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City On Fire
The New York Times bestseller
'Extraordinary…dazzling… a sprawling, generous, warm-hearted epic of 1970s New York' Observer
Midnight, New Year’s Eve, 1976. Nine lives are about to be changed forever.
Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, heirs to one of New York's greatest fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by the punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbour – and the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a shooting in Central Park on New Year’s Eve.
Then, on July 13th, 1977, the lights go out.
'Dazzling' Washington Post
'Heart-stopping' New York Times
'Addictive' Independent
'Extraordinary' Observer
'Extraordinary…dazzling… a sprawling, generous, warm-hearted epic of 1970s New York' Observer
Midnight, New Year’s Eve, 1976. Nine lives are about to be changed forever.
Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, heirs to one of New York's greatest fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Samantha, two suburban teenagers seduced by the punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbour – and the detective trying to figure out what any of them have to do with a shooting in Central Park on New Year’s Eve.
Then, on July 13th, 1977, the lights go out.
'Dazzling' Washington Post
'Heart-stopping' New York Times
'Addictive' Independent
'Extraordinary' Observer
944 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
2134 people are currently reading
44677 people want to read
About the author
Garth Risk Hallberg
11 books487 followersGarth Risk Hallberg’s stories and essays have appeared in Best New American Voices, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Prairie Schooner, New York Magazine, Glimmer Train, Slate, Canteen, and The Pinch, as well as at The Millions, where he’s a contributing editor.
A 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction and a two-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s Balakian award for excellence in book reviewing, Garth teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. Hallberg earned his BA at Washington University in St. Louis, and an MFA at New York University.
A 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction and a two-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s Balakian award for excellence in book reviewing, Garth teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. Hallberg earned his BA at Washington University in St. Louis, and an MFA at New York University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,499 reviews
October 11, 2023
Boy, I wanted to like this book.
Garth Risk Hallberg is certainly a writer of exceptional promise and unmistakable ability. There are passages in City On Fire that sublimely evoke New York City, portraying the Big Apple’s magnetism (and its monstrous shadow) so effectively as to make it feel like you’re walking the streets yourself. The amount of detail conjured in these pages is frequently astonishing.
And yet: why? Why must the writer tell us, for example, the relative size of an heirloom mattress and what it took to move it into an apartment years before? Mr. Hallberg does not know how much is too much. 900+ pages is a marvelous length, but no matter how artfully the words are assembled on them, they still need to convince the reader they are absolutely essential. On this account, City On Fire fails miserably. As a steak, the novel is riddled with gristle.
Would this were the only problem. But the novel is structured primarily as a limited-omniscient, third-person account from the perspective of its individual characters. Try as he might, Mr. Hallberg cannot inhabit his characters individually. His diction is out of control! (So much so that, yes, I find the exclamation point necessary.) It’s such a glaring problem, I’m rather shocked it wasn’t addressed further in editing. On almost every page he makes specific word choices and digressions of description that take the reader out of the story. At no time in the book did I believe I was hearing anything other than the novelist’s voice — and most of the time that novelist was hovering in my ears like a drunk mosquito.
Probably 20% of this novel is what I call a word salad: sophisticated jumbles of vocabulary arranged in a semblance of meaning. It all sounds impressive, but when you get to thinking about what you’ve just read, it doesn’t hold up. Mr. Hallberg does not know what to leave out. The effect is to flatter the writer, not to envelop or transport the reader.
Along similar lines: the assertions and summations Mr. Hallberg makes of his characters, for his characters, are frequently less than credible when considered for even a moment. As a reader, I quickly grow tired of being asked to swallow generalizations wholesale. (Again, these *sound* significant, but amount mostly to clutter, not perspective and much less real insight.)
At times I felt like Mr. Hallberg was fulfilling a list of requirements for an ambitious novel about the 70s: Race, check. Abortion, check. Punk rock, check. Redevelopment and gentrification, check. Then there’s the three-page chapters, chronological hopscotch, smattering of extra-textual elements… this is an exceptionally fussy and mannered book. There is never any doubt as to Mr. Hallberg’s intelligence; there is some question as to his ability to make his ambition serve the needs of a truly great book that he may indeed have in him.
The final nail in this coffin of exhaustion was, for me, the all-inclusive plot. Here we have yet another shaggy-dog tale, culminating in the convergence of characters and the careful parceling-out of information at prearranged intervals. I don’t know why these kinds of stories are still regarded by some as inherently profound (like, everything’s connected, man!). Does the novelist forget that a narrative comes together by his own hand, and that the reader knows (and expects) this? And does he think that the end of the book can excuse the rest of it? Setting the climax during a historic, notable event does not imbue a novel with importance.
Come fall (hell, now already) you will see a lot of breathless excitement about City On Fire. It certainly has the elements we’ve come to expect of a literary blockbuster. But like The Art of Fielding (which, I hasten to add, is a MUCH worse book than this one), City On Fire is the kind of tome that now makes me suspicious of big advances and lockstep marketing campaigns. The power in these coronations lies not with the writer and his prowess, but with those bestowing their great favor (and, let’s not forget, money) upon him. City On Fire indeed heralds a great talent, but it isn't a great book.
Best of luck in your future endeavors, Mr. Hallberg.
Garth Risk Hallberg is certainly a writer of exceptional promise and unmistakable ability. There are passages in City On Fire that sublimely evoke New York City, portraying the Big Apple’s magnetism (and its monstrous shadow) so effectively as to make it feel like you’re walking the streets yourself. The amount of detail conjured in these pages is frequently astonishing.
And yet: why? Why must the writer tell us, for example, the relative size of an heirloom mattress and what it took to move it into an apartment years before? Mr. Hallberg does not know how much is too much. 900+ pages is a marvelous length, but no matter how artfully the words are assembled on them, they still need to convince the reader they are absolutely essential. On this account, City On Fire fails miserably. As a steak, the novel is riddled with gristle.
Would this were the only problem. But the novel is structured primarily as a limited-omniscient, third-person account from the perspective of its individual characters. Try as he might, Mr. Hallberg cannot inhabit his characters individually. His diction is out of control! (So much so that, yes, I find the exclamation point necessary.) It’s such a glaring problem, I’m rather shocked it wasn’t addressed further in editing. On almost every page he makes specific word choices and digressions of description that take the reader out of the story. At no time in the book did I believe I was hearing anything other than the novelist’s voice — and most of the time that novelist was hovering in my ears like a drunk mosquito.
Probably 20% of this novel is what I call a word salad: sophisticated jumbles of vocabulary arranged in a semblance of meaning. It all sounds impressive, but when you get to thinking about what you’ve just read, it doesn’t hold up. Mr. Hallberg does not know what to leave out. The effect is to flatter the writer, not to envelop or transport the reader.
Along similar lines: the assertions and summations Mr. Hallberg makes of his characters, for his characters, are frequently less than credible when considered for even a moment. As a reader, I quickly grow tired of being asked to swallow generalizations wholesale. (Again, these *sound* significant, but amount mostly to clutter, not perspective and much less real insight.)
At times I felt like Mr. Hallberg was fulfilling a list of requirements for an ambitious novel about the 70s: Race, check. Abortion, check. Punk rock, check. Redevelopment and gentrification, check. Then there’s the three-page chapters, chronological hopscotch, smattering of extra-textual elements… this is an exceptionally fussy and mannered book. There is never any doubt as to Mr. Hallberg’s intelligence; there is some question as to his ability to make his ambition serve the needs of a truly great book that he may indeed have in him.
The final nail in this coffin of exhaustion was, for me, the all-inclusive plot. Here we have yet another shaggy-dog tale, culminating in the convergence of characters and the careful parceling-out of information at prearranged intervals. I don’t know why these kinds of stories are still regarded by some as inherently profound (like, everything’s connected, man!). Does the novelist forget that a narrative comes together by his own hand, and that the reader knows (and expects) this? And does he think that the end of the book can excuse the rest of it? Setting the climax during a historic, notable event does not imbue a novel with importance.
Come fall (hell, now already) you will see a lot of breathless excitement about City On Fire. It certainly has the elements we’ve come to expect of a literary blockbuster. But like The Art of Fielding (which, I hasten to add, is a MUCH worse book than this one), City On Fire is the kind of tome that now makes me suspicious of big advances and lockstep marketing campaigns. The power in these coronations lies not with the writer and his prowess, but with those bestowing their great favor (and, let’s not forget, money) upon him. City On Fire indeed heralds a great talent, but it isn't a great book.
Best of luck in your future endeavors, Mr. Hallberg.
June 23, 2018
for the most part, this book was totally worth 2 million dollars. and it's definitely worth the cover price of $30.00.
but damn it's hard to review. at its most reductive, it's a multi-viewpoint novel told from the perspective of several characters living in new york during '77, culminating in that summer's blackout. it's a panoptic of the ultra-wealthy and the squatters, the artists and musicians and revolutionaries, gay and straight, old and young, black and white and asian, uptown and downtown, police and criminals (both white collar and otherwise), journalists and teachers, sex and drugs and rock and roll and on and etc. the narrative axis around which the separate stories spiral out is the shooting of a teenage girl in central park on new years' eve, but although that event does serve as an anchor, it's hardly the main focus. this is not a mystery novel - it's a sprawling, exciting puzzle whose individual stories interlock so tightly that it's impossible to discuss one part without having to discuss all the parts.
it's a little bit Infinite Jest, a little bit A Visit from the Goon Squad, a little bit jonathan dee, a little bit Underworld, a little bit pynchon, and oddly enough, a little bit A Midsummer Night's Dream. didn't see that one coming, did ya? and it's the parts that feel MND-y that brought this one down to a 4 instead of a 5 star. basically, i loved the book until the blackout itself. while i think the blackout is a smart choice with great metaphorical potential, and while i acknowledge that the situation necessitates some irrealism, it just got a little murky for me in those bits. some stories definitely benefitted from this tonal change - particularly mercer's, and also keith and regan's. but others, like jenny's and charlie's, just missed the mark for me.
like Night Film, this book has all sorts of ephemera crammed in: a zine, letters, news articles, patient records, emails - but it doesn't come across as gimmicky. it is all necessary to tell this sprawling tale. this 900+ page book that reads smooth as chocolate milk.
it's a beautiful, lonely book about the changing face of a city - a city which has been changed several times over since the 70's. it's wonderfully nostalgic reading. i've lived in new york for twenty years, and i have seen many changes firsthand, but there's still so much that is recognizable in this book, despite hallberg's changing of a few names.
you don't have to know anything about new york to love this book. or fireworks, punk rock, posthumanism, fiscal concerns, or messianic delusions. i mean, it helps, so you can chuckle at things like this:
Rotten, Vicious, Hell & Thunders, like some firm of malign lawyers.
but this is a novel about people - about the way human beings live and love and screw up. it's one of the most impressive debuts i have ever read, even though i'm not crazy about the endish bits. you'd be wise to read it, since it's all anyone's going to be talking about for the next year or so…
************************************************************
got laid off?? read a giant book!
although, considering this cat got two million dollars for this debut, i'm probably approaching this from the wrong side.
come to my blog!
but damn it's hard to review. at its most reductive, it's a multi-viewpoint novel told from the perspective of several characters living in new york during '77, culminating in that summer's blackout. it's a panoptic of the ultra-wealthy and the squatters, the artists and musicians and revolutionaries, gay and straight, old and young, black and white and asian, uptown and downtown, police and criminals (both white collar and otherwise), journalists and teachers, sex and drugs and rock and roll and on and etc. the narrative axis around which the separate stories spiral out is the shooting of a teenage girl in central park on new years' eve, but although that event does serve as an anchor, it's hardly the main focus. this is not a mystery novel - it's a sprawling, exciting puzzle whose individual stories interlock so tightly that it's impossible to discuss one part without having to discuss all the parts.
it's a little bit Infinite Jest, a little bit A Visit from the Goon Squad, a little bit jonathan dee, a little bit Underworld, a little bit pynchon, and oddly enough, a little bit A Midsummer Night's Dream. didn't see that one coming, did ya? and it's the parts that feel MND-y that brought this one down to a 4 instead of a 5 star. basically, i loved the book until the blackout itself. while i think the blackout is a smart choice with great metaphorical potential, and while i acknowledge that the situation necessitates some irrealism, it just got a little murky for me in those bits. some stories definitely benefitted from this tonal change - particularly mercer's, and also keith and regan's. but others, like jenny's and charlie's, just missed the mark for me.
like Night Film, this book has all sorts of ephemera crammed in: a zine, letters, news articles, patient records, emails - but it doesn't come across as gimmicky. it is all necessary to tell this sprawling tale. this 900+ page book that reads smooth as chocolate milk.
it's a beautiful, lonely book about the changing face of a city - a city which has been changed several times over since the 70's. it's wonderfully nostalgic reading. i've lived in new york for twenty years, and i have seen many changes firsthand, but there's still so much that is recognizable in this book, despite hallberg's changing of a few names.
you don't have to know anything about new york to love this book. or fireworks, punk rock, posthumanism, fiscal concerns, or messianic delusions. i mean, it helps, so you can chuckle at things like this:
Rotten, Vicious, Hell & Thunders, like some firm of malign lawyers.
but this is a novel about people - about the way human beings live and love and screw up. it's one of the most impressive debuts i have ever read, even though i'm not crazy about the endish bits. you'd be wise to read it, since it's all anyone's going to be talking about for the next year or so…
************************************************************
got laid off?? read a giant book!
although, considering this cat got two million dollars for this debut, i'm probably approaching this from the wrong side.
come to my blog!
Read
June 3, 2015Couldn't make it past the prologue. Two characters took about 50 pages to move a Christmas tree across the crosswalk. I don't care how big the buzz is; life is too short.
September 29, 2016
HOW TO READ THIS BOOK
After page 350 I decided to skip all the passages which bored the bejeesus out of me. As there were quite a considerable number of those, getting through the next 550 pages became a whole lot easier, even occasionally enjoyable. Even so, I feel like I need someone to come and defibrillate me.
HOISTED WITH HIS OWN PETARD
On page 617 we read:
She seemed to like exactly those things he found most irksome about The New York Review of Books : its unapologetic boringness, its privileged hostility to privilege.
This seems to describe perfectly the army of fans this novel has. Let me run that by you again:
She seemed to like exactly those things he found most irksome about City on Fire : its unapologetic boringness, its privileged hostility to privilege.
Man, is this book unapologetically boring. Fiction is sometimes described as life with the boring bits left out. But the way to tell if you’re reading literary fiction is that they stick all the boring bits back in. Still, I got no one to blame but myself. If I want plot I can reread Gone Girl, right.
HOW BORING IS BORING?
For instance, the zine. A bunch of the characters in the book are anarcho-punks, that’s to say punks with political pretensions and teenage insights on our woeful rat bastard capitalist world. Maybe you can remember when you sat around vowing to smash the state and eat the rich. If not, Mr Hallberg is here to remind you of what you missed, all the embarrassing posturing and useless gestures and unpleasant sex. So we get the complete reproduced 30 page 1976 punk zine called Land of 1000 Dances, and it’s as authentically toe-curling as they all really were. It’s kinda cute to see stuck in the middle of a big serious literary thing but still, you read the actual words at your peril. It’s the kind of reading which could make you bulimic.
(A young Shane McGowan and his rad zines, 1976)
A PARAPLEGIC TURTLE
Tom Wolfe’s well-known novel The Bonfire of the Vanities is not an unfair comparison, that one is also vast (700 pages), set in New York City, panoramic, know-it-all, and also has a plot propelled by a single crime. And it’s a page turner, reason being that it’s funny. Okay, perhaps that is an unfair comparison because Garth Hallberg is not funny, I purely hope he’s not trying to be, anyway, because there is not the merest trace of the flicker of a wan grin to be had in the entire thing, far as I could see. So if it’s a grown-up serious novel then City on Fire has to be very compelling for other reasons, but instead it just seeps and sogs and backtracks, always backtracks. It inches forwards at the speed of a paraplegic turtle and then comes to many lurching dead stops as the author inserts 30 or 40 pages of back-story about each and every character. Mr Hallberg believes that his characters are all infinitely interesting. But the 17 year old dopey but bright Charlie Weisbarger, or the hipster reporter Richard Groskoph or the overreaching financier Keith Lamplighter are really not that interesting.
LAH DI DAH
Mr Hallberg has a smooth and often graceful style but quite often you have to ask yourself huh, what was that again? He has a trick of presenting a banal idea in a frightfully fancy way. Such as -
For it was only with her that he’d ever felt that powerful powerlessness he knew was love.
And
One of his mother’s antiquated beliefs involved the curative power of manual labor, and though she framed it as a favor he could do for her, he knew she was thinking of it the other way around when she asked him, at breakfast, to mow the north pasture.
and
Claggart’s eyes [he is a dog by the way], moist and brown and rimmed with amethyst, were able to grow to a size that made the rest of him seem pitiably small and defenseless, and to project the purest distillate of melancholy - a melancholy from which only Jenny could save him, he would have claimed, had he the power of speech.
and
There was a period just after the inevitability of ruin hove into view and just before it smashed into the hull of your life that was the closest to pure freedom anyone ever got.
THE BLACKOUT
As you may know, the climax, the denouement, the culmination of this novel’s infinite elaborations happens during the New York blackout of July 13-14, 1977. This takes the form of several characters looking for a needle in a haystack – is the needle there? No. Is it there then? No. And then…. There’s a kind of petering out. Yes, really.
Garth Hallberg has a whole lot of talent, for sure. Just like Neil Young is a great guitarist. And as it happens a track on my ipod popped up earlier – “Driftin’ Back”. It’s 27 minutes long. Neil Young doodlin’ away on his guitar. Nice stuff and all but ah 27 minutes of one track?
WHY IS THIS BOOK SO LONG? EASY
Eventually, probably like every other exhausted defeated would-be Garth Hallberg fan, I had to realise that rarely had I found myself in the presence of an author quite so much in love with himself. His remarkable trick, amongst all the New Franzens, was to get so many of the great and the good to fall in love with him too. I think Garth knows the secrets of Mind Control. "You shall publish my vast novel!" "Yes, O Garth! not one word shall we cut. 903 pages it is."
Just look at those back page blurbs : “I wanted it to go on and on and on” - well, it really did, that was one of the problems darling; “it assures us that we are not alone and that hope is infinite” – yes, you are not alone in hoping that this novel will come to an end soon, please dear Lord – “while I was reading I could barely do anything else” – that’s because it sucks all the time right out of your day along with most of the joy and the innocent pleasure of reading a new novel as opposed to a great leaden beast which presses down upon you like a very succubus sent from the Evil One.
RATING
Smooth patrician style : 4 stars
Vocabulary : a recherche 5 stars
Characters : 2 stars
Plot : you’re kidding, no stars
Fun with odd handwritten “inserts” and the famous zine : 3 stars
Feeling of accomplishment at finishing this beast with okay quite a bit of kangaroo-style skipping about but still, hell : 5 stars
Overall : 2.5
October 25, 2015
City on Fire was marketed as one of the biggest book releases of 2015. Garth Risk Hallberg’s 900+ page debut novel, sold to the publisher for a whopping $2 million, has been likened to Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. And while I see the similarities, I think Hallberg’s doesn’t quite stack up to either of these novels.
Let’s disregard the fact that yes, this book is incredibly well written. Hallberg understands language. He writes with precision, with big ideas and at times even bigger words. Not to toot my own horn, but I feel like I have a fairly wide vocabulary. Hallberg either is a walking dictionary, or had one at his side while writing this; for there were dozens of occasions in which I had to stop and look up a word (and as an avid reader, that doesn’t happen too often.) I appreciated that, though when every single character has the author’s vocabulary it drew me out of the story.
Hallberg has a strong hold on the sentence. But perhaps too strong? I have to agree with another reviewer who said that she couldn’t read without being aware of the author’s presence. While the story was engaging, it wasn’t absorbing enough to forget that you are indeed reading a story, not experiencing it. And what the two books I mentioned earlier did for me was deliver a book that was more than a book—they were experiences.
I will applaud Hallberg for writing a 944 page novel that rarely drags. With a mix of eclectic and well thought out characters along with a nicely paced and mysterious plot, I was always compelled to read on. I loved almost every character’s perspective. And the 3rd person omniscience with the free indirect speech (which I am a fan of, though others find it plodding and meandering writing), reminded me at times of Yanagihara’s stellar A Little Life. Sadly there are few other comparisons to make between Hallberg’s novel and the former.
