The Confessions Of Max Tivoli

Having long been an enormous Indiana Jones fan, I was surprised that it took me so long to see the new movie. But, I was even more surprised by one of the trailers that preceded it.

The trailer I saw did not give the movie a title, but it is certainly based on the book The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer (which I first wrote about here). I am totally trilled that this book is being made in to a movie (with Brad Pitt!). Greer is an amazing creative genius. If the script is faithful to the book, I am certain the movie will be terrific.

Next up, I will have to read The Story of a Marriage (also by Greer).

Of Course The Main Character Is 29

I have always thought that being 29 made people a little crazy and, even, a little bit distasteful. The nicest 28 year old and the coolest 30 year old was probably a pain in the butt at 29.

Anyway, I heard about The Book of Dahlia by Elisa Albert on NPR this morning. I am interested because it is supposed to be funny (not as funny as Ant Farm by Simon Rich that I wrote about here), but I am not really buying what the write up is selling.

I would normally avoid any and all entertainment that involves someone suffering from cancer, but could be persuaded if it was done in such a way that was funny (which is, apparently, what this book does).

But, I just don't believe it can be truly funny and not annoying (mostly because the main character is 29).

What Do The Cigarette Girl, Shopgirl And A Random Diary From Ebay Have In Common?

Despite a variety of good reviews, I avoided Shopgirl by Steve Martin for a long time. I avoided it not because I thought Steve Martin couldn’t write a novella, but because it seemed a little unfair that he was a great comedian and a great serious writer.

But, eventually, I picked it up and it is a terrific read (short, to the point and observational). What I liked best about it was the way that Los Angeles is evoked. In that sense, it was super similar to The Cigarette Girl by Carol Wolper, which was also excellent.

What about the diary? Well, on eBay there is a brisk trade in other people’s diaries (true story) and I bought one once. It was written by a woman living in LA in the 30s and I have to say that the LA she describes produces some of the same images (albeit 30s style) as both Martin and Wolper.

The First Draft Of The Reincarnationist

The honest truth is that, while I appreciate literature, my literary standards are not that high when it comes to an interesting plot or theme. And, as far as great plot devises go, it is hard to get better than reincarnation (deals with identity and spirituality with a bit of inherent time travel – hard to get better than that).

The Reincarnationist by MJ Rose (which I was fully expecting to be a great read) might possibly be the worst book that I have ever read. Truly. The plot devise is good, but the characters are flat and make no sense, the storyline is interesting, but doesn’t hang together and the book should be edited in a big way. It really should be about half as long as it is.

At best, The Reincarnationist is a first draft!

A Quote To Live By

It has been almost twenty years since I bought a magnet with this quote on it (attributed to Mark Twain). I think it is useful advice.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

The Last Sentence

I have often thought that the best first sentence in a novel is in The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. (3)

Prior to reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, I thought the best last sentence was in the published version of A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (though, from what I understand, there are lots of unpublished endings, but I will have to look that up later).

After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain. (332).

Now I think that sentence is tied for my favorite with the last one from Never Let Me Go (though, arguably, it is exactly the same in feeling and intent, if not the explicit words or preceding story).

I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be. (288)

The Feminine Mistake

I first learned about The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts when I read a review of it in the Washington Post here. Suitably intrigued, I picked it up and read.

The Feminine Mistake darts around like a minnow and continually circles back to a couple of core points. It is a little Momento-ish since each chapter reads like the first, which can be disorienting, but, ultimately, it drives home her main point.

Bennetts main point is that “stay-at-home wives” (a term she uses frequently) risk financial security when they become economically dependent on someone else. Basically, the old “a man isn’t a plan”.

But, this is the thing, “a job isn’t a plan” either. The logic doesn’t flow straight to financial security from staying employed. Lots of people make lots of money and are still not secure in their future because they don’t have an actual financial plan. I think “only a plan is a plan”.

Exercise guru Bill Phillips said “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Even though he wasn’t referring to money, I think that might be better advice to take to the bank.

That all being the case, I did like the general “you can do it” (succeed) theme of the book. It is a welcome message when many people say “it can’t be done”.

The Feminine Mistake is over 300 pages long, but I would say the entire word of caution that she is preaching can be summarized in this giant quote:

Given the likelihood that you will have to fend for yourself at some point in the future, protect yourself against economic hardship by maintaining the capacity to support yourself. Protect your children by making sure you can take care of them financially should anything happen to their father. Protect your future happiness against the nagging doubts harbored by frustrated stay-at-home mothers who can’t shake the guilt and regret they feel about failing to explore their full potential. Protect yourself against the desolation of the empty nest, which inflicts the deepest sense of loss on full-time mothers with no other identity or outlets to sustain them. Protect your older self against the feelings of uselessness and isolation experienced by so many women who didn’t cultivate meaningful work that could nourish them in their later years. (317)

A Scientific Romance

When I picked up A Scientific Romance by Ronald Wright, I thought I was going to read a steampunk novel. However, what I got included a lot more. In many ways it was like The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier (which I wrote about here) meets V for Vendetta (plus more).

