Books

Read a couple more good books lately. First one is Las Cucarachas, by my boy Yongsoo Park. I grabbed this one before I left for Hong Kong and just never got around to it until a few weeks ago, despite it being a fairly quick read. I liked it well enough, though I think I liked Boy Genius more. That is Yongsoo’s first book. They are very different books, however, and should not be compared solely on the fact that I read them and that I have different opinions of them (though critics do it all the time). I’ll just do my usual ramble and a little mini-critique.

Las Cucarachas is set in NYC in the 80s, and anyone who lived in the city then and was even remotely in touch with youth and popular culture will take a nice trip down memory lane. To some degree, Park lets the setting, more than the characters or even the plot, drive the story, and this makes for a mellow, almost existential pace that at times can be frustrating. I mean, nothing happens for a while, and some events seem to be replays of previous ones. However, this pace allows the big movements of the story to shine more and hides the more subtle, genuine developments that are occurring -- in a very pleasing fashion. It’s an excellent portrayal of the moral conflicts and challenges of maturity that a young man in his early teens faces during a certain time in his life as well as the ambivalence with which young men sometimes approach these challenges. The central character, Peter Kim, is growing up and he doesn’t even know it – this slow-cooked evolution is also not made quite apparent to the reader until one reaches the end and contemplates the protagonist’s whole life, his situation in its entirety. In some ways, it has the quality of the films Welcome to the Dollhouse or Napoleon Dynamite – the cameras seem to turn on at a certain point in the character’s lives, then just as arbitrarily turn off. Conflicts emerge without the commensurate resolutions. Things happen to the characters which can often be viewed as being of little consequence, but you come to realize that they are part of a broader, deeper development which is too large to capture in a couple hours or a couple hundred pages.

There’s a character in Las Cucarachas who, in my opinion, gets too little time in the story, but his significance in the story and his impact on Peter’s life cannot be overestimated. Mr. Schnell, who is a neighborhood retiree and chats with Peter now and then, periodically gives him books including The Old Man and the Sea. Peter thinks that the story is somewhat dumb, alleging that he doesn’t understand why the guy would go to all that trouble just for a carcass of a fish, but by the end of his own journey, Peter has come to recognize the central themes of the Hemingway tale and has related it to his own challenge – in this case, finding out who burglarized his house, regardless of the futility and difficulty of the search. This is subtly and masterfully done, and Park captures these low-frequency but highly resonant transformations of youth in a way that few writers are able to pull off. The book does get a little repetitive at times, and one finds himself yearning for something – or something different, rather – to happen, but it’s all part of the technique in my estimation, and Park pulls it off nicely. (Yongsoo, I’m no critic, so just ignore all the crap I wrote that you don’t like, WHAT!!! I’M NEXT, DAMMIT!)

The other book I just finished is titled The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living. It’s about a judge in the South, a man who has a lot going for him but isn’t terribly satisfied by it and has often struggled with the somewhat mundane path he has taken with his life. He has lost his sense of faith, wonder, and spirituality, and while it is his brother whose favorite saying is “whatever”, it is the judge who is more ambivalent about life.

Anyway, he meets a woman who makes him an offer that he, his brother, and some friends decide to take her up on (I know, terrible grammar), and they go on a rollicking adventure that allows for the emergence of more zany folks with their own agendas, issues, and flaws. What I like about this one is that the characters drive the story – a style or approach which I find is natural, organic and unassuming yet also rather dynamic. It allows for a more seamless integration of the plot – you know, the actual things that happen – and the themes and messages within. The characters become the bearers of both plot and theme and carry them in the same sack, pour them into the reader from the same bucket. The characters are well-drawn and engaging at all turns. The other thing I liked about this author’s writing style is the mention of small details that draw the reader into the scene – a wooden stick used to stir coffee, the metal box that surrounds a payphone, a glass requested for a beer that is left unused. Ah, it’s good stuff. I really enjoyed this one. And it’s got that notion that Sagan writes about in Contact: the notion that faith is something which cannot be measured or proved – it’s simply something that one discovers and experiences and brings to life simply by believing. One can discover all sorts of things in faith – strength, redemption, renewal, wonder, freedom…it’s just a matter of one’s willingness to believe and just let that shit flow, learning to let go of certain conventions or self-imposed boundaries. A great read.

Ok, more later. Got a bunch of shit to do tonight and it’s already 10.25. Peace!
Chucky