Tournament of Books discussion

Today is Round 8, judged by Michele, who chose between Patrick DeWitt’s Undermajordomo Minor and Amelia Gray’s [Gutshot:Stories]

Here’s a link to Michele’s decision

And here’s Link to the Tournament bracket

Thank you Michele!

Match-Up:Undermajordomo Minor vs. Gutshot:Stories
Judged by Michele

I like the idea that the volume and quality of intention in a work of art is what can create a profound experience. Really good writers demonstrate a broad range of intention in their characters, plots, and sentences. And, conversely, lack of intention or low-quality aspirations can produce undesired effects in the consumer.

In Undermajordomo Minor, I strapped in, determined to be a devoted reviewer and participant in the alt.TOB and within two pages I had to stop and admit to myself “Oh shit! I know I am going to hate this book, and I am going to have to explain why to my alt.TOB friends.”

So I took a closer look at the first paragraph. Here I found the crazy ideas of an “alert valise” and the physical movements of a person for an entire day being measured in “chary degrees.” These probably would not be big writing failures in a great book. But this is the first paragraph; the introduction of the author to the reader. For me, reading this first paragraph was like sitting down next to DeWitt and getting a whiff of his bad breath.

Soon after, when I read…

[Lucy] was mourning the fact that there was nothing much to mourn at all.

I felt I had sufficient things to mourn. For example, I began to mourn the fact that 17 year old Lucy and I were both stuck with an omniscient narrator who wasn’t very omniscient. I do not gamble…nor am I a professor of psychology. However, I will place a bet that this particular thought has never entered the mind of any teenager in all of time, nor hovered even briefly within thinking range near any teenaged psychological element.

The way I see it, Undermajordomo Minor is plagued by a mish-mash of ideas. Dialogue is stilted and pointless. A war is fought for no cause, real or imagined. An orgy ends with the men lighting their cigars with a candle stuck in the anus of a woman. The setting mostly seems medieval but includes trains and guns. The jokes aren’t funny. The drowning of puppies and the aforementioned orgy were definitely not funny. The plot wanders: it seems like it’s trying to be about love but as far as I can tell, there is no love between the lovers. Much more pronounced were sexism and violence against women. I could not find DeWitt’s intention.

I know that Undermajordomo Minor is a favorite book of many readers who I respect, and yet it is clearly not a favorite of mine; just one more reason to find myself delighted and mystified by the variety of human experience.

In happy contrast was Amelia Gray’s, Gutshot. Right away I felt like I was in the hands of an evolving genius. Her special take on weird horror brought to mind The Books of Blood by Clive Barker, a masterpiece of short horror stories. Some of Gray’s stories would completely baffle me, but most had me enraptured. It is easy to overlook what I don’t enjoy when there is so much else to enjoy; when there is intention.

In many stories Gray leaves a blank space at the end. And I found myself filling in the blank space with something really horrific. So horrific, that I would tell myself “No, she couldn’t mean that.” After thinking about this for a week or so, I realized that was the point. The reader is invited to fill in the blank space with something terrible. The author is implicitly saying, “I didn’t write that disgusting, weird idea. That was yours. You did it. You have this darkness in you. Deal with that.”

Alley-oop.

Gutshot is filled with ambitious intention. And I love it. If you like horror or the weird or want to stretch yourself, you must check this one out.

Winner: Gutshot

As one TOB match commentator declared in last year’s rounds, “Well…poop.” (SIDE NOTE:actually the most constructive part of the review, the commenter neglecting to even read the other book in the round, then having the gall to cry about how his preference is much like his oft-ignored publication, plug plug. Grrrr. I digress).

Michele you mentioned Monday that you don’t like puns & plays on words “At all.” And though Minor doesn’t employ puns so much, it has that same flavor of silly wordplay given with a straight face. Over and over again. I can only imagine the torture. I happen to be tickled by this type of humor so long as it doesn’t get too silly and thus forgive unlikely witty dialogue in the mouths of babes and vagrants. Meanwhile Grey’s “blank space” stymied me. I know exactly what you mean about filling it those blanks with my own nasty thoughts as she makes one work, work, work to either figure out the WTF?! Or the what comes next? She stretched me and made me very aware of where my comfort zone ended.

