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Lacking Character
Curtis White's long-awaited return to fiction reminds us that the founder of one of American literature's most vibrant and innovative movements is still the King of "transcendental buffoonery."
The story begins when a masked man appears in the night at the door of the Marquis, proclaiming a matter of life and "I stand falsely accused of an atrocity!"
Except he's not, really; he's just trying to get the attention of the Marquis (a video game-playing burnout) to help him enroll in some community college vocational classes. And so the exchange gets badly botched, and our masked man is soon lost in a maddening America, encountering its absurdities at every turn, and cursing his cruel fate.
In a time with the crisis du jour, White asks us to remember what it's like to laugh--to be a little silly even--in order to reclaim what used to be fundamental to the strength to create our own worlds.
The story begins when a masked man appears in the night at the door of the Marquis, proclaiming a matter of life and "I stand falsely accused of an atrocity!"
Except he's not, really; he's just trying to get the attention of the Marquis (a video game-playing burnout) to help him enroll in some community college vocational classes. And so the exchange gets badly botched, and our masked man is soon lost in a maddening America, encountering its absurdities at every turn, and cursing his cruel fate.
In a time with the crisis du jour, White asks us to remember what it's like to laugh--to be a little silly even--in order to reclaim what used to be fundamental to the strength to create our own worlds.
- GenresFiction
208 pages, Library Binding
First published March 18, 2018
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164 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 24, 2020
Curtis White’s latest novel since America’s Magic Mountain in 2004 is an improvisatory comic romp in the style of Gilbert Sorrentino (at his silliest and crankiest), Raymond Queneau (at his zippiest), and Raymond Federman (at his most meta-playful). As co-founder of FC2, White’s latest hearkens back to the freewheeling witty madness of that vintage postmodern era, serving up hilariously flippant prose, absurd digressions, and apt aperçus below each chapter heading. A welcome return to form for an extremely underrated comic novelist (see also the fantastic Requiem and Memories of my Father Watching TV).
July 16, 2020
Not sure what it was all about.
But it was such a ride!
A speculative-metafictional-science-fiction at its funniest!
The word "lacking" suggests that there is a presence of something. Rather than the absence of it,since the book was published and so we should have some narrative inside it,let's say it lacked rather than the absence of it.
So I would say it lacked almost everything. A proper narrative, story, arcs, etc.
In a good way though.
If I have to give you a sample from the book,which won't convey anything, since the speed at which a character breaks its particular inner logic is amazing. Perhaps only the spectral stranger with a Zorro mask (supplied by the intruding author) had a nice character arc or the queen of spells (sort of woman demi god) was maintaining her consistency.
This is my first from this very eccentric writer.
Hope to read more in the future.
But it was such a ride!
A speculative-metafictional-science-fiction at its funniest!
The word "lacking" suggests that there is a presence of something. Rather than the absence of it,since the book was published and so we should have some narrative inside it,let's say it lacked rather than the absence of it.
So I would say it lacked almost everything. A proper narrative, story, arcs, etc.
In a good way though.
If I have to give you a sample from the book,which won't convey anything, since the speed at which a character breaks its particular inner logic is amazing. Perhaps only the spectral stranger with a Zorro mask (supplied by the intruding author) had a nice character arc or the queen of spells (sort of woman demi god) was maintaining her consistency.
This is my first from this very eccentric writer.
Hope to read more in the future.
Read
March 31, 2018what are the barriers to an artificial facsimile of zorro enrolling in community college? can slaughtering a horde of tiny little zorro-looking homunculi be properly classified an atrocity? what is the value of dog money? how is one to distinguish between babies and guinea pigs that only look and behave like babies? curtis white, as always, asking the big questions. (i'm being flip but there's actually a great deal to chew on here, esp vis a vis demarcating b/w what's human and what's merely human-like, which seems, uh, pretty vital to be addressing atm.) sure, it's got a "you-kids-get-off-my-lawn" streak a mile wide, and narratively sorta droops in the fourth quintile, but dang, for me this one is squarely planted in the "worthwhile" column.
February 19, 2020
I really enjoyed this - incredibly silly and fun and yep, playful, zigging when you expect it to zag, and never outstaying its welcome. My most enjoyable read of 2018 so far, and I'll most likely go back and read it again before too long.
Dog guns! The dog guns keep making me laugh every time I think about them.
Dog guns! The dog guns keep making me laugh every time I think about them.
