ON THE NIGHT PLAIN
by J. Robert Lennon

     J. Robert Lennon, whose name we can assume is John, wrote a great book.  It is the story of a young man from Montana who attempts to find himself against a backdrop of mountainous drudgery and repugnant symbolism.   As boring as that sounds, and as boring as it could potentially be, and as boring as it would have been had it been set in one of the last three decades, it is, as it turns out,  just boring enough to earn a place beside the beloved summer reading list novels of your early adolescence. 
     It takes place in the years following World War II. The guy's name is Grant Person (Go ahead and picture one of the Radio Head aliens…. or Graham Parsons) and he comes from a family with a history of bloody and pathetic (Stone Boy) death.  He leaves his family on a soul journey which fails. Then he comes back home to find the ranch dysfunctional and spooky. His Mother has died and his father has run away. His one remaining brother takes off the moment he arrives, and he struggles to get the ranch back on its feet notwithstanding the ghost of a dead gangster from New Jersey, violent, humorless ranch hands and a herd of ailing sheep.
      Years pass, his brother returns from the city and the book turns into East of Eden. (sort of)
      Lennon comes closer than anyone his age, so far, to throwing off the insipid details which clutter modern existence and modern writing. Though the strain was obvious. For such objects as bails of hay, set on a vast treeless expanse, the ghosts of McDonaldland Fry Guys, and Zsa Zsa Gabor lean heavily on the reader's need to assimilate as, I'm sure they did on J's.  Let's face it, a ranch, in the forties, in Montana is scary as hell. The book is, too.  Grant is prone to hallucinations and his universe is teeming with omens and monsters. There is no television to frighten them away. The absence of television, in fact could be considered a character in this book.
     When he's awake, he's working, like constantly. And it's miserable work, with no one to talk to. It's not until his brother returns that you realize Grant had nothing to say in the first place.
     His brother, not being the first person, holds the world of sarcasm and modern life close enough to him that it makes you nuts, trapped inside the head of Grant (fucking) Person.  At one point, when he first arrives back at the ranch, they're all standing outside and he says "Shit, it's cold." Which is one of those modern phrases that seemed to bore their way through Lennon's subconscious and into the novel. Though It's not inconceivable that people spoke that way in the forties, it just seems strange. It also makes you want to walk into the story and hang out with Grant's brother to smoke cigarettes and talk about how everything sucks. But you never get the chance because Grant keeps you focused on his chores and an obsession with his brother's girlfriend.
     I don't want to give anything away, but the book is ruled by a Separate Peace, East of Eden, Cain and Abel archetype, which is not a bad thing. The description of the landscapes is unique enough to make you feel as if you're reading something original. And in a coming of age/ quirky-modern-life universe, this book is a raft to scramble upon to relax your culture-sodden brain.
     The only problems I had were with the ever-threatening love-triangle (come on everybody) and a lot of film-style jump-cuts. Also Lennon had a tendency to describe things as being "this, this and for no reason at all THIS." I won't bother explaining that any further.
      Overall, it was the most ambitious (as opposed to over-ambitious or Dickensian in scope) modern novel this young man has appreciated in a long time. It comes out in August. Everyone should buy it and read it. It's the book your children will grudgingly pack for summer vacations….. on the giant space station.


UNDER THE SKIN
By Michel Faber

     The first blurb on the back of this book states that it is "'As suspenseful and creepy as the first third of Psycho...An artful moral parable...in the mode of Brave New World and Animal Farm. ' 
-BOOKLIST"
     It's actually a book about a woman named Isserly who is from another planet. She drives around (a whole fucking lot-- 150 pages of her driving around Scotland, sweating and complaining about her giant fake breasts) and picks up male hitch-hikers to anesthetize them, (There's a poison needle shooter button on the dashboard) take them to her alien farm and ship them off to her home planet where they are sold as a delicacy. 
     Let me pause here to let you know that this book was reviewed, or described really, by the New York Times a week before it coincidentally landed on my desk as an advanced readers copy.  I guess the Animal Farm interpretation of such events would be that "Some books are more equal than others." 
      Isserly is depressed. She is depressed  about having been surgically modified. On her own planet she was covered with fur, and walked around with her quadraped boyfriends who promised her a toil-free life and lots of oxygen. (They don't have any on her planet. Well, they have some but it's expensive.) Now she's stuck working this miserable job which she took to escape getting shipped off to her planet's equivalent of "the projects" There's a whole class war thing. She's of a lower class. So, she was really attractive, but doomed, on her planet, and now she's hideously deformed with huge boobs, no tail and a spine that was broken to allow her to stand up straight.
     The company she works for, the one that processes the human flesh, is a giant monolithic corporation and she hates it. So you can imagine how upset she is when the company-president's son pays the farm a surprise visit. And you can further imagine how long she holds out before reluctantly admitting she's  in love with him. It turns out he's an animal rights activist who denounces his father and everyone else involved in the killing of "Vodsels," (humans) believes they have feelings and what not.  This depresses  Isserly because she has these boobs now and….learned the language of humans just to kill them and eat them and….well he's never going to go out with her...
     That's pretty much it. It's just a Scottish science fiction novel with really obvious ironies and a lot of sweating. Isserly sweats profusely.
     Actually, the Isserly character is interesting, for reasons other than that she sweats and used to be a wolf. She is a well developed, gravely unhappy character who is trapped in a job that is as dead end as it gets. I felt sorry for her. There's nothing worse than going to work. 
     But...It just wasn't good. The repetition of  meeting one hitch-hiker after the next staring at her boobs and sharing their thoughts on the subject was boring as church. If Michel was trying to emphasize the ubiquity of "animalistic" human behavior and the monotony of working all day long, it worked, but...no shit.
     On a personal note, my inability to envision the space-ships and aliens and all  was disturbing.  I saw everything in a "straight to video" way-- all computer animated and cartoonish with that Britney girl from Big Brother (Hey, there's your Orwellian connection) playing Isserly (I forgot to mention she has giant alien eyes) and various rock stars in hitchhiker cameos-- John Doe jumping into the car and saying "Wooh, thanks for picking me up. You'd think I was from another planet the number of uptight fuckers on this highway...Hey, this thing have driver's side airbags or  is that just you?...just kidding... no, seriously, were they factory installed?...heh heeeh….again….just, you know.

