Writer's Block Be-Gone

Since I've been doing more experimenting with fiction and poetry writing lately, I've been keeping my eyes out for any ideas for brainstorming techniques. These are my 3 favorite ones I've discovered recently.

1) Label a piece of notebook paper with the letters A to Z, one letter per line. Write down random words that start with each letter that come to mind. When you've filled the page, go back through your list and review the potential for literary inspiration of each item. Circle the ones which you think would provide a good jumping off point for a story or poem. Then do a free association page of writing using that word for inspiration, and see where it leads you from there.

(Source of Inspiration: David Leviathan's "Dictionary of Love")

2) This is one that I found works particularly well for me, with my journalism background, but I imagine it could be useful to writers with no experiences with investigative reporting as well. Pretend you are interviewing yourself for one of those "celebrity profile" features commonly found in magazines. Then answer the questions you ask yourself. It helps to also keep in the back of the mind the purpose that you're using this pretend interview for: inspiration for future fiction. So you'll want to include things in your answers that could help lead you to plots, settings, themes, and/or characters for future fiction or poetry.

(Source of Inspiration: Chuck Klosterman)

3) If you're trying to write a story with lots of dialogue--or a play/screenplay-- it works well to have your characters be loosely (or not so loosely, depending on your preference) based upon people you actually know in real life. That way, you can effectively imagine how they would respond to a given situation, or to a particular question/statement from another character. I almost always start out my stories by just writing down a "typical" conversation that would be had by me and a group of friends, having each of them talk about something that my friends typically talk about and in the tone and diction they tend to use.

(Source of Inspiration: Douglas Coupland's Generation X and JPod)

#38 The Visible Man Chuck Klosterman

Jacket Copy: Austin, Texas, therapist Victoria Vick is contacted by a cryptic, unlikable man who insists his situation is unique and unfathomable. As he slowly reveals himself, Vick becomes convinced that he suffers from a complex set of delusions: Y__, as she refers to him, claims to be a scientist who has stolen cloaking technology from an aborted government project in order to render himself nearly invisible. He says he uses this ability to observe random individuals within their daily lives, usually when they are alone and vulnerable. Unsure of his motives or honesty, Vick becomes obsessed with her patient and the disclosure of his increasingly bizarre and disturbing tales. Over time, it threatens her career, her marriage, and her own identity.

Interspersed with notes, correspondence, and transcriptions that catalog a relationship based on curiosity and fear, The Visible Mantouches on all of Chuck Klosterman’s favorite themes—the consequence of culture, the influence of media, the complexity of voyeurism, and the existential contradiction of normalcy. Is this comedy, criticism, or horror? Not even Y__ seems to know for sure.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

On balance, I’m not really sure how I feel about this book. Although I enjoyed it more than Downtown Owl, I still found it lacking in literary value. I certainly found it interesting and relevant, but I also could see how many people would find it boring and difficult to relate to. Its target audience is rather narrow; for the second novel of someone who’s trying to break out into the fiction business, it simply does not have a broad enough appeal. People interested in abnormal psychology will find it highly engaging, but others will likely find themselves confused and unimpressed with the scope of the novel. I wasn’t able to really take anything away from this book, other than the enjoyment of the entertainment reading it provided. There were no universal statements about humanity or major themes, at least not any that were immediately obvious. The characters, despite being the main focus of this book, still seemed flat and not developed enough. I can not picture either character existing in real life; they were not portrayed in a realistic enough fashion to make this possible. 

#37: The Lover's Dictionary (a Novel) by David Levithan

"Obstinate, adj
 Sometimes it becomes a contest: Which is more stubborn, the love or the two arguing people caught within it?"

"abyss, n.
There are times when I doubt everything. When I regret everything you've taken from me, everything I've given you, and the waste of all the time i've spent on us."

"motif, n.
You don't love me as much as I love you. You don't love me as much as I love you. You don't love me as much as I love you."

"vagary, n.
The mistake is thinking there can be any antidote to the uncertainty"

"voluminous, adj.
I have already spent roughly five thousand hours asleep next to you. This has to mean something.


Jacket Copy: How does one talk about love? Do we even have the right words to describe something that can be both utterly mundane and completely transcendent, pulling us out of our everyday lives and making us feel a part of something greater than ourselves? Taking a unique approach to this problem, the nameless narrator of this novel has constructed the story of his relationship as a dictionary. Through these short entries, he provides an intimate window into the great events and quotidian trifles of being within a couple, giving us an indelible and deeply moving portrait of love in our time.

Similar to: Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, Rob Sheffield's Love is a Mix Tape


Why I LOVED it: When I saw the premise of this book, on the jacket copy, I was really leaning toward not reading it. I feared no one would be able to pull off such a silly gimmick well. I finally decided to have a little faith in Mr. Levithan, and he proved my cynicism wrong. The dictionary format allowed him to tell a story using several little poems, and anecdotes, and single, precise, sentences with a lot of weight. It allowed him to jump chronologically in time, without it appearing awkward or forced. I don't usually like returning to books and reading them a second time, but this is definitely that rare exception that I will come back to. It's almost like a poem or a song in that I don't think it will lose its appeal or its beauty after multiple readings.

#36: White Noise Don DeLillo

Jacket Copy: Winner of the National Book Award in 1985, White Noise is the story of Jack and Babette and their children from their six or so various marriages. They live in a college town where Jack is Professor of Hitler Studies (and conceals the fact that he does not speak a word of German), and Babette teaches posture and volunteers by reading from the tabloids to a group of elderly shut-ins. They are happy enough until a deadly toxic accident and Babette's addiction to an experimental drug make Jack question everything. White Noise is considered a postmodern classic and its unfolding of themes of consumerism, family and divorce, and technology as a deadly threat have attracted the attention of literary scholars since its publication. 


