On Rereading The Great Gatsby

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F. Scott Fitzgerald

In one of my rare forays into movie-going last week I saw the trailer for the new The Great Gatsby movie. (Heads up: you don’t want to go to the movies with me, I have terrible taste and will talk the whole way through. That’s probably why I get so few invites now that I think about it.) It was so shiny and pretty and it made me want to cut my hair short and reread the book that I loved.

I first read The Great Gatsby when I was in year 11. I was 17 and faux-disillusioned with life. The world of the novel seemed so beautiful to me; it was sharp and glittery but so fragile. When Nick moves in next door to the fabulously rich Gatsby you can feel his life shiver. Life around Gatsby kind of shivers in general and his fabulous parties are held in a perfect balance between his extravagance and disinterest. But it turns out that Nick’s cousin Daisy is Gatsby’s first love and when Nick is bullied into reuniting them everything comes tumbling down.

I want her hair!

It’s all surface, and that’s the point, but it really stood out to me on this reading. What was still beautiful was the rhythm and the dialogue. I mean it just reads really well. Daisy and Myrtle’s dialogue give away far more about them than their short lines seem to contain. But overall I kind of wish I hadn’t gone back to it. Insert some green light metaphor here.

TOB Winner!

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Adam Johnson, Tournament of Books

Woo! The winner isn’t the worst book in the tournament! It’s probably the fourth best. Hooray. I really have nothing much more to say about this. We will return to regular scheduling of random reviews as soon as I finish a new book.

TOB Zombie Rounds

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Adam Johnson, Chris Ware, Gillian Flynn, John Green, Tournament of Books

I was only partially right for which I am thankful. Can you imagine a tournament of TFioS vs Gone Girl? Ugh. Regardless of outcomes, the zombie rounds have provided two of my favourite judgements to read.

Even though Judge Vargas-Cooper was wrong, I really enjoyed reading her judgement. I was getting really tired of everyone being so nice and the commentators themselves claimed 2013 as the nicest year ever. I feel like the book world is kind of like that because everyone knows everyone else and if they don’t they might meet them soon and probably want something from them, whether it be an interview, an event appearance or whatever. I myself have junked many an angry letter to a publishing house because I may some day want them to employ me!

So Judge Vargas-Cooper was a DELIGHT. She picked the book she liked better and said why it was so. Other judges have done the same thing with much less harshness and been applauded because ultimately the tournament is about making such decisions. But Judge Vargas-Cooper was harsh on a book because she felt it and people don’t seem to be cool with that. I personally thought her review was sassy and funny and call-it-like-you-see-it-y. Don’t take my word for it, though, read it yourself!

She also weighed in in the comments section, not to blatantly defend herself either. Miles Klee did that the other day in defence of meanness and apparently they know each other so I like to imagine them hanging out and being really mean to books. Sometimes books deserve it!  I can clearly relate. (Can I come hang out and be mean with you, Miles Klee and Natasha Vargas-Cooper?) Anyway as I said, she made the wrong call but she is totally allowed to not like graphic novels and it was refreshing to have someone say exactly what they thought rather than sugar-coat it to seem like a nice guy.

I went into the next round expecting the worst. Judge Grossman has a position on not giving bad reviews. That doesn’t mean (as some commenters have suggested) that he won’t say mean things if warranted, just that he would rather give good reviews to books that deserve them than put out hatchet jobs full of negativity. And I love negativity! Also he’s on record as being a big Gone Girl fan.

But I couldn’t have been more wrong because I enjoyed Judge Grossman’s zombie pick even more than Judge Vargas-Cooper’s! Not only was it intelligent, generous but fair, insightful and original, he also picked the right book. I’ve already talked about how much I love The Orphan Master’s Son so I have little more to say on the subject but Judge Grossman really captured everything that I loved about The Orphan Master’s Son much more eloquently than anyone else so far. If I started quoting him I’d never stop so you should just read the review. Then, if you’re anything like me, you’ll spend way too long reading his other reviews.

Not long to go now! Tonight we will find out whether the right book will reign supreme or whether I’ll never do any more TOB coverage again…

TOB Finals

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A.M. Homes, Adam Johnson, Chris Ware, Gillian Flynn, Hilary Mantel, Jess Walter, John Green, Sheila Heti, Tournament of Books

As promised, I am posting less because the whole of last week the judgements just went downhill: excellent, good, I guess, and WHAT THE FUCK YOU GUYS.

