What Are You Reading Now.

Finished two books opposite in voice.



"Drown" by Junot Diaz. (★★★★★)

This basically finishes for me everything Diaz has written fiction-wise. I wish he'd write more. It's a tragedy that he does not. He's been rather quiet since he won the Pulitzer in 2008. Well, I see a kid's book in 2018, but I have no interest in that. I'd also hesitate letting my kid read Diaz. haha. Actually, my kid just told me he finished reading "A Clockwork Orange." How much drugs and sex are in that? I assumed, a lot. Hmm . . . I'm a terrible parent. I guess . . . I don't believe in censoring books, and it saddens me to realize that he's probably old enough to be fine with this. I was reading worse in my day. Still, Clockwork Orange is probably not as lurid as Junot Diaz.

If I had to describe this book, first I'd say Spanglish. (not as much as say, "Zero Saints," but still quite a lot.) Then I'd add: gritty indifference, blunt honesty, ugliness and perseverance. It's written in a casual voice, extremely relaxed. Grammatically vulgar, but with these flourishes of imagery that give it stature. That's what interests me most as a writer. How does Diaz take these stories, which meander about with all the grace of a meat mallet, and then make them somehow high fiction? It's his timing with metaphor. He's quite clever and knows just when to elevate an idea. He never overdoes it. It's near perfect control.

If you're the type of reader who needs trigger warnings, then this is not for you. It's not an entirely pleasant journey. Some of it even bothered me. I appreciated its humor though. That almost never stops, even in the ugliest stories. My favorite character was the side character who had his face eaten off by a pig. He goes around with a bag on his head and all the kids chase him and torment him. He's probably the only "pure-hearted" character. The MC & co. chase him down to get that bag off his head. They want to see what he looks like. Those are the type of stories we're talking about. (I'm curious how much of this is autobiographical. I have a feeling that a lot of it is. The MC, Yunior, is basically Diaz.)

This is also yet another composite novel. It's a series of linked short stories. It takes a while before you realize that. I don't know why I keep choosing these. I don't mind them though. I feel it's the favored way to turn in a short story collection and have serious publishers believe in it. It's as if each chapter is a complete short story and a novel unfolds at the end.




"Klara and the Sun" (★★)

Okay. I hated this. I reserve one-star ratings for books that hold the reader in contempt, and I do feel this one was mildly trying, so it gets two. The author knew how to write a sentence, more or less, but I could have easily written a better story than this. And I have, many times. What makes it so weird is that the author is a Nobel laureate. Yeah, a Nobel prize for literature. If that's so, then what the hell is this?

The premise is that an android is purchased from a store. It lives with a sick girl. (The sickness is never explained. "She's tired" is all that's said.) The android hopes she gets better and she does. The End.

The beginning where the android is hoping to be purchased is interesting. It's alright. The ending where the android is discarded in a junkyard is nice too (storywise, you understand). It's vaguely amusing that the android worships the sun (she's solar powered). Nothing else matters. Nothing. The characters are flat ciphers. Events occur that are never explained or even shown to be important. They just fill the page. The sci-fi elements are ignored. The story could take place at a house in the Hamptons, but there's AI robots. Most people are genetically altered ("lifted," they're called), but this doesn't seem to mean anything. It's never shown. At one point, 200 pages in, it's mentioned that the father lives in a "fascist enclave," or something to that effect, because there's some sort of war? I would never have guessed. No detail of it is mentioned in any way. And then that's dropped. It makes no sense. It should have some bearing on the story.

The worst part is the dialog. The book is probably 75% dialog and it is universally terrible. I'm okay with the android sounding demure, but not every character. It's some of the most pedestrian writing I've ever seen. Grammatically, it's fine. It's just hollow. It sounds like Leave it to Beaver or something. Characters have a habit of referring to each other by name.

PEOPLE DON'T TALK LIKE THIS. Trust me. We don't use each others names all that much. This is the most amateur of all dialog mistakes.

‘Not now, Paul. Not here.’
‘Hmm. Okay.’
‘Hey, Dad,’ Josie called out beside me. ‘<blah blah>’
‘Like hell you’re not listening,’ the Father said and laughed.
‘No more arguments about the portrait, Paul,’ the Mother said. ‘<blah blah>’
‘I owe you? I don’t quite see why I owe you anything, Chrissie.’
‘Not now, Paul.’​

Yeah, it ends with a repetition. I suppose that's okay. . . okay-ish. It may be deliberate but it's hard to tell when the text around it is broken. The whole book carries on this way. Nothing is said of importance. There is no tension. There's no purpose. And this isn't me being selective. I could pull dozens upon dozens of sections out of here that repeat names like this. Excluding that, much of the dialog is banal. Just terrible. Dialog should be revelatory.