Ultimately I found the ending to be satisfying but in that way that left me little to chew on. It was all wrapped up with a pretty bow at the end, and I was left without anything to rip open and examine further. I’d still recommend this one to those courageous enough to take on this nearly-1000 page novel. Perhaps you’ll find something more within, and maybe my own re-reading (not for a long while though) would provide deeper insight. I’m sure there is much I missed, and I will miss these characters’ and their stories. I only wish I was left with less perfection and more of the raw, gritty reality that is presented elsewhere in the book. 3.5 stars
Let’s disregard the fact that yes, this book is incredibly well written. Hallberg understands language. He writes with precision, with big ideas and at times even bigger words. Not to toot my own horn, but I feel like I have a fairly wide vocabulary. Hallberg either is a walking dictionary, or had one at his side while writing this; for there were dozens of occasions in which I had to stop and look up a word (and as an avid reader, that doesn’t happen too often.) I appreciated that, though when every single character has the author’s vocabulary it drew me out of the story.
Hallberg has a strong hold on the sentence. But perhaps too strong? I have to agree with another reviewer who said that she couldn’t read without being aware of the author’s presence. While the story was engaging, it wasn’t absorbing enough to forget that you are indeed reading a story, not experiencing it. And what the two books I mentioned earlier did for me was deliver a book that was more than a book—they were experiences.
I will applaud Hallberg for writing a 944 page novel that rarely drags. With a mix of eclectic and well thought out characters along with a nicely paced and mysterious plot, I was always compelled to read on. I loved almost every character’s perspective. And the 3rd person omniscience with the free indirect speech (which I am a fan of, though others find it plodding and meandering writing), reminded me at times of Yanagihara’s stellar A Little Life. Sadly there are few other comparisons to make between Hallberg’s novel and the former.
Ultimately I found the ending to be satisfying but in that way that left me little to chew on. It was all wrapped up with a pretty bow at the end, and I was left without anything to rip open and examine further. I’d still recommend this one to those courageous enough to take on this nearly-1000 page novel. Perhaps you’ll find something more within, and maybe my own re-reading (not for a long while though) would provide deeper insight. I’m sure there is much I missed, and I will miss these characters’ and their stories. I only wish I was left with less perfection and more of the raw, gritty reality that is presented elsewhere in the book. 3.5 stars
December 7, 2015
I can't, just can't read this anymore. It is hanging over my head like Damocles' sword. Have read half but I just don't care enough about any of these characters to continue. Yes, it is well written, but way to wordy and just not for me a good fit. I am so darned relieved to be done.
January 14, 2016
Five reasons for 5 stars:
1. I had read 177 pages of this physical heavy weight book. (I own it). Then I saw that my library carried this audiobook - it was available ..so change of plans. Instantly I recognized *Rebecca Lowman* as one of the main narrators. I began to melt into REBECCA LOWMAN BLISS!!!! Rebecca adds 'life' to the language and brings the characters alive.
2. Rebecca Lowman's voice is so sincere, warm, and real...I'm interested in anything she talks about. It was 'because' of Rebecca I experienced the lovely floaty - feeling writing by Garth Risk Hallberg.
3. I did 'float'. No, I wasn't on drugs....but you tell me..you wouldn't float'... 'elevate' in body and soul resting on the couch, eyes closed, being 'read to' by this lovely voice. I don't usually 'float' when I'm reading a novel....but the impossible happened. During my 'walks', I couldn't 'float'...but this storytelling kept me interested walking imagining peacock feathers, Regan in costume and her outrageous mask for a gala, Charlie who is so deliciously in love with Sam..all of 17 years of his age, microphones, music, bartenders, Christmas lights, punks to love,
4. The short chapters ...helps makes this book more inviting. The letters in the book are what the author calls interludes. ( having the physical book with the audio is a great combination and I got a kick with the graphics, artwork, and photos...and reading the letters).
5. New York City 70's clubbing, guitars, buzz-cut 'city-on-fire' freedom dreamers!!
Audiobook 5 stars
Rebecca Lowman 5 stars
Garth Risk Hallberg 4.5 stars
Overall: 5 stars
Big-kicking boots...tattoos...love, sex, punk rock music, fireworks, a shooting,....BLACKOUT'!
...distorted gorgeous trippy writing...several characters looking for love, others for friendship, others to escape pain. I LOVED THE DREAM-LIKE 'floaty' EXPERIENCE...which came from the prose...( delivered soooo LOVELY by REBECCA LOWMAN!!!!
Final conclusion: The 'audiobook' heightened the enjoyment!!!! ( should I repeat it again?)...........ha!
1. I had read 177 pages of this physical heavy weight book. (I own it). Then I saw that my library carried this audiobook - it was available ..so change of plans. Instantly I recognized *Rebecca Lowman* as one of the main narrators. I began to melt into REBECCA LOWMAN BLISS!!!! Rebecca adds 'life' to the language and brings the characters alive.
2. Rebecca Lowman's voice is so sincere, warm, and real...I'm interested in anything she talks about. It was 'because' of Rebecca I experienced the lovely floaty - feeling writing by Garth Risk Hallberg.
3. I did 'float'. No, I wasn't on drugs....but you tell me..you wouldn't float'... 'elevate' in body and soul resting on the couch, eyes closed, being 'read to' by this lovely voice. I don't usually 'float' when I'm reading a novel....but the impossible happened. During my 'walks', I couldn't 'float'...but this storytelling kept me interested walking imagining peacock feathers, Regan in costume and her outrageous mask for a gala, Charlie who is so deliciously in love with Sam..all of 17 years of his age, microphones, music, bartenders, Christmas lights, punks to love,
4. The short chapters ...helps makes this book more inviting. The letters in the book are what the author calls interludes. ( having the physical book with the audio is a great combination and I got a kick with the graphics, artwork, and photos...and reading the letters).
5. New York City 70's clubbing, guitars, buzz-cut 'city-on-fire' freedom dreamers!!
Audiobook 5 stars
Rebecca Lowman 5 stars
Garth Risk Hallberg 4.5 stars
Overall: 5 stars
Big-kicking boots...tattoos...love, sex, punk rock music, fireworks, a shooting,....BLACKOUT'!
...distorted gorgeous trippy writing...several characters looking for love, others for friendship, others to escape pain. I LOVED THE DREAM-LIKE 'floaty' EXPERIENCE...which came from the prose...( delivered soooo LOVELY by REBECCA LOWMAN!!!!
Final conclusion: The 'audiobook' heightened the enjoyment!!!! ( should I repeat it again?)...........ha!
March 23, 2018
Η σκοτεινή φωτιά της Ν. Υόρκης αναζωπυρώνεται κατά τη διάρκεια τριών ιστορικών γεγονότων.
Παραμονή πρωτοχρονιάς 1975, εορτασμός της 4ης Ιουλίου για τη διακοσαετία και μια συσκότιση αντίπολιτισμικού φωτός και περιθωρίων στα τέλη της δεκαετίας του ‘70.
Είναι ένα επικό, πολύ φιλόδοξο μυθιστόρημα. Πυκνογραμμένο και απαιτητικό. Σε κάθε πρόταση ένα νόημα, σε κάθε παράγραφο πληθώρα εικόνων, σε κάθε φράση και μία αποκάλυψη όχι τόσο για την εξέλιξη της πλοκής, όσο για τον διαλογισμό και τη σκέψη.
Το μυστήριο της επιτυχίας μιας αποτυχημένης δολοφονίας, μια βαθύτερη εξερεύνηση της σεξουαλικότητας, της υπαρξιακής ταυτότητας,
της πίστης σε θεσμούς και αξίες και ένα περιπατητικό ταξίδι πολιτισμού.
Η παραφωνία της Ν. Υόρκης ακούγεται κατά τη διάρκεια επικών και φαινομενικά ασήμαντων γεγονότων. Μια πειραματική συναυλία μουσικής χωρίς πρόβα, παρτιτούρες και μαέστρο. Απαιτεί οξυμένες αισθήσεις για να νιώσεις τη μελωδία της ζωής που αν τελικά ακουστεί καλύπτεται απο ουρλιαχτά κακοφωνίας συνειδήσεων.
Οι θεατές-αναγνώστες το παγκόσμιο πλήθος της ανθρωπότητας.
Πριν και κατά τη διάρκεια του πειραματικού σχεδίου διανέμονται οι καταιγιστικές ενημερώσεις απο τα ΜΜΕ, γράμματα, σημειώσεις επεξηγηματικές με αδιόρατη σαφήνεια, ημερολόγια, σχέδια με πολλές διαγραφές και προσεκτικά ελεγμένες λεπτομέρειες. Και η μουσική ξεκινάει...
Περίπλοκο βιβλίο και βασανιστικά ογκώδες μα πολύ κατανοητό και ουσιώδες. Σύνθετο και σαρωτικό. Ο συγγραφέας ρίχνει μέσα σ’αυτές τις σελίδες κομμάτια αυτούσια απο την ψυχή και την καρδιά του. Δεν υπάρχει καμία επεξεργασία. Όμορφη γραφή, δημιουργικότητα, συναρπαστικοί χαρακτήρες.
Ίσως να ήταν αριστούργημα για περισσότερους αναγνώστες αν είχε μικρότερο αριθμό σελίδων, λιγότερη εφαπτόμενη φλυαρία, μα αυτό ειλικρινά δεν το καταλαβαίνω, γνωρίζοντας τι θα αντιμετωπίσεις όταν επιλέγεις ενα βιβλίο 1020 σελίδων, γιατί στο τέλος ακυρώνεις όλο το έργο λόγω όγκου ή μη απαραίτητων γραπτών στοιχείων.
Αδύνατον σε μια τέτοια έκταση γραφής να είναι όλα πρωταγωνιστικά, λιτά και απέριττα.
Ίσως ο ενθουσιασμός και η εκφραστική δεινότητα του συγγραφέα να επεκτάθηκε ανεξέλεγκτα, μα σου χάρισε σκέψεις, συναισθήματα, προβληματισμούς και ένα ταξίδι που σίγουρα δεν αξίζει κακή αξιολόγηση λόγω αναγνωστικής κούρασης.
Στην ουσία, με επίκεντρο το μυστήριο μιας δολοφονίας στο Σέντραλ Παρκ, κάποια χιονισμένη παραμονή πρωτοχρονιάς, εμφανίζονται ιστορίες πολλών ανθρώπων που περιστρέφονται γύρω απο το μυστήριο και τελικά συνδέονται αριστουργηματικά μεταξύ τους.
Ένα ευρύ φάσμα χαρακτήρων όλων των ηλικιών και των κοινωνικών τάξεων που ερωτεύονται με πάθος και μισούν με μανία τη Ν. Υόρκη.
Η γοητεία των χαρακτήρων που πρωταγωνιστούν όπως και των υπόλοιπων που έχουν δορυφορικό ρόλο έγκειται στον τρόπο που τους χτίζει ο συγγραφέας κάνοντας τους εκλεκτικούς, ρεαλιστικούς και πολύ δεσμευτικούς.
Ένα εντυπωσιακό μυθιστόρημα τρόπων, ένα θρίλερ, ένα κοινωνικό ντοκιμαντέρ, μια μαύρη κωμωδία. Με τέτοιο πλήθος χαρακτήρων θα μπορούσε η δομή να είναι πολύ βαριά, όμως είναι λειτουργική.
Πάρα πολλές διασταυρώσεις προσώπων και λογοτεχνικών μονοπατιών που εξελίσσονται σαν κάτι φυσικό και αναμενόμενο.
Το αξιοθαύμαστο είναι πως η πολύπλοκη αφήγηση, η χρονική εναλλαγή σε παρελθόν και παρόν και η συνάφεια στις ζωές των ηρώων δεν βασίζεται στην σύμπτωση. Τίποτα δεν ειναι τυχαίο ή αβάσιμο.
Μπαίνεις στον κόσμο των πυροτεχνημάτων μεταφορικά και ουσιαστικά. Γοητεύεσαι απο τα φαντασμαγορικά σχέδια ζωής που λάμπουν πολύ μα ακόμα κι αν αναπαράγονται συνεχώς για τον κάθε άνθρωπο χωριστά η διάρκεια είναι μικρή και ίσως προφταίνει να σπαταληθεί πριν καταστραφεί.
Είναι μια επίκληση του συγγραφέα προς τον ανώνυμο αναγνώστη για τη δυνατότητα διάσωσης ενός ρομαντικού ονείρου που καίγεται στις φλόγες κάθε πόλης, σε μια φωτιά σκληρής συνείδησης και ανθρώπινης σύνδεσης.
Ψάχνει τη σημασία μέσα απο τη λεπτομέρεια και σε προκαλεί.
Τον ακούς να σου λέει, εσείς εκεί έξω, δεν είστε κάπως έτσι, όπως εγώ;
Δεν ονειρεύεστε ακόμα έναν κόσμο διαφορετικό απο αυτόν;
Ποιος απο εμάς, με τίμημα να βγει απο την παγκόσμια παραφροσύνη, το μυστήριο και τις άπειρες πιθανότητες για άχρηστη ευκολία και ομορφιά ζωής, είναι έτοιμος, ακόμη και τώρα, να εγκαταλείψει την ελπίδα;
Η απροσδόκητη φιλοδοξία, οι μεγάλες έννοιες, τα παγκόσμια προβλήματα και η απίθανη επίλυση τους.
Η πόλη στις φλόγες είναι ένα σημαντικό έργο με απαιτήσεις. Ενδείκνυται για αναγνώστες που θα του αφιερώσουν προσοχή και χρόνο.
Οι υπόλοιποι απορρίπτονται.
Προσωπικά θα το πρότεινα σε ελάχιστα άτομα που γνωρίζω καλά.
Δεν ρισκάρεται εύκολα η μεγάλη πιθανότητα απαξίωσης για λόγους, κατά τα άλλα, σεβαστούς.
Απολαύστε το αν αντέχετε.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.
Παραμονή πρωτοχρονιάς 1975, εορτασμός της 4ης Ιουλίου για τη διακοσαετία και μια συσκότιση αντίπολιτισμικού φωτός και περιθωρίων στα τέλη της δεκαετίας του ‘70.
Είναι ένα επικό, πολύ φιλόδοξο μυθιστόρημα. Πυκνογραμμένο και απαιτητικό. Σε κάθε πρόταση ένα νόημα, σε κάθε παράγραφο πληθώρα εικόνων, σε κάθε φράση και μία αποκάλυψη όχι τόσο για την εξέλιξη της πλοκής, όσο για τον διαλογισμό και τη σκέψη.
Το μυστήριο της επιτυχίας μιας αποτυχημένης δολοφονίας, μια βαθύτερη εξερεύνηση της σεξουαλικότητας, της υπαρξιακής ταυτότητας,
της πίστης σε θεσμούς και αξίες και ένα περιπατητικό ταξίδι πολιτισμού.
Η παραφωνία της Ν. Υόρκης ακούγεται κατά τη διάρκεια επικών και φαινομενικά ασήμαντων γεγονότων. Μια πειραματική συναυλία μουσικής χωρίς πρόβα, παρτιτούρες και μαέστρο. Απαιτεί οξυμένες αισθήσεις για να νιώσεις τη μελωδία της ζωής που αν τελικά ακουστεί καλύπτεται απο ουρλιαχτά κακοφωνίας συνειδήσεων.
Οι θεατές-αναγνώστες το παγκόσμιο πλήθος της ανθρωπότητας.
Πριν και κατά τη διάρκεια του πειραματικού σχεδίου διανέμονται οι καταιγιστικές ενημερώσεις απο τα ΜΜΕ, γράμματα, σημειώσεις επεξηγηματικές με αδιόρατη σαφήνεια, ημερολόγια, σχέδια με πολλές διαγραφές και προσεκτικά ελεγμένες λεπτομέρειες. Και η μουσική ξεκινάει...
Περίπλοκο βιβλίο και βασανιστικά ογκώδες μα πολύ κατανοητό και ουσιώδες. Σύνθετο και σαρωτικό. Ο συγγραφέας ρίχνει μέσα σ’αυτές τις σελίδες κομμάτια αυτούσια απο την ψυχή και την καρδιά του. Δεν υπάρχει καμία επεξεργασία. Όμορφη γραφή, δημιουργικότητα, συναρπαστικοί χαρακτήρες.
Ίσως να ήταν αριστούργημα για περισσότερους αναγνώστες αν είχε μικρότερο αριθμό σελίδων, λιγότερη εφαπτόμενη φλυαρία, μα αυτό ειλικρινά δεν το καταλαβαίνω, γνωρίζοντας τι θα αντιμετωπίσεις όταν επιλέγεις ενα βιβλίο 1020 σελίδων, γιατί στο τέλος ακυρώνεις όλο το έργο λόγω όγκου ή μη απαραίτητων γραπτών στοιχείων.
Αδύνατον σε μια τέτοια έκταση γραφής να είναι όλα πρωταγωνιστικά, λιτά και απέριττα.
Ίσως ο ενθουσιασμός και η εκφραστική δεινότητα του συγγραφέα να επεκτάθηκε ανεξέλεγκτα, μα σου χάρισε σκέψεις, συναισθήματα, προβληματισμούς και ένα ταξίδι που σίγουρα δεν αξίζει κακή αξιολόγηση λόγω αναγνωστικής κούρασης.
Στην ουσία, με επίκεντρο το μυστήριο μιας δολοφονίας στο Σέντραλ Παρκ, κάποια χιονισμένη παραμονή πρωτοχρονιάς, εμφανίζονται ιστορίες πολλών ανθρώπων που περιστρέφονται γύρω απο το μυστήριο και τελικά συνδέονται αριστουργηματικά μεταξύ τους.
Ένα ευρύ φάσμα χαρακτήρων όλων των ηλικιών και των κοινωνικών τάξεων που ερωτεύονται με πάθος και μισούν με μανία τη Ν. Υόρκη.
Η γοητεία των χαρακτήρων που πρωταγωνιστούν όπως και των υπόλοιπων που έχουν δορυφορικό ρόλο έγκειται στον τρόπο που τους χτίζει ο συγγραφέας κάνοντας τους εκλεκτικούς, ρεαλιστικούς και πολύ δεσμευτικούς.
Ένα εντυπωσιακό μυθιστόρημα τρόπων, ένα θρίλερ, ένα κοινωνικό ντοκιμαντέρ, μια μαύρη κωμωδία. Με τέτοιο πλήθος χαρακτήρων θα μπορούσε η δομή να είναι πολύ βαριά, όμως είναι λειτουργική.
Πάρα πολλές διασταυρώσεις προσώπων και λογοτεχνικών μονοπατιών που εξελίσσονται σαν κάτι φυσικό και αναμενόμενο.
Το αξιοθαύμαστο είναι πως η πολύπλοκη αφήγηση, η χρονική εναλλαγή σε παρελθόν και παρόν και η συνάφεια στις ζωές των ηρώων δεν βασίζεται στην σύμπτωση. Τίποτα δεν ειναι τυχαίο ή αβάσιμο.
Μπαίνεις στον κόσμο των πυροτεχνημάτων μεταφορικά και ουσιαστικά. Γοητεύεσαι απο τα φαντασμαγορικά σχέδια ζωής που λάμπουν πολύ μα ακόμα κι αν αναπαράγονται συνεχώς για τον κάθε άνθρωπο χωριστά η διάρκεια είναι μικρή και ίσως προφταίνει να σπαταληθεί πριν καταστραφεί.
Είναι μια επίκληση του συγγραφέα προς τον ανώνυμο αναγνώστη για τη δυνατότητα διάσωσης ενός ρομαντικού ονείρου που καίγεται στις φλόγες κάθε πόλης, σε μια φωτιά σκληρής συνείδησης και ανθρώπινης σύνδεσης.
Ψάχνει τη σημασία μέσα απο τη λεπτομέρεια και σε προκαλεί.
Τον ακούς να σου λέει, εσείς εκεί έξω, δεν είστε κάπως έτσι, όπως εγώ;
Δεν ονειρεύεστε ακόμα έναν κόσμο διαφορετικό απο αυτόν;
Ποιος απο εμάς, με τίμημα να βγει απο την παγκόσμια παραφροσύνη, το μυστήριο και τις άπειρες πιθανότητες για άχρηστη ευκολία και ομορφιά ζωής, είναι έτοιμος, ακόμη και τώρα, να εγκαταλείψει την ελπίδα;
Η απροσδόκητη φιλοδοξία, οι μεγάλες έννοιες, τα παγκόσμια προβλήματα και η απίθανη επίλυση τους.
Η πόλη στις φλόγες είναι ένα σημαντικό έργο με απαιτήσεις. Ενδείκνυται για αναγνώστες που θα του αφιερώσουν προσοχή και χρόνο.
Οι υπόλοιποι απορρίπτονται.
Προσωπικά θα το πρότεινα σε ελάχιστα άτομα που γνωρίζω καλά.
Δεν ρισκάρεται εύκολα η μεγάλη πιθανότητα απαξίωσης για λόγους, κατά τα άλλα, σεβαστούς.
Απολαύστε το αν αντέχετε.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.