You may also notice that Steven has dropped out of the commentary altogether because, and I quote, “I don’t care about any of the books in the tournament any more.”

I was pretty happy to see John Green knocked out by a book that aimed so much higher and delivered on so many more levels. I think choosing between great ambition and more limited achievement is a really interesting call. Last year I remember it came up a bit, particularly with 1Q84 and The Tiger’s Wife (both of which are better than most of this years contenders! Went there!) but this matchup makes the whole conversation ridiculous. I’m not going to slam TFioS any more (mostly because we already have a lot) but The Orphan Master’s Son is not only much more ambitious in theme but also in style, character, scale and age. And then it pulls if off with aplomb. Again, we’ve already talked about this. As Judge Beck says, “Even if the book is exaggerated or inaccurate in some particulars, it captures the ugly spirit of a place ruled by secrecy, mythomania, and brutality.” But it is so much more! Johnson makes details sing, such as the much commented on fishing boat section or the practise kidnappings or the boots with toes still in or the slivers of tunnel fighting. It’s funny too!

Then May We Be Forgiven was knocked out; still all good.  Judge Weaver also completely nailed one of my main issues with the book:

“The second half is marked by a jolting calm. As triumph follows triumph, I steeled myself for a return to the chaos and bite of the earlier pages… Unlike the characters, I was prepared for their swift and sudden downfall. How disappointing, then, that it never came. In its second act, the novel builds and builds to a deafening crescendo of bliss, then never stops. It was like starting a dinner with a big, bloody steak, and finishing with a light garden salad.”

Next up was Gone Girl vs Beautiful Ruins. We never ended up talking about Gone Girl and now Steven won’t. I read it long after the hype, really only for the tournament. It was ok! If it hadn’t been super hyped I probably would have even said good. It was pacey and twisty and well plotted even with waaaay too many cliffhangers. Anyway I quite enjoyed it, but no more. The writing was not nearly as lovely as in Beautiful Ruins nor were the voices as varied but hey, that had flaws too. I thought the commentary on both Gone Girl matchups raised some interesting points, such as the male/female insights and the tight structure and plotting. I’ll personally pick writing style over plotting any day but I can definitely see the attractions of this book. Overall I was not too disappointed.

But then BAM How Should a Person Be?, whiny, lazy, and self involved, beat out what may have been the best book of the year. I actually don’t have words. There is nothing to say about how wrong this judgement is. If you don’t plainly see the problem here I don’t know that I can explain it to you.

So obviously I was thankful at least that Gone Girl knocked out How Should a Person Shut Up. (By extension the judgement reads Gone Girl > Bring Up the Bodies so hopefully that is a clue to how warped that last quarterfinal was.) I think I would have been much harsher on Gone Girl if it hadn’t just done that. As Steven once said, “it actually isn’t bad but CERTAINLY doesn’t deserve some of the hype it’s got.  It’s an OK crime book!  Totes fun!  Not badly written!  THAT’S ALL….  But also real talk Gone Girl just wasn’t that good yall!” Anyway more details were raised that certainly had merit: recession backdrop, projected vs actual selves, roles predetermined by money and looks. As for the other semi, I am sad to see The Orphan Master’s Son go but but Building Stories sounds amazing and the $65 price tag is becoming less dissuading with every judgement.

The next rounds will see two matches that I think should be really cut and dried. (What does that actually mean?) The Orphan Master’s Son is much much better than Gone Girl and having not read Building Stories I am confident that it is multiple times the book that TFioS is. So if track record is anything to go by the championship round will feature the two of the worst books in the tournament.

Tob Noooooooooooo

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Lauren Groff, Sheila Heti, Tournament of Books

Well that’s it, TOB. You’ve lost me. Well not really, I’ve already invested too much time to completely ditch the tourney two thirds through, but my heart is no longer in it. Judge Max himself said, “In most senses of the word, Lauren Groff’s Arcadia is a better novel than Sheila Heti’s.” AND THEN HE CHOSE THE WRONG BOOK ANYWAY. ON PURPOSE. PROBABLY TO MAKE ME MAD. (Sidebar on being mad: I just finished The Round House and oh man is it twenty times better than TFioS.)

