IQ84

IQ84 is a novel about an Asian-American high school girl with a below-average intellect. She’s not good at math. She plays neither violin nor piano. She probably wants to be a bricklayer or plumber, but her family won’t allow it. They insist she pursue a career in quantum physics or trigonometry despite her substandard smarts. All the kids at her mostly white school mock her for failing to meet the stereotypical criteria pertaining to Asians, even though most of them would kill for an IQ of 84. I am sure there’s a scene somewhere in the book in which the young girl goes on stage for a violin concert and all the other suburban white kids jeer her with kung fu sound effects as she twangs the strings. I hate white kids (it’s okay for me to say this because I used to be one, but not the mean kind. In fact, I was a really sensitive kid. I once invited a boy with Down syndrome to my birthday party and my mom cried because I was so sweet. Italian moms are like that, and now that I think of it, Italians aren’t exactly white. The Irish assholes I grew up with let me know this. To them, Italians were no better than Puerto Ricans. Actually we Italians are sort of a race of our own (the best of all races if you ask us) and speaking of Italian mothers, my grandmother was very prejudice against Asians because the Japanese killed her brother in WWII. She was a very devout Catholic and at her funeral mass an Asian priest showed up and my entire family nearly had a heart attack. He started reading from the Bible with a very thick Asian accent and then everybody in my family started choking with laughter. I am not sure who we were laughing at, Nonna or the priest?).

IQ84 is a coming-of-age tale about individuals who fail to meet cultural expectations. The young black male who can’t play basketball. A white suburban teen stricken with an interesting personality. What it must be like to be such oddballs? Standing in another person’s shoes, especially if you’re a white guy who wears a size 9 and you’re standing in Shaquille O’Neal’s 23’s. This probably pretty much sums up the whole point of the book, and great timing for the publishers to release it around the same time as Jeremy Lin’s emergence in the NBA. An Asian basketball player with skills! Who would have thunk? The white players in the NBA must be so pissed!

When You Are Englufed in Flames by David Sedaris

Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker! This has got to be the most badass book ever written! What could be more kickass than a skeleton smoking a motherfucking blunt? Pretty much nothing, not even Bruce Willis blowing up an airliner with a Zippo and laughing while doing so. Maybe a flaming skeleton pulling a bong hit. No, too contrived. A plain old skeleton smoking a blunt is way cooler. It’s artfully understated, elegant without being totally gay. This is real art for real people, not the kind of museum crap printed on coffee mugs and mouse pads. Monet, Manet, van Gogh (more like van Gay). They’re responsible for the elitist doctrine that art must be stuffy and effeminate, that it can never be funny or badass. I’m guessing that this cover might be a Caravaggio, the Bruce Willis of the Renaissance. While Michelangelo and company were wussing out, pissing their togas over God’s sociopathic omnipotence, Caravaggio was out shagging prostitutes and stabbing dudes to death. Therefore, When You Are Engulfed in Flames is not for the faint of heart or stomach. There is undoubtedly some crazy ass-kicking in this book.

The caption at the top of the cover says that Sedaris is also the author of Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, further proof that this author speaks for the American everyman. Judging from this, my bet is that When You Are Engulfed in Flames is a cowboy revenge saga with old-fashioned grit and gore. The protagonist is probably some sort of amoral, misanthropic gunslinger whose entire family has been raped, slaughtered, and torched. They were the only thing keeping him on the straight and narrow, from regressing to his former days as a bank-robbing, ruthless bastard. Now, with nothing but his soul to lose, he takes a flaming Johnny Weissmuller swan dive into hell, blasting the faces of his enemies the entire way down. After Brokeback Mountain, the Western could use this kind of penile pick-me-up. When You Are Engulfed in Flames is basically John Wayne on Viagra, wielding modernized weaponry.

The book isn’t all blood and brawn. It also has thematic genius. The smoking skull depicted on the cover is a hedonistic reminder to pound as many beers and heads as possible before dying. In the end, life is like Bruce Willis, much shorter than you’ve imagined. 5’9 at best, and that’s in a pair of man clogs (my uncle almost beat him up a few summers ago in Boston for flirting with his wife). Caravaggio’s smoking skull isn’t some Surgeon General’s Warning about the dangers of smoking. It’s about pulling the trigger on evildoers with your middle finger. It’s why Adam Sandler holds a skull during his performance as Hamlet in Billy Madison. All those old-timers kept skulls around so they wouldn’t forget to avenge their enemies before dying. When your uncle kills your dad and starts banging your mom, when a gang of outlaws rapes and kills your entire family, you’ve got to ask yourself the following question: Do I want to be the proverbial zit on the proverbial ass cheek or do I want to burn in hell while gaining revenge?

Well, do ya, punk?

I didn’t think so, but you can rest easy knowing that there are authors out there like David Sedaris, depicting man in a way that the P.C. police might consider patriarchal and/or sexist, but with whom we true-blue, working class Americans would like to have a beer. The kind of man we’d cast a vote for in 2012.

