fr bttm 3/25 wh incls threads re fvrt bks of the tourn, and bks wld hv liked in it.
3/26 3/28
Mon 3/30
3/30 Stephin Merrit judgement. /I enjoyed bold exprssn dislike/ second zombie match, last match before championship
Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See are humorless novels about characters ravaged by political forces over which they have no control. ... [Gay's] protagonist, Mireille, is an entitled lawyer from a wealthy Haitian family, arrogant and unlovable... Her complete absence of introspection only increases throughout the novel as she is kidnapped, raped, and tortured for 12 days, leaving her mangled and insane. . The point of all this eludes me, unless it is to emphasize—yes, to really emphasize, because it is undoubtedly worth emphasizing—that no matter how much of a jerk someone is, they don’t deserve to be kidnapped, raped, and tortured. But I think we knew that.
Less unpleasant, more stylish, but ultimately sentimental is All the Light We Cannot See, where the horrors of World War II are visited in vivid present tense on sympathetic characters in machine-gun chapters. Typical chapters are four pages long, and alternate between France, where the plucky little blind girl hides a twenty million dollar diamond, and Germany, whence comes the poor orphaned little Hitler Youth radiographer whose change of heart comes at just the right moment to save…the little French girl!
-Chico McDirk: Does the ToB still have 'pointing out the inherent absurdity of book awards' as its mandate? Or has that fallen by the wayside as the tournament's gotten more popular? I often get angry about judgments here, but I've tried to tell myself that the judge isn't obligated to do anything except advance one book.
-Rosecrans Baldwin: 1) Yes. 2) Definitely not, at least not in our minds.
itsonlyzach • Wow. I thought *I* was a monster this year. But you know what? Judges gonna judge, and there's not much we can do about it but wonder if the same kind of thought process goes into the less transparent book awards. I felt like An Untamed State was moving along in the tournament partially because it's tough to pick against its subject matter. To see the subject matter used against it was a big surprise. There were many reasons I liked but did not love An Untamed State; its atmospheric unpleasantness was not one of them. It sets up a final match-up that seems obvious in retrospect. From the get-go, I've been predicting/dreading a saccharine All the Light win, but I'm going to go with my heart and hope that Station Eleven wins 10-7. 9 • Reply • Share
BradMcGinty itsonlyzach • I've really been missing your perspective this year. 2 • Reply • Share
itsonlyzach BradMcGinty • Oh wow. I take that as high praise. And likewise. This was a year when I liked, not loved, a bunch of the books. So many of the books had descriptions that should have made for books that wowed me, but then upon reading them I wished they were better or more suited to me. There's a sprinkle of my comments throughout. I also was at peace that most of the decisions are not ones I would have made, but the judgments have been so solid (for the most part) that they've helped me hone my perspective on some of the books I was mostly lukewarm about. I will say this, though: except for the ending, I didn't hate Adam as much as everyone else. Did you have any outlier opinions? 3 • Reply • Share
BradMcGinty itsonlyzach • I feel about the same, sir. And I felt similarly last year to boot. I guess I missed your earlier comments (I'll go find/upvote them now). I will, in this moderated & over-filled comment section, lay out my most outlier opinion just for you. Ready? Brief History is terrible. /no. Marlon Jms is good. am pretty sure. but this is int argument:/ And part of that is because the characters it gives voice to don't matter to us today. /hmm./ By writing historical fiction that doesn't have to address contemporary racial issues James can be successful. Most of us white people (and I'll admit it affects me as well) don't want to deal with ideas of continuing racial persecution (mostly institutionalized at this point) /y. v good//. The writing in Brief History is not good /?really?/ and the voices are NOT that distinct from character to character (those that discussed audiobook superiority here secretly reinforce this) /I incline to believe the ppl who say the voices were distinct to them/.
It is unfair of me to say that Black authors should write "Black" books or Caribbean authors should write Caribbean books. And that's not what I'm saying here. I'm not accusing James of not being Black enough or having an ulterior motive. What I am saying is that Brief History just isn't that good. But a white audience likes it because: 1. It is hard enough to read to feel literary (when, in fact, it's just not well written) /no./ 2. Being written in dialect allows for us to feel like we are peeking in to a culture that is foreign. This is essentially poverty tourism in many cases and is deplorable but I know it is one of the reasons people like it. 3. Like that garbage novel The Help, it doesn't challenge the reader's concept of identity. Even worse, it allows us to slip on the skin of someone different (see point 2) without contextualizing it to our experiences (see point 1). This makes us modern whites feel good about ourselves. (My favorite part of conversations about The Help were people saying 'look how much better things are now').
I find it sincerely disappointing that works like Brief History come into the public arena so strongly //but his first two bks d n, right? so it's like built up. and this one is on big scale, so. build up of publishing cred, and then here is this big work. /so I mean Jms was not immedly commanding more attn than author of Long Division, was he? in ~2010 tob re Book of Night Women, I think maybe john warner linked to essay by Jms re difficulty getting that book published. /but mcginty by "works like" this one you mean that meet above points of seeming literary bcs hard to read, and not challenging reader's identity (bcs in this case, historical fiction thrf d n ~ implicate in current racial issues)//
while works like former TOB competitor Long Division (an amazing & challenging work) are lost to time. I feel this is because the primary book audience is still white and the majority of the book-establishment (critics, publishers, etc.) are white. So my hatred of Brief History is a meta-hatred in many ways. But frankly, it's not good and we need to stop making bad books good because they do the things we want while pretending to do the things we need. 5 • Reply • Share
itsonlyzach BradMcGinty • This is fantastic. Thanks for articulating a lot of what I've been trying to say beyond my philistine mutterings that I just didn't enjoy it that much. I was really afraid it was going to run the board here. I really enjoyed the experimental and more interesting Long Division, as well -- another book I never would have picked up were it not for the Tournament. <<< do read Long Division (have gotten sample on kindle in iphone). along w also At Night We Walk in Circles.
