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Versioni di me
Versioni di me è la storia di due fratelli di mezza età che vivono a Los Angeles, Nik e Denise. Nik, chitarrista e cantautore, ha sfiorato la fama in gioventù, ma ha rinunciato a una potenziale carriera da rockstar per rinchiudersi in un quasi totale isolamento; da trent’anni compone dischi geniali o assurdi che regala in pochissime copie ai suoi cari, e va mettendo insieme, in una serie di taccuini e album di ritagli, le «Cronache»: una monumentale biografia immaginaria fatta di articoli, interviste, lettere di fan, recensioni e stroncature, tutte rigorosamente scritte da lui stesso. Denise, che lo adora da sempre, conduce una vita più ordinaria: ha una relazione tranquilla, una figlia che studia a New York, si prende cura della madre anziana; ma anche a lei − specie quando guarda il telegiornale − il mondo causa sempre più ansia. All’indomani del suo cinquantesimo compleanno, Nik scompare senza lasciare traccia, gettando la sorella nello sconforto. Solo dopo un solitario viaggio nelle Cronache di Nik, e in un angolo remoto d’America, Denise riuscirà a trovare pace. Un romanzo sulla famiglia, le ossessioni, la memoria; e la capacità di resistere, con la forza della creatività e dei legami affettivi, alla minacciosa violenza del mondo contemporaneo.
249 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
106 people are currently reading
4067 people want to read
About the author
Dana Spiotta
13 books483 followersScribner published Dana Spiotta’s first novel, Lightning Field, in 2001. The New York Times called it “the debut of a wonderfully gifted writer with an uncanny feel for the absurdities and sadnesses of contemporary life, and an unerring ear for how people talk and try to cope today.” It was a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the West.
Her second novel, Eat the Document, was published in 2006 by Scribner. It was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and a recipient of the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Michiko Kakutani wrote in her review in The New York Times that Eat The Document was “stunning” and described it as “a book that possesses the staccato ferocity of a Joan Didion essay and the razzle-dazzle language and the historical resonance of a Don DeLillo novel.”
Stone Arabia is the title of Spiotta’s third novel. Scribner will publish it on July 12, 2011.
Her second novel, Eat the Document, was published in 2006 by Scribner. It was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and a recipient of the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Michiko Kakutani wrote in her review in The New York Times that Eat The Document was “stunning” and described it as “a book that possesses the staccato ferocity of a Joan Didion essay and the razzle-dazzle language and the historical resonance of a Don DeLillo novel.”
Stone Arabia is the title of Spiotta’s third novel. Scribner will publish it on July 12, 2011.
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October 30, 2018
Library Overdrive ebook....
This was an interesting book primarily focused on a brother sister relationship written as a fictional memoir.
Denise, middle age, is the narrator. She looks after her brother Nik. She also looks after her mother who has Alzheimer’s, and her beautiful daughter.
Nik, also middle age, recorded music for a number of bands - which produced about 20 albums over a 30 year period. He was barely what you would call ‘known’....yet he was a musical artist without an audience. Nik isn’t in the best of health - one of his bandmate friends died, he seems sad ( rather Denise worries about this a lot), and it does seem that Nic has a very fragile ego. Denise definitely worries about ‘that’....and wants to protect and support her brother. She’s his biggest fan.
Denise‘s daughter, Ada, wants to make a movie about Nik’s infamous career - include his recordings chronicling his life. But - Ada thinks of Nik as her *crazy* Uncle Nik. More worry for Denise.
Much to ponder about the characters. Do our memories define who we are?
And how does Art & music define our talents without an audience? How do we fit in this world if we live quiet isolated lives?
If you are wondering about the title....
Denise takes a road trip to New York. Stone Arabia is a small settlement in upstate New York. Since the 1980s, it’s been a home to a colony of the Amish. The Amish were trying to protect their lives by finding another path to the harmony of their own needs.
An intimate novel exploring family, - siblings - aging, memory, identity, obsession, and music.
Dana Spiotta’s perceptiveness stands out in this novel.
This was an interesting book primarily focused on a brother sister relationship written as a fictional memoir.
Denise, middle age, is the narrator. She looks after her brother Nik. She also looks after her mother who has Alzheimer’s, and her beautiful daughter.
Nik, also middle age, recorded music for a number of bands - which produced about 20 albums over a 30 year period. He was barely what you would call ‘known’....yet he was a musical artist without an audience. Nik isn’t in the best of health - one of his bandmate friends died, he seems sad ( rather Denise worries about this a lot), and it does seem that Nic has a very fragile ego. Denise definitely worries about ‘that’....and wants to protect and support her brother. She’s his biggest fan.
Denise‘s daughter, Ada, wants to make a movie about Nik’s infamous career - include his recordings chronicling his life. But - Ada thinks of Nik as her *crazy* Uncle Nik. More worry for Denise.
Much to ponder about the characters. Do our memories define who we are?
And how does Art & music define our talents without an audience? How do we fit in this world if we live quiet isolated lives?
If you are wondering about the title....
Denise takes a road trip to New York. Stone Arabia is a small settlement in upstate New York. Since the 1980s, it’s been a home to a colony of the Amish. The Amish were trying to protect their lives by finding another path to the harmony of their own needs.
An intimate novel exploring family, - siblings - aging, memory, identity, obsession, and music.
Dana Spiotta’s perceptiveness stands out in this novel.
December 5, 2020
CRITIQUE:
The Worth of Worth
Denise's brother is Nik Worth, a multi-instrumentalist and lead singer who is best known as the frontman of the late 70’s bands, the Fakes and the Demonics. His first name for a band that never eventuated was The Make-Believers.
The Fakes were a Beatlesque power pop band whose two albums enjoyed some commercial success, while the Demonics were more "weird sonic experimentations", "low-fi living room" underground and alt-rock that "veered into long, meandering songs". They too released two albums, though with less success than the Fakes.
After Nik wound up both bands, he made 30 solo albums in his studio apartment and distributed them to a short list of fans.
You probably know (of) someone like this, but Nik and Denise are fictions created by Dana Spiotta.
I've read two of her earlier novels, both of which I enjoyed to a three-star extent. Nevertheless, I was still excited to read her third novel, especially having just finished David Mitchell's rock band novel, "Utopia Avenue", which was more of a comic strip than the metafictional alt-rock realism of this novel.
Versions of Nik
Another factor that makes this novel stand out is its preoccupation with memory. The novel is set around the time Nik turns 50, and Denise, 47. Their mother has started to suffer some of the symptoms of dementia, while Denise is worried about her own modestly failing memory.
Ever since Nik’s bands broke up (he must only have been 20 at the time), he has documented his life and music in a fictionalized account he calls the Chronicles. It’s accompanied by a twenty volume music experiment called "The Ontology of Worth", which is variously described by fictional critics as "brilliant" and "self-indulgent".
Counter-Chronicle
When Denise discovers that she features in the Chronicles, she decides that she will create a rival or counter-chronicle, which becomes the essence of the novel that we're reading. While Nik is happy to fictionalise himself using "Versions of Me" (the name of one of his early songs), Denise is more dedicated to discovering the facts and, as far as is possible, the objective truth:
Facsimile of Denise
Denise finds a letter that Nik has written in her guise:
Their approaches differ, but we learn more from the aggregate. Nik suggests that memory, or reality, is a fabrication. Each of us must make our own contribution or we will be overlooked or ignored:
Denise realises that "Nik revelled in his solitude and [she] did not." He was a narcissist who dwelled in a life of solipsism.
Life in the Chronicles wasn't meant to be confused with real life. It was "not a fantasy perfect life at all, just a different life, perhaps a more artful life. But in the Chronicles he wasn't the author of the Chronicles, which was arguably the thing he had grown to be proudest of as time went by."
Fake Life Without Audience
Denise's daughter Ada adds to the variety of perspectives when she makes a documentary about Nik. In response to questions from Ada, Nik argues that "It wasn't [a fake life], it was real. And I grew to like not having an audience. Imagine being freed from sense and only having to pursue pure sound. Imagine letting go of explanations, of misinterpretations, of commerce and receptions. Imagine doing whatever you want with everything that went before you...Imagine total freedom."
Learning from the Don
Dana Spiotta has enjoyed considerable support from Don Delillo. This emerges in Denise's observation that "My memory is dominated by events external to my actual life. These events, for whatever reason, stick in my mind and become secondhand memories. Although I did not experience the events, watching them and reading about them and my reaction to them was a kind of experience nevertheless."
These events, often witnessed on TV, tended to occur in "chaotic foreign countries", where they were used to "violence and terror and collateral death", a DeLillo-esque expression and concern if I've ever seen one.
The Worth of Spiotta
Although I don't fully understand the title of the novel and the event it refers to, "Stone Arabia" reveals an author working at the peak of her creative powers and deserving of comparison to one of her major influences (particularly in his own music novel, "Great Jones Street").
Source: Life from the Roots
SOUNDTRACK:
The Worth of Worth
Denise's brother is Nik Worth, a multi-instrumentalist and lead singer who is best known as the frontman of the late 70’s bands, the Fakes and the Demonics. His first name for a band that never eventuated was The Make-Believers.
The Fakes were a Beatlesque power pop band whose two albums enjoyed some commercial success, while the Demonics were more "weird sonic experimentations", "low-fi living room" underground and alt-rock that "veered into long, meandering songs". They too released two albums, though with less success than the Fakes.
After Nik wound up both bands, he made 30 solo albums in his studio apartment and distributed them to a short list of fans.
You probably know (of) someone like this, but Nik and Denise are fictions created by Dana Spiotta.
I've read two of her earlier novels, both of which I enjoyed to a three-star extent. Nevertheless, I was still excited to read her third novel, especially having just finished David Mitchell's rock band novel, "Utopia Avenue", which was more of a comic strip than the metafictional alt-rock realism of this novel.
Versions of Nik
Another factor that makes this novel stand out is its preoccupation with memory. The novel is set around the time Nik turns 50, and Denise, 47. Their mother has started to suffer some of the symptoms of dementia, while Denise is worried about her own modestly failing memory.
Ever since Nik’s bands broke up (he must only have been 20 at the time), he has documented his life and music in a fictionalized account he calls the Chronicles. It’s accompanied by a twenty volume music experiment called "The Ontology of Worth", which is variously described by fictional critics as "brilliant" and "self-indulgent".
Counter-Chronicle
When Denise discovers that she features in the Chronicles, she decides that she will create a rival or counter-chronicle, which becomes the essence of the novel that we're reading. While Nik is happy to fictionalise himself using "Versions of Me" (the name of one of his early songs), Denise is more dedicated to discovering the facts and, as far as is possible, the objective truth:
"His archive oppressed her. She needed a chronicle of her own, with her own opposite silly penchant for reality and memory and ordinary facts."
"...if I'm here for anything, it is for truth, for disclosure, for the full story, no matter how tacky that full story might make me seem."
"I'm interested in recall, exact recall, of what was said, who said it and to whom. I want to know the truth, undistorted by time and revision and wishes and regrets."
Facsimile of Denise
Denise finds a letter that Nik has written in her guise:
"It was a sham, a hoax, a put-on. This document was from Nik's Chronicles...This was a letter, written by her brother, in her style – or his conjured style of her – for his Chronicles. He did a rather fascinating and painful facsimile of Denise, a witty, brutal parody of her...He made fun of her memory skills..."
Their approaches differ, but we learn more from the aggregate. Nik suggests that memory, or reality, is a fabrication. Each of us must make our own contribution or we will be overlooked or ignored:
"’Self-curate or disappear,’ he would say when they were older and Denise began to mock him for his obsessive archiving."
"...She knew [the Chronicles were] never meant to be about the facts or actual life out in the world."
Denise realises that "Nik revelled in his solitude and [she] did not." He was a narcissist who dwelled in a life of solipsism.
Life in the Chronicles wasn't meant to be confused with real life. It was "not a fantasy perfect life at all, just a different life, perhaps a more artful life. But in the Chronicles he wasn't the author of the Chronicles, which was arguably the thing he had grown to be proudest of as time went by."
Fake Life Without Audience
Denise's daughter Ada adds to the variety of perspectives when she makes a documentary about Nik. In response to questions from Ada, Nik argues that "It wasn't [a fake life], it was real. And I grew to like not having an audience. Imagine being freed from sense and only having to pursue pure sound. Imagine letting go of explanations, of misinterpretations, of commerce and receptions. Imagine doing whatever you want with everything that went before you...Imagine total freedom."