DeWitt’s work went down like cotton candy for me; sweet, quick and ultimately substance-less. Gray’s on the other hand I choked down initially, then adapted. Every word you said rang true and made so apparent how different tastes in readers lend themselves to such very different choices in cuisine. I read Gutshot first and Minor second and changed my mind around a great deal about which would win through the process. Had this been my call, my choice would have been obvious in the first 20 pages, then muddy halfway through and tough to call by the end.

Michele, this is a wonderful write up. I've not read either book, but you've confirmed for me what I suspected all along - that I won't read DeWitt's book, and I will most certainly read Gutshot. That 'blank space at the end' sold me, fantastic stuff. Thanks for helping to clarify my reading priorities!

Thanks for posting Amy.

Thank you Amy. The bottom line, really, is that Gutshot did hit me in the gut. I cared. I was taken in. UD, on the other hand, annoyed me. It is such a subjective thing, reading a book. The first thing that I will tend to always care about is whether I am enraptured. Do I want to read more?

Did I really say I don't like wordplay at all? I don't think that is true; therefore I misspoke. I just want it done well. Alice in Wonderland comes to mind. Early on, I thought DeWitt was trying to allude to Alice in Wonderland or Don Quixote. But no.

The charm of DeWitt eludes me. This was a pleasant enough book but no more. I haven't read Gutshot because of my unreasonable (?) prejudice against short story collections but you certainly make it sound interesting.

Michele, Gutshot is the one Alt.ToB book I didn't read, but I'm very happy with your decision. I loved Sisters Brothers, but Minor just did not work for me...it just felt cute, and not in a good way. So, thanks!

thanks for your great write--up, michele! and for getting it all wrangled into the thread, amy! :)

Wow. Shocked. Surprised.

Undermajordomo Minor may be the book that benefits from the audio more than any other in the alt.ToB. I was in this fairy tale from word one as it was read by a wonderful actor who brought all the timelessness and bumbling naiveté to life. I laughed several times and have listened to random parts of it several times since finishing it. I believe it would have been a completely different reading experience. As an audiobook, no other Alt.ToB book has come close in pure entertainment and absorption.

That said, Gutshot was ambitious and challenging in ways that I really enjoyed. I think it's a bold choice. The sense of decay, bodily secretions, the foulness of living flesh were palpable in a way I've never read. I didn't think every story worked, but as they accumulated they got under my skin...

Michele wrote: "Gutshot is filled with ambitious intention. And I love it. If you like horror or the weird or want to stretch yourself, you must check this one out. ."

Michele, thank you so much for this essay. I completely loved the way you described your experience with DeWitt's words, with the language on the page. You slowed down enough to pay attention to the words DeWitt chose and found them imprecise and eventually irritating. Sometimes I get the feeling that excellent writers think they can rely on the sound impressions of their sentences.

Gutshot: Stories is such a deliberately written book. It feels that way to me, anyway, that Gray is completely committed to every word on the page and that nothing gets written unless it's precisely what she means to write. She's like Gandalf!

poingu wrote: "Gutshot is such a deliberately written book... nothing gets written unless it's precisely what she means... ."

so to push on this a bit... I think Gray actually plays around with imprecision. As Michele mentioned and I think a lot of us interpret, the title fits the "punch to the gut" feeling a lot of us get reading the stories. But the title story seems to me to be much less about gut reaction, gut punch or anything similar and more about futility and people's general unhelpfulness in one's problems; once you're gutshot, nothing's going to save you.
Everything Gray does prompts more questions!

Amy wrote: "so to push on this a bit... I think Gray actually plays around with imprecision. As Michele mentioned and I think a lot of us interpret, the title fits the "punch to the gut" feeling a lot of us get reading the stories. "

yes, you're making me think about what I mean by "precise." It's certainly not "precise" in terms of "each word attaches itself logically to a specific meaning." But I did feel very strongly that Gray chose each word with absolute intent, even if that intent might be to confuse, dazzle, upset and upend the reader.