April 12, 2018
Curt was my professor in college. He was full of great anecdotes and aphorisms. My favorite part of this great novel was reading the epigraphs at the start of each chapter. And the chapters written in the style of other writers. His style and his vision will keep his fiction evergreen.
June 28, 2020
Well, that was a bit bonkers. But I liked it
July 16, 2018
Lacking plot too. But alas, as a proud member of the Reading Public, I read on to the end and my conclusion? Genius! Brilliant!
Having read it through, I know now that as a novel, it debunks the conventions--or serves as the meta-novel, or better yet, straight imaginative flights without ice. Don't skip a sentence or a paragraph, it turns that fast. The narrator appears as a character (not a new convention) but only as a shapeshifting cartoon face (also is also lacking character). One Percy (Percival, to the mythologists in the room) begins the book as the masked goyem, a flesh-and-blood bot sent on a mission. There is Felicite, the Queen of Spells, talking dogs, bicycles morphing into horses (more romantic), time travel, and on and on. In the middle of the book (notice I didn't use the word plot), Percy fades to Jake and Rory, a sort of Quixote/Panza team and they...well, you can discover the ultimate "consumatum est" of the novel
White mimics the great writers, uses epigrammatic quotes in the chapter head as tag points, inserts lines from poets (esp. T. S. Eliot), but best of all, criticizes social and cultural values, "the babble of the world" as the narrator calls it (p. 158). No, wait, the best part is the humor--it's damn funny! Here's one: "She was like the idea of a mother that you would get from someone else's mother, not your own." In short, he is a virtuoso.
If this novel lacks anything, it is more readers. I loved it!
Having read it through, I know now that as a novel, it debunks the conventions--or serves as the meta-novel, or better yet, straight imaginative flights without ice. Don't skip a sentence or a paragraph, it turns that fast. The narrator appears as a character (not a new convention) but only as a shapeshifting cartoon face (also is also lacking character). One Percy (Percival, to the mythologists in the room) begins the book as the masked goyem, a flesh-and-blood bot sent on a mission. There is Felicite, the Queen of Spells, talking dogs, bicycles morphing into horses (more romantic), time travel, and on and on. In the middle of the book (notice I didn't use the word plot), Percy fades to Jake and Rory, a sort of Quixote/Panza team and they...well, you can discover the ultimate "consumatum est" of the novel
White mimics the great writers, uses epigrammatic quotes in the chapter head as tag points, inserts lines from poets (esp. T. S. Eliot), but best of all, criticizes social and cultural values, "the babble of the world" as the narrator calls it (p. 158). No, wait, the best part is the humor--it's damn funny! Here's one: "She was like the idea of a mother that you would get from someone else's mother, not your own." In short, he is a virtuoso.
If this novel lacks anything, it is more readers. I loved it!
May 7, 2018
This wasn't the book for me. I like weird and quirky and odd. Yet, this felt a little too postmodern for me. It was disconnected. I was intrigued, particularly by Percy and the Queen of Spells. And I didn't need realistic. But I needed something. There may have been a point buried in there, but I didn't see it and wasn't interested enough to go looking. I am not saying I need my stories to have a point or a moral or a take home. But when given nothing else within a narrative to root myself in, it's hard not to start craving those things. And at the end there were bits that while still rooted in the narrative such as it was, seemed to call out the reader if they didn't get it. I just wasn't a fan. There are many who will disagree with me. And I hope so, because I want books to find their audience. I just wasn't the audience for this book.
August 12, 2021
I think the author says it best,
"...Sorry. This story is a mess. It started off well enough, long ago, but now it’s lumpy gravy...Perhaps it’s simply that my story has used up its energy source like a star that has exhausted its once-infinite supply of hydrogen, and now it is taking on all kinds of weird behavior: it’s pulsing, losing control of its own boundaries, spinning ominously...'
The characters, "...realized that their drama, they themselves, this entire world was not possible, and they were ashamed of it and the poor, selfish roles they had played."
"...Sorry. This story is a mess. It started off well enough, long ago, but now it’s lumpy gravy...Perhaps it’s simply that my story has used up its energy source like a star that has exhausted its once-infinite supply of hydrogen, and now it is taking on all kinds of weird behavior: it’s pulsing, losing control of its own boundaries, spinning ominously...'
The characters, "...realized that their drama, they themselves, this entire world was not possible, and they were ashamed of it and the poor, selfish roles they had played."
