Everday Masterpieces

I just finished the brilliant and concise novel by Stewart O'Nan "Last Night at the Lobster." This beautiful little book is like a small heartbreak, one that leaves you incapacitated but from which you know you will recover. It's a blues song in prose, but laced with hope.




O'Nan, though named by Granta (the literary magazine) as one of the 20 Best American Writers Under Forty, remains little known. His one true bestseller is the book he co-wrote with Stephen King, "Faithful," about the Red Sox World Series-winning season (the one that ended the fabled Curse of the Bambino). It is, in a way, a sad estimation of O'Nan's incredible talent that this is likely his only book to reach a massive audience, especially considering that, in the future, it is likely to be his least remembered work (it will likely be remembered only by King fans, and even then only as an oddity).

The truth is that O'Nan is a major talent (for once, Granta got it right). And "Last Night at the Lobster" is no exception.

O'Nan is that rare writer--rare not because it requires more talent, but simply because it requires a very specific sensibility--who grounds his stories entirely in everyday events. His people are ordinary people. Their lives are ordinary lives. Nothing particularly stupendous or exemplary occurs. And yet out of the simplest materials O'Nan carves fiction that stirs something inside you, gut-checks you out of your complacency, sometimes breaks you.




His last novel "Songs for the Missing" is a fine example. It is a story about the disappearance of a teenage girl and how her family handles and copes with her disappearance. In the hands of different writers this story would take on varied dimensions. For Denis Lehane, this would be a crime novel ("Moonlight Mile"). For Joyce Carol Oates, it would be a tale of family disintegration and societal obsession ("My Sister, My Love").

But O'Nan does not take it in either grand direction. He simply details how we cope, or fail to cope, how we experience devastation, how ordinary lives are shattered by the rather ordinary tawdriness of living in America.

The truth is that O'Nan's novels should be boring. His approach should put you to sleep. Because he does nothing fancy. He refuses to stand out. And yet, instead of boredom one finds themselves enthralled, and perhaps this is why he has been compared to the great Russian short story master, Anton Chekhov. The comparison is apt, for they both make much out of little.

The only novel of O'Nan's that, on the surface, breaks the pattern, is his wonderful novella "The Night Country." It is a ghost story, but unlike any ghost story you've ever read. The ghosts are a group of teenagers who died in a car wreck last fall, and now they have returned come Halloween night.




But, in typical O'Nan fashion, these ghosts are, sadly but not disappointingly, ordinary. Sadly, because they are ghosts damnit, and they should be by their very nature different from the rest of us, but they're not. They are simply teenagers, hardly changed by the fact that they are dead. They narrate parts of the story, as they travel about town during Halloween night, following old friends, following old teachers, following the man who was at fault in the accident that killed them all.

It is a beautifully written piece that manages to haunt you long after it is over, a feat all the more impressive given that O'Nan's ghost do no "haunting."

Another impressive work is the major novel "Wish You Were Here." It is the story of a far-flung family coming together for one last vacation at their summer home on the lake. The family has slowly pulled apart over the years, but not necessarily to the breaking point. Rather, the myriad of little battles have merely left their scars, and everyone has spent time in the trenches.

O'Nan writes a nearly flawless examination of the way families work, of the intricacies of loyalty and betrayal, of the beauty and the heartbreak of marriage, of the bitterness of failure and the sometimes equally bitter quality of success. His prose is perfectly on-pitch, smoothly revealing the lives of young children, teenagers, middle-aged parents and the elderly, all believable, all engrossing.




Not many writers delve into their characters' lives in this way, showing not only joy, not only pain, but the way in which both these elements are held so continuously in tandem. O'Nan writes with a brutal honesty that deserves more attention, for it is only with this kind of emotional and intellectual honesty that we can, both as individuals and as a nation, hope to face the perils of our everyday lives. For they are perilous, and how we spend our days, how we think our daily thoughts, how we live and breathe moment to moment, these little bits add up and become our lives.

"Last Night at the Lobster" is a fine piece of writing. Give it a shot. It's a short read, an afternoon's attempt, really, at just under 150 pages.

You won't regret it.