My Take: This book seems a bit dated. The part about it that attracts so many readers--it's scholarly, literary appeal--is the part that I most disliked about it. I enjoy a fun novel about pop culture and media, not a heavy-handed erudite criticism and academic view of it. But if that's your thing, then by all means, go for it. This is the book for you.


That said, this book really rang true with me. It's focus on fear of death was depressing, but deadly accurate. The most effective portrayal of the decline of American society due to consumerism that I've read to date. If that's not high praise, from an anti-capitalist, then I don't know what is. 

#35: Sleepwalk with Me Mike Birbiglia

Jacket Copy: Hello, I am Mike Birbiglia and I want you to read my book. Too on the nose? Sorry. Let me dial it back. I’m Mike Birbiglia and I’m a comedian. You may know me from Comedy Central or This American Life or The Bob & Tom Show, but you’ve never seen me like this before. Naked.

Wait, that’s the name of another book. Also I’m not naked as there are no pictures in my book. Also, if there were naked pictures of me, you definitely wouldn’t buy it, though you might sneak a copy into the back corner of the bookstore and show it to your friend and laugh. Okay, let’s get off the naked stuff. This is my first book. It’s difficult to describe. It’s a comedic memoir, but I’m only 32 years old so I’d hate for you to think I’m “wrapping it up,” so to speak. But I tell some personal stories. Some REALLY personal stories. Stories that I considered not publishing time and time again, especially when my father said, “Michael, you might want to stay away from the per­sonal stuff.” I said, “Dad, just read the dedication.” (Which I’m telling you to do too.) Some of the stories are about my childhood, some are about girls I made out with when I was thirteen, some are about my parents, and some are, of course, about my bouts with sleepwalking. Bring this book to bed. And sleepwalk with me.

Why I recommend it: When I first picked this up, I was worried it would just be a transcribed version of the same jokes I've heard on his stand up comedy recordings dozens of times before. It was actually not that at all. It was a thoughtful memoir, told in a humorous style, that was even somewhat educational. Birbiglia turns out to be an expert on growing up Catholic, performing in low-rent comedy clubs in front of an audience of 3, and REM behavior disorder (the cause of dangerous sleepwalking). Although his stand-up comedy often includes anecdotes from his own life, there is much found in this book to be learned about the very interesting man that he has never previously revealed. 

#34: Blue Nights Joan Didion

Jacket Copy: From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old.
 
Blue Nights opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana’s wedding in New York seven years before. Today would be her wedding anniversary. This fact triggers vivid snapshots of Quintana’s childhood—in Malibu, in Brentwood, at school in Holmby Hills. Reflecting on her daughter but also on her role as a parent, Didion asks the candid questions any parent might about how she feels she failed either because cues were not taken or perhaps displaced. “How could I have missed what was clearly there to be seen?” Finally, perhaps we all remain unknown to each other. Seamlessly woven in are incidents Didion sees as underscoring her own age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept.
 
Blue Nights—the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, “the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning”—like The Year of Magical Thinking before it, is an iconic book of incisive and electric honesty, haunting and profoundly moving.

Why I was disappointed with this book: When I heard about the upcoming release of the book, I counted down the days until I would be able to go out and buy it. Expecting it to be an inspiring and touching book in the same vein as The Year of Magical Thinking, finishing it left me feeling robbed of what I had anticipated. Although just as personal (or perhaps moreso) than her first memoir, Blue Nights does not leave you inspired or with a greater understanding of life and love; it just leaves you depressed about mortality and pitying Joan Didion. Whereas the subject of her other book was her husband John Gregory Dunne--and to some extent her daughter Quintana Roo--in Blue Nights she focuses exclusively on herself and her own misery. It does not present her in a flattering way, and it is not what I paid $20 for the hardcover to read. To be fair, I did get at least something out of this book, though. It provides what I see as a very solid and plausible depiction of obsessive compulsive disorder and the formative events that lead one to develop the disorder. 

#33: Bossypants Tina Fey

This was one of the most fun books I have read in a while. It's half a memoir, half a humor book. Tina Fey has funny and insightful things to say about motherhood, SNL, 30 Rock, improv, Chicago, homeless shelters, politics, and sexism...among a bazillion other things. You can't really do this book justice in a review, so, just read it.

#32: I Remember Nothing Nora Ephron

Jacket Copy: Nora Ephron returns, taking a cool, hard, hilarious look at the past, the present, and the future, bemoaning the vicissitudes of modern life, and recalling with her signature clarity and wisdom everything she hasn't (yet) forgotten. Ephron writes about falling hard for a way of life ("Journalism: A Love Story") and about breaking up even harder with the men in her life ("The D Word"); lists "Twenty Five Things People Have A Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised By Over and Over Again" ("There is no explaining the stock market but people try"; "you can never know the truth of anyone's marriage, including your own"; "Cary Grant was Jewish"; "Men cheat"); reveals the alarming evolution, a decade after she wrote and directed You've Got Mail, of her relationship with her in-box ("The Six Stages of Email"); and asks the age-old question, which came first, the chicken soup or the cold? All the while, she gives candid, edgy voice to everything women who have reached a certain age have been thinking...but rarely acknowledging.

Why I Like It: This is a short, breezy read, with lots of humor and insight. Although there is certainly a lot about aging in it, I think women of all ages will find it a good read. You don't have to agree with the opinions Ephron sets forth to acknowledge that they are innovative, refreshing, and have some grain of truth to them. This is a book that makes you think, but at the same time doesn't require intense concentration and doesnt bore you to the point of drifting off to sleep.

