Funny Enough...

The New Yorker's online book club selection for February was also Mr. Yates' feel-good story about the hap-hap-happiest marriage in the world. I like that we have book club competition.

And while I'm here, and if anyone's interested, I'm planning on watching, by, say March 15, Le Cercle Rouge, the 1970 French crime caper directed by Jean-Pierre Melville that's famous for its 35+ minute heist sequence. Criterion has put out an edition, but I doubt that's what Netflix'll send me. I'd be interested in discussing it if anyone's interested. Otherwise, my cat can get my two cents'. Here's a trailer to whet your appetite, francophiles:

Meet you all soon in the walk-in freezer with Manny.

Revolutionary Road

Seeing as how I will be involved in 2 different 4+ hour plane trips in the next week and will have a lot of time for reading (and I guess to give everyone a heads start if they want it) I've decided upon the next book, Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.



Now most buzzed due to the recent Sam Mendes adaptation with Leo and Kate, the book is highly acclaimed and, in keeping with our winter theme, I'm assuming ends tragically.

From NPR:

Frank and April Wheeler, the protagonists of Richard Yates' 1961 novel Revolutionary Road, are, in the most basic sense, ordinary people. He works in the city in what he calls "a hopelessly dull job;" she's a stay-at-home mother of two. They live on the street that gives the novel its title, in a cookie-cutter suburb in Connecticut.

In the 300-plus pages of the novel, nothing all that extraordinary happens to them, at least not until the end: Frank and April deal with dissatisfaction and fear, with pregnancy and ambition, and with the dream of escape. Yet in spite of this lack of surface pizazz, Revolutionary Road seems, each time I read it, ever more moving, and ever more an essential testament about mid-20th century America.

Sounds like a treat, but it's something I've wanted to read since Woody Allen mentioned Yates in both Annie Hall and Manhatten. Plus, it was nominated for and then lost the National Book award the same year that Catch-22 did the same. So it has some pretty nice company.

Now, please, continue to consider the Last Night at the Lobster.

A Thought.

Forgive me for sullying the book club with yet another tangent, but I'm really enjoying the way we're getting, here, to books I always wished I'd read and to books I hadn't really heard of beforehand. And discussing them!

In that same vein, I was thinking about movies. There are plenty of 'em out there that I haven't seen--or heard of--and want to, so why not turn this utterly pleasant blog business into a book/movie club? We all read at different paces, but movies are watchable at pretty controllable intervals, no? I'd like to think we could roll movie discussions into this blog pretty seamlessly. But hey, Christ knows I've been wrong before.

We could have movie themes (British heist movies, sports movies, love stories, literary adaptations, Harryhausen movies, director-centric, B-movies, zombie flicks, documentaries, ad infinitum ). We could go birthday-by-birthday selections, or whatever.

OR, I could take my wares elsewhere and do a movie blog all on my own. I'd like to think I'd be able to drum up interest beyond the five-ish of us who contribute here (and I'll try regardless), but I wanted to get you all in on the potential ground floor just in case. We seem to be good at discussing shit.

This idea's been kicking around for a while, and it seems pretty thematically relevant to you all. But if I'm wasting your time and if this club is a book-only club, sorry, truly, and I'll take this post down ASAP, but just in case this isn't a terrible notion, then let's do yes.



Could we possibly be a Culture Club?

Not to kill the current discussion

It has been requested that I post the next title, which is "Last Night at the Lobster" by Stewart O'Nan. I'd love to add a picture of the cover as well as the publisher's blurb about it, but I've been trying to figure out how to do that for the past ten minutes and now I have to leave for work. Rest assured that it is both short and set in present-day America.

Now by all means continue discussing Johnny.

Edit: Added in the picture and publisher blurb - PAK

"Perched in the far corner of a run-down New England mall, the Red Lobster hasn't been making its numbers and headquarters has pulled the plug. But manager Manny DeLeon still needs to navigate a tricky last shift. With four shopping days left until Christmas, Manny must convince his near-mutinous staff to hunker down and serve the final onslaught of hungry retirees, lunatics, and holiday office parties. All the while, he's wondering how to handle the waitress he's still in love with, his pregnant girlfriend at home, and where to find the present that will make everything better."

Authorial Intent

Not to get way off track, but I think it's kind of interesting how like with the last novel this is boiling down to how much you should factor authorial intent and social/historical context into your reading. You can forgive O'Toole for the necessary shortcomings that come with broad strokes of a farce (like racist or classist undertones) and Trumbo for the necessary shortcomings that come with writing this kind of polemic for the masses (like simplistic arguments and inconsistent realism) only if you are willing to bring more to a novel than what the author gives you on the page.

I guess I'd argue that both have to be read in context to get their full impact, and considering how little social context any of us have for 1960s New Orleans or, jeez, 1938 anywhere, I think we've given ourselves a doozy of a one-two punch to open up this here book club. But I'm definitely enjoying the debate it's bringing.

Depressed

Does anyone else feel like they need prozac now?

Sophomoric

While I agree with Mr. Trumbo's arguments against war, I felt that a lot of the argument was rather sophomoric. He does not communicate any of the complex political nature of conflict. Maybe this is because Joe is supposed to be a "regular Joe." Maybe his thinking is not as complex. There are positives and negatives in this sort of argument. First it is more accessible to a larger readership, which is a positive thing. However, I also feel that many of his arguments may be dismissed by people who see themselves as complex thinkers and appreciate correct grammar. I find it hard to believe that he got this book published and that it was so widely read when he so obviously needed an editor, as well as a research assistant. For example, Joe's hospital care must be inaccurate. If he was truly in the hospital for that long a time and received no more care than he described he would have died of bed sores long before 7 years. Also, there's no way that he could have survived a blast like and have not had a brain injury. The blast wave alone would have churned his neurons enough for him not to be able to put together a complete sentence. I have an answer for the question at the back of the book about why the "counter-culture" of the 60's picked up this book and championed it. It is because it is simple enough that they could still understand it even though they had killed off most of their brain cells dropping acid. Fortunately they also knew enough to get up off their asses and march to Washington.

