by Lauren Leto
I’ll endure Chetkovich’s glare when I compliment Franzen on Freedom but get on her good side by mentioning that I once read one of her short stories somewhere (I made sure to Google it before they arrived). We’ll meet for dinner at a dark bistro in TriBeCa. Chetkovich won’t be able to make up her mind and will have everyone else order before her. She’ll end up picking the lamb.
Little-Known Treasures
PEOPLE TEND TO FOLLOW the pack with their taste in books, abiding by the tides of popular opinion to figure out the next read on their list. Just look at Oprah’s Book Club. Even those who try to read outside the mainstream get caught up in pockets of influence; William Gibson’s cyberpunk begets Orson Scott Card’s space epic begets Susanna Clarke’s magical alternative history. But where is the fun in reading the same thing everyone else is reading? The best books are the ones you hardly hear about. These are a couple of cult favorites for people who want to tread the unbeaten paths of contemporary literature.
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE BY JAMES M. CAIN
A great, grimy, gritty crime novel to read on an airplane instead of Stieg Larsson or Harlan Coben.
THE DUD AVOCADO BY ELAINE DUNDY
Playful, flaky chickadee romps around Paris. Read this instead of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS BY ISABEL ALLENDE
Magical realism fans have probably already read this. For everyone else, it’s a better introduction to the genre than A Hundred Years of Solitude.
THE MASTER AND MARGARITA BY MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
If you’re already into Russian literature, it’s only a matter of time before you discover this work. The influence by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky is obvious in parts and yet Bulgakov is utterly original. Ignore Poor Folk for this book.
THE MEZZANINE BY NICHOLSON BAKER
A trip up the escalator comes to mean so much more when Baker explicates every thought that runs through the protagonist’s head. Replace Consider the Lobster with this.
THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG BY MURIEL BARBERY
A remix of the classic class-consciousness tale, read this instead of Water for Elephants.
THE LOSER BY THOMAS BERNHARD
One of the denser reads you’ll ever encounter, Bernhard makes sure you work for his meanings. Cross off Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce in favor of this piece.
THE GOOD SOLDIER SVEJK: AND HIS FORTUNES IN THE WORLD WAR BY JAROSLAV HASEK
This unfinished novel makes hilarity out of war. Joseph Heller is quoted as saying that if he never read Svejk he wouldn’t have written Catch-22. Replace the solemn All Quiet on the Western Front with this book.
ENDER’S GAME BY ORSON SCOTT CARD
A cult favorite of techies, a young kid is trained to save the world. Much better than Rama II, I promise. If you read this and like it, check out Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
SHARDS OF MEMORY BY RUTH PRAWER JHABVALA
Seemingly simple tale of a family held together by a cult reveals the complexities of familial bonds and hierarchies. Read this instead of Gilead.
THE SECRET AGENT BY JOSEPH CONRAD
Put this book before any other Conrad work. The Secret Agent is part spy thriller, part meditation on the life of one aging spy.
THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN BY LAURENCE STERNE
Credited as one of the first postmodern novels; read this instead of anything by Jonathan Safran Foer.
Infinite Lies
AFTER DAVID FOSTER WALLACE died, a friend instant-messaged me for my reaction. I had seen the articles and digested the obituary; this was a couple days afterward. I expressed the appropriate sentiments to him.
“Have you read Infinite Jest?” he asked.
“Yeah, loved it,” I replied.
Except I hadn’t.
I surprised myself. I’d never lied so baldly about having read a book that I hadn’t. Sure, I’d massage the truth sometimes, mentioning bits without mentioning that I’d gathered them from a review or skimming the back cover. But never before had I directly lied.
I was bitter about the whole thing, mad at myself for not realizing it was risky to not be in any hurry to read his books. Philip Roth, John Updike, Don DeLillo—there was a long list of contemporary authors who could’ve suddenly dropped dead and we would’ve been sad, sure, but not caught off guard. I was slow to approach contemporary literature, budgeting my high school years to creep through the postmodernists. I ignored the “New Releases” table at the bookseller, thumbing my nose at hardcovers. I had no time to waste on literature’s youth, passing on opportunities I had to attend lectures in favor of curling up with a long-dead author. I figured I’d arrive at the present, contentiously framed post-postmodernism era around the time I’d graduate college, with plenty of time to spare for visiting authors’ signings and listening to readings. I planned on moving to a big city, where writers like Wallace would be sitting in the coffee shop around the corner; that’s when it would be important to have read his book. However, I hadn’t planned on any of those young writers disappearing.
So I said, “Yeah, loved it,” because I should’ve read it. I should’ve read it and shown up at nearby schools when Wallace visited to talk about his work. What better experience could there be than asking an author about their work? Why was I so opposed to acknowledging the living, hell-bent on studying only those already passed or about to croak?
