Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer

  Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer

So, this is the second part of Less, the previous Pulitzer winning novel by Greer, but no wonder it didn't win another Pulitzer as it is not as good.  Feels like Greer wanted to make some money from the same topics of the previous book and using the same characters, like a bunch of extra chapters.  Freddy is now announced as the narrator in the beginning which makes the book less interesting as it is not a surprise uncovered at the end like in the previous book.  Also the tour of the US South and East is not as interesting as the international tour Less did in the last book.

The characters he meets and the events he attends are also less interesting, with the exception of his meeting with his father and their relationship.  The worst part is at the end when he meets the black Arthur Less and realizes he attended many events which were meant for him. The "Financial Peril' plot seems very forced, as why wouldn't Robert pay the back debt for the house where they lived together? Very unbelievable. 

Having Freddy both as a narrator and a character doesn't work.  His travel to Maine, the island and 'the widow' is strangely disconnected from the rest of the narrative and doesn't add to it in any meaningful way. 

All in all, I read this to the end, but I wasn't impressed.  Another proof that sequels rarely work (but they're amazing when they do!)

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

 Less by Andrew Sean Greer

I read this book because my psychotherapist was aghast that I've been reading Oscar Wao, especially during a period where I was experiencing physical and psychological distress.  He did a search on Pulitzer and comedy and this book came on top (only two comedy books ever won the Pulitzer fiction prize, all the rest are traumatizing, dark horrors).  

The book is not exactly a comedy, more like social commentary with comedic touches, but definitely brighter than my previous horror experience that is still traumatizing me.  It is mostly a meditation on gay love and turning 50, i.e. being decidedly middle age with no way to deny it and fast walking towards the inevitable ultimate death and perishing forever in this universe.  Maybe when the universe is recreated from the breath of Vishnu you'd exist again, but then you would be remembering previous existence and you don't.

Less is a middling famous writer from SanFran who lost his love Freddy to another man and is taking a trip around the world on other people's expense to forget about it.  He goes to Mexico, Italy, India, Morocco and Japan, of all places, always doing engagements with his writer fame and getting into different happenings, mostly funny, but not all of them.  The ones concerning aging are depressing, especially if you're over 50 when everything in your body suddenly starts to fail in various non-funny way.  

It is a good book and kept my spirits up during the lead up to my hospitalization even though I skimmed through some parts as I was too psychologically distraught to pay attention to the written word.  It impressed me so much that I read the next one, which turned out to be a disappointment. 

Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

 Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

I finished this book back in March and it was a part of my new initiative to read Pulitzer-prize winning fiction,  Because of the health and life happenings of the past few months (including the month-long hospitalization, thanks wife!) I haven't written any reviews, though I have definitely continued reading. Now that I am reinstalling THERIPPER in order to erase any possible hacks, I have time while BitDefender is running full disk scan (12TB), so here I am.

Well, one thing I didn't count with was that Pulitzer prize winners are dark, bleak and traumatizing, describing the worst of human nature, which I cannot stomach at the best of times, let alone in probably the worst psycho-physical situation I've been in my life so far.  The ENTR mechanical keyboard feels good, but not as good as I remember from a lot of typing. Well, this book is supposedly satirical, i.e. funny, but describes some blood-curling scenes like Oscar being beaten to almost-death and the perps jumping on his head with both legs and his great-grandfather being tortured in Trujillo prison by having wet rope tied to his skull and then dried in the hot sun, causing permanent brain damage. Shit, I'm going to have nightmares about those for life.  Definitely not a good idea to read it in this condition, but my condition was not bad when I started. 

Anyway, the book is describing horrifying events through the lens of satire and sci-fi/fantasy obsession of the main character, the obese, love-hungry Dominican-American Oscar who wants to fall in love, but no girl in the US would have him so he goes back to Dominican where he falls in love with a former prostitute who is currently banging a corrupt police chief who orders the cruel beating and eventual murder of Oscar. The US authorities couldn't care less, of course, as long as the Trujillo regime is hunting 'commies'.  Commies were more important to the US than the lives of its own citizens. 