Keep an eye out for When You Are Engulfed in Flames. It’s bound to become an American classic if republicans can string together a few more two-term presidencies. Even better, I've heard rumors that David Sedaris is going to write the next Die Hard script.

How to be Alone by Jonathan Franzen

This cover is completely redundant. How to be alone? We all know that reading is the surest way to achieve loneliness, celibacy, and a host of other depressive disorders, not to mention shortsightedness, bad breath, and a hair across your ass. Exhibit A: the woman on the cover. She’s an unfashionable nerd, Eleanor Rigby in a pair of Jean-Paul Sartre glasses. The red lipstick fails to sexualize her thin lips. She’s also rocking some sort of feathered mullet from the mid ‘80’s. That black beatnik sweater merely slims down her already slender chest. Reading at a bookstore is the last thing this androgynous melancholiac should be doing. She is sure as shit going to die alone, covered in the fur of twenty-seven Persian cats. She needs to get the hell out of that bookstore and join some type of social network. Even masturbating on Chatroulette with a paper bag over her head would be a step in the right direction.

There’s no need to buy this book of essays because the cover perfectly illustrates the self-explanatory rhetoric of its title. It’d be like buying a book entitled How to Be Fat with a cover picture of a morbidly obese woman chomping into a Big Mac while she sits inside of a crowded McDonald’s. Look at the other people in the bookstore. Their blurry, indistinguishable faces are prime examples of what happens to a person who reads too much. You lose your identity. You lose your autonomy. You become tyrannized by the authority of not just the author but the stuffy New York agents and editors who had a hand in constructing this new reality that has re-territorialized your own. I get an existential migraine just looking at those facial auras in the background. I am not sure what the attractive brunette under the lamp is doing in a bookstore. Perhaps she is looking at the cover of the newest Candace Bushnell novel. Why else would a beautiful woman be standing in a bookstore?

I wanted to applaud Jonathan Franzen for writing a collection of essays that warn people about the dangers of reading, but something told me that How to Be Alone is more of an instruction manual, a how-to book for unimaginative recluses. The wordy, name-dropping quote from the New York Times signifies as much. So the question must be asked. Why does Jonathan Franzen want people to read and hence be alone? Socrates warned Athenians on the dangers of reading. Aristotle once described man as an apolitical but completely social animal. Is Franzen calling two of Western civilization’s greatest thinkers stupid? Probably. Controversy sells books and how else would Picador sell a collection of essays? Nobody reads them anymore. Not even the French.

The underlying question to all of this is who reads anymore period? The answer? Writers. Unless you’re an aspiring or established writer, there is no need or motivation to open a book. You think Don DeLillo spends a bunch of money buying books? It’s why there are so many MFA programs these days. The literary industrial complex depends on failed and struggling authors; otherwise, there wouldn’t be any readers/customers. The publishing world needs losers, desperate ones. It’s why most MFA programs don’t require GRE scores. A friend of mine is getting one. He looks really smart, but his affected introvert persona excludes him from ever having to prove it verbally. Once he did muster enough interest in the world to mumble a sentence or two in my presence. He said the best way of becoming a writer is to become a voracious reader. I asked where he heard such rubbish. He said his MFA program. Sounds like a racket to me. Most MFA directors could probably be brought up on RICO charges.

My MFA buddy also told me (between strokes of his soul patch) that Franzen is an admitted literary descendant of Don DeLillo. If so, why is he trying to convince young writers to read more in order to develop their craft? DeLillo himself admits that his writing was more influenced by jazz, abstract expressionism, and avant-garde European films than reading. So clearly, if you want to be the greatest American writer of all time, your best bet is to invest in an iPod, a Netflix account, and membership to your local art museum. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than a thirty thousand dollar MFA program.

Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson

My best friend’s wife recently passed me up as godfather of their fourth child. She based her decision on my being an atheist and hence un-Catholic. This line of reasoning is fallacious. Believing in God or Christ is not a necessary condition of being Catholic. The real credentials are First Communion, confirmation, and being uncircumcised (not necessarily in that order). I’ve got all three. My friend’s wife disregarded me nonetheless. Family and friends are always excluding me from various religious ceremonies and rites. Still smarting emotionally from the godfather snub, I thought I’d prove my detractors wrong this Christmas season by reviewing a book about Jesus.

My penis is slightly longer than this book. This was the first thing that popped into mind while holding Jesus’ Son. I can’t say that about many books, certainly not the past two I’ve reviewed (scroll down). Jesus’ Son is short and skinny. In this regard, it’s the perfect read for just about any man, except for maybe that little Asian guy in The Hangover. It’s a known fact that most men, Italian Catholic ones especially, prefer books that are thinner than their skin and shorter than their penis. Jesus’ Son will not disappoint, more importantly, it won’t belittle, which is surprising given its apparent Jesus Christ Superstar plot of living in the shadows of the most perfect being who ever lived.