October 30, 2024
Um, I'm not exactly sure what this was supposed to be, but clearly not for me. It presents itself as being fun and entertaining and unusual, but instead dips its toes fully into the experimental/difficult pond. There's really no structure or coherence to it, and it does this whole faux-highbrow thing... quite disappointing.
Oh well, at least it was short.
Oh well, at least it was short.
May 25, 2019
I know that it must seem as if my characters live not in the world but midway in some interior distance, suspended between a mute God and the babble of the world. In short, my characters are curiously lacking in character. They are self-negating. This my sound abstruse, but I like the lack of clarity in this bracketed space between the ineffable and the incorrigible. It suits me.
But I recognize that not everyone feels this way. That oddball anachronism that we call the "Reading Public" would prefer that the bracket, where the Work says its piece, be in among the particulars of a familiar world. In other words, their little world. It should remind them of family, of real places, of, God forgive them, real people. I can hear them now, those weary voices who would simply like to say that the author ought to try to help out now and then. A time and a place, they say. Give us that. For instance, they suggest, Delhi, in 1943, the dying days of the British Raj. The viceroy's insomnia. The confusion and suffering among the sepoys of the Pankot rifles. The rich sentimentality for the old days when the colonialists were mother and father to a world of dark children.
Then, completely out of bounds, the Reading Public shouts, "Or at least can we have some trees?"
I'm sorry, but much as I would like to oblige, to cooperate, to satisy and comfort, I don't know anything about colonial India. In all honesty, I can't even say I know much about trees except to say that they seem to be all over the place. But the Reading Public should admit that I have committed myself to a few things. Minnesota, for example. That's a place. It's even a state. Also, a lake with a name: Lake Mandubracius (ridiculous, I admit, but I'm new to this). And there are boulders (about which I've already said too much). So, since it makes you happy, I will say something more about trees. Writers often do. Only painters seem to enjoy them more, use them, profit from them in all sorts of ways. Musicians I think couldn't care less about trees. In fact, I suspect that most musicians are afraid of trees. Something about them. If only all of my readers were musicians, I'd be free of this obsession of the Reading Public!
I hope now that we can return to the wide-open spaces of the American interior, and I promise you solemnly, there will be trees, lots of trees.
But I recognize that not everyone feels this way. That oddball anachronism that we call the "Reading Public" would prefer that the bracket, where the Work says its piece, be in among the particulars of a familiar world. In other words, their little world. It should remind them of family, of real places, of, God forgive them, real people. I can hear them now, those weary voices who would simply like to say that the author ought to try to help out now and then. A time and a place, they say. Give us that. For instance, they suggest, Delhi, in 1943, the dying days of the British Raj. The viceroy's insomnia. The confusion and suffering among the sepoys of the Pankot rifles. The rich sentimentality for the old days when the colonialists were mother and father to a world of dark children.
Then, completely out of bounds, the Reading Public shouts, "Or at least can we have some trees?"
I'm sorry, but much as I would like to oblige, to cooperate, to satisy and comfort, I don't know anything about colonial India. In all honesty, I can't even say I know much about trees except to say that they seem to be all over the place. But the Reading Public should admit that I have committed myself to a few things. Minnesota, for example. That's a place. It's even a state. Also, a lake with a name: Lake Mandubracius (ridiculous, I admit, but I'm new to this). And there are boulders (about which I've already said too much). So, since it makes you happy, I will say something more about trees. Writers often do. Only painters seem to enjoy them more, use them, profit from them in all sorts of ways. Musicians I think couldn't care less about trees. In fact, I suspect that most musicians are afraid of trees. Something about them. If only all of my readers were musicians, I'd be free of this obsession of the Reading Public!
I hope now that we can return to the wide-open spaces of the American interior, and I promise you solemnly, there will be trees, lots of trees.
March 20, 2018
Lacking Character by Curtis White is a witty, puzzling, digressive, meandering fairy tale of sorts, set in N(ormal), Ill.
The queen of spells dispatches Percy, a masked courier to deliver a message to the marquis of N. The marquis spends much of his time playing Halo an inadvertently kills all of Percy's companions. The request was for the marquis to care for Percy, an "animated doll" created by the queen. Percy lacks character, but has the skills to survive, which is good, because the marquis doesn't assist Percy. Marquis is more concerned with grandson Jake either finding a job or money. Percy ends up working for/with Fanni, Jake's promiscuous wife, performing "ritual abasement" in exchange for housing.
