Norman Mailer- An American Dream

An American Dream

Norman Mailer

1965

“The feeling of joy came up in me again the way the lyric of a song might remind a man on the edge of insanity that soon he will be insane again and there is a world there more interesting than his own.” 

Despite the fact that my pile of unread books is usually long enough to keep me preoccupied for many, many months, I'm always on the look out for books and authors to add to a mental list of future exploration. There's a massive allure of coolness with certain authors and their time periods that keeps me hooked, partially based on the style alone. I just bought a calendar with famous authors on it (because I'm a nerd), and January has a cool black and white picture of Jack London, so now I want to read Jack London. I'm kind of shallow like that.

Anyway, for a long time, Norman Mailer was just a name and its reputation for me, but a name that led me to imagine a great big bibliography for me to eventually get around to and enjoy. An American Dream was the first book I came across, and ended up being the perfect start, turning out to be an incredibly stylish, individual, downbeat and compelling story. It fits into its own place in US literary history perfectly, and I enjoyed it for many of the same reasons I enjoy Kurt Vonnegut and Chuck Bukowski; though with its own special brilliance.

Originally released in 1965 as a series of installments for Esquire, An American Dream follows the story of former congressman and current television star Stephen Rojack, who, at the beginning of this relatively short book, murders his estranged wife and appears to get away with it, and spends the next two hundred pages or so spiraling into a drunken voyage through a perfect pulp fiction/film noir Manhattan. Rojack has to deal with constant suspicion from the police and from his ex-father-in-law, while meanwhile becoming more and more intoxicated with this New York underworld. He falls for his femme fatale, a night-club singer and mobster's girlfriend, and revels in the violence and decadence.

Like Fitzgerald, Steinbeck and others before him, Mailer presents a very dark and embittered take on American society, encapsulated by the bitterly ironic title. His portrayal of New York as Rojack sees it is detailed and described through his warped viewpoint, but despite being dark and dangerous it's also incredibly poetic and stylish; the charisma and poise emanates from every line, evocatively conjouring images of film noir and hard-boiled detective fiction. There's plenty to think about regarding Mailer's stylistic choices in relation to his presentation of 1960's American society, but whether you choose to imbed yourself in deconstruction or just want to follow a roller-coaster ride of style and suspense, then this book is for anyone with any fondness of gritty, hard-boiled black fiction.

Goerge R.R. Martin- A Song of Ice and Fire 04- A Feast For Crows

 A Song of Ice and Fire 04- A Feast For Crows

Harper Voyager

George R.R. Martin

2005

Game of Thrones - A Clash of Kings - A Storm of Swords: Book One: Steel and Snow -  A Storm of Swords: Book Two: Blood and Gold - A Feast for Crows

“All me lie when they are afraid. Some tell many lies, some but a few. Some have only one great lie they tell so often that they almost come to believe it ... though some small part of them will always know that it is still a lie, and that will show upon their faces.” 

Before we get going with this review of the fourth installment of George R. R. Martin's soap opera with swords, I feel like I need to make kind of an apology to the friends I have who really, really like the series. Honestly guys, I'm sorry in advance, because I understand how the power and lure of a good franchise universe can extract an unconditional love for even its weakest entry. Then, when a guy comes along who admits he's not really a fan of fantasy, starts reviewing the beloved series, and goes from enthusiastically positive to drearily repetitive within four micro-blogs, I can see how that might kind of annoy people.

So yeah, the above paragraph might give the impression that I really didn't enjoy A Feast for Crows, and that impression would be right. On this whole, this review is going to be pretty negative, but, don't fret, will aim for a bit of positivity. I'm not giving up on this series (I've got a copy of A Dance with Dragons- Book One sat on my shelf), and I do expect it to return to a more enjoyable standard, because the reason that I didn't at all like this one was pretty obvious. Going back to the franchise thing above; A Song of Fire and Ice is no really different to, say, Star Wars in that it's continuity-based storytelling where the appeal lies in strong, memorable characters. If George Lucas wrote Empire and cut out Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Yoda because it was getting too long, it would be rubbish. In A Feast of Crows, George R. R. Martin excludes Jon Snow, Tyrion, and  Daenerys completely, and I'm pretty sure those three are the best characters.