The time-and-tragedy combination increases notoriety. Wallace called himself “as famous as your local weatherman” but made it to national-news-anchor-level fame after passing. Compare this effect to the death of another nineties meteor, Kurt Cobain; absence makes fans’ hearts grow fonder. David Lipsky got a book deal for interviews he conducted with Wallace—previously deemed too uninteresting to publish by Rolling Stone. The resulting book is now a New York Times bestseller. A fan site for the author, The Howling Fantods!, saw its traffic double in the months leading up to the publication of Wallace’s posthumous The Pale King. Unfortunately for me, the friend whom I bluffed about reading Infinite Jest to hasn’t stopped mentioning the book every time we hang out, which thankfully has been less and less over the years. His insistence on bringing up the book has me convinced he’s trying to trip me up; he could see through me over instant message and wants to punish me for my lie. Luckily, for all his talk of the book, he still hasn’t tried to read it, so I’m safe from grilling on specifics. Our friendship will officially end on the day he creases the spine.
I owned the book by the time I moved out to New York, somewhere along the way acquiring it, knowing now was the time to own it, even if there was no chance of turning a corner and bumping into Wallace. New York had everything it had advertised: readings, signings, book clubs. I decided to join a reading group at the Center for Fiction (a center for fiction, can you imagine how happy that made me?) for Infinite Jest. The cost of the class was $80, a price I felt was a significant burden that would nail me into attending the nine meetings they had, once a month.
“Have you read the book before?” a coworker asked me after I announced my plan at lunch.
“Yeah!” For the life of me, I have no idea why I lied again. Continuity? Self-flagellation?
“Cool, care if I sign up to take the class with you?”
“Sure, have you read the book before?” I asked, not wanting to hear her answer.
“Yep!” So now I had lied to her, and she’d be accompanying me to every class, expecting me to not be surprised by plot twists or unsure of the direction in which a character was developing. She then told me about her experience reading the book: she had read it during college with a group of friends, ripping through the book over two weeks of marathon reading sessions and heady discussions. When she finished, she looked at me as if it was time for my tale of reading Infinite Jest. I smiled and walked quickly back to my desk. What part of the fact that this was one of the most well-known and talked-about books in the last twenty years did I not understand? Other, dut
iful and honest people have read it. The book was my telltale heart; everyone I lied to seemed to be suspicious of me. She knew, now that I had supplied no story for how or why I read the book, that I hadn’t. How does one get through an over-nine-hundred-page book without some sort of event, an anecdote to color the experience?
Another friend signed up for the class with me as well; I hadn’t lied to her when she asked, “Have you read the book?” I’d replied, “Bits and pieces,” which was a significantly more truthful version of my lie, or at least I thought so.
On the day of the first class, my two friends and I sat together. The man who led the Wallace reading group was a mellow, middle-aged academic who said things such as “I’m a Joycean by nature” to apologize for future gaps in his postmodern knowledge. Something about him reminded me of Bob Ross from PBS, softly guiding us on how to dab the paint to make a bird against a sunset. “Now, let’s go around the room and everyone should tell us their name, if they’ve read Infinite Jest before, and what they’re hoping to get out of this class,” he told the group.
I’m an idiot, I thought. I hadn’t realized that telling different lies to the two people I was going to be sitting in between in the group discussions would create a minefield. I cursed the teacher, pathologically assuming this was his way of outing liars. I’d have to say yes, and then my experience in the class would be marked by the fact that supposedly I’d already read the book. It wouldn’t just be my coworker I’d have to perform for, it’d be the entire group. Even worse, I had to find a middle ground between having read “bits and pieces” and having read the whole book to answer his prompt of whether or not I had read it.
“I’m Lauren; I’ve read…most of Infinite Jest…[lifting from my coworker’s experience] I read it in college, not as thoroughly as I’d like [ha!], so I want to return and read it well.” Read it well, indeed. I couldn’t look at either friend afterward, hoping to avoid questioning.
When it came to equipment for reading Infinite Jest, I spared no expense. I downloaded the book on my iPhone, brought the print version to work with me, got an electronic copy for my iPad at home. I was ready to conquer the thing, to save myself from my lies by eradicating the issue.
I made it to the second class of the discussion group, then I never made an appearance again. Time was an issue. It was also frustrating to have to start and stop, to avoid getting too far ahead or behind during the month we had in between classes. Discussion groups generally turn out to be more of a burden than a blessing; twenty people on one book can’t be efficient. But most frustrating of all was reading Wallace, knowing that you’ll never hit on his level, that you didn’t even know of his level when you arrived. He made me throw down his book, try to write something myself, then study it for possible similarities or traces suggesting that I could do the same. They didn’t exist. He was the best thing for my writing and the worst, forcing me to try again but also lying out of reach and causing anxiety over whether I ever could write well enough. I found it slow going, being forced to actually read in bits and pieces (a bit of cosmic retribution) because of the sugar-high-like feeling I’d experience while being confronted by page after page of good writing. A friend of mine expressed once that the closer he gets to the end of a book, the slower he moves. He doesn’t want it to finish, he says. I never understood that feeling until I read Infinite Jest. You just want it to go on.