Learning from the Don
Dana Spiotta has enjoyed considerable support from Don Delillo. This emerges in Denise's observation that "My memory is dominated by events external to my actual life. These events, for whatever reason, stick in my mind and become secondhand memories. Although I did not experience the events, watching them and reading about them and my reaction to them was a kind of experience nevertheless."
These events, often witnessed on TV, tended to occur in "chaotic foreign countries", where they were used to "violence and terror and collateral death", a DeLillo-esque expression and concern if I've ever seen one.
The Worth of Spiotta
Although I don't fully understand the title of the novel and the event it refers to, "Stone Arabia" reveals an author working at the peak of her creative powers and deserving of comparison to one of her major influences (particularly in his own music novel, "Great Jones Street").
Source: Life from the Roots
SOUNDTRACK:
June 14, 2012
You will find in this novel some swell writing, the story flows well and touches many issues of the modern era. The protagonist Denise rambles on life, the bubble around her brother Nik the music artist and her mother Ada who is slowly heading down the Dementia road. The story includes real news headlines from timeline of 1978 to 2004 and the protagonists take on it and her heart felt view on matters. Lots of family stuff what could have been, what’s liked and disliked.
This book takes me back to Freedom by Franzen, but Spiotta connects better with Denise’s plight and the world around her, philosophical, intelligent and witty. The book’s ending could be better but I think the writer knows better than me the plotting of her story. That brings on a thought can perfection lead to insanity if you don’t balance the scales in life.
Excerpts
Visit webpage for trailer and other stuff.
http://more2read.com/?review=stone-arabia-by-dana-spiotta
This book takes me back to Freedom by Franzen, but Spiotta connects better with Denise’s plight and the world around her, philosophical, intelligent and witty. The book’s ending could be better but I think the writer knows better than me the plotting of her story. That brings on a thought can perfection lead to insanity if you don’t balance the scales in life.
Excerpts
“Written words demand the deep attention that spoken words just aren’t entitled to. Writers get to pull something solid out of our relentless, everyday production of verbal mucilage. A writer is a word salvager and scavenger and distiller.”
“I have discovered how much memory can dissolve under pressure. The more I try to hold on to my ability to remember, the more it seems to escape my grasp.
I find this terrifying. I have become alarmed at my inability to recall basic facts of the past, and I have worked to improve things. I have been studying various techniques and even tricks, and I should employ them. Memory, it seems, clings to things. Named things. Spaces. Senses.”
“I believe I know that photos have actually destroyed our memories. Every time we take a photograph, we forget to embed things in our minds, in our actual brain cells. The taking of the photograph gets us off the hook, in a way, from trying to remember. I’ll take a photo so I can remember this moment. But what you are actually doing is leaving it out of your brain’s jurisdiction and relying on Polaroid’s, Kodak paper, little disintegrating squares glued in albums.”
“When I think of my family, I think that our history really lives in our bodies. The mind distorts and fails, but the body endures until it doesn’t, and up until that moment it held it all. I knew that when she died, it would be her body I would remember, her physical presence, and to recall any part of her body her smell, her hair would make me weep and grieve for her.”
“The Beslan School broke her open, but what purpose did it serve? What was a person supposed to do with all of this feeling? Feeling nothing was subhuman, but feeling everything, like this, in a dark room in the middle of the night, by yourself, did no one any good. Certainly not Denise, who held her head and wept, and watched two hours of breaking, beating new coverage. Of children and blood and chaos. Each possibility, not feeling or feeling, each response was inadequate.
The worst part would come tomorrow, when they repeated these images over and over; or the day after, when the world out there would move to the next thing, the next terrifying and electrifying and stupefying thing. Are we supposed to forget? If not forget, then what?”
Visit webpage for trailer and other stuff.
http://more2read.com/?review=stone-arabia-by-dana-spiotta
July 23, 2011
In the winter of 2007 my boyfriend and I invented a game called "Let's just see where the day takes us." This would start with taking a bus downtown and end 18 hours later passed out in a stony booze coma, snoring out a toxic mix of carbon dioxide and alcohol fumes. A few days ago he found photographic evidence of one of those days. The shots taken early in the night are quiet and abstract: a series of match books lined up on the counter of the bar, a pint of beer, candid portraits before our faces turned slack and putty-colored.
His animated face fills the screen in one blurred shot. He's surrounded by smears of red lighting consistent with all photos ever taken in the back bar area of Pizza Luce.
"I remember the exact moment I took that," I said, leaning over his laptop.
"It was the header on my blog for awhile," he said.
Maybe I didn't remember taking that. Maybe I just remembered the photograph, and remembering the photograph had replaced remembering it in actuality. And then I was able to call on something I had just read within the past 24 hours from Dana Spiotta's novel "Stone Arabia."
"I believe -- I know -- that photos have destroyed our memories. Every time we take a photograph, we forget to embed things in our minds, in our actual brain cells. The taking of the photograph gets us of the hook, in a way, from trying to remember. I'll take a photo so I can remember this moment. But what you are really doing is leaving it out of your brains jurisdiction and relying on Polaroids, Kodak paper, little disintegrating squares glued in albums."
I love it when that happens. It's so AP English.
Spiotta's novel has memory at it's base: What we remember, what we think we remember, how we are remembered. The story is from the perspective of Denise, a 40-something with a quiet life, world's biggest fan of her older brother who goes by the rock star name Nic Worth. The two have a remarkable sibling link having grown up without supervision in 1970s Los Angeles. Dabblers in eye liner and weed, anonymous sex and punk rock.
In the novel's early pages, Denise is reading a fictitious letter from herself to her college-aged daughter Ada, a part of Nic's life work called "Chronicles." Having never achieved rock and roll fame, Nic has created a fictional buzz about himself and his music. He makes albums that he releases to just a handful of family and ex-lovers. He writes reviews of the albums, assigning them fake bylines of fake writers for Rolling Stone or LA Weekly. When real Nic's dog dies, an event that makes barely a ripple in his actual life, "Chronicles" reports fans sending sympathy cards and an album dedicated to the dog. Everything is intricately catalogued and filed and complete to the point that if an anthropologist stumbled on this time capsule in 200 years, they would believe that Nic Worth had been Elvis-ian in stature.
He has concert posters, concert souvenirs, T-shirts. He has fictional anthologies written by the fake Rolling Stone writers.
"The readers would find them entirely plausible," Nic tells Ada, who is making a documentary about her reclusive uncle. "It would be hard to believe they are conjured from nothing. Particularly when I have all the music. I kept close track. I kept the internal logic and continuity. I have the accompanying scholarship. Verifications could be made."
Denise's defining characteristics are that she is enamored with her brother's work as well as breaking international news. She is in a pleasant, albeit loveless relationship with a man who keeps her rich in Thomas Kincade Chaser of Light trinkets. She has a bestie relationship with her daughter and her mother is in the early stages of dementia. She is a blurred character when the story opens, but becomes more intriguing as she comes into focus as a former wild child and a hunter of breaking news about Abu Ghraib.
It doesn't take teenagers in a psychedelic van to see where the story is headed, but it still unfolds in this really lovely way. Like being on a long slide and deciding halfway down that you don't want to be on the ride but really, you really do. Spiotta also takes Denise on a sort of bizarre side bar that seems a little forced in that put-the-character-on-a-road-trip, a technique that so many novels employ.
This story starts out a little cold and clunky, but it's purpose starts to reveal itself -- not unlike a Polaroid. And then it is a total pleasure.
His animated face fills the screen in one blurred shot. He's surrounded by smears of red lighting consistent with all photos ever taken in the back bar area of Pizza Luce.
"I remember the exact moment I took that," I said, leaning over his laptop.
"It was the header on my blog for awhile," he said.
Maybe I didn't remember taking that. Maybe I just remembered the photograph, and remembering the photograph had replaced remembering it in actuality. And then I was able to call on something I had just read within the past 24 hours from Dana Spiotta's novel "Stone Arabia."
"I believe -- I know -- that photos have destroyed our memories. Every time we take a photograph, we forget to embed things in our minds, in our actual brain cells. The taking of the photograph gets us of the hook, in a way, from trying to remember. I'll take a photo so I can remember this moment. But what you are really doing is leaving it out of your brains jurisdiction and relying on Polaroids, Kodak paper, little disintegrating squares glued in albums."
I love it when that happens. It's so AP English.
Spiotta's novel has memory at it's base: What we remember, what we think we remember, how we are remembered. The story is from the perspective of Denise, a 40-something with a quiet life, world's biggest fan of her older brother who goes by the rock star name Nic Worth. The two have a remarkable sibling link having grown up without supervision in 1970s Los Angeles. Dabblers in eye liner and weed, anonymous sex and punk rock.
In the novel's early pages, Denise is reading a fictitious letter from herself to her college-aged daughter Ada, a part of Nic's life work called "Chronicles." Having never achieved rock and roll fame, Nic has created a fictional buzz about himself and his music. He makes albums that he releases to just a handful of family and ex-lovers. He writes reviews of the albums, assigning them fake bylines of fake writers for Rolling Stone or LA Weekly. When real Nic's dog dies, an event that makes barely a ripple in his actual life, "Chronicles" reports fans sending sympathy cards and an album dedicated to the dog. Everything is intricately catalogued and filed and complete to the point that if an anthropologist stumbled on this time capsule in 200 years, they would believe that Nic Worth had been Elvis-ian in stature.
He has concert posters, concert souvenirs, T-shirts. He has fictional anthologies written by the fake Rolling Stone writers.
"The readers would find them entirely plausible," Nic tells Ada, who is making a documentary about her reclusive uncle. "It would be hard to believe they are conjured from nothing. Particularly when I have all the music. I kept close track. I kept the internal logic and continuity. I have the accompanying scholarship. Verifications could be made."
Denise's defining characteristics are that she is enamored with her brother's work as well as breaking international news. She is in a pleasant, albeit loveless relationship with a man who keeps her rich in Thomas Kincade Chaser of Light trinkets. She has a bestie relationship with her daughter and her mother is in the early stages of dementia. She is a blurred character when the story opens, but becomes more intriguing as she comes into focus as a former wild child and a hunter of breaking news about Abu Ghraib.
It doesn't take teenagers in a psychedelic van to see where the story is headed, but it still unfolds in this really lovely way. Like being on a long slide and deciding halfway down that you don't want to be on the ride but really, you really do. Spiotta also takes Denise on a sort of bizarre side bar that seems a little forced in that put-the-character-on-a-road-trip, a technique that so many novels employ.
This story starts out a little cold and clunky, but it's purpose starts to reveal itself -- not unlike a Polaroid. And then it is a total pleasure.
July 9, 2016
The book misses on every level. Oh, there are paragraphs here and there of fine writing and phrases, there are the starts of intelligent explorations of memory, family, rock and roll musicians, holding on to love, but then phytttttt. In reading this, it feels like a lit firecracker which unexpectedly goes out. The story doesn't explore anything enough with any theme or topic. This novel would have made a better short story, especially if it had focused on the characters of Denise and her mother.
My frustration peaked by the middle of the book. Reading was like being on a treadmill, mileposts passed but no change. No characters stand out and they all seem too ordinary for a book. No tension. Nothing happens. They wake up, go to work, drive home, call on each other and say hi, go home to bed, sleep. Done.
Nic is a musician who apparently has spent decades making CDs for his family that consist of experimental sounds rather than music, (which we can't hear since we are reading a book which makes the pages referring to his music excruciatingly boring after the first five or so pages discussing it). His sister, Denise, appreciates Nik for 235 pages, which is also excruciating dull to read. Yawn. Nik is a boring person. He never shows his work in public, he never has a real job for long, and he has no family contacts except for Denise, her daughter Ava, and his mother. The book's primary focus is on Nik and his Chronicles. The Chronicles consist of revelations which could be either slightly altered versions of his real life or faked PR releases (which I skimmed).
(When is the last time you've read through all of the ads in a magazine or catalog, word by word? Well, that is exactly what half of Nic's chronicles consist of, which means half of this book is nothing but fictionalized ad copy. Which means a third of this book is similar to slogging through 1,000,000 pages of Rolling Stone Magazine music reviews one after another. Hold that thought in your mind for a minute. That's how excruciating of a read this was to me.)
