brief book reviews

 i just ate a big burrito so this might get sloppy

the divorce by césar aira (new directions): bought this on a whim, new, at a local bookstore, feeling rushed to find a book in a story that mainly only sells big five books and bestsellers while some visiting family picked out some kids books. i liked that this seemed small, was by an argentinian author, and was blue. i hadn't started reading it until i saw sebastian castillo had bought it, so we decided to read it together and talk about it. i read it over the course of a few days. it's a funny kind of book, where there's a larger 'joke' about how it's not really about his divorce - he keeps sidetracking into these long, rambling, often surreal (magically real) stories, which are actually the meat of the book. it basically consists of four of these stories, loosely based on a character named enrique. the first of the four stories was least interesting to me - seemed to go on too long and repeat itself a lot. sebastian speculates that part of it being less interesting is its emphasis on an action sequence - people running through a burning building, which neither of us seemed interested in, but i like that sebastian commended him for writing an action sequence that seemed inventive or literary or something. but the rest of the stories i thought were very endearing, interesting, and sometimes funny. style-wise it's very maximalist and playful - lots of interesting words, descriptions, wandering philosophical pondering. i liked the metahumor of, by the time he starts the last story, he doesn't bother really setting it up or tying it to anything, just like, "i saw him walking, and, well, in this part of the city...". unsure if it's a kind of book i'd enjoy reading a lot of, so i appreciated its short length. as part of book club i embarassingly rambled about combinatorial logic to sebastain in a DM until he said he had to go run an errand - this was because of the way aira tends to let a story's natural logic 'balloon' out into an interesting philosophical idea, with one specific instance being combinatorial logic. sorry, sebastian.

second marriage by frederick barthelme (penguin): found myself being 'comforted' by barthelme's prose when i started this one. a very classic barthelme novel that follows the checklist: shlubby divorced guy with a step daughter, extramarital affairs and uncomfortable conversations about them, horny/weird neighbors, driving around in the rain, watching tv, eating at seafood restaurants, weird interactions with strangers on or near a highway. the first half i think i was really great and featured like 4-5 very comedic scenes where he let stupid shit naturally play out for pages at a time, e.g. a guy spilling a bunch of ketchup in a burger king. second half kind of drags on and seems moodier, less engaging. felt interested in how he often writes interactions/dialogue that make no sense to me, usually about people trying to flirt or be act horny around each other. one of the earlier chapters was familiar and i'm pretty sure it was a stand-alone story in moon deluxe. i was thinking idly about how i like how he writes teenage/preteen kids in the 80s/90s in a way that feels like the polar opposite of how these kinds of characters were presented in movies in the same time period, and i like how he writes about father/stepfather relationships with kids in a positive, calm way. felt frustrated/confused by everyone having similar, boring first names (including a dog named Henry) - i kept having to stop and try to remember who Cindy was, who Winnie was, who Cameron was, etc., especially at the end, during a long party sequence where basically all the supporting characters show up. i like how there are a lot of moments where things get really intense or fucked up or otherwise 'extreme' seeming, in a way that feels natural in spite of being unnatural, e.g. a person shooting out a car tire, a guy breaking a diving board and falling into a pool, his neighbor trying to seduce him in a hotel room while eating fried chicken/covered in chicken grease and then later attempting suicide, etc.

i thought i read a third book...maybe not...might just post these two