December 2, 2015
I can already feel the sting from the glances of side-eyed skepticism (and even scepticism) as I type this, that (for 600 pages, anyway) City on Fire, the massively hyped, crazy-quilt pastiche of a doorstopper was this close to earning a spot on my imaginary Favorites shelf. I was utterly enraptured by Garth Risk Hallberg's swirly, sweaty portrait of NYC in the mid-to-late '70's. Even with the pretentious slathering of the most obscure words of the English language, I flew through the pages as if they were popcorn-buttered. Even as Hallberg kept gumming up the works by rolling out character after character (all interesting, if not likable) into the fray, even as the forward flow of the narrative kept being hijacked by being shifted into reverse (seemingly, at Hallberg's whim), even as I kept feeling Hallberg was liberally borrowing from the styles of Pulitzer Prize-winners and NYC-veterans (Jennifer Egan, Donna Tartt, Don Delillo, Tom Wolfe) to dangle as award-bait, I still could not get enough of this novel.
Then, at about the 60% mark, the bottom fell out.
I can't quite pinpoint the reason why the book started tanking for me, but it seemed as if Hallberg was dithering about how to end the thing. I never confused this for a mystery or thriller (it's nothing of the sort, really), but each time he'd hover close to a suitable climax and denouement, he'd retrace his steps and rehash key plot points. I'm sure this is the tritest criticism ever, but if ever a book earned it, City on Fire is the one: this book is in desperate need of a competent editor; one allowed to excise the fat. When I mentioned to a friend that Hallberg is in love with his own writing, it's the seeming absence of an editor I was referring to. The veterans of the doorstop novel (Norman Mailer, Stephen King, et.al.) may've gotten away with getting their manuscripts published with a minimum of editing, but a relatively cachet-less (read: formerly novel-less) author like Hallberg? Leaving in all this fat can only lead the cynical reader to point the finger at Knopf for inflating the page count. A 300-page cut could've made this a masterpiece.
I purposely haven't mentioned the plot, as it takes a backseat to the crisply rendered vision of a city at the verge of upheaval. There is a good one, though, coursing beneath the brilliant prose and beautifully ugly backdrop. There's way too much to concisely mention, but using the real-life July 13, 1977 Blackout of NYC as a fulcrum (of sorts) to balance upon, Hallberg has enlisted a solid cast of characters as instruments (some unwitting, some more actively involved) in that upheaval. There's the gay, African-American aspiring novelist (and NYC transplant from backwoods Georgia) Mercer Goodman; Billy Three Sticks (aka William Hamilton-Sweeney III), Mercer's punker boyfriend (whose up-and-coming band Ex Post Facto's biggest "hit", "City on Fire" provides the book its title); the musically talentless Nicky Chaos (another punker whose nihilistic machinations form an SDS/SLA-esque group bent on changing the world called PHP, or Post-Humanistic Phalanstery); Samantha Cicciaro, a Long Island NYU student, photographer, fanzine publisher, and daughter of one the few original 'fireworkers'--those that run elaborate fireworks displays; Richard the journalist, whose essay on the origins of fireworking uncovers a much more deeper (and far-reaching) story; Charlie, the asthmatic 15 year-old Long Islander who desperately wants to get out from under his overbearing mother's wing...
Okay, I think you get the picture: there's so much going on here. Hallberg's undertaking is huge...and more than a little Sisyphean: there's so much going on, it's impossible to tie up every loose end. I admire Hallberg's fortitude and vision, which is epic in scope. I can see why bidding wars arose over this. I, as well (after reading half of this) wanted to exalt it to all (even the skeptics). Alas, with all the aborted endings and untrimmed fat, the best I can do is warn readers not to expect perfection. There's enough of a slow burn to make City on Fire a worthwhile read, but it's certainly not the be-all end-all novel the first half portended.
Then, at about the 60% mark, the bottom fell out.
I can't quite pinpoint the reason why the book started tanking for me, but it seemed as if Hallberg was dithering about how to end the thing. I never confused this for a mystery or thriller (it's nothing of the sort, really), but each time he'd hover close to a suitable climax and denouement, he'd retrace his steps and rehash key plot points. I'm sure this is the tritest criticism ever, but if ever a book earned it, City on Fire is the one: this book is in desperate need of a competent editor; one allowed to excise the fat. When I mentioned to a friend that Hallberg is in love with his own writing, it's the seeming absence of an editor I was referring to. The veterans of the doorstop novel (Norman Mailer, Stephen King, et.al.) may've gotten away with getting their manuscripts published with a minimum of editing, but a relatively cachet-less (read: formerly novel-less) author like Hallberg? Leaving in all this fat can only lead the cynical reader to point the finger at Knopf for inflating the page count. A 300-page cut could've made this a masterpiece.
I purposely haven't mentioned the plot, as it takes a backseat to the crisply rendered vision of a city at the verge of upheaval. There is a good one, though, coursing beneath the brilliant prose and beautifully ugly backdrop. There's way too much to concisely mention, but using the real-life July 13, 1977 Blackout of NYC as a fulcrum (of sorts) to balance upon, Hallberg has enlisted a solid cast of characters as instruments (some unwitting, some more actively involved) in that upheaval. There's the gay, African-American aspiring novelist (and NYC transplant from backwoods Georgia) Mercer Goodman; Billy Three Sticks (aka William Hamilton-Sweeney III), Mercer's punker boyfriend (whose up-and-coming band Ex Post Facto's biggest "hit", "City on Fire" provides the book its title); the musically talentless Nicky Chaos (another punker whose nihilistic machinations form an SDS/SLA-esque group bent on changing the world called PHP, or Post-Humanistic Phalanstery); Samantha Cicciaro, a Long Island NYU student, photographer, fanzine publisher, and daughter of one the few original 'fireworkers'--those that run elaborate fireworks displays; Richard the journalist, whose essay on the origins of fireworking uncovers a much more deeper (and far-reaching) story; Charlie, the asthmatic 15 year-old Long Islander who desperately wants to get out from under his overbearing mother's wing...
Okay, I think you get the picture: there's so much going on here. Hallberg's undertaking is huge...and more than a little Sisyphean: there's so much going on, it's impossible to tie up every loose end. I admire Hallberg's fortitude and vision, which is epic in scope. I can see why bidding wars arose over this. I, as well (after reading half of this) wanted to exalt it to all (even the skeptics). Alas, with all the aborted endings and untrimmed fat, the best I can do is warn readers not to expect perfection. There's enough of a slow burn to make City on Fire a worthwhile read, but it's certainly not the be-all end-all novel the first half portended.
October 26, 2016
I survived City on Fire! No matter what else I read in 2016, I feel a sense of accomplishment after finishing this dense, sprawling, 900-page tome.
For it is dense and sprawling. Comparisons to Dickens and Pynchon and David Foster Wallace and hell, even Shakespeare, are apt. The plot is so complicated it defies summary. There is a punk group on a mission; there is a rich family embroiled in a corruption scandal; there is an honest cop close to retirement; there are estranged lovers; there is a girl who was shot; there is an angry father; there is a prodigal son; and there is a journalist trying to uncover the truth. And everything comes to a head during the July 1977 blackout in New York City.
This is a novel so crammed with stuff that it took me a while before I started to like it. Sure, my expectations had been raised because Garth Risk Hallberg had inspired a bidding war for this debut, ending up with a $2 million advance (I know, it's crazy). Also, I made the mistake of listening to this on audio, which I would not recommend because the print version makes better sense of all the ephemera and found objects, including letters and zines and diary entries.
In short, I would recommend this novel if you like epic stories that make you work a little harder. It's a book I will need to reread to fully appreciate.
Favorite Quotes
"The reason we can say anything we want in America is that we know it makes no difference."
"And she learned that you couldn’t stockpile anything that mattered, really. Feelings, people, songs, sex, fireworks: they existed only in time, and when it was over, so were they."
"The Lonliest Man in the World, she said, only has room in his heart for one person, and if he can't have that person, he locks himself away. He tells himself no one could possibly love him, but really, it's that he refuses to love anyone else."
For it is dense and sprawling. Comparisons to Dickens and Pynchon and David Foster Wallace and hell, even Shakespeare, are apt. The plot is so complicated it defies summary. There is a punk group on a mission; there is a rich family embroiled in a corruption scandal; there is an honest cop close to retirement; there are estranged lovers; there is a girl who was shot; there is an angry father; there is a prodigal son; and there is a journalist trying to uncover the truth. And everything comes to a head during the July 1977 blackout in New York City.
This is a novel so crammed with stuff that it took me a while before I started to like it. Sure, my expectations had been raised because Garth Risk Hallberg had inspired a bidding war for this debut, ending up with a $2 million advance (I know, it's crazy). Also, I made the mistake of listening to this on audio, which I would not recommend because the print version makes better sense of all the ephemera and found objects, including letters and zines and diary entries.
In short, I would recommend this novel if you like epic stories that make you work a little harder. It's a book I will need to reread to fully appreciate.
Favorite Quotes
"The reason we can say anything we want in America is that we know it makes no difference."
"And she learned that you couldn’t stockpile anything that mattered, really. Feelings, people, songs, sex, fireworks: they existed only in time, and when it was over, so were they."
"The Lonliest Man in the World, she said, only has room in his heart for one person, and if he can't have that person, he locks himself away. He tells himself no one could possibly love him, but really, it's that he refuses to love anyone else."
October 5, 2015
The “it” book this fall is “City on Fire,” a 911-page debut by an unknown writer named Garth Risk Hallberg. Yes, Risk is literally his middle name, but it’s his publisher that’s taking a chance here. Having reportedly paid nearly $2 million for the manuscript, Knopf must be praying that “City on Fire” is worth its weight in Goldfinch. Such irrational exuberance can’t buy a spot on the bestseller list, but it can guarantee coverage. So prepare yourself for what passes for a book publicity juggernaut: Over the next few weeks, you’ll read about this novel everywhere, and you’ll hear the young author interviewed on NPR, and you’ll see pyramids of “City on Fire” at your local bookstore. And at some point, you’ll wonder, “Should I read this novel — or three others?”
That decision may hinge on your stamina, but “City on Fire” is an extraordinary performance. Radiating youthful bravado that will make older authors sniff with contempt (or sweat with envy), Hallberg has conjured what he calls the “muchness” of New York City in the late 1970s. He calculates “the sum of thousands of variations, all jockeying for the same spot.” Like Tom Wolfe — but with less nervous energy and more stylistic elegance — Hallberg climbs quickly up and down the economic ladder. He inhabits the minds of whites and blacks, men and women, old and young, ga. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
That decision may hinge on your stamina, but “City on Fire” is an extraordinary performance. Radiating youthful bravado that will make older authors sniff with contempt (or sweat with envy), Hallberg has conjured what he calls the “muchness” of New York City in the late 1970s. He calculates “the sum of thousands of variations, all jockeying for the same spot.” Like Tom Wolfe — but with less nervous energy and more stylistic elegance — Hallberg climbs quickly up and down the economic ladder. He inhabits the minds of whites and blacks, men and women, old and young, ga. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
April 26, 2016
It’s hard to know where to begin with Garth Risk Hallberg’s much-hyped City on Fire. I could try to talk about the $2 million advance, but I’m just a simple rube from the Midwest, with little knowledge of the bidding wars engaged in by publishing houses. I could ruminate on its complexly interwoven plot, with dozens of character arcs meandering in all directions until the book’s culminating event – the 1977 New York City blackout – pulls them all together. I could also marvel at this book’s size, which at 900 pages (plus change), is certainly prodigious.
All these things are worth mentioning. However, perhaps the most important thing for me to say is this: I absolutely loved City on Fire, but I couldn’t think of a single person in my life to whom I would recommend it.
Distilling City on Fire is no mean feat. The animating moment is the shooting of a young girl in Central Park on New Year’s Eve 1976. The ripples of this event touch most of the many (many, many, many) characters, while also supplying a bit of traditional suspense while Hallberg methodically works his way towards the aforementioned blackout on July 13, 1977. To say this is a book about a mysterious crime and a blackout, however, almost entirely misses the point. This is a book whose true purpose is to bring an entire city, during a specific time-period, to blazing, effervescent life. (There are even graphics! City on Fire includes six so-called “interludes.” These inserts include a hand-written letter from one character to another; an excerpt from journalist character’s magazine article; and a copy of a homemade ‘zine, complete with local music reviews).
With Tolstoyan ambition, Hallberg tries to light a candle in every single shadowy corner of the Big Apple. Writing in the third-person (with a couple exceptions), he places his various characters all over the map. There is William Hamilton-Sweeney, the estranged heir to a huge family fortune. He is a wannabe artist with daddy issues and a drug problem. William is dating Mercer Goodman, a black man from Georgia who teaches at an all-girls school. (Gay and black? This is where literary hype comes from!). William’s sister, with whom he has no contact, is Regan. She works for the Hamilton-Sweeney company, in close proximity with her mysteriously-devious step-uncle Amory Gould. Regan is married to Keith; they are separated due to Keith’s roaming eye. Keith is – well, I could go on for paragraphs, trying to unspool all the threads. Suffice to say, this is just a preview of the uptown folks. There are also two punk-obsessed teens, Charlie and Sam; a tenacious long-form journalist; a fireworks expert; a domestic terrorist named Nicky Chaos, who runs an anarcho-syndicalist commune; an Asian-American woman who works as an assistant to an art dealer named Bruno; and an NYPD inspector with polio.
City on Fire is intricately plotted and overstuffed with side-plots and digressions. Nevertheless, this is not a confusing book. Hallberg structures the novel into seven chapters, interspersed with six interludes. These chapters are not strictly chronological, but Hallberg uses datelines to warn you when he is jumping forward and backward in time. The only difficulty I had was in keeping all the relationships straight. Everyone is connected to everyone, somehow. It’s like the early seasons of LOST. (And like LOST, it eventually gets a bit preposterous). If you decide to read this, it might be a good idea to keep a running list of the characters and their relationships. Or you can do what I did, and rustle manically through the pages in mounting frustration before finally keeping track of names on a page torn from a spiral-bound notebook.
Hallberg’s writing is gorgeous. His sentences are lively and inventive. In fact, they are so lively and inventive that I sometimes got exhausted. There are paragraphs that feel like they took a year to write. There are perfect metaphors thrown away on mundane details. There are lines in this book that most authors would have guarded jealously, hoarding them until the perfect, climactic moment. Hallberg tosses them out like a millionaire dispensing pennies. This is a book written with confidence, even arrogance. Yet, it is never impenetrable. It is not Joyce or Pynchon. This is an accessible novel written with bravura skill and verve.
Having said that, there are minor irritations. Chief among them is Hallberg’s insistence on scraping the bottom of the thesaurus for every spelling-bee word he can find. There are times when City on Fire reads like the work of a precocious 11th grader in an Advanced Creative Writing class. In a smaller work, Hallberg’s sesquipedalian tendencies would have annoyed the hell out of me. Here, though, it’s almost part of the charm. City on Fire thrives on its too-much-ness. I can therefore forgive his use of “florilegia” and “perfervid” and many other look-at-me words.
Hallberg’s great achievement is in his keen eye for humanity. His characters, even the minor ones, brim with dimensions. There is a minor subplot when Mercer returns to his hometown of Altana, Georgia, to visit his mom, dad, and wayward brother. The Goodman family is rendered so vividly that I continued to wonder about them, long after the course of the narrative had left them behind. None of the characters are fully likeable. All of them make stupid mistakes, hurt others, hurt themselves, display pettiness or vindictiveness. Yet they are all made sympathetic. For instance, there is Samantha on New Year’s Eve, recalling the mother who abandoned her:
The strength of Hallberg’s characters is one of City on Fire’s great triumphs. The other is its mesmerizing sense of place. Hallberg has recreated the look, feel, and smell of 1970s-era New York City. This is a New York City on the verge of bankruptcy, with certain areas like the South Bronx a Third World wasteland of abandoned buildings (targeted for arson), drugs, and crime. There is tactility to Hallberg’s descriptions. There is atmosphere. I don’t know if this was what it was actually like. I wasn’t in New York in the 70s. Neither was Hallberg. That doesn’t matter. It feels real, and that’s the important thing in fiction.
As I said above, this is a hard book to recommend. It’s an immersive read. The book’s size allows Hallberg to be generous with his characters, to allow them to simply exist, which is a pleasure in and of itself. The ending eventually feels drawn out (it reminded me of Peter Jackson’s Return of the King in that respect), but its big set-piece is a corker. Over the course of 150 pages or so, Hallberg gives you a panoramic view of the July 1977 Blackout. The way he ties up all the threads is pretty implausible, yet also entertaining. In many respects, his resolutions are cathartic and emotionally affecting.
At the same time, I can see how others might find this book a winding, pretentious bore. What I found deep, others might find facile; what I found resonant, others might find tedious. Where I found a richly embroidered portrait of a city, others mind find a navel-gazing paean to a city that already has too much self-regard. (Okay, to be honest, I found this both a richly embroidered portrait and an exercise in navel gazing. Seriously, New Yorkers, there are other cities on Earth).
What I’m really saying is that this is a 900 page book. You have to know what you’re getting into. If it’s not working for you, it’s going to suck (especially if you are like me, and refuse to quit). There’s only one thing worse than a bad novel, and that’s a bad novel that won’t end.
This is not War and Peace. I make no claims to this book’s lasting place in the firmament. But I found myself thinking of Tolstoy’s masterpiece as I finished City on Fire. It has been said that if the world could write, it would write like Tolstoy. Tolstoy earned this praise by his comprehensiveness, his ability to encompass so much of the human experience between two covers. Hallberg shoots for something along those same lines. If New York City could write… Well, you get my point.
All these things are worth mentioning. However, perhaps the most important thing for me to say is this: I absolutely loved City on Fire, but I couldn’t think of a single person in my life to whom I would recommend it.
Distilling City on Fire is no mean feat. The animating moment is the shooting of a young girl in Central Park on New Year’s Eve 1976. The ripples of this event touch most of the many (many, many, many) characters, while also supplying a bit of traditional suspense while Hallberg methodically works his way towards the aforementioned blackout on July 13, 1977. To say this is a book about a mysterious crime and a blackout, however, almost entirely misses the point. This is a book whose true purpose is to bring an entire city, during a specific time-period, to blazing, effervescent life. (There are even graphics! City on Fire includes six so-called “interludes.” These inserts include a hand-written letter from one character to another; an excerpt from journalist character’s magazine article; and a copy of a homemade ‘zine, complete with local music reviews).
With Tolstoyan ambition, Hallberg tries to light a candle in every single shadowy corner of the Big Apple. Writing in the third-person (with a couple exceptions), he places his various characters all over the map. There is William Hamilton-Sweeney, the estranged heir to a huge family fortune. He is a wannabe artist with daddy issues and a drug problem. William is dating Mercer Goodman, a black man from Georgia who teaches at an all-girls school. (Gay and black? This is where literary hype comes from!). William’s sister, with whom he has no contact, is Regan. She works for the Hamilton-Sweeney company, in close proximity with her mysteriously-devious step-uncle Amory Gould. Regan is married to Keith; they are separated due to Keith’s roaming eye. Keith is – well, I could go on for paragraphs, trying to unspool all the threads. Suffice to say, this is just a preview of the uptown folks. There are also two punk-obsessed teens, Charlie and Sam; a tenacious long-form journalist; a fireworks expert; a domestic terrorist named Nicky Chaos, who runs an anarcho-syndicalist commune; an Asian-American woman who works as an assistant to an art dealer named Bruno; and an NYPD inspector with polio.
City on Fire is intricately plotted and overstuffed with side-plots and digressions. Nevertheless, this is not a confusing book. Hallberg structures the novel into seven chapters, interspersed with six interludes. These chapters are not strictly chronological, but Hallberg uses datelines to warn you when he is jumping forward and backward in time. The only difficulty I had was in keeping all the relationships straight. Everyone is connected to everyone, somehow. It’s like the early seasons of LOST. (And like LOST, it eventually gets a bit preposterous). If you decide to read this, it might be a good idea to keep a running list of the characters and their relationships. Or you can do what I did, and rustle manically through the pages in mounting frustration before finally keeping track of names on a page torn from a spiral-bound notebook.
Hallberg’s writing is gorgeous. His sentences are lively and inventive. In fact, they are so lively and inventive that I sometimes got exhausted. There are paragraphs that feel like they took a year to write. There are perfect metaphors thrown away on mundane details. There are lines in this book that most authors would have guarded jealously, hoarding them until the perfect, climactic moment. Hallberg tosses them out like a millionaire dispensing pennies. This is a book written with confidence, even arrogance. Yet, it is never impenetrable. It is not Joyce or Pynchon. This is an accessible novel written with bravura skill and verve.
Having said that, there are minor irritations. Chief among them is Hallberg’s insistence on scraping the bottom of the thesaurus for every spelling-bee word he can find. There are times when City on Fire reads like the work of a precocious 11th grader in an Advanced Creative Writing class. In a smaller work, Hallberg’s sesquipedalian tendencies would have annoyed the hell out of me. Here, though, it’s almost part of the charm. City on Fire thrives on its too-much-ness. I can therefore forgive his use of “florilegia” and “perfervid” and many other look-at-me words.
