoughts:
ReplyDelete-I read this book in exactly 6 sittings over the last 6 weeks or so. I'm not sure why this was. It's been a weird and busy fall and my reading has fallen off a bit of late. However, I think reading this book in such a way really helped me to enjoy it optimally. Imagine sitting down with an smart, funny, and light story for about 45 minutes once a week and then picking it up the next. The avenue where one does that most often is with television comedy. Wasn't Hely somehow initially affiliated with that medium? This story could easily be broken up into episodes. The Big Idea episode. The Writing Episode. The Getting it Published Episode. The Hollywood episode. The MFA episode. The Book Expo episode. Of course, those could also be chapters, but why not play along?
-The book is genuinely funny. I consider myself to have a pretty honed sense of humor and found myself laughing out loud at several times as well. When Pete wrote on the Reutical high, "The Black Hills were said to 'rise from the land like the calluses and corns and warts from God's own foot.'" The sasquatch on p.133. The conversation with Zadie Smith on p.139, the bit about the liquefied THC on p. 210. It's not often you come across a book that is entertaining in THIS way.
-How frickin' meta the book is, especially considering the context in which we read it. So, in the book club lets discuss the merits of a book which is about a guy who is writing a book about the merits of books. Not only that, he is writing said book in a way that makes it completely aware that the entire book (by Hely--writing it as the second book, a memoir, by Tarslaw) could be judged in the same ways as the initial "book" by Tarslaw. No matter what the end result, you have to appreciate the literary gymnastics.
-The entirety of Chapter 15 seems completely true to me. I thought you all might find that interesting as I can speak from personal experience. It also serves a very important purpose in the story, which I will get to later.
K- thanks for an entertaining pick, and an easy to read book that was intellegent. With all these club choices, I realize that I have to find a different way of choosing books to read.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it's weird that I'm chiming in to clarify such a small point, but let the record show that I had never read Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead" before I chose it for this club. In fact, I think the only one of us who did chose a book that he has already read was Paul, who, from what I understood, wanted us to read "Snow Crash" because it was one of his favorite books. (I also don't think this was something Kevin was ever accusing us of doing, rather it was Steve's interpretation of a certain sentence in this post. All Kevin was saying was that we tend to really like our own choices.)
ReplyDeleteI only mention this because I don't think there's anything wrong with picking a book that you've already read, although that really isn't the way people have been going about it. I, for one, have read many books that no one else I know has read, and I can name a small mountain of titles that I'd wish I could make one of you read so I could discuss it with you. (In fact, someone please go read Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" and then give me a holla. ;)
Bottom line, we're all here for the joy of discovery. But we're also here for the joy of sharing. And lovely things both.