Evelyn Waugh: The Loved One

I didn't include this book on my "Currently Reading" section of my blog because The Loved One has been my bath book for the last few weeks now. It's small and cheap and when the pages got all wrinkly I didn't even mind. Now my bath book is Jock of the Bushveld, an old South Africa folk story which continues to shock and amaze me with it's racist slurs and hokey colloquialisms. I'm enjoying it though - it's like visiting another time and place.

Back to Waugh...

The Loved One (published in 1948) is loosely based on the Forrest Lawn graveyard in the Hollywood Hills (which apparently fascinated Waugh). Waugh is a satirist and in this book he took on a great subject; death and dying in Western culture. He manages to mock the American nouveau-riche and the almost grotesque extremes people go to to avoid facing mortality. The book is funny and insightful and irreverent. The main character, Dennis Barlow, is a transplanted Brit living and working in Hollywood. His job as a pet mortician (at the Happier Hunting Grounds Pet Cemetery) has shamed the other Brits in the area who feel they have a certain reputation to upkeep. The woman he falls in love with, Aimee Thanatogenos is the makeup woman at the Whispering Glades Funeral Home and works closely with Mr. Joyboy who, in his love for Aimee, makes sure that every body who comes her way has a beautifully sculpted smile on its face. The bodies are referred to as "loved ones", thus the novel's title.

The writing is witty, charming and often sarcastic. No subject escapes Waugh's sardonic sword and he wields it artfully. It's a quick and easy read but worth it.

Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I enjoyed Safran's last book because it was so unique and different from most of the other books I had read (besides maybe Dave Eggers). This newer one was no less impressive, in fact it probably left me more in awe than his first book.

Foer's voice in one that I can relate to when hearing it but know I could never write in. I feel humbled by the way he makes the words dance and tumble in a sometimes chaotic, but perfectly synchronized execution of life and story. He does a lot of stream of consciousness writing which in the past has sometimes left me feeling excluded. Instead, I feel as though he is describing my own thoughts, if only I were bright enough to think them.

In ELIC, Foer writes the story of a little boy whose father dies in the Twin Towers on September 11tth. He does it without the use of patriotism, militarism, political commentary or real mention of terrorism. How refreshing to read such a sad and harrowing story of loss and fear without being pulled away by any political discourse. You get such a real sens of the people and the lives affected by the tragedy of that day and yet the book is quite funny.

The first page of the book:

What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of "Yellow Submarine", which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d'etre, which is a French expression that I know. Another good thing is that I could train my anus to talk when I farted. If I wanted to be extremely hilarious, I'd train it to say "It wasn't me!" every time I made an incredibly bad fart. And if I made an incredibly bad fart in the Hall of Mirrors, which is in Versailles, which is outside of Paris, which is in France, obviously my anus would say, "Ce n'etais pas moi!"

What about little microphone? What is everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pockets of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sounds like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.

The books contains some great dialogue and a wistfulness that makes you want everything to be okay. I must say, this is one of the best I've read in a long time.

If you're new to this type of contemporary writing or want to give it another shot, try Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Even if you hate it you'll be better off for having read it.