In Which I Finally Read A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD

Here's the entry I really wanted to write today before I went all US Weekly on you.

Jennifer Egan's A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD is as good as everyone says it is, so run along and read it in haste.

What, you need more? Very well, here’s why Jennifer Egan’s lauded all over book is this good: Its structure and narrative are working perfectly in concert with each other to deliver the kind of meaning you so often want in life, but don’t get.

Like a good house, it’s all in the bones. The 13 chapters in GOON SQUAD initially present themselves as linked stories in which you get to know a set of characters, a lifestyle, a social group, up close -- and then you jump away, trailing off with one of the characters to a new city or (sometimes) a new life. Only (and here’s the genius thing) they don’t really fall away and when you encounter them later, you’re so happy to find them again. The ones who don’t get that kind of grace are often immortalized within the text itself, but not in the sense that you feel they need to be gotten rid of. Even the book’s arguably most tragic figure doesn’t end at his ending. (I loved that chapter. Heartstopping.)

And then there’s the matter of Chapter 12, the unconventional one (whose unconvention I’m about to spoil if you haven’t heard about it yet). Let me tell you, I open PowerPoint at work more days than I don’t, and thus believed myself to be inoculated against Chapter 12’s charms. This simple story, told by a kid (which makes perfect sense not only in the future, but because kids are the population for whom PowerPoint is still a fun cool alternative to papers and posters) absolutely worked on me. There are plenty of words to describe that loneliness the narrator of that chapter feels, but none better than its format for that moment.

(I cried over both Tournament of Books finalists this year and I own it.  My sticky-marshmallow heart, covered in lint and salt -- take it or leave it.)

If I had one minor quibble with this book, it’s that some of the innovations described for the future aren’t so much futuristic as current. That’s my only complaint, really, and it’s tiny, but I thought it was worth pointing out. If you feel like you’re in a reading rut, this book will shake you out. I can’t wait to catch up on Egan’s back catalog. So just in case you were waiting for my endorsement… this is it.

Earlier on Egan:

“I wouldn’t probably qualify as an actual crazy cat lady.”

Congratulations to the winners of the National Book Award

“The only way I know how to work is to move away from what I’ve already done.”

Local author spotting!

I knew this guy was a neighbor but not a neighbor neighbor. Good thing he caught me when I was at the tail end of my run and lacked the breath to say anything.

Posted without comment: 111 Male Characters of British Literature, In Order Of Bangability (The Awl)

Okay, one comment: #21?? Ahead of #28, #69 (heh) (We read that one in book club!) #94... incorrect.

How you sell tickets to a literary event

"On May 5th, Elizabeth Gilbert will be in conversation with Paul Holdengräber to speak in public for the last time about her EAT, PRAY, LOVE journey before retiring to a quieter life of, as she puts it, 'working on slow fiction and even slower gardening.'" I mean, I wouldn't put down $25 on the chance that it will be the last time, but someone will. What do we think? Is Gilbert over pizza, meditating and my Javier Bardem jokes?

Oh, these pants? Why, they're...

I don't do this a lot but please to read my review of Tina Fey's book BOSSYPANTS over at The AV Club. I didn't so much sweat bullets as entire magazines over this because my first draft looked like:

Tina Fey is really awesome, right everybody? So cool. Pretty much the neatest lady ever. There aren't even words to describe how awesome she is.

If that doesn't entice you to check out the finished product I don't know what will.

Taken two weeks ago, Asbury Park, NJ

Back home, I got to work on another rewrite. Deborah got to work, too, coming home each night with pages she'd marked up on the train. Her notes were about fleshing out the world of the story, digging deeper into the characters, raising the level of the language—things any good writer knows any good story must have, but that I needed her push to do. Pages flew between us as the book went from copy edit to proofs to second proofs. By Christmas, she'd gone through the manuscript three times, making painstaking comments on every page.

Somewhere along the line, the book came together. Scenes came into focus. The narrator finally found his voice. And by the time I turned in my last batch of revisions just after New Year's, the novel had become the piece of fiction I'm proudest of.

"It's surprisingly not bad," Deborah said, with a smile.

--Will Allison in Slate on being edited by his wife.

Filmbook Preview: Spring/Summer Adaptations Of Doom

They aren't all that doomful, it just looked nice to write, I think you'll agree. Note: I excluded all comic-book movies from this round-up, less as a judgment on their putative merits (after all, I haven't seen them) than because that would nearly double this list and for my purposes I'll consider them a different subgenre of adaptation.