/smwh here recent last few days also a cmmt re use of dialect praised wrt Brief Hist but criticized in Long Division.
-KROCNYC: I liked Station Eleven just fine, but, as an act of imagination, its future dystopia feels dinky compared to the fierce, real, ripped-from-today's-headlines dystopia Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killing thrusts us into, whether we want to be there or not. //y//
I preferred the deliciously creepy texture of Jeff Vandemeer's Southern Reach dystopia, too, though The New Weird is probably an acquired taste. /mm./
re An Untamed State:
Tim //who upvoted my cmmt re liking Stephin Merritt not using "I", so I am further endeared to him, after already I think being in agreement w his cmmts//:
disqus.com/home/discussion/themorningnews/the_morning_news_tournament_of_books_presented_by_field_notes_302/#comment-1936819501
re its Sensitive Very Important Topic, and you are expecting to be judged by your SVIT
-Tim: You can not like the book, and still be against gang rape. It's also possible that there are books about the holocaust, or starving children in Africa, of the Khmer Rouge, or slaves in Mississippi, or the Trail of Tears, or AIDs, or cancer, or the glass ceiling that just aren't very good. Equating people who have reservations about the book with people who blame the victims of rape is a pretty strong show of your emotional commitment to the book and the SVIT, but hardly justified.
No one has been trying to minimize or disrespect the experience of the people who liked the book. Some people have been trying to explain why it didn't have the same resonance for them. Let's have a little respect for their experience of the book, too.
also
-Tim: Stephin's criticisms of both novels are pretty well placed. That he didn't find anything to like about either seems ungenerous; but he has engaged with these books.
-Andrew Womack: Dear all: This is a reminder that we don't allow ad-hominem attacks in our comments.
--Bill Hughes: You shouldn't allow personal attacks either. /ha ha like in Deadwood when Al is critiquing the newspaperman's headline about smallpox, what is the word he needs glossed, and says ~ why don't you just say? ~ ah 'free' rather than ''gratis' [1-6 "two cases of the smallpox Have been diagnosed in our camp By doctor amos cochran. " Hey, doc! Get the amos Outta there! Scratch amos. "at dr. Cochran's suggestion, A pest tent, endowed by the generous Retailers of our fine community, Is being erected for the Afflicted on the south end, And riders dispatched To secure a vaccine. Maybe you Should add there, "they're already probably On their way back. Excuse me. 'the pioneer has been assured Of their imminent return. That's catchier. thanks also to The aforementioned merchants, The vaccine will be Distributed gratis. " Free gratis. Free gratis Is a redundancy. Does that mean Repeats itself? Then leave gratis out. What luck for me, al, That you have Such a keen Editorial sense. Free. Distributed free.]
-ImaniToo Man, I do not even care about this final. When's the next ToB? Serve it up :D.
-Marinus (Naoko JunDo): I haven't read Untamed State, but I did thoroughly enjoy reading the judgment. I think it's fair to call books as you feel 'em, not as you're supposed to feel 'em--and that's surely what Merritt has done. YMMV, of course. I'm not hugely enthusiastic about either of our finalists, which oddly suffer from similar flaws and present similar strengths. So all things being equal, it's going to be coin-toss close. I'll say 9-8 with Station Eleven eking out victory on the basis of its marginally tighter structure.
-The Surveyor • All the Light wins 9-8.
I'm torn between loving Merritt's candor (I felt the same way about All the Light, but didn't read AUS) and being sad about his failure to (publicly) recognize the best parts of the books. That said, the TOB would be boring without one or two such decisions to remind us that we all read books differently.
Thanks for another great year! Just 9 more months until the next shortlist defines my winter reading!
-Joel P. :Station Eleven will get Eleven votes. All the Lights will get All The Rest. // :)
and someone else offered their projection pleasingly, having compared ~ the prose of? ATLWCS to too much dessert, then guessing that that, I think, ~dystopia wins over dessert. hey cool, that was teedle, whose cmmts I have been liking!
-teedle: My issue with All the Light is that the style of short chapters, while making the book undeniably propulsive, means that we never spend any length of time with the characters. So, instead of having deep-dives, we're given brief descriptions of the THINGS that interest them. A book about birds! Locks! Mollusks! These are all shorthand in the place of really insight. The telling detail can be really interesting when done sparingly, but Doerr--while being in general a really wonderful writer on a sentence-by-sentence level--really overdoes it here. While there are some lovely details (a previous judge mentioned a favorite-the skimming of ice off of shallow puddles), they become overwhelming, like a meal comprised of dessert only.
I'm guessing that Dystopia beats Dessert, 10-7.
Bill Hughes • 3 hours ago {re how ppl do their zombie voting}
-Kerry Nice try! Only a fool would reveal his strategy. I am no fool, so clearly I cannot reveal my strategy. But, you know that I am not a fool, you would have counted on it // :)// , so I clearly cannot remain silent. You're not from Australia, are you? Everyone knows it is peopled entirely by criminals. Look! What in the world is that! //(Princess Bride Wally Shawn) I vote for my favorite among those I have read which is usually a very small sample. Or I vote for the one I think will be my favorite once I have read them. /yup yup that's wh I wld do if voted./ Redeployment this year because I had read it, I liked it, and I hadn't yet read Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay.