Denise, when not admiring her brother for another million pages, is helping her mother through the middle stage of Early Onset Alzheimer's. This is the most interesting part of the book. Unfortunately, the interactions between Denise and her mother amount to only about 40 pages, but it highlights most movingly that the family is losing its past through inertia and memory loss. The history of generations is fading from everyone's mind. The family is losing not only its stories, it's losing meaning.
Denise is deeply frightened by her mother's illness and her brother's poor health, since he hardly ever leaves his rented house, and since all he does is make experimental sounds and fake ad copy, he has no money. Denise thinks he's a genius (not that there is any proof of that in the book except Denise's feeling). She's frightened that she will lose both her brother and mother, which means she won't have anyone in her life to support her memories. Both her mother, through her failing brain, and her brother, with his fake diaries, have been rewriting all of the real memories of Denise's life. She is frightened that when both ARE gone, her memories will be compromised.
What was the reason for writing this book about a family of four boring, do nothing, go nowhere, say nothing, meet no one people that spend all minutes admiring one brother who does the least living except for the creativity which remains private in his head, in his Chronicles and on unlistenable CD's? If the novel was supposed to be a literary enlightenment or exploration of a dying family, it was a horrendously boring ick way to do this, too boringly done, so boring I couldn't pick up ANYTHING interesting about this family. If the theme was about memory, that has been done much better elsewhere. If it's about creative process, there REALLY is only a hint of that. If it's about rock and roll, well, again there was a page or two and then it was done. About Denise, a character obsessed with her brother and fearful of losing her mother? So obsessed she lives her life wasting it through admiring her brother and his 'art' and watching CNN in her spare time hopelessly crying over the ephemeral passing of news? I made it sound more interesting here than it did in reading it in the book.
For me, an utter waste of time. What am I missing?
My frustration peaked by the middle of the book. Reading was like being on a treadmill, mileposts passed but no change. No characters stand out and they all seem too ordinary for a book. No tension. Nothing happens. They wake up, go to work, drive home, call on each other and say hi, go home to bed, sleep. Done.
Nic is a musician who apparently has spent decades making CDs for his family that consist of experimental sounds rather than music, (which we can't hear since we are reading a book which makes the pages referring to his music excruciatingly boring after the first five or so pages discussing it). His sister, Denise, appreciates Nik for 235 pages, which is also excruciating dull to read. Yawn. Nik is a boring person. He never shows his work in public, he never has a real job for long, and he has no family contacts except for Denise, her daughter Ava, and his mother. The book's primary focus is on Nik and his Chronicles. The Chronicles consist of revelations which could be either slightly altered versions of his real life or faked PR releases (which I skimmed).
(When is the last time you've read through all of the ads in a magazine or catalog, word by word? Well, that is exactly what half of Nic's chronicles consist of, which means half of this book is nothing but fictionalized ad copy. Which means a third of this book is similar to slogging through 1,000,000 pages of Rolling Stone Magazine music reviews one after another. Hold that thought in your mind for a minute. That's how excruciating of a read this was to me.)
Denise, when not admiring her brother for another million pages, is helping her mother through the middle stage of Early Onset Alzheimer's. This is the most interesting part of the book. Unfortunately, the interactions between Denise and her mother amount to only about 40 pages, but it highlights most movingly that the family is losing its past through inertia and memory loss. The history of generations is fading from everyone's mind. The family is losing not only its stories, it's losing meaning.
Denise is deeply frightened by her mother's illness and her brother's poor health, since he hardly ever leaves his rented house, and since all he does is make experimental sounds and fake ad copy, he has no money. Denise thinks he's a genius (not that there is any proof of that in the book except Denise's feeling). She's frightened that she will lose both her brother and mother, which means she won't have anyone in her life to support her memories. Both her mother, through her failing brain, and her brother, with his fake diaries, have been rewriting all of the real memories of Denise's life. She is frightened that when both ARE gone, her memories will be compromised.
What was the reason for writing this book about a family of four boring, do nothing, go nowhere, say nothing, meet no one people that spend all minutes admiring one brother who does the least living except for the creativity which remains private in his head, in his Chronicles and on unlistenable CD's? If the novel was supposed to be a literary enlightenment or exploration of a dying family, it was a horrendously boring ick way to do this, too boringly done, so boring I couldn't pick up ANYTHING interesting about this family. If the theme was about memory, that has been done much better elsewhere. If it's about creative process, there REALLY is only a hint of that. If it's about rock and roll, well, again there was a page or two and then it was done. About Denise, a character obsessed with her brother and fearful of losing her mother? So obsessed she lives her life wasting it through admiring her brother and his 'art' and watching CNN in her spare time hopelessly crying over the ephemeral passing of news? I made it sound more interesting here than it did in reading it in the book.
For me, an utter waste of time. What am I missing?
July 19, 2011
There are points in this book where I was so frustrated with the clunky attempts at post-post-modern structure games that I had to put it down. Reading through all the positive reviews of this work, I almost feel I must've read a different book. This is not a "rock'n'roll" novel but instead a mish-mash of prose about two sad people living pathetic lives. There's little here that's compelling although the character "Nik" has his moments. The forced connections between the narrator Denise's obsession with various current events (which, sadly all read as very dated at this point) and her inability to connect to the mess that is her life, left me frustrated not so much with the character (as was the obvious goal) but with the writer. The 2 main characters here are supposedly 47 and 50 but read more like they're in their late 50's. Of course, since the bulk of the narrative is told in first person removed - Denise's story told via a series of writings she creates on the event of her brother's disappearance - we cannot know what is simply Denise's skewed POV and what is actually happening in the narrative. The shifts from third back into stilted first person served only to break the narrative flow and did nothing toward creating a more compelling narrative. Overall, there is much that shows potential here and Nik's character (albeit a cliche of the failed rock musician/narcissist) reads as somewhat interesting. What this book needs is a good editorial spanking. Or at least an editor who would make this obviously talented writer work harder to tell a compelling, cohesive narrative. That this novel has received such rave reviews I find, to be honest, depressing. I'd give it a B minus at best.
July 18, 2013
Many of Spiotta’s preoccupations appear here, obsessively watching movies, mentally ill siblings, cultural fixation to the point of psychological, our visions of reality versus the grim mortality of it, an almost surreal examination of the objects of our culture, and trying to find real emotions in a society built on spectacle. This book revolves around a sister and a brother. The brother has over the years obsessively (can’t help but use that word a lot when discussing one of her books) created a rock and roll stardom for himself. This book is about much more than that simple description can hint at. Spiotta’s insights are painfully exact but necessary, her vision is satirical but compassionate, odd but recognizable, and she will make you examine your life and face what makes a life in an over mediated and under caring world. Questions of what is fame, what is compassion, and what is life for are handled in an odd but compelling book with little fat or self-indulgence, Spiotta has an eye for the failures and triumphs of humanity and a voice to articulate it.
December 22, 2013
“Stone Arabia” is one of those weird titles that sound brilliant only after you’ve finished the book. “A Visit from the Goon Squad” was another one, and it’s curious that both these clever novels jump off the 1980s punk scene in Los Angeles and then move into the melancholy tones of middle age. Like Jennifer Egan, Dana Spiotta records the smothered dreams of a washed-up musician, but what she’s really listening for is the melody of nostalgia that none of us can resist.
At the center of “Stone Arabia” sits a 50-year-old bartender named Nik Worth who sponges off his devoted sister, Denise. In the late ’70s, Nik and his band almost made it big. “Nik had the sensibility down,” Denise remembers. “And Nik had the look down. He was born to look pasty and skinny and angular.” Like so many other musicians, though, he never attained escape velocity, and his career faded away, another no-hit wonder in the City of Angels. That’s an old story, of course, the provenance of a million electric guitars offered up in neighborhood garage sales. But it marks the moment that Nik’s life became startlingly strange.
Faced with the prospect of oblivion, Nik began throwing all his energy into creating an alternative history of a spectacular career, a sprawling collection of fake documents he calls “The Chronicles.” Even as his real life stagnated into loneliness and poverty, he wrote Rolling Stone profiles of himself, Los Angeles Times reviews of his music (good and bad), fan magazines and newsletters. He created his own concert posters and album covers. He wrote lyrics and recorded his own CDs. Eventually, “The Chronicles” grew to more than 30 volumes of faux history that describe the lifework of a musical colossus on a par with Elvis — complete with all the usual news about band breakups, court-ordered rehab, divorce and paparazzi photos. “It was all quite systematic and gratuitously laborious.”
I was reminded of a hilarious novel that far too few people read: “Simon Silber: Works for Solo Piano,” by Christopher Miller, about a ghastly musician who hires a man to write his fictional biography. But Spiotta’s comedy is more muted and melancholy. And she’s got a casually epigraphic style that allows her to slough off clever lines: “When a young person smokes,” Denise says, “it just underlines their excess life. It looks appealing and reminds you they feel as if they have life to spare.”
“Self-curate or disappear,” Nik tells his sister; the awesome purity of his solipsism is sad, even if he knows it’s a “profoundly elaborated private joke.” Indeed, if Nik weren’t so laid back and cool, the whole thing would be downright scary: Jack Nicholson strumming “Blitzkrieg Bop” in an empty hotel. The level of detail in “The Chronicles” — the handmade ticket stubs and liner notes, the creation of rival bands and academic experts — suggests a misspent creative mania driven by deep disappointment.
And yet in a note at the end of the novel, Spiotta says she was inspired to create this “eccentric genius” by her stepfather, “a true artist,” who recorded a similar “chronicle of his life as a secret rock star.” After reading this dark novel, I’m not convinced by that praise, which sounds more like an effort to avoid unpleasantness at her next family get-together. But there is something essentially American about writing one’s own usable past, an act of self-creation that’s so confident it needs no confirmation from the outside world. Perhaps in our echo-chamber culture of vapid celebrity, Nik’s determination to create his own fame makes him a tragic hero.
In any case, we get only well-parceled glimpses of Nik and his postmodern autobiography. “Stone Arabia” is as much about Denise, the younger sibling who adores him, who thinks of herself only as a footnote to her brother’s private success. She may spend the whole novel looking at Nik, but she becomes the more fascinating, tragically resonant character for us. A hypochondriac who’s desperately unhappy but terrified of dying, she’s rubbed raw with “a nearly debilitating sympathy” for every tragedy she sees in the news. She articulates the common plight of living in a sea of images, videos, stories and Web sites that ask us to constantly witness the suffering of strangers all over the world. “What was a person supposed to do with all of this feeling?” Spiotta asks as Denise weeps through the television coverage of the Beslan school massacre in 2004. “Feeling nothing was subhuman, but feeling everything, like this, in a dark room in the middle of the night, by yourself, did no one any good.”
Denise has the sense of herself dissolving in the acid bath of the world’s pain pouring over her, and it’s that terrifying loss of selfhood that unifies the strains of this novel and gives it the deep chords of profundity. While Nik meticulously constructs his own glorious past, Denise remains panicked about losing hers. She challenges herself every day with little games to forestall the symptoms of Alzheimer’s that have already ravaged her mother’s brain.
What’s most remarkable about “Stone Arabia” is the way Spiotta explores such broad, endemic social ills in the small, peculiar lives of these sad siblings. Her reflections on the precarious nature of modern life are witty until they’re really unsettling. She’s captured that hankering for something alluring in the past that never was — a moment of desire and pretense that the best pop music articulates for each generation and makes everything else that comes later sound flat and disappointing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
At the center of “Stone Arabia” sits a 50-year-old bartender named Nik Worth who sponges off his devoted sister, Denise. In the late ’70s, Nik and his band almost made it big. “Nik had the sensibility down,” Denise remembers. “And Nik had the look down. He was born to look pasty and skinny and angular.” Like so many other musicians, though, he never attained escape velocity, and his career faded away, another no-hit wonder in the City of Angels. That’s an old story, of course, the provenance of a million electric guitars offered up in neighborhood garage sales. But it marks the moment that Nik’s life became startlingly strange.
Faced with the prospect of oblivion, Nik began throwing all his energy into creating an alternative history of a spectacular career, a sprawling collection of fake documents he calls “The Chronicles.” Even as his real life stagnated into loneliness and poverty, he wrote Rolling Stone profiles of himself, Los Angeles Times reviews of his music (good and bad), fan magazines and newsletters. He created his own concert posters and album covers. He wrote lyrics and recorded his own CDs. Eventually, “The Chronicles” grew to more than 30 volumes of faux history that describe the lifework of a musical colossus on a par with Elvis — complete with all the usual news about band breakups, court-ordered rehab, divorce and paparazzi photos. “It was all quite systematic and gratuitously laborious.”
