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Goodbye, Goodness: A Novel
GOODBYE, GOODNESS is a sad but ultimately (sort of) triumphant story about the weight of personal history and the obligations of the present, about the relationships that construct our lives while simultaneously destroying them. Hayward is the great grandson of an eccentric baron of the gilded age named Finn, a man who built the first roads across the country, famous for their unearthly glow in the moonlight, the inventor of the first Sea World, an attraction that would showcase the cities of the future, and a lover of Annie Oakley, a character who deeply influenced our ideas of the American frontier. His massive legacy has ruled the generations after him and Hay’s family has been alternating between ill-conceived plots to shore up the family fortune and great hemorrhages of waste and abandon, massive purchases quickly forgotten, drunken fishing trips and even drunker prep school reunions. The novel opens with Hay recovering from a concussion in a beach house that he has broken into, having obviously gone through hell but telling the reader nothing of how he’s gotten there. In interconnecting flashbacks we see the story of his life; his early experiences with his father, his meeting at Yale of his friends Will and Kimmel, a post college romance in New York that turns into full time care-taking of an insane woman, and an eventual overtaking by alcoholism with a crash landing on the west coast. Exploring the past and the present of a deeply unconventional family and using episodes taken from Annie Oakley's actual diary, Brumbaugh illuminates the narrative of a life separated from normalcy.
- GenresFiction
277 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 21, 2008
From Brumbaugh's back-cover blurb: "Written with the exquisite, nonchalant precision of a master chef preparing an early dinner for friends, Goodbye, Goodness is a new take on coming of age, and marks the arrival of a thrilling new voice."
Two things first and then further things: i)If Brumbaugh is cheffing, I'll eat elsewhere, thank you. (And I'll take my wine with me.) ii)There is nothing "thrilling" in Brumbaugh's drab summaries and nothing "new" in his hackneyed flashbacks.
And as for Brumbaugh's "voice?" Well, it's at least as old as Balzac's (without the, ahem, talent). For you see, in Brumbaugh's world the shop-worn holds sway and style is sacrificed for, ahem, story. Brumbaugh is not the type of writer to let innovation or even originality to keep him from writing his tale. He's in too much of a hurry to pay attention to what he's writing or how he's writing it. There are ideas to get across, after all. So what's a few, or a few hundred, slightly dented phrases here and there? Who can it hurt?
Well, me, for one. And you, if you ever get bamboozled into reading this book.
In Brumbaugh's world, when an imaginary car passes one of his imaginary characters, it gets "bathed in the headlights." He allows his characters to "shift uncomfortably." Sometimes, when they are angry, they "look sharply" at someone. When they are suspicious, their "eyes narrow." And when they are really, really angry, their eyes will "harden", like egg yolks left for too long on the stove. When his characters grow tired, their heads "fe(el) heavy" and they "f(a)ll immediately into a long and dreamless sleep." There are more of these gems. Many more. Most of them I left to twinkle on the page. I couldn't bear to wake them.
Brumbaugh has a thing for the quotidian. He spends precious ink on mundane greetings of the How are you?/I am fine. variety. He has a lust for inventories. He wants to show me and you and everyone the insides of refrigerators, of pantries, of grocery carts, of bookshelves, of closets. Even when the clothes have come out of the closets, Brumbaugh loves to list them. Each new character's ensemble is catalogued, usually after their first sentence of dialogue. If only these lists made them interesting or were in fact interesting in themselves or were in some way central to something somehow. But no. They're just lists. Lists of stuff that's hanging around. Lists of whatever's behind this or that door, in this or that satchel. Nothing post modern about these lists. They are pure nineteenth century.
Perhaps to reassure us that he is in fact a "thrilling new voice," Brumbaugh drops many twentieth century names. These are usually pop icons, the type that often appear on t-shirts or on dorm-room posters. They are a kind of shorthand, a way of hinting at character or taste without having to do much work. On one page, I counted five separate references (and several repeats) in less than a single inch of type.
Again, on the back-cover blurb, Goodbye, Goodness is compared favorably to John Knowles' A Separate Peace. That alone should warn any sensible reader away from it. This is lazy, lazy writing. And a bad novel. Not worth, in fact, the time I spent reading it or writing about it.
Two things first and then further things: i)If Brumbaugh is cheffing, I'll eat elsewhere, thank you. (And I'll take my wine with me.) ii)There is nothing "thrilling" in Brumbaugh's drab summaries and nothing "new" in his hackneyed flashbacks.
And as for Brumbaugh's "voice?" Well, it's at least as old as Balzac's (without the, ahem, talent). For you see, in Brumbaugh's world the shop-worn holds sway and style is sacrificed for, ahem, story. Brumbaugh is not the type of writer to let innovation or even originality to keep him from writing his tale. He's in too much of a hurry to pay attention to what he's writing or how he's writing it. There are ideas to get across, after all. So what's a few, or a few hundred, slightly dented phrases here and there? Who can it hurt?
Well, me, for one. And you, if you ever get bamboozled into reading this book.
In Brumbaugh's world, when an imaginary car passes one of his imaginary characters, it gets "bathed in the headlights." He allows his characters to "shift uncomfortably." Sometimes, when they are angry, they "look sharply" at someone. When they are suspicious, their "eyes narrow." And when they are really, really angry, their eyes will "harden", like egg yolks left for too long on the stove. When his characters grow tired, their heads "fe(el) heavy" and they "f(a)ll immediately into a long and dreamless sleep." There are more of these gems. Many more. Most of them I left to twinkle on the page. I couldn't bear to wake them.
Brumbaugh has a thing for the quotidian. He spends precious ink on mundane greetings of the How are you?/I am fine. variety. He has a lust for inventories. He wants to show me and you and everyone the insides of refrigerators, of pantries, of grocery carts, of bookshelves, of closets. Even when the clothes have come out of the closets, Brumbaugh loves to list them. Each new character's ensemble is catalogued, usually after their first sentence of dialogue. If only these lists made them interesting or were in fact interesting in themselves or were in some way central to something somehow. But no. They're just lists. Lists of stuff that's hanging around. Lists of whatever's behind this or that door, in this or that satchel. Nothing post modern about these lists. They are pure nineteenth century.
Perhaps to reassure us that he is in fact a "thrilling new voice," Brumbaugh drops many twentieth century names. These are usually pop icons, the type that often appear on t-shirts or on dorm-room posters. They are a kind of shorthand, a way of hinting at character or taste without having to do much work. On one page, I counted five separate references (and several repeats) in less than a single inch of type.
Again, on the back-cover blurb, Goodbye, Goodness is compared favorably to John Knowles' A Separate Peace. That alone should warn any sensible reader away from it. This is lazy, lazy writing. And a bad novel. Not worth, in fact, the time I spent reading it or writing about it.
February 14, 2007
indie rock sadness in the wayward 30-somethings. also, kinda serves as a biography of annie oakley in parts. funny and heartbreaking.
January 28, 2008
A bit disappointing. Probably could have been 100 pages shorter, without all the Annie Oakley nonsense. Has it's moments though.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews