Deadeye Dick - Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut was one of my four go-to authors through high school, and by the time I left home for university I’d read all of the books of his my parents had, except for one: Deadeye Dick. The (fairly stupid) reason for this was that their copy was either poorly bound or mistreated (or both), and as a result most of the pages would come free as soon as you turned them. I was never comfortable takin it out of the house, and because I did most of my reading on the school bus, I kept giving it a miss.

I’ve picked up a few Vonnegut books since high school (mostly re-reads), but that dumb prejudice kept me from picking it up until a couple of weeks ago, when I finally decided to read the thing, and if it fell apart in my hands, who the hell cares?

It would be a neat irony if it turned out Deadeye Dick was far and away my favourite Vonnegut book, but reality isn’t so tidy. It’s a good book—I’ve never read a Vonnegut that wasn’t—and very much in his milieu, but I don’t think it is quite the equal of Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, or Breakfast of Champions (which most people don’t consider one of his best, but remains a favourite of mine).

The story follows Vonnegut’s familiar obsession with bizarre characters caroming off each other in peculiar coincidences. The narrator, a pharmacist and self-professed “neuter” named Rudy Waltz, recounts his life and that of his helpless bohemian parents. At twelve years old, Rudy fired a gun off his roof at nothing in particular and accidentally murdered a pregnant woman. The resulting arrest and lawsuit ruins his family socially and financially, and he becomes their caregiver, a role he doesn’t seem to particularly resent.

Like most Vonnegut novels, Deadeye Dick bounces between points in time, talking one moment about his venture opening a hotel in Haiti, the next about his short-lived career as a published playwrite. Rudy’s defining trait is his apathy/ Nothing in life excites him, and he recounts everything with muted emotion.

This isn’t the book I’d give someone as an introduction to Vonnegut, but for a fan it’s certainly worth a read.

A Woman First: First Woman - Selina Meyer (Billy Kimball and David Mandel)

Veep is a great show. It’s so good that I couldn’t resist buying A Woman First: First Woman, even though I’m not often one for TV show or movie tie-ins (though I have made exceptions: see The Real Festivus). The book is proported to be an autobiography by former president Selina Meyer, and is presumably distinct from the fictitous Some New Beginnings: Our Next American Journey (though I would happily read that as well). Humour books are tricky, but this one plays very well, with a solid collection of jokes that vary enough in structure to avoid getting formulaic or predictable. It also fleshes out some of the events in the show, which always took the admirable path of hinting at actions rather than dumping exposition in your lap. (I confess that I didn’t fully understand the Uzbek hostage scandal until I read about it here.)

There are some jokes hinting that the entire book was lazily ghostwritten, presumably by Mike McLintock, and the early chapters parsody the optimistic vacuity of most politicians’ books. However, the bulk of the book is presented as an honest recounting of Selina’s life, told from her perspective but without the outright lies that would doubtless obscure any actual publication the character put out. It reads most like a long-winded grievance told to a trusted confident. Selina is arrogant, insulting, and blind to her many defects, but she still tells the story more or less as it probably happened, rather than causing you to glimpse the truth behind veils of falsehood, which is more what I expected.

The voice feels very much like Selina’s, particularly in the final seasons, where her original flaws have metastatized and consumed whatever bit of actual humanity she’d possessed in season 1. Veep and I’m Alan Partridge, two of my favourite shows, were both written by Armando Iannucci, and while there are certainly similarities betwee nthe tow characters—outwardly successful bigheads who are nevertheless deeply unhappy and busting their skulls bloody on the ceilings of their own limitations—I noted in watching Veep that Selina’s flaws deepen, while Alan’s remain more or less flat. Selina in season 1 is a better person than Alan Partridge, but Selina in season 6 is far worse, plummeting past pigheadedness into the depths of clinical sociopathy. I would mark season 4 as the point in which their lines cross on the old Douchometer, though I’d need to rewatch the show carefully to be sure.

Definitely something for fans of the series to pick up,

The Life and Times of the thunderbolt kid - bill bryson

I have read all of Bill Bryson's books at least once (excepting his newest, which I just bought this afternoon and will start shortly), most of them twice, but The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid holds a personal record for me. I'm not sure how many times I have read it, but a conservative estimate would put it at six. It is my literary comfort food, the book I pick up with the most relish, the one that hits me in the belly with a pang every time I reach its final pages, when I know it will be a couple of years at least before I pick it up again.

Though most famous as a travel writer, Bryson's books--especially his later works--cover a wide range of subjects, from science to history to literature. If I had to categorize him as a particular kind of writer, i would do so (somewhat pretentiously, I admit) as a chronicler of knowledge. Whatever his subject, he covers it with verve, intensity,and an unparalleled wit.

Among his works, Thunderbolt Kid is something of an outlier. It is ostensibly an autobiography, but in Bryson's characteristic meandering style, it becomes as much a biography of his era—1950s America--than of himself. He uses his own experiences as springboards to a discussion of the broader period, its strengths, its mores, its foibles and quirks. He peppers the text with interesting facts and arresting anecdotes, including bizarre news stories that serves as epigraphs for each chapter. The result is a rich exploration of America's apotheosis, told without jingoism but with pride.

Bryson’s prose, as always, is excellent. He is quite possibly the greatest comic writer of his time, and in Thunderbolt Kid he is at the top of his game. There are parts of this book that make me laugh every time I read them, even though I know they’re coming from pages away. While I would argue that his greatest, most out-of-the-park lines actually appear in A Walk in the Woods (his description of a bunk bed mattress, in which he notes that the previous occupant “didn’t so much suffer from incontinence as rejoice in it” can get a belly laugh out of me from memory alone, pretty much at will), I think Thunderbolt Kid is, when taken as a whole, his funniest book, and also his most touching. I already look forward to reading it again.