Career of Evil

Afterthoughts about Robert Galbraith's Career of Evil. Lots of spoilers, so putting the post after a jump. 

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A Romance Novel Isn't Exactly "Infinite Jest"

So, hey, there's been another article published in a newspaper that casually assumes that all romance novels are formulaic dreck. I've stopped paying attention to these articles. I've had the argument so often that it bores me now. 

But one of the quotable moments from this one got my attention (it's a donotlink link), to wit: "But a romance novel isn't exactly Infinite Jest." 

If every writer sits down and thinks, "Well, I've got to write the next Infinite Jest or there's no point..." the only people who finish books will be delusional narcissists. 

There are bad books. There are good books. There are great books. Which books fall into which category is a matter of debate, but we need bad books. Bad books are like extras in a movie. The scene feels empty and less alive without them. Bad books are starting points; they leave room for growth. The profusion of bad books lessens the shame of writing one, which makes it easier to sit down and write a second, hopefully better than the first. And then a third, better again, and so on, until you've written a good book.

A thriving book culture will populate every part of the landscape, from shoddy to polished and from low to high. You don't have to read bad books--whatever your idea of 'bad' is. You don't have to like them, praise them, offer them your grudging respect. But if you want to collect the cream, you'd better hope that someone out there wants to buy the milk. 

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A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace

I have started Infinite Jest two or three times and never get past the first hundred pages. I feel horrible about this, because it's a cultural touchstone and I want to experience it. I also feel A-OK about it, because I've come to realize that forcing myself to read something is a waste of time. Reading through a mental block is like trying to drink from a glass with a lid on it.

So I decided I'd give Wallace a shot through his essays and picked this one up as an audiobook. Surprise surprise, I really liked it. 

With caveats. Some major caveats. Listening to this book was a lot like opening a time capsule. Somehow, I'd completely forgotten how riveted I'd once been by post-modern literature--forgotten that I once cared about post-modernism and defended it passionately. These essays were written at a time when that seemed like an exciting intellectual activity. How things change, hmm?

Some of the blasts from the past are less benign. The way Wallace talks about gender and race, for example, really shocked me. The dialogue has shifted so much in such a short amount of time. 

And the essays are snobbish, too. Sometimes apologetically, sometimes with a self-conscious flair. 

But wait, wait, I liked this book so maybe I should get around to that. There are seven essays in the book and I really enjoyed four of them. 

"Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All" describes a visit to the Illinois state fair. Wallace is from Illinois but also feels alienated from his home state, and the essay zeroes in on that odd juxtaposition. He wanders the fair, describing the exhibits and the carnival rides, feeling sick and celebratory, nostalgic and revolted. 

"David Lynch Keeps His Head" is about David Lynch. I am not a big David Lynch fan so I'm not sure whether it's good or bad that this essay held my attention so well. It didn't make me want to go watch any David Lynch movies, not at all; but I understood the phenomenon better after listening, and I enjoyed it. (Lots of uncomfortable/repellant statements about women in this essay, though.)

"Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness" ... and now that I've written out that title I'm reminded that I can't decide if I like the way Wallace mixes slacker drawl and showy erudition. I suppose the goal is a tonal shift in academic language rather than a ploy for mass appeal, or... maybe I'd be wrong, because he certainly achieved mass appeal. 

Anyway, this was an excellent essay about a professional tennis player--Michael Joyce--who's at the bottom of the top of his field. I have no interest in tennis at all but this held me riveted; Wallace writes about the sacrifices that the players make, how pursuing excellence in one field leaves them stunted in others. He writes about what it's like to be one of the very best players in the world and finding out that it's still not good enough, that almost-the-best still means chasing invitations, playing yourself into the ground, scrabbling for funds.

It's really moving. Wallace was, apparently, a gifted tennis player who couldn't break into the big leagues & an author who did break through but must have related to Joyce's predicament: success after success but unable to relax or rest on his laurels. 

So it's an essay by a creative about what it's like to live the dream, costs and benefits both. 

"A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" is about a Caribbean cruise. It's the most purely enjoyable essay of the bunch, or at least it was for me. He describes the cruise industry, he catalogues each day he spends on the ship, and in between writes about selling an experience: in this case relaxation and fun. It's an interesting balancing act, and Wallace captures that--giving cruisers the illusion of choice (limitless options!) and also removing the burden of choice (no responsibilities, everything taken care of without lifting a finger), taking care to define the pleasures of the cruise so they can be delivered, how the cruise's success ultimately leaves him querulous and discontent. 

 

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STATION ELEVEN by Emily St. John Mandel

A lot of post-apocalyptic novels are about stripping people down to their essence. Who are we without cars, phones, grocery stores... laws, prisons, consequences. What does it mean to be human, how do you stay human, when you're living like an animal--fighting for survival, one step ahead of hunger.

Most post-apocalyptics will tell you that we're still social, that friendships and trust matter more than ever, that some of us are still noble, that strength shines through in a way it couldn't without a backdrop of sheer desperation. But they'll also have you looking over your shoulder, dogged by the inescapable notion that we're one natural disaster away from being cavemen, that our sense of self is built on an artificial foundation.

STATION ELEVEN is the antidote to that attitude. It has the frame of a conventional post-apocalyptic novel--a motley assortment of companions brought together by necessity, living a hard-scrabble existence, who encounter a charismatic arch-nemesis--but it's about the drive to make art, to move beyond subsistence, to cultivate beauty.

The main characters of the post-apocalypse in STATION ELEVEN belong to the Traveling Symphony, a group of musicians and actors who travel in a circuit around the great lakes, performing for the small settlements they pass through. Their motto is "survival is insufficient" and they make their livelihood proving that to themselves and to their audiences.

As a sidenote: I tend to be wary of art about how important art is. The element of self-congratulation can get really tiresome, like watching an awards show. Congratulations to us! And to us again! STATION ELEVEN never crossed that line for me. Maybe because the characters are more pragmatic than pretentious? They scavenge in abandoned homes for costumes, perform whatever the audience wants to see. Something about STATION ELEVEN reminded me of ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD by Tom Stoppard; the players create a sense of heightened reality or surreality, not a circle jerk.

The book alternates between chapters set in the pre-apocalypse, before the disease that wipes out most of humanity, and chapters set in the post-apocalypse. The alternating timelines evoke nostalgia instead of horror, wonder instead of pain. A sense of loss permeates the book, but also of hope. It's melancholy and beautiful.

Human beings make art. It's a defining characteristic of our species. Strip us down to nothing and art will still come back.

Anyway. I enjoyed the book. It's well-written, atmospheric, enjoyable. Worth a read.

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