Review: The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Just about as close to perfect as a book can get, for me. A big cast of finely crafted characters, a sweeping swath of time, big themes captured in small human scenes. "The Interestings" follows a group of friends who meet at a summer camp for the arts in the early 70s through the next four decades. Lovely to read from beginning to end, there's not much more to say.

I'd call "The Interestings" Franzen-esque as a compliment, but Wolitzer's humor doesn't work as well as Franzen, while her characters and relationships feel much more real. Less satire, more social. So to call this book Franzen-esque would probably be a disservice to both. But I'd argue that the elevation of Jonathan Franzen to "Great American Novelist" and the attendant controversy (see any op-ed Jennifer Wiener has ever written) surrounding HIM, has actually allowed THIS type of relatively plotless, character-driven, "reflection of our current times" kind of novel to be considered a possible Great American Novel. There's no leaden, thorny philosophical issues being overtly debated here, no characters feel like authorial stand-ins, no post-modern tricks, nothing heavy-handed -- it couldn't be easier or more pleasurable to read; in these ways I feel like it diverges from what might previously have been the "Type" of novel that gets consideration as a "Great American Novel" status, but this more egalitarian era (The Franzera?), it seems to be getting more weight and consideration. I couldn't support this shift more!

The way Wolitzer manipulates time in this novel -- she covers 40-or-so years -- is really unbelievable. The rippling way she moves the narrative ribbon from the "present day" back into the past and then forward again -- a trick that I often find off-putting -- was as elegant as anything I've read. There's a particular pleasure I feel as a reader when everything is so carefully, deftly, masterfully constructed that structure becomes invisible, and you're carried along as if on a white water raft. The water, just like this book, never seems to exert any energy, you're simply propelled unstoppably, joyously onward.

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Embracing Weirdness: What I Missed in Swamplandia! (Or Did I?)

After thoroughly not enjoying Swamplandia! I went searching the internet to help understand why so many people were totally on board with this acclaimed book that I didn't like at all.

It's clear Karen Russell is phenomenally talented, first of all. Nobody that gets a major work of fiction published in the first place is a hack. (No, not even Dan Brown.) Further, nobody that gets recommended for the freaking Pulitzer Prize is without an abundance of talent. (We can happily exclude poor Dan Brown from that particular list!) So it's not about talent, it's just about personal preference. And I love figuring out why my personal preference hasn't, in this case, lined up with what seems to be the General Critical Consensus ("GCC").

This interview with Karen Russell from my favorite site, The Millions, gave me a lot of important context. It's instructive to hear how inspired she was by George Saunders, another writer I like but that I know other people loveloveLOVE. I can see how she's inspired by Saunders' zaniness. But three key differences between George Saunders and Russell:

1) Saunders is really really funny, like hilariously funny, and

2) Saunders has the gift of making you care deeply almost instantly, and lastly

3) Saunders is generally working in allegory.

I never felt emotionally connected to the characters in Swamplandia, and I never felt like it was all that funny. It was also too literal; as far as I can tell it was meant to take place on Earth, in the present day. Saunders tends to operate in the future or some cracked-mirror version of Earth. If Swamplandia! was meant to be in an alternate version of our planet that was not at all clear to me. There were some amusing moments and lines, but mostly I would describe it as "zany" or "kooky" or "looney" rather than "Funny." Yet it makes sense to me that Russell sees this book as Saunders-esque. It helps me get what kind of a tone and mood she was going for. Obviously some people feel she succeeded; that's great.

Another interview with The Rumpus that she gave when her most recent work came out gives some further insight. The key here is her love of short stories: 

You can really come at some of the same themes and preoccupations from different angles, sort of like turning the facets of a little jewel. And then you can also hop bodies and continents, so there’s sort of this pinwheeling freedom, but there’s also this way you can maybe achieve a composite portrait of something that’s different than what you can do with a novel. You can occupy these really different points of view from story to story.