#31: A Man Without A Country Kurt Vonnegut

"We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. and like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on."

"We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you different."

"For some reason the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But often, with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings."

Jacket Copy: In a volume that is penetrating, introspective, incisive, and laugh-out-loud funny, one of the great men of letters of this era-- or any era-- holds forth on life, art, sex, politics, and the state of America's soul. Whether he is describing his coming of age in America, his formative war experiences, or his life as an artist, this is Vonnegut doing what he does best: being himself.

#30: Blind Sight Meg Howrey

"Love isn't like this thing that people say it is. Like some big thing that only happens once in awhile when you really get to know someone and share all the same life goals and all that. That's something else. Love happens all the time"
"So then what's the other thing? The something that isn't love?"
"Contract negotiations."

Jacket Copy: This spellbinding story introduces the unforgettable seventeen-year-old narrator, Luke Prescott, who has been brought up in a bohemian matriarchy by his divorced New Age mother, a religious grandmother, and two precocious half-sisters. Having spent a short lifetime swinging agreeably between the poles of Eastern mysticism and New England Puritanism, Luke is fascinated by the new fields of brain science and believes in having evidence for his beliefs. “Without evidence,” he declares, “you just have hope, which is nice, but not reliable.” Luke is writing his college applications when his father—a famous television star whom he never knew—calls and invites him to Los Angeles for the summer. Luke accepts and is plunged into a world of location shooting, celebrity interviews, glamorous parties, and premieres. As he begins to know the difference between his father’s public persona and his private one, Luke finds himself sorting through his own personal mythology. 
     
By the end of the summer Luke thinks he has found the answers he’s been seeking, only to discover that the differences between truth and belief are not always easy to spot, and that evidence can be withheld: when Luke returns home, his mother reveals something she knows will change everything for him. 
     
With Blind Sight, Meg Howrey gives us a smart, funny, and deeply moving story about truth versus belief, about what we do and don’t tell ourselves—with the result, as Luke says, that we don’t always know what we know.

Why I like it: You'll notice there isn't a "similar to" section for this book. That's deliberate. I honestly feel this writer has a style all her own, and can't wait until her second (and hopefully many more to come) novel comes out. 

#29: My American Unhappiness Dean Bakapoulos

Jacket Copy: “Why are you so unhappy?” That’s the question that Zeke Pappas, a thirty-three-year-old scholar, asks almost everybody he meets as part of an obsessive project, “The Inventory of American Unhappiness.” The answers he receives—a mix of true sadness and absurd complaint—create a collage of woe. Zeke, meanwhile, remains delightfully oblivious to the increasingly harsh realities that threaten his daily routine, opting instead to focus his energy on finding the perfect mate so that he can gain custody of his orphaned nieces. Following steps outlined in a women’s magazine, the ever-optimistic Zeke identifies some “prospects”: a newly divorced neighbor, a coffeehouse barista, his administrative assistant, and Sofia Coppola (“Why not aim high?”). 
A clairvoyant when it comes to the Starbucks orders of strangers, a quixotic renegade when it comes to the federal bureaucracy, and a devoted believer in the afternoon cocktail and the evening binge, Zeke has an irreverent voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit and heart-on-sleeve emotion, underscored by a creeping paranoia and made more urgent by the hope that if he can only find a wife, he might have a second chance at life.

Similar to: Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint; Nicholson Baker; Richard Ford's The Sportswriter

#28: The Easter Parade Richard Yates

Jacket Copy: Even as little girls, Sarah and Emily are very different from each other. Emily looks up to her wiser and more stable older sister and is jealous of her relationship with their absent father, and later her seemingly golden marriage. The path she chooses for herself is less safe and conventional and her love affairs never really satisfy her. Although the bond between them endures, gradually the distance between the two women grows, until a tragic event throws their relationship into focus one last time. Richard Yates's masterful novel follows the two sisters from their childhood in the 1920s through the challenges of their adult choices, and depicts the different ways they seek to escape from their tarnished family past.
Similar to: Virginia Woolf's "The Years"; Richard Ford; Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire
Why I am Getting Tired of Richard Yates: I would like to see just one women character in a Richard Yates novel who is not an alcoholic. Just one. Also, a dude who is not completely against the idea of monogamy. They exist. Also, how am I supposed to like any of the male characters in the novels when they all beat their wives? One of my biggest turn-offs for books is when they don't have a single character that I can admire. I would also like to see Yates treat abortion with more sensitivity and attention to the psychological issues that accompany it (the way Didion does). He shouldn't even mention it at all if he's just going to mention it for a second, just state that it happened, and then act like it had no impact on her mental state or her later life whatsoever. Also, his novels tell wonderful stories and include extraordinary depths of character development. Narrative ability and description are  definitely his greatest strengths. What the novels lack however, is a point, or a conclusion that the reader is supposed to come to at the end of the novel. What universal message about life and the world are we supposed to take away from Yates' novels? I have only the very vaguest idea. 

#27: Run River Joan Didion

Jacket Copy: Joan Didion's electrifying first novel is a haunting portrait of a marriage whose wrong turns and betrayals are at once absolutely idiosyncratic and a razor-sharp commentary on the history of California. Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily, are the great-grandchildren of pioneers, and what happens to them is a tragic epilogue to the pioneer experience, a story of murder and betrayal that only Didion could tell with such nuance, sympathy, and suspense.