I was reminded of a hilarious novel that far too few people read: “Simon Silber: Works for Solo Piano,” by Christopher Miller, about a ghastly musician who hires a man to write his fictional biography. But Spiotta’s comedy is more muted and melancholy. And she’s got a casually epigraphic style that allows her to slough off clever lines: “When a young person smokes,” Denise says, “it just underlines their excess life. It looks appealing and reminds you they feel as if they have life to spare.”
“Self-curate or disappear,” Nik tells his sister; the awesome purity of his solipsism is sad, even if he knows it’s a “profoundly elaborated private joke.” Indeed, if Nik weren’t so laid back and cool, the whole thing would be downright scary: Jack Nicholson strumming “Blitzkrieg Bop” in an empty hotel. The level of detail in “The Chronicles” — the handmade ticket stubs and liner notes, the creation of rival bands and academic experts — suggests a misspent creative mania driven by deep disappointment.
And yet in a note at the end of the novel, Spiotta says she was inspired to create this “eccentric genius” by her stepfather, “a true artist,” who recorded a similar “chronicle of his life as a secret rock star.” After reading this dark novel, I’m not convinced by that praise, which sounds more like an effort to avoid unpleasantness at her next family get-together. But there is something essentially American about writing one’s own usable past, an act of self-creation that’s so confident it needs no confirmation from the outside world. Perhaps in our echo-chamber culture of vapid celebrity, Nik’s determination to create his own fame makes him a tragic hero.
In any case, we get only well-parceled glimpses of Nik and his postmodern autobiography. “Stone Arabia” is as much about Denise, the younger sibling who adores him, who thinks of herself only as a footnote to her brother’s private success. She may spend the whole novel looking at Nik, but she becomes the more fascinating, tragically resonant character for us. A hypochondriac who’s desperately unhappy but terrified of dying, she’s rubbed raw with “a nearly debilitating sympathy” for every tragedy she sees in the news. She articulates the common plight of living in a sea of images, videos, stories and Web sites that ask us to constantly witness the suffering of strangers all over the world. “What was a person supposed to do with all of this feeling?” Spiotta asks as Denise weeps through the television coverage of the Beslan school massacre in 2004. “Feeling nothing was subhuman, but feeling everything, like this, in a dark room in the middle of the night, by yourself, did no one any good.”
Denise has the sense of herself dissolving in the acid bath of the world’s pain pouring over her, and it’s that terrifying loss of selfhood that unifies the strains of this novel and gives it the deep chords of profundity. While Nik meticulously constructs his own glorious past, Denise remains panicked about losing hers. She challenges herself every day with little games to forestall the symptoms of Alzheimer’s that have already ravaged her mother’s brain.
What’s most remarkable about “Stone Arabia” is the way Spiotta explores such broad, endemic social ills in the small, peculiar lives of these sad siblings. Her reflections on the precarious nature of modern life are witty until they’re really unsettling. She’s captured that hankering for something alluring in the past that never was — a moment of desire and pretense that the best pop music articulates for each generation and makes everything else that comes later sound flat and disappointing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
February 22, 2025
Con la lectura de Stone Arabia, me he subido a un viejo Cadillac y me he puesto rock and roll a todo trapo para disfrutar de un viaje emocionante por las carreteras de Los Ángeles, siempre muy bien acompañado por Nik Worth, un apasionado del rock que nos muestra a través de los años su paso como líder por distintas bandas musicales y como cantautor, siempre creando canciones que, gusten más o menos, lo tienen allí donde él cree que merece estar. Nik es un apasionado de la música desde que era un niño, el regalo de una guitarra cuando cumplía los diez años es uno de los artífices de esa magnánima pasión. Ahora, a sus cincuenta años, nos muestra todo su repertorio de una forma brillante y apasionada.
Al contrario que una novela de rock tradicional donde imperan las drogas, las depresiones o las noches de hotel en soledad e incomprensión, esta es una novela luminosa y muy cercana. Una novela que empieza lenta, muy alejada de su pretexto inicial, pero que nos sirve en bandeja una relación preciosa entre Nik y su hermana Denise, su fan número 1. A lo largo de la trama, y como narradora principal, Denise nos habla de miedos y frustraciones compartidas, ya no solamente con su hermano, también con una madre que padece de Alzheimer y de su hija Ada. Esta pretende hacer una película sobre la complicada carrera musical de su tío Nik, una carrera alejada de los focos y de las superventas y que, aunque pueda parecer lo contrario, lo lleva a grabar veinte discos en un periodo de treinta años. Pero su tío Nik hace música porque le gusta hacer música, no la hace para gustar a nadie ni para vender, simplemente le gusta crear y compartir con su familia, en especial con su hermana.
Aunque pueda parecer una novela autobiográfica, Stone Arabia es todo ficción, una novela preciosa que fluye de forma perfecta, con unos personajes muy bien trabajados y explorando temas y preocupaciones de la actualidad. Personalmente y como un gran apasionado de la música y del rock en especial, creo que Dana Spiotta nos narra una novela íntima que explora el amor inequívoco de la familia, la pureza y el valor de un hermano, el paso de los años y su consecuente melancolía, los recuerdos y la memoria, la identidad y la propia personalidad de cada uno, la obsesión, los sueños o la música.
Os dejo una frase que me ha gustado mucho:
“Lo único que queda de ese pastel es una foto en algún álbum perdido. Y no, tener una foto no sirve de nada. De hecho, creo (sé) que las fotos han acabado con nuestros recuerdos. Cada vez que hacemos una foto, nos olvidamos de grabar ese momento en la memoria, en nuestras neuronas. Cuando hacemos una foto nos libramos en cierto modo de tener que recordar. «Voy a sacar una foto para recordar este momento». Pero lo que haces en realidad es dejar ese momento fuera de la jurisdicción del cerebro y relegarlo a una Polaroid, o a un papel Kodak, pequeños recuadros medio desintegrados, pegados en álbumes. Tan fáciles de perder, olvidados en cajas amontonadas en un garaje húmedo. O sepultarlo en alguna carpeta de un dispositivo digital enorme, a la espera de que alguien la abra.”
Al contrario que una novela de rock tradicional donde imperan las drogas, las depresiones o las noches de hotel en soledad e incomprensión, esta es una novela luminosa y muy cercana. Una novela que empieza lenta, muy alejada de su pretexto inicial, pero que nos sirve en bandeja una relación preciosa entre Nik y su hermana Denise, su fan número 1. A lo largo de la trama, y como narradora principal, Denise nos habla de miedos y frustraciones compartidas, ya no solamente con su hermano, también con una madre que padece de Alzheimer y de su hija Ada. Esta pretende hacer una película sobre la complicada carrera musical de su tío Nik, una carrera alejada de los focos y de las superventas y que, aunque pueda parecer lo contrario, lo lleva a grabar veinte discos en un periodo de treinta años. Pero su tío Nik hace música porque le gusta hacer música, no la hace para gustar a nadie ni para vender, simplemente le gusta crear y compartir con su familia, en especial con su hermana.
Aunque pueda parecer una novela autobiográfica, Stone Arabia es todo ficción, una novela preciosa que fluye de forma perfecta, con unos personajes muy bien trabajados y explorando temas y preocupaciones de la actualidad. Personalmente y como un gran apasionado de la música y del rock en especial, creo que Dana Spiotta nos narra una novela íntima que explora el amor inequívoco de la familia, la pureza y el valor de un hermano, el paso de los años y su consecuente melancolía, los recuerdos y la memoria, la identidad y la propia personalidad de cada uno, la obsesión, los sueños o la música.
Os dejo una frase que me ha gustado mucho:
“Lo único que queda de ese pastel es una foto en algún álbum perdido. Y no, tener una foto no sirve de nada. De hecho, creo (sé) que las fotos han acabado con nuestros recuerdos. Cada vez que hacemos una foto, nos olvidamos de grabar ese momento en la memoria, en nuestras neuronas. Cuando hacemos una foto nos libramos en cierto modo de tener que recordar. «Voy a sacar una foto para recordar este momento». Pero lo que haces en realidad es dejar ese momento fuera de la jurisdicción del cerebro y relegarlo a una Polaroid, o a un papel Kodak, pequeños recuadros medio desintegrados, pegados en álbumes. Tan fáciles de perder, olvidados en cajas amontonadas en un garaje húmedo. O sepultarlo en alguna carpeta de un dispositivo digital enorme, a la espera de que alguien la abra.”
August 24, 2012
Dana Spiotta has been reading my mail and walking through my memories and dreams. Which is fine, really. She is most welcome.
Not since Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad has an author captured so much of what drew me and my crew to certain types of music when I was a kid. Three decades on, I've begun to realize I may never again feel such unfettered passion, but Stone Arabia comes tantalizingly close to revivifying some heady feelings. At times I could smell Aqua Net while I was reading.
Upon finishing Stone Arabia - at 2 AM or so, because I could not put it down - I felt new life coursing through old friends and bandmates, most of whom, like me, did not get the brass ring. Some are dead, some simply broken, but a precious few, like Stone Arabia 's rock and roll hermit genius Nik Kranis (AKA Nik Worth) remain creative in the face of dashed hopes and dreams deferred. These are my people.
49-year-old Nik, however, who hasn't played a gig since 1979, is several cuts above in terms of his obsessive devotion; he makes music, yes, but he also creates an alternate universe in which he is a star. Nik's arc is wildly impressive, and not only includes many self-recorded/designed/released albums, but also reviews and interviews by journalists of Nik's own invention. One reviewer, in fact, loathes the work, and the pith and tone of the ersatz music journalism is, at times, hilarious. Yet, brilliant as he is, anti-digital Nik allows a scant few folks to actually hear his music and read the cut-and-paste scrapbooks he calls his Chronicles. Among them is his devoted little sister, 47-year-old single mom Denise, who narrates Stone Arabia.
Denise is as much a piece of work as Nik, and although the novel takes brief excursions into third person, we mostly experience Stone Arabia in Denise's head. The tone is both conversational and epistolary, with lengthy philosophical excusions bumping against brief emails, blog entries, and transcripts from Denise's 22-year-old daughter Ada's documentary about Nik.
As much as I latched on to Nik, the meat of the story is Denise's personal struggles, of which her increasingly remote, alcoholic brother is but one. Spiotta renders these trials with familiar ache, but also refreshing sucker-punch humor. Denise struggles with credit card debt (exacerbated by frequent loans to Nik) perimenopause, and an addiction to the 24-hour-news cycle. Plus, Nik and Denise's mom has Alzheimer's (deadbeat dad is long dead) and Denise herself is beginning to feel her own memory cracking beneath the weight of her years. Yet her recollections of both her and Nik's childhood, and then formative years as latchkey kids in glittery-then-punky Los Angeles, are vividly cinematic; the Kranis kids walk out of a screening of A Hard Day's Night and share amazement that the world is unchanged; teenage Denise obsesses over fey boys; at a disastrous pool party, young single mom Denise realizes, with horror, that she has gone from carefree to careless.
The rock & roll stuff is great, but Spiotta's multi-leveled depiction of a modern, albeit eccentric family is really the heart of the book. And it's a big, beating thing, that heart. We ride the emotional tides of daughters, siblings, girlfriends, parents; but through the disappointment, rage, anxiety, and irritation shines an abiding, treacle-free love. Spiotta reminds us that memories fade, people change, plans don't pan out, dreams die, fuck-ups accrue, but we all hope for love through it all. Stone Arabia spins that love around, surface noise and all.
Not since Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad has an author captured so much of what drew me and my crew to certain types of music when I was a kid. Three decades on, I've begun to realize I may never again feel such unfettered passion, but Stone Arabia comes tantalizingly close to revivifying some heady feelings. At times I could smell Aqua Net while I was reading.
Upon finishing Stone Arabia - at 2 AM or so, because I could not put it down - I felt new life coursing through old friends and bandmates, most of whom, like me, did not get the brass ring. Some are dead, some simply broken, but a precious few, like Stone Arabia 's rock and roll hermit genius Nik Kranis (AKA Nik Worth) remain creative in the face of dashed hopes and dreams deferred. These are my people.