Hallberg’s great achievement is in his keen eye for humanity. His characters, even the minor ones, brim with dimensions. There is a minor subplot when Mercer returns to his hometown of Altana, Georgia, to visit his mom, dad, and wayward brother. The Goodman family is rendered so vividly that I continued to wonder about them, long after the course of the narrative had left them behind. None of the characters are fully likeable. All of them make stupid mistakes, hurt others, hurt themselves, display pettiness or vindictiveness. Yet they are all made sympathetic. For instance, there is Samantha on New Year’s Eve, recalling the mother who abandoned her:
What you did was, you read your resolutions out loud and put a check by the ones you’d managed to keep. The ones you’d broken became a starting point for your new list. Fifty percent was considered pretty good, unlike at school. As she looked back now, though, several things struck Sam. The first was that Mom had already harbored yearnings she must not have realized were legible there, in the resolutions that had been hanging in plain sight for the last 364 days, if only Dad would have thought to look. The second was the guilty way Mom had glanced at the streaks of her daughter’s Dacron thighs as Sam read aloud her previous vow to lose twenty pounds. And finally…there was this: how little difference it made. In the end, like every human project, these plans that on December 31 burned so brightly in the forebrain would gutter and come to grief. It was remarkable how many of her own resolutions Sam would forget in the course of the year. They would return to her at its end like sealed messages, bottles set adrift by some other self on the far shore of a wide sea.
The strength of Hallberg’s characters is one of City on Fire’s great triumphs. The other is its mesmerizing sense of place. Hallberg has recreated the look, feel, and smell of 1970s-era New York City. This is a New York City on the verge of bankruptcy, with certain areas like the South Bronx a Third World wasteland of abandoned buildings (targeted for arson), drugs, and crime. There is tactility to Hallberg’s descriptions. There is atmosphere. I don’t know if this was what it was actually like. I wasn’t in New York in the 70s. Neither was Hallberg. That doesn’t matter. It feels real, and that’s the important thing in fiction.
As I said above, this is a hard book to recommend. It’s an immersive read. The book’s size allows Hallberg to be generous with his characters, to allow them to simply exist, which is a pleasure in and of itself. The ending eventually feels drawn out (it reminded me of Peter Jackson’s Return of the King in that respect), but its big set-piece is a corker. Over the course of 150 pages or so, Hallberg gives you a panoramic view of the July 1977 Blackout. The way he ties up all the threads is pretty implausible, yet also entertaining. In many respects, his resolutions are cathartic and emotionally affecting.
At the same time, I can see how others might find this book a winding, pretentious bore. What I found deep, others might find facile; what I found resonant, others might find tedious. Where I found a richly embroidered portrait of a city, others mind find a navel-gazing paean to a city that already has too much self-regard. (Okay, to be honest, I found this both a richly embroidered portrait and an exercise in navel gazing. Seriously, New Yorkers, there are other cities on Earth).
What I’m really saying is that this is a 900 page book. You have to know what you’re getting into. If it’s not working for you, it’s going to suck (especially if you are like me, and refuse to quit). There’s only one thing worse than a bad novel, and that’s a bad novel that won’t end.
This is not War and Peace. I make no claims to this book’s lasting place in the firmament. But I found myself thinking of Tolstoy’s masterpiece as I finished City on Fire. It has been said that if the world could write, it would write like Tolstoy. Tolstoy earned this praise by his comprehensiveness, his ability to encompass so much of the human experience between two covers. Hallberg shoots for something along those same lines. If New York City could write… Well, you get my point.
December 9, 2015
I can't do it. I can't read another page of this book beyond the 357 pages I've read so far. Maybe this book gets better, maybe it doesn't. But I'm not about to invest another minute to find out. I can only tell you my experience with it so far at the one-third mark which led me to abandoning it. And I'm not a person to abandon books easily.
The story takes place in New York City in the 1970's, the large handful of characters criss-crossing paths to connect and disconnect from one another. A shooting in Central Park occurs early on, the victim's assailant a mystery, one that relates back to the characters. Characters which the author spends a great deal of time developing, much to his credit. They range in age from seventeen to mid-sixties. They come from different backgrounds, have different education levels, different religious practices, different ethnicities, different sexual orientations. But guess what? They all sound the same. They all sound like they ate a thesaurus and would now like to share their latest meal with the reader. I can't help feeling that the author was trying to impress me with his overblown vocabulary and extended literary knowledge since there were also myriad literary references scattered throughout the book that were lost on me. I don't know about you, but I like to read a book uninterrupted without having to look up the meanings of dozens of words and literary references in each chapter to know exactly what was said. And I like the characters I read about to sound like themselves instead of them being a mouthpiece for the author's agenda, whatever that may be.
If you think I'm exaggerating or being unfair, here are some of the words you will encounter in this book, in dialogue or in the characters' thought processes, some of them coming out of the mouths and minds of seventeen year old punk rockers: sfumato, pusillanimous, tropism, apostasy, perspicuity, vituperative, obstreperous, to name only a few. In one particular sentence, an older gentleman compared himself to a quivering ephebe. I have a college education, but I had to look that one up to discover it only meant a nervous young man. Why not say that in the first place? And here's another example of this stilted, formal language in action:
"The only viable tenant appeared to be an Orange Julius. For having so far husbanded his cash pretty well, Mercer rewarded himself with one of the eponymous beverages." Really? Why not just say, "The Orange Julius seemed to be the only successful tenant doing business in that center. Having conserved his cash pretty well, Mercer rewarded himself with one of the frothy drinks from that establishment." He can still sound intelligent without sounding like a walking dictionary. Though I have to say, I wouldn't have minded one or two characters speaking that way as a quirky attribute. I just couldn't take every single character spouting words I considered unnatural to them. Adding to that, every single character was so self-absorbed, I kept shying away from them and found it impossible to connect with them on more than a superficial level. As it stood, I was mildly interested in them, but I didn't really care about them. I wanted to peel off the layers of pretentious language and calculated back stories used to elicit sympathy from me to reveal their true selves. But maybe they would have turned to dust without those things holding them together. I couldn't stick around any longer to find out if they became real or not.
You might wonder if there was anything good about this book since I stuck with it for as long as I did. As I mentioned, the characters were well drawn, and how they related to one another was a mystery, so I was interested in how they would come together, affecting one another for good or bad. And despite my criticism of the writing, some of it was observant and clever when the author reined in his vocabulary choices. Here's an example of some of the descriptive writing that intrigued me:
"Chalk dust seemed to cover her mouth and throat. Her thumb throbbed. Pain crept from her temples back into the vault of her skull, where her withered brain now sat, tiny ruler on its outsized throne, nattering to itself instead of doing what it should have been doing, which was sleeping off its hangover."
But then the author would ruin examples like this by including dozens upon dozens of similes and metaphors following them, making them nothing special.
So in a nutshell, this book had an interesting premise with interesting characters who eventually didn't interest me when the author made them all sound the same, spewing words no one uses in normal conversation. As for the story, at the one third mark, it had stalled out as the author traveled back in time, detailing all his characters' life histories to get me to care about them. So I have no idea if it picked up the pace or when. I only know it certainly wasn't a page turner at that point.
Maybe you'll want to risk however much time of yours it would take for you to read 900 pages to learn what happens in this book, but I wouldn't advise it based on the contents of one third of those pages. Reader beware.
The story takes place in New York City in the 1970's, the large handful of characters criss-crossing paths to connect and disconnect from one another. A shooting in Central Park occurs early on, the victim's assailant a mystery, one that relates back to the characters. Characters which the author spends a great deal of time developing, much to his credit. They range in age from seventeen to mid-sixties. They come from different backgrounds, have different education levels, different religious practices, different ethnicities, different sexual orientations. But guess what? They all sound the same. They all sound like they ate a thesaurus and would now like to share their latest meal with the reader. I can't help feeling that the author was trying to impress me with his overblown vocabulary and extended literary knowledge since there were also myriad literary references scattered throughout the book that were lost on me. I don't know about you, but I like to read a book uninterrupted without having to look up the meanings of dozens of words and literary references in each chapter to know exactly what was said. And I like the characters I read about to sound like themselves instead of them being a mouthpiece for the author's agenda, whatever that may be.
If you think I'm exaggerating or being unfair, here are some of the words you will encounter in this book, in dialogue or in the characters' thought processes, some of them coming out of the mouths and minds of seventeen year old punk rockers: sfumato, pusillanimous, tropism, apostasy, perspicuity, vituperative, obstreperous, to name only a few. In one particular sentence, an older gentleman compared himself to a quivering ephebe. I have a college education, but I had to look that one up to discover it only meant a nervous young man. Why not say that in the first place? And here's another example of this stilted, formal language in action:
"The only viable tenant appeared to be an Orange Julius. For having so far husbanded his cash pretty well, Mercer rewarded himself with one of the eponymous beverages." Really? Why not just say, "The Orange Julius seemed to be the only successful tenant doing business in that center. Having conserved his cash pretty well, Mercer rewarded himself with one of the frothy drinks from that establishment." He can still sound intelligent without sounding like a walking dictionary. Though I have to say, I wouldn't have minded one or two characters speaking that way as a quirky attribute. I just couldn't take every single character spouting words I considered unnatural to them. Adding to that, every single character was so self-absorbed, I kept shying away from them and found it impossible to connect with them on more than a superficial level. As it stood, I was mildly interested in them, but I didn't really care about them. I wanted to peel off the layers of pretentious language and calculated back stories used to elicit sympathy from me to reveal their true selves. But maybe they would have turned to dust without those things holding them together. I couldn't stick around any longer to find out if they became real or not.
You might wonder if there was anything good about this book since I stuck with it for as long as I did. As I mentioned, the characters were well drawn, and how they related to one another was a mystery, so I was interested in how they would come together, affecting one another for good or bad. And despite my criticism of the writing, some of it was observant and clever when the author reined in his vocabulary choices. Here's an example of some of the descriptive writing that intrigued me:
"Chalk dust seemed to cover her mouth and throat. Her thumb throbbed. Pain crept from her temples back into the vault of her skull, where her withered brain now sat, tiny ruler on its outsized throne, nattering to itself instead of doing what it should have been doing, which was sleeping off its hangover."
But then the author would ruin examples like this by including dozens upon dozens of similes and metaphors following them, making them nothing special.
So in a nutshell, this book had an interesting premise with interesting characters who eventually didn't interest me when the author made them all sound the same, spewing words no one uses in normal conversation. As for the story, at the one third mark, it had stalled out as the author traveled back in time, detailing all his characters' life histories to get me to care about them. So I have no idea if it picked up the pace or when. I only know it certainly wasn't a page turner at that point.
Maybe you'll want to risk however much time of yours it would take for you to read 900 pages to learn what happens in this book, but I wouldn't advise it based on the contents of one third of those pages. Reader beware.
November 17, 2017
Ναι είναι μεγαλειώδες έργο. Αλλά σίγουρα θα απογοητεύσει πολλούς και θα κουράσει ακόμα περισσότερους. Γιατί αν κάποιος το αγοράσει προκειμένου να διαβάσει μια αστυνομική περιπέτεια, θα το παρατήσει σίγουρα πριν καν φτάσει στη μέση. Ο συγγραφέας δεν θέλει να διηγηθεί απλώς μια καλή ιστορία. Θέλει να εξαντλήσει όλα τα λογοτεχνικά μέσα προκειμένου να αναπαραστήσει μια περασμένη εποχή, κάνοντας το παν για να της εμφυσήσει ζωή. Και το απίθανο είναι πως το πετυχαίνει.
Αποφάσισα να χωρίσω την παρουσίασή μου σε δύο μέρη. Το πρώτο είναι γενικό, χωρίς να προδίδει σημαντικά πράγματα από την πλοκή και το τέλος. Το δεύτερο είναι μια περίληψη που απευθύνεται σε όσους το έχουν διαβάσει αλλά και σε όσους δεν κατάφεραν να το τελειώσουν αλλά θα ήθελαν να μάθουν τί απέγινε τελικά.
ΜΕΡΟΣ ΠΡΩΤΟ ΧΩΡΙΣ SPOILER
Η υπόθεση έχει έναν απλό πυρήνα. Η ιστορία εκτυλίσσεται στα τέλη του 1976 ως τα μέσα καλοκαιριού του 1977, με πολλά φλας μπακ στην προηγούμενη δεκαετία αλλά και αναφορες σε μεταγενέστερες εποχές (ως το 2003). Στη Νέα Υόρκη και σε περιοχές γυρω της όπως πχ στο Λονγκ Άιλαντ. Την παραμονή της πρωτοχρονιάς του '77 η Σαμάνθα Τσιτσάρο μια νεαρή 17χρονη φοιτήτρια δέχεται δολοφονική επίθεση με όπλο σε ένα πάρκο. Η αναζήτηση του ενόχου οδηγεί σε ένα κουβάρι από ανθρώπινες ζωές που πρέπει να ξετυλιχθεί για να επέλθει, όχι η απονομή της δικαιοσύνης με την αυστηρή νομική έννοια, αλλά η κάθαρση που θα επιτρέψει στους ήρωες να προχωρήσουν στη ζωή τους.
Το βιβλίο θα το χαρακτήριζα αντι – έπος. Έχει κάτι από τις ποιότητες που συναντά ο αναγνώστης στο “Πόλεμος και ειρήνη” του Τολστόι, αλλά ξεφεύγει από τους κανόνες του κλασικού μυθιστορήματος τόσο από άποψη τεχνικής όσο από την πλευρά της θεματολογικής και ιδεολογικής προσέγγισης. Προσωπικά μου δίνει την εντύπωση μιας συνέχειας του ενδοσκοπικού μυθιστορήματος, που έναν αιώνα πριν είχε καταφέρει να δημιουργήσει ο Μαρσέλ Προυστ γράφοντας το "Αναζητώντας τον χαμένο χρόνο”. Δηλαδή με απλά λόγια, ο συγγραφέας, χτίζει το λογοτεχνικό του οικοδόμημα, ψηφίδα – ψηφίδα, προκεμένου να αναλύσει σε βάθος τον ψυχισμό των ηρώων του και να αναπαραστήσει στην εντέλεια μια περασμένη εποχή, κατασκευάζοντάς την από την αρχή, αξιοποιώντας τα υλικά της μνήμης. Αυτά είναι τα Τεκμήρια που στο τέλος, με σχήμα κυκλικό, καθαρά προυστικό, συμπυκώνουν τον μύθο, σαν αντίστροφη έκρηξη.
Γι' αυτό είναι απόλυτα κατανοητό, που πολλοί αναγνώστες, παραπονούνται πως το έργο είναι υπερβολικά μακροσκελές και φλύαρο. Όπως θα συνέβαινε αν παρακολουθούσαμε ένα γεγονός όχι σύμφωνα με τον λογοτεχνικό χρόνο αλλά με τον πραγματικό. Δεν είναι τυχαίο, αυτό που αναφέρει ένας από τους ήρωες, ένας αφροαμερικάνος επίδοξος συγγραφέας για τη λογοτεχνική δημιουργία και το ανέφικτο αυτής:
“Πώς ήταν όμως δυνατόν ένα βιβλίο να είναι μεγάλο σαν τη ζωή; Ένα τέτοιο βιβλίο θα έπρεπε να αφιερώνει 30 και σελίδες για κάθε ώρα που περνά κανείς ζώντας […] δηλαδή 800 σελίδες την ημέρα. Επί 365, γύρω στις 28.000 σελίδες το χρόνο: ας πούμε 3 εκατομμύρια τη δεκαετία ή 24 εκατομμύρια στη μέση διάρκεια μιας ανθρώπινης ζωής. (σελ. 974).
Το βιβλίο χωρίζεται σε επτά μέρη:
Βιβλίο Α: Έχουμε γνωρίσει τον εχθρό και είμαστε εμείς (Δεκ. 1976 – Ιαν. 1977)
Βιβλίο Β: Σκηνές της ιδιωτικής ζωής (1961 – 1976)
Βιβλίο Γ: Λίμπερτι Χάιτς (Ιαν. - Ιούλ. 1977)
Βιβλίο Δ: Μονάδες (1959 – 1977)
Βιβλίο Ε: Ο Δαίμονας Αδελφός (12 – 13 Ιουλίου 1977)
Βιβλίο ΣΤ: Τρία είδη απόγνωσης (1960 – 1977)
Βιβλίο Ζ: Στο σκοτάδι (13 Ιουλίου 1977 - ∞ )
Μόνο στο έβδομο και τελευταίο βιβλίο δίνονται όλες οι απαντήσεις και επέρχεται η κάθαρση, αλλά χωρίς τους προηγούμενους προπαρασκευαστικούς τόμους, το τελευταίο βιβλίο, δεν μπορεί να σταθεί από μόνο του.
Ο μοντερνιστικός χαρακτήρας του μυθιστορήματος, φαίνεται και στον τρόπο που ενσωματώνει ο συγγραφέας, στο τέλος του κάθε βιβλίου κάποια κείμενα, γραμμένα με διαφορετική τεχνική, που εξυπηρετούν την πλοκή και διαφωτίζουν τα σκοτεινά σημεία του κάθε βιβλίου ξεχωριστά. Υπάρχουν άρθρα, γραμμένα με καθαρά δημοσιογραφικό στυλ, παροδοσιακές επιστολές αλλά και email, ένα τεύχος από το περιοδικό (φανζίν) της Σαμάνθας, ένα διάγραμμα ψυχολόγου κα).
Το βιβλίο ισορροπεί χάρη στους πολλούς και διαφορετικούς χαρακτήρες του ανάμεσα στον ρεαλισμό, που συχνά έχει πολιτικές και φιλοσοφικές διαστάσεις και στο υπερβατικό -καθαρά θρησκευτικό - στοιχείο που αποκαλύπεται πχ στα οράματα του Τσάρλι και το όνειρο της Σαμ με την Πάτι Σμιθ – Παναγία – Μητέρα. Ο συγγραφέας διευρευνά την εποχή μετά την γλυκερή αισιοδοξία του κινήματος των χίπις, δηλαδή την εποχή του πρωτοπάνκ κινήματος που έρχεται να κολλήσει επάνω σε μια χρονική περίοδο που δεσπόζει η μεγάλη οικονομική κρίση των ΗΠΑ της δεκ. του '70 και σε μια από τις πολλές – κατά καιρούς - χιλιαστικές δοξασίες, που ήθελε τον κόσμο να τελειώνει στις 7/7/77. Μια εποχή με πολλή πειραματική μουσική και ακόμα περισσότερα ναρκωτικά κάθε είδους:
“Κι εμείς τί κάνουμε Τσάρλι; Ανταποκρινόμαστε. Υπερασπιζόμαστε. Εγκαταλείπουμε το φυσικό μας δικαίωμα, που είναι η δύναμη να ορίζουμε οι ίδιοι το πεδίο της δράσης μας[....] Θέλω να πω, από τη μια έχουμε μιλιούνια πυρηνικές κεφαλές που προστατεύουν το κατεστημένο. Από την άλλη έξυπνα κολεγιόπαιδα διαβάζουν τον Μονοδιάστατο άνθρωπο και σκέφτονται: Ε, θα πάω να πιέσω πολιτικά τον... όποιον τελοσπάντων... και θα απαλλαγούμε από τις κεφαλές. Χωρίς να καταλαβαίνουν ότι έτσι ουσιαστικά στηρίζουν το σύστημα που τις δημιούργησε (σελ. 377).
Αυτή είναι και η θλιβερή διαπίστωση του μυθιστορήματος. Ένα σύστημα καταρρέει μοιραία από μέσα. Οποιαδήποτε εξωτερική σύγκρουση, φαίνεται να στηρίζει το καθεστώς και να το ενισχύει, καθιστώντας την οποιαδήποτε αντίδραση ή επανάσταση, πιόνι του. Μια βαλβίδα εκτόνωσης που παρατείνει τον χρόνο ζωής του. Αλλά τί γίνεται με τις ανθρώπινες ζωές, που βιώνουν την απώλεια, την παρακμή, την οικονομική και ηθική κρίση; Αυτές καταρρέουν, συνθλίβονται, χάνονται στην ανωνυμία και τη μοναξιά. Κι ό,τι απομένει είναι η τέχνη που αποτυπώνει το στιγμιαίο, δίνοντάς του μια παράταση χρόνου, πριν η αιωνιότητα το καταπιεί.
