Waiting

Sometimes prose will impress me as I'm reading it, but when I'm done I feel as though the pieces never really added up to anything. With his latest novel A Hologram for the King Dave Eggers produced just the opposite effect in me.  When I finished it the impact was surprisingly powerful.

In simple, clean language he tells the story of Alan Clay, a 54-year-old consultant, who has come to Saudi Arabia to demonstrate a holographic teleconferencing system to King Abdullah. He hopes to land the IT contract for the King Abdullah Economic City, a massive development being constructed in the desert outside Jeddah. Day after day Clay and his team sit in an unairconditioned tent in the barely started KAEC and wait for the arrival of the king.

There's no doubt that Eggers is paying homage to “Waiting for Godot” - the book's epigraph is a Samuel Beckett quote (“It is not every day that we are needed.”). And there's a bit of Willy Loman in the confused but hopeful Alan Clay. He began his career as a salesman in the most American of companies – Fuller Brush and Schwinn bicycles. But outsourcing has taken his job, and he has lost confidence in the superiority of American industry and his place in the new global economy. Divorced from his wife, concerned about paying his daughter’s college tuition, he struggles to understand a culture where much is forbidden but bans are ignored, where it seems impossible to get a straight answer out of anyone.

Eggers tells his story in a simple straightforward, sometimes comic, way. It's not preachy or political. But he manages to encapsulate so many of the themes of America in the twenty-first century into the travails of one decent man.

Looking Backward

I had two problems with Irish author John Banville's beautifully written Ancient Light, and I think that they are both my fault and not his.

The first is that I accidentally did not start at the beginning. As I was reading, I felt that some of the pieces of the characters' back stories were missing, and I afterward discovered what the problem was. (I always like to read a book 'cold' and only read about it when I'm done). Some of the characters had appeared in two of his earlier books, “Eclipse” and “Shroud”. The main character, aging actor Alexander Cleave, looks back on his life, including the suicide of his only daughter Cass. I kept thinking he would expand on the circumstances that led to her death, but they had been covered in an earlier book. Likewise, Alex has been asked to play the part of literary critic Axel Vander in an upcoming biographical movie, and it is clear that Vander's life had some unsavory chapters, but he too was fleshed out in an earlier novel.

As Cleave prepares for his role he reminisces about his love affair at the age of 15 with the 35-year-old mother of his best friend. We see the drama solely from his perspective, he was the very definition of a callow youth, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what she saw in him. I know, I know, it's no different from “Lolita” with the genders flipped, but I just wasn't persuaded that Mrs. Grey (as he calls her throughout) would be attracted to this pouting, headstrong, adolescent. The sex was great for him (as he frequently remarks) and I'm sure she enjoyed it too (although he wasn't terribly concerned that she did so), but it felt too much like a male fantasy to me. My 35-year-old self would have been creeped out by the whole idea of it. I guess I don't have enough Mrs. Robinson in me.

Banville is a wonderful writer, and his thoughts on the power and the limits of memory are beautifully expressed, but this one just didn't do it for me.

Favorite Books of 2012

Once again I face the difficult task of choosing my favorite books of the year.  One thing makes it easier as I get older - I forget more.  If I look at a book title and can't quite remember what it was about, it won't make my list.  But for so many others, not only do I remember them, they call up vivid images, powerful emotions, lasting impressions.

So, in no particular order:

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo (Truth in Journalism): a non-fiction book with a story more powerful than a novel.
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (Worth a Second Look): How can the spare story of a simple life leave such a lasting impression?  Johnson's beautiful prose makes that happen.
The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton (A Master at Work): One of America's most influential novelists reminds me why her reputation is so richly deserved.
What Happened to Sophie Wilder by Christopher Beha (A Question of Faith): I don't know why, but this one just really stayed with me.  Maybe because Beha asks hard questions.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (A Day in the Life): Maybe it's because I read this one so recently, but I'm still marveling at how a short book can be so American, so funny, so vivid, so sad,

And yes, I do have runners-up:

Arcadia by Lauren Groff (Commune Life): Revisiting commune life without romanticizing it.

There but for the by Ali Smith (Words, Words, Words): The most unusual premise of the year.

Salvage the Bones by Jessamyn West (Weathering the Storm): A young female protagonist who isn't plucky or adorable, just honest.

Skios by Michael Frayn (Greek Delight): Strictly for the laughs.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Summer Reading): My addictive guilty pleasure this year.

A Day in the Life

Nineteen year old Army Specialist Billy Lynn is completing a two week tour of the U.S. with seven fellow surviving members of Bravo Company, second platoon, first squad. Fox News has renamed them Bravo Squad, after its embedded team recorded a fierce firefight on a remote canal in Iraq in which the squad heroically battled Iraqi insurgents. The frequent airing of that video has turned them into national heroes, and the Bush administration has sent them on tour to rally support for the war, culminating on Thanksgiving Day at a Dallas Cowboys football game, where they will be part of an extravagant halftime show.

Ben Fountain's debut novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk spends that day inside Billy's head. He watches oleaginous Cowboys owner Norm Oglesby (who bears a remarkable resemblance to Jerry Jones) bloviate about patriotism, bravery and all things Texan. He observes movie producer Albert Ratner as he attempts to sell movie rights to their story, even if it means letting Hilary Swank play Billy's role. He is mesmerized by the cheerleaders (one in particular) and overwhelmed by frantic excess of the halftime show. The squad is unstintingly polite and obliging to gushing admirers, but raucous, adolescent and over-served when no one is watching. But through all the blitz and glitz Billy is grieving the loss of his beloved sergeant, and wrestling with his feelings about his family, his fellow soldiers and his return to Iraq.

Fountain's language is can be blisteringly sharp, funny, dizzying, and sometimes achingly sad. By the end I was exhausted but reluctant to leave Billy and Bravo Company behind.