49-year-old Nik, however, who hasn't played a gig since 1979, is several cuts above in terms of his obsessive devotion; he makes music, yes, but he also creates an alternate universe in which he is a star. Nik's arc is wildly impressive, and not only includes many self-recorded/designed/released albums, but also reviews and interviews by journalists of Nik's own invention. One reviewer, in fact, loathes the work, and the pith and tone of the ersatz music journalism is, at times, hilarious. Yet, brilliant as he is, anti-digital Nik allows a scant few folks to actually hear his music and read the cut-and-paste scrapbooks he calls his Chronicles. Among them is his devoted little sister, 47-year-old single mom Denise, who narrates Stone Arabia.
Denise is as much a piece of work as Nik, and although the novel takes brief excursions into third person, we mostly experience Stone Arabia in Denise's head. The tone is both conversational and epistolary, with lengthy philosophical excusions bumping against brief emails, blog entries, and transcripts from Denise's 22-year-old daughter Ada's documentary about Nik.
As much as I latched on to Nik, the meat of the story is Denise's personal struggles, of which her increasingly remote, alcoholic brother is but one. Spiotta renders these trials with familiar ache, but also refreshing sucker-punch humor. Denise struggles with credit card debt (exacerbated by frequent loans to Nik) perimenopause, and an addiction to the 24-hour-news cycle. Plus, Nik and Denise's mom has Alzheimer's (deadbeat dad is long dead) and Denise herself is beginning to feel her own memory cracking beneath the weight of her years. Yet her recollections of both her and Nik's childhood, and then formative years as latchkey kids in glittery-then-punky Los Angeles, are vividly cinematic; the Kranis kids walk out of a screening of A Hard Day's Night and share amazement that the world is unchanged; teenage Denise obsesses over fey boys; at a disastrous pool party, young single mom Denise realizes, with horror, that she has gone from carefree to careless.
The rock & roll stuff is great, but Spiotta's multi-leveled depiction of a modern, albeit eccentric family is really the heart of the book. And it's a big, beating thing, that heart. We ride the emotional tides of daughters, siblings, girlfriends, parents; but through the disappointment, rage, anxiety, and irritation shines an abiding, treacle-free love. Spiotta reminds us that memories fade, people change, plans don't pan out, dreams die, fuck-ups accrue, but we all hope for love through it all. Stone Arabia spins that love around, surface noise and all.
July 24, 2011
My take on this book: meh. But I'm having an incredibly hard time articulating why I was so wearied and largely unimpressed by what should have, by all accounts, been a fascinating read. The premise of the book is promising. Nik is a famous rockstar, but nobody knows it except for a handful of fans -- his ex-bandmates, his ex-girlfriends, his sister, his niece. By all appearances, Nik's an aging, washed-up musician turned druggie bartender, but in his secret life (documented in a 30-volume scrapbook called The Chronicles) the LPS he's recorded and released to his small group of followers all these years have made him a celebrity. To support this alternate narrative, Nik's created rave reviews, letters, fan-gear and bootleg copies of his own work to support his alternate narrative.
Most of the story is told from the perspective of Nik's sister, Denise, who has started writing a kind of Counterchronicles of her own, to meet Nik's "witty" and "brutal" depiction of her in his archive. Denise is in her late 40s too. Nik and Denise have always been close. She's the only one who "gets" his music and sensibility, and he relies on her as an emotional and financial anchor. But she's a little unstable too-- she can barely pay her bills, and has a tendency to get sucked in by sensational news stories, losing track of her real life for days at a time. She's also convinced she's slowly losing her memory.
The book offers up a collage of questions about aging, identity, art and its audience, fame and its construction, privacy, knowing and being known and how we define who we are. All interesting things to consider, but the storyline offers little in the way of answers or new insights. Instead, things as the plot thickens (when Denise's 20-something Brooklynite daughter Ada decides to make a documentary about her eccentric uncle) things seem to just splinter and dead-end. Spiotta is a brilliant writer and there are some terrific descriptive passages (especially as Denise is recalling her youth), but it doesn't all really come together. Confronted with the complexity of modern life -- this is a book that embraces internet news, blog posts, Google searches, voicemail, cable television, rented DVDs and YouTube -- Stone Arabia essentially just throws its arms up in a post-modern shrug.
Most of the story is told from the perspective of Nik's sister, Denise, who has started writing a kind of Counterchronicles of her own, to meet Nik's "witty" and "brutal" depiction of her in his archive. Denise is in her late 40s too. Nik and Denise have always been close. She's the only one who "gets" his music and sensibility, and he relies on her as an emotional and financial anchor. But she's a little unstable too-- she can barely pay her bills, and has a tendency to get sucked in by sensational news stories, losing track of her real life for days at a time. She's also convinced she's slowly losing her memory.
The book offers up a collage of questions about aging, identity, art and its audience, fame and its construction, privacy, knowing and being known and how we define who we are. All interesting things to consider, but the storyline offers little in the way of answers or new insights. Instead, things as the plot thickens (when Denise's 20-something Brooklynite daughter Ada decides to make a documentary about her eccentric uncle) things seem to just splinter and dead-end. Spiotta is a brilliant writer and there are some terrific descriptive passages (especially as Denise is recalling her youth), but it doesn't all really come together. Confronted with the complexity of modern life -- this is a book that embraces internet news, blog posts, Google searches, voicemail, cable television, rented DVDs and YouTube -- Stone Arabia essentially just throws its arms up in a post-modern shrug.
September 6, 2011
Nabokov stated in the first page of his 1961 memoir, Speak, Memory, "...our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." In Diana Spiotta's new novel, STONE ARABIA, eccentric narcissist, obsessive archivist and iconoclastic musician Nik Kranis mines that fleeting fissure of light and warns his sister, Denise, "Self-curate or disappear."
This nostalgic and affecting story of siblings (and family) is a philosophical meditation on memory and the driven desire for autobiography--to document and render a consequential life, and to assemble disparate experiences into coherent narratives. "And even then," says Denise, "the backward glance is distorted by the lens of the present...It is not just that emotions distort memory. It is that memory distorts memory."
At the vortex of this novel is fifty-year-old Nik Kranis, aka his alter ego, Nik Worth, a pre-punk, no-hit wonder, LA musician, whose band The Fakes almost made it twenty years ago. "Nik had the sensibility down. And Nik had the look down. He was born to look pasty and skinny and angular."
But a combination of self-sabotage and solipsism undermined commercial success, and Nik alternately constructed a legendary career in music via his manufactured narrative, "The Chronicles." Stretching back from1973-2004, "The Chronicles" is a thirty-volume reinvention of a life, a daily scrapbook and fictionalized biography of Nik Worth, platinum rock star. It is a career arc so detailed and spectacular that it would rival Dylan's.
Included in The Chronicles is every band Nik was ever in, every record he ever made, and his solo career, recorded via his twenty-volume "Ontology of Worth." We also get liner notes, reviews (sometimes highly critical and damning, all created from Nik's imagination), obits of former band members, and detailed artwork for every cover. Nik is what we would call a legend in his own mind.
We depend on Denise's shifting narrative modes to trace the authentic Nik, a hermetic, aging, chain-smoking, alcoholic mooch who is blasé about his present decay and his future prospects. "He pursued a lifetime of abuse that could only come from a warped relationship with the future." But even Denise is hooked on Nik's worth as a musician.
The story is narrated largely through Denise's point-of-view, which shifts back and forth from first to third person, and is conveyed like the 80's eclectic music scene, mash-up style, that fans of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad would appreciate. She's the younger sister and caretaker of the family, and Nik's biggest fan. However, Denise is concerned with exact recall, and is writing "The "Counterchronicles" as counterpoint to Nik's mythical biography, to earnestly document an accurate record of recent events.
Besides Nik, Denise's life orbits around her daughter, Ada, a documentary filmmaker who wants Nik as her next subject; a tepid relationship with boyfriend, Jay, who she sees every two weeks for sex and old movies; and a mother who is suffering from early dementia. Denise is frightened of her own memory loss, convinced that it is imminent and inevitable.
Trebly and anxious, Denise panics vicariously through sordid and tragic news events. External though they are, they penetrate her personal boundaries, leak inside and cause ongoing existential crises. SARS, Abu Ghraib, and a celebrity murder-suicide are but a few of the terrors that invade Denise's psyche. Moreover, Denise and Nik are enmeshed to a degree that "My sister doesn't count as my audience because she feels like an extension of me. She's, well, an alternative version of me."
Spiotta's creamy prose is abundant with quotable lines and arch aphorisms. It is also warm, arresting, emotionally accessible. There isn't much of a plot, but the story is powerful and vibrant, laced with mordant, electric riffs and visceral, melancholy chords.
See my full review on mostlyfiction.com
Link to it: http://bookreview.mostlyfiction.com/2...
This nostalgic and affecting story of siblings (and family) is a philosophical meditation on memory and the driven desire for autobiography--to document and render a consequential life, and to assemble disparate experiences into coherent narratives. "And even then," says Denise, "the backward glance is distorted by the lens of the present...It is not just that emotions distort memory. It is that memory distorts memory."
At the vortex of this novel is fifty-year-old Nik Kranis, aka his alter ego, Nik Worth, a pre-punk, no-hit wonder, LA musician, whose band The Fakes almost made it twenty years ago. "Nik had the sensibility down. And Nik had the look down. He was born to look pasty and skinny and angular."
But a combination of self-sabotage and solipsism undermined commercial success, and Nik alternately constructed a legendary career in music via his manufactured narrative, "The Chronicles." Stretching back from1973-2004, "The Chronicles" is a thirty-volume reinvention of a life, a daily scrapbook and fictionalized biography of Nik Worth, platinum rock star. It is a career arc so detailed and spectacular that it would rival Dylan's.
Included in The Chronicles is every band Nik was ever in, every record he ever made, and his solo career, recorded via his twenty-volume "Ontology of Worth." We also get liner notes, reviews (sometimes highly critical and damning, all created from Nik's imagination), obits of former band members, and detailed artwork for every cover. Nik is what we would call a legend in his own mind.
We depend on Denise's shifting narrative modes to trace the authentic Nik, a hermetic, aging, chain-smoking, alcoholic mooch who is blasé about his present decay and his future prospects. "He pursued a lifetime of abuse that could only come from a warped relationship with the future." But even Denise is hooked on Nik's worth as a musician.
The story is narrated largely through Denise's point-of-view, which shifts back and forth from first to third person, and is conveyed like the 80's eclectic music scene, mash-up style, that fans of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad would appreciate. She's the younger sister and caretaker of the family, and Nik's biggest fan. However, Denise is concerned with exact recall, and is writing "The "Counterchronicles" as counterpoint to Nik's mythical biography, to earnestly document an accurate record of recent events.
Besides Nik, Denise's life orbits around her daughter, Ada, a documentary filmmaker who wants Nik as her next subject; a tepid relationship with boyfriend, Jay, who she sees every two weeks for sex and old movies; and a mother who is suffering from early dementia. Denise is frightened of her own memory loss, convinced that it is imminent and inevitable.
Trebly and anxious, Denise panics vicariously through sordid and tragic news events. External though they are, they penetrate her personal boundaries, leak inside and cause ongoing existential crises. SARS, Abu Ghraib, and a celebrity murder-suicide are but a few of the terrors that invade Denise's psyche. Moreover, Denise and Nik are enmeshed to a degree that "My sister doesn't count as my audience because she feels like an extension of me. She's, well, an alternative version of me."
Spiotta's creamy prose is abundant with quotable lines and arch aphorisms. It is also warm, arresting, emotionally accessible. There isn't much of a plot, but the story is powerful and vibrant, laced with mordant, electric riffs and visceral, melancholy chords.
See my full review on mostlyfiction.com
Link to it: http://bookreview.mostlyfiction.com/2...
November 27, 2012
A fascinating meditation on memory and narrative. Denise is the sister of Nik, a rock star in his own mind and obsessive chronicler of his own stardom. The prose in this book is wonderful. Lots of people mention Don DeLillo as an influence (and he's thanked in the acknowledgments), and I can see why. The mixture of sparse, declarative sentences with more angular stuff really makes the paragraphs click.
I found myself thinking a lot about Daniel Johnston, the great singer/songwriter/outsider artist from Austin whose songs have a major cult following. It's never entirely clear how much recognition Nik has in the music world. I think it's entirely possible the only people who listen to his music are Denise and her daughter. But if his music is good, it seems very likely that it's good in the timeless, pop-y way that Johnston's is good.
That I read this book in a narcotic haze after surgery only added to the effect that Spiotta is able to spin here.
Recommended for anyone who loves rock and roll, punk, underground culture, etc. Also a great companion piece to another great book that tackles memory, narrative, and rock, albeit in a very different manner, A Visit from the Goon Squad.
