Shallow Book Reviews

This is a new feature, which I hope to repeat from time to time. I call it Shallow Book Reviews because I rarely have anything to say about a book, or movie for that matter, much deeper than "I liked it" or "It sucked." But really, what more do you need to know?

Several months ago, I found myself in several conversations about literature saying that I didn’t read current American fiction, that I had no interest in it, and that I was pretty sure it all sucked, and as I said more or less the same thing again and again, I started to choke on it a bit, knowing that what I was saying was stupid. So I made a solemn vow, yes a solemn vow, seriously, to read more current American fiction in order to fight back personal stupidity, at least on one front.

I began by reading Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. I know, Murakami is technically a contemporary Japanese writer, but a guy I know who could, in a nice way, be described as a literary poser had been going on and on about him for months and I had read a couple short stories in Harper’s that were good, and at least he’s a contemporary writer who Americans like, if not American himself. Norwegian Wood, however, is a rather ordinary tale of doomed relationships among college students. Not in any way bad for the genre, but not exceptional either.

But it was good enough that I read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by the same author, which my poser friend considers to be possibly the best novel ever written. It is, I will admit, a real page-turner. After reading Norwegian Wood , I was surprised that there was a lot of magic in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, not magic like it was great, but magic like magical realism magic. Although I turned the pages and enjoyed it overall, it was ultimately unsatisfying. The story kind of got away from him in the end. This is understandable with a young author no doubt trying to meet a deadline, or just move on to the next thing, but unfortunate nonetheless.

Next I sucked it up and dove into the real thing. I picked up Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, which I found very disappointing. I had been led to believe that Roth was some kind of Literary Giant and that this book had great Literary Merit. Well, I don’t know about Roth’s other work, but The Plot Against America had little depth. It was, however, fairly easy to read so it wasn’t horrible. Same thing with E.L. Doctorow’s The March. It was a more than serviceable page-turner, but ultimately not that great.

That took me to Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. It, too, was easy to read, but my jury is still out on its ultimate literary value. The prose is great and the story and its denouement was in no way typical or predictable, but a couple of the main characters could arguably be described as stereotypical plot devices -- the world-weary old sheriff and the invincible hit man with seemingly magical abilities. Those elements make for good drama and big budget movies, but are usually not the stuff of great literature. Still, there was enough about the book to merit deferred judgement. And I'm pretty sure it won't be made into a big budget movie any time soon.

I’m now reading Rabbit Run by John Updike and Me Talk Pretty Someday by David Sedaris. I think I read the Updike book when I was a teenager, or at least skimmed it looking for the sex parts and all that I know about Sedaris is that he is contemporary and American. Anyway, although I am a shallow book reviewer, I am not so shallow that I will review a book before I finish it, so we’ll all just have to wait.