Similar to: Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men; Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury; Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca

Why I Love It: Joan Didion is the master of subtlety and understatement. There is more to be found in what she does not say, than in what words are actually on the page. I love the way this combined so many different themes and genres of writing (as you can see from the "similar to" section). I feel like it has something for everyone. It almost has the feel of an old 1940s black and white movie. When reading a book can make you feel like you're watching a movie, I usually consider that a pretty damn good writing job :)

My Top 40 REM Songs

Now that REM is (sadly) come to the end of its career as band, here are my favorite REM songs:

Top 10:
Sweetness follows: live your life filled with joy and thunder
The ascent of man: my book is called the Ascent of Man, i marked your chapter with a catamaran, the accents off, but i am what I am
Final Straw: love, love will be my strongest weapon
Maps and legends: he's not to be reached, he's to be reached. he's not to be reached. maybe he's caught in the legend, maybe hes caught in the myth. maybe these maps and legends, have been misunderstood
All the Right Friends: you've been hanging with the wrong crowd, you've got all the right friends

At My Most Beautiful: you always say your name, like i wouldnt know its you. at your most beautiful

I’ve been high: What i want, what i really want is, just to live my life on high. and i know, i know you want the same, i can see it in your eyes.

Me in honey: if you got to do what you're doing, do it with me.

She Just wants to be

Walk unafraid: I will walk unafraid, i'll be clumsy instead. hold my love me or leave me high. 

I realize this is not a typical list by any means...its way more heavily weighted towards their more recent stuff than most people's lists. I just feel its under-rated and that as Stipe matured is words became more poetic and beautiful.


The other 30:
Accelerate

Catapult

Country feedback

Driver 8

Electron blue

Find the river

Harborcoat: a handshake is worthy, if it's all that you've got

Horse to water

I believe

I don’t sleep, I dream: I'll settle for a cup of coffee, but you know what I really need

I wanted to be wrong: mythology's seductive and it turned a trick on me, that i have just begun to understand

I’ll take the rain

Ignoreland

Imitation of life: like a friday fashion show teenager, cruising in the corner, trying to look like you don't try

Kohoutek

 Moral kiosk: its so much more attractive, inside the moral kiosk

Mr. Richards

Near Wild Heaven: near wild heaven, not near enough

New Test Leper: I can't say that I love Jesus, that would be a hollow claim. But he did make some observations, and i'm quoting them today. Just lest not ye be judged, what a beautiful refrain. 

Nightswimming

Pretty Persuasion

Romance

Second guessing

Sitting still: I'm the sign and you can read; i'm the sign and you're not deaf 

Strange currencies: I dont know why you're mean to me, when you call on the telephone. and i dont know what you mean to me

Supernatural superserious

The lifting: you have watched on repeat, the story of your life across the ceiling

The outsiders

Welcome to the Occupation

What’s the frequency, Kenneth?: you said that irony was the shackles of youth

#26 Stone Arabia Dana Spiotta

Jacket Copy: Stone Arabia, Dana Spiotta’s moving and intrepid third novel, is about family, obsession, memory, and the urge to create—in isolation, at the margins of our winner-take-all culture. In the sibling relationship, “there are no first impressions, no seductions, no getting to know each other,” says Denise Kranis. For her and her brother, Nik, now in their forties, no relationship is more significant. They grew up in Los Angeles in the late seventies and early eighties. Nik was always the artist, always wrote music, always had a band. Now he makes his art in private, obsessively documenting the work, but never testing it in the world. Denise remains Nik’s most passionate and acute audience, sometimes his only audience. She is also her family’s first defense against the world’s fragility. Friends die, their mother’s memory and mind unravel, and the news of global catastrophe and individual tragedy haunts Denise. When her daughter, Ada, decides to make a film about Nik, everyone’s vulnerabilities seem to escalate.

Similar to: Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays; Don Delillo’s Falling Man

My Take: This is kind of like the book version of Spinal Tap--if such a thing could even be said to exist. But it also has more depth than that movie could ever be credited with; in addition to the humor that pervades the novel, there is also an element of tragedy throughout the novel to create a nice balance. The juxtaposition of light-hearted comedy with scenes of pathos serves to emphasize the absurdity of the modern world. The most interesting part of the novel to me-- the part that really stood out--was the unusually strong connection the protagonist felt with news events she saw on TV. The author seems to suggest that this is a symptom of modern life--to feel sadness about things one can do nothing about, while being numb and unable to feel anything about things that are actually happening in one's own life, and are within one's potential sphere of control. In this sense, this book can be quite easily compared to the work of Joan Didion and Bret Easton Ellis; all these authors embrace a philosophy of decadent nihilism in their work, attempting to make a statement about just how far in the direction of insanity modern life tends to drive people. 

#25 Downtown Owl Chuck Klosterman

Book Jacket Copy: Somewhere in North Dakota, there is a town called Owl that isn't there. Disco is over but punk never happened. They don't have cable. They don't really have pop culture, unless you count grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. They hate the government and impregnate teenage girls. But that's not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it's perfect.

Chuck Klosterman's Downtown Owl is the unpretentious, darkly comedic story of how it feels to exist in a community where rural mythology and violent reality are pretty much the same thing. It's technically about certain people in a certain place at a certain time...but it's really about a problem. And the problem is this: What does it mean to be a normal person? And there is no answer. But in Downtown Owl, what matters more is how you ask the question.

Similar to: John Green's An Abundance of Katherines; Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio

My Take: I am a huge fan of Klosterman's books of essays (I own every single one of them) but in my opinion, he really should stick with nonfiction. It remains to be seen whether his first book will be unique in its mediocrity, or if it will prove to be a continuing trend: his second novel will be released this Fall. Whereas I generally read Klosterman's essay books in a matter of a few hours or a few days, it took me an entire month to get through his 270 page debut novel, Downtown Owl; I just could not get into it, it didn't grab my attention so I could really only read a few pages at a time without losing interest and going somewhere else (or a million different other places, ADD-style) for entertainment... the Tube, Walmart, the back of a cereal box, whatever works. Basically, just save your money (and a month of your life) and skip this book, opting for one of Klosterman's far superior journalistic endeavours--I particularly recommend Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Eating the Dinosaur. 