So in one corner we have Arcadia: gentle and beautiful, ranging across fifty years, full of honest and different characters of all different ages, races, genders etc. It traces the life of Bit as he grows from the youngest member of a utopian tribe of hippies into a middle aged father, looking at politics, family, community, idealism adn all other sorts of interesting issues and our modern interpretation of them. Lauren Groff is great at the movement of time, passing effortlessly between disparate periods that never feel disjointed. She captures tiny sparkling moments so that they’re almost little photographs, with the perfect mix of nostalgia and realism for a time that was so idealistic but inherently flawed. IT’S SO GOOD WHY DIDN’T IT WIN.

Then there’s How Should a Person Be?: a self indulgent writing exercise with one mode. It follows ‘Sheila’ as she wonders how a person should be, while she takes advantage of her equally pretentious friends, feels sorry for herself and generally makes excuses for not doing anything at all. It also has some really dehumanising and demeaning sex scenes. I’m supposed to like Sheila I guess? I’m supposed to sympathise with her or something? All I wanted to do was to tell her to shut up. So whiny. There were occasional moments of beauty as truth but mostly just a mess of uninteresting thoughts. Kevin Guilfoile gives a great run-down of my main issues with this book in a much less snarky way. I totally agree that it tells instead of showing and that all the incidents feel staged. And the characters “speak with a self-awareness that is beyond the grasp of any actual people I know, yet they act as if they have no self-awareness at all.” But hey if you’re into shallow stream of consciousness diaries with weird relationships to sex, then this is your new bicycle. 

Anyway, whatever, ToB. I have disagreed VEHEMENTLY with the majority of the choices so far. I have disagreed with the reasoning behind them. I have watched excellent books being passed over for mediocre ones and then then I’ve watched myself becoming bitter and twisted. I’m out. (But to clarify: I’m emotionally out but will still be commentating. Maybe less regularly.)

TOB Catching up

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Hilary Mantel, Jess Walter, Laurent Binet, Madeline Miller, Steven, Tournament of Books

Sorry for the pause in posting! I had meant to get up to date this weekend but instead I was struck down with a deadly illness and forced to spend hours in bed feeling sorry for myself. We will have a Chatz on Gone Girl for you soon but in the meantime lets look at the last two matchups, The Song of Achilles vs Beautiful Ruins and Bring Up the Bodies vs HHhH.

Fay: Unlike Judge Horwitz I am a BCE gal. I’ve had a thing for Trojan stories since I was a teenager and I was pretty excited to read The Song of Achilles after it won the Orange Prize. So I liked it because I’m a sucker for the subject but I didn’t think it was amazing. I completely agree with pretty much all Judge Horwitz’s comments; I too found the pseudo-ancient dialogue and soft porn sex scenes awkward, I too though the battle scenes were much better drawn!

As for Beautiful Ruins, I didn’t love it either but it was the much better written book. At first I found all the strands of the story interesting but more and more I was drawn to Pascale and his lonely hotel as he was caught up in the glamourous film scene. I did not care a heap for any of the other characters, especially ‘female place filler’ movie lover who’s name I honestly can’t even remember. The only other part that was as enthralling was the movie pitch for ‘The Donner Party!’ (exclamation intentional) which was dark, moody and evocative. Overall Beautiful Ruins was definitely well written and definitely had different tones for different characters and time periods which should be but is not always a given with braided narratives. Also Jess Walter is a silver fox.

Steven: Eh, this book was lame.  Not for Steven.  I did not care for the characters – and not in an ‘I didn’t like them’ way (that doesn’t matter to me) just that they were largely either boring (Dee, as Fay mentioned, Pat, who was the worst) or generic (Michael Deane).  Nor did I care for the plot! Italy?  Love?  Hollywood’s golden age?  White people looking for redemption and stuff?  Bah, humbug.  I basically just wish that Walter would have written a completely different book altogether.  I don’t mean that to be as much as an insult as it sounds like!  Just that he clearly has a way with words, and was capable of writing some beautiful sentences, but everything around them just did not interest me in the slightest.  The book didn’t do anything new, and while it largely did nothing new WELL (except whenever Pat was in it) it certainly didn’t do nothing new excitingly.  And that’s a confusing sentence but your three readers are smart enough to work it out.

And onto the next matchup which was really unfair. I mean I guess putting anything up against Bring Up the Bodies is kind of unfair but why couldn’t it have knocked out something bad?? Because I loved HHhH. How do you tell a story of the plucky rebels against the evil oppressor when the setting is the Holocaust? How do you choose who rates a mention and who does not? How do you approach sucha  fraught subject? How does a historical novel really work? How much do the facts matter in a novel? These are the questions that Laurent Binet is trying to answer and what comes across is the humanity and the bravery of those involved and the incomprehensibility of the evil they were up against. I disagree with Judge Hitt’s criticisms: Binet’s commentary is what makes this book special because we, as his readers, should share his concerns about the nature of reading, writing and remembering. But then Bring Up the Bodies is Bring Up the Bodies. It’s in a class of its own.