The books goes several generations back, with Oscar's mother, grandmother, and great-grandfather and what happened to them as a result of that animal Rafael Leonidas Trujillo being left to run amok since the US wanted him to kill more 'commies'. If you think Trump's regime is bad, checkout the US from the 50s and 60s - unbelievable.  Google Operation Condor too.

Anyway, very well written book, very flowing style and funny parts, but certain scenes are lifelong traumatizing, especially when you know that it was all actually true and most of these perp animals were never punished (El Dentista).

Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

​Never read anything by Jennifer Egan before, but it won the Pulitzer Prize, so was on my reading list. Very well written book, with short sentences, all five senses present, descriptive details where it matters and interesting events. It says it is a novel but it is actually a set of short stories with overlapping characters and voices. Works better than Cloud Atlas though. 

Sasha and Bennie seem to be the main characters, as most of the stories touch on them. It is interesting to see them described in vignettes from their teens to their 60s (in Bennie’s case). Ups and downs in life , from teenage prostitution and drug use for Sasha to a Midwest housewife life. For Bennie from teenage pink rebel with a band through a record executive which snorts gold flakes for potency and still manages to cheat on his wife multiple times , until a second marriage and kid in his 60s with an ethnic wife half his age. 

We also hear about Alex and Scotty and a few other characters , but their stories (in their voices) are just there to support Bennie and Sasha. The 12th chapter (PowerPoint) is a bit too much , even for an experimental novel. 

It is a good and fast read, but it feels like something that was intended to be good and fast , rather than a life work that the author felt compelled to write regardless of commercial success. This was written to be a commercial success and be in top lists. 

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

​Yes, I know, I’m late to the party. However I was deeply unimpressed by the movie in 2012, so I postponed reading the book by a decade and a half. Decade and a half passed quickly. The book is much better than the movie. At least it makes sense. Each story is connected and fully told, not just snippets like in the movie.  

The book has Matrioshka doll structure, while the movie is more of a mosaic. I’m not sure I’d call this book a novel as it is 7 interconnected short stories. Yes, the characters are “reincarnations” but they are not aware of their previous lives in details , so they just might be completely new humans. Their old selves are dead forever. 

As many have noted , this book is very pretentious. Starting with the structure and especially with the language and style of each short story, Mitchell tries to impress us with how educated and skillful he is , but falls mostly flat. The middle story with Zachary is the most pretentious one with the made up language which sounds like a four year old tried to remake English. Absolutely unnecessary and the worst story in all the book. 

I liked the Robert Frobisher epistolary story the best, although I did not see his suicide at 24 coming, as there’s not enough happening for him to want to kill himself - and definitely not because of the spoiled brat Eva. The rest is very interesting and Frobisher’s voice is very well defined with all the musical metaphors, although using obsolete Britishisms is redundant and only serves the pretentiousness of the author. 

The Timothy Cavendish story is also pretty good and fun to read and thank God, it has the least pretentious language. The Sonmi 451 story is also very weak, second weakest probably, as Mitchell is not a very good sci fi writer. The future where North Korea conquers most of Asia and turns into corporatist Unanimity is not very imaginative or interesting and the twist where the resistance is actually the regime is lifted straight from 1984. 

The Louisa Rey story is Mitchell’s attempt to write hard boiled detective fiction and it fails flat. Neither the inclusion of the Triads at the end counts as some big or interesting twist although we loved to hate the Fay woman. 

Overall this book wasn’t bad, even though it is an exercise in style rather than than substance , but the sheer length and pretentiousness would stave me off from reading it a second time. Still much better than the disjointed nonsensical movie. 

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

I'm a big fan of PK Dick, although he was a crazy bastard, always high on drugs, paranoid, probably schizophrenic, and a curse to everyone who knew him (like his newfound friends in Vancouver found out).   Hollywood has discovered PK Dick , but completely misunderstood or willingly misrepresented him.  Blade Runner is not about hunting androids - it is about religion and what religious feeling means - is it about empathy that only humans can feel?  Minority Report is not about high octane Sci Fi action, but about repressive state and police apparatus, where a man is never free until he dies.  It is good that this book has not been made into a movie yet, as it is probably going to turn into some commercialized Hollywood bullshit.  I always wondered why Hollywood didn't make into films William Gibson's books, since they are amazing, but I think now because it is difficult to put a twist on the dark nihilism in the books.  And dark nihilism in movies doesn't sell. 

