Sebastian Junger's "Tribe" Dabbles at Anthropological Findings

Sebastian Junber (b Amer 1962) is an accomplished writer, journalist & filmmaker.  His non-fiction book "The Perfect Storm" was made into a film starring Mark Wahlberg (1997.)  His documentary film "Restrepo" was nominated for an Acad Award ('09.)  And, his non-fiction book "Boston Strange" (2007) an investigative exploration of Boston murders earned Junger the PEN/Winship Award.  "Tribe" (2016) tries to be lofty by idealizing older tribal communities to fractious & displaced contemporary society.  Junger warns in his note about combat, and post traumatic stress disorder findings has "…the potential to greatly surprise or even upset some readers."  I was surprised by how poorly written & unsubstantiated Junger presented his findings.  And, I was disturbed by his obvious condescending conclusions that solders are immune to differences in race, religion or politics to form a cohesive, intense bond but return from their tours of duty to find a very divisive & dissociative society.  The book read like a high school senior's thesis that would have been better received as a succinct interview or editorial piece.  "Tribe" tries for noble observations but is mere dribble.  

Atticus Lish's "Preparations for the Next Life" winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award ('15) for Fiction

"Preparations for the Next Life" is titled from a bi-lingual sign (English/Arabic) that hangs above a mosque in Queens.  The lives of an illegal Chinese/Muslim immigrant woman, Zou Lei and a mentally ill Iraqi vet, Brad Skinner, come together in a volatile love story.  Both their broken, stressful worlds of an undocumented immigrant & a psychotic Iraqi vet with PTSD collide on a destructive pathway that is a depthless, black void.  Skinner never felt obligated to anyone who hadn't shared his war.  Zou Lei orphaned since childhood made an onerous migration to the US doing whatever necessary for self-preservation.  Atticus Lish's writing takes us through an unsurmountable tour of duty where instinct & hunger are primal. Life is so brutal for Lei she's forced into hard labor & do many things she would never want in order to survive.  She never felt what it means to be safe or loved.  Upon discharge, Skinner was prescribed medication for his anxiety, psychosis and inability to sleep and left to his own resources.  He has no civilian skills and is fearful of making only disasterous decisions.  He's right in accessing his inability to cope.  Unlike the gun he keeps, his mind has no safety to shut off all his deranged thinking.  Having crossed paths with their own needs, their tribal army of 2 seems the better alternative than being alone.  Their union fails to heal one another.   A greater desert forms between them than either had known from combat or country of origin.  The unbridled abuse & torments for both open a vortex into an underworld that most of us would never see or choose to know.  For both Skinner & Lei life holds no guarantees except unrelenting anguish and abuse.  The promise of a obtaining what is wanted in the next life offers a tempting reassurance of reward for doing everything correct.  Atticus Lish (b Amer '72) is a vet & has worked the uneviable odd jobs of many undocumented workers.  Lish's taut writing enables the reader to feel Skinner's confusion & anger and Lei's vulnerabilities & resilience.  There are other broken characters who know only to inflict pain in this oppressive & effecting novel.   "Preparations for the Next Life" paints a Hellish world that is all too real.

"The Throwback Special" a Nat'l Bk Award Finalist by Chris Bachelder is a Winner

The term chick flick or chick lit denotes a genre geared to the feminine gender.  "The Throwback Special" is a gender bender that seems directly aimed to males that throws a Haily Mary of a story that is caught by readers of both sexes; football fans or not.  Chris Bachelder's hilarious novel was a finalist for the Nat'l Bk Award last year.  This winning novel that is both wry & wise from start to finish.  The novel covers 22 male characters.  Each are given their own playtime in the spotlight.  This motley mix of men convene annually to re-enact Lawrence Taylor's brutal tackle on Joe Theisman in a 1985 game causing a gruesome & career ending leg injury.  Each year these guys feel compelled to gel together as a tribe in hotel to conduct ritualistic customs leading to a simulated short scrimmage of this disturbing play from an NFL Monday night game (co-anchored by OJ Simplson & Frank Gifford?)  Therein lies the quandaries of life - "Life is a precious gift, sure, but usually what life is, is going to the store to buy a stupid piece of shit-ass hardware, and then buying the wrong size."  Bachelder has a scorching talent for satirical calls.  All the men have their hang-ups, wistful envies and astute commentaries; especially on marriage.  "Marriage guarantees that one person is watching," eliminating the possibility that one's own existence might go unnoticed.  The 22 madcap players all tussle to dominate at some point by force or deception.   Individually, they all make scoring observations.  The only black male in the group thinks "white people need to be aware of the subtext of race."   The most morose among the men wonders "How do you enjoy something that has, by virture of being, commenced its ending."  "The Throwback Special" is a hilarious & sophisticated psychological game that succeeds at "converting vast quantities of crude ridicule into tiny nuggets of sentiment."  The competition for the 2016 Nat'l Bk Award had to have been heavily stacked to have gotten the win.