- - - -
-Abigail Nussbaum: With hardly any exception, every musician invited to participate in this tournament has delivered a shallow, poorly-argued judgment that has demonsrated, at best, lack of reading comprehension, and at worst, a distaste for reading in general (who was it who made his choice based on the books' covers because he couldn't be bothered to get through them?). To be fair, I'm sure there are musicians out there who are also good readers and capable of expressing themselves well about the books they read, but somehow the ToB never seems to find them, so maybe it's time to just stop?
disqus.com/home/discussion/themorningnews/the_morning_news_tournament_of_books_presented_by_field_notes_302/#comment-1935887126
--Drew: I will argue against this so full-throatedly that I will go hoarse. Lack of reading comprehension? Distaste for reading in general? You're making some blanket statements about a group of people here who are very talented writers in a radically different form from what they happen to be judging - but that should not disqualify them from being judges. And if you call for this this, you're lumping John Darnielle's judgement in there too, a judgement just about everybody got on board with the beauty of even if they disagreed with the content. Just keep that in mind. /last year 2014 Semifinals March 24 John Darnielle A Tale for the Time Being v. The Good Lord Bird
---KROCNYC: Not to mention his book, Wolf in White Van.
//and I started to type this:
The judge who arguably decided by -- certainly wrote mostly about -- the book covers was Jason Kottke, a longtime blogger, not a musician. To be sure: In the comments he averred that he had read both books "cover to cover (ha ha) and genuinely preferred the one he advanced.
www.themorningnews.org/tob/2010/let-the-great-world-spin-v-the-lacuna.php ***
Was there someone else who decided based on book packaging?
decided not to post bcs realized that it was in same (2010) tournament - huh in fact the very next day, the other semifinal match -
that *musician* Andrew W.K. [Andrew W.K. is a musician, motivational speaker, and party maker] judged "The Book of Night Women took me into versions of humanity that I’ll never fully know, but can now carefully imagine. I can’t really choose one book over the other based on the stories or writing—both are superb—but I do like the cover, cast of characters, and family tree of Wolf Hall more than the presentation of The Book of Night Women. So, for the sake of supporting intricate book production, I’m choosing Wolf Hall as my top book."
www.themorningnews.org/tob/2010/wolf-hall-v-the-book-of-night-women.php
John: Oh, this one hurts. It’s not like it’s the most capricious judgment in Tournament history, [14. Dale Peck judges Ali Smith vs. Ian McEwan ] but oh to see one of my favorite books of the year eliminated this way just sucks. Andrew W.K. describes both books as “intense,” but there’s nothing particularly intense about Wolf Hall. In fact, I’d say its chief hallmark is how measured the tone is throughout the novel. The whole thing is a very slow burn, if it burns at all. I’m not convinced that Andrew W.K. read beyond that family tree. It’s not that I think Wolf Hall doesn’t deserve praise or recognition since its already received plenty. But The Book of Night Women hasn’t received nearly enough, and here it is, knocked out on an apparent caprice //yeah//, and now I feel like all of our readers and commenters who get irrationally pissed when one of their favorites doesn’t make it through.
*** hey cool 'hatha' ~ whose comment I started to read and thought Oh I'll upvote this, though it was five yrs ago, then realized 'hatha'! ~ is me!!
getupto88mph • 5 years ago Anybody else think the cover for The Lacuna is hideous? Also, I despise hardcover books. (They're heavy!)
-hatha getupto88mph • 5 years ago Yes! It was striking to read Kottke's description, because on every point, my preferences are contrary to his. I much prefer paperbacks. I much prefer quieter covers, that won't end up looking garish to me. I dislike cut-outs in dusk jackets, because it's much more likely to catch & tear, and it adds to what I find gaudy. And most of all, I strongly dislike deckle pages, which seem to me to 'signal' artifice & pretension. Someone might be able to talk me out of that, maybe. But also I can't flip easily through pages when they are rough cut! Arg, it's maddening. I'd have to be very drawn to a book to read it despite its having deckle pages. Oh -- and I like the cadence of the title 'Let the Great World Spin' and I've found it memorable. But I've been seeing the Kingsolver book for days and I couldn't have told you the title until today.
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3/28 Station 11 > Brief History Seven Killings
today Fri cleaning up at 440 to move out, so again only looked bit and now late night. also not v int? bcs tht Marlon James's book seemed the most outstanding and now it is out. ppl seem like nicole cliff's (of site the Toast) judgement, I didn't? lost interest?
-ImaniToo itsonlyzach • 12 hours ago
Have you read The Book of Night Women by James? Most of the major characters are women; the men take a backseat. It's my favourite from him and could become an all timer on reread. It may be more to your liking. (It's shorter, too.)
-ImaniToo: Mandel contorts the plot into all of these coincidences in order to serve the story and it comes off very amateur and unrealistic. Almost soap opera-ish (in a bad way). Even the mixture of narrative styles --the interviews interspersed with the graphic novel bits etc. -- added no real verve. I had read it all before by those who've used it to such better effect. There were interesting moments but it never took off for me. Ball's "Silence Once Begun" was a much better example of a story that read as if it demanded unusual treatment; the story could not be without it.
-Jeff: I read Station Eleven mostly as importing the worst elements of The Beautiful Ruins into an unconvincingly gentle and twee post-apocalyptic setting, with excessive, wistful reminiscing about the lost grandeur of smartphones and air travel.
A Brief History of Seven Killings is a sui generis masterpiece, full stop. This criticism jumps out as particularly unfair: "It was 36 percent too complicated. There were 16 too many people. It was 48 percent too confusing." It reminds me of the old retorts that DeLillo's Underworld was too long: please begin by identifying the portions that you want cut. If you're disinclined to like books with sprawl and strands and detours, that's cool and respectable, but flag that as your up-front inclination, the way that Judge Vazquez directly acknowledged his discomfort with military literature in his discussion of Redeployment. If trying to "force" A Brief History of Seven Killings "into some kind of artificial coherence" is your response to the book, you are doing it all wrong. Which is fine! We all have those episodes. But the failings flagged in this review were not with Marlon James.