This philosophical novel is a mish-mash of narrators, styles, and low comedy. I really tried to engage with the novel and go with the flow of the presented novel, and managed to appreciate parts of it, but the totality of this one eluded me. There were several messages that could be parsed out of the divergent trails the prose traipses through, and the effort was worth some of these, but not all of them. Additionally sometimes I did always find the comedic episodes all that humorous. In the end Lacking Character is a so-so novel for me. Not bad, but not for me.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Melville House Publishing.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2018/0...
The queen of spells dispatches Percy, a masked courier to deliver a message to the marquis of N. The marquis spends much of his time playing Halo an inadvertently kills all of Percy's companions. The request was for the marquis to care for Percy, an "animated doll" created by the queen. Percy lacks character, but has the skills to survive, which is good, because the marquis doesn't assist Percy. Marquis is more concerned with grandson Jake either finding a job or money. Percy ends up working for/with Fanni, Jake's promiscuous wife, performing "ritual abasement" in exchange for housing.
This philosophical novel is a mish-mash of narrators, styles, and low comedy. I really tried to engage with the novel and go with the flow of the presented novel, and managed to appreciate parts of it, but the totality of this one eluded me. There were several messages that could be parsed out of the divergent trails the prose traipses through, and the effort was worth some of these, but not all of them. Additionally sometimes I did always find the comedic episodes all that humorous. In the end Lacking Character is a so-so novel for me. Not bad, but not for me.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Melville House Publishing.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2018/0...
December 29, 2018
This postmodern romp has a goofy Alice-in-Wonderland feel to it. The “Marquis of N” is initially the main character, but he is a Marquis manqué who spends all his time playing video games and eating pizza with his grandson, putting him in dire financial straits, while his fiefdom falls into dereliction. A Zorro-masked courier delivers an ominous message from “The Queen.” The Marquis rejects the message and the messenger, sending the queen herself out on a search for both. The grandson goes off to look for a job.
Meanwhile, the third-person narrator gradually becomes a first-person character in the story. Anything seems possible and the line between imagination and reality is fuzzy, as is the “line” if there is one, between artificial and natural intelligence. The story really isn’t one. As a picaresque, the novel is a showpiece for the author’s wit and craft, both of which grew tiresome in a hundred pages, for me.
The writing is genuinely witty, but the humor is based on remote and bawdy nonsequitur, not on insightful observation, so as with a Monty Python show, a little goes a long way. I think the book would appeal more to a reader accustomed to the fantasy genre.
Meanwhile, the third-person narrator gradually becomes a first-person character in the story. Anything seems possible and the line between imagination and reality is fuzzy, as is the “line” if there is one, between artificial and natural intelligence. The story really isn’t one. As a picaresque, the novel is a showpiece for the author’s wit and craft, both of which grew tiresome in a hundred pages, for me.
The writing is genuinely witty, but the humor is based on remote and bawdy nonsequitur, not on insightful observation, so as with a Monty Python show, a little goes a long way. I think the book would appeal more to a reader accustomed to the fantasy genre.
May 21, 2018
there's no real structure to speak of here and recounting whatever plot there is would defeat the purpose; roughly, this is a book about the author's relationship with his characters and his readership. it utilizes imitations of form and metanarrative to very loosely advance a social satire of what character means and how we derive self in the 21st century.
Read
October 30, 2024I'm not rating this title as, judging from reviews, I've decided I'm not going to delve into it. At a different time in my life, i might have been interested in trying to figure it out, but ....not now.
Very thankful for excellent libraries in this area, so i can sample without buying books.
Very thankful for excellent libraries in this area, so i can sample without buying books.
December 14, 2018
Hilarious and enjoyable from start to finish. He does not understand how Halo works though but I forgive him.
December 29, 2019
Silly and fun, pure irony.
October 7, 2020
<33.
If you appreciate word play, are open to being momentarily confused over and over and loyal enough to keep reading, then you might love this.
I felt I’d been invited inside White’s creative process in which I watched wonderful characters come to life and then not so wonderful characters... was confused then confident (and back)... was bazaar then briefly grounded... etc.
All the while I was having a dualistic reading experience which is not something I would have thought to seek. I am thoroughly thankful for the strangeness (that is likely not actually so strange.. just a glimpse into the stages before one generally decides to publish).
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