The Andrew Extravaganza

I'm posting this about a week later than I had originally intended: adjust the arrival date of my next post accordingly. Now for the books:

The Water Method Man by John Irving
The usual suspects: Lust, adultery, Vienna, New England, Iowa, wresting.
Bogus Trumper, the unlikable main character has ruined his marriage and is working on ruining his current relationship. The scenes in Vienna are great; as are the documentary about Trumper’s two relationships ("Fucking Up") and the Old Low Norse epic poem "Akthelt and Gunnel", the translation of which Trumper undertakes in grad school. Not Irving's best work by any stretch, but it is his most comedic and is worth reading.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
My first attempt at this one was aborted because I couldn’t get used to the ALL CAPS typeface that Owen speaks in; it didn’t faze me at all on the second attempt. This is Irving’s best book in my opinion. A first time reader of Irving should start with The World According to Garp then head directly to Meany: it's perfect and should be taught in schools.

James Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet:

The Big Nowhere
L.A. Confidential
White Jazz

When I get around to purchasing and reading The Black Dahlia (first in the series), I will have finished the quartet completely out of sequence (3,2,4,1). The beauty of the quartet is that each novel is self contained. There are some story lines that carry over (like Ed Exley vs Dudley Smith), but the focus of each book is unique. L.A Confidential is the best; if you enjoyed the movie, then you will love the book as well. White Jazz is told in first person and rivals L.A. Confidential in greatness, but with a less sprawling story.

Ellroy creates very realistic characters with flaws and actions that make sense for their character. I’ve only read these three books, but it looks like Ellroy’s style underwent a drastic change from The Big Nowhere to L.A. Confidential/White Jazz. His language evolved to become more stripped down and rapid fire (think sentences without verbs). I can't recommend these books enough: Think Elmore Leonard's best work, but darker and more violent.

Split Second by David Baldacci
I found this one on a book shelf in our upstairs game room. I had just finished L.A. Confidential and was out of reading material pending a trip to Half-Price Books. Baldacci’s genre is Thriller; he wrote Absolute Power—I think I’ve read it (or maybe I saw the movie version), but it didn’t leave much of an impression. This one had a promising beginning: eight years before the story takes place a secret service agent has his 3rd party presidential candidate assassinated right in front of him; present time, a female agent has her 3rd party candidate kidnapped from under her detail’s nose. Clearly there must be a link between the two; oh, what squandered potential. I’ll admit that Baldacci writes very well (for a Thriller)—the pacing is fast and he doesn’t waste time developing characters. His big problem is with the actual story (The Robert Rodriquez Cringe Point is in effect). Rather than go political with it, Baldacci goes with a ridiculously implausible uber-villain that takes advantage of contrived plot points to commit more crimes whilst remaining undetected until the end of the novel. A terrible story, but I read it in one day so it’s relatively harmless.

Something Happened by Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is still my all-time favorite novel. Good as Gold was a brilliant comedic novel that took shots at politics and Henry Kissinger. Closing Time was very good too. I had to quit reading Something Happened at the half way point—I got bogged down: entirely too many parenthetical digressions. I have to fight the same urges when I write. A joke pops into my head: into the sentence it will go. But used too often, the flow of the narrative gets shot to hell. Something Happened is often very funny and certainly the subject matter (a dysfunctional 70’s family) is ripe for the picking, but Heller just couldn’t control himself in the first person narrative. His character’s thoughts constantly digress into stream of consciousness recollections or self analysis. At some point I will give the book another chance—Something Happened has too many likeable qualities and Heller has far too much goodwill in the bank to just bury it in a box in the attic with only Michael Chricton’s catalog to keep it company.