But this sounds like exactly what was going on in Swamplandia -- taking different qualities and moods and tones and characters and combining them, no matter how discordant. Perhaps that kind of stylistic hybrid is really better suited for a short story collection where each piece can stand apart? Or maybe I just parochially like my fiction slightly more straightforward, my genres less commingled?

What's clear is that for a lot of people this book really worked -- people responded to the humor and wild shifts and nuttiness. I always hate to think I missed something -- some key plot point or character moment -- that would part the clouds and change my mind in a burst of sunlight. But in this case I think it's purely just a matter of taste and preference. Exactly what I didn't like was precisely what a lot of people loved. Weird! But good to know! To each their own!

Review: Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book didn't do it for me. I probably should have abandoned ship halfway through, when I stopped to read not one, but two, other books. Instead, I came dutifully trudging back to deliver the coup de grace (to myself!).

So I'm not sure what all the buzz was about here. (NOW I understand (1/3rd of) the Pulitzer debacle!) I found almost no relation to actual human life in the pages of this book. I found almost no character or situation I could relate to or even imagine understanding. I found the plotting shoddy and the tone disjointed. Everything felt like some kind of confusing mix up -- like Paul Thomas Anderson somehow found himself directing an episode of Friends, with all the stars replaced by the cast of The Hobbit. Nothing about it made any sense whatsoever.

Now, there were certainly some lovely, elegiac passages of writing; some of the descriptions of grief and heartbreak really resonated. But that was it. Aside from those few (and far between) pages of beauty, any semblance of truth faded and was replaced by the Marx Brothers in a Cormac McCarthy novel.

Maybe for some of the people who loved this book it is exactly that kind of lunatic high-wire act that was appealing. Certainly if there are points to be awarded for unapologetic, aggressive, untethered weirdness, Karen Russell deserves all those points. Consider those points to be granted. Unfortunately, the rest of the scoreboard was disappointingly empty for me.

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Review: Arcadia by Lauren Groff

Arcadia by Lauren Groff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I completely enjoyed this book without ever really loving it. Set in a late-'60s/early-'70s commune in upstate New York, the novel follows Bit Stone, whose birth coincides with the founding of the commune; the story spans the course of many decades until Bit's late middle age in the somewhat near future. The unique subject matter and the real-feeling characters are top-notch. I also loved the vast swath of time Groff covers, showing the vast range of people and emotion from the inception of the commune through its life and (spoiler alert?) eventual dispersal (I can't imagine that's a spoiler in a realistic novel about a hippie commune, but I'll play it safe). I loved the thematic arguments throughout about how and why we humans live together, and might live together more peacefully, more happily, more sustainably. Or not, as the case may be.

Just two complaints that kept me from really loving this book:
1) the writing was slightly too stylized for me to love. It was just trying too hard to be super-delicate, gossamer, elegant, natural. Sometimes it succeeded and worked to lovely effect, sometimes it was just affected. Stylized writing is tough to pull off under the best of circumstances, and I can't imagine how especially tough it would be to pull off for 300 pages. That I enjoyed the writing at all is testament to great skill, but I can't pretend that it didn't aggravate me at intervals.

2) The final sections of the book reminded me a ton of the later portions of Jennifer Egan's "A Visit From the Goon Squad." As in that book, Groff takes us into the realistic semi-near future, a daring act which paid off hugely in "Goon Squad" but here feels (again) like it's just trying slightly too hard. The contrasts Groff intends to underscore in the "near-future" ending of the book have already been made, and more subtly, earlier in the text. It doesn't help that the incidents of the final section of the book all feel like faits accomplis, and there is no mystery, tension, or wonder to keep the pages turning. While it's not a "plotty" book, enough happens and the character arcs are so compelling that the pages keep turning...up until the final section. The emotional climax of the book comes sooner, I think, than Groff intended.

Although if I'm being honest with myself, I am probably looking for more nits to pick than I would otherwise, since this book really resonated on uncomfortable levels for me, especially as a semi-recent father; in an interview at the end of the book, Groff herself talks about how the novel grew out of her conflicted feelings of conceiving and delivering a child into a troubled world. I certainly understand her point of view and connect with those uncertain feelings, maybe too much for my liking.

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