John Hawkes is an Enemy of Prose

Second Skin
by John Hawkes
p. 1964

Second Skin is an experimental fiction novel by John Hawkes. On John Hawkes’ Wikipedia page, there is a quote of his that reads as follows:

"I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme, and having once abandoned these familiar ways of thinking about fiction, totality of vision or structure was really all that remained."

And if I had known about this ahead of time, I might have been forewarned that I would hate John Hawkes.

But alas, I tend to avoid looking up plot or author style to keep my reading as pure as possible the first time around. Unless I am delving into a popular book I’ve heard a lot about, or a serial book by an author I enjoy, I am usually going in blind. Only after I’ve reached the end and have allowed myself some time to consider what I’ve read and form my own impressions do I then research the author and specific novel (if indeed there is any context to research).

With Second Skin, I truly had to resist the urge to look up the book before I was even halfway through, if only for some clue about what was going on. I can honestly say that 200-odd pages later, I still have no idea what was happening in that novel. I know it’s about a middle-aged man named Edward and his tragic, tragic life wherein all his loved ones commit suicide (father, wife, daughter) or are murdered (son-in-law). I got the impression that there was some strange incestuous aspect of his relationship with his daughter Cassandra but this is never confirmed. The whole novel is just weird. Things happen for seemingly no rhyme or reason and they happen in non-linear fashion, of course. It is just chapter after chapter of tragic bemoaning without any cause or consequence or seemingly any wisdom to be gained. Every other word out of the narrator’s mouth is ‘poor’ this person and ‘poor’ that person and oh isn’t it just so sad? And Edward has got to be the most passive narrator ever because he just lets it all happen.

At some point in the novel, I half expected the author to reveal that Edward the Sad Sack King had a dark alternate ego (a ‘second skin,’ if you will) that was responsible for the highly improbable number of deaths in his life, that he in fact murdered his wife and son-in-law and daughter/lover then blocked it out of his conscious mind.

And you know what? That kind of reveal would have absolutely saved this novel.

Perhaps I just don’t ‘get it.’ Perhaps the deeper meaning was more articulate than I’m giving Hawkes credit for and it all just went over my head. I am certainly not the target reader of this novel; I’ve had a long-standing detestation of poetry. My brain has always angled towards the direct over the abstract and I prefer my novels to present themselves as prose. That this novel read more like an epic poem is probably what turned me off it.

Here is another quote of Hawkes’s that I discovered in my attempt to dissect this impossible book:

"Like the poem, the experimental fiction is an exclamation of psychic materials which come to the writer all readily distorted, prefigured in that inner schism between the rational and the absurd."

In other words: this book is intentionally irrational and there’s probably no point in trying to figure out what it all means anyway. What I’ve gleaned from this experience is that I should probably be a little more choosy with what I waste several hours of my life on next time.

You Blew It Up! You Damn, Dirty Hippies!

Directive 51 
A Novel of Daybreak
by John Barnes

p. 2010

John Barnes’ Directive 51 is the latest in the slew of post-apocalyptic fiction novels in my repertoire, but unlike most of the others I’ve read, it is not a product of Cold War propaganda, but rather a modern day take on the apocalypse, in that it hits us where it counts—technology. Directive 51 is the first in a trilogy of novels (titled the Daybreak trilogy) detailing an attack on the world using bio-terrorism that targets all mechanical and plastic materials, effectively reducing us to pre-industrial-revolution times.

Let’s start with what exactly Directive 51 is. It’s real, for starters, a term coined under the Bush administration, but existing, in some form, under some other title, for a couple decades, according to the afterword by Barnes. It’s the rule that states what happens when the president is found unfit to lead the country, and that is precisely what happens when Daybreak—the name for the underground eco-terrorist movement—is unleashed on the planet. The search for a fitting president in the crisis loosely provides the basis for the first installment in this trilogy... and it’s exactly as boring as it sounds.

Directive 51 is fundamentally an ensemble story, but indispensable government agent, Heather O’Grainne, often takes center stage. Heather works for the department of 'Future Threat Assessment’, a group meant to anticipate crimes and prevent them, and since the story picks up on the very morning that Daybreak (a worldwide coordinated event amongst thousands of different groups and millions of participants) is unleashed, I think it’s safe to say that Heather is probably terrible at her job. But we’re supposed to see her as the smartest person in the room, so it’s probably a good idea to adopt a ‘Just shut up and go with it’ attitude from the start.