#24 13 Reasons Why Jay Asher

Synopsis: Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a mysterious box with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker--his classmate and crush--who committed suicide two weeks earlier. On tape, Hannah explains that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out how he made the list. Through Hannah and Clay's dual narratives, debut author Jay Asher weaves an intricate and heartrending story of confusion and desperation that will deeply affect teen readers.

Similar to: Looking for Alaska, I Love You Beth Cooper, David Leviathan

My take: This book was the perfect combination of being a suspenseful and entertaining read, a pageturner, and at the same time presenting an important message in a powerful way. For the most part it avoids the cliches of the high school novel genre, which is refreshing. It also is not preachy or heavy-handed; it doesn't hit you over the head with its message, but instead conveys it in a more subtle way, leaving the reader more likely to embrace it than if they felt they were being condescended to or preached to. The ending of the novel actually gives a suggestion about what the reader can actually actively do once they've taken in the book's message. Often times books will give you a message about something in society that is a problem, but it won't give examples of solutions that readers could actually then go out and change the world with. This book does not have that problem.

#23 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson

Jacket Copy: http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/252-jacket-copy-for-fear-and-loathing-in-las-vegas-a-savage-journey-to-the-heart-of-the-american-dream

Similar to: Tom Wolfe, Bret Easton Ellis, Jack Kerouac

My Take: This book seems to be over-rated. The feeling I came away from it with was that I wanted the author to tell me more. There just wasn't enough meat to this book. The writing style is also not particularly remarkable or innovative. It's not pretty or interesting prose to read; it's just plain prose. (Disclaimer: Pretty-to-read prose is just one of my personal preferences in literature, so obviously this is not a universal criticism, just my personal reason for disliking the book).

 The author also tends to assume that if you're reading this book, you share his political views (i.e. Nixon and business interests are the devil). To that end, he doesn't give us any reasoned arguments for why he feels this way, he just assumes that we know why. I would have liked to see him expound more upon the themes of what exactly has gone wrong with our country in the 70s, rather than just repeating "drugs, violence. drugs, violence" over and over again but not even delving into how exactly they've been the downfall of the American Dream.

The fake journalism part of it just gets on my nerves; i don't feel that this narrative technique really adds much at all to the story--it may even take away from the books' main messages by distracting us with unnecessary details.

#22 Falling Man Don DeLillo

"This mind and soul, her's and everyone's, keep dreaming toward something unreachable. Does this mean there's something there, at the limits of matter and energy, a force responsible in some way for the very nature, the vibrancy of our lives from the mind out, the mind in little pigeon blinks that extend the plane of being, out beyond logic and intuition."

Jacket Copy: Falling Man, Don DeLillo's magnificent, hauntin novel about September 11, begins in the smoke and ash of the burning towers and tracks the aftermath of this global tremor in the altered lives of a few New Yorkers. First there is Keith, a lawyer who walks out of the rubble and back into the world of his estranged wife, Lianne, and their young son, Justin. In the weeks and months after that day, Lianne probes Keith's moods, tries to reconcile two versions of her shadowy husband. Justin turns furtive, speaks in monosyllables and stands at the window, scanning the sky for more planes. These are lives choreographed by loss and grief, emotional landscapes reconfigured by the enormous force of history. DeLillo's love of New York--its pluck and verve, the history it carries, the sudden intimacies of strangers on its streets--makes Falling Man one of his most resonant novels, heartbreaking and beautiful.

Similar to: Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays


Highlights:
--The reason I compared this to Didion is for its spare but sharp prose. It's one of those short but sweet novels that says a lot in a very few words.
--The thing about this book is that I wouldn't say that I enjoyed it...it's an unpleasant book, so it's not something anything would really "enjoy" per se. But I feel like I know more about the world and about human nature from reading it, so in that sense, it's a great book.
--The use of the "Falling Man" performance artist as a metaphor for survivors of the 9/11 attacks was particularly genius. This is the image that will stick with me most from reading the book; it's what makes this book so haunting, long after you've finished reading it.

#21 By Nightfall Michael Cunningham

“who in the world despairs more exquisitely than the young, it’s something the old tend to forget”

Jacket Copy: Peter and Rebecca Harris: midforties denizens of Manhattan’s SoHo, nearing the apogee of committed careers in the arts—he a dealer, she an editor. With a spacious loft, a college-age daughter in Boston, and lively friends, they are admirable, enviable contemporary urbanites with every reason, it seems, to be happy. Then Rebecca’s much younger look-alike brother, Ethan (known in the family as Mizzy, “the mistake”), shows up for a visit. A beautiful, beguiling twenty-three year old with a history of drug problems, Mizzy is wayward, at loose ends, looking for direction. And in his presence, Peter finds himself questioning his artists, their work, his career- the entire world he has so carefully constructed. Like his legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s masterly new novel is a heartbreaking look at the way we; live now. Full of shocks and aftershocks, it makes us think and feel deeply about the uses and meaning of beauty and the place of love in our lives.

Similar to: Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”; John Green; Bret Easton Ellis’ Glamorama; Philip Roth’s American Pastoral; James Joyce

Highlights:

--this book is about seeming minutiae. The little split second decisions we make all day long, that, while often appearing rather inconsequential, indeed do have effects that change the course of things. The novel traces the cause and effect patterns of several of these “small” decisions to their, inevitable and at the same time unpredictable, ends.