H Νέα Υόρκη δεν είναι απλά μια πόλη. Είναι ένα τεράστιο στομάχι, γεμάτο οξέα, που χωνεύει πολλές και διαφορετικές πόλεις στο εσωτερικό του. Μπορεί υπό τις κατάλληλες συνθήκες να γίνει ένας προθάλαμος της κόλασης. Είναι μια MegaCity με τον πληθυσμό μιας κανονικής χώρας. Με την Γουόλ Στριτ να ορίζει τους κανόνες του χρηματοοικονομικού παιχνιδιού, τις πλούσιες γειτονιές που απολαμβάνουν τα πάντα και τις φτωχές, υποβαθμισμένες συνοικίες όπου επικρατεί μια άνευ προηγουμένου εγκληματικότητα, η απόσταση ανάμεσα στις πολιτικές που ασκεί το νόμιμα εκλεγμένο σώμα των κυβερνώντων και σε αυτές που ορίζει η μαφία του οργανωμένου εγκλήματος ουσιαστικά εκμηδενίζεται. Με τεράστια υγρασία το καλοκαίρι και τσουχερό κρύο τον χειμώνα, η Νέα Υόρκη μπορεί να καταπιεί και να εκμηδενίσει ακόμα και την πιο ισχυρή προσωπικότητα. Κι όπως αναφέρει σε ένα άρθρο της η huffington post τελικά οι αυτοκτονίες σε αυτήν την πόλη, ξεπερνούν τις δολοφονίες.
Μιλάμε δηλαδή για έναν κόσμο όπου ο θάνατος των πολλών και ανώνυμων γίνεται το λίπασμα για να τροφοδοτεί τη ζωή των λίγων. Ένας διαχρονικός κανόνας. Ένας αμείλικτος νόμος της φύσης που εξισορροπεί βασιζόμενος στην πλέον ανισόρροπη ανισοτητα:
“Ανάγκασε τον εαυτό της να κοιτάζει κατάματα τα πρόσωπα εκείνων των αντρών και των γυναικών που κοιμούνταν στα στενά και στα πάρκινγκ, λιγότερο από ένα χιλιόμετρο μακριά από τα μέγαρα που είχαν χτίσει οι βιομήχανοι και μετά τα είχαν εγκαταλείψει για να μεταφερθούν στα προάστια. Εκείνα τα σπιτια έπρεπε να παραμένουν άδεια, σκέφτηκε, για να μην καταρρεύσει η αξία των ακινήτων... με τον ίδιο τρόπο με τον οποίο ένα συγκεκριμένο προσοστό ενηλίκων Αμερικανών έπρεπε να παραμένουν χωρίς δουλειά, έτσι ώστε να εξασφαλίζεται ότι η αγορά εργασίας θα λειτουργούσε προς όφελος του εργοδότη (σελ. 615)”
Για όλους τους παραπάνω λόγους και για πολλούς περισσότερους που δεν μου φτάνει ο χώρος να αναλύσω, Η πόλη στις φλόγες του Χάλμπεργκ είναι από τις πιο επιτυχημένες απεικονίσεις της σύγχρονης πραγματικότητας, είναι ένα έργο που άνετα μπορεί να συγκαταλεχθεί ανάμεσα στα άλλα αριστουργήματα της λογοτεχνίας, ένα έργο διαχρονικό, προορισμένο να γίνει κλασικό και να αγαπηθεί από όλους όσους έχουν πάθος με την καλή λογοτεχνία.
ΜΕΡΟΣ ΔΕΥΤΕΡΟ ΜΕ SPOILER
Ξεκαθαρίζω και διευκρινίζω πως από εδώ και πέρα ξεκινάνε τα spoiler. Όποιος θελήσει να συνεχίσει την ανάγνωση, ας το κάνει με δική του ευθύνη.
Αποφάσισα να χωρίσω την παρουσίασή μου σε δύο μέρη. Το πρώτο είναι γενικό, χωρίς να προδίδει σημαντικά πράγματα από την πλοκή και το τέλος. Το δεύτερο είναι μια περίληψη που απευθύνεται σε όσους το έχουν διαβάσει αλλά και σε όσους δεν κατάφεραν να το τελειώσουν αλλά θα ήθελαν να μάθουν τί απέγινε τελικά.
ΜΕΡΟΣ ΠΡΩΤΟ ΧΩΡΙΣ SPOILER
Η υπόθεση έχει έναν απλό πυρήνα. Η ιστορία εκτυλίσσεται στα τέλη του 1976 ως τα μέσα καλοκαιριού του 1977, με πολλά φλας μπακ στην προηγούμενη δεκαετία αλλά και αναφορες σε μεταγενέστερες εποχές (ως το 2003). Στη Νέα Υόρκη και σε περιοχές γυρω της όπως πχ στο Λονγκ Άιλαντ. Την παραμονή της πρωτοχρονιάς του '77 η Σαμάνθα Τσιτσάρο μια νεαρή 17χρονη φοιτήτρια δέχεται δολοφονική επίθεση με όπλο σε ένα πάρκο. Η αναζήτηση του ενόχου οδηγεί σε ένα κουβάρι από ανθρώπινες ζωές που πρέπει να ξετυλιχθεί για να επέλθει, όχι η απονομή της δικαιοσύνης με την αυστηρή νομική έννοια, αλλά η κάθαρση που θα επιτρέψει στους ήρωες να προχωρήσουν στη ζωή τους.
Το βιβλίο θα το χαρακτήριζα αντι – έπος. Έχει κάτι από τις ποιότητες που συναντά ο αναγνώστης στο “Πόλεμος και ειρήνη” του Τολστόι, αλλά ξεφεύγει από τους κανόνες του κλασικού μυθιστορήματος τόσο από άποψη τεχνικής όσο από την πλευρά της θεματολογικής και ιδεολογικής προσέγγισης. Προσωπικά μου δίνει την εντύπωση μιας συνέχειας του ενδοσκοπικού μυθιστορήματος, που έναν αιώνα πριν είχε καταφέρει να δημιουργήσει ο Μαρσέλ Προυστ γράφοντας το "Αναζητώντας τον χαμένο χρόνο”. Δηλαδή με απλά λόγια, ο συγγραφέας, χτίζει το λογοτεχνικό του οικοδόμημα, ψηφίδα – ψηφίδα, προκεμένου να αναλύσει σε βάθος τον ψυχισμό των ηρώων του και να αναπαραστήσει στην εντέλεια μια περασμένη εποχή, κατασκευάζοντάς την από την αρχή, αξιοποιώντας τα υλικά της μνήμης. Αυτά είναι τα Τεκμήρια που στο τέλος, με σχήμα κυκλικό, καθαρά προυστικό, συμπυκώνουν τον μύθο, σαν αντίστροφη έκρηξη.
Γι' αυτό είναι απόλυτα κατανοητό, που πολλοί αναγνώστες, παραπονούνται πως το έργο είναι υπερβολικά μακροσκελές και φλύαρο. Όπως θα συνέβαινε αν παρακολουθούσαμε ένα γεγονός όχι σύμφωνα με τον λογοτεχνικό χρόνο αλλά με τον πραγματικό. Δεν είναι τυχαίο, αυτό που αναφέρει ένας από τους ήρωες, ένας αφροαμερικάνος επίδοξος συγγραφέας για τη λογοτεχνική δημιουργία και το ανέφικτο αυτής:
“Πώς ήταν όμως δυνατόν ένα βιβλίο να είναι μεγάλο σαν τη ζωή; Ένα τέτοιο βιβλίο θα έπρεπε να αφιερώνει 30 και σελίδες για κάθε ώρα που περνά κανείς ζώντας […] δηλαδή 800 σελίδες την ημέρα. Επί 365, γύρω στις 28.000 σελίδες το χρόνο: ας πούμε 3 εκατομμύρια τη δεκαετία ή 24 εκατομμύρια στη μέση διάρκεια μιας ανθρώπινης ζωής. (σελ. 974).
Το βιβλίο χωρίζεται σε επτά μέρη:
Βιβλίο Α: Έχουμε γνωρίσει τον εχθρό και είμαστε εμείς (Δεκ. 1976 – Ιαν. 1977)
Βιβλίο Β: Σκηνές της ιδιωτικής ζωής (1961 – 1976)
Βιβλίο Γ: Λίμπερτι Χάιτς (Ιαν. - Ιούλ. 1977)
Βιβλίο Δ: Μονάδες (1959 – 1977)
Βιβλίο Ε: Ο Δαίμονας Αδελφός (12 – 13 Ιουλίου 1977)
Βιβλίο ΣΤ: Τρία είδη απόγνωσης (1960 – 1977)
Βιβλίο Ζ: Στο σκοτάδι (13 Ιουλίου 1977 - ∞ )
Μόνο στο έβδομο και τελευταίο βιβλίο δίνονται όλες οι απαντήσεις και επέρχεται η κάθαρση, αλλά χωρίς τους προηγούμενους προπαρασκευαστικούς τόμους, το τελευταίο βιβλίο, δεν μπορεί να σταθεί από μόνο του.
Ο μοντερνιστικός χαρακτήρας του μυθιστορήματος, φαίνεται και στον τρόπο που ενσωματώνει ο συγγραφέας, στο τέλος του κάθε βιβλίου κάποια κείμενα, γραμμένα με διαφορετική τεχνική, που εξυπηρετούν την πλοκή και διαφωτίζουν τα σκοτεινά σημεία του κάθε βιβλίου ξεχωριστά. Υπάρχουν άρθρα, γραμμένα με καθαρά δημοσιογραφικό στυλ, παροδοσιακές επιστολές αλλά και email, ένα τεύχος από το περιοδικό (φανζίν) της Σαμάνθας, ένα διάγραμμα ψυχολόγου κα).
Το βιβλίο ισορροπεί χάρη στους πολλούς και διαφορετικούς χαρακτήρες του ανάμεσα στον ρεαλισμό, που συχνά έχει πολιτικές και φιλοσοφικές διαστάσεις και στο υπερβατικό -καθαρά θρησκευτικό - στοιχείο που αποκαλύπεται πχ στα οράματα του Τσάρλι και το όνειρο της Σαμ με την Πάτι Σμιθ – Παναγία – Μητέρα. Ο συγγραφέας διευρευνά την εποχή μετά την γλυκερή αισιοδοξία του κινήματος των χίπις, δηλαδή την εποχή του πρωτοπάνκ κινήματος που έρχεται να κολλήσει επάνω σε μια χρονική περίοδο που δεσπόζει η μεγάλη οικονομική κρίση των ΗΠΑ της δεκ. του '70 και σε μια από τις πολλές – κατά καιρούς - χιλιαστικές δοξασίες, που ήθελε τον κόσμο να τελειώνει στις 7/7/77. Μια εποχή με πολλή πειραματική μουσική και ακόμα περισσότερα ναρκωτικά κάθε είδους:
“Κι εμείς τί κάνουμε Τσάρλι; Ανταποκρινόμαστε. Υπερασπιζόμαστε. Εγκαταλείπουμε το φυσικό μας δικαίωμα, που είναι η δύναμη να ορίζουμε οι ίδιοι το πεδίο της δράσης μας[....] Θέλω να πω, από τη μια έχουμε μιλιούνια πυρηνικές κεφαλές που προστατεύουν το κατεστημένο. Από την άλλη έξυπνα κολεγιόπαιδα διαβάζουν τον Μονοδιάστατο άνθρωπο και σκέφτονται: Ε, θα πάω να πιέσω πολιτικά τον... όποιον τελοσπάντων... και θα απαλλαγούμε από τις κεφαλές. Χωρίς να καταλαβαίνουν ότι έτσι ουσιαστικά στηρίζουν το σύστημα που τις δημιούργησε (σελ. 377).
Αυτή είναι και η θλιβερή διαπίστωση του μυθιστορήματος. Ένα σύστημα καταρρέει μοιραία από μέσα. Οποιαδήποτε εξωτερική σύγκρουση, φαίνεται να στηρίζει το καθεστώς και να το ενισχύει, καθιστώντας την οποιαδήποτε αντίδραση ή επανάσταση, πιόνι του. Μια βαλβίδα εκτόνωσης που παρατείνει τον χρόνο ζωής του. Αλλά τί γίνεται με τις ανθρώπινες ζωές, που βιώνουν την απώλεια, την παρακμή, την οικονομική και ηθική κρίση; Αυτές καταρρέουν, συνθλίβονται, χάνονται στην ανωνυμία και τη μοναξιά. Κι ό,τι απομένει είναι η τέχνη που αποτυπώνει το στιγμιαίο, δίνοντάς του μια παράταση χρόνου, πριν η αιωνιότητα το καταπιεί.
H Νέα Υόρκη δεν είναι απλά μια πόλη. Είναι ένα τεράστιο στομάχι, γεμάτο οξέα, που χωνεύει πολλές και διαφορετικές πόλεις στο εσωτερικό του. Μπορεί υπό τις κατάλληλες συνθήκες να γίνει ένας προθάλαμος της κόλασης. Είναι μια MegaCity με τον πληθυσμό μιας κανονικής χώρας. Με την Γουόλ Στριτ να ορίζει τους κανόνες του χρηματοοικονομικού παιχνιδιού, τις πλούσιες γειτονιές που απολαμβάνουν τα πάντα και τις φτωχές, υποβαθμισμένες συνοικίες όπου επικρατεί μια άνευ προηγουμένου εγκληματικότητα, η απόσταση ανάμεσα στις πολιτικές που ασκεί το νόμιμα εκλεγμένο σώμα των κυβερνώντων και σε αυτές που ορίζει η μαφία του οργανωμένου εγκλήματος ουσιαστικά εκμηδενίζεται. Με τεράστια υγρασία το καλοκαίρι και τσουχερό κρύο τον χειμώνα, η Νέα Υόρκη μπορεί να καταπιεί και να εκμηδενίσει ακόμα και την πιο ισχυρή προσωπικότητα. Κι όπως αναφέρει σε ένα άρθρο της η huffington post τελικά οι αυτοκτονίες σε αυτήν την πόλη, ξεπερνούν τις δολοφονίες.
Μιλάμε δηλαδή για έναν κόσμο όπου ο θάνατος των πολλών και ανώνυμων γίνεται το λίπασμα για να τροφοδοτεί τη ζωή των λίγων. Ένας διαχρονικός κανόνας. Ένας αμείλικτος νόμος της φύσης που εξισορροπεί βασιζόμενος στην πλέον ανισόρροπη ανισοτητα:
“Ανάγκασε τον εαυτό της να κοιτάζει κατάματα τα πρόσωπα εκείνων των αντρών και των γυναικών που κοιμούνταν στα στενά και στα πάρκινγκ, λιγότερο από ένα χιλιόμετρο μακριά από τα μέγαρα που είχαν χτίσει οι βιομήχανοι και μετά τα είχαν εγκαταλείψει για να μεταφερθούν στα προάστια. Εκείνα τα σπιτια έπρεπε να παραμένουν άδεια, σκέφτηκε, για να μην καταρρεύσει η αξία των ακινήτων... με τον ίδιο τρόπο με τον οποίο ένα συγκεκριμένο προσοστό ενηλίκων Αμερικανών έπρεπε να παραμένουν χωρίς δουλειά, έτσι ώστε να εξασφαλίζεται ότι η αγορά εργασίας θα λειτουργούσε προς όφελος του εργοδότη (σελ. 615)”
Για όλους τους παραπάνω λόγους και για πολλούς περισσότερους που δεν μου φτάνει ο χώρος να αναλύσω, Η πόλη στις φλόγες του Χάλμπεργκ είναι από τις πιο επιτυχημένες απεικονίσεις της σύγχρονης πραγματικότητας, είναι ένα έργο που άνετα μπορεί να συγκαταλεχθεί ανάμεσα στα άλλα αριστουργήματα της λογοτεχνίας, ένα έργο διαχρονικό, προορισμένο να γίνει κλασικό και να αγαπηθεί από όλους όσους έχουν πάθος με την καλή λογοτεχνία.
ΜΕΡΟΣ ΔΕΥΤΕΡΟ ΜΕ SPOILER
Ξεκαθαρίζω και διευκρινίζω πως από εδώ και πέρα ξεκινάνε τα spoiler. Όποιος θελήσει να συνεχίσει την ανάγνωση, ας το κάνει με δική του ευθύνη.
August 5, 2018
This first novel by Garth Risk Hallberg is an impressive piece of literature. It has gotten a lot of press due to its weight (911 pages) and the signing bonus the author received ($2M apparently), so I was a little skeptical. Nonetheless, I did find it a good read and it kept me involved cover to cover.
**Possible Spoiler Alert but no real "big" ones**
The book centers around the shooting of Samantha Cicciaro in Central Park NYC on New Year's Eve in 1977 and the aftermath that ensues.
There are several clusters of characters:
The Hamilton Sweeney family who has a massive fortune due to the shrewd (and not always legal) investment skills and corporate mergers they orchestrated
- William III - the family heir who, being gay, will not give the family and heir thus ending the dynasty. He is a complex character who lives two parallel lives -that of junkie punk singer Billy Three-Sticks of the Ex-Post Facto band) and that of estranged boyfriend/roommate Mercer and emerging artist (photography and painting/plastic arts). His character arc takes him from despondency and dependency to enlightenment amd eventual assumed death due to AIDS in 2002-2003
- Regan - William's sister whose calculated rape by the son of the CEO of another company in exchange for the merger of the Hamilton-Sweeney company and that of the CEO leaves her pregnant and alone. When the book begins, she is separated from her husband Kevin and they have shared custody of their two children, Will and Cate. Her character arc takes her from her damaged state after the rape having become bulimic to a questioning of her motives and her eventual liberation from the chains of wealth and privilege to a more "normal" life.
- Kevin - Regan's arriviste husband who drops out of medical school and buries himself in Amoury Gould's more unseemly business. He is also Sam Cicciaro's lover. His character arc sees him grow from a self-centered asshole to realizing what love is and ultimately redeeming himself.
- Will - the son of Kevin and Regan who we meet about halfway though the book and who survives the harrowing blackout of July 1977 saving his sister and much later preserving the legacy of his Uncle William's artistic legacy
The Gould family marries into the Hamilton-Sweeney when Felicia Gould marries William II (Regan and William III's father). They are hated by Regan but especially by William III who calls them "the Ghouls"
- Amoury Gould - the brother of Felicia, Amoury gains control of the vast Hamilton-Sweeney empire (with the tacit approval of the aging William II) and creates a maze of financial shenanigans which ultimately implodes the Hamilton-Sweeney empire. He is shown as a Machiavellian monster who (besides planning Regan's rape) pays off various nefarious members of the underworld to do his bidding such as burning down neighborhoods to render then Blight Zones that he can sweep in and buy for pennies and then redevelop. He does not really have a character arc and we are only once in his psyche as he flees to Hong Kong following the collapse. He is strangely called the Demon Brother in his relations with the...
The Post-Humans (PHP) who are basically the punk group Ex-Post Facto (and later Ex Nihilo) one of whose songs is entitled "City on Fire", thus the book title
- Nicki Chaos - he usurps control of the band from William/Billy of whom he is jealous and - funded by Amoury - runs an arson campaign on the Lower East Side. He is an egomaniac who decides (and fails) to attempt to kill William and Amoury with a bomb and flees the blackout with Sol and D Tremes (the other two founding members of EPF with Billy Three Sticks). His character arc is also pretty linear as he builds a revolutionary cell which his ultimately destroys and abandons
- Sam Cicciaro - a bright young daughter of fireworks artist Carmine Cicciaro who falls into the pink scene and starts living in the PHP collective. Her murder (no, I won't spoil the whodunnit) sets off the majority of action in the book. She writes a punk magazine (which also serves as her confessional) called The Land of 1000 Dances.
- Prophet Charlie - a young kid living near Sam in Flower Meadows and is deeply in love with her (non-reciprocated). He gets deeply involved with PHP, but his character arc actually is quite positive as well as he also reaches redemption.
Others:
- Lieutenant Detective Pulaski - a police officer with polio who takes Mercer's statement after Sam's murder and is critical in helping many of the characters move towards redemption. His arc is rather linear so he is more of an enabler in the story
- Richard Groskoph - an independant reporter who ultimately puts together the connections between William III and the PHP. His arc is cut prematurely short.
- Janet Nguyen - Richard's neighbor who carries on Richard's work. Her arc is left open.
The book has six chapters with Interludes between them featuring:
- A letter from William II to William III which the recipient may not have ever read but which was a confessional of sorts
- The Fireworkers Parts 1 and 2 which is Richard Groskoph's reporting on how he connected the dots
- The Land of 1000 Dances, Issue 3 by Sam
- a psychological self-evaluation by William III
- notes from William II about his massive Evidence II work of art
So, you have all the elements for an engaging story featuring changing narrators, manipulating a post-modern non-linear timeline, and multiple media supports (not unlike Jennifer Egan's Goon Squad). I would not, however, elevate this book to the comparisons made on the cover and sleeve to DeLillo and Pynchon because I felt the scope of the former's Underworld was inferior to that of City on Fire and I feel that the latter's greatest works (Mason&Dixon, Gravity's Rainbow, and Against the Day) all have even more fascinating and complex characters and the meta-text is far more complex. Rather, I would liken City of Fire to The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt in terms of narration and character development (although I prefer Tartt's Boris to any of the City on Fire characters).