There were so many themes and concepts that it seems silly to list them all, but here goes (in varying levels and not in order of importance):

Civilization, Archeology, Pandemic, Imperialism, Globalization, Time Travel, Industrial Revolution, Morality, Mad Cow Disease, Friendship, Steampunk, Human Society, Fossil Fuels, Monarchy, Victorian Undergarments, Neolithic Societies, Vegetarians, Rome, Evolution, Love, Academia, History, Environmentalism, Shakespeare, Computers, Nature, Science, Religion, Cities, Anarchy, Racism, Betrayal, Mortality, Crime, Plumbing, Genocide and Culture

Things not in this book: the Internet, Feminism and Space Aliens

Anyway, much of the action takes place on a walk from London to Scotland and, since that takes quite a long time, a fair amount of narrative takes place in the protagonist’s musings as he walks. The result is a lot of themes and concepts.

Everyman

While I generally enjoyed the book, the problem with Everyman by Philip Roth is that it is a little inaccurately sold. The book is a collection of memories of a single man (supposedly an ordinary man) that starts with his funeral.

The problem is this: the main character isn’t ordinary. His father is a well-off jewelry merchant, his brother is a multi-millionaire, he has a successful advertising career, he manages to sell some of his paintings and in the middle of his life he hooks up with (and eventually marries) a gorgeous Danish model (oh, plus he is supposedly really good looking).

As I wrote, I did like this book, but it does have one thing in common with For One More Day by Mitch Albom. Basically, if you go out of town (and are doing something that you shouldn’t be doing), your Mom dies of a stroke (or something) while you are gone.

Of course, the main theme, the “everyman” theme, is the angst associated with internalizing mortality. Despite being in good shape (doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t gain weight) the main character has his share of health problems.

He is exposed early to death and thinks (right before he has a burst appendix):

Terrifying encounters with the end? I’m thirty-four! Worry about oblivion, he told himself, when you’re seventy-five! The remote future will be time enough to anguish over the ultimate catastrophe! (32)

I think that is pretty good advice (course, poor Mr. Everyman doesn’t actually make it to 75).

A Separate Peace On Elm Street

As compelling as it is, this book totally freaked me out. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a “coming of age story” about the “coming of age” of people (clones) who are being raised so that the vital organs can be harvested.

It is complete with teenage angst, romance and girl infighting (not too different from the movie Mean Girls based on Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosiland Wiseman). However, the backdrop is the life of these clones who “know, but don’t know” that their whole existence is to provide organs to “normals”.

It is probably obvious that a book with this premise would tackle (or at least provoke contemplation about) ideas related to organ donations, cloning, research and even food production (a la the movie Fast Food Nation). It is filled with an endless stream of ethical and moral questions asked in an interesting way. But, that isn’t what got me.

What got me was the metaphor for life. We are born, we become “carers” (part of the story line) and we die (all the while we have a bit of nostalgia for our childhood home and history).

Never Let Me Go brings you along at a fast clip for the most part, but it does get bogged down in a kind of literary self-gratification (the kind that people say “what an excellent way of exposing character”), which gets a little boring:

When I found myself alone, I’d stop and look for a view – out a window, say, or through a doorway into a room – any view so long as there were no people in it. I did this so that I could, for a few seconds at least, create the illusion the place wasn’t crawling with students, but that instead Hailsham was this quiet, tranquil house where I lived with just five or six others. (90)

It is a deep and disturbing plot line, but it has moments of humor:

You could go around implying you’d read all kinds of things, nodding knowingly when someone mentioned, say, War and Peace, and the understanding was that no one would scrutinize your claim too rationally. You have to remember, since we’d been in each other’s company constantly since arriving at the Cottages, it wasn’t possible for any of us to have read War and Peace without the rest noticing. But just like with the sex at Hailsham, there was an unspoken agreement to allow for a mysterious dimension where we went off and did all this reading. (122)

Last, even though the clones know the end of life will come (don’t we all?), the narrator still approaches it in a manner that is void of the context (which, I guess, if it is the only existence you have know, you would do):

And it started to dawn on me, I suppose, that a lot of things I’d always assumed I’d plenty of time to get round to doing, I might now have to act on pretty soon or else let them go forever. (213)

All in all, Never Let Me Go is super chilling, but well worth reading.

Identity

Milan Kundera is a genius. His books are nearly perfect. Identity is a quick, but brilliant, read and is filled with many interesting quotes. Ultimately, it is a love story, but it is also a view of external events via the interior world.

