The events of any given day generally seem almost disposable, interchangeable. Our perspective is blinkered. Mona Simpson takes everyday events and writes from the blinkered perspective of a teenaged boy in 'Casebook,' to create an intimate epic, a story rich with life and struggle, seen up close with understated grace and economy. 'Casebook' is a compelling, engaging and often frightening story of love, loss and discovery in the friendly, apocalyptic landscape of the post-nuclear family.
Miles Adler-Hart tells the story in first person, beginning with his attempts to find out what his mother will and will not permit in terms of television viewing. What he learns instead is that his parents are separating, and as he ups his surveillance game to phone tapping and more, he's our witness to love in all its frightening splendor. His father moves out, his friend's mother moves to Topanga, as worlds are torn asunder with a gentle nod and a soft handshake.
Simpson's novel is riveting from the first page, and maintains an intense tension through the final line. She uses the perspective of her teenaged protagonist to tell us much more than he understands. It's a canny move, giving readers an emotionally mature rendering of an emotionally immature mind. Miles has a few hard moments at first, but he soon gets to know his mother's new boyfriend, Eli. It's not long before Eli's in his sights as well, even as he falls for the man as a possible replacement for his father. As readers we want to see both Miles and his mother happy, but Miles investigations continue to ask questions to which nobody wants answers.
The prose here is the star; told entirely in Miles' voice (with the exception of found papers, etc.), 'Casebook' is incredibly involving. Miles is funny and much smarter than he knows. By making a fair amount of the reading experience happen outside of the text, Simpson grabs her readers and sets them up as storytellers. The novel unfolds over a couple of years and Simpson craftily conveys Miles' maturation as he grows up.
But while Miles is the protagonist, he's also just one a very large and well-crafted cast of characters, most of whom he has endearing nicknames for. Mims, his mother, is smart, sweet and a little bit confused. He has a set of twins as little sisters whom he calls "the Boops." Readers will find the character of Eli to be a fascinating portrait, and Ben Orion to be one of the most engagingly original PIs you've ever met. His friends, their mothers, his mother's friends and their kids, most of them in some form of separation or divorce, all come seem like members of your own extended family.
To a degree, 'Casebook' is a bit deceptive. It starts with a light tone that might lead readers to think they're getting a nicely written bit of humor. And there are many laughs, many out loud, to be found here. But there are also more serious moments, more tender moments, more terrorizing times of the sort life provides, with or without our consent.
Mona Simpson, using the bits and pieces of the kind of lives we causally shatter, has crafted an epic story of love and loss as seen from the outside. The economic and emotional casualties of the war on families, the clashes between family members, may not seem so rich, so sorrowful, as we live them from within. There is no bright flash, no duck-and-cover. But perhaps there are analogues to those shadows on the sidewalk, burnt into our souls in a manner that informs our lives after the end.
04-21-14:Lorrie Moore 'Bark'
Undoing the World
We are the authors of our own unhappiness, and unhappily prolific in the creation of our work. The stories you read in Lorrie Moore's 'Bark' manage the unique feat of showing us just how skilled we are in the work of undoing the good in our lives, our species-specific skill of undercutting our own survival, and yet, in the reading, these stories are light and filled with the stuff and joy of life. Lorrie Moore embraces mutually exclusive notions with grace, intelligence and lovely writing.
For a book chock-a-block with divorce, death and deception, 'Bark' is a lot of fun to read. Moore may have a dark vision of the world, but her complicated, prickly characters ring true. They often manage to enjoy themselves, and sometimes do the right thing, making the world, their worlds just a little better in the midst of a whole lot of worse.
It helps that Moore peppers the reader with variety. There are two longer stories here that border on being novellas and have the feel of novels. There are shorter, one-stop-shopping mood pieces, smart snapshots of characters who might usually be in motion in a moment of repose and party stories. All eight stories are excellent, some are amazing, and the collection as a whole is intelligent and entertaining.
Your favorite story may depend on your personal bent, and for this reader, "Debarking" one of the two longer pieces, was the winner. It's the story of fifty-something Ira, immersed in post-divorce hysteria, (it's been a while, really), setting foot in the dating scene set against the backdrop of the run-up to one of our recent wars. Conflicts external and internal slice-and dice this rather timid gentleman who gets what he wishes for, with a side-order of increasingly creepy extras. It's funny, charming, and deeply disturbing.
"The Jumpier Tree" is a shorter work, a little nightmare of guilt brought to life. Where would we be without guilt? Our literature would surely be the worse. Moore makes a cogent argument for mixing the language of guilt with that of love. "Paper Losses" imagines marriage after divorce, like a hangover. "Foes" is the first party story, a not-so-nice trip down Surrealism Lane.
"Wings" is the other long story, much closer in length and texture to a novella, a 21st century twist on Wings of a Dove with Dench, a marginally-talented musician, attaching himself to KC, a marginally more-talented musician, and the two of them homing in on Milt, a well-to-do elderly man with a mind of his own. Moore plays this out with a sly smile and a wicked heart. It's a rich, real slice from a life that you'd rather read than lead.
"Referential" riffs from Nabokov in a nervy and tense story about how love will tear us apart, again. They should have bought the album. "Subject to Search" wrestles with spies and time, pitting one against the other in a quick-witted, acrobatic feat of prose. The collection finishes with "Thank You for Having Me," another party story, this time, a wedding. It's sweet, funny and nicely surprising. It's not the wedding you are seeking, but it's a fun gig.
Lorrie Moore's 'Bark' offers a collection of stories that are smart and engaging enough on the first read to bring readers back for a second appraisal. The characters will linger, like friends who stay at the party a bit too long, relatives whose behavior borders on embarrassing but nonetheless are loved, because they're family. It's what you do, it's what we do, because we're human. Before we start tearing things apart, we somehow manage to bring them together.
New to the Agony Column
09-18-15: Commentary : William T. Vollman Amidst 'The Dying Grass' : An Epic Exploration of Simultaneity
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with William T. Vollman : "...a lot of long words that in our language are sentences..."
09-05-15: Commentary : Susan Casey Listens to 'Voices in the Ocean' : Science, Empathy and Self
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Susan Casey : "...the reporting for this book was emotionally difficult at times..."
08-21-15: Agony Column Podcast News Report : Senator Claire McCaskill is 'Plenty Ladylike' : Internalizing Determination to Overcome Sexism [Incudes Time to Read EP 211: Claire McCaskill, Plenty Ladylike, plus A 2015 Interview with Senator Claire McCaskill]
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Emily Schultz Unleashes 'The Blondes' : A Cure by Color [Incudes Time to Read EP 210: Emily Schultz, The Blondes, plus A 2015 Interview with Emily Schultz]
07-05-15: Commentary : Dr. Michael Gazzaniga Tells Tales from Both Sides of the Brain : A Life in Neuroscience Reveals the Life of Science
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Michael Gazzaniga : "We made the first observation and BAM there was the disconnection effect..."
04-21-15: Commentary : Kazuo Ishiguro Unearths 'The Buried Giant' : The Mist of Myth and Memory
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro : ".... by the time I was writing this novel, the lines between what was fantasy and what was real had blurred for me..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Marc Goodman : "...every physical object around us is being transformed, one way or another, into an information technology..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report UPDATE: Time to Read Episode 199: Marc Goodman : Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