Steven: Bring Up the Bodies deserved to win and it deserves to just as easily crush everything else in the Tournament.  The only book that could give it the slightest competition as far as I’m concerned was knocked out last week in favour of a book for tiny children so I have to say (as you can probably tell by my tone since that day) that I don’t really care about this Tournament any more   I used to love you the Tournament of Books!  ANYWAY.  HHhH was one of the better books this tournament!  It takes a LOT for me to read a WWII/holocaust book and even more for me to like it, so that’s saying something.  And while it needed to go down when faced with the unstoppable power of Bodies I’m sad to see it go so soon (and it’s defs not coming back as a zombie).  HHhH is a charming little curio (charming being a word that applies to much World War II/Holocaust literature) and my praises and criticisms of it were the reverse of the judge Jack Hitt and commentator Kevin Guillefoile.  The former writes that “in the guts of this story is a breathtaking thriller and we never get to be simply seized by the details of it” while the latter says that “while I was reading HHhH, what I wanted to be reading was a rollicking good novel about the same subject”.  Not me bitches!  I was much happier with this book than I would be with a rollicking thriller (though there’s nothing necessarily wrong with those guys).  In fact the more straightforward parts of the book, particularly towards the end, were for me the least interesting, and I loved Binet’s (or ‘Binet’s') interjections and commentary on historical fiction.  When the narrative took over and the Binet largely just commented on the enormity of the event, the cruelty of the Nazi’s or the heroism of Gabčik and Kubiš the book lost some of its momentum for me, despite the events described.   The rest of the book though had very interesting things to say, and I found Binet’s (or ‘Binet’s') comments fascinating and enlightening, making me think more about the relation between history and fiction.  Also I could read a whole book of him criticising The Kindly Ones, and I haven’t even read that book!  So in short, right choice, but shame about HHhH being out so soon. 

So onto the last or the opening round tonight! This is my most anticipated match up because it brings yet another over-hyped monster up against one of my favourite books of last year. Trends this year suggest Arcadia will get smooshed by the more popular opposition but c’mon Judge Max! Make the right call!

TOB with bonus commentator

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A.M. Homes, Ben Fountain, Steven, Tournament of Books, Veronica

Fay: Another choice that I disagree with and another over-hyped book passing onto round two. But to save us from bitterness, today we have guest commentator Veronica! She is a coworker and a pal, an astute literary critic and writer with really nice hair. Bear with us because this is a long one. We all have things to say and we’re damn well going to say them!

I don’t know. I just totally disagree with Judge Pacey today. The parts of Billy Lynn that he selects for criticism were examples of the writing I loved. I had a whole thing about it but then John Warner said it better: “I find Billy Lynn’s to be a novel that’s expertly observed. The eye is simultaneously jaundiced and clear… The description of game-day couture, strikes me as both accurate and interesting as part of the bigger-picture motifs of American excess, hero worship, and play-acting that Fountain is working with in the novel.” I seriously feel like Judge Pacey just missed the whole point of Billy Lynn and that makes me sad.

I’ve already said nice things about it. Billy is a convincing picture of a sweet kid put in a shit situation and the dialogue is whip smart and instantly captures camaraderie of the Bravo team. It paints these wonderfully garish pictures of consumerist life in that slightly ‘describing normal things to an alien’ kind of way that really makes you feel the weirdness of these guys returning home. And I liked the word clouds. They gave a sense of the walls of talk Billy comes up against and as for what Judge Pacey called Fountain’s ‘gimmick’ of phoneticising words (such as ‘Nina Leven’), for me this was a comment on the way the way such phrases have lost their meaning through patriotic overuse.