--this book suggests that what we generally consider beautiful and aesthetically pleasing is often missing that factor of true beauty: the ugliness within that makes the beautiful parts stand out by contrast. It posits that its not the virtues of people that ultimately attract us to them, but rather their vices, their flaws, their inconsistencies.

#20 The Radleys Matt Haig

Jacket Copy: Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys. Many of us grew up next door to one. They are a modern family, averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a staid and quiet suburban English town. Peter is an overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become increasingly remote and uncommunicative. Rowan, their teenage son, is being bullied at school, and their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a vegan. They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception: Peter and Helen are vampires and have--for seventeen years--been abstaining by choice from a life of chasing blood in the hope that their children could live normal lives. One night, Clara finds herself driven to commit a shocking--and disturbingly satisfying--act of violence, and her parents are forced to explain their history of shadows and lies. A police investigation is launched that uncovers a richness of vampire history heretofore unknown to the general public. And when the malevolent and alluring Uncle Will, a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police off Clara's trail, he winds up throwing the whole house into temptation and turmoil and unleashing a host of dark secrets that threaten the Radleys' marriage. The Radleys is a moving, thrilling, and radiant domestic novel that explores with daring the lengths a parent will go to protect a child, what it costs you to deny your identity, the undeniable appeal of sin, and the everlasting, iridescent bonds of family love. Read it and ask what we grow into when we grow up, and what we gain--and lose--when we deny our appetites.

Similar to: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; Joss Whedon's "Angel"

Highlights:
--the metaphorical potential that the vampire plot mechanism holds is of course, very rich, and Haig makes use of it to a great extent. He tells the story in a way that allows us to relate to the characters, despite the fact that we are not, ourselves, vampires.
--although there have been a lot, a lot of stories written about vampires, and most of them are, admittedly, not worth reading, this book is one of the few that is well worth your time.

#19 Revolutionary Road Richard Yates

Jacket Copy: From the moment of its publication in 1961, Revolutionary Road was hailed as a masterpiece of realistic fiction and as the most evocative portrayal of the opulent desolation of the American suburbs. It's the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.

Similar to: Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Henry James' Daisy Miller, E.M. Forster

My Take:
-- I hardly think a movie version of this book was necessary, since the story comes so vividly to life on the pages, that you can picture it in your head as you read.
--This book is not a light-hearted, uplifting read by any means. It's disturbing and haunts you after you read it.
--This book is about how nothing in life is black and white, there's always gray areas and ambiguity, no matter how much 1950s suburban America tried to pretend like these complications didn't exist and tried to create a much more simple version of reality for people to console themselves with.
--This book is most well-known for its style of prose, its known primarily as a "well-written" novel. But I actually found the writing much less enjoyable than i found the story and the plot itself, and particularly, the well-developed portrait he creates of the characters. He describes them in great detail like Dickens does, but unlike Dickens characters, who are often caricatures or stereotypes, the characters in Yates' novels are real people; they're complex and complicated and not at all easy to pin down.

#18 The Sportswriter Richard Ford

"I hate for things to get finally pinned down, for possibilites to be narrowed by the shabby impingement of facts..."

"In a way, I suppose you could say all of us were and are lost, and know it, and we simply try to settle into our lost-ness as comfortably and with as much good manners and little curiosity as we can"

Jacket Copy: As a sportswriter, Frank Bascombe makes his living studying people—men, mostly—who live entirely within themselves. This is a condition that Frank himself aspires to. But at thirty-eight, he suffers from incurable dreaminess, occasional pounding of the heart, and the not-too-distant losses of a career, a son, and a marriage. And in the course of the Easter week in which Richard Ford’s wonderfully eloquent and moving novel transpires, Bascombe will end up losing the remnants of his familiar life, though with spirits soaring. With finely honed prose and an eye that captures the beauty and strangeness of our most neglected landscapes, Richard Ford creates a novel whose portrait of heroic decency is guaranteed to linger with us long after we have turned its last page.

Similar to: Virginia Woolf, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Richard Yates, Nicholson Baker

 Highlights:

-- Explains how its possible to be both an optimist AND a realist at the same time, to recognize that their ugly and cruel parts to life and to the world but to not dwell on them so much that it prevents you from enjoying and appreciating the better parts of life. 

--The title of this book is somewhat misleading, since it isn't really "about" sports or about "writing" so much as its about the isolation and loneliness of modern life. 

#17 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson

"Be brave enough to dare to be loved."

Jacket Copy: Published in 1919, Winesburg Ohio is Sherwood Anderson's masterpiece, a work in which he achieved the goal to which he believed all true writers should aspire: to see and feel "all of life within." In a perfectly imagined world, an archetypal small American town, he reveals the hidden passions of that turn ordinary lives into unforgettable ones. Unified by the recurring presence of young George Willard, and played out against the backdrop of Winesburg, Anderson's loosely connected chapters, or stories, coalesce into a powerful novel. Anderson's intuitive ability to home in on examples of timeless human conflicts--a working man deciding if he should marry the woman who is to bear his child, an unhappy housewife who seeks love from the town's doctor, an unmarried high school teacher sexually attracted to a pupil--makes this book not only immensely readable but also deeply meaningful. An important influence on Faulkner, Hemingway, and others who were drawn to Anderson's innovative format and psychological insights, Winesburg Ohio deserves a place among the front ranks of our nation's finest literary achievements.