What I didn't like about City on Fire was the aforementioned uni-dimensional characters like Amoury and Nicki and some of the inconsistencies:
- on page 705, Jenny speaks of 3 casualties whereas I only counted two
- Kevin walks out on a Grand Jury investigation where he was trading immunity for information, but this legal aspect and hanging thread is never resolved
Also, I think that the Richard and Jenny characters should have been introduced earlier. Perhaps, I would go as far as to say that the Jenny character is not really all that central to the story but takes a disproportionate amount of space but is left inconclusive at the end.
What I did like was the narrative structure and his erudite descriptive text. He does a great job on interior monologue and draws a convincing picture of Manhattan in 76-77. The major characters are interesting and engaging.
I resisted the 3* rating because it really is well-written and does hold together over its imposing length but would not go to 5* because I don't see it on the same level as, say, Infinite Jest or Against the Day. So, 4*. It will be interesting to see where this promising writer goes next. Will there be a movie or TV series to justify the $2M advance?
**Possible Spoiler Alert but no real "big" ones**
The book centers around the shooting of Samantha Cicciaro in Central Park NYC on New Year's Eve in 1977 and the aftermath that ensues.
There are several clusters of characters:
The Hamilton Sweeney family who has a massive fortune due to the shrewd (and not always legal) investment skills and corporate mergers they orchestrated
- William III - the family heir who, being gay, will not give the family and heir thus ending the dynasty. He is a complex character who lives two parallel lives -that of junkie punk singer Billy Three-Sticks of the Ex-Post Facto band) and that of estranged boyfriend/roommate Mercer and emerging artist (photography and painting/plastic arts). His character arc takes him from despondency and dependency to enlightenment amd eventual assumed death due to AIDS in 2002-2003
- Regan - William's sister whose calculated rape by the son of the CEO of another company in exchange for the merger of the Hamilton-Sweeney company and that of the CEO leaves her pregnant and alone. When the book begins, she is separated from her husband Kevin and they have shared custody of their two children, Will and Cate. Her character arc takes her from her damaged state after the rape having become bulimic to a questioning of her motives and her eventual liberation from the chains of wealth and privilege to a more "normal" life.
- Kevin - Regan's arriviste husband who drops out of medical school and buries himself in Amoury Gould's more unseemly business. He is also Sam Cicciaro's lover. His character arc sees him grow from a self-centered asshole to realizing what love is and ultimately redeeming himself.
- Will - the son of Kevin and Regan who we meet about halfway though the book and who survives the harrowing blackout of July 1977 saving his sister and much later preserving the legacy of his Uncle William's artistic legacy
The Gould family marries into the Hamilton-Sweeney when Felicia Gould marries William II (Regan and William III's father). They are hated by Regan but especially by William III who calls them "the Ghouls"
- Amoury Gould - the brother of Felicia, Amoury gains control of the vast Hamilton-Sweeney empire (with the tacit approval of the aging William II) and creates a maze of financial shenanigans which ultimately implodes the Hamilton-Sweeney empire. He is shown as a Machiavellian monster who (besides planning Regan's rape) pays off various nefarious members of the underworld to do his bidding such as burning down neighborhoods to render then Blight Zones that he can sweep in and buy for pennies and then redevelop. He does not really have a character arc and we are only once in his psyche as he flees to Hong Kong following the collapse. He is strangely called the Demon Brother in his relations with the...
The Post-Humans (PHP) who are basically the punk group Ex-Post Facto (and later Ex Nihilo) one of whose songs is entitled "City on Fire", thus the book title
- Nicki Chaos - he usurps control of the band from William/Billy of whom he is jealous and - funded by Amoury - runs an arson campaign on the Lower East Side. He is an egomaniac who decides (and fails) to attempt to kill William and Amoury with a bomb and flees the blackout with Sol and D Tremes (the other two founding members of EPF with Billy Three Sticks). His character arc is also pretty linear as he builds a revolutionary cell which his ultimately destroys and abandons
- Sam Cicciaro - a bright young daughter of fireworks artist Carmine Cicciaro who falls into the pink scene and starts living in the PHP collective. Her murder (no, I won't spoil the whodunnit) sets off the majority of action in the book. She writes a punk magazine (which also serves as her confessional) called The Land of 1000 Dances.
- Prophet Charlie - a young kid living near Sam in Flower Meadows and is deeply in love with her (non-reciprocated). He gets deeply involved with PHP, but his character arc actually is quite positive as well as he also reaches redemption.
Others:
- Lieutenant Detective Pulaski - a police officer with polio who takes Mercer's statement after Sam's murder and is critical in helping many of the characters move towards redemption. His arc is rather linear so he is more of an enabler in the story
- Richard Groskoph - an independant reporter who ultimately puts together the connections between William III and the PHP. His arc is cut prematurely short.
- Janet Nguyen - Richard's neighbor who carries on Richard's work. Her arc is left open.
The book has six chapters with Interludes between them featuring:
- A letter from William II to William III which the recipient may not have ever read but which was a confessional of sorts
- The Fireworkers Parts 1 and 2 which is Richard Groskoph's reporting on how he connected the dots
- The Land of 1000 Dances, Issue 3 by Sam
- a psychological self-evaluation by William III
- notes from William II about his massive Evidence II work of art
So, you have all the elements for an engaging story featuring changing narrators, manipulating a post-modern non-linear timeline, and multiple media supports (not unlike Jennifer Egan's Goon Squad). I would not, however, elevate this book to the comparisons made on the cover and sleeve to DeLillo and Pynchon because I felt the scope of the former's Underworld was inferior to that of City on Fire and I feel that the latter's greatest works (Mason&Dixon, Gravity's Rainbow, and Against the Day) all have even more fascinating and complex characters and the meta-text is far more complex. Rather, I would liken City of Fire to The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt in terms of narration and character development (although I prefer Tartt's Boris to any of the City on Fire characters).
What I didn't like about City on Fire was the aforementioned uni-dimensional characters like Amoury and Nicki and some of the inconsistencies:
- on page 705, Jenny speaks of 3 casualties whereas I only counted two
- Kevin walks out on a Grand Jury investigation where he was trading immunity for information, but this legal aspect and hanging thread is never resolved
Also, I think that the Richard and Jenny characters should have been introduced earlier. Perhaps, I would go as far as to say that the Jenny character is not really all that central to the story but takes a disproportionate amount of space but is left inconclusive at the end.
What I did like was the narrative structure and his erudite descriptive text. He does a great job on interior monologue and draws a convincing picture of Manhattan in 76-77. The major characters are interesting and engaging.
I resisted the 3* rating because it really is well-written and does hold together over its imposing length but would not go to 5* because I don't see it on the same level as, say, Infinite Jest or Against the Day. So, 4*. It will be interesting to see where this promising writer goes next. Will there be a movie or TV series to justify the $2M advance?
October 16, 2018
In the office where I sometimes work we have a game of seeding living writers according to talent and allocating them in three divisions - Serie A, Serie B and Serie C. Seeing as the publisher paid a whopping amount of money for this manuscript the assumption would be that here's an exciting new voice destined for the heights of Serie A. The first surprise therefore was how anachronistic and overwrought the prose is. We're back to the days of Thomas Wolfe - the misguided belief that genius can be defined as overwriting. Except Hallberg doesn't benefit from the genius of an editor of Max Perkins' calibre. At times it might appear he didn't benefit from any kind of editor. Not that Hallberg doesn't want to come across as modern and super cool. At times he reminded me of a teenager practicing dance moves in front of a mirror. Another assumption might be that we're going to get some kind of ingenious innovation in structure. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a novel written in standard chronological fashion whose chapters have simply been shuffled at the end in an attempt to provide a more contemporary architecture. Except there's something amateurish going on here. The plot has been set up well, we're keen to know what will happen next but we're suddenly thrown back into the characters' backstories and basically given a lot of information we don't need. For me Donna Tartt is the maestra at providing too much information and there are times when you suspect Tartt (top half of Serie B for me) might be Hallberg's favourite writer. But even more than Tartt City on Fire reminds me of an overweight version of Bonfire of Vanities - a movie plot that enables the writer to forage into every social class of a city's quantum physics. I wasn't convinced he has anything new to say about these social interactions. He's no Zadie Smith. In fact it's an old fashioned nostalgic kind of novel, heavily seeded with recycled crops, like the literary equivalent of the English rock band Oasis. It can be decent toe-tapping stuff but it reminds you how much better the composers of the source material were.
However, there is good stuff in this novel. Most notably, the plot itself (though this probably required 350 pages, not 900), and sometimes even the writing when he relaxes the mirror gyrating. So, this is bottom half of Serie B for me. It's difficult to guess what his next book will be like. So much of what's both good and bad in this is down to youthful exuberance. The novel runs to over 900 pages which means you could read three average length three novels in the same time. I'd recommend the latter course.
However, there is good stuff in this novel. Most notably, the plot itself (though this probably required 350 pages, not 900), and sometimes even the writing when he relaxes the mirror gyrating. So, this is bottom half of Serie B for me. It's difficult to guess what his next book will be like. So much of what's both good and bad in this is down to youthful exuberance. The novel runs to over 900 pages which means you could read three average length three novels in the same time. I'd recommend the latter course.
November 7, 2015
No novel has ever needed to exist less.
An actual sentence: "Great rolls of toilet paper arc like ejaculate through the black sycamores."
An actual sentence: "Great rolls of toilet paper arc like ejaculate through the black sycamores."
February 8, 2017
Nueva York, los 70. La era del Qué-más-da, del escepticismo desarticulado, de la anarquía casquivana. Las voces de Patti Smith y Joey Ramone recorren los suburbios del Bronx, los adolescentes se revelan contra un sistema que no entienden del todo, el punk es sinónimo de pertenencia y los grafitis, de identidad. Enajenación y desencaje, libertad y responsabilidad, soledad y conexión, el abuso de drogas y la autodestrucción son temas recurrentes que se deslizan a lo largo de las casi 1000 páginas de este tochazo. Una conjunción de microcosmos de una ciudad dura y maltrecha que se quiebra a merced de sus habitantes. Desde un adolescente enamorado en plena formación de valores hasta un inspector tullido ausente con su esposa, esta novela se enlaza y desenlaza en sus personajes con ligereza y dinamismo debido a la maestría de un autor debutante pero con un talento incalificable.
Ciudad en llamas está constituida por más de una veintena de personajes envueltos en una red que ignoran. Buscan su camino hacia un objetivo poco claro. En sus privadas y contradictorias soledades desconocen sus respectivas partes que deben declamar en una obra tan compleja que los desborda. Esa red insondable se despliega a partir de un tiroteo en Central Park, en Año Nuevo de 1976, cuando el reloj marca las doce y la Luna brilla más que nunca, y termina en el famoso Gran Apagón del 77, cuando la ciudad alcanza su auge en términos de locura y desenfreno, en medio de la oscuridad total, vidrios rotos, saqueos y rascacielos que se pierden en la noche estival.
Si tuviera que elegir una palabra para describir este libro, esa palabra sería desamparo, porque lo que caracteriza a cada uno de los personajes de esta novela es su incapacidad de encontrarse a sí mismos. La depresión y la soledad dotan de una profundidad asombrosa a los personajes de Ciudad en llamas. Encontrarse a sí mismos es una tarea que parece ajena al individuo aislado, se debe buscar en un otro que, paradójicamente, transita por aquella misma búsqueda. La incomunicación, la imposibilidad de conectar realmente con otra persona debido al fragoroso esfuerzo de hallarse uno mismo en alguien más es lo que, simultáneamente, une y desune a los personajes de Ciudad en llamas. No sentirse a gusto en una subcultura sucedánea del yo, la confianza quebrada y la decepción de los ideales son pequeños estímulos que van a guiar a los personajes hacia la conexión acaso no total pero reconstituyente del afecto que tanto, tanto persiguen.
Y de esto se desprende lo que más quiero resaltar en esta obra. Hallberg es un romántico, un cantor de la nostalgia. En Ciudad en llamas el sentimiento se rehuye pero no se renuncia. Ciudad en llamas es un libro que revela el fondo abisal de lo que nos hace seres humanos, y es por aquello que a lo largo de sus páginas se respira un aire de tristeza. Los personajes buscan el hogar en donde solo hay ruinas de algo que nunca existió. Se ponen la máscara que se ajusta mejor al entorno. Tal como dice Samantha Cicciaro: «Al final, nos convertimos en lo que somos. Las máscaras se funden con la cara». Hallberg logra representar el hermetismo del sentimiento personal, que no se ajusta jamás al contexto social, solo se calla, y no sin dolor.
La narrativa de Hallberg no me sorprendió, pero porque me lo esperaba, no porque me haya decepcionado. Una escritura pynchoniana que recuerda mucho a Franzen y le toma bastante prestado a Wallace y que puede hacer, en ocasiones, que se pierda el hilo argumental. Están advertidos. Los cambios de tiempo, la segmentación y la transgresión de las letras a través del desorden forman parte del estilo barroco que tanto me gusta de esta clase de autores. Es como si a Hallberg se le diera por ocultar un secreto y nos fuera revelando su contenido a intervalos, de manera que resulte indescifrable si se lo contempla en sus partes pero que cobra un sentido si se lo aborda desde el conjunto. Puede que esto derive en quejas y pasos de páginas violentos para demostrar el hastío ante semejante osadía y — casi — tomadura de pelo del autor, sin embargo, y se los aseguro desde la esencia de mi corazón de porcelana, se verán recompensados.
Ya mencionaba anteriormente el manejo narrativo maestro de Hallberg. Ciudad en llamas es una obra compleja, en el sentido de que se desarrolla como un dédalo descomunal que en su mayor parte aparenta nunca llegar a nada. Sin embargo, en varias ocasiones la historia se fractura en interludios compuestos por cartas, fanzines, proyectos de arte, etcétera, que le proporcionan al libro un rasgo altísimamente llamativo, que sin lugar a dudas agiliza el proceso de lectura. Puede que a Ciudad en llamas le sobren unas cuantas páginas, o puede que no, no obstante es ineludible que cada uno de los párrafos de esta historia aportan su pequeño grano descriptivo que propulsa la magistral formación de tanto la narración como la de sus personajes, y lo que también, hay que decirlo, da lugar a escenas inolvidables de las que me costará despegarme.
No teman embarcarse en esta travesía que puede considerarse un tour de force para algunos y una vuelta a casa para otros. Ciudad en llamas es un recordatorio. Un memorando gastado y arrugado que nos dice que detrás de este caos hay vida, que detrás de esta absurda búsqueda por ser alguien más está aquello en lo que debemos creer. Que quizá el auténtico vínculo sea inalcanzable, pero transitar este lastimero camino con alguien de la mano hace las cosas más fáciles. Aunque no lo sea para todos.
Ciudad en llamas está constituida por más de una veintena de personajes envueltos en una red que ignoran. Buscan su camino hacia un objetivo poco claro. En sus privadas y contradictorias soledades desconocen sus respectivas partes que deben declamar en una obra tan compleja que los desborda. Esa red insondable se despliega a partir de un tiroteo en Central Park, en Año Nuevo de 1976, cuando el reloj marca las doce y la Luna brilla más que nunca, y termina en el famoso Gran Apagón del 77, cuando la ciudad alcanza su auge en términos de locura y desenfreno, en medio de la oscuridad total, vidrios rotos, saqueos y rascacielos que se pierden en la noche estival.
Si tuviera que elegir una palabra para describir este libro, esa palabra sería desamparo, porque lo que caracteriza a cada uno de los personajes de esta novela es su incapacidad de encontrarse a sí mismos. La depresión y la soledad dotan de una profundidad asombrosa a los personajes de Ciudad en llamas. Encontrarse a sí mismos es una tarea que parece ajena al individuo aislado, se debe buscar en un otro que, paradójicamente, transita por aquella misma búsqueda. La incomunicación, la imposibilidad de conectar realmente con otra persona debido al fragoroso esfuerzo de hallarse uno mismo en alguien más es lo que, simultáneamente, une y desune a los personajes de Ciudad en llamas. No sentirse a gusto en una subcultura sucedánea del yo, la confianza quebrada y la decepción de los ideales son pequeños estímulos que van a guiar a los personajes hacia la conexión acaso no total pero reconstituyente del afecto que tanto, tanto persiguen.
Y de esto se desprende lo que más quiero resaltar en esta obra. Hallberg es un romántico, un cantor de la nostalgia. En Ciudad en llamas el sentimiento se rehuye pero no se renuncia. Ciudad en llamas es un libro que revela el fondo abisal de lo que nos hace seres humanos, y es por aquello que a lo largo de sus páginas se respira un aire de tristeza. Los personajes buscan el hogar en donde solo hay ruinas de algo que nunca existió. Se ponen la máscara que se ajusta mejor al entorno. Tal como dice Samantha Cicciaro: «Al final, nos convertimos en lo que somos. Las máscaras se funden con la cara». Hallberg logra representar el hermetismo del sentimiento personal, que no se ajusta jamás al contexto social, solo se calla, y no sin dolor.
La narrativa de Hallberg no me sorprendió, pero porque me lo esperaba, no porque me haya decepcionado. Una escritura pynchoniana que recuerda mucho a Franzen y le toma bastante prestado a Wallace y que puede hacer, en ocasiones, que se pierda el hilo argumental. Están advertidos. Los cambios de tiempo, la segmentación y la transgresión de las letras a través del desorden forman parte del estilo barroco que tanto me gusta de esta clase de autores. Es como si a Hallberg se le diera por ocultar un secreto y nos fuera revelando su contenido a intervalos, de manera que resulte indescifrable si se lo contempla en sus partes pero que cobra un sentido si se lo aborda desde el conjunto. Puede que esto derive en quejas y pasos de páginas violentos para demostrar el hastío ante semejante osadía y — casi — tomadura de pelo del autor, sin embargo, y se los aseguro desde la esencia de mi corazón de porcelana, se verán recompensados.
Ya mencionaba anteriormente el manejo narrativo maestro de Hallberg. Ciudad en llamas es una obra compleja, en el sentido de que se desarrolla como un dédalo descomunal que en su mayor parte aparenta nunca llegar a nada. Sin embargo, en varias ocasiones la historia se fractura en interludios compuestos por cartas, fanzines, proyectos de arte, etcétera, que le proporcionan al libro un rasgo altísimamente llamativo, que sin lugar a dudas agiliza el proceso de lectura. Puede que a Ciudad en llamas le sobren unas cuantas páginas, o puede que no, no obstante es ineludible que cada uno de los párrafos de esta historia aportan su pequeño grano descriptivo que propulsa la magistral formación de tanto la narración como la de sus personajes, y lo que también, hay que decirlo, da lugar a escenas inolvidables de las que me costará despegarme.
No teman embarcarse en esta travesía que puede considerarse un tour de force para algunos y una vuelta a casa para otros. Ciudad en llamas es un recordatorio. Un memorando gastado y arrugado que nos dice que detrás de este caos hay vida, que detrás de esta absurda búsqueda por ser alguien más está aquello en lo que debemos creer. Que quizá el auténtico vínculo sea inalcanzable, pero transitar este lastimero camino con alguien de la mano hace las cosas más fáciles. Aunque no lo sea para todos.
February 9, 2017
My review of this book will be up on my channel later this month, so look out for that :)
December 30, 2016
Nullarbor in New York
If you're going to write a thousand page saga about 1970's New York City, you shouldn't make it as flat and featureless as Kansas in the wintertime. I hit the wall at page 200.
Hallberg is certainly a competent writer but narrative-competence alone doesn't create enough payoff for the reader who has to slog through the tome that is City on Fire. No engaging emotion, no memorable physical description (I have no idea what any of the protagonists might look like), no humour, no elegant prose, just interminable story with an increasing cast of unmemorable characters.
It's a bit risky, as well, to set a piece like this in a time and place within living memory but of which the author has no experience. Codgers like me get proprietorial about our youth and then are provoked to take aim at sexual and racial cliches that we feel are trite. Add to that the pointed use of period vocabulary like 'spaldeen' we get irrationally annoyed.
Nevertheless, I am sure there are many who will appreciate what Hallberg provides: if not chicken soup for the literary soul, then at least some sort of feast for the culturally starved. BON APPÉTIT.
If you're going to write a thousand page saga about 1970's New York City, you shouldn't make it as flat and featureless as Kansas in the wintertime. I hit the wall at page 200.
Hallberg is certainly a competent writer but narrative-competence alone doesn't create enough payoff for the reader who has to slog through the tome that is City on Fire. No engaging emotion, no memorable physical description (I have no idea what any of the protagonists might look like), no humour, no elegant prose, just interminable story with an increasing cast of unmemorable characters.
It's a bit risky, as well, to set a piece like this in a time and place within living memory but of which the author has no experience. Codgers like me get proprietorial about our youth and then are provoked to take aim at sexual and racial cliches that we feel are trite. Add to that the pointed use of period vocabulary like 'spaldeen' we get irrationally annoyed.