--Marinus (Naoko JunDo) Jeff • 14 hours ago: I made that connection to Beautiful Ruins, too--a book I truly dislike. Maybe I should stay away from any book with aging narcissistic actors. But mostly I thought S11 was an idea in search of characters, my least favorite literary form, especially when the idea isn't particularly new.
And Brief History may be a masterpiece, as you say—it certainly has those ambitions, and yes, it makes a reader work from page one. I think the judge DID flag her resistance to that /hvg to work at reading/ from the very start. But I agree with you that it's the better book of these two.
-ryan ries: A little disheartening that the decision seemed to come down to which book was easier. Though I wonder if this was a function of the judge's life circumstances: with a toddler and newborn..
-llj: It amuses me that James, in the middle of his 700-page book, gives a nod to another 700-page book, in just four easy sentences. I wonder if there is a Maxwell Perkins in his life. /editor for Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe. He has been described as the most famous literary editor. so, wh 700 pg bk did Jms mention? Wolfe?
-ekdumas: Station Eleven was as close to a perfect reading experience I've had in this tourny, except for maybe All The Birds Singing which I love equally as much.
-Margaret L: Station 11 was a fun & captivating read. Brief Hist: I finished gasping rather than smiling. Fun? Not exactly. Thrilling is more like it. I am not sad Station 11 advanced, but I am troubled A Brief History did not. /y.
-teedle: disappointed, but excited to read S11 now. I will have to invent ulterior motives for the judge's decision until I do. She probably didn't read the books/didn't get it/is in the pocket of Big-dystopia.
-MrHilary: Alas, to see the would-be king dethroned. But the judge's analysis, particularly the suggestion that this book was simulcast for her specific interests, makes total sense to me. I wasn't part of that demographic (I'm not a Star Trek/graphic novel/dystopia/fan-of-actors&musicians-talking-about-their-craft guy), and I got very little out of Station Eleven. But I can appreciate an attempt to bring some quiet, twee poetry to the dystopian genre, and it's not a book I can muster up any great disdain for. --And, of course, by "simulcast," which makes no sense, I meant "narrowcast." I also meant every dumb thought to be smart, but who's got that kind of editing time?
-Hebe: I read a lot of SFF, and I loved Station Eleven. I think the difference between pure genre novels and literary novels with genre content is that what they're trying to do is essentially different: genre is asking "what if?" and literary genre is asking "what does this question "what if" tell us about ourselves?"
--I wouldn't say that Octavia Butler's Parable series or Haldeman's 'Forever War' or Farhrenheit 451 is *less* concerned about what speculation tells us about ourselves than Mandel is.
-Hebe: OK; but I'd argue that SF novels like the ones you mention are more invested in exploring their "what if?" questions in order to think about speculation in a way that Mandel (and other "literary genre" novelists like Mieville) doesn't. That is, the questions that hard SF - or hard genre - raises about speculation are functions of plot and setting; they arise directly from explorations of their "what if?" scenarios, while Mandel's questions about the meaning of art and sub-creation arise not as the result of an apocalyptic scenario but against that backdrop. They're thrown into relief by it, not created by it
-Peer S. [3/24 "Good morning, my name is Peer and I am German.] : I guess there will be 2 zombies fighting in the final. /thinks ALTWCS will win over UAS? I wldn't gues so. Stephin Merrit of Magnetic Fields as judge. but I dunno. wld rather read the judge panels votes for St11 vs UAS. (ATLWCS unint to me.) wld way have rather had BriefHist in the final. versus Ferrante. or if not than vs Station 11. but that cld not happen bcs St11 was its zombie -- had to be so as to avoid matching w UAS, wh was an opening round match (that UAS won).
BTW: Id like to see a poll with all the previous winners (and this year) were you can choose (for each book): Like / Dislike / neutral / Havent read.
Woulds like to see, which Winner was the most likes / least liked / least read and the most controversial (smallest gap between like/dislike).
--teedle [to Peer s. • 9 hours ago ] Historically:
2005 Cloud Atlas over Plot against america 10-5
2006 The Accidental 9-7 over Homeland
2007 The Road 15-2 over Absurdistan
2008 Oscar Wao 12-4 over The Remainder
2009 A Mercy over City of Refuge 11-6
2010 Wolf Hall over The Lacuna 9-8
2011 Visit from the Goon Squad 9-8 over Freedom
2012 The Sisters Brothers 10-6 over Open City
2013 Orphan Master's Son 14-2 over The Fault in our Stars,
2014 Good Lord Bird 10-6 over Life After Life
Interestingly, if this is an all zombie final, it'll be the second time, after Fault in Our Stars vs. Orphan Master.
As far as controversial, I remember that The Accidental and Sisters Brothers were the two "least liked" winners, and Oscar Wao and The Road were the most liked (by the commenters, if not the judges).
nb 2013 HHhH < read sample
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no notes 3/27 ? maybe not m noted bcs not especially into Nicole Cliffe of The Toast (not th am against, but other cmmtrs really liked wh she said).
and sorry for Marlon James Brief Hist to be out. wanted and thought it might get to championship, wh wld then be int to read all judges takes on; and probably win. was the one I thought seemed best to win.
March 27 Nicole Cliffe Station Eleven v. A Brief History of Seven Killings
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3/26 UAS > Ferrante //Thurs. appt then WF then cathy so only lkd at in am and now late night. ...