The childlike Crayola scrawl of its title signifies that Jesus’ Son is a collection of stories about a young boy who thinks he’s the Messiah. I went through a similar phase as a kid, as do most Italian Catholic boys. Denis Johnson doesn’t sound like an Italian name, nor does it sound particularly Catholic, but maybe he had a doting Italian mother. That’s all a boy needs in order to develop a raging superiority complex. However, no Italian-brand neurosis is complete without an overshadowing father figure. The Italian mother convinces her son that he’s the Second Coming while the Italian father’s eternal disapproval provides the motivation to become it.

My uncircumcised Oedipal complex is the solipsistic measure of all things; therefore, I have to question the authenticity of Johnson’s stories. After their messy divorce, my larger-than-life Italian father became addicted to himself and my mother to booze. With a waspy name like Denis Johnson, I doubt this author has experienced enough melodrama in his life to write a collection of stories about a hypersensitive egomaniac with grand delusions.

Besides, there ain’t a snowball’s chance in hell of the next Jesus being Protestant. Jesus’ Son is pocket-sized for a reason. If you’re a Presbyterian or Baptist with a short penis or Italian Catholic virgin then Jesus’ Son is probably the perfect book for you.

Baudolino by Umberto Eco

Is it me or is there a copy of this novel in every used bookstore in the country? I see it on discount racks everywhere. That’s never a good sign. The medieval font points towards the likelihood of archaic boredom, like shopping at an antique store with your mother-in-law. I’d rather go to the mall and beat up a handful of Goth kids. Who wants to read about some long-ago dead guy in a Chef Boyardee hat blowing a trumpet? Unless this Chef Boyardee is also blowing coke and banging waitresses in the walk-in, I say don’t bother with Baudolino.

The artwork looks like Fra Angelico illustrating Led Zeppelin’s “Battle of Evermore,” which could be cool, but given that the author’s name is three times the font size as the book’s title, I can only assume that this is the lesser work of some hotshot literary author. Umberto Eco sounds like a made-up name to me, some sort of stuffy, post-modern nom de plume. It’s a name signifying a highly self-conscious narrative, one that calls on its own neurosis with some sort of contrived “echo” effect. The book surely ends with the protagonist (Baudolino I presume) drowning in a shallow pool of narcissism.

I spend most of my time between hipster-ridden Providence and khaki-clad Boston. Baudolino ain’t selling in either demographic. Eco tried jumping on the Harry Potter craze a while back by offering literary Goths a sort of Dungeons & Dragons, choose-your-own-adventure novel. Obviously, the cover is not resonating with the intended target market. The reason is simple. Baudolino is too handsome. He looks like a FIFA star not an androgynous nerd. You couldn’t give this book away, not even at a Tolkien convention.

The publishers must have known the book was going to flop. At the bottom of the cover it informs potential buyers that Eco is also the author of The Name of the Rose. This must be the literary prequel to the Romancing the Stone trilogy starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. I didn’t even know those were books. Terrific, maybe Cameron Douglas can play the lead role in the eventual film adaptation when he gets out of prison.

Baudolino isn’t worth a second glance. If I were the publisher, I'd re-issue the book with a new cover. Maybe something depicting a beer wench's cleavage, perhaps a vampire or two.

Underworld by Don DeLillo

At first glance, this book looks like every other 9/11 book with its cover of the Twin Towers enshrouded in smoke while the second plane approaches, the cross of a NYC cathedral in the foreground. Jesus H. Christ that’s some heavy handed Photoshopping! I automatically assumed that Don DeLillo must be a former speech writer of George W. Bush or perhaps a news desk editor for FOX News, but then I got to thinking. What if this book came out before 9/11? After all, I was standing there looking at it in the book section of my local Salvation Army.

I squinted harder and held the book with both hands. I then realized that the approaching object isn't a plane but a bird and that the smoke isn't smoldering jet fuel but fog. This DeLillo guy must be some kind of prophet. At the bottom of the cover it says that he is also the author of Libra and White Noise. I am not a big fan of astrology and I am not so shallow as to judge White Noise on Michael Keaton's sub par performance in the film adaptation. Judging a book by its cover requires an observant mind. Judging one by its film is intellectually lazy.

DeLillo is an Italian surname thus the title Underworld must imply some sort of mafia plot. Given that it's published by Scribner (a fancy pants, artsy fartsy publishing house), the book is probably some high brow, conspiracy theory narrative that ties the Gambino crime family to 9/11. At least three inches thick, there's got to be more to the novel than a bunch of guineas strong-arming stock brokers. The religious cross in the foreground hints at a potential Catholic priest molestation subplot. I am sensing that the book is an Oliver Stone/Da Vinci Code hybrid. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Underworld has won the Pulitzer. Therefore, this book is definitely worth picking up and looking at. In fact, if you're only going to look at one book in your entire lifetime, I would say let it be this one.

Here's my reasoning. I have a friend with an MFA in poetry. He wears $150 flannel shirts and has two beards. Whenever I question him on the importance of literature, he responds with some quote about writers being the antennae of the race. If I had to guess, I'd say he probably lifted the quote from someone much smarter than himself. Anyway, DeLillo certainly fits this category. I would even go so far as to say that the prophetic symbolism of its cover makes Underworld worth actually buying. It just might be the most significant book cover of the twentieth century.