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Attachment: A Novel of War and Peace
a novel of war and peace is historical fiction during the 2004 presidential election. Set upon the backdrop of the stunning Oregon coast and exhilarating Colorado Rockies, it weaves a colorful tapestry of global war, American culture, interpersonal psychology, and individual motivation and emotion."That is a very brave book you have written." Carla Perry; author/poet. "Bought it, got it, read it, loved it!" Michelle Perkins; Exceptional Family Resource Center."The cat has definitely leaped out of the bag." Rhaine Gonzalez; student."A live coal." Sandra McRae; author, poet. "Ive started many a book, put them down and never finished them. Yours was read in two days - think that says something, especially since Im opposed to most (or is it all) of what Joe believes in." Judy Mangers. "A GREAT read, Mark... It caught me emotionally--POW--always a sign of>> excellent writing." JoAnn Ray; feminist, university professor. "...the scenes with Bobbie and the relationship between Joe and his father -- particularly the memories of abuse -- how those scenes were done -- WOW WAS I IMPRESSED!!!!!!" Mary Collopy Southworth; Educator. "I read Attachment in two days. I enjoyed it. A good book." John Dicke; Psychologist. "this is one smart beautiful book." Murray Moulding; poet. "I liked your book a lot! Well done." Laura Prichett; Author. Read more reviews, or order also www.myspace.com/mejabbour
- GenresContemporary
266 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 16, 2006
9 people want to read
About the author
mark Jabbour
3 books47 followersI was weened on Greek Mythology, graduated to Edgar Rice Burroughs & then moved to James A. Michener and then on to the Influences listed. I began writing non-fiction in 1992 - Letters to the Editor, grants, Op-EDs and such and started writing fiction by accident, in 2004. I just released my book concerning the US Election 2016. It's pretty much a theory of everything. http://www.markjabbour.com
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January 30, 2009
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally. My apologies, by the way; today's review is just a little longer than Goodreads' word-count limit.)
As regular readers know, I've been spending the week finally making my way through a whole pile of only so-so books that have been in my reading list, titles that in some cases have been in the queue for months now; and as mentioned in an earlier post, I want to remind people that this is a different thing than a book simply being bad, else I would simply say that the book is bad, in that I've never had a problem saying such a thing in the past. Take today's title under examination, for example, the human-interest novel Attachment by m.e. Jabbour, which is actually a surprisingly complex story when you stop and analyze it, one that a certain amount of people are bound to naturally love. It's just that the weaknesses of the book are going to keep X amount of people away from it as well, which is why it's ultimately getting an only so-so score today; because that's part of what makes up the ridiculously overanalytical scores I give out here, not just how good the book itself is at what it's attempting, but how much it will appeal to a large general crowd versus a small niche one, how much it transcends the trappings of whatever genre or style it was written in.
Because make no mistake, Attachment is written in a very specific style -- it's one of those character-heavy academic novels that them perfessers love so much, the kind that concentrate more on examining the human condition than in relating an exciting plot. Specifically it's the story of one Joe Burns, who in the tradition of the novels I love the most is what I call an "antivillain" -- that is, instead of the more well-known "antihero" situation, where we end up rooting for a character who at first appears to have deeply repulsive flaws, here we start out with a sympathetic character who we come to despise more and more, the better we get to know them. Why that is is essentially the subject of this book, an examination not only of why so many liberal intellectuals seemed to completely lose it during the second Bush presidential term of 2004 to '08, but of what drives these people to become who they are in the first place, and of how a complete obliviousness to their own inner nature can sometimes cause an endless cycle of repetitive terrible behavior.
Why yes, if this sounds remarkably like the premise behind the popular novel and award-winning movie Affliction, that's because it is -- except in this case, instead of the main character being an aimless middle-aged conservative in a small town in the midwest, with a penchant for boozing and a tendency towards violence brought on by decades of parental psychological abuse, here the main character is an aimless middle-aged progressive in a small town on the Oregon coast with the same past and current problems. Because make no mistake, Joe is a bundle of violent, passive-aggressive neuroses, caught in a repeating cycle of acting-out precisely because of the complete selective blindness he has developed regarding his own behavior; and then instead of ever confronting all this, he ends up channeling his rage into an all-consuming hatred for the neocon nutjobs who ran this country during the early 2000s, becoming the proverbial letter-to-the-editor crank throughout history who blames every single thing going wrong in his life to whatever politician happens to be in charge that particular moment.