-Tim: But, we have people actually arguing that bad prose shouldn't be a strike against a novel. That seems pretty hard to rationalize at face value, even if we recognize that plot and characterization and plenty of other things drive our attachment to a novel. /good y.
It's not the only case of this kind of rationalization we've had (although it is the one that I find most amusing: don't judge a text by its text....) and I myself am resolutely closing my eyes to the few possibly valid criticisms of my own favorite tournament loser this year //which????//, so I completely understand the feeling.
But maybe at the point where we say "we shouldn't be judging writing by the quality of the writing" we should stop ourselves and instead try to figure out what it was that made us ignore the clumsiness of the prose.
Making that effort *is* rewarding - it's insight that we all benefit from; it gives us ways to explore and understand the text and ourselves. It's certainly a lot more valuable than arguing that the flaws shouldn't count against it, or that the bugs are really features
-I haven't actually argued AUS is bad prose. I stopped reading it because I couldn't stand to read any more of the violence against Mirielle. But I've found the arguments* that the prose is weak the sort of thing I find interesting in these comments: compelling, convincing, and consistent with my experience /y me too/ (of the third of the book I got through). More so because, I admit, I didn't notice it in my reading (consumed by the ugly violence of the story), but having had it pointed out to me, I recognize it retroactively.
...As far as who gets to decide: I don't get to decide if you enjoyed the book. But I think people can make objective claims about prose style. And we can each assess their arguments and decide for ourselves: I've decided that those* against the prose are handily carrying the day in that battle, the hold-outs resorting to "it shouldn't be a criterion" or retreating with a dignified and justified "perhaps, but I preferred the book for other reasons." /or: it was on purpose.
* [[I took a second just now to go back through the comments to try to name check some of the best of you, but there are a lot of really good comments along those lines from a lot of really good contributors, so I'm going to cheat and just say "You know who you are. Thanks!"] /I've noted Kerry. and one other distinctly. can check noted cmmts fr..3/23
--Jess Thrift: In this case, our judge says, "An Untamed State had me from start to finish. I devoured it in a day because I needed to know what would happen to Mireille, to Michael, to their son. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since."
So, I guess AUS consumes some readers and not others. For those of us drawn into Miri's head, the prose is not bad. I was never trying to get past the clunky prose when I read it. I was cringing, crying, squeezing myself, doing stretching exercises to release the hunched stress of it, and ultimately, texting my friends immediately to talk about it.
-Tim: I feel like I've already had my say on this, more than the commentariat can probably bear - but: What keeps me reading the ToB is the writing which reveals something about the way the book works or doesn't work - through the prose, the structure, the characterization, the setting (ImaniToo! /y/), the Very Important Issue. Arguments with evidence about things we can all access, that is, and not claims about the internal states of readers.
As other people have mentioned before me, the way our hosts outlined the effects of removing the suspense about Mirielle's release, for example, can change the way I read or understand a book - or at least help me recognize authorial strategies that affected my response. And it's something I don't have to get inside Kevin or John's head to grasp. It's there, in the book, for me or any reader to experience once it's been pointed out.
Hearing about how you were cringing and crying - and I don't mean this to be dismissive of your experience - reveals nothing to me about the book (except maybe that it isn't a happy book), despite the fact that some people here wrongly seem to think that these subjective experiences are only thing we can share. It probably won't allow me to predict my response to the book and it probably won't show me much about the book or change my reading of it.
-Kerry Caroline Pruett • 13 hours ago
Literature is timeless. An Untamed State is timely. There is a gate-keeper and it values quality through and through, which I find reassuring rather than uncomfortable.
--aliceunderskies: I dunno, I have read plenty of "classics" that I consider pretty goddamn poorly written (side eye to To Kill A Mockingbird). And plenty that are important more for their historical insight than some measure of objective prose quality.
-Caroline Pruett Tim • 10 hours ago
What do objective claims about style look like?
-Tim Caroline Pruett • 10 hours ago
More interesting than coy extreme skepticism /whoa! (am in agreement w Tim, I think, but that's maybe too hostile)/, and much like objective claims about anything.
-Kerry Caroline Pruett • 6 hours ago
If, whenever a character needs to spend time doing something close to nothing but different than the day before, you say she "whiled away the time", even with variations, there needs to be a reason for that or it is just bad style. Likewise, a few quick examples of not so great prose/metaphors: .. "A shadow flickered across my father's face..." (Not an actual shadow, mind you.) It isn't rugged. It isn't spare. It isn't masculine vs. feminine. It's just weak sauce.
Heather • 17 hours ago
I would never say that An Untamed State is not an important novel. It is important. But I don't feel like it is good literature.
I know I (and many others) have mentioned this before, but the writing itself, on a line by line level, is just banal and uninspired. The dialogue is clunky. The prose falls flat.
The story itself is good, and her ability to set up tension and force the reader to look at a hard subject and answer hard questions is really excellent. I am not at all saying she is a bad writer. I just don't think this novel is an example of great writing, and I am irritated that less "brave" novels with better prose (at least in my opinion) keep getting defeated by this book. Especially when I wanted to like it so much! I love all of Roxane Gay's other writing. I wanted to love her novel. I just don't.
-ekdumas19 • 17 hours ago
I've said all I've needed to about An Untamed State. Boo hiss.
/// -ekdumas19 Heather 11 days ago
I'm with you Heather! The bad writing trumped the harrowing kidnapping/PTSD storyline.
-ekdumas19 Amateur Reader 11 days ago
I felt the opposite. The writing didn't feel blunt to me. It felt...superficial and it was a distraction that sort of devalued the whole thing for me. ///
-Sophronisba: I want both, too. But if you're faced with a choice between good story/bad writing and bad story/good writing, do you always pick the good writing? (Obviously I'm oversimplifying here.)