I found myself thinking a lot about Daniel Johnston, the great singer/songwriter/outsider artist from Austin whose songs have a major cult following. It's never entirely clear how much recognition Nik has in the music world. I think it's entirely possible the only people who listen to his music are Denise and her daughter. But if his music is good, it seems very likely that it's good in the timeless, pop-y way that Johnston's is good.
That I read this book in a narcotic haze after surgery only added to the effect that Spiotta is able to spin here.
Recommended for anyone who loves rock and roll, punk, underground culture, etc. Also a great companion piece to another great book that tackles memory, narrative, and rock, albeit in a very different manner, A Visit from the Goon Squad.
January 5, 2018
"He pursued a lifetime of abuse that could only come from a warped relationship with the future"
I've been thinking about what to write in this review for a while now, and I can't seem to come up with anything.
So, the only thing I can offer in this review are my feelings for the book: I really, really liked it, and I can't even pinpoint the reason why. It seems I just liked the dynamics between the characters; I tend to really like stories about families because I'm very fascinated with the aforementioned family dynamics and the place that people have in their own family. People may find this book dull because... well, nothing really happens here. If you aren't interested in the characters, there's no point in reading it, it is more of a fictional memoir than a plot-driven book, and personally I had no problems with that.
Denise was a likeable protagonist, if only a bit pitiful, but I'm sure that was intended by the author, and I was equal parts intrigued and eyerolling (yes, that's a feeling) with Nik. It was annoying having to read the descriptions of his music instead of, y'know, actually listening to it, but ain't that just the way?
Plus, the writing is beautiful. That definitely helped.
All in all, I enjoyed the book. It isn't for everyone, that's all I can say, but it was for me.
I've been thinking about what to write in this review for a while now, and I can't seem to come up with anything.
So, the only thing I can offer in this review are my feelings for the book: I really, really liked it, and I can't even pinpoint the reason why. It seems I just liked the dynamics between the characters; I tend to really like stories about families because I'm very fascinated with the aforementioned family dynamics and the place that people have in their own family. People may find this book dull because... well, nothing really happens here. If you aren't interested in the characters, there's no point in reading it, it is more of a fictional memoir than a plot-driven book, and personally I had no problems with that.
Denise was a likeable protagonist, if only a bit pitiful, but I'm sure that was intended by the author, and I was equal parts intrigued and eyerolling (yes, that's a feeling) with Nik. It was annoying having to read the descriptions of his music instead of, y'know, actually listening to it, but ain't that just the way?
Plus, the writing is beautiful. That definitely helped.
All in all, I enjoyed the book. It isn't for everyone, that's all I can say, but it was for me.
May 4, 2016
So loved this. I can't wait to read more by Spiotta.
June 12, 2012
I'm thinking about past events. I'm interested in recall, exact recall, of what was said, who said it and to whom. I want to know the truth, undistorted by time and revision and wishes and regrets.
So says Denise Kranis, the 40-ish narrator of Dana Spiotta’s brilliant novel, Stone Arabia. Denise is comparing her own story-telling to that of her brother Nik’s, which involves much more elaborately constructed and documented versions of reality. I love this truth-seeking premise, even more so for the way Spiotta juxtaposes the siblings’ styles and temperaments. They are both truth seekers, but who’s to say which is the real truth?
Everything about this book feels fresh and modern. Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Good Squad received much more buzz, but this is the better book. For one thing, we care about the characters so much more. Denise is a woman I know in my heart. She is solid and trustworthy, but also broken and seeking. She scrapes by, adores her daughter, takes care of her mother (whose struggles with dementia add another layer to the truth & memory subtext).
Most importantly, she spoils and forgives her ne’er-do-well brother, Nik. Nik has all the trappings of a modern-day loser. Poised just on the wrong side of success, he is an unapologetic addict, who does not seem worthy of Denise’s loyalty. And yet, Spiotta writes him with such passion, that I loved him too.
Getting dizzy-high was just the beginning. Swing sets were his gateway drug. Nik had an intense appetite, a special extra need, and as he grew older he grew hungry for any and all alterations. I watched it; it was impossible not to miss his difference, how he craved anything that undid his equilibrium.
Spiotta smartly tells her story in short chapters from Denise, which move both forward and backward in time. We know she is after some explanation (some truth) to explain where (Nik’s place) and why (upset) she is the moment we meet her. But to get to that explanation, we have to know Denise and how she thinks, what she longs for. This unveiling is where Spiotta truly shines.
I felt the memory of my father on my body, the way you feel a breeze or the heat of the sun. He did not feel - and so was not - entirely lost to me. Inside, beyond my recall of events and dates and talk, there was this hot-wired memory of his body...your experiences, the hard felt ones, don't fade. They are written forever in your flesh, your nerves, your fingertips.
Into these passages, she intersperses excerpts of Nik’s Journals, which read like the Rolling Stone version of Denise’s recollections. Add to this mix, Denise’s daughter, a documentary film-maker and you start to get the many layers Spiotta adds to the story-telling.
My eternal thanks to Kathy, for reminding me over and over that I really needed to read this book. She was right.
July 25, 2011
Dana Spiotta's third novel is a sometimes moving, poetic story about family, fame, memory, fear of loss and obsession—and how each can take their toll on life.
Nik Worth, born Nicholas Kranis, was a musician on the fringes of celebrity in the late 1970s. After his period of minor fame passed, he continued making music under the guise of several fictional bands (and record labels)—and obsessively building a fictional chronicle of his career, authoring myriad reviews, fan magazine interviews, news articles and other memorabilia. While this expansive fantasy world Nik has created troubles Denise, his younger sister, she has issues of her own. In caring for their mother, who is in the early stages of dementia, Denise is convinced she is losing her own mind, and worries she will have no one to take care of her. And to top that off, Denise gets fixated on tragedies reported in the media, from childhood abductions, hostage crises, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, etc. When Denise's daughter, Ada, decides to make a documentary about Nik's life and art, it opens everyone up to anxiety about truth, art, fact and fiction, and Denise realizes for the first time that everything isn't headed in the right direction.
I love books that explore the creative process, especially in the music world, and Stone Arabia is a really compelling look at the obsession with art, creativity and fame. When the book explores Nik and Denise's relationship, the book is at its strongest, because so many of us can identify with the way people slip into the same roles when dealing with their loved ones. This is a fascinating and heartbreaking story, but pieces of the story—particularly a strange road trip Denise takes near the end of the book—don't ring as true as others. In the end, Spiotta is a terrific storyteller, and I found myself hooked from start to finish.
Nik Worth, born Nicholas Kranis, was a musician on the fringes of celebrity in the late 1970s. After his period of minor fame passed, he continued making music under the guise of several fictional bands (and record labels)—and obsessively building a fictional chronicle of his career, authoring myriad reviews, fan magazine interviews, news articles and other memorabilia. While this expansive fantasy world Nik has created troubles Denise, his younger sister, she has issues of her own. In caring for their mother, who is in the early stages of dementia, Denise is convinced she is losing her own mind, and worries she will have no one to take care of her. And to top that off, Denise gets fixated on tragedies reported in the media, from childhood abductions, hostage crises, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, etc. When Denise's daughter, Ada, decides to make a documentary about Nik's life and art, it opens everyone up to anxiety about truth, art, fact and fiction, and Denise realizes for the first time that everything isn't headed in the right direction.
I love books that explore the creative process, especially in the music world, and Stone Arabia is a really compelling look at the obsession with art, creativity and fame. When the book explores Nik and Denise's relationship, the book is at its strongest, because so many of us can identify with the way people slip into the same roles when dealing with their loved ones. This is a fascinating and heartbreaking story, but pieces of the story—particularly a strange road trip Denise takes near the end of the book—don't ring as true as others. In the end, Spiotta is a terrific storyteller, and I found myself hooked from start to finish.
October 2, 2014
So many human emotions and experiences are timeless but there is something about recent fiction that can further the intimate relationship between author and reader. Spiotta includes current phenomena like the crawl under the t.v. news and the emotions that brings as our brains are fed this diet rich in salaciousness. The main character Denise is with us on our long strange trip. Spiotta has the wonderful talent of telling a great story with deceptive ease. One has the deep literary enjoyment of reading a breathtakingly beautiful passage that perfectly serves the plot. Her writing reflects the rhythms of life as we experience it in 2012. Our senses are flooded by media and it can on occasion catch up with us and overwhelm us. Stone Arabia along with Infinite Jest are my two favorite novels that I have read this year.
September 22, 2011
I was going to write something for The Millions about this--but someone beat me to it! D'oh!
This book is beautiful and so deliciously sad. Spiotta's writing reminds me of Don DeLillo's crossed with Jennifer Egan's crossed with Lydia Davis's. I wasn't jazzed by the switches to first and third person in the book (the set-up felt clunky), but I was so taken by this story of a brother and a sister. I loved the surprising structure and all that's said about memory, identity, and living in a world where you can fall down an internet rabbit hole and emerge a few hours later totally drained and obliterated.
I can't wait to read Eat the Document, which is supposed to be better! Wowza.
This book is beautiful and so deliciously sad. Spiotta's writing reminds me of Don DeLillo's crossed with Jennifer Egan's crossed with Lydia Davis's. I wasn't jazzed by the switches to first and third person in the book (the set-up felt clunky), but I was so taken by this story of a brother and a sister. I loved the surprising structure and all that's said about memory, identity, and living in a world where you can fall down an internet rabbit hole and emerge a few hours later totally drained and obliterated.
I can't wait to read Eat the Document, which is supposed to be better! Wowza.
June 23, 2025
È ora di iniziare una seria crociata contro i risvolti di copertina.
Su questo c'è scritta tutta la trama del libro. Siete stronzi? Che problemi avete?
E mettere in copertina quella frase su Nabokov! Nabokov! Cosa c'entra con la Spiotta? Vorrei spaccarvi la testa.
Dana ha un bel flow scorrevole ma per i miei gusti nel libro c'è troppa cultura americana. Non mi piace quando gli autori si prendono il mio tempo per dirmi quello che pensano riguardo prodotti di consumo. Un conto è se mi dici la tua sulll'autarchia, su dada o se mi racconti cosa succede se mescoli benzedrine e cevapceci ma perché mi racconti film anni '50? Perché parli del disco di Richard Hell? Lo conosco già e non mi interessa il tuo parere a riguardo.
Poi ci piazzi anche una bella strage avvenuta in Russia, altra cosa tipicamente americana. Da voi i bambini vanno in giro con le pistole e si sparano in faccia a scuola, Trump ha appena attaccato l' Iran ma nei libri americani ci sono le stragi degli altri paesi. Vabbè torniamo al libro.
Il romanzo nasce da un'idea potente. Nick, un musicista che suona solo per se stesso, produce album di cui fa una decina scarsa di copie e nel frattempo scrive una gigantesca autobiografia fittizia creando anche giornalisti immaginari, fanzine, recensioni e giustificando il tutto.
Purtroppo Nick non è il protagonista del libro.
Protagonista e voce narrante è la sorella di Nick, e questa non mi è parsa una scelta felicissima.
Ci sono altre scelte infelici, tipo indugiare sulla malattia della madre e a un certo punto farla semplicemente sparire dalla narrazione.
Peccato perché l'idea era ottima e la scrittura tiene. I problemi grossi sono la costruzione del romanzo e il focus decisamente fuoricentro
Libro scorrevole, ma non riuscito del tutto
Su questo c'è scritta tutta la trama del libro. Siete stronzi? Che problemi avete?
E mettere in copertina quella frase su Nabokov! Nabokov! Cosa c'entra con la Spiotta? Vorrei spaccarvi la testa.
Dana ha un bel flow scorrevole ma per i miei gusti nel libro c'è troppa cultura americana. Non mi piace quando gli autori si prendono il mio tempo per dirmi quello che pensano riguardo prodotti di consumo. Un conto è se mi dici la tua sulll'autarchia, su dada o se mi racconti cosa succede se mescoli benzedrine e cevapceci ma perché mi racconti film anni '50? Perché parli del disco di Richard Hell? Lo conosco già e non mi interessa il tuo parere a riguardo.
Poi ci piazzi anche una bella strage avvenuta in Russia, altra cosa tipicamente americana. Da voi i bambini vanno in giro con le pistole e si sparano in faccia a scuola, Trump ha appena attaccato l' Iran ma nei libri americani ci sono le stragi degli altri paesi. Vabbè torniamo al libro.