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY
by MICHAEL CHABON
     Finishing this took me a freaking month, the course of which led me to read two other shorter novels in an attempt to get the hell away from it. That sounds like a statement made by someone who has just finished a volume of Proust, but this wasn't Proust. I wish it had been Proust. If it had been Proust I would have been able to look up words like "opprobrium" and feel somewhat justified in my ignorance.
But it wasn't Proust. It  was the guy who wrote the Wonderboys. 
     The book is about two cousins, one from Prague and one from New York. The one from Prague escapes from the Nazis as a young boy and travels on his own to America and depression era NYC.  The two of them develop their own comic books and rise to temporary greatness.  It's a very comfortable, very PC novel sidestepping any pretense of conveying actual life experience. The characters are one dimensional and , somehow, after 600 pages, never fully developed.  The events are contrived and sensational and everyone is righteous and superficially flawed. Just like a comic book.
     But comic books can be read in the bathroom or on a bus, this book requires like a drafting table and swivel chair.
     I said something about one of Michael's short stories, that it could have become an Owen Meany if he stuck with it. This book is his Owen Meany, but without twists or memorable characters.  I'm happy about the lack of twists. I'm sick of twists. If I want a twist I'll go see a Bruce Willis movie.
     The juxtaposition of exorbitant language and low-brow culture doesn't work. The language doesn't do anything. No beauty is conveyed. There is no vivid description of New York. You wouldn't know they were in New York if the Empire State building wasn't mentioned so often. 
     The only moments true to real life were the final chapters in which the characters all reminisce about the old days and essentially recap the first third of the book. That's what real people do. That's the ONLY thing real people do. 
      It simply doesn't need to be so naively ambitious and self-aware.  The story is not difficult to follow, but the writer seems to fear that it is, so he throws in overt reminders of what has happened one hundred pages ago.  I think that if these helpful hints were removed, and the book were that much shorter, they wouldn't be necessary in the first place. I'm aware that I'm committing the same error here by stating again that the story doesn't warrant the interminable length or lofty language by which it is told.
       With that said (too many times) I would have been happier had the novel been  released in a serial format like the genre to which it is nodding. It would have been one hell of a lot easier to deal with.
       Also, Chabon got a haircut. He no longer looks like a member of Gene Loves Gezebel. Which is good for everyone.

THE RICKFORD FILES
By RICKY POWELL
Remember sparking fatties in Queens in the late eighties?
Neither do I.
Beastie Boy's (related) photographer  Ricky Powell submits to you his photographs of New York's  halcyon days in which  you could play softball with Matt Dillon or run into Cindy Crawford in the bathroom. I can live without the giant black and white photograph of Gregory Peck's face, but the book adequately captures the Paul's Boutique (fisheye lens shots of old men at fruit stands) era which you most likely spent in a dorm room in Illinois. Early 90s resplendence aside, this book serves best to illustrate that Ricky Powell is cooler than you are. He also knows more celebrities. (I wrote this review in 2000, and have since, in 2002 received an email from someone claiming to be Ricky himself---he said I "missed his angle." If that was really you, sorry Ricky. I always thought it was a pretty funny review. Why would you want to hear the same old opinions from everybody? And it's not like the book just fell out of a window and landed in my hand...there was a reason why I sought it out and spent money on it. Good luck with your new books and Peace to you and your city.)

CAKES AND ALE
By Somerset Maugham
     This book was, when written, a scandalous satire of the British literary community in the forties. It's about a man who, as a child, spends time with a writer and his wife. As an adult, he moves to London a few blocks from the famous couple. The man has become a celebrated author, his wife has become a...whore, pretty much.
     Predictably, the man, now twenty one, has sex with the celebrated author's concupiscent wife and becomes attached to her, then goes slightly berzerk when he realizes she's still doing it with everyone else.  He regains his wits pretty quickly because he's… you know….smooth.
     In the end, the author understands that it was just this woman's nature to have sex with anyone who happened to be next to her because she just had so much love to offer. I didn't buy it. He should have called this book "I SCORE."  Seriously, it was like a frat-guy bragging, in a self deprecating way about doing it. Something along the lines of "I'm not proud of it but……and it's really nothing to brag about but you should have seen her….." 
     I suppose, had this book been written now, with recognizable celebrities being satirized, I'd appreciate the humor.
     Unfortunately, this is the only Maugham book I've read.  And, it was called Cakes and Ale. I guess I should have read Of Human Bondage.  Cakes and fucking Ale. I think at the end of the story, as the woman is explaining how she has no regrets, she's eating biscuits or something. Apparently the book was titled, at one time, Skeletons in the Cupboard. Which is a much better title.
     Here is a list of other titles to consider for future printings.
---"Big Tittie Woman I Banged When I Was 21"
---"British People are Repressed Snobs...I'm just a snob."
---"My Dad was a Curate in a village of Vicars and Now Everything Sucks."
     I'm not sure I have any right to criticize this book. I'm sure he wasn't considering the reactions of an American slacker who works in a bookstore  in the year 2000.

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