Steven: Yeah count me in as another dude who doesn’t understand Pacey’s comments on BLynn. That’s not to say he hasn’t necessarily made the right choice – I haven’t read the A. M. Holmes so can’t remark to its quality (obvs that didn’t stop me with Fault but that is a book for children) – but nonetheless I disagree on his take. I especially disagree with his characterisation of the book as a ‘red state narrative’. In all honesty I don’t even know how he arrived at this judgment (apart from the book’s actual setting in a red state), and it leads me to believe that Pacey might have misread chunks of the book. Interestingly (jk, talkin about books) no one has mentioned my only semi-major issue with the book, notably the lately introduced idea that Billy could run away to a group opposing the war and not have to return to Iraq. For me this undermined (though not in a serious way) the book. Firstly, unlike the rest of the novel this part wasn’t believable to me. Secondly I didn’t like how it made an inevitability a conscious choice; I feel the novel would have worked better if, at the end of the day, Billy just had to go back to Iraq. The idea of this other option reduces the character to a single choice and I felt that he, and the rest of the narrative, deserved better. Further, I don’t feel like this plot point added anything already unsaid to the novel.

Anyway that was far from a book ruining problem. As we’ve both said before, BLynn was a clever, well constructed satire of a stupid war which admirably didn’t allow its satire to take center stage over its characters. Based on the strength of this book, no doubt Fountain is an author I shall pick up again, whenever his next book may be.

Fay: Well I didn’t love May We Be Forgiven. It certainly marches along but the places it goes (Africa? Why??) were somewhat disjointed. Different episodes seemed to be going in different directions: Harold Silver going to family day at his nephew’s boarding school, weird online hook-ups, visits to the wilderness camp/prison alternative to see his brother and other such weirdness. It never added up and then it had to explain to me why it should have. I didn’t mind it while I was reading it but I always wondered where it was going and why and it never really resolved for me. It had Bernadette’s level of zaniness without its lightness or fun. But here’s Ronnie with some positivity for us:

Ronnie: Yeah, I have no complaints about this verdict. I agree with the elements of May We Be Forgiven which Pacey singles out for praise. Obviously, I’m completely biased because I haven’t read Billy Lynn. However, I’ve read (and loved) May We Be Forgiven, and I want to defend its victory.

 

Essentially, May We Be Forgiven is a funny book disguised as a solemn one. As comedy goes it’s incredibly dark: its plot is largely driven by adultery, murder, and emotional disconnection. A.M. Homes uses her protagonist Harold’s dubious morality to delineate and examine the universal struggle for self-definition.

The raves Homes’ writing receives from heavyweights like Jeanette Winterson, Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith led me to expect a Worthy Tome from a Serious Literary Figure. I actually think that is what it is – and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the process of reading it even so (and despite the wanky title).

 

Initially, I was distracted by the characters’ warped motivations and implausible relationships. I admit that the book’s final two-thirds (and its climax especially) are completely ridiculous. I think Homes uses the outrageous sequence of events to more effectively make her point: by stretching the bounds of believability, each new occurrence seems both weighty and inconsequential. 

 

Once I opened myself to the absurdity of these conceits, MWBF became a treat which entertained, provoked and – most surprisingly – moved me, deeply. May We Be Forgiven might be classified as a literary novel because it juggles these disparate elements. However, it’s also surprisingly readable. Also, I have a big fat crush on Harold’s delinquent teenage nephew, Nate.

Fay: So there you have it. We must agree to disagree! And onto the next round for Chatz on Gone Girl tomorrow.

Thank you, TOB, for Alice Munro

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Alice Munro, Tournament of Books

Let me start by saying I haven’t read Building Stories. It sounded really appealing, even before the raves at TOB yesterday  but it is also like three times the price of a regular book and not exactly available at libraries.

But I did read Alice Munro’s Dear Life and it was a joy. LIke John Warner, I haven’t finished it because I’m parcelling it out. I rushed through the first half before realising it needed to be savoured. It is everything said yesterday. It is magic, it literally takes your breath away. I loved the way Munro uses language so precisely and economically, suggesting so much depth and story behind what is actually said. The quiet, the suffocation Judge Yu mentions, the ordinary moments hiding the bigger moments. I think he puts it better than I can: “Munro takes us on a complete round trip, to childhood and back to the present moment, drawing in a single stroke a continuous unbroken line of sight that spans a life. She compresses time, and then elongates it, folds it and layers it and works it into complex, tangled shapes.”

So, yeah, it lost. But I just wanted to say that you should read it anyway.