Lost American Writer

I've written here before about Don Robertson, the author of the Morris Bird trilogy, which includes "The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread," "The Sum and Total of Now," and "The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened." It is still my fervent belief that this trilogy is something special in American literature, a truly unique and utterly accurate portrayal of the coming of age of a young boy. The coming of age story is a classic structure, but few writers pull it off convincingly. Robertson seems to do so with ease, delving into truths and mysteries few writers dare to touch.

His trilogy is, I argue, better than the more highly lauded "Catcher in the Rye," and is without question the equal of "To Kill a Mockingbird." That Robertson's work is wholly ignored today, that he is a great "lost writer," is a sad and unfortunate circumstance.

I have recently finished another Robertson novel, "A Flag Full of Stars," which takes place almost entirely upon election day during the presidential election of Harry Truman. If anyone recalls their history, Truman, who was the incumbent president, was not merely supposed to lose to the challenger Dewey, but to be roundly and solidly whipped. Every single polling agency in the country predicted President Truman going down in flames and the Republican party taking over the government. In fact, Truman won, the Democrats won, and Dewey became but a footnote in history. It was one of the greatest upsets in American politics.

Robertson's novel follows a vast cast of characters, many of whom have loose ties with each other, their lives having swerved together and apart throughout the years. But few of these characters actually collide on election day. Instead, Robertson follows this panorama throughout the day, showing in detail the lives of his dozen-plus characters, all of whom will be touched in ways either great or small by Truman's election.

Robertson does not try and make a case for politics as transformation. Most of his characters undergo no "ah-ha!" moment when Truman is elected. Some, in fact, are nearly oblivious to politics in general, and Truman's election does not induce an overwhelming redirection in their lives.

Instead, Robertson aims to show how politics interweave into the everyday lives of ordinary people. How the hopes and dreams of normal Americans are subtly altered by the political world. More importantly, by juxtaposing national politics with everyday life, Robertson illustrates how all politics are local. How politics begin, and often end, inside the small community, inside the home, inside the bedroom, and inside the mind. Also, by choosing Truman's election, Robertson aptly focuses on a defining American moment when all eyes were turned in the same direction, and in doing so he shows us how, in spite of our differences, we are all Americans. There are few such moments: Pearl Harbor, September 11th, Kennedy's assassination...it is to Robertson's credit, I think, that he chooses not a travesty (unless, perhaps, you're a Republican) but a powerful, social moment devoid of tragedy. He could have written a similar panoramic novel around, say, Lincoln's assassination or the 1929 stock market crash, but the tone and result would have been vastly different.

Where Robertson excels is in getting you to care about his characters. He does so in old fashioned ways. He gives you tremendous detail and information, but always in a way that is entertaining and thoughtful. His humor is present throughout, as is his pathos. Even his most pathetic characters retain some level of dignity, and it is the sign of Robertson's mastery that he can keep you hanging on whether he is writing about a pregnant teenage girl running away from home to a shotgun marriage or a bitter middle-aged wife encouraging her cheating husband to run for office in the hope that he will lose.

Don Robertson is a great American writer. He is also, sadly, a nearly-forgotten American writer. I don't know that you will be able to find "A Flag Full of Stars." It is currently out of print, but you might be able to locate it through a library loan. If you can't, Robertson's Morris Bird trilogy has been re-issued and can be found at any major bookstore. I would urge you to start there. "The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread" is an out and out masterpiece.

Good luck.

That Old Spooky Feeling

A week into my favorite month of the year, I feel it is high time to celebrate one of my favorite artists.

October often brings thoughts of Ray Bradbury, that master of fluttering fallen leaves and haunted gusts of wind, but there is another major American artist who deserves attention this time of year: Charles Addams.

Better known now for the movies made from his characters, The Addams Family, Addams' actual comics are sadly neglected. This is most unfortunate given that the films, while funny in their own right, turned Addams' biting, eerie humor into a form of ludicrous ham-it-up escapades. While the movies tickle the funny bone, Addams' comics jolt the gut. They are both funny...and churning.

It is often said that this artist or that is a "one of a kind," by which it is generally meant that an artist is talented, even though their may be a dozen other artists just like them. In Addams' case, the term fits rather well. There are other master cartoon series (I favor Dilbert, Garfield and The Far Side), there is no one who strikes the same balance of humor and queasiness that Addams achieves time and again.

