jackshoegazer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jackshoegazer) wrote2008-09-16 11:16 am
jackshoegazer) wrote2008-09-16 11:16 am
I am getting back on track with my reading.
Way back in pre-operation July, at my wonderful birthday party picnic at the zoo, arranged by the ever-lovely Jacquelyn, Will & Iris got me a gift card for Borders. The first half of that gift turned out to be Season Two of Little Britain which was purchased before I went to Salt Lake. The other half was not purchased until three days ago when Jacquelyn and I went to Borders between dinner at The Great Dane and seeing Burn After Reading at the Sundance Theatre. That purchase, the super-cool gift, turned out to be Downtown Owl, which is Chuck Klosterman's (he of Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs fame) first novel. I got home that evening and checked in at Amazon to see what it had been rated and discovered that it wasn't due out until the 16th. This was the 13th. I got the book three days early! So I quickly devoured it, which wasn't much a of a chore since it's a very good novel, and wrote a quick review of it for Amazon. I'll be the first one to review it. Maybe I'll get a spotlight review? Perhaps, perhaps.
After I saw an advertisement for a Klosterman event calling him "the next Hunter S. Thompson," I got very upset because, Klosterman, Hunter S. Thompson, you are not. I suddenly had a very irrational hatred for Klosterman. I thought Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs was pretty good. I didn't always agree with him, but at least when he was wrong, he was entertainingly wrong. Suddenly I hated that book and thought he was incredibly stupid and not very clever at all in retrospect. This novel, Downtown Owl, changed my mind. Klosterman is cool once more.
Guess what? Chuck Klosterman wrote a novel and it's good and it's nothing like his non-fiction pop culture essays. In fact, were I given the book not knowing the author, I would never have guessed.
Downtown Owl reminds me in tone and texture of a Mark Haddon novel or David Mitchell's Black Swan Green. It has the same humor as Franzen's The Corrections with less resolution. Chuck does an amazing job with the small-town Midwest and most amazingly - he somehow writes the early-to-mid 80's without seeming nostalgic or silly or even dated. Chuck displays his encyclopedic knowledge of film and music throughout but manages to make the release of E.T. seem current. The real trick, the real page-turner is that the struggles of his characters are as universal today as they were over twenty years ago. Downtown Owl lacks the rough edges and narrative mistakes of many first novels and rolls heavy with both wit and tragedy.
The one critique I see coming for this novel is that it could be argued that there is a lack of plot. This novel could be Dazed and Confused if that film was spliced with extra narratives, one from a teacher at the school and another from an old man who spends his afternoons talking in a cafe with other elderly farmers. The novel covers August of '83 through February of '84, but it is never more than "This is what happened to these people." One could argue there is no resolution because there were never any conflicts to resolve, and the few that did exist were sidestepped.
Ultimately, this comes down to the question, "Is it the journey or the destination?" Your enjoyment of this book may very well depend on your answer.
On the bright side, in the almost-two months I've been home from my surgery, I've finally gotten back on track with reading regularly. I've read five novels in seven weeks, which is five times as many novels as I read in the preceding seven weeks. Woot?
After I saw an advertisement for a Klosterman event calling him "the next Hunter S. Thompson," I got very upset because, Klosterman, Hunter S. Thompson, you are not. I suddenly had a very irrational hatred for Klosterman. I thought Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs was pretty good. I didn't always agree with him, but at least when he was wrong, he was entertainingly wrong. Suddenly I hated that book and thought he was incredibly stupid and not very clever at all in retrospect. This novel, Downtown Owl, changed my mind. Klosterman is cool once more.
Guess what? Chuck Klosterman wrote a novel and it's good and it's nothing like his non-fiction pop culture essays. In fact, were I given the book not knowing the author, I would never have guessed.
Downtown Owl reminds me in tone and texture of a Mark Haddon novel or David Mitchell's Black Swan Green. It has the same humor as Franzen's The Corrections with less resolution. Chuck does an amazing job with the small-town Midwest and most amazingly - he somehow writes the early-to-mid 80's without seeming nostalgic or silly or even dated. Chuck displays his encyclopedic knowledge of film and music throughout but manages to make the release of E.T. seem current. The real trick, the real page-turner is that the struggles of his characters are as universal today as they were over twenty years ago. Downtown Owl lacks the rough edges and narrative mistakes of many first novels and rolls heavy with both wit and tragedy.
The one critique I see coming for this novel is that it could be argued that there is a lack of plot. This novel could be Dazed and Confused if that film was spliced with extra narratives, one from a teacher at the school and another from an old man who spends his afternoons talking in a cafe with other elderly farmers. The novel covers August of '83 through February of '84, but it is never more than "This is what happened to these people." One could argue there is no resolution because there were never any conflicts to resolve, and the few that did exist were sidestepped.
Ultimately, this comes down to the question, "Is it the journey or the destination?" Your enjoyment of this book may very well depend on your answer.
On the bright side, in the almost-two months I've been home from my surgery, I've finally gotten back on track with reading regularly. I've read five novels in seven weeks, which is five times as many novels as I read in the preceding seven weeks. Woot?
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Hmmmm...calling anyone the "next" Hunter S. Thompson is ludicrous.
Your review is well written, and makes me think the novel is worth a read- although I do now have the same nagging disdain you expressed- hopefully I'll be able to read the novel without being too critical of his writing style (through a Thompson lens, as it were).
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Either way, it annoys me when people become the "next" whomever.
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Dude, you're the next Elle Macpherson!
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I like the review!
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Thanks. There's a second one now :P It's pretty bad - he mostly just rehashes the plot, which I HATE in reviews. Somehow, his reviewer rank is like 1000. Bastard.
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