The Tournament of Books regains our favour

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Adam Johnson, Maria Semple, Steven, Tournament of Books

Fay: A relief after the last horrendous choice, Judge Holt has made the right call. Lets start with Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple. As the judge and commentators say, it is very recommendable. That’s because it’s easy to read, funny in an inoffensive way and runs with themes of the approachable variety such as mother/daughter relationships, fitting in and family dynamics. It’s also told in emails, notes and letters that are short enough to read quickly. The eccentric Bernadette, her mysterious past and her eventual disappearance is designed to keep you reading and guessing at what will happen next. But I honestly found it all a bit too contrived. The situations were so wacky and not correspondingly funny enough for me. Unlike Judge Holt, I didn’t find Bernadette’s snobbery endearing and I found it dragged at times. But still: good fun and quite entertaining. Steven?

Steven: Yeah Bernadette was fine in a nothing sort of way.  Entertaining but not really up there with even a lot of books in this year’s tournament.  Even Beautiful Ruins, my least favourite of the books I’ve read, was a better book.  Bernadette was fun though!  And there ain’t nothing wrong with that.  Everything about it was entertaining and amusing in a broad way, though I never laughed (that said, I’m not a book laugher).  Interestingly (or not) Semple was a producer for the final season of Arrested Development which still remains one of the funniest series of all time ever ever, but AD-like humour certainly did not make its way into the book.  Each character was more or less a caricature; take Ollie the cliche spouting, optimistic PR machine or Audrey the entitled, ‘as-a-mum’ mother who is basically just a horrible person.  All the beats were predictable, although Semple pulled them off with some level of aplomb, keeping the proceedings light, breezy and fun.  Just not a book that will be remembered. 

Fay: As for The Orphan Master’s Son, I would agree with everything they had to say. Ambitious, daring, farcical, satirical, political commentary, tick tick tick etc. My only complaint is that I don’t know enough about North Korea to determine how much is fact and how much is satire. My fault, not Adam Johnson’s. But I’d argue that the way he presents the general wackery of North Korean life is actually a credit to his skills as a writer. It could all be true, he makes the crazy sound entirely plausible. One of the highlights was Jun Do’s time on the fishing boat, presented with so much insane detail that the ridiculous became entirely conceivable. I also like the way the second half spiralled out into farce, as Kevin Guilfoile puts it: ‘Johnson is writing about a country whose leaders are constantly writing and rewriting absurdist fiction and passing it off as history’ and so (as Judge Holt says) ‘The absurdity conveys the inherent dishonesty of the North Korean regime. The official narrative is so at odds with reality that it underscores the brutal truth.’

Steven: Hey you stole your only complaint from me when I mentioned it a couple of days ago!  BRAIN THIEF!  But yeah I also have one other complaint: the writing could be REALLY obvious sometimes.  Not often!  For most of the book it was a darkly entertaining romp that I really enjoyed (though the first half was superior to the second).  As Fay mentioned, the fishing ship was a highlight expressing a lot of the themes of the book about North Korea and narrative control in miniature.  Actually just thinking about it now the effectiveness of that section somewhat undermined the rest, making a bunch of it seem more obvious and repetitive.  And on a few occasions, Johnson hammers his point home REALLY hard, like when Jun Do’s in America and two women are discussing the fact that his name sounds like ‘John Doe’ and the significance thereof.  Seriously, more clunky than that there sentence.  But aside from those flaws this was a good book!  I enjoyed it and stuff!  Good book Johnson!

TOB Round One, Chatz Stylz

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John Green, Louise Erdrich, Steven, Tournament of Books

Welcome to round one of the Tournament of Books! Our initial excitement was only matched by our extreme disappointment in the outcome of this match. So this post is pretty angry and bitter. (Next one will not be! We’re happy with the next choice!) Anyway the Chatz format is something that we used to do at Sunflower. It is a real time online chat between us and it probably won’t happen too much but anyway here it is, as it happened:

Steven:  yo wassupppp

Fay:  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Fay: is my response to today’s match

Steven:  no pleasantries?

Fay:  eh we’re both tired

Steven:  no ‘hey bud what’s up

Steven: i’m doin fine thanks

Steven: for asking

Fay: but seriously today’s judge made the WRONG CALL

Steven:  yeah

Fay:  and I haven’t even read The Round House

Steven:  fuck you the tournament of books

Fay:  And that is our official position?