Similar to: Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, D.H. Lawrence

Highlights:
--this is really more a book of connected short stories than it is a "novel." this format in itself makes it kind of cool to read
--this is a book about loneliness and isolation and feeling different from everyone else. Its a book about temptation and about confusion over one's desires and one's own human nature.
--as such, it is infinitely relatable to any human being who reads it--everyone has felt the emotions and been in similar situations to the ones described in this book.
--although the stories in here are very very plot driven, there are still several notable examples of poetic language, that, although perhaps a bit sappy and overly sentimental, I enjoyed because of its romantic tone. Here's my favorite example:

Love is like the wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night.You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses

#16 On the Road Jack Kerouac

"“It’s not my fault! Nothing in this lousy world is my fault, don’t you see that? I don’t want it to be and it can’t be and it won’t be”


Jacket Copy: In its time Kerouac's masterpiece was the Bible of the Beat Generation, the essential prose accompaniment to Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Now a modern classic, its American Dream is nearer that of Whitman than Scott Fitzgerald; and it goes racing toward the sunset with unforgettable exuberance, poignancy, and autobiographical passion. On the Road swings to the rhythms of fifties underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns, and drugs with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveler and mystic, the living epitome of Beat. 


Similar to: Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath; Don DeLillo's Americana; Nathanael West


Highlights: 
--beautiful, poetic, detailed descriptions of the American West
--the narrator takes a very objective (rather than subjective) approach to telling the story; he doesn't make  a lot of evaluations of people's actions, he simply describes things factually as they happened. This allows the reader to make his or her own judgments
--this books' strengths lie in its descriptions of setting, of time and place, rather than in its plot or characters. There are also some great, profound themes explored throughout the novel related to mortality, insanity, and poverty.
--I've been looking for a long time for a book that is written in the form of poetry, but tells a story with a plot like a novel does. This book really fit that description. 

#15 The Day of the Locust Nathanael West

"I don't like people who won't drink. It isn't sociable. They feel superior and I don't like people who feel superior."

Jacket Copy: The Day of the Locust--considered by many to be the best novel about Hollywood ever written--revolves around Tod Hackett, who hopes for a career in set design only to discover the boredom and emptiness of Hollywood's inhabitants. In the end, only blood will serve. The day of the locust is at hand...

Similar to: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Joan Didion's "Play It As It Lays"

Highlights:
--This book is much more about the symbols contained within it, than about anything to do with the "plot". These symbols are ones that will stick with you long after you finish the book, coloring your thinking about Hollywood and about the American Dream more generally.
--The economy of prose is wonderfully done, much like in Hemingway and Didion's works of sparse prose with lots of white space.
--Urges us to not see things as black and white, particularly in judging people; to acknowledge the ambiguity that exists in trying to determine the moral character of one's fellow man and the fact that we all have the potential to let darkness take over in our lives, given the right circumstance (i.e. boredom and disappointment with how life has turned out).

#14 Play It As It Lays Joan Didion

"One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what 'nothing' means, and keep on playing. 'Why?' BZ would say. 'Why not' i say'".

Jacket Copy: A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It As It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the emptiness and ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose both blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil—literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul—Play It As It Lays remains, more than three decades after its original publication, a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose. 

Similar to: Bret Easton Ellis, Nathanael West, Hemingway

Highlights:

--The “nothing” in the above quote refers to the concept that there are no longer any moral absolutes, nobody is using the words “right” and “wrong” any more. BZ decides that he can’t live in a world like this, but Maria decides to keep playing, to keep looking for the alternative to this, to try and find a way to get back to these moral absolutes. BZ faces the fact that he doesn’t care about anything anymore by killing himself, but Maria faces it by realizing that she should care, and she needs to keep looking for a way back to a place where she can care.

--Living in a world without moral absolutes, it can be difficult to have any sense of one's own identity. This is a book about trying to find your identity, anywhere that you think you could find it, whether it be through popular culture such as films and art or through romantic relationships or familial relationships. 

--This book doesn't sugar coat any of the tough issues it deals with; it simply lays things out as they happened, without any censorship or embellishment. In that way, Didion owes much stylistically to the works of Hemingway. 

--My affinity for this book is in large part due to its unique style of spare, bitter, dark prose. It's like nothing else I've ever read, beautiful in its own way (despite presenting a picture of the world that is utterly bleak and disturbing). 

#13 Talking to Girls About Duran Duran Rob Sheffield

Jacket Copy: Growing up in the eighties, you were surrounded by mysteries. These were the years of MTV and John Hughes movies, the era of big dreams and bigger shoulder pads. Like any teenage geek, Rob Sheffield spent the decade searching for true love and maybe a cooler haircut. This is his tale of stumbling into adulthood with a killer soundtrack. Inept flirtations. Dumb crushes. Deplorable fashion choices. Girls, every last one of whom was madly in love with the bassist of Duran Duran. As a confused teenager stranded in the suburbs, mowing lawns and playing video games, Rob had a lot to learn about women, love, music, and himself. But he was sure his radio had all the answers, whether he was driving an ice cream truck through Boston to "Purple Rain," slam-dancing to the Replacements, or pondering the implications of Madonna lyrics. From Bowie to Bobby Brown, from hair metal to hip hop, he loved them all. This book is a journey through the pop culture of an American adolescence that will remind you of your first crush, first car, and first kiss. But it's not just a book about music. This is a book about moments in time, and the way we obsess over them through the years.

Similar to: Chuck Klosterman, Nick Hornby, Fiction (An R.E.M. Biography)
Highlights:
--if you didn't grow up in the 80s, this book will tell you everything you ever need (or want) to know about New Wave music and the subculture that sprang up around its misfit fans
--this is a book for us wallflowers, who live vicariously through music, too shy to dare to live the life of glamour and adventure glorified in the lyrics of our musical heroes
--if you're into "Pretension" as it's own genre of literature, Sheffield's memoirs, along with the essays of Klosterman, Hornby, and David Foster Wallace are must-reads: the canon, if you will.