-Felicity: I think I would pick good writing/bad story because I just find it too hard to read bad writing. It's not that I think one is actually more important than the other in an abstract sense, it's just that bad writing impacts my entire experience of the novel at all levels. A novel is, fundamentally, written words strung together to create meaning. You have to get through the words to get to the plot or anything else.
To be clear, I am fine with writing that is straight to the point and doesn't try to do anything fancy. What I am talking about here is writing that is so bad I find it distracting and impossible to ignore (which, sadly, is how I felt about AUS). With actually bad writing, the quality of plot doesn't matter to me because I can't appreciate it.
on 3/27 back to re UAS -Kerry: As I said previously, the success of the book was in how it demands compassion and understanding for Mirielle and, by extension, everyone else because who knows what demons they are fighting.
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books 2015 tob 3/25 Brief Hist > The Paying Guests . . . . . incls a thread re fvr of tourn bks. and a thread re wh bks wld hv liked to see in this year's tourn.
tob 3/25 Brief Hist
judgement by Laura Cogan, editor of San Francisco-based journal ZYZZYVA Literary Magazine.
one of James’s characters observes, “The problem with a book is that you never know what it’s planning to do to you until you’re too far into it.” //not so much for me? does a book or a tv show ever end up leaving me done in way d n feel early on bcs of voice? /usual thing to remind is that my thoughts will take on the voice, cadence. so if d n like it, may want not to read.//
the rewards for reading this stunning book are considerable.
begins in Jamaica in 1976: post-colonial dysfunction extreme poverty social unrest political corruption.
rotating 11 first-person voices. speakers often crass, cruel, violent.
also, each & every multidimensional, convincing, captivating.
dialogue superb. interior monologues that make up rest of the text expertly crafted.
sustains this chorus of narratives over nearly 700 pages. arc spans 15 years. building suspense, higher stakes each sxn.
political references, pop culture references (TV, movies) philosophy (rock, reggae, disco) (Cold War history) =
vibrant cultural context for all th action. and moments levity.
violence is prevalent, often upsetting, but it is not exploitative.
rampant misogyny, pervasive in many of the narratives. feels completely true to the characters, but I’ll admit that I did find it distressing and, at times, exhausting. glad for char wry Nina Burgess, who is reinventing herself, running for her life. (though I am saddened she was only female voice; perhaps that imbalance redeemed by wh a large presence she becomes.)
James mindful re writing fiction about ugly history.
Jamaican prison inmate Tristan Phillips, who says to journalist Alex Pierce, re bk in library at Rikers: "One of them is this book Middle Passage. Some coolie /just met this word in Evth I Nvr Told You/ write it, V.S. Naipul. Brethren, the man say West Kingston is a place so fucking bad that you can’t even take a picture of it, because the beauty of the photographic process lies to you as to just how ugly it really is. …Trust me, even him have it wrong. The beauty of how him write that sentence still lie to you as to how ugly it is. It so ugly it shouldn’t produce no pretty sentence, ever."
Pierce visiting Jamaica for Rolling Stone, restlessly seeking a larger story: "Well, at some point you gotta expand on a story. You can’t just give it focus, you gotta give it scope… Or else it’s just a report of some shit that happened somewhere and you can get that from nightly news."
James fully aware what striving for: this is the kind of fiction in its unflinching language, detailed research, and breadth / scope
has a role to play in our study of history, offering a different way into historical material, awakening our sensitivities and empathies, setting synapses firing, finding unexpected connections in {of} politics and {with} music, philosophy, and history.
cmmtry
Elliott Holt: I fell in love with A Brief History of Seven Killings, wh is probably not a surprise since it’s a novel driven by voice. *****
I was seduced by the energy and ambition and brutal humor of this book. ... Jamaica was caught in the crossfire of the Cold War, and the drug war, so this is an epic involving CIA operatives, Castro loyalists, local gangs, and Colombian cartels. This book is a wild ride, but it also feels urgent and true and necessary.
Laura: I was like, yes, this book absolutely needed this much space. James did something really interesting with all that space. ... A Brief History is very micro and very macro at the same time. Macro in the sense that there the larger stories you mentioned sprouting up around the characters and micro in the sense that we’re convincingly inhabiting these different consciousnesses. Few books are able to look out and look in so powerfully
-Amber Bug at shelfnotes: Yes, yes yes! Let the games begin. I really want to see this advance to the end, just to get the reactions from all the judges.
1:21pm 117 cmmts
-ImaniToo an hour ago /so, noon-ish
Yes! Hurrah! #TeamJamaica
I have not read the Waters and am not yet done with the Marlon James but I'm having a ball with A Brief History so far. If one is going to set one's novel in a developing country then deal with it or leave it alone if your other option is narrow, stereotypical "third world hell hole" (and nothing else) for the sake of "poectic licence", please and thank you!
I don't think I can clearly judge the James. Too much of what he wrote is comprised of stories/anecdotes I heard myself; the line between what's "fact" and fictionalised is ever unstable. It's a complicated situation because even the stories from that time that we take as "fact" turned out to be distorted or overblown -- like the Michael Manley quote about telling folks to hop on those Miami flights. James books' are recreating a Jamaican Myth Cycle. The thought just came to me -- I'll have to work it out.
So far the characters have not bled into each other for me; I can more or less pick up who is who from the change in cadence. ***** This is prob more obvious to me than it would be to others.
I doubt it will supplant "A Book of Night Women" as my favourite but we will see.
-sophronisba: I wasn't blown away by A Brief History, to my chagrin, but it did make me look for a (non-fiction) book on the history of Jamaica. (I haven't yet found exactly what I'm looking for; anyone know of a good one?) That's got to be fascinating.
