After reading The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, I decided to pick up another book by this author. I chose, "In the Lake of the Woods".
It was a very interestingly written story, which posed as a mystery, but in the end left bits of the puzzle missing, allowing the reader to piece together their own ideas about who the characters really were and what they did.
The book was set in Minnesota and had a very authentic feel to it.
I really enjoyed the non-traditional chapters which consisted of excerpts from books and the criminal investigations, which the book referenced in overt and oblique ways. They fit very nicely into the story and in their own way added to the narration.
Amazon link
In the Lake of the Woods
Books: January 2005 Archives
I recently read two books written by Chuck Palahniuk, "Fight Club" and "Survivor". I really enjoyed them both.
Fight Club
I had recently seen the movie and I loved it. I immediately got the book at my local library. I loved the book as much if not more than the movie. The author really has an interesting way to tell a story where it seems like the story is happening around the characters rather then than the alternative of the characters making the story happen. I loved it. The whole notion of duality in the book was far more robust than in the movie.
Here are some of my favorite quotes.
""What you have to consider," he says, "is the possibility that God doesn't like you. Could be, God hates us. This is not the worst thing that can happen."
How Tyler saw it was that getting God's attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all. Maybe because God's hate is better than his indifference.
If you could be either God's worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?
We are God's middle children, according to Tyler Durden, with no special place in history and no special attention.
Unless we get God's attention, we have no hope of damnation or redemption."
""We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact," Tyler said. "So don't f_ck with us.""
Survivor
This book started slow for me. I liked the idea well enough, but it was just really slow until somewhere in the middle of the book. I am desperate to know if all the cleaning advice offered in the book actually works. For instance, if you soap the inside of a crease in a pair of dress pants before ironing, will it really make the crease sharper? Then somewhere in the middle of the book, I really started to like it and by the end I was completely hooked. It was very unsettling to read a book where the page and chapter numbers are in reverse order.
In some ways his writing reminds me of William Gibson, except that when Mr. Palahniuk has a really clever original idea, he develops it completely as part of the story, while Mr. Gibson blows you away with the idea and never completes it.
One other interesting bit of the story for me was that I've know people raised in religious colonies, which made the entire story more real to me.
Here are a few of my favorite excerpts. The author has a wonderful gift for twisting a phrase or thought.
""We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact," Tyler said. "So don't f_ck with us.""
"It's all so deep.
So real.
Everything the agent's been telling me makes perfect sense. For instance, if Jesus Christ had died in prison, with no one watching and with no one there to mourn or torture him, would we be saved?
With all due respect.
According to the agent, the biggest factor that makes you a saint is the amount of press coverage you get."
"We're all miserable together. It's the opposite of a victimless crime." Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
Amazon Links
"We're all miserable together. It's the opposite of a victimless crime." Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
I just finished up "The Things They Carried", by Tim O'Brien a Minnesota writer.
The book was really good. It was a series of short stories ostensibly about Vietnam. The stories were haunting; each chapter had both its own unique beauty and horror.
The last story, which ties together some threads in the book and isn't so much about Vietnam, was one of the most amazing pieces of writing I have seen in a long time.
"I can see Kiowa, too, and Ted Lavender and Curt Lemon, and sometimes I can even see Timmy skating with Linda under the yellow floodlights. I'm young and happy. I'll never die. I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story."
Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried"
I finally understand why I like telling stories, my desire to write them down, my desire to re-visit even the dark moments of my life. I'm just trying to breathe life into the ghosts, to save them, to bring them back to life.
When writing is good enough to help you grapple with your own heart, it's very good.