#12 Love Is A Mix Tape Rob Sheffield

Jacket Copy: Mix tapes: We all have our favorites. Stick one into a deck, press play, and you’re instantly transported to another time in your life. For Rob Sheffield, that time was one of miraculous love and unbearable grief. A time that spanned seven years, it started when he met the girl of his dreams, and ended when he watched her die in his arms. Using the listings of fifteen of his favorite mix tapes, Rob shows that the power of music to build a bridge between people is stronger than death. You’ll read these words, perhaps surprisingly, with joy in your heart and a song in your head—the one that comes to mind when you think of the love of your life.

Similar to: Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking,” Chuck Klosterman, Nick Hornby

Highlights:

--shows how we all use pop culture as a mirror of our emotional lives

--you would think the idea of a story told through mixed tapes would be unbearably clichéd and corny, but he manages to make this the opposite of that

--a tribute to the parts of the 90s that are most often forgotten but most in need of remembering 

#11 Twitterature Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin

Jacket Copy: Hatched in a dorm room by two freshmen at the University of Chicago, Twitterature is a hilarious and irreverent reimagining of the classics as a series of 140-character tweets from the protagonist. Providing a crash course in more than 80 of the world's best-known books, from Homer to Harry Potter, Virgil to Voltaire, Tolstoy to Twilight, and Dante to the Da Vinci Code, it's the ultimate Cliffs Notes. Because as great as the classics are, who has time to read those big, long books anymore?

Highlights:

The Metamorphosis- Kafka: I curse the day I inexplicably transformed into a gigantic, six-legged metaphor!

Harry Potter 5: I AM UNDERGOING A LOT OF ANGST RIGHT NOW. And this Asian girl is giving me a major hard-on. Blue balls suck. No magic potion for it either

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man- Joyce: I'm in college. Cool. But I live at home with my mom. That doesn't make me a tool does it? Nah, I'm totally cool. Look, I've got this cool tweed hat. Yeah, I'm cool. Totally. 

The Crying of Lot 49- Pynchon: At the theater. The play also mentions the Tristero thing. Talked to this dilettante director in the shower. He's totally DTF.

The Sound and the Fury- Faulkner: Why won't that watch stop ticking? Also, the image of other men's dicks in my sister plagues me. So many dicks in my dear, dear sister.

#10 Vineland Thomas Pynchon

"Sure, she knew folks who had no problem at all with the past. A lot of it they just didnt remember. Many told her, one way or another, that it was enough for them to get by in real time without diverting precious energy to what, face it, was fifteen or twenty years dead and gone. But for Frenesi the past was on her case forever, the zombie at her back, the enemy no one wanted to see, a mouth wide and dark as the grave."

Jacket Copy: On California's fog-hung North Coast, the enchanted redwood groves of Vineland County harbor a wild assortment of Sixties survivors and refugees from the "Nixonian Reaction" still struggling with the consequences of their past lives. Aging hippie freak Zoyd Wheeler is revving up for his annual act of televised insanity when news reaches him that his old nemesis, sinister Federal agent Brock Vond, has come storming into Vineland at the head of a heavily armed Justice Department strike force. Zoyd instantly disappears underground, but not before dispatching his teenage daughter Prairie on a dark odyssey into her secret, unspeakable past. Freely combining disparate elements from American popular culture--spy thrillers, Ninja potboilers, TV soap operas, sci-fi fantasies--Vineland emerges as what Salman Rushdie has called in the NYTBR "that rarest of birds: a major political novel about what America has been doing to itself, to its children, all these many years."

Similar to: Bret Easton Ellis' "The Informers," Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Coupland's "Generation X" 

Highlights:

--full of hilarious one liners about everything in American pop culture-- from the Los Angeles Lakers to Hawaii Five-O.

--although the idea that television is bad for us has been beat to death, he presents that message in a new and interesting way, through the use of satire and sci-fi/fantasy fables

--the distinctions "hero" and "villain" are hard to give to any of the characters in this novel, since they are very complex. this encourages the reader to think about whether things in real life are really ever "black and white" or if maybe the truth lies somewhere more towards the middle

--draws a direct line between Americans' obsession with Television and the end of the 60s counterculture movement; a very interesting theory indeed

--i really enjoyed the way the book wasnt entirely realistic but also wasnt entirely a fantasy universe either. For the most part, this was a story that really could have happened, but the parts that are implausible just make the story more interesting, and more, rather than less, powerful. 

#9 Americana Don DeLillo

"That's what we really want. We want to be totally engulfed by all the so-called worst elements of our national life and character. We want to come to terms with the false anger we so often display at the increasing signs of sterility and violence in our culture."

Jacket Copy: At twenty-eight, David Bell is the American dream come true. He has fought his way to the top, surviving office purges and scandals to become a high-powered television executive. David's world is made up of the images that flicker across America's screens, the fantasies that enthrall America's imagination. And then the dream--and the dream-making--become a nightmare. At the height of his success, David sets out to rediscover reality. Camera in hand, he journeys across the country in a mad and moving attempt to capture a sense of his own and his country's past, present and future.

Similar to: Nicholson Baker, Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City," Nathanael West

Highlights:
--dripping with irony and sarcasm, yet still manages to be authentic and sincere
--trains a keenly perceptive eye on the darker parts of being American that people are reluctant to acknowledge
--this book is about the passage of Time and the inevitability of death more than anything. It's about how we as Americans attempt to deal (and not deal) with those twin inescapable realities