Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

This doesn’t count as me having finished another book, as this was at least my fourth time reading it (if not more). Some might wonder why I read and reread depressing memoirs like Angela’s Ashes. (1) It reminds me that others have it much worse, (2) it shows the strength and resiliency of the human spirit, and (3) it’s a masterfully written book. Stark and unsugarcoated, but not self-pitying, Mr. McCourt tells it like it was, matter-of-fact and with a sense of humor, through the innocence of a child. This book will always have a special place in my heart for introducing me at an early age to my love of memoir and biography, but deservedly so because its poignant portrayal of love, hardship, endurance, and shame.

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Some passages that caught my attention this time around:

I think my father is like the Holy Trinity with three people in him, the one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and the prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey and wants us to die for Ireland. I feel sad over the bad thing but I can’t back away from him because the one in the morning is my real father and if I were in America I could say, I love you, Dad, the way they do in the films, but you can’t say that in Limerick for fear you might be laughed at. You’re allowed to say you love God and babies and horses that win but anything else is a softness in the head (McCourt, 210).

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Ah, pension my arse. Sixteen years of age an’ talking about the pension. Is it coddin’ me you are? Do you hear what I said, Frankie? Pension my arse. If you pass the exam you’ll stay in the post office nice and secure the rest of your life. You’ll marry a Brigid and have five little Catholics and grow little roses in your garden. You’ll be dead in your head before you’re thirty and dried in your ballocks the year before. Make up your own bloody mind and to hell with the safeshots and the begrudgers. Do you hear me, Frankie McCourt?…’Tis your life, make your own decisions and to hell with the begrudgers, Frankie. In the heel o’ the hunt you’ll be going to America anyway, won’t you? (McCourt, 334)

The Dinner by Herman Koch

I don’t really get why this book had to take place at a dinner. It feels a little gimmicky, if you ask me. All the dinner backdrop really serves to do is (1) break up the progression of the book into digestible portions (aperitif, appetizer, main course, dessert, digestif), and (2) underscore the problematic nature of this family (going out to dinner at a seen-and-be-seen restaurant to discuss a crime committed by their children seems like they’re not taking the crime seriously)–both of which could be just as skillfully done without a waiter interrupting every so often. But alright.

Despite the gimmick, The Dinner is a fun read highlighting the power of the unreliable narrator. I know I litter all my entries with dozens of spoilers (they’re reflections after all)–but let me just say this: that family is psychotic.

Life Itself by Roger Ebert

I read this back in July 2015 while in Spain with friends, celebrating our recent graduation from college. I’ve decided not to pad my blog with musings written in my personal journal because that’s making things quite messy, timeline-wise, but this was such a fun read for someone obsessed with movies–as one of the most prominent film critics in history, Roger Ebert’s memoirs is chockfull of anecdotes involving Hollywood’s biggest names–that I just had to include it. Here are two quotes that I noted down, either for the sake of humor or wisdom.

(1) “Roger, when I need to amuse myself, I stroll down the sidewalk reflecting that every person I pass thought they looked just great when they walked out of their house that morning” (Gene Siskel, 330).
(2) “The lesson Studs [Terkel] taught me is that your life is over when you stop living it. If you can truly ‘retire,’ you only had a job, but not an occupation” (398).

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

NOTE: WRITTEN ON APRIL 26, 2016

And in that moment, the longing he’d felt for Sasha at last assumed a clear shape: Alex imagined walking into her apartment and finding himself still there–his young self, full of schemes and high standards, with nothing decided yet. The fantasy imbued him with careening hope.

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Alex felt an ache in his eyes and throat. “I don’t know what happened to me,” he said, shaking his head. “I honestly don’t.”

Bennie glanced at him, a middle-aged man with chaotic silver hair and thoughtful eyes. “You grew up, Alex,” he said, “just like the rest of us.”

Alex closed his eyes and listened: a storefront gate sliding down. A dog barking hoarsely. THe lowing of trucks over bridges. The velvety night in his ears. And the hum, always that hum, which maybe wasn’t an echo after all, but the sound of time passing.