At one point I thought that the entire world was being filtered through the android's AI. Everything I was reading was a lie. I assumed the filter would be broken and I would hear real dialog. I was that much in shock at its failure. I can't explain why someone with such accolades would write a story that says so little so poorly.

Here's some real dialog. From "Drown" (no quotation marks in Diaz's books):

What the hell are you wearing that mask for anyway? Rafa asked.
I’m sick, Ysrael said.
It must be hot.
Not for me.
Don’t you take it off?
Not until I get better. I’m going to have an operation soon.
You better watch out for that, Rafa said. Those doctors will kill you faster than the Guardia.
They’re American doctors.
Rafa sniggered. You’re lying.
I saw them last spring. They want me to go next year.
They’re lying to you. They probably just felt sorry.​

They didn't use each other's names! But how will we know who's speaking? See the repetition? (You're lying / They're lying) It deliberately intensifies. It's connecting the dialog flow at the end. It's sentence cohesion within a dialog, reaching back over a line. That's the type of trick a lauded expert should show. It's why I read fancy lit. The good stuff has a lot to teach you about mechanics and story. Look at this part!

You better watch out for that, Rafa said. Those doctors will kill you faster than the Guardia.
They’re American doctors.
​

That's a discourse trick. (Discourse is a weird field of semantics). The bag kid, Ysrael, didn't deny the statement. He moved to a counter-statement. He said "no" without saying "no." In the world of dialog, it's a "show don't tell." It holds those two lines tight together in the reader's mind. That's phenomenal writing, IMO.

Sorry for the mega-post. I blame the pictures.

 

This one was the same way. I looked at "Remains of the Day" just because I was curious about his other work, and that looked okay. Better than this, for sure. I usually can figure out why an author's great even if they're not my preference. But this time I just don't see what everyone else does. The 5-star reviews on this book (and there are many) are confounding. I'm reading them now.

I'll mention again (for anyone reading this): If you want sci-fi that is deeply emotional, beautifully written, imaginative and tense, read Ted Chiang's "Stories of Your Lives and Others." I cannot recommend that book highly enough. The sci-fi is there, but not in an geeky way. It's subdued, sometimes just a background element of the story. (okay, sometimes at the fore) It's shaping characters who are well-rounded and believable. Even if you never read that genre, you'll probably like those stories lots. I'd be surprised if anyone didn't. I would put it in my top 10 books of all time.

 

That's too bad. I read that one after the other book. It's probably more of a 4-star book, IMO. But I was in a good mood from the first and gave it like 4 1/2. If you really didn't like that one though, I guess you wouldn't like the other. You must be more of a w40K sci-fi fan? (This isn't an insult. I have a whole shelf of Black Library omnibuses. Omnibi?)

If I remember right, there was one story in there that I felt was excellent, and that was the one where the father is trying to repair the relationship with his estranged daughter. The whole story, it's shown that the daughter is a screw-up and her hysterics forced the two of them apart, until the father (through sci-fi device) sees the truth of what happened. You're siding with the father and then the rug's pulled out from under you. There weren't any clues that he was an unreliable narrator, but he was. I liked that.

 

I understand. Dan Abnett's my go-to guy for W40K. Genius.

 

I haven’t read this one. But that’s not to say I’m not familiar with some of the other stuff this author has written. I read Never Let Me Go and that one was about a class of young school children (clones, I think) who are being raised for the purpose of donating their organs to sick children. The clones aren’t considered to be human. Are they or are they not? That’s the question the author asks of you as you read through the POV of the clone child. He raises a few questions. However, I thought the concept was too bizarre for my taste and preferred his other book - The Remains of The Day - because it was very poetic and talked about beautiful sunsets AKA the title. Now, if you’re exclusively a fan of “show don’t tell”, I’m not sure you’ll grasp the style of this author’s writing. Me, I liked it because it read like poetry. The plot of the story was predictable in every way.. but THAT’S what I liked about the book. It was like listening to a relaxing classical tune you’ve heard before, when you know what’s coming next, and derive sheer comfort from the music when it does. Also, I don’t mind books that are less “show-y” and more “tell-y”, I got plenty of those on my reading list (!) and I guess it all comes down to taste. The author is British (Japanese) - I think - so it’s natural that you’ll get different styles of writing across cultures (and centuries). Encyclopaedias are also very tell-y tell-y, and if you like fiction that is tell-y, you’ll probably enjoy this author’s style a lot more. Yes, it’s a question of taste and personal preference.

 

I took a peak at Remains of the Day, and it did look decent. It's funny, until recently, I thought that story was written by some old 19th century guy. Just because of its subject, you understand. Someone like Thackeray. i was surprised to see it was so new. Of course, all I knew about it was Anthony Hopkins was on the VHS cover looking fly.