-wesleybinko: The Dead Yard by Ian Thomson.
............. back to read the now 207 cmmts tonight.........
-Breen Reardon: Brief History is clearly the OVERWHELMING favorite at this point, right?
-Heather:I think it's definitely the favorite as far as chances for winning,
but I haven't heard very many commenters say it's their favorite book of the tournament.
Which makes me wonder...what were the favorites of the books that you all read? One of my favorites is alas, knocked out never to return, All the Birds, Singing.
-Amateur Reader: It's my favorite book of the tournament BY FAR. --By "It," I mean Brief History. And I've read everything in this year's tournament.
-Melanie G: Ferrante. James. When they go head-to-head in the final (fingers crossed!) I will be a ball of nerves. But Ferrante is my favorite.
I would also be proud to crown Mandel [Station 11] or Gay [UAS]. //it's these four and ATLWCS (as zombie along w Mandel) now in contention. (4 semifinalists now down to 3, and 2 zombies) tomorrow will say Ferrante or Gay, I hope Ferrante. and then we will find out if whichever of those two loses will displace one of the zombies. thus our lineup of final four: two winners of semifinals and two zombies. //
And Wyld is the one I most regret is out of it now. Overall I liked this slate a great deal. There were maybe 3 I wish weren't here at all, and a lot of merit in the rest of my bottom tier. But Ferrante has a strangle-hold on my heart.
-Marg L: I guess I'm the only one, but All the Light is still my favorite. I just loved it so much. I loved the characters, and it inspired and traumatized me in the best ways a book can. Very closely followed by Annihilation and Station Eleven.
-caroline pruett: I'd be happy with any of the current books as finalists but wouldn't mind at all if All the Light zombies to the finish line. I'd probably call it or 'Redeployment' my favorite,.
-teedle: All the Light Vs. Brief History would be an interesting decision. I'm solidly on BH's side, but All the Light is extremely easy to get into, and very crowd-pleasing--which is no small feat. I could see it winning, no problem.
-Breen Reardon: I think Dept. of Speculation was my favorite, but I may remember A Brave Man and Annihilation even more. I felt a little out of my depth with both at certain times. I felt like I was growing as a reader with both of those books, and I enjoyed that as well as the plot, characters, etc. I also liked All the Birds
-aliceunderskies: I didn't read everything (haven't read either of today's, maybe someday) but from what I did read, most were good! An Untamed State is so powerful, I loved Dept. Of Speculation, lol'd over Wittgenstein Jr. /huh/, stayed up late anxious over All The Birds, adore Ferrante, and had a grand old binge-reading time with Station 11 and The Bone Clocks . That is a goddamn fantastic year in the ToB for me!
-outlikealamb: I've yet to start Ferrante but just have this ache in me that tells me it will be my favorite. Excluding that one, Brave Man was probably the top. /huh./ Love reading everyone's answers here!
-emily: All the Birds, Singing was my favorite (though I only made it through about half the books). What a bummer that it was ejected so quickly from the competition!
-brandon lueken: Favorites: All the Birds, Singing; Station Eleven, Annihilation.
-teedle: Brief History was easily my favorite book of the tournament, and one of the best (new) books I've read in years. Oddly, I haven't read the Ferrante yet, but everything else I've read by her I've loved more than almost anything else. //right on. encourages my liking of teedle's cmmts. those two are the most excellent bks here. (while I may like as m or more also Annihilation and All the Birds, Singing; but d n think are going to be as ~ outstanding.//
//^ so re fvr of the tourn books: no mention of Evth I Nvr Told You. ~ unremarkable ish. Marg L (I think) wrote how was personally v moving to her; here however says fvr ATLWCS (eh), Station 11, Annihilation. //also no mention of Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball ? wh seems appealing int to me. /(and no mention of Adam).
m. Heather • a few seconds ago
too late to get a response, probably, but on the off chance I'll go ahead and observe that, unless I missed any comments in this thread, no one mentioned favoring Silence Once Begun or Everything I Never Told You. (or Adam. but the absence of that one seems ~ less striking. to me.)
were these among anyone's favorites?
_________re Ferrante:
-Barniclaw: How great was that last scene/sentence in [My Brilliant Friend]?! I was like, oh no he didn't! She seems to do that at the end of each in the series.
-Melanie G: I have never gasped so loud about a motion so small in my life. LOADED. So damn good.
__________________re the Final ie championship round
-I'm guessing the final will be between this and Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and I'm really curious about what will happen
-Man, that'd be unlike just about any other final, I think. I'd be captivated. I think, depending on what pulls thru tomorrow, Station Eleven could face Brief History in the final -- that is, if the Ferrante wins tomorrow and S11 was Zombie 2, I think it could rise up. Either way, would be an interesting matchup.
________
thread -llj: Brief History will be added to my "Books I Really Want To Read...As Soon As I Have the Energy" list.
-bradmcginty: The level of energy and commitment required for it would be better used training a sleuth of bears to master the concert oboe. What I'm saying, that a really think everyone secretly agrees with, is Brief History is a goddamned boring slog.
-teedle: Yes. Either everyone is lying or you just didn't get it.
-bradmcginthy: don't think anyone is lying intentionally. Also I know people are afraid to criticize the work. Can I just say though "not getting it" is my favorite charge. I say it all the time. But in this case not only are you implying a lack of skill or intelligence on my part but you are basing it on my failure to comply with the majority view. I love you for this.
-teedle: The majority view? You mean like this? "a [sic] really think *everyone secretly agrees* with, is Brief History is a goddamned boring slog"
-bradmcginty: Well, I'm just a hopeful person, you know? I want to believe the best in everyone. Has it occurred to you that I might be right and maybe you just don't get it?
