fine whine

I don't know if I've been seeing a decline in quality book writing corresponding to the general decline in book reading, or if I've just been reading disappointing books lately, but either way it annoys me. Being disappointed by a book is far worse than being disappointed by a movie, I'd say, because of the longer time commitment and greater effort of imagination. Not only do book readers have to turn the pages, but they also have to envision all of the action. And a decently-sized book takes at least twice as long to read as a corresponding movie does to watch (though Matchstick men by Eric Garcia took me approximately 90 minutes to read, the likely runtime of the upcoming film adaptation). So being let down by a book is a far bigger blow than watching Batman comes back again. And I've been let down twice in the last week.

First up was Jim Knipfel's The Buzzing, a sliver of a novel that could easily have doubled in size... in fact, another book's worth of material would be very welcome as the book just stops. The protagonist starts to unravel the unlikely and very sinister plot, and then the author gives up. Yes, the book's about conspiracies, Godzilla and general weirdness, but a book about paranoia should end with some sort of resolution, right? Or is that irony? I'd characterize the book as all rising action, though interesting, but without follow-through enough to call it a finished work. It reminds me of movies made ostensibly for the beginning of a long franchise that become the end of said franchise as well. So I was disappointed.

Literary disappointment number two came in the form of D. B. Weiss's Lucky Wander Boy, an engaging but uneven look at dysfunctionality and classic video games. Weiss brings up some brilliant points about society in general and geeks in specific, and also makes great insights on what makes a classic video game classic and the compelling but improbable mythological undercurrents within it. Two points struck me: first, in Frogger, the cars and whatnot are not determined adversaries but uncaring obstacles. It's not a frog vs. the traffic but a frog vs. the world. I'd like to make a good game like that, where somehow all of the "enemies" are more incidental than against you. His other, far weightier point is that the more caricatured or cartoony and less real that art is, the easier it is to experience more personally. To wit: Donkey Kong players can imagine themselves as Mario, overcoming obstacles and (almost) getting the girl. Why? Other than knowing he's a carpenter, he's a blank and up to our interpretation for the rest of his personality. Today's game characters, though, have very well-defined characteristics including back stories and well-fleshed relationships. Which does not leave much room for personalization and interpretation. This is one of the basic points that anime enthusiasts and graphic novel fans try to make. Weiss's knowledge of the fledgling arcade and home console industry is conveyed well though at times it does sidetrack the narrative (The same technique expertly used by Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy). His pop culture insights and silver-dollar word style largely work, and the book is mostly an engaging read. My problems lie with the Wayne's World wrapup, with a number of 'replay' chapters tacked onto the end. None alone is the real ending, nor does any offer total resolution. And none of them is the Scooby Doo ending, either. It's a cop-out, a weaseling cheat of an ending for a book that deserves far better.

So I'm almost leery to talk about the book I'm midway through. I like it even more than the other two (at their best) because it seems like a book I'd write, or at least could. After all, the narrator and I had the same kind of doorknobs in our childhood homes. Not to say that this is the first guy with the same door hardware, but Nicholson Baker is the only author I can recall who mentions such a detail. Minutiae is his specialty, it would seem, as more than half of the pages I've read of The Mezzanine, so far have been either graced by footnotes or continuations thereof. His asides' footnotes beget more asides, and the whole story is one rambling mess. But in a good way. Baker revels in trivia, both in the sense of useless facts as well as unimportant matters. The narrator has an intimately detailed consciousness of everything he does, from breathing to tying his shoes and making facial expressions. His awareness is surpassed only by his articulate descriptions, making the reader sympathetic partners to his otherwise insignificant musings. I am loving this book. I fear that anything I try to write from now will unwittingly (in both senses of the word) emulate his style, if not his pervasive attention to the banal.

So I'm happy with that book, so far. On an unrelated note, I say "actually" far too much.