On the one hand, I'm looking forward to reading the next book a bit more, but on the other it leaves this book as dull and fairly event-less, as it follows the stories of second-tier characters like Cersei and Samwell, taking another 600-pages to do so. I'm not a fan of Martin's writing style by itself, so I was left with almost nothing interesting. The only character I really had any interest in was Arya Stark, and nothing much happens with her either.

So, what did I like about this book? Not much. The pace of events picks up somewhat towards the end for certain characters. There's plenty of violence and other nastiness, as is tradition for this series. The cover is a nice colour. I'm suspiciously looking forward to the next one. That's about it, really. Essentially it comes down to the fact that I'm only a casual Song of Ice and Fire fan and I don't hang on Martin's every word, so his decision to slimline the scope of this book only served to damper my enjoyment. That's enough of that.

Paul Auster- Timbuktu

Timbuktu

Faber & Faber

Paul Auster

1999

Other Paul Auster Reviews- The Invention of Solitude - The Country of Last Things - Moon Palace - The Art of Hunger - Mr. Vertigo - Timbuktu - The Book of Illusions - Oracle Night - Invisible
 

“That's all I've ever dreamed of, Mr. Bones. To make the world a better place. To bring some beauty to the drab humdrum corners of the soul. You can do it with a toaster, you can do it with a poem, you can do it by reaching out your hand to a stranger. It doesn't matter what form it takes. To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do.”

I don't really get any hits on this website. Admittedly a lot of this is because I barely ever update it and put almost absolutely no effort into promoting it whatsoever. The remaining reason is probably because all I do is write about books, and books aren't massively popular. Don't get me wrong, they're not in danger of going anywhere, and millions of people worldwide enjoy reading, but they're definitely behind films, television and music in the modern entertainment pantheon, and perhaps video games too. It takes the average person far more time to finish a novel than to watch a film, and so anyone who wants to egotistically consider themselves to be well-read has to spend a lot of bloody time sitting still, thumbing paper.

I've distracted myself from the original point of the above paragraph, which I never actually made. Anyway, my point is that the ten people (maybe) who've opened up my blog site today are undoubtedly groaning in unison at the sight of yet another Paul Auster review. He might be a great author, but he's not exactly fashionable, and he's probably not going to shoot up the page ranking. But that's what I get for committing myself to review everything I read.

Anyway, the thing about Timbuktu that genuinely makes it stand out from every other Auster novel such as- gratuitous link time- Invisible, Mr. Vertigo and The Invention of Solitude) as a book that I honestly think could have major mainstream appeal is that it's literally about a dog. His name is Mr. Bones, and he is very clever. He's not a talking, intelligent Disney-style dog, but he does have the neat narrative ability to understand English, leaving him somewhere between Goofy and Pluto on the intelligence scale.

At the start of the novel Mr. Bones is in the care of one Willy G. Christmas, a long-suffering now-homeless kindly soul who also happens to be about to die. He and Mr. Bones take their last journey together to Baltimore, in search of a figure from Willy's past, but inevitably Mr. Bones finds himself alone.

Partly a philosophical look at our hopes for the afterlife and partly a nerve-wracking adventure of danger and confusion, Timbuktu is a book that stayed with me permanently the first time I read it some years ago, and had the same effect the second time around. It might be that it's easy to tug at the heartstrings when your lead character is a lonely dog, but Auster still does it very well indeed, mixing up narrative fantasy with harsh doses of reality to lead to a unique, intense, and poignant ending.

Short, simple and bittersweet, Timbuktu may look like a curio in the author's bibliography, but it's actually one of his strongest efforts and certainly something I'd recommend to anyone wanting to read him for the first time. 

Self-Peer Pressure

I was ill for a bit, and after I recovered I increased my hours at work, plus I'm lazy. Anyway, in the hope of some organisation, the following is a list of all the books I need to review to catch up;

Paul Auster- Timbuktu
Paul Auster- Leviathon
George R. R. Martin- A Feast for Crows
Soren Kierkergaard- Fear and Trembling
Darren Shan- The City- Book One- Procession of the Dead
Norman Mailer- An American Dream

I'm pretty sure that's it. That and about 30 Discworld books.