-teedle: Yes. /nice. (I like the boldness of both these ~guys.]
_______________
-linda newman: I wish some other 2014 books had been in the contest, including Narrow Road to the Deep North, and Euphoria by Lily King /right, lkd at th, hv sample on kindle, re ~ marg meade). And overall none of the 2014 books seem to reach the levels of the top contenders of 2013 (particularly Life after Life and A Tale for the Time Being).
//huh. I think last year I was hardly into any? what won? oh y: Good Lord Bird. over Life after Life.
and I liked when brad mcginty turned up saying there were a number of reasons had not been participating one of wh bcs bks all terrible this yr. / I was a bit int Long Division. and in (like title of): At Night We Walk in Circles. oh, and People in the Trees.
-llj: I'm not one to avoid the emotionally tough reads, but I do have to pace myself for them. Narrow Road, Untamed State, and Birds, Singing are all high on my "Later, when I'm up to it" list. Recently read All My Puny Sorrows and Low Life /luc sante?/, wh are stunning. Just stunning. Toews' wit helps lighten the weight a bit, of course.
-S-k-s: For me, it [Narrow Road] was worth reading, and I mostly agree with the criticisms. The women are terribly drawn, as are certain of the postwar elements. But the core of the book, about the POW experience was, to me, beautifully drawn and had some of the best bits I'd read all year.
-sophronisba: I was really surprised that Euphoria didn't make the final list. I thought it was a shoo-in.
-Alchoholic Synonymous: I'm kind of disappointed that The Book Of Strange New Things didn't make it this year. [ io9.com/the-book-of-strange-new-things-will-blow-you-away-1675147919 Michael Faber's new novel The Book of Strange New Things .. a missionary named Peter travels from Earth to the planet Oasis, where humans are just beginning to colonize. Peter tries to teach the aliens about the Bible..]
-cdhermelin: Other disappointing non-inclusions:
2am at the Cat's Pajamas by Marie Helene-Bertino /eh~ [smart-mouthed, rebellious nine-year-old Madeleine doggedly searches for Philadelphia's legendary jazz club The Cat's Pajamas, where she’s determined to {perform}
Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson /maybe int
Nobody is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey /lkd this up after mentioned earlier round.
The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman / eh ~ [As a child, Tooly Zylberberg led a peripatetic existence. Paul, her less-than-attentive father, took her from from her unfit mother, and he and Tooly traveled from Australia to Bangk .. spans thirty years]
Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle /am int in this. got kindle sample, liked.
-outlikealamb: Yes, I was positive 4th of July Creek would be in! <<<<<<< of int to read
-llj: Oh, how I love 4th of July Creek!!!! [booklist: Dedicated social worker Pete Snow lives in remote, impoverished Tenmile, Montana, in part because he’s hiding out from the fallout of his own fractious divorce and in part because he knows that poverty breeds dysfunctional families, and there are plenty of kids who need his care. When he is summoned to open a file on Benjamin Pearl, a nearly feral 11-year-old boy who is suffering from malnutrition, he comes into contact with the boy’s father, Jeremiah, a paranoid survivalist who mints his own money and is convinced that the end-time is near. Pete soon learns that the FBI is also interested in Jeremiah, targeting him as a homegrown terrorist. Meanwhile, Pete’s own family is in crisis; his teenage daughter has vanished, and his ex-wife can’t do much more than drink and pray. First-novelist Henderson displays an uncanny sense of place—he clearly knows rural Montana and its impassable roads, its dank bars, its speed freaks and gas huffer... Dark, gritty, so good.]
//3/30 -Aaron Corn: I would have loved to see Fourth of July Creek in this tournament for many reasons, but one would be to squelch dull contenders under the weight of both heavy subject matter, which it unflinchingly wades into, and its elegant prose.
-llj: How in the world did The Rise and Fall of Great Powers fail to make it!!!!! Was it disqualified for some reason? I will walk 100 miles on my knees for Rachman's next book! // ~ d n sound appealing I think re a kid all over world
-teedle: Wolf in White Van seemed like such a tournament book, too.
-Vanessa: While we're at it I'm just going ot go ahead and pour one out for Night Film, I'm still not over it not being included in last year's tourney. /by Marisha Pessl : beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. father cult film director.. /eh.
-Anna HF: I challenge you to do an additional 16 bracket Tournament (with decisions and reasonings etc. being episodes on your podcast) with all the books that should've been included in this year's TOB. -drew: I'm already creating brackets in my head) << cool. wld prefer not to hv to listen though. to read. but seems this is only a podcast. not a blog. just did 12th epsd. says they (drew and cdhermelin = christopher met in cmmts of tob, last year, huh. //
~~~~~
3/27 ~neighbors73: This is pretty much the only place worth commenting on the Internet. TNC /Ta Nehisi Coates :)/ over at thr Atlantic used to be a dream, but these days, even that's mostly trolling and brawling /aw. sorry to hear th./. I sometimes go back and read old TOB Commentary if we are talking about a book for my book club or something. March is the best. These late round match ups where we have mostly discussed the book and mostly just free associate are some of my favorite days. /eh./
well 3/30 she (has said she is a woman. 41 yrs ld) just upvoted me 8:30pm Monday, and well this answers whther someone liking me makes me like them more. yes. also, my cmmt was about Stephin Merritt not saying "I" til very end, how I liked that. and n73 has been the cmmtr who strikes me most as talking as "I" ~ also being v friendly ~ ie personal, making it about persons. like stillshimpy at twop. shld be likeable but I ~dislike it. but now feel sorry for that. shld open my mind.
//wish on disqus I cld see the cmmts I upvote! (as on facebook can see the posts I "like"d.
