Paul’s Book Reviews

Because, in fact, you can read Gibson’s novels out of order, and even mix novels from different trilogies, and be quite satisfied. Gibson is a terrific storyteller, and each novel stands alone.

But now that I’ve figured out the trilogy structure of the Sprawl and Bridge novels, I’m going to have to read them again, this time in order, because I know I’ll see more than I saw first time around.

Good. I’ve been looking for an excuse to read more Gibson.

As with Heartbreaking Work, Eggers writes about characters who are purposely and selfishly unable to cope, young men who seize upon everyday tragedies (the kind the rest of us manage to overcome and move beyond, because we must) as excuses to abandon responsibility, drop out, and indulge in masturbatory idleness. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Eggers’ idle shitbirds didn’t spend entire novels trying to get us to feel sorry for them.

Of course I realize Eggars wants us to dislike his characters. He deliberately makes them unsympathetic. And I’d go along with it if Eggars had something important to say, as Dostoevsky said with his character Raskolnikov. But Will and Hand, the two jackoffs of Eggers’ novel, have nothing to teach us. And they poured gasoline over a cow, set it afire, and watched it burn to death. If you can forgive Will and Hand — and Dave Eggars — after reading that (even if Eggars did make it up), you are a better person than me.

p.s. Eggers is a good writer, and my 1 1/2 star rating has nothing to do with the quality of his writing. It is based on moral revulsion. Just want to make that clear.

Failed how? Failed in that I didn’t pick up on the long expository speeches made by characters later in the novels, the poor writer’s way of moving a complex story along. Both authors had the good sense to start their novels with action, vivid scenes, and interesting characters, wisely saving the Ayn Rand-style speechifying for later chapters. I felt gypped with I got to those parts, and in fact I was gypped. I will not read either author again.

And what a shame, because both writers started off with interesting ideas, ideas robust enough to build good stories on. In Doctorow’s case, a story about near-future entrepreneurs finding ways to build new societies — and new kinds of social contracts — amidst an economy destroyed by runaway capitalism. In Barnes’ case, a story about radical environmentalists releasing organisms that destroy rubber, oil, and electronic components, and the way society and government respond to the new order suddenly imposed upon it.

Authors like Margaret Atwood, Dennis Mitchell, and William Gibson take such ideas and spin engrossing novels from them. Their characters live and act within the givens of fictional near-future worlds. They don’t stop to explain the givens; we learn about them in the context of the story. In Oryx and Crake, the characters don’t lecture us about greedy corporations exhausting the world’s natural resources and destroying agriculture through the introduction of genetically-engineered seed and hybrid animals. They live in their ruined world and whatever history we learn is the imperfectly-understood history the characters pick up along the way as they struggle to stay alive in a hostile environment.

From now on, when I’m standing in the library or Barnes & Noble with an unknown author in my hand, I’m opening the book two-thirds through. That’s where the hacks bury the speeches. Just think . . . if I’d have known this as a pimply-faced teen, I’d have been spared Atlas Shrugged!