A lot of writers are good enough that they can just coast. They can make pretty sentences happen that kind of, sort of have some attachment to their purpose in writing them. They can sound really good and lull a reader into thinking they mean more than they do. I'm not sure if Michele agrees but that's how I felt about DeWitt's writing in Undermajordomo Minor, and it's also exactly how I felt about Fates and Furies, actually--a lot of beautiful auto pilot in that novel, to me.

Poingu - I think I get what you mean. before starting UMDM, I checked my rating on The Sisters Brothers and was shocked that I had rated 4 stars because I could remember almost nothing about it (not my norm even for mediocre books). So it made me wonder if I'd been lulled into lazy reading by too much prettiness or wittiness.

Hey, I just realized that with this decision, our ALT-tob moves to the quarter final rounds!

Here are the quarter final matches, winners to be posted in the next few days:

Under the Udala Trees v. Sweetland

The Mountain Story v. Aquarium

Man Tiger v. Oreo

Delicious Foods v. Gutshot

And here are the tournament brackets again:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y...

Yes, I agree. The intent is what creates the great writing. I agree it was missing from both UM and Fates and Furies.

I'll try to remember to go find it. But Dewitt just did an interview for Granta, I think, where he said that he knew UM was a mess and he went in and used some technique to fix it and he felt dirty afterward. He pushed that feeling aside in the interview, but I think he was right. I think he did feel dirty. He knew there was a problem.

Writing is very hard. It doesn't surprise me that authors push out less than their best work a lot of the time.

I also agree that I felt like Gray knew exactly what she was doing with each word. Even if I didn't know what she was doing, I knew she did.

I haven't read either of these books, but I own both and would like to get to them eventually. The posts here certainly add to my interest in both. DeWitt is one of those authors I've been meaning to read forever -- I thought about picking up The Sisters Brothers, but I never did. I need to take the plunge one day. And Amelia Gray has been on my radar as a potentially interesting lesser-known writer who possibly deserves more attention. We'll see! Thanks for the judgment, Michele.

Well dang. I'm really enjoying Undermajor, but I think this is a really excellently explained decision. Thank you Michele!

Thank you, Michele, for your thoughtful decision. I read UM and liked it a lot while I started Gutshot twice and put it down both times, due in part to the fact that while I like short stories in theory in practice I prefer the full meal rather than the tasting menu. Plus I think that due to my prior experience with DeWitt the goodwill generated let me excuse his imprecise language and clunkiness, but as I reread parts of it I see exactly what you mean. I think DeWitt also benefitted from the fact that as I read the entire cast of Monty Python were assigned roles in my mind and they did a hilarious job with it (especially Graham Chapman as the Baron).

@Huntlybrinkley - Monty Python cast were definitely in my head during the UM reading as well!

i thought Undermajordomo Minor a great bit of fun. and i do enjoy that being mixed into my reading. (though i had hoped to re-read it but haven't managed it.) i sometimes fret (not sure of the right word) over everything being so heavy and serious in literature. it's hard to find really excellent humour or fun. i don't know if it's a favourite, but i appreciated the break it offered in the alt-TOB reading.

i have attempted Gutshot: Stories 3 times now, since our alt-TOB got underway... :/

though perhaps unfairly because i haven't read all of grey's, my decision would have gone the other way. and definitely!! on the monty python. haha! so true! :)

Huntleybrinkley wrote: "while I like short stories in theory in practice I prefer the full meal rather than the tasting menu."

If I could have, Huntleybrinkley, I would have chosen to introduce people to Amelia Gray via her novel published in 2012, also by FSG--Threats. Jason mentioned liking Undermajordomo Minor via audio and I totally loved the audio version of Threats, too--for some of these works it feels really good to be read to.

I think the same people who hate Gutshot: Stories are likely to hate Threats, though. It's a masterful presentation of an impossibly shaped story, the verbal equivalent of a cube in 4D space. It's hyper-surreal. Even surreal novels follow their own coherent logic eventually but Gray manages to upend expectation, and to shut down any logical conclusions your brain may try to make as you read along, time after time. Opinions will differ but I found it exhilarating. It's like an extreme sport of reading.

Ok that's enough mixed metaphors for now!