In fact, there's yet another literary trick on display here that in general I'm a big fan of, a device that's so good for antivillain novels, which is the use of an "unreliable narrator" to tell the actual story; because the more you read of Attachment, the more you come to realize that Joe is leaving out important details of these events from the first-person narrative making up this manuscript, details that would make these situations seem a lot more even-handed if disclosed, that would help him identify his own bad behavior and stop repeating it if he could simply learn to acknowledge them. For example, near the beginning of the novel Joe starts a romantic relationship with a woman significantly younger than himself, which at first he paints in deliberately vague terms that makes it seem like he's maybe in his early forties and she in her late twenties, on the outer edge of what most consider a "normal" age gap in a relationship but certainly within that normal boundary; but the longer the story continues, the more it becomes clear that he's actually more in his early fifties and she still college-aged, a ten-year addition to this age gap that moves it thoroughly into creepy territory.
This is bad enough, and especially his complete lack of mature awareness over her young and confused actions towards him; he perceives her constant hot-and-cold attitude the same way a teenaged boy would, for example, as some sort of complex dance of seduction on her part, instead of what it actually is, a young sad girl with daddy issues and no affection in her life, stuck in a rapidly aging small coastal town and with no prospects for the future. But then to be invited over to her family's place for Thanksgiving out of the blue; to get punched in the face when first arriving by her angry career-Marine brother, for what he sees as his legitimately pervy nature; to then proceed to get hammered on the family's liquor over the course of the afternoon, openly leer down the girl's blouse every time she bends over, pick a curse-laded fight with said Marine brother at the dinner table concerning the Iraq War, and then end the day with drunken target-shooting in the rural backyard, using the gun the middle-aged hippie keeps under the front seat of his car at all times...to experience all that and still at the end think to themselves that the day went "pretty well" is a serious commitment indeed to self-delusion.
The book is full of such little details, which I have to admit I found simply brilliant: the way we only hear his half of all telephone conversations, for example, with Jabbour clearly hinting that what's being said on the other end are such sensible questions as "Are you all right?" and "What's wrong with you?" and "Why do I keep hearing all these stories about you acting batsh-t crazy?" Or to cite another excellent example, the way that Joe is under the impression that every woman in his life is maintaining a flirtatious, sexually tense relationship with him, from the teller at his bank to the leader of his writing workshop, and is constantly quoting from their conversations as a way to prove his point; but how to an objective outsider, the conversations he quotes could just as easily be seen as the innocuous small-talk of some poor woman caught at work and stuck having to deal with this oblivious middle-aged lech, saying as little to him as possible in a desperate attempt to not encourage him further, and to get him to just move the f-ck along. Now, is this a sign of Jabbour being deliberately brilliant, by understanding the deep flaws inherent in such a person, and by laboriously maintaining Joe's self-delusion throughout all of this bad behavior? Or is it a sign of Jabbour being ironically brilliant, by being just as self-deluded as the character on display? That's the problem, after all, with writing a novel that shares many of the characteristics of the novelist's own life, is that they practically beg for such questions to be asked, questions that are probably better left for obsessed fans to ponder; as a simple critic, the only thing that's important to me is whether that brilliance is there, and whether it ultimately makes for compelling literature. Which in this case, it is and it does.
Of course, like I said, Attachment has its serious problems as well, some of which are just natural drawbacks of writing a character-heavy academic novel; like many such books, for example, the actual plotline is nearly non-existent for most of its length, then suddenly at the end veers into ridiculously melodramatic territory, an unrealistic and forced high tension that attempts in one fell swoop to make up for two entire previous acts that went nowhere. Also, Jabbour is absurdly guilty of a notorious pet peeve of mine regarding middle-aged progressive liberal authors, of using a hackneyed literary device (in this case, regular visits by Joe to a therapist) as an excuse to add an excruciating amount of rambling, overly simplistic political rants, these pedantic little speeches that sound like they were lifted word-for-word from one of those rambling personal/political blogs that middle-aged progressive liberals love maintaining so much. (And related to this, let me also confess my personal displeasure with authors who use a novel as an excuse to also include a dozen of their rambling, overly simplistic political poems. "Bush / like a cancer / growing, growing..." F-ck, okay, I get it. Stop now.)
But all that said, Attachment also succeeds at exactly what it's trying to do -- it is for sure a deeply complex look at a whole series of complicated people, the kind of book that inspires you to get lost in its details and setting and mood, to feel by the end like you just got done spending time with actual people, not just a bunch of artificial constructs that exist only as words on a piece of paper. In fact, all throughout this book I couldn't help but think of a past favorite of mine, Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, and of the heartbreakingly complex portrait he paints in it of his father -- this rage-filled alcoholic who was actually quite a productive foot soldier during the Irish Revolution of the early 20th century, but...