Anyways, in Flow My Tears (a medieval flute song) Jason Taverner, a famous talk show and singer, dating the hottest singress on the planet, suddenly wakes up in a dingy hotel room without any IDs and no one knows who he is.  The hotel clerk (a police snitch who plants a tracker on Jason) leads him to a fake document girl maker, Kathy, who is also a police informer (US is a police state at this time, after the Second Civil War), who makes him some documents, then removes the transmitter dots from them in lieu of sleeping with him.  But Jason never sleeps with her because he discovers that she's batshit crazy and has a police handler who eventually sends her back to an asylum. 

Jason tries to hook up with his previous acquaintances but no one knows him. He doesn't exist. He's an unperson.  Eventually the police chief Felix Buckman, who is in an incestious relationship with his sister and claims to be a 'seven', which is above the 'six' than Jason is, a eugenics, genetically engineered human to be good looking and smart.  Buckman finds the circumstances Jason's in funny, and knowing the police state of which he was once a Marshall, knows that the fame or money will not help Jason if he gets caught in the "system". The system destroys people. 

Alys, Felix's sister, picks up Jason after he's released by Felix and she takes him to their house (they have an incest son in Florida), and tells him he was there before and they took drugs together.  She's always on drugs and does some occult shit.  Eventually she overdoses and dies on the new drug KR-3 which not only changes reality for the person who takes it, but for everyone around them as well.  Since Alys was jealous of Jason's fame, she imagined a world in which he doesn't exist and it happened.  

Jason escapes but Felix sets him up with the murder of Alys (which was an OD) and he goes to trial, but is exonerated and becomes even more famous that before.  Felix is fired and goes into retirement on Fiji where he is murdered by the USA Police State when he writes a book exposing them.  Eventually the police state fails and democracy comes back, forced labor camps area abandoned, and police checks and raids are things of the past. 

What PK Dick is trying to say is that we are all Jasons Taverners. We can all be disappeared in an instant and no one is ever going to find us. 

The City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami

 Murakami remains my favorite writer of all time, however the last couple of books have been lower quality and this last one has been a chore to read through.  Still, good, but highly unreadable, especially compared to his masterpiece "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle".  

The book comes in three parts and the first part is the most unreadable as it is written in second person.  Murakami often writes in first person and sometimes in third person, but never before in second person.  One gets tired from "You did this, you wrote this, you said this...". The first part is about when the narrator was in high school, 17 years old, and met a girl, 16, at an essay competition and fell in love with her (and she with him).  They write very long letters to each other and are together, except for sex, as the girl tells him her real self is in a walled city far away from here.  Eventually the girl disappears and the author is devastated.

In the second part the narrator is 45, had some middling career in book trade, but never formed a family and is still brooding over the 16 year old girl from high school.  He quits his job in Tokyo, moves to the sticks and boonies of Fukushima prefecture.  There he becomes the head librarian and is coached by the ghost of the previous head librarian, Mr. Koyasu, who died a year before the narrator arrived.  Here he also meets a 16 year old boy who read voraciously and never talks to anyone except to ask them their birthday. Mr. Koyasu used to be the boy's mentor and the narrator tries to become his substitute.  The boy reveals that he knows about the City with the Uncertain Walls and wants the narrator to take him there, but he doesn't know how. 

In the third part the boy dies in the real world and his wooden corpse is discovered by the narrator in a dream in a dark closet in a mountain cabin and the narrator goes back to the City with the Uncertain Walls, which his real self never left, but only his shadow, and here he decides to leave and leave the boy, who inhabits his body, to be the Dream Reader.

Very allegoric and parabolic book with thoughts on life, youth, love, identity, self, shadow (in Jungian sense).  However, it seems to follow a Murakamian formula of dream self, split identity, non-identification with reality, etc.  These topics have already been espoused on in previous Murakami books to a great extent, so this one seems superfluous.  It is very voluminous, with not much to say, yet not like the other "slice of life" Murakami books - it is not easy to read and it doesn't flow easily.  

Murakami is still my favorite author, and it is nigh time he gets the Nobel prize in literature, but this book could have been better.