Shantaram

Shantaram = Good book.

A real page turner without it actually devolving into super piss-poor bestseller prose. It’s not the literary book of the year or anything, but it was a damn good read. (Don’t get offended if you like the book — the author writes well enough, but he’s not up there with Chabon, Atwood, nor McCarthy).

The book is by Gregory David Roberts. He is an Australian writer who now permanently resides in Mumbai, India. Shantaram is semi-autobiographical — although it is a work of fiction.

Gregory Roberts (like his fictional protagonist, Lin), was incarcerated in Australia. He escaped from prison. He fled to India to start a new life (like his fictional protagonist). And you should just read the book . . .

It’s going to be made into a movie. Apparently Johnny Depp loved it like I did and convinced a few of his friends to back it. I am not as influential as Johnny.

However, I wanted to talk about the book before the movie came out and of course, inevitably, the movie inspired cover that I will be embarassed to be seen with (a vestige of my English major snob ways — what are you gonna do?).

Any book that convinces you to travel to another country is something. Mumbai here I come . . .

 

Annie Choi: Architects Hate Her and She’s Hilarious

I just finished reading Annie Choi’s “Happy Birthday or Whatever: Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family Disasters.”

Very funny book. I read it on a flight up the bay area and back. Yeah, it’s a fast read. Go buy it. Be literate for once in your life. Or drop me an email and I’ll lend you my copy you parsimonious bastard/ette.

The book is a very David Sedaris-esque autobiographical tale. I have to say though, that my favorite is still Paul Beatty’s “White Boy Shuffle.” He was a Slam Poet, so it’s hard to compete with that. Anyways, I wanted to give props to Korean American writers not named Chang-Rae Lee, so there it is. I like reading Asian American writers that don’t make me want to kill myself (Chang-Rae — you write beautifully and all that, but seriously, can I crack a smile once, puhlease? I don’t like feeling suicidial when I read books — oh yeah, thank you Rohinton Mistry, the pleasure was all mine . . . )

I personally want to encourage the blossoming of Asian American writers who write funny — kinda like Shawn Wong and his “American Knees”. I thought so much of that guy that I actually drove up to Seattle and bugged a graduate student at U-Dub to set up a meeting. He is a charming man. They eventually made the novel into a movie, “Americanese” — yeah, I get it . . .

I “discovered” Annie Choi when an architect friend sent me a HEEEE-larious article by Annie Choi. I was telling my architect friend that she became important in my life as I inadvertently achieved certain accouterments of a bourgeoisie life. I needed to park her at my cocktail parties (I have yet to have one, although my wife and I are planning a Rockband party in the near future and if you have to ask you’re not invited) in order to mark the fact that I can now introduce my snooty friends who read The New Yorker to my friend, the architect. She promptly sent me the article, entitled, “Dear Architects” and told she’ll never ever attend any of my cocktail parties. She mumbled something about proletariat riff-raff. I knew she wasn’t talking about me.

Please read it. Those three pages was enough to convince me that I needed to buy her book.

http://rasmusbroennum.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/deararchitects.pdf

You can also check out her blog: www.annietown.com

I have not really read her blog, so I do not vouch for its funniness nor its hilarity.

But I suppose it’s gotta be better than this blog.

 

The Road, at least out of the SF ghetto

Jonathan commented on my earlier post about Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning The Road.  It is indeed a great book.   And this is despite it being an Oprah Winfrey Book Club selection (ha, ha, Franzen, you’re an idiot . . .).

With brute brevity, I’m going to say that The Road chronicles the story of a father and son attempting to survive in a post-apocalyptic America.   Read it.  And don’t lend your copy out to anyone because you’ll never get it back (I’m still waiting for my copy to make it back to me).

This is ostensibly a science fiction book, because it deals with life after some sort of mutually assured destruction scenario taking place.  And if it is, it is by far one of the best sci-fi books out there and one that you can recommend to people who hate sci-fi with confidence.  (I don’t know if I can say the same for Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, with its space operatic the-entire-existence-of-humankind-in-the-balance-due-to-aliens theme merely typifies why it might be the best of the genre, but doesn’t transcend the genre at all.)

First of all, the book is very well written, with the typical sparse prose style that I love so much about McCarthy.  Sci-Fi fiction is filled to the brim with techno-speak and the talk of guys who need to explain every little thing to the readers, maybe in a juvenile attempt to be so nerdily pedantic.

Secondly, the book never explains why and hows of the cities on fire and how the ashen world came to be.  And really, that’s what makes this so great.  Most sci-fi books & movies are obsessed with this perspective of overall historical omniscience, to be on the bridge of the ship during climactic battle, so to speak.   The focus is on two, arguably, inconsequential characters and how important they are to the narrative.

This could be the book that leads sci-fi out of its sci-fi ghetto.  Once a sci-fi writer, you can never get that stain off of you.  But Cormac brought this type of story into the mainstream.  C’mon, Oprah can’t be wrong (more on her and my snobby aversion to her “Oprah” book stickers later), can she?  Margaret Atwood tried with The Blind Assassin and to a certain extent, Oryx and Crake.  Somehow I thought the sci-fi elements were gimmicky and not well used.

Keep in mind I haven’t seriously read heavy sci-fi since junior high.  I think I abandoned it for the above reasons.  If I come across more “literature” (I mean, seriously, what the hell does that mean?) that has credible sci-fi elements, I will get back into it.

 

Cormac McCarthy = Edith Wharton

I just saw No Country for Old Men.  I’ve been avoiding watching the movie because I liked the book so much.  The movie was faithful to the book.  Fan-tastic.

I am a big fan of Cormac.  And that’s where the title heading come’s from.

The prose style of McCarthy is really sparse, evocative, and elliptical.  In other words, he is able to get a lot through with very little.  And I think in a sense, it’s very similar in the way Edith Wharton was able to get convey her sense of story.  Edith, was the one who wrote The Age of Innocence, among other books — which was adapted into an underrated and beautifully shot movie by Scorsese.  So imagine Wharton with steroids, guns, Texas, and all other things manly, then you got Cormac.  Okay, I’ve obviously gone over the edge here.

But the above thought did cross my mind.  And all of you should read  The Road when you get a chance.