kye1780

With about a 80 pages left in this book, I started to become a little impatient. Here’s what I scribbled down: He's stalling (he being the narrator, John). We're all waiting for Owen's fate, but he's just continuing to reveal how uninteresting of a person he is—his asexuality is actually becoming creepy, and his delusional excuse for why he was not demonstrably anti-war smacks of a weak attempt at self-exoneration for doing jack shit besides reading the newspaper and whinging. Ok, we get it, you weren't into protesting, but do you really want to hammer home the point that doing nothing but bitch is better than trying to put together an anti-war movement, even if it's highly flawed and mostly ineffectual? But I'm mostly just annoyed that he's been putting off the ending for the last 100 pages or so. The juvenile humor, the book's secret weapon, was KIA about the same time Owen enlisted in the army. Let’s talk about the humor for a second though. The first 2/3 of the book are full of these moments where you don't really want to laugh because it's jejune and often bodily humor, but it's just too damn irresistible. So I end up giggling and smiling like a buffoonish idiot on my T commute, rather than my preferred practice of smarmily grinning at my own “cleverness” for recognizing wit (rather than actually responding to the wit itself) that anyone with a post 10th-grade English background can appreciate. John Irving can flat out write though. The story hums (at least pre-2/3rds and post-4/5ths) with a smooth and easy flow, the characters are believable—except maybe adult John. You’re no longer interested in SEX? Come on—and mostly likeable, and the politics are comfortably left-wing without being too radical. Ok, this makes it sound boring, but it was a joy to read. As far as overall “feel” goes, this book reminded me a lot of The Brothers K by David James Duncan. So if you like one of these books and haven’t read the other one, then that other one is a safe bet for a good time. Structurally, the story is oddly reminiscent of War and Peace, despite the very different ending styles. Both Irving and Tolstoy decided that writing a lush human drama wasn’t enough for them. They wanted it to be more. The most obvious similarity is the apparent need to interweave war narratives that mostly distract the reader from the shit they really want to read about—Owen’s penis size, for example, or Natasha’s first appearance at a fashionable ball. They also single out famous, powerful figures (Napolean for Tolstoy and Reagan for Irving) and brutally dismantle the recent and ongoing hagiography that was in effect during their respective writing periods. I am very ready to forgive Irving these grand ambitions and prolixity because, let’s be honest, I agree with most of his berating tirades and who doesn’t like to be on the receiving end of some agreeably abusive rants from the pulpit every once in a while?

2022-10-21 05:46