• May 6: "Something Borrowed," Ginnifer Goodwin, Kate Hudson, based on the Emily Griffin novel of the same name. I haven't caught up on the book itself but this is highly anticipated among my chick-lit-reading friends, so keep an eye on it. 
• Also May 6: "Everything Must Go," Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, based on the Raymond Carver short story "Why Don't You Dance." This one snuck up out of nowhere! (Costar: Christopher Jordan Wallace, son of Chris "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace.) 
• June 3: "Submarine," Sally Hawkins, Paddy Considine, based on the Joe Dunthorne novel of the same name. This troubled/obsessed teenager flick may be a little too quirky/ "Harold and Maude"esque, but that approach has worked out well for a lot of directors.
• June 17: "Mr. Popper's Penguins," Jim Carrey, based on the Richard Atwater children's book of the same name. I expect nothing. 
• July 8: "One Day," Jim Sturgess, Rebecca Hall, based on the David Nicholls novel of the same name. If adaptations have a season this is more or less the tentpole. Unpopular opinion: I expect to like this movie more than the book. 
• July 15: "Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 2," Ralph Fiennes, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson. Oops, did I say "One Day" was the tentpole? This is just a wee bit bigger. 
• Also July 15: "Winnie the Pooh," voice work of John Cleese, Craig Ferguson. Oh please don't screw this up.
• Also July 15 (whew): "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," based on the novel of the same name by Lisa See. Curious about this movie despite knowing nothing about the book (I believe it's a club favorite, which could go a lot of ways)
• August 12: "The Help," Emma Stone, Viola Davis, based on the Kathryn Stockett novel of the same name. I am the last person in the continental U.S. to read this book, I'm fairly certain. I wonder if Stockett's lawsuit by her family's former maid will be settled by then? HMMM.

Why is everybody talking about SAVAGES?

I was not able to "turn my brain off" enough to enjoy this thriller, a lot of which reads like bad poetry, about a pair of snarky young'uns (science genius and ex-Middle Eastern mercenary) who decide to take on a Mexican drug cartel to protect their share of the SoCal pot trade. I still finished it, but then I was re-irritated because you've seen the ending of this book onscreen a dozen times, likely with a Nickelback song scrolling over it.

It is in fact being adapted by Oliver Stone, with a string of not-terrible casting choices attached (Benicio del Toro as the local 'muscle' of the drug queenpin; Taylor Kitsch [sigh] as the ex-mercenary). Stone probably picked it because one of the characters quotes the "Life is a game of inches" speech from "Any Given Sunday." Or someone leaked him the (spoiler) threesome scene. It's so shocking!!! Hollywood, thou art easier than a two-piece puzzle.

"A little company during the workday. I used to think that I was the only one hunched over a keyboard in soiled pajamas, rummaging through the catalogue of my failures and intermittently weeping. Now, I open Twitter and see that I am not alone. I am part of a vast and wretched assembly of freaks who are not fit for decent work and thus must write, or wither. I am fortified by their failures, and I hope they take succor from mine. Some of those out there are established, some are just starting out. I don't give a whit about your accomplishments—all I care about is your facility for describing the fine grain of your work-related suffering, in less than 140 characters, preferably 100, so I have room to add a footnote."

-Colson Whitehead in Publishers Weekly on willpower, the Internet, and writing

Unnecessary book of the month! One of the Italian guys Elizabeth Gilbert met in Rome and wrote about in EAT, PRAY, LOVE is coming out with his own memoir of her visit, UN AMICO ITALIANO: EAT, PRAY, LOVE IN ROME. (Looks like she already blurbed it so she must know it exists.) Finally, the untold story! How many pieces of pizza did she really eat??

Don't look, author is working

Last night I went to the international premiere of a movie called "Black Butterflies" at the Tribeca Film Festival, a Dutch biopic of the South African poet Ingrid Jonker. I didn't know much about Jonker going in, but she was a confessional poet who launched her career concurrent with the rise of apartheid; her early poems were very personal and then she became politicized. Ironically her father was a conservative political leader and on the national censorship board, so they were often at odds (and he frequently overruled on votes to ban her books). She also suffered from some ill-defined mental illness and ended up committing suicide in her early 30s.

This movie was beautifully shot and mostly well acted (well, Rutger Hauer as the father seemed to be somewhere else, but that's not new) but the dialogue was pretty hackneyed. I would have liked it to go more into how young Ingrid started writing; from what I've read since going in, she was sort of a prodigy. At first when the "political awakening" began I was apprehensive as to how it would be handled, but for the most part it was done well.

It strikes me that there are a few stock ways to show onscreen that someone is writing:

• Hand with a pen moving over the paper (or fingers moving over the keys) 
• Author staring at the wall above the typewriter, or at the screen
• Author looking up wistfully, sometimes accompanied by voiceover
• Author reading a page, then crumpling it up and throwing it out (is there ANYTHING more satisfying than this? naught can compare, and that's from someone who writes on the computer 85 percent of the time) 
• Montage of the first four images

One sort of neat device used in this film was showing Jonker's childhood bedroom -- actually the servants' quarters of her father's house, where she and her sister had to live along with his next wife and stepchildren -- with poetry scrawled over the walls, but it wasn't clear when she had written those or whether they were more in her head than visible (although another character reads them later).

Sadly I think the most realistic recent movie about writing is "Stranger Than Fiction" and -- if I remember correctly -- you hardly even see Emma Thompson's character in the act of writing. (Anyway, this is apples-to-oranges in the case of "Black Butterflies," which deals with a real person.) Like the rest of us, Hollywood just wants to skip through that dull middly bit of actually writing to get to the other side.

NYC: Charles Bukowski-honoring bar opens in Brooklyn

Bukowski isn't my favorite but this review of Post Office in Williamsburg piqued my curiosity. "Nightcaps and tête-à-têtes"? I'm there.

I should just post this one every year

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

--W. Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

Good news! There's an Off-Broadway play about a book club. Bad news! The New York Times says it sucks. I feel like this premise is always better in theory than in execution (see also: "The Jane Austen Book Club," a not-great movie based on a just-okay novel of the same name) but is hard not to touch given the built-in audience of People (mostly Women) In Book Clubs.