Michele wrote: "I'll try to remember to go find it. But Dewitt just did an interview for Granta, I think, where he said that he knew UM was a mess and he went in and used some technique to fix it and he felt dirty afterward. He pushed that feeling aside in the interview, but I think he was right. I think he did feel dirty. He knew there was a problem.."

Michele, thanks for this reference. I think I found the podcast on ITunes--from 12/16/15, link here:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/g...

It's very interesting and also gives me a hopeful feeling that DeWitt is paying attention to what went wrong for him with this novel. That's rare. I felt something went fairly wrong with Ishiguro's novel from last year, and in much the same way as the DeWitt novel derailed slightly for me, but Ishiguro just denied it and insisted he was writing something that wasn't genre at all.

And yet, it's very tricky to be skirting the edge of genre but still not be writing genre, and also, not be writing something that just gets hokey, because you're trying so hard to make it not-genre. The same mistake happens sometimes in movies about comic book heroes, where they are just painfully self-aware and self-mocking, and it can be painful in turn to watch them. Batman with Michael Keaton made that mistake; Batman with Christian Bale didn't.

Jennifer wrote: "i thought Undermajordomo Minor a great bit of fun. and i do enjoy that being mixed into my reading. (though i had hoped to re-read it but haven't managed it.) i sometimes fret (not ..."

Jennifer, just to push on this a bit, as Amy said above...I thought Undermajordomo Minor was pretty dark. I also felt there was a metafictional overlay that was pretty cynical, enough that I wouldn't call it "fun" without a lot of caveats.

poingu wrote: "wouldn't call it "fun" without a lot of caveats.
"

for example one of the first scenes, "...his father was dead in bed, his mouth a gory sneer, hands stiffened to claws. The undertakers came to remove the corpse and one of them slipped going down the steps, knocking Lucy's father's head against the edge of the tread. The violence of the blow punched a triangulated divot in the skull at the forehead"... etc.

The whole book felt a little unsavory to me, not fun, because these dark turns of phrase came on in every sentence. I credit (it is a talent of a sort so "credit" is right) DeWitt's talent as a writer that he can spin this kind of writing on and on in a whimsical way but so many passages and scenes were unpleasant to me. You could say, well, how about compared with Gutshot? but Gutshot wasn't trying to be fun.

Not meaning to put Jennifer on the spot--I'd be really interested in hearing from everyone else too whose primary feeling re the novel was that it is comic fun, and a reprieve from the dark.

poingu -- you know, the reaction you are giving is reminding me of how A Confederacy of Dunces divides readers. which is another one i found fun and enjoyable -- though can totally see the aspects of the book that make it depressing or 'mean' (a refrain i have heard a lot) to many readers. i can see the aspects of dewitt's that could make it 'unsavoury'. i just don't happen to be in that camp on it as i was much more as amy has described, feeling it witty and a little silly. but, again, i don't know that i would call it a favourite, and i appreciate it has flaws. it was just a good read for me at the time i read it. (and, again, i haven't had time for a re-read - which i would very much like to do. but my concentration and focus are way off and my reading has not been going well of late.)

Jennifer wrote: "poingu -- you know, the reaction you are giving is reminding me of how A Confederacy of Dunces divides readers. which is another one i found fun and enjoyable -- though can totally se..."

Thanks Jennifer. "Mean," yes, I guess so. Whatever it is that DeWitt does, he keeps doing it, sometimes three or four flourishes of delicate meanness in the same sentence, so once I got sensitized to it, it got difficult to ignore.

poingu wrote: " The same mistake happens sometimes in movies about comic book heroes, where they are just painfully self-aware and self-mocking, and it can be painful in turn to watch them. Batman with Michael Keaton made that mistake; Batman with Christian Bale didn't. "

Oh but I love the Michael Keaton batman but not so much with the Christian Bale. I feel like Tim Burton would much rather be self-aware and self-mocking than Nolan. I have never read a Batman comic but it seems like many of Tim Burton's movies are comicy anyway, while Nolan might have wanted to separate from the comics. Also, in the 80s, it might not even been a thought for Burton to even separate the movie from the comics. Also, I really like meta.