As regular readers know, I've been spending the week finally making my way through a whole pile of only so-so books that have been in my reading list, titles that in some cases have been in the queue for months now; and as mentioned in an earlier post, I want to remind people that this is a different thing than a book simply being bad, else I would simply say that the book is bad, in that I've never had a problem saying such a thing in the past. Take today's title under examination, for example, the human-interest novel Attachment by m.e. Jabbour, which is actually a surprisingly complex story when you stop and analyze it, one that a certain amount of people are bound to naturally love. It's just that the weaknesses of the book are going to keep X amount of people away from it as well, which is why it's ultimately getting an only so-so score today; because that's part of what makes up the ridiculously overanalytical scores I give out here, not just how good the book itself is at what it's attempting, but how much it will appeal to a large general crowd versus a small niche one, how much it transcends the trappings of whatever genre or style it was written in.
Because make no mistake, Attachment is written in a very specific style -- it's one of those character-heavy academic novels that them perfessers love so much, the kind that concentrate more on examining the human condition than in relating an exciting plot. Specifically it's the story of one Joe Burns, who in the tradition of the novels I love the most is what I call an "antivillain" -- that is, instead of the more well-known "antihero" situation, where we end up rooting for a character who at first appears to have deeply repulsive flaws, here we start out with a sympathetic character who we come to despise more and more, the better we get to know them. Why that is is essentially the subject of this book, an examination not only of why so many liberal intellectuals seemed to completely lose it during the second Bush presidential term of 2004 to '08, but of what drives these people to become who they are in the first place, and of how a complete obliviousness to their own inner nature can sometimes cause an endless cycle of repetitive terrible behavior.
Why yes, if this sounds remarkably like the premise behind the popular novel and award-winning movie Affliction, that's because it is -- except in this case, instead of the main character being an aimless middle-aged conservative in a small town in the midwest, with a penchant for boozing and a tendency towards violence brought on by decades of parental psychological abuse, here the main character is an aimless middle-aged progressive in a small town on the Oregon coast with the same past and current problems. Because make no mistake, Joe is a bundle of violent, passive-aggressive neuroses, caught in a repeating cycle of acting-out precisely because of the complete selective blindness he has developed regarding his own behavior; and then instead of ever confronting all this, he ends up channeling his rage into an all-consuming hatred for the neocon nutjobs who ran this country during the early 2000s, becoming the proverbial letter-to-the-editor crank throughout history who blames every single thing going wrong in his life to whatever politician happens to be in charge that particular moment.
In fact, there's yet another literary trick on display here that in general I'm a big fan of, a device that's so good for antivillain novels, which is the use of an "unreliable narrator" to tell the actual story; because the more you read of Attachment, the more you come to realize that Joe is leaving out important details of these events from the first-person narrative making up this manuscript, details that would make these situations seem a lot more even-handed if disclosed, that would help him identify his own bad behavior and stop repeating it if he could simply learn to acknowledge them. For example, near the beginning of the novel Joe starts a romantic relationship with a woman significantly younger than himself, which at first he paints in deliberately vague terms that makes it seem like he's maybe in his early forties and she in her late twenties, on the outer edge of what most consider a "normal" age gap in a relationship but certainly within that normal boundary; but the longer the story continues, the more it becomes clear that he's actually more in his early fifties and she still college-aged, a ten-year addition to this age gap that moves it thoroughly into creepy territory.
This is bad enough, and especially his complete lack of mature awareness over her young and confused actions towards him; he perceives her constant hot-and-cold attitude the same way a teenaged boy would, for example, as some sort of complex dance of seduction on her part, instead of what it actually is, a young sad girl with daddy issues and no affection in her life, stuck in a rapidly aging small coastal town and with no prospects for the future. But then to be invited over to her family's place for Thanksgiving out of the blue; to get punched in the face when first arriving by her angry career-Marine brother, for what he sees as his legitimately pervy nature; to then proceed to get hammered on the family's liquor over the course of the afternoon, openly leer down the girl's blouse every time she bends over, pick a curse-laded fight with said Marine brother at the dinner table concerning the Iraq War, and then end the day with drunken target-shooting in the rural backyard, using the gun the middle-aged hippie keeps under the front seat of his car at all times...to experience all that and still at the end think to themselves that the day went "pretty well" is a serious commitment indeed to self-delusion.