Il romanzo nasce da un'idea potente. Nick, un musicista che suona solo per se stesso, produce album di cui fa una decina scarsa di copie e nel frattempo scrive una gigantesca autobiografia fittizia creando anche giornalisti immaginari, fanzine, recensioni e giustificando il tutto.
Purtroppo Nick non è il protagonista del libro.
Protagonista e voce narrante è la sorella di Nick, e questa non mi è parsa una scelta felicissima.
Ci sono altre scelte infelici, tipo indugiare sulla malattia della madre e a un certo punto farla semplicemente sparire dalla narrazione.
Peccato perché l'idea era ottima e la scrittura tiene. I problemi grossi sono la costruzione del romanzo e il focus decisamente fuoricentro
Libro scorrevole, ma non riuscito del tutto
December 27, 2014
I'm a young guy. The music side of things appealed to me but I was afraid of that the whole "aging sibling" thing might be a drag. I was worried that it would be old people afraid of getting old. And it is. But it's very real, very human and amazingly well done.I haven't read anything else by Spiotta. I read this because by chance I heard the book reviewed and profiled on NPR.
The theme of this book is tied up in memory and history. You have Nik the eccentric musician who has rewritten and obsessively recorded a fictional history of himself as this great individual musical icon. Ranging from punk to power pop to purely experimental, Nik creates The Chronicles volume by volume and year by year creating something in writing and scrapbooking that he never could do in real life. It is not entirely praiseworthy though. He's his own biggest fan, his biggest critic and hater. He encompasses within himself an entire subculture around his ficitonal self.
Then you the mother who is aging and losing her memory capacity to some kind of dementia or Alzheimer's. Her brain begins to create her own past and she starts to believe the many delusions.
Then you have Denise the chief narrator in the story. She starts to write down incidents and reactions to news and her real-life idiosyncrasies. She's obsessed with the true history and true memory because she believes like her mother her past is deteriorating.
The driving plot device is the film Denise's daughter wants to make of her Uncle Nik. This forces the entire family that much closer and forces Denise to confront things she's afraid of: getting old, being alone, her family--you know the sappy stuff that all books are really about.
What I liked so much about this book was the amazing creativity that Spiotta poured into the character of Nik. She details his chronicles so much you'd think they were real--and it turns out that Nik's character was actually inspired by her real life stepfather, Richard, according to the author's note in the back. It also lends credibility by the portrait of Denise. She's obsessed with cable news and the Internet recounting several news stories and how they effect her. I enjoyed this book. Definite recommend.
The theme of this book is tied up in memory and history. You have Nik the eccentric musician who has rewritten and obsessively recorded a fictional history of himself as this great individual musical icon. Ranging from punk to power pop to purely experimental, Nik creates The Chronicles volume by volume and year by year creating something in writing and scrapbooking that he never could do in real life. It is not entirely praiseworthy though. He's his own biggest fan, his biggest critic and hater. He encompasses within himself an entire subculture around his ficitonal self.
Then you the mother who is aging and losing her memory capacity to some kind of dementia or Alzheimer's. Her brain begins to create her own past and she starts to believe the many delusions.
Then you have Denise the chief narrator in the story. She starts to write down incidents and reactions to news and her real-life idiosyncrasies. She's obsessed with the true history and true memory because she believes like her mother her past is deteriorating.
The driving plot device is the film Denise's daughter wants to make of her Uncle Nik. This forces the entire family that much closer and forces Denise to confront things she's afraid of: getting old, being alone, her family--you know the sappy stuff that all books are really about.
What I liked so much about this book was the amazing creativity that Spiotta poured into the character of Nik. She details his chronicles so much you'd think they were real--and it turns out that Nik's character was actually inspired by her real life stepfather, Richard, according to the author's note in the back. It also lends credibility by the portrait of Denise. She's obsessed with cable news and the Internet recounting several news stories and how they effect her. I enjoyed this book. Definite recommend.
July 25, 2024
A moving contemplation of siblinghood, anxiety, and life crumbling inward.
February 27, 2015
I've now read each of Spiotta's novels, and all of them were fascinating period pieces. I don't mean she really caught the spirit of the '90s in her first novel, the '70s in her second, and the '00s in this one. I mean her novels are exactly what people will think of when, in a few decades, they talk about early 21st century American literary fiction. There is much existential angst about meaninglessness, empathy and emotional distance. There is stuff about new media. There is metanarrative. There is some very mild formal trickeration, but not enough to scare anyone. There is tired mumbo about "memory", a theme and abstract noun that should really be banned for a few decades at least.
This is frustrating because (not Spiotta's fault, I know) she's feted as "a major, unnervingly intelligent writer" by people who really should know better (Joy Williams, Sam Lipsyte, Michiko Kakutani, Thurston freaking Moore). That kind of praise made me buy her books. It also set up false expectations.
Anyway, Spiotta is definitely getting better as a novelist. Lightning Field was distressingly bad; Eat the Document was kind of disappointing; the first half of this book is pretty good. The trickeration is contrived, but also entertaining (musical genius brother writes fake Chronicles of his life; average sister Denise writes Counter-Chronicles of those Chronicles--and, eventually, Denise's daughter makes a film about her uncle). Denise is far more entertaining than Spiotta's third person narrator, though far less entertaining than her brother. A book that was just some Chronicles, some counter-Chronicles, and bits of the film could have been fascinating.
Instead, Denise has to worry about the form her Counter-Chronicles take (because metanarrative worrying), which becomes an excuse for shoving bits in to the novel that don't really belong there (mother is dying; world is going to hell but we either feel too sad or not sad enough about it; memory is interesting but also misleading, right?).
How long, dear reader, do you think a novel has to be before it can successfully deal with the themes of: memory, family, aging, death, art, populism vs elitism, imagination, empathy, world politics, new media, self-destruction, CHILD ABDUCTION, THE AMISH, INTERNET MEDICAL ADVICE, POPULAR CULTURE, AND ZOMBIES?
Okay, there are no zombies.
But if you answered 230 pages, congratulations, this is the book for you, and I envy you your ability to think that 'successfully dealing with' is actually a synonym of 'mention in passing'.
I really, really, really hope Spiotta follows her character into isolation for the next twenty years and works on a long enough book for long enough to really fulfill her ambition to write about fucking everything. That would be worth doing. A fourth short book about everything, however... we probably don't need that.
This is frustrating because (not Spiotta's fault, I know) she's feted as "a major, unnervingly intelligent writer" by people who really should know better (Joy Williams, Sam Lipsyte, Michiko Kakutani, Thurston freaking Moore). That kind of praise made me buy her books. It also set up false expectations.
Anyway, Spiotta is definitely getting better as a novelist. Lightning Field was distressingly bad; Eat the Document was kind of disappointing; the first half of this book is pretty good. The trickeration is contrived, but also entertaining (musical genius brother writes fake Chronicles of his life; average sister Denise writes Counter-Chronicles of those Chronicles--and, eventually, Denise's daughter makes a film about her uncle). Denise is far more entertaining than Spiotta's third person narrator, though far less entertaining than her brother. A book that was just some Chronicles, some counter-Chronicles, and bits of the film could have been fascinating.
Instead, Denise has to worry about the form her Counter-Chronicles take (because metanarrative worrying), which becomes an excuse for shoving bits in to the novel that don't really belong there (mother is dying; world is going to hell but we either feel too sad or not sad enough about it; memory is interesting but also misleading, right?).
How long, dear reader, do you think a novel has to be before it can successfully deal with the themes of: memory, family, aging, death, art, populism vs elitism, imagination, empathy, world politics, new media, self-destruction, CHILD ABDUCTION, THE AMISH, INTERNET MEDICAL ADVICE, POPULAR CULTURE, AND ZOMBIES?
Okay, there are no zombies.
But if you answered 230 pages, congratulations, this is the book for you, and I envy you your ability to think that 'successfully dealing with' is actually a synonym of 'mention in passing'.
I really, really, really hope Spiotta follows her character into isolation for the next twenty years and works on a long enough book for long enough to really fulfill her ambition to write about fucking everything. That would be worth doing. A fourth short book about everything, however... we probably don't need that.
August 3, 2011
Dana Spiotta's third novel hit me so hard and deeply that I haven't been able to write about it for weeks. I won't rehash the plot because you can find that in numerous places on the Web. Briefly, it is a story about a musician and his younger sister in Los Angeles.
What it is really about is the life of a creative individual who was never recognized by the music industry or by pop culture. I would guess that such a fate is usual for a huge percentage of creative persons. Most of us take it more or less in stride, "move on" as they say, find other ways to make a living, sometimes do our creative thing as a hobby. Nik and his sister Denise never moved on.
I was surprised and delighted by Spiotta's previous novel, Eat the Document. In fact I think it was better written than Stone Arabia. But it was about revolutionary politics and its fallout in terms of the personal lives of those involved. I have never participated in anything remotely political, I don't like politics and don't think anyone can achieve positive societal change through it.
I do love music; have been a professional musician and songwriter. I do think that art, music, and literature can effect societal change. In fact, all I have ever truly desired to do in life is play music, read books and try to write both. I have had close to zero success with any of that.
Nik chose to retreat from life, hole up in a cabin in Topanga Canyon, work as a bartender and keep creating. He had about five fans, his sister Denise being number one.
What is success? How much does one person owe another? How true is memory? Is the life we see on television, in the news, more interesting, more impacting than our own little lives? What is creativity for? Big questions in a little book that reminds me, now that I think of it, of the early novels of Carolyn See (mother of Lisa See.) Spiotta says her inspiration as a writer comes from Don DeLillo.
I found Nik, Denise, Denise's daughter Ada, so annoying at times. Only after finishing the novel did I realize that I was supposed to be annoyed. This author gets under your skin and makes you look again at your cherished beliefs in new lights. It is an uncomfortable experience.
For me, she made it all right to feel really sad and discouraged about not having come even close to the dreams I had when I was young. Nik just refused to accept that fact. Whether Spiotta meant for it to happen or not, I ended up seeing him as some kind of tarnished hero.
What it is really about is the life of a creative individual who was never recognized by the music industry or by pop culture. I would guess that such a fate is usual for a huge percentage of creative persons. Most of us take it more or less in stride, "move on" as they say, find other ways to make a living, sometimes do our creative thing as a hobby. Nik and his sister Denise never moved on.
I was surprised and delighted by Spiotta's previous novel, Eat the Document. In fact I think it was better written than Stone Arabia. But it was about revolutionary politics and its fallout in terms of the personal lives of those involved. I have never participated in anything remotely political, I don't like politics and don't think anyone can achieve positive societal change through it.
I do love music; have been a professional musician and songwriter. I do think that art, music, and literature can effect societal change. In fact, all I have ever truly desired to do in life is play music, read books and try to write both. I have had close to zero success with any of that.
Nik chose to retreat from life, hole up in a cabin in Topanga Canyon, work as a bartender and keep creating. He had about five fans, his sister Denise being number one.
What is success? How much does one person owe another? How true is memory? Is the life we see on television, in the news, more interesting, more impacting than our own little lives? What is creativity for? Big questions in a little book that reminds me, now that I think of it, of the early novels of Carolyn See (mother of Lisa See.) Spiotta says her inspiration as a writer comes from Don DeLillo.
I found Nik, Denise, Denise's daughter Ada, so annoying at times. Only after finishing the novel did I realize that I was supposed to be annoyed. This author gets under your skin and makes you look again at your cherished beliefs in new lights. It is an uncomfortable experience.
For me, she made it all right to feel really sad and discouraged about not having come even close to the dreams I had when I was young. Nik just refused to accept that fact. Whether Spiotta meant for it to happen or not, I ended up seeing him as some kind of tarnished hero.
December 17, 2011
What is the worth of art, memory, or life itself? In this intelligently rendered novel, Dana Spiotta, a meditation-of-sorts on the quest for stardom, she carefully deconstructs the concept of what is valuable and how we strip down to reveal our true identities.
Outside artist Nik Worth – appropriately named – is an aging non-starter rock ‘n’ roller, a legend in his own mind, who has spent his lifetime pursuing art for art’s sake. “I grew up to like not having an audience,” he reveals. “Imagine being freed from sense and only having to pursue pure sound. Imagine letting go of explanations, of misinterpretations, of commerce and receptions.” At another point, he muses, “Do you need an audience to crate work, or does not having an audience liberate you and make you a truer artist?” Nik has spent his so-called career pursing that question and creating a sometimes true, sometimes false history in his written work, The Chronicles, filled with self-written reviews and interviews.