Nevertheless, I am sure there are many who will appreciate what Hallberg provides: if not chicken soup for the literary soul, then at least some sort of feast for the culturally starved. BON APPÉTIT.
October 8, 2016
Incendiary "Bleak House." NYC, Summer 1977: Blackout Brewing, Punkers Stewing
4.6 stars. J'ai un peu peur ... Mon amour viens plus près, embrasse-moi.
Posted on Amazon b4 I got involved in Goodreads. I'm the Outlier . So be it. I'm sticking by my 5 stars. Not that anyone will read this once they see 5 stars.
REVIEW
A brash and brilliant novel set in the brazier that was 1977 New York City, a "Municipality Infernality," an "Immolation Station."
Don't be deterred by the novel's length. If you can totally immerse yourself in a place/time through the magic of reading great literature, you should buy this book.
I see the similarity between "City on Fire" and a Dickens novel like "Bleak House," in that both interweave connected story lines toward solving a mystery, here a college freshman co-ed from Long Island, involved in the punk rock scene, is shot on New Year's Eve, 1976,* in the Park outside a soiree' being held by a wealthy family, the Hamilton-Sweeneys. The novel culminates in the NYC blackout of mid-July 1977.*
The novel's primary cast is populated by the Hamilton-Sweeney patriarch's mid-30s daughter, Regan, and her husband Keith Lamplighter (Hallberg has a Dickens-like talent for naming characters); Regan's late 20s brother, William Hamilton-Sweeney, and his boyfriend Mercer Goodman, an African-American teacher from rural Georgia; a talented, alcoholic, investigative reporter and his neighbor; the co-ed and her close friend (boyfriend?) the fiery (red-head) Charlie a/k/a The Prophet; the detective trying to solve the shooting; a serpentine uncle referred to as the "Demon Brother," and a saurian punkcubus named Nicky Chaos. Minor characters include a pill-popping, conservative radio talk jock stirring up the masses, and a punk rock band soundman named, also in Dickensian fashion, Solomon Grungy. My minor beef with the book (or its length) was the insertion of short diversions to the talk radio host and the protest march the host whipped up; yet, I can see where these branches to the story are important to painting a NYC aboil in the summer of '77, making my gripe akin to a complaint there's too much timpani in a symphony.
The criticism that the novel has too many characters to follow is misplaced because of how and when each is introduced (seamlessly). And, as you'd expect from the title, New York City takes on its own calescent, then blazing, character. In CITY ON FIRE, Mr. Hallberg also shows quite a risible flare, unlike another recent, acclaimed novel set in NYC, A Little Life (in which I don't recall one moment of levity, not a single, solitary moment in how many pages? 720 pages. I would have been glad to read another 250 pages of a lighter epilogue had I not wanted to go out and jump off a bridge first).
After a torrid pace on the last night of the blackout, Hallberg ties then furls the story lines together nicely, like the end of a symphony.
*#1 song on Billboard's Top 40 on New Year's Eve 1976 was the best parking song of all time: Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright)
#1 song on Billboard's Top 40 in July 1977 was Gonna Fly Now from the movie Rocky.
Top Film of 1976: Rocky
Top Film of 1977: Star Wars
COINCIDENCE?
C'mon. Don't be so serious!~!!!!!! There's no relevant relation among these facts. Unless you've dreamed of making out with Rocky Balboa under the stars while Star Wars plays on the screen at the drive-in.
Laugh a Little; Get a Little Life in ya!!!!! ;-)
4.6 stars. J'ai un peu peur ... Mon amour viens plus près, embrasse-moi.
Posted on Amazon b4 I got involved in Goodreads. I'm the Outlier . So be it. I'm sticking by my 5 stars. Not that anyone will read this once they see 5 stars.
REVIEW
A brash and brilliant novel set in the brazier that was 1977 New York City, a "Municipality Infernality," an "Immolation Station."
Don't be deterred by the novel's length. If you can totally immerse yourself in a place/time through the magic of reading great literature, you should buy this book.
I see the similarity between "City on Fire" and a Dickens novel like "Bleak House," in that both interweave connected story lines toward solving a mystery, here a college freshman co-ed from Long Island, involved in the punk rock scene, is shot on New Year's Eve, 1976,* in the Park outside a soiree' being held by a wealthy family, the Hamilton-Sweeneys. The novel culminates in the NYC blackout of mid-July 1977.*
The novel's primary cast is populated by the Hamilton-Sweeney patriarch's mid-30s daughter, Regan, and her husband Keith Lamplighter (Hallberg has a Dickens-like talent for naming characters); Regan's late 20s brother, William Hamilton-Sweeney, and his boyfriend Mercer Goodman, an African-American teacher from rural Georgia; a talented, alcoholic, investigative reporter and his neighbor; the co-ed and her close friend (boyfriend?) the fiery (red-head) Charlie a/k/a The Prophet; the detective trying to solve the shooting; a serpentine uncle referred to as the "Demon Brother," and a saurian punkcubus named Nicky Chaos. Minor characters include a pill-popping, conservative radio talk jock stirring up the masses, and a punk rock band soundman named, also in Dickensian fashion, Solomon Grungy. My minor beef with the book (or its length) was the insertion of short diversions to the talk radio host and the protest march the host whipped up; yet, I can see where these branches to the story are important to painting a NYC aboil in the summer of '77, making my gripe akin to a complaint there's too much timpani in a symphony.
The criticism that the novel has too many characters to follow is misplaced because of how and when each is introduced (seamlessly). And, as you'd expect from the title, New York City takes on its own calescent, then blazing, character. In CITY ON FIRE, Mr. Hallberg also shows quite a risible flare, unlike another recent, acclaimed novel set in NYC, A Little Life (in which I don't recall one moment of levity, not a single, solitary moment in how many pages? 720 pages. I would have been glad to read another 250 pages of a lighter epilogue had I not wanted to go out and jump off a bridge first).
After a torrid pace on the last night of the blackout, Hallberg ties then furls the story lines together nicely, like the end of a symphony.
*#1 song on Billboard's Top 40 on New Year's Eve 1976 was the best parking song of all time: Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright)
J'ai un peu peur
Je que c'est que va dira maman
Mon amour viens plus près, embrasse-moi.
Oh, Je t'adore beaucoup
Cette nuit mon ami
oui cette nuit mon ami
Je t'aime Je t'aime Je t'aime.
#1 song on Billboard's Top 40 in July 1977 was Gonna Fly Now from the movie Rocky.
Top Film of 1976: Rocky
Top Film of 1977: Star Wars
COINCIDENCE?
C'mon. Don't be so serious!~!!!!!! There's no relevant relation among these facts. Unless you've dreamed of making out with Rocky Balboa under the stars while Star Wars plays on the screen at the drive-in.
Laugh a Little; Get a Little Life in ya!!!!! ;-)
February 15, 2019
Το συγκεκριμμένο βιβλίο έχει διχάσει ορισμένους από τους αναγνώστες. Θεωρώ ότι όσοι επέλεξαν να το διαβάσουν κυρίως εξαιτίας του marketing προώθησης του ως αστυνομικό, κατά ένα μεγάλο ποσοστό, το αδίκησαν.
Το Πόλη στις φλόγες είναι ένα αμερικάνικο μυθιστόρημα, το οποίο με εφαλτήριο τη δολοφονία μιας νεαρής κοπέλας την Παραμονή της Πρωτοχρονιάς του 1977 στο Σέντραλ Πάρκ, παρουσιάζει τις ιστορίες διαφορων ανθρώπων, φαινομενικά ασύνδετων μεταξύ του. Μέσω αυτών των ιστοριών, γνωρίζουμε τις αντιλήψεις διαφορετικών κοινωνικών ομάδων, την καθημερινότητα και τον τρόπο σκέψης τους. Σίγουρα είναι ένα βιβλίο που θέλει το χρόνο και την συγκέντρωση του αναγνώστη αποκλειστικά προσηλωμένα σε εκείνο.
Δεν ντρέπομαι να ομολογήσω, ότι υπήρχαν κάποιες στιγμές που κι εγώ κουράστηκα και σκέφτηκα να το εγκαταλέιψω. Δεν το έκανα όμως.
3,5 αστέρια λοιπόν κι αυτό γιατί οι ιστορίες των εμπλεκομένων σε κάποια σημεία ήταν υπερ του δέοντος λεπτομερείς κι η τελική ουσία χανόταν.
Το Πόλη στις φλόγες είναι ένα αμερικάνικο μυθιστόρημα, το οποίο με εφαλτήριο τη δολοφονία μιας νεαρής κοπέλας την Παραμονή της Πρωτοχρονιάς του 1977 στο Σέντραλ Πάρκ, παρουσιάζει τις ιστορίες διαφορων ανθρώπων, φαινομενικά ασύνδετων μεταξύ του. Μέσω αυτών των ιστοριών, γνωρίζουμε τις αντιλήψεις διαφορετικών κοινωνικών ομάδων, την καθημερινότητα και τον τρόπο σκέψης τους. Σίγουρα είναι ένα βιβλίο που θέλει το χρόνο και την συγκέντρωση του αναγνώστη αποκλειστικά προσηλωμένα σε εκείνο.
Δεν ντρέπομαι να ομολογήσω, ότι υπήρχαν κάποιες στιγμές που κι εγώ κουράστηκα και σκέφτηκα να το εγκαταλέιψω. Δεν το έκανα όμως.
3,5 αστέρια λοιπόν κι αυτό γιατί οι ιστορίες των εμπλεκομένων σε κάποια σημεία ήταν υπερ του δέοντος λεπτομερείς κι η τελική ουσία χανόταν.
November 24, 2015
Set in 1970s New York, this much-talked-about, epic debut (it's 960 pages long and famously secured a $2m advance) centres on the shooting of a seventeen-year-old girl on New Year's Eve. At least, it starts off seeming like it does. It's so sprawling that it takes in the entire life story of most of its characters, who include Sam, the girl who's shot; her group of punk friends; Charlie, the boy who's infatuated with her; the mega-rich Hamilton-Sweeney family, notably siblings Billy and Regan; Billy's boyfriend Mercer and Regan's husband Keith; Larry Pulaski, the cop investigating the shooting; Richard Groskoph, journalist writing a book about Sam's father's fireworks business; and Jenny Nguyen, Richard's neighbour... There are lots of people in this story, but more than enough room to flesh them out. Almost all of them are rich and nuanced with unsurprisingly lengthy backstories and myriad vulnerabilities, with the sole exception, unfortunately, being Sam. Partly because she's stretched in directions that seem like opposites, partly because she just seems so empty in a way that none of the others do. But then I suppose she is a point on which the plot turns more than she is a person. If I had to pick favourites of the lot, I'd go with Mercer and Jenny, both of whom I felt fiercely attached to from their first appearances.
The themes the story ends up exploring aren't exactly original. The woes of an extremely wealthy family; a middle-aged man having an affair with a girl young enough to be his daughter; drug addiction; a would-be author with writer's block and a relationship that's falling apart; and of course, the setting, New York City. But Hallberg's treatment of them is constantly engaging, if not exactly fresh. You believe in the characters and therefore believe/understand their situations as things that affect real people, however cliched they might seem in theory.
Each part of the novel is bookmarked by an 'interlude'. They're physical evidence, almost, of these characters' lives (a clear reference to Billy's artworks), so they're presented as if they are real objects, like the original material has been scanned in. I guess they're supposed to feel 'authentic', but they're so hard to read. In fact I found the first one, the 'handwritten' letter, so unreadable I had to skip the whole thing, and I still have no idea whether it might have contained something crucially important. I did force myself through Sam's zine, which I think has to be one of the most unconvincing things I have ever read and simply served to underline the weakness of Sam as a character. One interlude is brilliant: Will's account of his dreams, the story taking in events post-1977, Billy's fate and 'Evidence II'. At a point when my interest was flagging, this chapter made me desperately want to power through the rest of the book.
City on Fire uses many genre devices in its plot. It has both a whodunnit-style mystery and an implausibly wide-ranging conspiracy, for example. But it feels like more of a literary novel when you come to its ending... because even though it's so long and there's so much detail and the narrative flashes back and forth through time, absolutely nothing is resolved. The dramatic climax, encompassing the 1977 blackout and ensuing protests, loses all the human interest of the rest of the book as it turns into a series of action-packed scenes, a way to incorporate some tension, peril, and contrived ways to bring hitherto unconnected characters together. If the novel's length is a problem, it's a problem in that even after near to a thousand pages it doesn't feel properly complete, not because there's too much description or explanation. (Some readers seem to have found the description offputting very early on, but Hallberg's insistence on painting a vivid picture no matter how small the scene - along with his creative vocabulary - remained one of my favourite things about it throughout.)
It's hard to talk about City on Fire because the things I enjoyed about it are so broad and general, and sound like cliches - the well-roundedness of (most of) the characters, the use of language and the description, the sense of the book creating a complete separate universe that I could enter at will - whereas the things I didn't like are very specific. I think it's a great achievement, a beautifully written epic novel, and I don't regret devoting my time to getting all the way through it. But as to whether I'd recommend it - I'm really not sure. I wish I'd felt more satisfied at the end of it. I find myself wondering what became of some of the characters immediately after what happened in this book and later in life, which is testament to a) the strength of the characters (I can't help but think about them like they're real) and b) the frustration of the story.
If you're interested in this book, I'd suggest reading a sample first - I was gripped straight away; I think it'll be easy for any reader to figure out whether Hallberg's meandering-yet-engrossing style is their bag. If it's not, I think a slimmed-down, tightened-up version of City on Fire is going to make a fantastic film.
The themes the story ends up exploring aren't exactly original. The woes of an extremely wealthy family; a middle-aged man having an affair with a girl young enough to be his daughter; drug addiction; a would-be author with writer's block and a relationship that's falling apart; and of course, the setting, New York City. But Hallberg's treatment of them is constantly engaging, if not exactly fresh. You believe in the characters and therefore believe/understand their situations as things that affect real people, however cliched they might seem in theory.
Each part of the novel is bookmarked by an 'interlude'. They're physical evidence, almost, of these characters' lives (a clear reference to Billy's artworks), so they're presented as if they are real objects, like the original material has been scanned in. I guess they're supposed to feel 'authentic', but they're so hard to read. In fact I found the first one, the 'handwritten' letter, so unreadable I had to skip the whole thing, and I still have no idea whether it might have contained something crucially important. I did force myself through Sam's zine, which I think has to be one of the most unconvincing things I have ever read and simply served to underline the weakness of Sam as a character. One interlude is brilliant: Will's account of his dreams, the story taking in events post-1977, Billy's fate and 'Evidence II'. At a point when my interest was flagging, this chapter made me desperately want to power through the rest of the book.
City on Fire uses many genre devices in its plot. It has both a whodunnit-style mystery and an implausibly wide-ranging conspiracy, for example. But it feels like more of a literary novel when you come to its ending... because even though it's so long and there's so much detail and the narrative flashes back and forth through time, absolutely nothing is resolved. The dramatic climax, encompassing the 1977 blackout and ensuing protests, loses all the human interest of the rest of the book as it turns into a series of action-packed scenes, a way to incorporate some tension, peril, and contrived ways to bring hitherto unconnected characters together. If the novel's length is a problem, it's a problem in that even after near to a thousand pages it doesn't feel properly complete, not because there's too much description or explanation. (Some readers seem to have found the description offputting very early on, but Hallberg's insistence on painting a vivid picture no matter how small the scene - along with his creative vocabulary - remained one of my favourite things about it throughout.)
It's hard to talk about City on Fire because the things I enjoyed about it are so broad and general, and sound like cliches - the well-roundedness of (most of) the characters, the use of language and the description, the sense of the book creating a complete separate universe that I could enter at will - whereas the things I didn't like are very specific. I think it's a great achievement, a beautifully written epic novel, and I don't regret devoting my time to getting all the way through it. But as to whether I'd recommend it - I'm really not sure. I wish I'd felt more satisfied at the end of it. I find myself wondering what became of some of the characters immediately after what happened in this book and later in life, which is testament to a) the strength of the characters (I can't help but think about them like they're real) and b) the frustration of the story.
If you're interested in this book, I'd suggest reading a sample first - I was gripped straight away; I think it'll be easy for any reader to figure out whether Hallberg's meandering-yet-engrossing style is their bag. If it's not, I think a slimmed-down, tightened-up version of City on Fire is going to make a fantastic film.
July 18, 2015
I think I just hit my limit. I can only handle, you know, 10 references to Hegel and Gramsci per book. And the interspersed Latin, French, Italian, poorly translated Spanish...? SERIOUSLY?
Characters speak of academic theories they would not know. All have the same voice. A 17-year old girl from Long Island should not sound like an old money company head in his 60s. And no characters should resemble Ivy League comp lit professors.
I have compiled a list of about 300 words from this book that would make people at the Scripps' Spelling Bee gape. Most of these cannot be found dictionary.com, my kindle dictionary, or from cursory Google search. Their use made for an irritating read.
I do and don't get the hype. The plot is interesting. I did read all of it. Maybe the author has some sort of Style, and I'm just not smart enough to appreciate it. (Likely.) Oh, and after almost 1000 pages, it was too long and ended too quickly. Go figure.
Characters speak of academic theories they would not know. All have the same voice. A 17-year old girl from Long Island should not sound like an old money company head in his 60s. And no characters should resemble Ivy League comp lit professors.
I have compiled a list of about 300 words from this book that would make people at the Scripps' Spelling Bee gape. Most of these cannot be found dictionary.com, my kindle dictionary, or from cursory Google search. Their use made for an irritating read.
I do and don't get the hype. The plot is interesting. I did read all of it. Maybe the author has some sort of Style, and I'm just not smart enough to appreciate it. (Likely.) Oh, and after almost 1000 pages, it was too long and ended too quickly. Go figure.
January 13, 2016
Jesus, this book was the longest thing I've ever read. Worse than the physical number of pages in my hand was how long and heavy it felt - it dragged me down to the bottom of a 'what was the point of this book?' ocean and left me there to drown.
Things I learnt :
1. No amount of talent or ambition can survive an empty plot.
2. There are only a handful of books that require 900 pages to get things done. This is not one of those books.
3. No amount of talent or ambition can cover up the lack of a strict, merciless editing job.
4. Reading about someone's drug habit is excruciating when it takes a million pages for him to explain how he prefers his heroin.
5. Even passages about Christmas trees become torture when it takes thousands of pages to carry one across a road.
6. It is possible to make punks boring.
7. It is possible to make the 70s unbearably boring.
8. When one reads a Hallberg novel, one must carry a dictionary in one's back pocket because the vocabulary will be ridiculous.
I love long novels full of imperfect character studies. What I don't love is one that takes over 600 pages to get interesting only for the interesting bit to last a mere 50 pages, and then for the damned novel to get confusingly metaphysical and yawningly meh all at the same time.
Is Garth Risk Hallberg talented? YES. Does he do New York justice? YES. Is Mercer a great character? YES. But that's about it. One day, Hallberg will probably write an astounding novel. And it will be 300 pages, with all the fat cut away and I will not break my mind nor my wrists carrying it around. One star for ambition , and one for the promise of a better second book.
Things I learnt :
1. No amount of talent or ambition can survive an empty plot.
2. There are only a handful of books that require 900 pages to get things done. This is not one of those books.
3. No amount of talent or ambition can cover up the lack of a strict, merciless editing job.
4. Reading about someone's drug habit is excruciating when it takes a million pages for him to explain how he prefers his heroin.
5. Even passages about Christmas trees become torture when it takes thousands of pages to carry one across a road.
6. It is possible to make punks boring.
7. It is possible to make the 70s unbearably boring.
8. When one reads a Hallberg novel, one must carry a dictionary in one's back pocket because the vocabulary will be ridiculous.
I love long novels full of imperfect character studies. What I don't love is one that takes over 600 pages to get interesting only for the interesting bit to last a mere 50 pages, and then for the damned novel to get confusingly metaphysical and yawningly meh all at the same time.
Is Garth Risk Hallberg talented? YES. Does he do New York justice? YES. Is Mercer a great character? YES. But that's about it. One day, Hallberg will probably write an astounding novel. And it will be 300 pages, with all the fat cut away and I will not break my mind nor my wrists carrying it around. One star for ambition , and one for the promise of a better second book.
August 10, 2024
Ένα καλό βιβλίο,το οποίο για άλλο είδος σε προειδεάζει(περιπέτεια) και άλλο "βγαίνει"(δράμα).Εκεί είναι που "χάνει" το ένα αστεράκι.
August 28, 2016
Αν κι η αλήθεια είναι ότι σπάνια τρέχω να διαβάσω τα βιβλία τη στιγμή που "συμβαίνουν", με το Πόλη στις Φλόγες ήταν σχεδόν αδύνατο να το καθυστερήσω. Αρχικά μου έκαναν δώρο την αγγλική έκδοση τα περασμένα Χριστούγεννα και στη συνέχεια κ την ελληνική έκδοση (που είναι πανομοιότυπη με την αγγλική, με μοναδική διαφορά ότι αυτή του Κέδρου είναι σχεδόν ντροπιαστική αλλά θα επανέλθω στο τέλος), με αποτέλεσμα να νιώθω ότι τα δύο ολόιδια "τούβλα" θα με πλάκωναν αν τα άφηνα να μαζέψουν κι άλλη σκόνη.