Steven: tournament of books i am putting you on blast

Steven: you’ve got a dud collection of books this year and it just got literally twice as duddy

Fay:  But let’s get more specific here: Edan Lepucki made some very valid criticisms of TFioS. It IS too slick. It DOES bear the readable hand of John Green. It shows and doesn’t tell. A book about funny and clever teenagers with terminal cancer is emotionally manipulative. It has no bad guy and is unchallenging in many ways. SIGH. I don’t even know what to say. I’ve said it all already. It is NOT THAT GOOD A BOOK

Fay: Back me up with some Round House stuff

Steven:  yeah seriously shit sounds like the worst

Steven: if there is one thing i hate it is precocious teenagers referencing like fitzgerald or sartre or shit which is what i imagine this book to be like but in book form

Steven: which, unfair, i haven’t read it but come on

Steven: COME ON

Steven: my assumption is Edan Lupecki is racist?

Steven: only possible explanation

Steven: obvs that’s not true (edit: OBVIOUSLY NOT TRUE WE ARE DEFINITELY THROUGH DEFAMING PEOPLE)

Steven: (though awks that now literally all the books left are written by whitey)

Steven: The Round House was the best

Steven: a fantastic book

Fay:  People, you got sucked into the rise of the teen read. It is easier and more satisfying than a book that takes on more. It is literally designed to be easier to read. I’m not saying it’s not enjoyable or funny or emotional or affecting. A word that comes up a lot is ‘charming’. And yes, the characters are too smart and funny and good to be true and the conceit is awful and unfair. But that is exactly what I mean by emotionally manipulative. But it is not particularly deep or interesting. You made the wrong choice. You just did. And now I’m really mad.

Fay: And, I’m gonna come out and say it, Gus is a twat.

Fay: Seriously that guy is all surface, all about how cool he is and how romantic he’s being.

Fay: Just coz you say he is, doesn’t make it so

Steven:  re Fault, which again I haven’t read, so defamation ahoy, but also I am not a child, how many times have we seen that formula, which again, I don’t read books for tiny children so if I know it HOW PREVALENT MUST IT BE, but where you have two sarcastic, precocious, slightly outsider children (still white and pretty conventionally attractive though), some kind of life problem like death of a relative or, as in this case, the cancer, sad ending but with life lessons learnt all the while telling the reader how clever he/she is for getting references to classic literature which COME ON NO

Fay:  It’s particularly prevalent in John Green books

Steven: i dunno man i haven’t read this book but i am FIRED UP

Steven: puttin john green on blast

Steven: undeservedly most like!

Fay:  ‘They’re hyper-verbal in a Gilmore Girls fashion that causes me to simultaneously admire them as “wonderful” characters and distrust their genuineness’ Umm excuse me but why would a character’s tendency to talk more automatically make them ‘wonderful’?

Fay:  There are good things too. I just don’t think they’re as good as everyone is making them out to be and so I feel like I’m being forced to be overly harsh on the book just to put it back into perspective. So now I seem like a dick. THANKS A LOT, TFioS!

Steven:  anyway, Round House

Steven: super good book

Steven:  moving and written with a simple touch that belied its emotional weight and the sense of history behind it all

Steven:  it was deep and devastating, and the reservation was wonderfully realised. Joe’s father was a saint and i loved him and think that he and atticus finch should team up and fight racist crime. Joe’s grandfather Mooshum was also great, a tough, horny old man who remembers the old ways, with the story Joe overhears while the old man is asleep providing a history of the reservation and an historical background to the crime commited against Joe’s mother and his people as a whole. Joe’s auntie Sonya, an object of his lust was also fantastic, in particular in the scene in which SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

Steven: (you’ll know what I mean if you’ve read the book and that was one of the best scenes in the novel, with what Sonya says to Joe after it occurs particularly striking home)

Steven:  FURTHER what is Lepucki talking about when she says that ‘the book still read like a project’

Steven: that’s nuts i tells ya!

Steven:  first of all I think she overstates the crime element of the book. yes it’s about a terrible crime and its aftermath but the coming of age elements and Joe’s story as a whole is so much more important

Steven: it just wasn’t a whodunit and it was much better for that

Steven:  this is a beautiful, tragic book which ties the crime, and the reservation as a whole, to centuries of history

Steven: and I don’t know if she meant to imply this but I didn’t find the book remotely preachy or lecturey

Steven:  reservation life and history was fleshed out but in a way that felt organic, not simply as slabs of information

Steven:  whatever, i ain’t great at talking about books but i loved the Round House, it was one of my favourites of the year and I am super bummed to see it lose out to something that (again, haven’t read it) lacks its scope, its meaning and its importance

Steven: and so I say one more time you done fucked up, the tournament of books

PEACE