Denise, his sister, has remained faithful to Nik; indeed, she is his number one fan. While she is his cheerleader, he is her alter ego. In important ways, they channel the other; she reconstructs his last year and he takes on her voice in certain entries in The Chronicles. In ways, they each rely on each other to provide structure for the other’s sense of self.
In many ways, Denise remains disengaged from day-to-day feelings; instead, she is consumed by salacious stories – murders and other human misfortunes – that she views on the nightly news. “Let’s call them breaking events. I don’t mean breaking news. I mean breaking of boundaries.” She is the keeper of her brother and also of her aging mother, whose memory seems to be unraveling more and more each day. Some of the most poignant passages of this book appear in the reinterpreting of the relationship between mother and daughter as the mother’s own grasp of reality.
This intrepid novel – about inventing and reinventing ourselves, adjusting our memories to passing time, and creating real and faux windows into our lives through journals, computers, and the ceaseless onslaught of TV news-entertainment, raises deep and provocative questions. It is not a book for everyone but for those who are willing to surrender to it, it is filled with thoughtful insights about the creation and endurance of art
Outside artist Nik Worth – appropriately named – is an aging non-starter rock ‘n’ roller, a legend in his own mind, who has spent his lifetime pursuing art for art’s sake. “I grew up to like not having an audience,” he reveals. “Imagine being freed from sense and only having to pursue pure sound. Imagine letting go of explanations, of misinterpretations, of commerce and receptions.” At another point, he muses, “Do you need an audience to crate work, or does not having an audience liberate you and make you a truer artist?” Nik has spent his so-called career pursing that question and creating a sometimes true, sometimes false history in his written work, The Chronicles, filled with self-written reviews and interviews.
Denise, his sister, has remained faithful to Nik; indeed, she is his number one fan. While she is his cheerleader, he is her alter ego. In important ways, they channel the other; she reconstructs his last year and he takes on her voice in certain entries in The Chronicles. In ways, they each rely on each other to provide structure for the other’s sense of self.
In many ways, Denise remains disengaged from day-to-day feelings; instead, she is consumed by salacious stories – murders and other human misfortunes – that she views on the nightly news. “Let’s call them breaking events. I don’t mean breaking news. I mean breaking of boundaries.” She is the keeper of her brother and also of her aging mother, whose memory seems to be unraveling more and more each day. Some of the most poignant passages of this book appear in the reinterpreting of the relationship between mother and daughter as the mother’s own grasp of reality.
This intrepid novel – about inventing and reinventing ourselves, adjusting our memories to passing time, and creating real and faux windows into our lives through journals, computers, and the ceaseless onslaught of TV news-entertainment, raises deep and provocative questions. It is not a book for everyone but for those who are willing to surrender to it, it is filled with thoughtful insights about the creation and endurance of art
February 28, 2013
Stone Arabia is the story of two siblings, Denise and Nik. If they had experienced sibling rivalry early on in life, they had moved past that, both now in their fourties. Denise worries. For her brother, the unconventional musician, and her mother, who is losing her mind to dementia. Denise practices memory exercises so she too won't lose her memory and mind, and this creates a sense of confusion in her, where her mother stops and she begins. Nik had always made music, but he acknowledged that he would never see great success. In his journals, called the Chronicles, he pretends that he is a famous rock star with millions of fans and top-selling albums. He knows that this is not true and is okay with that, yet perhaps the Chronicles are a way for him to live out his wildest fantasies.
In the Author's Note, Dana Spiotta wrote that her inspiration for Nik was her stepfather. On the outside, the concept of this book is very simple (and some may say the idea shouldn't even warrant a book to be written). But when you look at the inside, it becomes more complex and holds layers of detail, which give the framework of the story a definite but intricate structure.
Is it just about two siblings? No.
Is it just about a wannabe musician? No.
Is is about a family that isn't quite normal and has their fair share of problems? Yes.
This is not one of those literary books that tries too hard. Stone Arabia doesn't attempt to be raw or overtly honest, it just is that way. It doesn't try to grab every nerve in your body and make you feel so many strong emotions. If anything, this book is thought-provoking. It won't go as far as making you question your mental health or how stable your family is, but it is there to show that there is a potential for collapse in everything you know. How pleasant.
In the Author's Note, Dana Spiotta wrote that her inspiration for Nik was her stepfather. On the outside, the concept of this book is very simple (and some may say the idea shouldn't even warrant a book to be written). But when you look at the inside, it becomes more complex and holds layers of detail, which give the framework of the story a definite but intricate structure.
Is it just about two siblings? No.
Is it just about a wannabe musician? No.
Is is about a family that isn't quite normal and has their fair share of problems? Yes.
This is not one of those literary books that tries too hard. Stone Arabia doesn't attempt to be raw or overtly honest, it just is that way. It doesn't try to grab every nerve in your body and make you feel so many strong emotions. If anything, this book is thought-provoking. It won't go as far as making you question your mental health or how stable your family is, but it is there to show that there is a potential for collapse in everything you know. How pleasant.
May 9, 2012
There's an old, probably apocryphal story about JD Salinger that goes something like this: the famously reclusive writer one day encountered an acquaintance who asked if he had been writing anything. Of course I have, Salinger replied. Great, said the acquaintance, when will you be publishing it? And Salinger, as though his acquaintance had made the most outlandish suggestion imaginable, replied: "Publish it? What in the world for?"
Nik Worth, the focus of Dana Spiotta's Stone Arabia, is something like Salinger in that anecdote: he self-produces dozens of recordings and writes a voluminous, semi-fictional account of his own life, and photographs, films, documents, draws extensively for almost four decades, a staggering creative output to rival any artist, writer, or musician that can be named--but none of this work ever sees distribution beyond a small and very select audience, made up mostly of his younger sister Denise, Denise's daughter Ada, and a body of friends and ex-lovers. Nik is the enigma at the heart of Stone Arabia, an undeniably talented creator with no interest in sharing his creations with the world at large. He insists that the total creative freedom provided by his ongoing resistance to marketing his work for mass consumption is what he truly craves, but there is something else lurking around the edges of his cloistered creativity, something potentially devastating, and as Denise works to understand her brother even as their mother slips into old age and dementia, Stone Arabia weaves an intimate but still-complex tale of family relationships and the creative impulse.
This is a dense and utterly fascinating story that has me seeking out more of Spiotta's work.
Nik Worth, the focus of Dana Spiotta's Stone Arabia, is something like Salinger in that anecdote: he self-produces dozens of recordings and writes a voluminous, semi-fictional account of his own life, and photographs, films, documents, draws extensively for almost four decades, a staggering creative output to rival any artist, writer, or musician that can be named--but none of this work ever sees distribution beyond a small and very select audience, made up mostly of his younger sister Denise, Denise's daughter Ada, and a body of friends and ex-lovers. Nik is the enigma at the heart of Stone Arabia, an undeniably talented creator with no interest in sharing his creations with the world at large. He insists that the total creative freedom provided by his ongoing resistance to marketing his work for mass consumption is what he truly craves, but there is something else lurking around the edges of his cloistered creativity, something potentially devastating, and as Denise works to understand her brother even as their mother slips into old age and dementia, Stone Arabia weaves an intimate but still-complex tale of family relationships and the creative impulse.
This is a dense and utterly fascinating story that has me seeking out more of Spiotta's work.
December 29, 2011
This book was a bit of a mixed bag for me. In many ways i liked it a lot. I liked the narrator's voice, mostly, except she was too reflective for my taste and i thought a lot of the musings were not that well developed. I liked Nik's story...I thought his story alone would have made a fantastic book. I liked that there was a bit of mystery about what the heck "went wrong."
But for some reason Spiotta wanted to write two books in one and on one of those she did not deliver (for me). I did not really get why the obsession with the news and her "Breaking Points" needed to be so central to the book--it came off as gimmicky and contrived to me. and while i wanted Nik's story to wrap up the way Nik's story would wrap up, the detour Spiotta went on at the end of the book just didn't work for me. I can't say much about it, since it's a spoiler. But it's related to where the title comes from. Normally when a title is perplexing, i like to figure it out and have an a-ha moment, but that didn't happen in this case. Instead, i felt myself say "really??"
I think perhaps Spiotta was trying to do too much. All the pieces (Nik and Denise's relationship and dependence on each other, the Mom-factor, memory versus reality, what's-Denise's-point) did not come together convincingly for me.
It has also occurred to me that i probably would have enjoyed this book a lot more if i were 19. But i'm not anymore. And perhaps this is the type of novel that would be better as a film. I can easily see it as a film and one that i would likely enjoy.
But for some reason Spiotta wanted to write two books in one and on one of those she did not deliver (for me). I did not really get why the obsession with the news and her "Breaking Points" needed to be so central to the book--it came off as gimmicky and contrived to me. and while i wanted Nik's story to wrap up the way Nik's story would wrap up, the detour Spiotta went on at the end of the book just didn't work for me. I can't say much about it, since it's a spoiler. But it's related to where the title comes from. Normally when a title is perplexing, i like to figure it out and have an a-ha moment, but that didn't happen in this case. Instead, i felt myself say "really??"
I think perhaps Spiotta was trying to do too much. All the pieces (Nik and Denise's relationship and dependence on each other, the Mom-factor, memory versus reality, what's-Denise's-point) did not come together convincingly for me.
It has also occurred to me that i probably would have enjoyed this book a lot more if i were 19. But i'm not anymore. And perhaps this is the type of novel that would be better as a film. I can easily see it as a film and one that i would likely enjoy.
August 20, 2011
This book is interesting, but not compelling. The narrative voice, Nik's sister Denise, is insightful, yet boring. You get to know about her, but you never care about her. She's more a composite of traits than a realized character. Perhaps intentionally, Nik is fascinating, and fully three-dimensional, which makes the book readable, but seeing everything through Denise's eyes makes it even more depressing than it would be through the eyes of an omniscient, more-removed narrator. Of course, no one but Denise would have the necessary insight; even an omniscient narrator isn't an adoring sister. Her relationship with her daughter Ada could have been a real plot element, but wasn't. Her phobia relating to her mother's dementia was used in an unsuccessful attempt to flesh her out. And her visceral responses to some horrible news items (Abu Ghraib, missing children) never seemed meaningful.
I suppose this book is somewhat experimental. The whole concept of Nik's Chronicles, his self-reflective scrapbook/faux-memoir of his life as a musician, when the making of the Chronicles IS his life, is excellent, and very well thought out. One of the most striking elements was Nik's faux letter from Denise to her daughter Ada, describing Denise and Nik's younger years. But Ada's attempt to make a documentary about her uncle Nik is a good idea that reads like a method to close up the narrative rather than the central plot element that it could be.
I suppose this book is somewhat experimental. The whole concept of Nik's Chronicles, his self-reflective scrapbook/faux-memoir of his life as a musician, when the making of the Chronicles IS his life, is excellent, and very well thought out. One of the most striking elements was Nik's faux letter from Denise to her daughter Ada, describing Denise and Nik's younger years. But Ada's attempt to make a documentary about her uncle Nik is a good idea that reads like a method to close up the narrative rather than the central plot element that it could be.
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November 24, 2014Dana Spiotta is among the current novelists who most fascinate me. Her books are enormously engaging, succinct, easy to get into and then get lost in, and yet utterly original and demanding both in form and content. I am a big fan of her second novel, Eat the Document, about two early-70s anti-war activists who, after killing someone in a bombing, go "underground" for the next 30 years. In Stone Arabia, her third novel, Spiotta follows a 47-year-old Denise and her older brother, Nik. Nik, decades ago a performing musician, has created an elaborate alternative existence in which he is a famous rock star. In a massive set of volumes he calls the Chronicles, he assembles ersatz clippings about "himself" and reviews of his music (including scathing pans). He actually does create real music--CDs with handmade covers that he shares only with his sister and niece and possibly one old girlfriend. The novel raises a greater number of interesting questions than I can list here, but they include: Is art still worthwhile when no one "consumes" it? Is devoting one's life to such art crazy or unusually sane? Is is fair for an artist to live off of people who make money at "normal" jobs, as Nik lives off his sister, even though she can ill afford it?
Spiotta is really brilliant, the creator of work to re-read and absorb and let bloom in oneself over time.
Spiotta is really brilliant, the creator of work to re-read and absorb and let bloom in oneself over time.
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