A lot of the characters in this story have the potential to be interesting. A lot of the first part follows various ‘Daybreakers’ as they deposit their instruments of destruction around the U.S. and a couple of them are mentioned later, but for the most part, they are dropped without ceremony or just plain presented as brainless, selfish hippies. If Barnes was intending for their cause to be sympathetic, he failed miserably, but I don’t think he was; I think he had every intention of bashing young eco-crusaders for the dirty hippies he thinks they are.

Barnes isn’t very transparent in general. Despite the fact that two party politics really have nothing to do with the conflict, it is repeatedly stressed that the acting president when Daybreak occurs is Democratic, and when he suffers an untimely mental breakdown, his replacement—another Democrat—quickly turns tyrant and stages a coup, actually succeeding in murdering the first president so he can’t reclaim power. The new president is a Republican who had been planning to run in the upcoming election anyway. It is mentioned that he leans towards religious fundamentalism, leading me to suspect that this president will also be problematic when he tries to sneakily impose his beliefs on the American people, vulnerable in this time of crisis... but that entire thread is dropped and it turns out this president is, like, the best prez evah and exactly what America NEEDS... until he gets martyred in a nuclear attack. His replacement? Another Democrat who lets power go to his head... of course. Very subtle, Barnes.

Dropping story threads is something else I have issues with. I understand that this is a trilogy and this is only book one, but nothing really happens. There are a small handful of actions scenes interspersed in a 500 page book, and the rest is all talking, and not even fun or interesting talk at that. Lots of talk is forgivable if the reader is enjoying themselves, but Barnes’ dialogue is forced and his characters are too bland. All of them are either no-nonsense government officials who were too stupid to do anything right or dirty hippies who only thought of themselves. I didn’t find myself rooting for any of them and any of those I thought could be interesting were dropped halfway through. So much for that.

But Directive 51’s biggest problem is in the subversion of its genre. The reason I love reading post-apocalypse stories is to see how ordinary people adapt and survive, but none of Directive 51’s characters are regular people; they are the most important people in the country, literally, and as such they don’t really get to experience the full realm of Daybreak firsthand. They get showers and electricity and access to the last working forms of transportation where others do not, because they are that important. The full depth of human struggle of Daybreak—the starvation, the riots, the ravages of disease—are not felt and these characters are not relatable.

I will give Barnes one thing though—his ratio of female to male characters is impressive and his women are strong and smart and not totally lacking in a couple spare dimensions... The only time I raised an eyebrow was when Heather—our lead hero and at one point, somehow the only voice of reason and stability in the entire government—decided that the best idea, in the wake of a worldwide attack kickstarting the end of the world as we know it, was to get pregnant immediately with her sure-to-not-survive-the-apocalypse handicapped boyfriend.

Because, sure.

This foolhardy logic aside, Heather did a great job as lead and I’m sure she and all the other characters introduced in Directive 51 continue to grow and have adventures in the next two novels in Barnes’ trilogy... but I’m clearly not the target audience for them.

Victory At Any Cost

Triumph
by Philip Wylie
p. 1963

Something about Triumph feels really familiar to me... and I don’t think it’s because I just happen to read a lot of Cold War era post-apocalyptic fiction. The basic plot of Philip Wylie’s Triumph is almost exactly that of Mordecai Roshwald’s Level 7, the book that initially sparked my interest in this very specific genre some years back, so the comparisons in this review are inescapable. Both novels feature protagonists sequestered in a secure, deep, underground base following worldwide nuclear holocaust and their struggle to survive in a world they destroyed in an instant.

Triumph’s chief protagonist is Dr. Ben Bernman, a scientist who happens to be spending a weekend at Sachem’s Watch, the estate of millionaire, Vance Farr, when the world’s arsenal of nuclear technology is unleashed. Luckily for Ben, Vance Farr is The Man Who Thought of Everything, so when the sirens go off, Farr and his friends and family retreat to his vast underground shelter, where anything they could possibly need to survive a long nuclear winter awaits. Not much of import happens in the two years they spend underground; despite a lot of attractive young people of various races congregating in limited space, a few extramarital attractions, and one character’s rampant alcoholism, nothing really dramatic takes place amongst the ranks of the survivors of Sachem’s Watch. People learn to cooperate pretty quickly and—with the exception of one moment of insanity near the end of their internment—jealousy and racism are miraculously not issues.

