104 Book Round Up #3

So we keep on working on this whole challenge thing and today I finished book seven so an extra special triple round up is upon us. This week we have Oryx & Crake from Margaret Atwood, Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson and Diary by Chuck Palahniuk.


So yes, Oryx & Crake indeed. The really quite quizzical cryptic messaging they use for a blurb here leads you to believe exactly the feeling I left this book with: utter confusion yet strange fascination and satisfaction. Atwood is a great writer, capable of creating palpably believable World's often concerned with the future plight of basic natural humanity: pregnancy or fertility often come up. Here, she is tackling the subject preferred of many dystopic visionaries, the dictatorship of cultdom and the breakdown of the postmodern grand narrative. Here story here is told in fragments that take their sweet time to come together into a cohesive, meaningful whole but nonetheless, leave you flawed not only by her incredible prose but by the sheer fact that despite understanding the metaphorical thematics of what you are reading, you are utterly compelled, moved and fascinated by all she describes. Its a wonderful book that leaves you equally confounded and in awe.


Denis Johnson is among my favourite writers, a modern Carver-esque chronicler of the American loser, the simple kind of man America is secretly built on but never acknowledges unless they are written about by men like this. Jesus' Son is a collection of vignettes about the charmingly monikered Fuckhead, a junkie and petty criminal in small town America living, loving and fucking up his life bit by bit. He's a walking Replacements song, a lovable loser you have no tangible reason to love other than Johnson's ability to create a beating heart beneath his characters' layer of antisocial idiocy. Fuckhead's a charming philosopher throughout the book, an uneducated Holden Caulfield without the extra degree of pathos or wiseness to his words. But his overall summations, mainly involving a philosophy of 'forget trying' existentialism and a basic idea that love, does indeed, matter above all else. This is by no means a romantic novel, but its an enjoyable and interesting read for anyone interested in this form of downbeat U.S literature.



Diary is a very interesting work that runs, for the most part, purely on its great concept. Written as the diary of a man in a coma, it chronicles the beaten up, curious life of the Wilmott's and their twisted little family saga. It has moments of excellence but doesn't really get going until the final third when that avant device known to many as plot kicks in. For while generationally important in his nihilistic, misanthropic outlook that pours from his pages, Palahniuk has never quite moved, like Douglas Coupland (his main peer) has from zeitgeist-y postmodernist tomes to genuine, emotive fiction. The humanity of Diary is there between the lines, but Palahniuk seems unable to locate the basic beauty behind the sadness of his characters. Akin to Neil LaBute (although Palahniuk has yet to make his Wicker Man), his inability to move beyond coldness denies his work the connection that can be made with the work of Coupland. He also ends up becoming lost in his own cleverness, seemingly not quite thinking through the final reels and losing much of the power built within that final third's plotting. What could have been his masterpiece ends up as a well written failure that remains worthwhile to those who like their sadness served cold.