It’s telling that the teacher of the class labeled himself a “Joycean.” I’ve found that James Joyce, for much of the generation of writers preceding Wallace, is the most-often-mentioned name when they discuss influences. I find Toni Morrison noting to The Paris Review that she appreciated Joyce’s humor and irony. Norman Rush described Joyce as a “wondrous and calamitous influence” on him. Salman Rushdie claimed, “Joyce is always in my mind, I carry him everywhere with me.” There’s some inexplicable connection to understanding how or why an author writes the way they do and what they thought of Ulysses. In the last five or so years, Joyce has been replaced with Wallace by authors explaining influences. Neal Stephenson said, “I think [he] was the best we had, and who influenced me in the sense of making me try harder and wanting to do better.” Teddy Wayne spoke about how he wrote his English thesis on Wallace. Dave Eggers described his writing as “world-changing.” Zadie Smith stated, “I didn’t feel he had an equal amongst living writers.” This is the greatest point in any argument I can make when I try to claim Wallace’s style was profound enough to hurtle us into a new realm of fiction; there have been many, many other writers who have jotted down things and examined them with hopes the scribblings might miraculously contain some Wallace elements.
I am happy to say, I now have finished the book.
There, you see? I lied again.
How to Write Like Any Author
WHEN YOU’RE YOUNGER, your writing takes on the cadence and tones of your newest favorite author. Suddenly, during your J. D. Salinger phase (which is when most of us start to write, unfortunately), you’re sarcastic and skeptical about the booze in your cup at a party. As you move on to Hemingway, you’re brief and unmoving about otherwise complicated emotions and situations. In college you begin to use more flowery descriptions; you’re reading the Russian greats and suddenly the manuscript you’ve been working on gives mention of a bloodline in an otherwise contemporary family.
Then, one day, you stick your own voice in there. And it’s amazing, because you didn’t know you were missing originality; you didn’t even realize how heavy-handed you were with your inspiration from the greats. Your warbled, watered-down versions of their voices have now, with the addition of your own self to your writing, become influences.
For the time when you’re still trying to find your way on a page, here are some tips for writing like others.
STIEG LARSSON
Your male lead should have an inflated sense of self. Your female lead should have a deflated sense of self. The only props any character may be fiddling with are drinks, coffee, cigarettes, and weapons.
JOAN DIDION
Be redundant, be scattered. Try not to stay on the same point for any real detail. Find beauty in simple objects. Have little epiphanies in every paragraph.
SIMON RICH
Your character’s inner dialogue should read like a cross between the thoughts of a neurotic sixty-year-old Jewish man and those of a precocious seven-year-old. Do not bother spending time on character development; instead focus on a half-dozen supremely well-crafted observations.
MALCOLM GLADWELL
Blame all innovation and talent on blind luck. Give nothing more than anecdotal evidence for every thesis you put forth.
JHUMPA LAHIRI
Write about a husband and wife who are finding excitement or strife in their daily life. The writing should be perfect yet plain. Your MFA professor will be proud.
HENRY MILLER
Sentences cannot go beyond a line and a half. Preferably they should be under ten words. If a sentence must go on, make sure it is laden with em dashes.
ANAÏS NIN
Find a way to make the most graphic visuals ever without actually mentioning the proper names for genitals.
DON DELILLO
State the object. Then, in the next sentence, give an adjective to the object. Describe the object now with scientific detail about its appearance. State the object again.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Every paragraph must have a sentence fragment that somehow, magically, conveys a whole thought with only three words and rarely a vowel. Bonus points if you can accomplish it with two words.
MARILYNNE ROBINSON
You write, and they read, and you write more, about everything and about anything else in there and all that. And then you deny editing; instead you check it again, because you don’t want to conform and you’re afraid of seeming like everyone else, you tell me.
ANN BEATTIE
It’s this writing that lets you go on and on, expanding the story line, extensively delving into
the actions of the protagonist, and so on, simply by adding a comma, you see? So similar to Raymond Carver, in her style of short stories, but with so much more punctuation, it’s really quite interesting.
RAYMOND CARVER
First-person exploration. Beautiful woman talk to me, No quotation marks necessary.
JUNOT DIAZ
Pop culture reference, Spanish phrase.
PART III
How to Fake It
What Your Child Will Grow Up to Be If You Read Them…
MUCH LIKE ADULTS ADOPT favorite authors and genres in a way that defines their tastes, children fall in love with a particular imaginary world that embodies the elements they hold dear. For many, that’s their first bit of rebellion, recognizing that not every book is on the same moral plane when you laugh much harder at Dr. Seuss’s ne’er-do-well cat than the goody-two-shoes big red dog named Clifford.
A parent chooses (consciously or otherwise) books in line with the message of their parenting style; something in the plot picks up on how they’d rather their child appear, as the subdued orphan Madeline or the wily, brash Eloise. Remember what your parents read to you when you were younger? Did they try to quietly influence your worldview by stockpiling your tiny bookshelf with Paddington Bear instead of Tom Thumb? Now you have more evidence than their divorce to mount on the wall of things they did wrong.
For the record, my mom read Love You Forever to me so much as a kid that I can repeat it by memory, but my favorite books were the Berenstain Bears collection. I was an annoying child.
THE GIVING TREE
“I want that!” your daughter or son will be yelling next time you take them to the mall. Smooth move, Mom and Dad, teaching your kid about how parents will sacrifice for their children. Have fun explaining to your kid why a tree would do more for him than you would.