For a taste, here are some of my favorites. If you like, check out Addams' collections Nightcrawlers and Monster Rally.

"Honestly, can't you do anything right?"

"George! George! Drop the keys!"

Please Set Me Free

Coming to the close of Jonathon Franzen's new and heavily lauded novel, I found myself reading B.R. Myer's review of Freedom in The Atlantic Monthly. It is the most incise and accurate description of the book I've read. There has been so much press surrounding Freedom and nearly all of it unabashedly, resoundingly--I hesitate only briefly to say weepingly--positive that one almost feels compelled to rush to the nearest bookstore, snatch the book off the shelf, and batten down inside the closest available bathroom to read this monument cover to cover.

But, alas...spare yourself.

It ain't worth it.

"But if Freedom is middlebrow," Myers writes, "it is so in the sacrosanct Don DeLillo tradition, which our critical establishment considers central to literature today. The apparent logic is that the novel can lure Americans away from their media and entertainment buffet only by becoming more 'social,' broader in scope, more up-to-date in focus. This may be the reason we get such boring characters. Instead of portraying an interesting individual or two, and trusting in realism to embed their story naturally in contemporary life, the Social Writer thinks of all the relevant issues he has to stuff in, then conceives of a family 'typical' enough to hold everything together. The more aspects of our society he can fit in between the books' covers, the more ambitious he is considered to be."

This is, I think, the finest summation not only of Freedom but of a whole swath of modern American fiction.

Interestingly, my experience with Franzen's novel was eerily the same as my experience with the other writer Myers name-drops, DeLillo. Underworld's prose dragged me swiftly along, shifting between periods when DeLillo really revs up and periods where the book is roughly on par, in terms of excitement, with watching cement dry (this, mind you, is the book that ranked number 2 in a recent poll of the greatest novels of the last thirty years). When I eventually tossed the book down, after 400 pages (the half-way point) it wasn't even primarily because it had become boring but because after all those pages absolutely nothing had happened (but then, maybe that is the definition of boring).

Freedom doesn't even have that much going for it. Nowhere do you really feel like Franzen is revving up. Mostly you wonder if someone will ever point him toward the runway. Strangely, though, he is not unreadable. In fact, quite the opposite. Franzen's writing is misleadingly swift, accessible, and compulsive; misleadingly, because it never leads anywhere.

It also, sadly, is full of hackneyed grammar and overburdened cliches, which, in their attempts to appear clever, have only that much further to fall.

Consider: "...stirred the cauldrons like a Viking oarsman," "...another overconsuming white American male who felt entitled to more and more and more: saw the romantic imperialism of his falling for someone fresh and Asian, having exhausted domestic supplies," "...the emptiness of her nest...now that the kids had flown."

American literary critics have yet to give justified explanation for why writers of commercially successful fiction can be condemned for such stilted, silly cliches but writers of mainstream garbage are given a free pass.

Indeed, it is not just a free pass that is often given, but high praise, awards, and money.

As it stands right now, Franzen's novel is the 2010 Oprah Book Club Pick (the irony here is sharp enough to draw blood). It is the number one and number two bestseller on Amazon.com (a miracle of marketing made possible by a separate, Oprah BC edition). Franzen will no doubt be up for a National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize (Pulitzer being more likely, as he won the NBA for his last novel). The movie rights have already been purchased. And Franzen made the cover of Time under the heading "Great American Novelist," with Freedom being compared to Tolstoy's War and Peace.

I rarely trash books...at least not publicly. And to be honest, I'm not that interested in trashing Freedom. It's not a horrible book. But it IS boring. And pointless. And, in the end, disappointing.

What disappoints most is that this is the literature the American literatti take seriously. This is what is held out to the world (and to our own society, to our children who struggle every day between choosing to read or choosing to watch movies) as the best we can do. If this is as good as our writers get, then we might as well stop trying. Because this isn't compelling literature.

There are a wealth of great writers in America. Unfortunately, Franzen isn't one of them.

If you want some better selections, take a look at the list to your left. These are the best books I read last year. All of them are worth your time.