Okay, so I realized that I don't have the patience or skill to write as many full-fledged posts as are required for the books I've read and manage to keep them interesting, so I'm just going to cover all of them in the first installment of 'Luke Lazily Summarizes All The Books He's Recently Read Using A Series Of Mini-Posts'! Hold onto your butts.
HauntedWho wrote it? - Chuck Palahniuk, the master of presenting unlikable characters you eventually sympathize with.
What is it? - A series of short stories, each one more gruesome, visceral, and disturbing than the last - which is pretty bad, considering the fact that the first story was enough to make me want to claw my eyes out and never eat anything again.
Here are a few of the stories I can tell you about that aren't too bad compared to the other stories: a chef who goes around the country butchering people who write bad reviews about his restaurant on the internet; a woman who goes to the tops of hills in her city and throws down bowling balls, causing destruction and death to whoever gets in their paths; a man who has to chew through his lower intestine to save himself from drowning; and a group of brothers who were imprisoned in a German POW camp during WWII and watched the captain of the camp sexually exploit and then murder countless women prisoners.
How is it? - Well, that depends. If you like Palahniuk (and I'm suspecting that all the readers of this blog don't) then you'd love this, even though it might turn your stomach a little. If you're uninitiated to his work, then this is definitely not the book to introduce yourself to Chucky Boy. Also don't read it if you believe in God, are an optimist, dislike throwing up, like puppies and babies, or ultimately think that humans are good by nature. But hey, I liked it.
SurvivorWho wrote it? - Palahniuk again.
What is it? - The story of a member of a death cult who becomes a media sensation and a savior to millions. The book opens with him narrating his life story aboard a plane that's on an inevitable crash course into the desert. And what a story it is - he talks about his origins and raising in the death cult, his introduction into the outside world, the subsequent slave wage jobs he has to take up (as do all outside members of the cult), and his fifteen minutes of fame once he is the last surviving member of his cult once every follower commits suicide, believing that the Rapture is upon them.
How is it? - Quite wonderful. The book tackles a variety of modern day issues (ennui, isolation, information overload), but most successfully it exposes the superficiality of the media which we allow to dominate our lives. Once the cult the protagonist belongs to wipes itself out a number of people contact him and tell him that now's his moment to become famous as a man who survived against all odds. So he becomes a televangelist of sorts, preaching to packed auditoriums of people about his life in the cult and the horrors he had to endure - horrors his press agents make up. He soon gains a following and becomes a sensation, with people buying his books and weeping in his presence. He becomes a modern Christ-like figure, in a way. But he's no more worthy of worship than anyone else, nothing sets him apart from his fellow men. He's not intelligent, charismatic, wise, or talented - in fact, he's a pretty pathetic and unlikable character. But he happens to be just the right guy at the right time. Palahniuk is a master of revealing uncomfortable truths about our society and its many trappings, and even if you don't like his books or agree with his views you're at least going to be doing some thinking after you read his stuff.
A Confederacy Of DuncesWho wrote it? - John Kennedy Toole, who committed suicide after writing only two novels (this one and
Neon Bible).
What is it? - A comedy about a bloated blowhard by the name of Ignatius Reilly who believes himself to be the greatest philosophical genius the world has ever known, a culmination of all the intellectual efforts achievements of mankind. But in reality, he's an unemployed thirty year-old college graduate who still lives with his mother and does nothing besides sit around his house, eating and lamenting how hard it is to be the only intelligent person in a world full of fools. But all that changes when his mother gets drunk and wrecks the car into a building which forces Ignatius to get a job if he wants to continue living in his house. Of course, his ego and high opinion of himself means he's always doing whatever job he gets according to how he thinks it should be done and as a result he's constantly getting fired. Throughout the course of the book he's always meeting new people and affecting their lives in ways both good and bad.
How is it? - Splendiferious! Besides offering a rich look at late 50's/early 60's New Orleans, the book features a huge, diverse cast of characters who are all as entertaining as they are unique. There's Jones, the Negro who has been recently released from prison and gets a low-paying job cleaning a bar that Ignatius and his mother show up to and get plastered in; the cop who, as a result of trying to arrest Ignatius, loses his esteem and respect in the police force and so must go and do humiliating undercover work with the intention of arresting prostitutes and/or homosexuals; and of course, Ignatius' mother who loves her son with all of her being despite the fact that he treats her like dirt or worse.
The book is hilarious, well-written, vivid, authentic, and surprisingly poignant in places. Pick it up and thank me later.
The JungleWho wrote it? - Upton Sinclair.
What is it? - Oh, don't give me that. You know what it is.
How is it? - Brutal. Much has been said about how this book exposed the disgusting conditions of the meat people were eating, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to the terrible working conditions people faced in the Industrial Age. The factories of early 20th century America were effectively deathtraps meant to lull in unsuspecting immigrants, and once they were worn out by the unreasonable (to put it lightly) hours and incredibly unsafe conditions they were fired and tossed out to make room for the next batch of ignorant immigrants to repeat the cycle all over again.
This book kind of reads like a Dante's Inferno of sorts, with the jobs of each factory representing another level of Hell with its own unique horrors. For example: the ones who stir the vats of chemicals used to treat the meat occasionally fall in and are only fished out once the vats are drained and the liquid shipped out, and by that time little is left of the worker but the bones; the ones who have to decapitate the carcasses of the animals up sometimes accidentally cut themselves which results in infection and eventual amputation; the ones who mop up the bottom floor (where everything drains down to) are constantly walking in acrid chemicals all day and so their shoes eventually disintegrate and their feet become bloody, sore-ridden stumps unfit for them to walk on; and so on. There's a rather grim part that talks about how you can identify what job a certain person works based on what physical afflictions they have. And what's worse, when someone dies on the job their loved ones aren't even informed since that would risk someone snooping into the inner workings of the factory. Overall, this is a wonderfully detailed picture of the workingman's life in the Industrial Age, when profits of the few were made on the bones and blood of the many poor.
The only gripe I really have with it is the it loses its effectiveness somewhat in the final act, when the main character joins the Socialist Party and the rest of the book becomes a series of pedantic speeches, extolling the virtues of mutual ownership and the evils of competition. It's too bad because the book packs such a punch up to this point, but once he becomes a Socialist it becomes unrealistic and preachy like a Michael Moore movie made in 1905. Still, it deserves to be read, if only for the fact that it paints such a natural portrait of its subject matter.
That's all for now, but I'll return with more eventually. Just as soon as there's nothing good on TV.