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A sound of clicking heels on the pavement punctured the quiet. Alex snapped open his eyes, and he and Bennie both turned–whirled, really, peering for Sasha in the ashy dark. But it was another girl, young and new to the city, fiddling with her keys.

-Selections from pg. 339-340 of A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

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What is this book about?

At first I thought it’s simply about life and people, in all their glorious shades of messiness; snapshots of humanity. A chapter focuses on a character or a group of related characters in a period of time in their lives; the next chapter hones in on a secondary character mentioned in the previous chapter but during a completely different period of time in their life, providing some sort of backstory glimpse into that character’s future. Many chapters feature insight into both past and future. Essentially, the book is a non-chronological scrapbook of the lives of multiple distantly related, very flawed, very human characters.

Take Sasha for example–the klepto who spent her late teenage years wandering around Asia and Europe, filching wallets and goods, scrubbing floors, sucking off older men, and when desperate, wiring her worried parents for more money in order to survive. Though she always retains at least a bit of her rebellious streak, she finally comes back to the States at 21 and starts studying Business and Music at NYU, where she befriends a very confused boy with self-destructive tendencies who soon dies in a drowning accident, and dates the boy she will marry and have two children with much later in her life, after she gets fired post many years of service as the assistant of a prominent music producer because of her klepto tendencies, and after many years of dating and sleeping with random guys–Alex, among them (they had one date when Alex first moves to New York. He annoys her, but they sleep together anyways). By the time she has had her family, Sasha has calmed down and become a responsible human being, a loving wife and mother.

Sasha’s story starts with a story told with her as the central character. She’s 35, still an assistant for Bennie at Sow’s Ear music production, in therapy seeking help for her kleptomania. The story describes an unmemorable first and only date with Alex. Many chapters later, Sasha’s story resurfaces in a chapter focusing on Rob, her college best friend who drowns. From Rob’s story, we get a glimpse of the college Sasha–less cynical and jaded, still full of hope. College Sasha scorns drugs, whereas the next glimpse of Sasha clearly does not. Via her uncle’s story of when he was sent to Italy to find a post-high school pre-college Sasha who has run away from home to wander around Asia and Europe, we get a glimpse of a wilder more reckless Sasha, stealing and sucking off older men to survive. And finally, through her daughter’s PowerPoint deck retelling, we get a vision of a tame Sasha–a loving wife and mother of two who teaches her children to love and appreciate music, but without all the sex and drugs and rock and roll (and stealing of her youth).

Sasha’s story was of one who slowly grows up (though not completely successfully). Many of the other characters do not.

When late in the book “goons” are finally mentioned–”Time’s a goon,” Bennie says to Scotty–I feel good that my analysis of the book is almost correct. The book is about time, specifically the lives of people across different periods of time in their lives and in society.
But the last chapter completely threw me off guard. It’s told from Alex’s point of view, set in the future. In the 2020s at least, 2030s more realistically. Whereas the other chapters seem to capture very real portraits of humanity, this one seems like satire on the way that society is moving: everyone is glued to their phones, babies especially (dependence on technology, short attention spans); babies become the next most important target audience (the media is targeting increasingly younger demographics); bloggers are immensely powerful and shamelessly promote the opinions of whoever gives them money (the rise of bloggers and the ethics of sponsorships); words like “connect” and “transmit” are outdated (pace of technological advancement–transmission of information becoming increasingly instantaneous) and “identity” and “friend” are rendered meaningless (falsity of social media); texting language changes, curse words disappear from the vocabulary, and tattoos and piercings fall out fashion (generational fads–the self-righteousness of newer generations)–the satire is endless. This chapter seems like the only overt commentary on society; everything else seems to be more about the self-destructive choices that we make (so there’s some other chapters that can be construed as commentary, for example the one centering on La Doll/Dolly and her far-fetched experience trying to make money after her fall from grace, but this one is more rooted in reality than in a futuristic society obviously satirizing society today). But I suppose even through the satire, Alex’s story is still very relatable and rooted in the human experience of going back on your morals to get ahead, and longing for the past when everything was still before you–hope, not cynicism on the way the world worked. And that’s ultimately what this book is about. Loss of the starry eyed hope of youth.