Yeah, I like TV too
conversation with my son in the car this evening:
me: The name of this band is Television.
nathan: Huh? Yeah – I like television.
me: What? Television – I’m talking about the song that’s playing. The band is called Television.
nathan: Oh. I thought you were talking about TV. Television is a bad name for a band. They should call themselves “The Rock and Roll Band.”
sigh.
The Bridges of Why Am I Reading This Crap
So, I’ve got this little disorder. Just this one: Once I begin reading a book, I am compelled to finish it. Regardless of how much I dislike it, I continue to pick up the book… continue to read.
After finishing Brett Easton Ellis’ excellent Lunar Park (see previous post), I wanted to read something by Jay Mcinerny. Jay is a character in Lunar Park and is best known for his breakthrough novel Bright Lights, Big City. Not sure what posessed me, but rather than going for the easy bet and reading BL, BC, I made the error of picking out The Good Life, Jay’s latest.
Bleh.
The Good Life reads like Bridges of Madison County for the middle-aged urbanite. Set in NY, NY around the time of 9/11, the novel tells the story of a couple of priveledged New Yorkers too lazy to work at their own marriages that fall easily into illicit love amongst the Ground Zero soup kitchens. If “illicit love” makes you think “Harlequin Romance”, then you’ve got the right idea: there’s enough trashy bodice-ripping in there to satisfy the requirements of the genre.
There’s also a large helping of grief porn if you’re into that sort of thing. The jumpers, the flee-ers, the diggers and the body bags… Jay’s got it covered.
Learn from my mistake. Read Bright Lights, Big City. It really is as good as you’ve heard.
Brett Easton Ellis eats his own tail
You first heard about him in conjunction with Less Than Zero. Your curiosity was piqued by the buzz around American Psycho and you were secretly horrified that you enjoyed it (despite its violent excess). You may even have picked up Glamorama and been surprised to find that it had a plot… sorta.
Well, you’re in for a treat. You’ve been putting it off, but it’s time to read Lunar Park. Buy it now. I’ll wait.
OK… I used the verb ‘read’. ‘Listen’ is fine, too. More on that later.
BEE’s latest book is a great stew of genres. Meta memoir? Reverse Roman à clef? Supernatural haunted house story? Retelling of Hamlet? Lunar Park is at times each of these things, but simultaneously deconstructs them. It’s complicated, sometimes confusing and often wonderful.
Just for fun, before reading it, reread Breakfast of Champions. The scenes where Vonnegut intrudes into his own narrative? Great, right? You’re going to enjoy how ‘writer Ellis’ steps in to interfere with the fictional ‘narrator Ellis’ and how it makes you consider how these fictional worlds take on lives of their own.
Oh, yes… the ‘listen thing’. Over the last year or so, I’ve started listening to a lot of audio books. My brain seems to be able to cope with listening to one story while reading another (not simultaneously, mind you) without twisting together the plots too much. I guess I process and store stuff I hear differently from stuff I read. Well, anyway, a good narrator can really make an audio book something special. James Van Der Beek (who starred in the movie adaptation of Ellis’ Rules of Attraction) does a wonderful reading of Lunar Park. If you’re so inclined, I recommend checking it out in audiobook format. Join Audible.com – you’ll be glad you did.
Do yourself a favor: read (listen to) Lunar Park. Then invite me out for coffee and tell me what you think the deal is with that crazy furr-ball monster thing and the demonically possessed toy.