In short: Trumbo makes valid points, although not very complex. He needed an editor. He needed a research assistant.

johnny got his gun: stream of consciousness

(Hi, all. Courtney recommended we try to thread our discussions to make them a bit easier to follow. The easiest way I can see to do this is to start a different post each time we tackle a different area of discussion. Not sure if it will be easier this way or just weirder, but either way I vote we give it a shot this month. If we don't like it, we can always go back to the previous method, right?)

For me, the most powerful part of this novel was the ninth chapter when Joe reflects on the pointlessness of war, and since it sort of ties in with Trumbo's use of stream of consciousness, I figured I'd mention it in this thread. Chapter nine is probably one of the most poignant and most reasonable arguments against war I think I've ever read, and I've come back to it at least four times since finishing the novel. Here's a part that made me nod my head with furious agreement:

I know what death is and all you people who talk about dying for words don't even know what life is. There's nothing noble about dying. Not even if you die for honor. Not even if you die the greatest hero the world ever saw. Not even if you're so great your name will never be forgotten and who's that great? The most important thing is your life little guys. You're worth nothing dead except for speeches. Don't let them kid you any more. Pay no attention when they tap you on the shoulder and say come along we've got to fight for liberty or whatever their word is there's always a word.

Just say mister I'm sorry I got no time to die I'm too busy and then turn and run like hell. If they say coward why don't pay any attention because it's your job to live not to die. If the talk about dying for principles that are bigger than life you say mister you're a liar. Nothing is bigger than life. There's nothing noble in death.

And coming from a guy who is little more than an brain and a torso, it's certainly hard to argue against that kind of logic.

But here's the thing - while this was one of the most powerful sections of the novel, it's also the place where Trumbo's stream of consciousness got a bit warbly for me. Steve was right in commending him for his ambitious attempt at carrying it throughout an entire novel, but this is the section where I felt Trumbo's voice creeping in, speaking through the puppet of poor Joe. It didn't bother me so much I guess, however Trumbo so seamlessly moved between Joe's memories and his present for the most part that when I came to this chapter - which I gathered to be the novel's basic thesis - it felt a bit tangential.

I'm not sure that this is a criticism as much as it's an observation. Other thoughts regarding our narrator's voice?

Darkness Imprisioning Me (and Other Fun Stuff)

First off, this book had way too many fart jokes.

Howdy, book club. I have lots of thoughts on my pick for this "month", Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, and I hope you'll all get around to posting your thoughts within the next week or so.

I'll spare you any broader interpretations for now and instead point you in three directions we could discuss, though I'm sure you've got things in mind too, and since you retain all of your limbs and senses and since you lack a big pus-y face-hole (or at least you did when I last saw you), sharing them shouldn't be too much a hassle, right?

Stream-of-consciousness on a scale as large as a novel is a bit of a high-wire act to pull off, and I for one thought Trumbo did it well. Much of the novel takes place between Joe's ears (or at least where his ears used to be), and as he discovers and negotiates an understanding of what's happened to him, and as he attempts to mark and pass the time, and as he reminisces on moments of loss (his dad, at the bakery, Lazrus, etc.), and as he attempts to communicate with the nurses and doctors, I found a consistency to Bonham's perspective that made the novel cohere. Joe's not a complex person, really, and that comes across effectively and through Trumbo's linguistic restraint....

...which lent the political allegory depth. The book obviously aspires to be a Polemic, provoking discussions about the effect of war on soldiers who're essentially pawns, but that doesn't really explain its staying power through the decades. Anti-war novels aren't anything new--it's the duty of the artist to speak truth to power, right?--so for my monies' worth what Trumbo's done here is execute a scenario that's so shocking, so violent and disturbing, that the volume of our discussions about war necessarily got turned up. Which got me thinking...

...about modern warfare. Joe gets hurt on the last day of fighting in World War I, and though I won't bore you with details (for now), it's generally believed that WWI was the first truly horrific war. Artillery shells--just like the one that took all but Joe's mind and chest-skin--were first used in WWI, and their effect on the number of casualties is staggering. And this is to say nothing of mustard gas, machine guns, airplanes, tanks and a dozen other "modern" warwaging technologies. Before WWI, war was a relatively genteel affair: soldiers accompanied by marching bands, aristocrats sipping tea on nearby hillsides, etc. After WWI, humanity had to deal with a whole new reality: we can kill each other en masse, and pretty easily. Such knowledge was clearly not anodyne to Mr. Trumbo.

There's a lot more I'd like to discuss--the working-class struggles depicted, the motif, the nurses, the notion of death as rebirth and of speaking for the dead, the Christ halluination, books I should reread, and that fucking rat scene, among others--but for now, let's just get this ball a-rollin'.

I chose this book because a screenwriter friend of mine, Mark (who just got a big paycheck) told me it was his favorite novel, and I'd tried to read it a few times before and just couldn't get into it. So far, the club here has been a nice way to cross such books off my list, and for that I'm grateful. I'm also curious as to what our next book will be, so Courtney, please do share when you decide.

Below is the trailer for the 2008 one man stage production of Johnny that'll be released on DVD sometime this year. It stars Ben McKenzie from The OC and looks...interesting.