I just finished reading Miriam Toews's novel The Flying Troutmans, and quite enjoyed it. The plot is not especially fascinating (it's a typical "road trip" narrative), but the characters are fantastic. The 11-year-old girl Phebes is especially good. She is a precocious child similar to Oskar in Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (her talents are artistic rather than scientific, though). Her adult-like persona is almost unrealistic at times, but Toews does a good job of mixing in enough childishness to make her believable. Phebes's brother Logan's single-minded devotion to basketball is also well-done, and is somewhat humorous because he's Canadian (Steve Nash notwithstanding).
The pastiche of pop culture references that Toews mixes in is also entertaining because of its highly eclectic nature. It includes Fight Club (109), the Bible (83), Sylvia Plath (167), Scrabble (63), David Bowie (125), the Beatles (83), and James Bond (116) among others. The novel has a postmodern feel despite its realist chronological narrative, in part because of its pastichiness and in part because of its continued emphasis that hoping for centers in human existence is futile: nothing is universal or infallible. It manages to convey this somber message in an enjoyable, often humorous way, though.
Showing posts with label Miriam Toews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miriam Toews. Show all posts
Friday, May 20, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
A Miscellany
The combination of blogger.com being down for a few days last week and a very busy weekend hosting family has led to me not posting for nearly a week, so today's entry is wide-ranging.
I was listening a bit to the Rolling Stones the other day and was struck by the oddness of "Mother's Little Helper." What possessed Mick Jagger to write this song? Why did he, the epitome of (packaged, mainstream) nonconformity and a heavy drug user, feel the need to sing about the dangers of housewives abusing drugs and the rise of pre-packaged food products? It's bizarre.
Manchester United's clinching of their 19th league championship (12 in the Premiership and seven in the old First Division) on Saturday was incredibly satisfying. I fancy their chances of winning the Champions League final against Barcelona more than most (and not just because I am a United fan). All of the pressure will be on Barcelona, and the final is at Wembley! Don't underestimate the "home" advantage for United, as well as all of the ghosts from their 1968 European Cup win, also at Wembley. Plus the revenge factor from losing to Barcelona in the 2009 final. United have all of the intangibles on their side, and they have shown throughout Sir Alex Ferguson's tenure that they know how to use intangibles to their utmost advantage.
I just finished reading Nnedi Okorafor's novel Who Fears Death, a science fiction/fantasy narrative that is a pastiche of themes from Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Dave Eggers's What is the What. It does not explicitly acknowledge that it is an allegory of the genocide in Sudan until the very end, though this correlation is obvious from the very beginning. It was a fun read, not especially accomplished technically, but interesting as a fictionalized response to real-world catastrophe, which is an area of scholarly interest for me.
Books Acquired Recently
Dlugos, Tim. A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos. Ed. David Trinidad. Callicoon: Nightboat, 2011.
I wrote last month about how I enjoy Dlugos because of his similarity to Frank O'Hara, and sure enough, the first blurb on the back of the book is Ted Berrigan calling Dlugos "the Frank O'Hara of his generation." The back cover also claims that Dlugos is "a major American poet," which at this point is just wishful thinking, but it is a statement that deserves to be true. It also calls him the "seminal poet of the AIDS epidemic," ha ha.
Toews, Miriam. The Flying Troutmans. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2008.
I've been meaning to read this for a while. I really enjoyed Toews's previous novel, A Complicated Kindness, and am interested to see what she does with characters that (as far as I can tell from reading about the book) are not Mennonite. Toews is also excellent as Esther in the film Silent Light, which is probably the best movie about Mennonites/Amish, beating both Witness and Hazel's People.
I was listening a bit to the Rolling Stones the other day and was struck by the oddness of "Mother's Little Helper." What possessed Mick Jagger to write this song? Why did he, the epitome of (packaged, mainstream) nonconformity and a heavy drug user, feel the need to sing about the dangers of housewives abusing drugs and the rise of pre-packaged food products? It's bizarre.
Manchester United's clinching of their 19th league championship (12 in the Premiership and seven in the old First Division) on Saturday was incredibly satisfying. I fancy their chances of winning the Champions League final against Barcelona more than most (and not just because I am a United fan). All of the pressure will be on Barcelona, and the final is at Wembley! Don't underestimate the "home" advantage for United, as well as all of the ghosts from their 1968 European Cup win, also at Wembley. Plus the revenge factor from losing to Barcelona in the 2009 final. United have all of the intangibles on their side, and they have shown throughout Sir Alex Ferguson's tenure that they know how to use intangibles to their utmost advantage.
I just finished reading Nnedi Okorafor's novel Who Fears Death, a science fiction/fantasy narrative that is a pastiche of themes from Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Dave Eggers's What is the What. It does not explicitly acknowledge that it is an allegory of the genocide in Sudan until the very end, though this correlation is obvious from the very beginning. It was a fun read, not especially accomplished technically, but interesting as a fictionalized response to real-world catastrophe, which is an area of scholarly interest for me.
Books Acquired Recently
Dlugos, Tim. A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos. Ed. David Trinidad. Callicoon: Nightboat, 2011.
I wrote last month about how I enjoy Dlugos because of his similarity to Frank O'Hara, and sure enough, the first blurb on the back of the book is Ted Berrigan calling Dlugos "the Frank O'Hara of his generation." The back cover also claims that Dlugos is "a major American poet," which at this point is just wishful thinking, but it is a statement that deserves to be true. It also calls him the "seminal poet of the AIDS epidemic," ha ha.
Toews, Miriam. The Flying Troutmans. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2008.
I've been meaning to read this for a while. I really enjoyed Toews's previous novel, A Complicated Kindness, and am interested to see what she does with characters that (as far as I can tell from reading about the book) are not Mennonite. Toews is also excellent as Esther in the film Silent Light, which is probably the best movie about Mennonites/Amish, beating both Witness and Hazel's People.
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