Some of the quotes are short, and interesting (even out of context):

The pervasive rose fragrance: a metaphor of adventure. (39)
What to attach to, if his inner self should keep as silent as it had before? (68)
You’re living out the destiny I escaped by chance. (85)
Is having two faces such a triumph? (115)
She has the impression of being drawn along by a conspiracy of coincidences…(131)
…our only freedom is choosing between bitterness and pleasure. (146)

And, then, there are dozens of longer quotes that are terrific like:

Their problem is time – how to make time go by, go by on its own, by itself, with no effort from them, without their being required to get through it themselves, like exhausted hikers, and that’s why she talks, because the words she spouts manage inconspicuously to keep time moving along, whereas when her mouth stays closed, time comes to a standstill, emerges from the shadows huge and heavy, and it scares my poor aunt, who, in a panic, rushes to find someone she can tell how her daughter is having trouble with her child who’s got diarrhea… (79)

For sure, there are many more, which, ultimately, if I collected them all, would actually be the entire book reprinted.

But, I do have a favorite:

When he did that, I understood the sole meaning of friendship as it’s practiced today. Friendship is indispensable to man for the proper function of his memory. Remembering our past, carrying it with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To ensure that the self doesn’t shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flower, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. (46)

I wonder, has anything more accurate been written?

Next up by Kundera, Slowness (finally going to deliver on the time travel).

As A General Rule

As a general rule, I don’t think that The Hours by Michael Cunningham has much in common with Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. But, the following quotes have a similar feel and message.

From Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart contemplating while she is waiting for Hank Rearden:

The hours ahead, like all her nights with him, would be added, she thought, to the savings account of one’s life where moments of time are stored in the pride of having been lived. The only pride of her workday was not that it had been lived, but that it had been survived. It was wrong, she thought, it was viciously wrong that one should ever be forced to say that about any hour of one’s life. (343)

From The Hours, Clarissa’s thoughts towards the end of the book:

There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. (225)

Some Of The Best Of Immortality

Milan Kundera published a work of non-fiction called The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts.

Let me start by making it clear that I love every word Milan Kundera has ever written. I think he is brilliant and his books (since the ones that I have read are translations) are almost enough for me to devote a large part of my day to learning Czech (almost).

I do have a friend who learned to read German so that she could fully appreciate and enjoy the writings of Franz Kafka. After reading The Castle, I decided that she must be partially insane, because it must be even worse in its original form. Or, at least, make the reader more nuts.

Anyway, back to Kundera, The Curtain is a non-fiction book about the art (or the place?) of the novel (I won’t regurgitate the synopsis here, but it sounds great) and I will read it in short order.

In the meantime, I will provide a couple of my favorites from Immortality (over the next weeks or maybe months, I’ll quote the others, but, for no particular reason, I am starting with Immortality).

On burning old letters and diaries:

Imagine yourself in her place: it isn’t easy to burn intimate documents that are dear to you; it would be like admitting to yourself that you won’t be here much longer, that tomorrow you may die; and so you put off the act of destruction from day to day, and then one day it’s too late. Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death. (74)

On politics, terrorism and lines:

He never expressed his opinion about Palestinians, Israelis, the October Revolution, or Fidel Castro, or even about terrorists, because he knew there existed a border beyond which murder is no longer murder but heroism, and that he would never be able to recognize just where that border lay. (105)

On self-perception:

He suddenly realized, too, that people saw him differently from how he saw himself or from how he thought he was seen by others. (124)

On perceiving others:

She was therefore certain that she knew him by heart and that nobody had ever known him as well as she. The emotion of love gives all of us a misleading illusion of knowing the other. (132)

Another on self-perception:

As for her, she saw her inappropriate behavior and rash words as marks of her personality, as the charm of her self, and she was happy. (147)

On history and death:

I refuse to die with this day and its cares, I wish to transcend myself, to be a part of history, because history is eternal memory. (164)

On time and youth:

When someone is young, he is not capable of conceiving of time as a circle, but thinks of it as a road leading forward to ever-new horizons (275)

One that is just plain interesting:

Episodes are like land mines. The majority of them never explode, but the most unremarkable of them may someday turn into a story that will prove fateful to you. (305)

Next up, quotes from Identity.

Living Life in Reverse

This quote has been making the email rounds (I did a brief search and could not find the author. If anyone knows who wrote this, I would love to know):

I want to live my next life backwards.
You start out dead, and get that out of the way.
Then you wake up in an old age home, feeling better every day.
Then you get kicked out for being too healthy.
You enjoy your retirement and collect your pension.
Then, when you start to work, you get a gold watch on your first day.
You work 40 years until you're too young to work.
You get ready for high school, drink alcohol and party, and are generally very social.
Then, you go to primary school, become a kid, play and have no responsibilities.
Then you become a baby.
Then, you spend your last nine months floating peacefully in luxury in spa-like conditions, central heating, and room service on tap.
Then, you finish off as an orgasm.
I rest my case.

-Author Unknown-

It reminded me of one of the best books that I ever read: The Confessions of Max Tivoli: A Novel by Andrew Sean Greer. Max Tivoli is born as an old man and grows younger over time. On the surface it sounds totally absurd (kind of "you lost me at born an old man"), but Greer makes it work and the suspension of disbelief required is not as impossible as you might think.

While the context for the book is the biography of a man living in reverse, the book itself is really about unrequited love, loss, abandonment and loneliness. Max Tivoli is a creative classic.