Everybody's talking about America America

Ethan Canin's new novel, "America America," is getting attention from newspaper book reviews across the country. Everyone says that it's grand in scope and ambition, which tempts comparison to other grand, ambitious novels.

Both the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington Post compare it to Robert Penn Warren's classic "All the King's Men." Like the earlier novel, "America America" follows a charming but flawed politician from the narrative perspective of a younger aide/journalist.

That young aide is brought into this circle of power and politics by a wealthy patriarch, a man with both riches and a sense of noblesse oblige. That character prompted the LA Times reviewer to make comparisons to "The Great Gatsby;" the Chicago Tribune went with another F. Scott Fitzgerald work, "The Last Tycoon."

The reviewers aren't entirely in accord with how successful the book is; some note that, despite its achievements, there are some structural problems (for the most extreme critique in this department, see the New York Times.)

The one things that everyone agreed upon is that there is a real-life corollary to the politician in "America America": a liberal senator with Presidential ambitions that are hampered by a tragic accident. If you can't guess who that might be, here's the answer.

Carolyn Kellogg

Two very different reads

Darin Strauss, author of "Chang and Eng" and "The Real McCoy," has a new not-historical novel, "More Than It Hurts You." What it's about, exactly, varies depending on who's telling you about it.

The Chicago Tribune details the plot, which begins with two young parents, Josh and Dori ("a Jewish Yuppie Everycouple"), bringing their child to the emergency room. The boy's condition worsens at the hospital; his illness is troubling and mysterious. The Tribune reviewer reveals that mystery (I won't), writing that the suspense comes from whether the "self-deluding and ultimately none-too-admirable Josh" will figure it out.

The Washington Post seems to have read a very different novel: The review asserts that "Strauss has packed this gripping story with the whole radio dial of divisive, hot-button issues." Race is high on the list. The doctor who treats the boy is African American — not that any character is racist per se, but "all the good liberals who populate this novel are constantly agonizing about race." Other issues are class, sexuality and cynicism about American culture.

Angelenos can decide for themselves whether the book is more domestic mystery or issue-laden thriller; Strauss reads at Vroman's in Pasadena Tuesday evening. He's also blogging about his book tour for Newsweek; his book is serious, he explains, but his blog is light and entertaining.

Carolyn Kellogg

Presidential sex and TMI

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor in 1904, the summer before they were married.

By the year 1921, Franklin Roosevelt had fathered six children with his wife Eleanor; he'd also been involved with Lucy Mercer, Eleanor's secretary. Upon discovering his dalliance, Eleanor had, it is said, banned him from her bed -- forever. What's more, he'd lost the use of his legs. All of which makes him an odd candidate for a revisited sexual history, but that is, in part, what Joseph Persico has created in his new book "Franklin and Lucy: President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherford, and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life."

Some reviewers find this unseemly. Like David Greenberg, who wrote in the New York Times Book Review last week:

Everyone likes a bit of gossip now and then, but Persico’s relentlessness is disconcerting. He pursues questions about when and with whom Roosevelt went to bed with the same solemnity that other historians take to the question of when and with whom he decided to go to war.

Yet the Chicago Tribune had a different take on the relevance of sexuality to our understanding of historical figures like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Sunday's review by Susan Ware states: 

Integrating the stories of public accomplishments with the daily routines of private lives leads to a fuller understanding of male and female personages alike.

It's not that the two reviewers disagree -- each indicates that the intimate overshadows the public a shade too much. But when the Greenberg review emphasizes that " 'Franklin and Lucy' may be able to make the dubious claim of being as complete a record as we have of the president’s sexual history," while crying "too much information," it presents an incomplete picture of what the book is trying to do. Ware's review is more sympathetic toward the project, showing that the book spends much time on the "other women" of the title, including FDR's mother and his daughter Anna (nothing prurient there).

Can a president's sex life inform our understanding of his decisions? Or is it all just TMI?

Carolyn Kellogg

Chuck Palahniuk: prophet or profane?

Chuck Palahniuk's bad-boy books are received by an avid fan base; visitors to his website are invited to join "the cult" of Chuck. Nine years after the film version of "Fight Club," he still draws capacity crowds — in Minneapolis last month, 350 people packed in for a reading of his new novel, "Snuff." That book is currently on the N.Y. Times bestseller list even as his previous one, "Rant," is a paperback bestseller at the L.A. Times.

Of course, popularity is no guarantee of critical acclaim. And Palahniuk is pushing literary boundaries, if not buttons, with "Snuff," which tells the story of an aging porn star trying to break the record for copulations on camera — she's got 600 men lined up, and one or more may want to kill her. (At readings, Palahniuk gives away autographed blow-up dolls — autographed where, exactly, is NSFW.)

Remarkably, many critics have looked past his role as "gross-out cartographer of the modern male id" (Washington Post) and found "a writer who is unafraid to flay open our cultural DNA" (Los Angeles Times). The San Francisco Chronicle said that Palahniuk creates "the folktales and mythologies of our time, the stories that people a hundred years from now will read to correctly understand who we were."

That's some praise — but not everyone wants to see themselves reflected in Palahniuk's mirror. "What the hell is going on?" the NY Times lamented in a review of "Snuff" this weekend. "Not only has America tried to ruin the rest of the world with its wars, its financial meltdown and its stupid stupid food, it has allowed its own literary culture to implode.... Whatever point Palahniuk meant to make seems to have been lost in a self-induced miasma of meaninglessness."

This seems to be more than just a generational difference of opinion. L.A. Times reviewer Tod Goldberg is in his 30s, and Lily Burana, whose review for the Washington Post almost jumps up and down with glee, is too (judging by her '80s punk bona-fides). These two are certainly old enough to critically judge Palahniuk's work. The difference seems to be that these reviews, like the one in the San Francisco Chronicle, took "Snuff" on its own terms. They didn't expect it to be Twain.

But at the N.Y. Times, Lucy Ellmann is preoccupied with America's cultural decay; she's dismayed by Stephen King and John Grisham and their "props," corpses and corn chips. In that environment, what chance do John Updike or Jane Smiley have — let alone a button-pushing, gross-out novelist like Palahniuk?

Carolyn Kellogg

Read the reviews:
May 20 - Los Angeles Times
May 22 - San Francisco Chronicle 
June 8 - New York Times
June 8 - Washington Post