“Let me start with this: I’m prepared to admit that I might be wrong. This might be a really good book. A lot of people I respect, people whose opinions I respect, really dig this. I don’t want to convince anyone they’re wrong, and I don’t want to change anyone’s mind. I disliked the book, and I feel compelled to say why, maybe only to explain it to myself.
With that out of the way…I don’t think I really understand this book. Or understand its appeal.
The premise is this: Take a framed scene, in this case a living room, and then imagine what happened in that space throughout the history of the planet. Swamp days, natives hanging out, the 60’s, the 70’s. What the book does is to show this same space, and through the use of frames, show what happened there throughout time. Sometimes the bulk of the image is the house in 1971, while a small frame in the middle shows a bird flying through, which happened in that space in 1654. The basic idea.
And I think my problem is, I didn’t see a lot going beyond that premise. It’s an interesting premise, but I didn’t feel like it was 300+ pages interesting. Also, it’s total fiction.
For me, a fiction is only as strong as its combination of voice and story. An imbalance in those two can be made up for by one or the other. A boring story told really well can still be pretty compelling. Think David Sedaris. A great, great story told in a mundane way can still work. I read a memoir by a guy who contracted HIV, and although the prose wasn’t super, he was really open and honest about how his life works now, and that meant that the book worked.
In this book, there is essentially no voice. The reader is an omniscient observer floating in the corner of this space. There is very little written dialogue. The art is pretty, but I would say it’s more accurate than anything. Accuracy isn’t a crime, but I think accurate, architectural art feels less voice-y than something more stylized. Again, not a criticism of the art, but an expression of the fact that I didn’t feel the art style could stand in for a narrative voice.
So what about the story?
I didn’t feel like there was a lot of story either. Stuff happened. But it was minor stuff. Which I suspect is the point here, that a million minor things all happened in this one area, and that means there’s a story. But the stories within are things like “A man hangs a deer head on the wall, which his partner does not care for.” “An old man falls out of a chair.” “Benjamin Franklin(?) argues about the monarchy.”
Here’s the thing: I think this book definitely relies on the reader to do the heavy lifting. Which I am somewhat able to do. But I also think this book, the appeal is about the reader doing the heavy lifting outside the story. Imagining all the things that happened in her office, all the stuff that happened on that spot throughout history. Imagining all the things that happened where a guy plays pool. If you read this book, it can help in that it gives you a very zen experience the next time you’re in line at the post office and it sucks. You can just think about how this spot probably used to be a literal smelly hellpit bog instead of a metaphorical one.
My writing teacher has a saying that he likes to break out when a writer is concerned that his or her work is too mundane. Too navel-gazing. He says, “You can tell a boring story about an exciting person, or you can tell an exciting story about a boring person, but you can’t tell a boring story about a boring person.” That’s how I felt about this book. The story didn’t excite me, and the way it was told was very static.
I recognize that the very things I disliked about it are at the very core of the story and the way it was told. That my reasons for disliking it are kind of the purpose of the entire thing.
Oh, wait. I have one more thing about this.
I’m sorry, I know it’s a fictional story, but it all felt so damned convenient. All this stuff happened in this one spot. Natives had sex on this very spot where Ben Franklin argued with some redcoat jagoff!
It feels like genealogy to me. I have never in my life heard from someone who is interested in genealogy who discovers that he is related to absolutely no one of interest. That his family is very basic, never did anything exciting, and never made history. But let’s be honest. 99% of humans on this Earth will not do anything on a level of interest that warrants keeping track of. Most people are born, they write some bad book reviews, and then they die. Most of us will be branches on the family tree that are used only as footholds in an attempt to climb up to the point of a person of interest. After I die, some distant relative will step on my proverbial branch-y face to reach up to the next branch in hopes of climbing to the point of being related to Abraham Lincoln or something.
As most people are uninteresting, I think most of the square footage on this planet is also probably VERY uninteresting. Yes, I’d totally watch a time-lapse of my apartment from the dawn of time until now. But would I ever re-watch it? I have seen all of ‘Black Mirror’ so maybe, but it’s pretty unlikely.
So while it’s fun to think about, it’s less fun if you’re a pessimist like myself who kind of feels like things are way less interesting that most people think.
Oh, I have another, last thing to say.
This book fits into a sort of This American Life idea, which is the idea that every person has a story, and every story is interesting. Which I think is false. Someone much smarter than me pointed out that This American Life isn’t just a great idea. It’s not just a matter of walking up to someone on the street and pointing a microphone in their face and saying, “Tell me your best story.” It’s a well-produced show that’s very thoughtful, and the stories they tell are ALMOST NEVER mundane, boring stories. They represent, perhaps, boring sectors of our lives, but the stories themselves are almost always remarkable or take a remarkable twist on the ordinary. A father taking his baby for a walk is very unremarkable, but if that father was totally blind and taking on fatherhood, now that walk is interesting.
Or take Found Magazine. It’s composed entirely of found notes. Let me tell you, pick up every note you see, and almost all of them are unexciting or uninteresting. You get some gems, and it’s worth it because, what the hell, I’m not above bending down to snoop in the life of a stranger. But as someone who has done this for years, who feels a tremendous guilt and thinks about it all day when he bypasses a folded note, I’m here to tell you that MOST times you pick up a note, it’s a bust.
I’m somewhat against the idea that everything is extraordinary. The idea is a little…well, I don’t understand why people who work very hard to create great works want to promote that idea, why they want people to think that they aren’t working hard. In my own work, I don’t screw from the rooftops how great something is, but if someone asks whether or not it’s a lot of work, I’m never shy about saying, “Yes, writing and polishing that 1,500 words was a lot of work. It took a lot of time and effort.” If someone asks whether podcasting is hard, I have no problem saying, “The recording is the easiest part. You have to master the file, get it online, and you have to get a feed that takes it all into iTunes, and there are about 1 million ways to screw this up. Yes, setting up that framework is a lot of work.”
I guess I should wrap this up. And I’ll just say my piece in a much briefer format.
1. I think this book lacks a voice.
2. I think the stories contained in here are not very meaningful (the exception being the joking old man at the end, who I enjoyed).
3. I think this book continues this idea that interesting things JUST HAPPEN if you dig beneath the surface. That fascinating material is just there waiting as opposed to created and honed through lots of hard work.
Okay, this is the third time, but this is REALLY the final thing.
I think this story has been told better by a series of still images like this:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewtucker/spinetingling-pictures-of-war-ghosts-from-the-past#.neWoM32VN “