I found this novel a bit dry, especially in comparison to Level 7, which is strange when you consider that Triumph focused on fourteen civilian survivors (including a billionaire who built a miracle bomb shelter, his alcoholic wife, his Italian-Irish mistress, and a wunderkind Japanese technowhiz, among others) whereas Level 7 was a vague narrative focusing on military personnel who lacked even first names. I think this is because where Level 7 maintained an air of mystery by being so stingy with the details, Triumph tended to overload us with facts, particularly with dry interludes on the remaining American military and their vengeful attempts to bring down the ‘Russkies.' If Vance Farr is The Man Who Thought of Everything in regards to bunker life (he even thought of providing roller skates for entertainment!) then Philip Wylie is The Author Who Thought of Everything in regards to surviving nuclear holocaust. However, I thought the most engaging parts of Triumph were the sporadic diary entries of one survivor describing daily bunker life in her words, and not the 'scientific' or philosophical rambling of the men. I tended to zone out when Ben and Farr were talking tech.

Then there were the jarring segments where the violence of the surviving outside world were described in shocking detail that was atypical of the rest of the book. I feel these were done for shock value and added very little to the story.

naïve.

My initial feeling towards Triumph was dislike. When I read Level 7, I was impressed by its progressiveness. The language was vague and provided no indicators of whose point of view we were getting; it could be ‘us’ or ‘them’ and in the end, neither side mattered because everyone perished at their own folly. Triumph, on the other hand, was not so subtle in their ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ attitude. The constant references to ‘Reds’ and ‘Russkies’ getting ‘what they deserved,’ the revenge-driven interludes with the military, and the obsession with being the ‘winners’ or the last men standing all left a bad taste in my mouth, as it seemed terribly naive.

However, I am willing to lend Wylie the benefit of the doubt and say that this opinion was presented solely as a contrast to the progressive peaceful stance taken by the survivors of Sachem’s Watch. Many times throughout the book, the characters discuss racial relations and how interesting it is that the survivors are so amalgamated—white, black, Japanese, Chinese, Jewish, Italian, rich, poor—it’s a real 'We Are the World' down there. The attitudes presented may seem dated by today’s politically correct standards, but at the time, they were progressive. Everyone gets along and race is rarely, if ever, a matter of contention, so it seems fitting that in the end the fortunate, well-meaning survivors of Farr’s estate—and not the men whose revenge drove them to the inevitable murder-suicide of the entire northern hemisphere—seem to be the only living things to escape the ruins of America unscathed.

 

Superstud: Adventures in Embarrassment Empathy

Superstud
Or How I Became a 24-year-old Virgin
by Paul Feig
p. 2005


Here is a term I have just invented to describe my feelings about this book:
Embarrassment Empathy - when you're just so embarrassed for a character on page or screen that you have to hide your face until it's over because it's all too much to bear. (For TV fans, this may also be referred to as The Michael Scott Effect)

Superstud is the follow up to Paul Feig’s first autobiographical novel, Kick Me. Like Kick Me, it revolves around the comically awkward and often cringeworthy aspects of growing up that we all unfortunately experience. Feig, a native of my very own Royal Oak, Michigan, holds a special place in my heart, but I would have read this pair of novels regardless, as Feig’s is a career I have followed my entire adolescence, whether I realized it or not.

Superstud follows a lot of the patterns that its predecessor used, in that each chapter reads like its own anecdotal short story, but may be referenced in later chapters. I still laughed out loud, I still felt appropriately horrified at teenage Paul’s social missteps, and I still resonated with his awkwardness, but on the whole, I wasn’t as impressed with Feig’s sophomore novel as I was with Kick Me. Perhaps it was because Superstud covers the teenage to young adult portion of Feig’s youth as opposed to the earlier years. Watching someone stumble and fail hilariously is a lot easier to handle when they are a kid who probably doesn’t realize what they’re doing; watching that person repeat their mistakes on into young adulthood is so much worse because now you know they probably realize everything they’re doing wrong and still can’t get it together. I found myself cringing and sinking my face into my hands a lot more while reading Superstud than I did reading Kick Me. It just felt too uncomfortably aligned with my own awkward adolescence.

The content was a bit more alienating to me this time around, as nearly a third of the novel focuses on Feig’s misadventures in teenage masturbation and accidental boners, which I understandably lack familiarity with. It was a bit much, and all right up front, as the entire first section of the book is named after it, but I suppose male readers would find the whole ordeal a lot funnier than I would.

There were also some stylistic choices I thought fell a bit flat, namely Feig’s narration of finally losing his virginity, which is written out as if they are biblical passages. I got the intention, but I wasn’t feeling it the way it was written and got a bit tired of it a couple pages in.

That said, Feig’s super awkward comedy of errors that made up his youth would translate really well to the big screen. Someone really ought to snatch these books up and make a comedic film out of them. I’d watch it (even if I had to hide my face to bear the embarrassment empathy) because Feig’s torment is just too relatable, and if you can’t look back on that awkwardness and laugh about it (and Feig certainly has no problem doing this, as evidenced by his bare all attitude) then you’re gonna have a hard time moving forward.