Και δεν ήταν κακή ιδέα, γιατί στο πρόσωπο του εκατομμυριούχου πια Hallberg, η αμερικανική λογοτεχνία βρίσκει ένα εξαιρετικό συγγραφέα που ακόμα κι αν δυσκολεύεται να πειθαρχήσει την πένα στο άπλωμα των χαρακτήρων, καταφέρνει να δώσει ένα έργο που μόνο πρωτόλειο δεν φαντάζει. Στις 1000+ σελίδες του, ο συγγραφέας πέρα απ'τη σάγκα των πανίσχυρων Χάμιλτον-Σουίνι, ζωντανεύει στα μάτια σου τη Νέα Υόρκη στα τέλη των 70s (το κύριο μέρος της πλοκής ξεκινάει την παραμονή της πρωτοχρονιάς του 1977 και κορυφώνεται το καλοκαίρι της ίδιας χρονιάς) σε σημείο που ξέρεις πια που περπατάει ο κάθε ήρωας (κι είναι και αρκετοι οι άτιμοι).
Πέρα απ'το όποιο μάρκετινγκ που κλώτσησε αρκετούς αναγνώστες που έψαχναν το πανκ κομμάτι της πόλης (που δεν παίζει τόσο μεγάλο ρόλο στην πλοκή αλλά σκιαγράφειται εντυπωσιακά καλά), το μεγαλύτερο όπλο του βιβλίου είναι η μαγική αφήγηση, είτε γίνεται απ΄τη μεριά του απόκληρου Γουίλιαμ είτε απ'τη πιο αδικημένη φιγούρα του βιβλίου την Ρέιγκαν κ φυσικά τον συμπαθέστατο έφηβο Τσάρλι. Φυσικά υπάρχουν αρκετά πράγματα που λείπουν απ'το κείμενο, κυρίως όμως φαίνεται ότι απ'τις συζητήσεις που έκανα με πολλούς φίλους που το διάβασαν κ το απέρριψαν, πως το βιβλίο σε κάποιους φαίνεται πως στερείται μιας κεντρικής ιδέας που να εξηγεί γιατί ο Hallberg επέλεξε να γράψει τόσες σελίδες, κάτι ας πούμε δεκτό σαν παρατήρηση που ίσως να είναι και το επόμενο βήμα αυτού του πραγματικά ταλαντούχου γραφιά, αν κ εδω που τα λέμε δεν με ενδιαφέρει να κάνω τον καλλιτεχνικό διευθυντή κανενός συγγραφέα.
Κι αυτό είναι τελικά που μετράει, ότι η Πόλη στις Φλόγες είναι έργο ενός γεννημένου συγγραφέα και η αναγνωσή του είναι μια υπέροχη εμπειρία που δεν θα είχα πρόβλημα να συνεχιστεί κ για αλλες 500 σελίδες (που λέει ο λόγος). Κι αυτό είναι αρκετά μεγάλο κοπλιμέντο αν λάβει κανείς υπόψη ότι οι εκδόσεις Κέδρος έχουν εκθέσει έναν τόσο καλό μεταφραστή όπως ο Κυριαζής (η δουλειά του στον Πίντσον κ μόνο φθάνει), παραδίδοντας στο κοινό ένα κείμενο γεμάτο λάθη (μιλάμε για δεκάδες λάθη, είτε συντακτικά είτε τυπογραφικά) γεγονός ντροπιαστικό για την μεγαλύτερη ίσως επένδυση ��ου έκανε ��η φετινή σεζόν ο Κέδρος, με αποτέλεσμα να περάσω τελικά στην αγγλική έκδοση για το τελευταίο τρίτο του βιβλίου κ να φαω στη μάπα το ενίοτε επιτηδευμένο λεξιλόγιο του Hallberg που δεν είναι κ απ'τα προτερήματα του βιβλίου.
Τίποτα όμως δεν θα μου χάλαγε την απόλαυση αυτού του κειμένου, που συστήνω ανεπιφύλακτα σε όσους αρέσκονται σε πολυσέλιδα, φιλόδοξα μυθιστορήματα που είναι ικανά να φτιάξουν ένα ολοζώντανο σύμπαν (ή μια πόλη στην προκειμένη).
4.5*/5
Και δεν ήταν κακή ιδέα, γιατί στο πρόσωπο του εκατομμυριούχου πια Hallberg, η αμερικανική λογοτεχνία βρίσκει ένα εξαιρετικό συγγραφέα που ακόμα κι αν δυσκολεύεται να πειθαρχήσει την πένα στο άπλωμα των χαρακτήρων, καταφέρνει να δώσει ένα έργο που μόνο πρωτόλειο δεν φαντάζει. Στις 1000+ σελίδες του, ο συγγραφέας πέρα απ'τη σάγκα των πανίσχυρων Χάμιλτον-Σουίνι, ζωντανεύει στα μάτια σου τη Νέα Υόρκη στα τέλη των 70s (το κύριο μέρος της πλοκής ξεκινάει την παραμονή της πρωτοχρονιάς του 1977 και κορυφώνεται το καλοκαίρι της ίδιας χρονιάς) σε σημείο που ξέρεις πια που περπατάει ο κάθε ήρωας (κι είναι και αρκετοι οι άτιμοι).
Πέρα απ'το όποιο μάρκετινγκ που κλώτσησε αρκετούς αναγνώστες που έψαχναν το πανκ κομμάτι της πόλης (που δεν παίζει τόσο μεγάλο ρόλο στην πλοκή αλλά σκιαγράφειται εντυπωσιακά καλά), το μεγαλύτερο όπλο του βιβλίου είναι η μαγική αφήγηση, είτε γίνεται απ΄τη μεριά του απόκληρου Γουίλιαμ είτε απ'τη πιο αδικημένη φιγούρα του βιβλίου την Ρέιγκαν κ φυσικά τον συμπαθέστατο έφηβο Τσάρλι. Φυσικά υπάρχουν αρκετά πράγματα που λείπουν απ'το κείμενο, κυρίως όμως φαίνεται ότι απ'τις συζητήσεις που έκανα με πολλούς φίλους που το διάβασαν κ το απέρριψαν, πως το βιβλίο σε κάποιους φαίνεται πως στερείται μιας κεντρικής ιδέας που να εξηγεί γιατί ο Hallberg επέλεξε να γράψει τόσες σελίδες, κάτι ας πούμε δεκτό σαν παρατήρηση που ίσως να είναι και το επόμενο βήμα αυτού του πραγματικά ταλαντούχου γραφιά, αν κ εδω που τα λέμε δεν με ενδιαφέρει να κάνω τον καλλιτεχνικό διευθυντή κανενός συγγραφέα.
Κι αυτό είναι τελικά που μετράει, ότι η Πόλη στις Φλόγες είναι έργο ενός γεννημένου συγγραφέα και η αναγνωσή του είναι μια υπέροχη εμπειρία που δεν θα είχα πρόβλημα να συνεχιστεί κ για αλλες 500 σελίδες (που λέει ο λόγος). Κι αυτό είναι αρκετά μεγάλο κοπλιμέντο αν λάβει κανείς υπόψη ότι οι εκδόσεις Κέδρος έχουν εκθέσει έναν τόσο καλό μεταφραστή όπως ο Κυριαζής (η δουλειά του στον Πίντσον κ μόνο φθάνει), παραδίδοντας στο κοινό ένα κείμενο γεμάτο λάθη (μιλάμε για δεκάδες λάθη, είτε συντακτικά είτε τυπογραφικά) γεγονός ντροπιαστικό για την μεγαλύτερη ίσως επένδυση ��ου έκανε ��η φετινή σεζόν ο Κέδρος, με αποτέλεσμα να περάσω τελικά στην αγγλική έκδοση για το τελευταίο τρίτο του βιβλίου κ να φαω στη μάπα το ενίοτε επιτηδευμένο λεξιλόγιο του Hallberg που δεν είναι κ απ'τα προτερήματα του βιβλίου.
Τίποτα όμως δεν θα μου χάλαγε την απόλαυση αυτού του κειμένου, που συστήνω ανεπιφύλακτα σε όσους αρέσκονται σε πολυσέλιδα, φιλόδοξα μυθιστορήματα που είναι ικανά να φτιάξουν ένα ολοζώντανο σύμπαν (ή μια πόλη στην προκειμένη).
4.5*/5
Read
August 3, 2018(short notes in english follow)
Να πω ότι καταλαβαίνω απόλυτα και όσους το λάτρεψαν και όσους το παράτησαν. Είναι από τα βιβλία εκείνα που και οι δύο κατηγορίες αναγνωστών έχουν δίκιο και τα επιχειρήματα να το υποστηρίξουν. Εγώ θα σταθώ κάπου ανάμεσα, άξιζε και με το παραπάνω τον χρόνο που αφιέρωσα αλλά δεν μου προκάλεσε τον ενθουσιασμό που ένιωσαν άλλοι.
Είναι ένα βιβλίο που λόγω του μεγέθους αλλά και του εύρους του απαιτεί χρόνο και αφοσίωση από τον αναγνώστη. Ο ρυθμός του είναι αργός αλλά όχι βασανιστικός καθώς αυτό οφείλεται στην ιδιαίτερα πυκνή γραφή και στο πλήθος των λεπτομερειών. Δεν κουράζει ή δυσκολεύει τον αναγνώστη αλλά απαιτεί την προσοχή του. Στο τελευταίο τέταρτο του βιβλίου ο ρυθμός επιταχύνει αρκετά καθώς όλα αρχίζουν και ταιριάζουν μεταξύ τους αλλά κάποιος θα μπορούσε και να υποθέσει πως μάλλον ο συγγραφέας κουράστηκε και αποφάσισε να το ολοκληρώσει. Βέβαια αυο δεν πιστεύω ότι ισχύει καθώς είναι άρτια ταιριασμένο με όλο το υπόλοιπο.
Με αφορμή ένα έγκλημα (το βιβλίο απέχει πολύ από το να χαρακτηριστεί αστυνομικό) ο συγγραφέας μας μεταφέρει κυρίως στη Νέα Υόρκη στα τέλη της δεκαετίας του '70, μια πόλη σε πλήρη παρακμή. Μέσα από τις ζωές των χαρακτήρων του θεωρώ ότι επιτυγχάνει να μας μεταφέρει την ατμόσφαιρα και το κλίμα της. Τα ναρκωτικά και το πανκ εννοείται πανταχού παρόντα. Παρά τον αργό ρυθμό, στο τέλος βλέποντας από απόσταση την πλοκή στο σύνολό της νιώθει κανείς ικανοποίηση για το πως ταιριάζουν όλα τα κομμάτια της. Υποψιάζομαι πως αυτό έγινε και λίγο επίτηδες, δηλαδή, όπως πρέπει να δεις μια πόλη σαν τη Νέα Υόρκη από μακριά για να έχεις τη γενική της εικόνα έτσι συμβαίνει και με την πλοκή του βιβλίου.
Το μεγαλύτερο μέρος του βιβλίου όμως είναι αφιερωμένο στους χαρακτήρες του. Όσοι αγαπούν τους καλά αναπτυγμένους χαρακτήρες σε ένα βιβλίο πιστεύω πως θα τους αρέσει πολύ. Ο συγγραφέας, μας τους παρουσιάζει σε όλες τους τις πτυχές, ξεδιπλώνει το παρόν και το παρελθόν τους και δεν αφήνει καμία αμφιβολία για τις σκέψεις και τα κίνητρα των κεντρικών του χαρακτήρων ενώ και οι δευτερεύοντες χαρακτήρες δένουν αρμονικά στο σύνολο.
Συμπερασματικά θα έλεγα ότι αξίζει να το διαβάσετε αρκεί να έχετε ένα ενδιαφέρον για την περίοδο που διαδραματίζεται και φυσικά να έχετε το χρόνο για να το διαβάσετε με το ρυθμό που αυτό θα σας επιβάλει. Θεωρώ πως δεν είναι από τα βιβλία που μπορούν να διαβαστούν "στα κλεφτά" και αν το επιχειρήσετε απλά θα ταλαιπωρηθείτε.
It is a book that requires some effort and plenty of time from the reader. It has its own, slow, rythm and it would be frustrating trying to rush through it. However, it can satisfy the reader as it is well written and if you like the setting (NY, late 70s) and characters that are exhaustively detailed, it is well worth your time.
Να πω ότι καταλαβαίνω απόλυτα και όσους το λάτρεψαν και όσους το παράτησαν. Είναι από τα βιβλία εκείνα που και οι δύο κατηγορίες αναγνωστών έχουν δίκιο και τα επιχειρήματα να το υποστηρίξουν. Εγώ θα σταθώ κάπου ανάμεσα, άξιζε και με το παραπάνω τον χρόνο που αφιέρωσα αλλά δεν μου προκάλεσε τον ενθουσιασμό που ένιωσαν άλλοι.
Είναι ένα βιβλίο που λόγω του μεγέθους αλλά και του εύρους του απαιτεί χρόνο και αφοσίωση από τον αναγνώστη. Ο ρυθμός του είναι αργός αλλά όχι βασανιστικός καθώς αυτό οφείλεται στην ιδιαίτερα πυκνή γραφή και στο πλήθος των λεπτομερειών. Δεν κουράζει ή δυσκολεύει τον αναγνώστη αλλά απαιτεί την προσοχή του. Στο τελευταίο τέταρτο του βιβλίου ο ρυθμός επιταχύνει αρκετά καθώς όλα αρχίζουν και ταιριάζουν μεταξύ τους αλλά κάποιος θα μπορούσε και να υποθέσει πως μάλλον ο συγγραφέας κουράστηκε και αποφάσισε να το ολοκληρώσει. Βέβαια αυο δεν πιστεύω ότι ισχύει καθώς είναι άρτια ταιριασμένο με όλο το υπόλοιπο.
Με αφορμή ένα έγκλημα (το βιβλίο απέχει πολύ από το να χαρακτηριστεί αστυνομικό) ο συγγραφέας μας μεταφέρει κυρίως στη Νέα Υόρκη στα τέλη της δεκαετίας του '70, μια πόλη σε πλήρη παρακμή. Μέσα από τις ζωές των χαρακτήρων του θεωρώ ότι επιτυγχάνει να μας μεταφέρει την ατμόσφαιρα και το κλίμα της. Τα ναρκωτικά και το πανκ εννοείται πανταχού παρόντα. Παρά τον αργό ρυθμό, στο τέλος βλέποντας από απόσταση την πλοκή στο σύνολό της νιώθει κανείς ικανοποίηση για το πως ταιριάζουν όλα τα κομμάτια της. Υποψιάζομαι πως αυτό έγινε και λίγο επίτηδες, δηλαδή, όπως πρέπει να δεις μια πόλη σαν τη Νέα Υόρκη από μακριά για να έχεις τη γενική της εικόνα έτσι συμβαίνει και με την πλοκή του βιβλίου.
Το μεγαλύτερο μέρος του βιβλίου όμως είναι αφιερωμένο στους χαρακτήρες του. Όσοι αγαπούν τους καλά αναπτυγμένους χαρακτήρες σε ένα βιβλίο πιστεύω πως θα τους αρέσει πολύ. Ο συγγραφέας, μας τους παρουσιάζει σε όλες τους τις πτυχές, ξεδιπλώνει το παρόν και το παρελθόν τους και δεν αφήνει καμία αμφιβολία για τις σκέψεις και τα κίνητρα των κεντρικών του χαρακτήρων ενώ και οι δευτερεύοντες χαρακτήρες δένουν αρμονικά στο σύνολο.
Συμπερασματικά θα έλεγα ότι αξίζει να το διαβάσετε αρκεί να έχετε ένα ενδιαφέρον για την περίοδο που διαδραματίζεται και φυσικά να έχετε το χρόνο για να το διαβάσετε με το ρυθμό που αυτό θα σας επιβάλει. Θεωρώ πως δεν είναι από τα βιβλία που μπορούν να διαβαστούν "στα κλεφτά" και αν το επιχειρήσετε απλά θα ταλαιπωρηθείτε.
It is a book that requires some effort and plenty of time from the reader. It has its own, slow, rythm and it would be frustrating trying to rush through it. However, it can satisfy the reader as it is well written and if you like the setting (NY, late 70s) and characters that are exhaustively detailed, it is well worth your time.
April 28, 2016
Και τώρα βρίσκομαι κι εγώ στην ίδια περίπου θέση. Ψάχνω ψηλαφιστά . Αισθάνομαι. Φαντάζομαι τον εαυτό μου σε κάποιο τρίτο χώρο, να παρατηρεί μέσα από μια ρωγμή στον τοίχο καθώς διαβάζεις αυτές τις λέξεις. Προσπαθώ να καταλάβω τι θέλουν να πουν εδώ που τις έχει ξεβράσει η παλίρροια των τυπογραφικών στοιχέιων γεμίζοντας ως επάνω τους τοίχους , πριν το λευκό αρχίσει να τις καταπίνει ξανά και όλο αυτό το κωλόπραμα σβήσει σε ένα τίποτα που είτε θα είναι άσκοπο είτε όχι.
February 10, 2017
Ένα βιβλίο που πραγματικά ήταν ατελείωτο. Αρχικά, όμως πρέπει να δώσω συγχαρητήρια σε αυτούς που ασχολήθηκαν με το marketing. Το μυθιστόρημα αυτό πλασαρίστηκε ως αστυνομικό- αν και στην πραγματικότητα δεν ανήκει σ' αυτή την κατηγορία- γιατί το συγκεκριμένο είδος πουλάει πολύ. Έπειτα, το γεγονός ότι ο συγγραφέας πήρε 2000000, όσο να' ναι εξάπτει την περιέργεια του αναγνώστη. όλα αυτά, λοιπόν, βοήθησαν στο να γίνει το βιβλίο αυτό το εκδοτικό φαινόμενο της χρονιάς.
Ας έρθουμε, όμως, στο μυθιστόρημα αυτό καθεαυτό. Καταρχάς, αδιαμφισβήτητο είναι το γεγονός ότι ο Hallberg ξέρει να γράφει. Ναι, ο τύπος όντως στην πορεία μπορεί να γράψει ένα διαχρονικό μυθιστόρημα. Σε αρκετά σημεία έπιανα τον εαυτό μου να τον θαυμάζει. Βέβαια, δεν έλειψαν οι στιγμές που ένιωθα ότι θέλω να του φέρω το τούβλο -ναι το βιβλίο εννοώ- στο κεφάλι. Γιατί; Γιατί καταντούσε κουραστικός, γιατί η ιστορία δεν "κυλούσε". Εγώ θα χα κόψει πάνω από το μισό βιβλίο. Νομίζω ότι ήταν αρκετά φλύαρο. Έχω την εντύπωση πως ο Hallberg κάνει επίδειξη των ικανοτήτων του. Αν και φαίνεται να θέλει να περάσει αρκετά νοήματα, νομίζω πως αυτά χάθηκαν ανάμεσα στις πυκνογραμμένες σελίδες του μυθιστορήματος.
Η αλήθεια είναι πως πάντα πίστευα ότι η ποιότητα αξίζει και όχι η ποσότητα. Γεγονός που μου το επιβεβαίωσε το βιβλίο αυτό.
Ας έρθουμε, όμως, στο μυθιστόρημα αυτό καθεαυτό. Καταρχάς, αδιαμφισβήτητο είναι το γεγονός ότι ο Hallberg ξέρει να γράφει. Ναι, ο τύπος όντως στην πορεία μπορεί να γράψει ένα διαχρονικό μυθιστόρημα. Σε αρκετά σημεία έπιανα τον εαυτό μου να τον θαυμάζει. Βέβαια, δεν έλειψαν οι στιγμές που ένιωθα ότι θέλω να του φέρω το τούβλο -ναι το βιβλίο εννοώ- στο κεφάλι. Γιατί; Γιατί καταντούσε κουραστικός, γιατί η ιστορία δεν "κυλούσε". Εγώ θα χα κόψει πάνω από το μισό βιβλίο. Νομίζω ότι ήταν αρκετά φλύαρο. Έχω την εντύπωση πως ο Hallberg κάνει επίδειξη των ικανοτήτων του. Αν και φαίνεται να θέλει να περάσει αρκετά νοήματα, νομίζω πως αυτά χάθηκαν ανάμεσα στις πυκνογραμμένες σελίδες του μυθιστορήματος.
Η αλήθεια είναι πως πάντα πίστευα ότι η ποιότητα αξίζει και όχι η ποσότητα. Γεγονός που μου το επιβεβαίωσε το βιβλίο αυτό.
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