The book is full of such little details, which I have to admit I found simply brilliant: the way we only hear his half of all telephone conversations, for example, with Jabbour clearly hinting that what's being said on the other end are such sensible questions as "Are you all right?" and "What's wrong with you?" and "Why do I keep hearing all these stories about you acting batsh-t crazy?" Or to cite another excellent example, the way that Joe is under the impression that every woman in his life is maintaining a flirtatious, sexually tense relationship with him, from the teller at his bank to the leader of his writing workshop, and is constantly quoting from their conversations as a way to prove his point; but how to an objective outsider, the conversations he quotes could just as easily be seen as the innocuous small-talk of some poor woman caught at work and stuck having to deal with this oblivious middle-aged lech, saying as little to him as possible in a desperate attempt to not encourage him further, and to get him to just move the f-ck along. Now, is this a sign of Jabbour being deliberately brilliant, by understanding the deep flaws inherent in such a person, and by laboriously maintaining Joe's self-delusion throughout all of this bad behavior? Or is it a sign of Jabbour being ironically brilliant, by being just as self-deluded as the character on display? That's the problem, after all, with writing a novel that shares many of the characteristics of the novelist's own life, is that they practically beg for such questions to be asked, questions that are probably better left for obsessed fans to ponder; as a simple critic, the only thing that's important to me is whether that brilliance is there, and whether it ultimately makes for compelling literature. Which in this case, it is and it does.
Of course, like I said, Attachment has its serious problems as well, some of which are just natural drawbacks of writing a character-heavy academic novel; like many such books, for example, the actual plotline is nearly non-existent for most of its length, then suddenly at the end veers into ridiculously melodramatic territory, an unrealistic and forced high tension that attempts in one fell swoop to make up for two entire previous acts that went nowhere. Also, Jabbour is absurdly guilty of a notorious pet peeve of mine regarding middle-aged progressive liberal authors, of using a hackneyed literary device (in this case, regular visits by Joe to a therapist) as an excuse to add an excruciating amount of rambling, overly simplistic political rants, these pedantic little speeches that sound like they were lifted word-for-word from one of those rambling personal/political blogs that middle-aged progressive liberals love maintaining so much. (And related to this, let me also confess my personal displeasure with authors who use a novel as an excuse to also include a dozen of their rambling, overly simplistic political poems. "Bush / like a cancer / growing, growing..." F-ck, okay, I get it. Stop now.)
But all that said, Attachment also succeeds at exactly what it's trying to do -- it is for sure a deeply complex look at a whole series of complicated people, the kind of book that inspires you to get lost in its details and setting and mood, to feel by the end like you just got done spending time with actual people, not just a bunch of artificial constructs that exist only as words on a piece of paper. In fact, all throughout this book I couldn't help but think of a past favorite of mine, Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, and of the heartbreakingly complex portrait he paints in it of his father -- this rage-filled alcoholic who was actually quite a productive foot soldier during the Irish Revolution of the early 20th century, but...
January 25, 2009
This book is set in the months surrounding the 2004 election. I felt
bludgeoned by this book, to be perfectly honest. It is a series of manic political(mostly) and societal(to a lesser extent) rants very thinly pulled together by the whisper of a narrative about a writer in Oregon. Don't get me wrong--the arguments are actually quite well thought out and brilliant and I agreed with 95% or more of them,
though they often were delivered in such a way as to court as much attention to the orator as they delivered the intention of the same. They were so aggressive and so rapid with so little buffer around them (and none IN them) that they were exhausting. The best was an imaginary trial the writer held for George W. Bush, alleging that he has an anti-social personality disorder and therefore should be disqualified for any sort of leadership role. The intelligence and ideas in this work shine brightly, but I really feel like they would be more appropriate to a political blog than a novel. Fans of vehement political discourse will appreciate this book.
bludgeoned by this book, to be perfectly honest. It is a series of manic political(mostly) and societal(to a lesser extent) rants very thinly pulled together by the whisper of a narrative about a writer in Oregon. Don't get me wrong--the arguments are actually quite well thought out and brilliant and I agreed with 95% or more of them,
though they often were delivered in such a way as to court as much attention to the orator as they delivered the intention of the same. They were so aggressive and so rapid with so little buffer around them (and none IN them) that they were exhausting. The best was an imaginary trial the writer held for George W. Bush, alleging that he has an anti-social personality disorder and therefore should be disqualified for any sort of leadership role. The intelligence and ideas in this work shine brightly, but I really feel like they would be more appropriate to a political blog than a novel. Fans of vehement political discourse will appreciate this book.
October 30, 2007
Attachment is a book full of revelations, perceptions, and personal growth keeping you involved from the 1st –last page. A direct and thoughtful approach to the mysteries of life, reflection and opportunity jump from the pages…A beautiful tug-of-war account of life experiences. Candid and humorous, sad and involving. I truly loved this book. Would love to pass the book on if I could retrieve it from my heart, sorry..you’ll have to get your own! Enjoy!!
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