Greetings blogarians,
I want to start this post by promising that I will write about something other than books very very soon. Maybe. But before you judge, you must realize that my summers are usually full of reading and writing (in addition, of course, to grilling things on my tiny dysfunctional Weber and thwacking a tennis ball around). And, truthfully, if I don’t read and write during the summer then my wife comes home and asks me what I did all day and I have to answer truthfully: YouTube.
Today I’ve been thinking about a certain kind of book that I almost always enjoy. And for lack of a better term, I’m going to call it The-Long-Comic-Rant That-Is-Sometimes-Depressing-Novel. My favorites in this category usually take on some epistolary quality. They’re fake letters, diary entries, spoken monologues, etc. And usually they have these characteristics in common:
Number 1) The are written in a very “voicey” first person perspective.
Number 2) They are usually written by a whiner and/or general crank.
Number 3) They start out very funny but inevitably dip into dark moon-canyons of depression. This is mostly likely because pain can only be funny for so long before it starts to be unfunny and quite sad.
I’m currently reading Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles, and it shares all the aforementioned qualities of the T.L.C.R.T.I.S.D.N. (what an easy acronym to remember) Our narrator, Benjamin R. Ford, is devilishly funny, has a way with words (and puns) and slowly leads us down a trail of acerbic wit to the reaches of depression-town. The book is framed as one long letter to American Airlines after a life-altering flight was cancelled.
I think I like this book, and others of its ilk because a letter of complaint just feels like a good form for a novel to take. Especially if the narrator has a bone to pick with all of existence. Just like many of us do. Even when we (real living people) write complaint letters (or more likely these days: snarky web reviews of plumbers and pretentious bike shop owners) there is a sense of purging the affliction from the mind. It just feels good to complain, right? Of course an actual litany of complaints as novel would make for pretty tortuous reading, so these novels usually morph into something resembling a more traditional first-person telling, complete with compelling plots. But reading them can satisfy you in the same ways writing your own complaint letter does. In other words, you can play along with the home game.
Example:
Dear American Airlines,
My name is Benjamin R. Ford and I am writing to request a refund in the amount of $392.68. But then, no, scratch that: Request is too mincy & polite, I think, too officious & Britishy, a word that walks along the page with the ramrod straightness of someone trying to balance a walnut on his upper ass cheeks. Yet what am I saying? Words don’t have ass cheeks! Dear American Airlines, I am rather demanding a refund in the amount of $392.68.
That’s part of the opening of Dear American Airlines. And in addition to bristling with energy and humor, it’s kind of like a salve to that same part of me that wants to say things like that to airline folk. It’s a perfect inner complaint for all that ails the reader.
The Cadillac of this genre (which I sort of invented) is Portnoy’s Complaint by Phillip Roth. Structurally, Portnoy’s Complaint is a long verbal pity party narrated by Alexander Portnoy, to his shrink, Dr. Spielvogel. And the monologue is usually about sex. And so here again we have another lovable whiner with a life-defining complaint. But this time there’s sexual dysfunction! And… a kind of unabashed honesty that fits this T.L.C.R.T.I.S.D.N. form perfectly.
I.e.:
“…and once behind the locked bathroom door, [I] slip over my head a pair of underpants that I have stolen from my sister’s dresser and carry rolled in a handkerchief in my pocket.”
Finally, I’ll just mention Homeland by Sam Lipsyte. This book is written as a false high school alumni magazine update from one of the school’s most scathing and brilliant losers. It’s addressed, constantly to “Catamounts,” the school’s mascot.
As in: “You see, fellow Catamounts, I’ve been to the edge of the abyss on more than one unsavory occasion.”
The fun here is that we’re able to take part in a giant “I was miserable in high school” purging session. The book is a clever satire of all the successful people who write into their alumni magazines to broadcast their accomplishments. It rants. It’s largely comic. And at some point it gets so so sad.
I wish I had some kind of amazing final thesis about these books, but this is a blog not my dissertation. So, in closing, I’ll just say that I like a good comic rant, especially if it tricks me into discovering lowdown and honest things about life along the way. Sometimes you just need to hear the confessions of a man with underwear on his head to feel like someone out there knows how you feel.
For you home game players: feel free to comment about favorites of yours in this startling new(ish) genre.
Bognani: I enjoy your comedy, but it turns out your criticism is equally astute. I feel like I bought one and got the second item of equal or lesser value for free. Would you consider “The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga a T.L.C.R.T.I.S.D.N.?
Crooks!
Way to expose a gap in my reading list. I’m putting this on my table next. Not because of the Booker Prize. But because you’ve nominated it for T.L.C.R.T.I.S.D.N. status. And, from my initial research all signs point to yes on this account. Epistolary elements. Darkly comic voice. Darkness encroaching. I think we have a winner.