"Another Brooklyn" by Nat'l Bk Award Winner Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson (b Amer 1963) is an extremely gifted writer of children's books & young adult novels.  "Brown Girl Dreaming" received the Nat'l Bk Award ('14.)  She was honored with the lifetime achievement award as a children's writer; the Margaret Edwards Award ('05.)   Woodson's novel "Another Brooklyn" is a beautifully crafted coming of age novel that reflects back on the friendship & lives of 4 young girls of color in Bklyn during the 1970's.  August is the central heroine who along with her father & brother move from TN to Bklyn following the suicide of her mother.  August never fully comes to terms with her mother's death and propitiates her pain with the fallacy of her mother's impending return.  The sophisticated storytelling is sheathed in a melancholia directed at a mature audience.  August reflects, "Who hasn't walked through a life of small tragedies - What is tragic isn't the moment.  It is the memory."  The essence of Woodson's graceful writing is the feeling of friendship, youth, beauty & omnipotence; the parables of the bonds shared amongst young girls.  August & her friends wanted desperately to believe they's always be connected.  The novel traverses the exhiliration of friendship & youth and the bewilderment & pain that comes with adolescence.  "When you're 15 pain skips over reason, aims right for the marrow." The enhanced writing produces an audible 70's soundtrack & the sentient feel of spray roaring from an open firehouses.  Wonderment turns murkier as the girls mature & become subjected to sexual advances, teen pregnancy, religious fanaticism and death.  August grappled for a deeper understand of death, betrayal & survival.  Her mother taught her early never to trust the friendship of other women.  Her mother also claimed dark skin as a "curse" she needed to find a way past.  The mixed messaging in this deceptively mature "memoir" was sobering.  "When you're 15, the world collapses in a moment, different from when you're 8."   Woodson interlopes inspiring messages of study, striving to become better with harsher views of August & her friends as "ghetto girls." I recommend "Another Brooklyn" for its stunning prose and over-powering reflections.  "Everywhere we looked, we saw people trying to dream themselves."

"The Commonwealth" by Anne Patchett-Modern Families Overflowing with Life's Mixed Bag

Anne Patchett is an American novelist (b 1963. She received the PEN/Faulkner & Orange literary prizes for her novel Belle Canto ('02.)  Can't say I agreed with the accolades bestowed on this earlier novel but should her latest, "The Commonwealth" (16) not bestowed literary honors, it will be a colossal oversight.  Patchett's writing is so deceptively brilliant as to keep the reader thoroughly engaged in a fierce tribe of strewn together families.  She makes the mundane seem profound while maintaining an intrigue into the overlapping lives of its multiple characters.  Today's modern families are in constant flux.  The wonder of it all creates a perplexing web in which to follow all the lines in every direction with whom marriages/divorces & time mysteriously connects and dissociates people. Two young families are at the crux of the novel, the Fix family and the Cousins family; aptly named as neither family is maintained in tact & their intertwining mingles them like cousins.   The Fix family is having a christening for their youngest daughter, Fanny when Bert Cousin, father of 3 + 1 one the way,  crashes the christening to escape the tedium of his home.  Bert makes a pass at Beverly Cousins which leads to an affair & their future marriage.  Originally, everyone lived in LA until  Beverly/Bert move with her 2 daughters to Virginia while Theresa (Bert's 1st wife) remains in LA with their 2 sons & 2 daughters.  The familial custody arrangements meld the step-siblings together. Amazingly enough - they don't hate each other.  In fact, they share a common contempt aimed at one or another parent.  The focal point is not on any one individual, but rather on all 6 offsprings throughout their lives and the 3 co-parent Cousins; Bert, Beverly & Theresa.  The term Commonwealth is referenced in multiple ways; as a locale in VA, as a novel/screenplay written of their lives as told to a famous writer (by Fanny to her lover) and as the Native American Indian Tribe; Commonwealth.  This is a beautiful & stirring novel of tribal family affiliations honed through happenstance, camaraderie and the cornucopia of commonalities & inestimable burdens of life.  There are divergent paths caused by the pursuit of one's self-interests that push & pull at family members.  Culling through shared experiences, it's absorbing to note the disparaging validities of events.  One sister "remembered seeing everything in terms of who had less than she did and who had more."  And, one brother believed "The past was always right there with him and so he assumed that everytone else felt the same way."  The 2 spouses whose partners abandoned them maintained an affirmative outlook on life.  "Hope was the blood of life."  And, "The pleasure of a long life is the way some things worked themselves out."  

"The Forgetting Time" an Uninspiring Reflection on Reincarnation

What if we had chance upon chance to love the people we love, to redeem ourselves and make things right?  This is the reiterated core of Sharon Guston's debut novel "The Forgetting Time."  This hogwash remains a sentimental bore. "And tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death."  (Shakespeare)  Guston references to Shakespeare & to documented cases of conceivable accounts of reincarnation are not suffice to make for a compelling story or strong argument for reincarnation.   Guston has written & produced a documentary "On Meditation."  The book is overflowing with cornball cliches that are meant as profound reflections.  "I can't hold on to hope and I can't hold on without."  And, "You had to be where you were.  The life you're living, the moment you're in."  In retrospect, these alternative truisms are shallow.  Still, this substantively light novel is a swift read due to the mother/son bond driving the narrative.  Janie is a single mother of an emotionally disturbed 4 year old, Noah.  Noah has extreme night terrors, water phobias, unexplained knowledge and a relentless plea with Mommy-mom (Janie) to take him back to his Mama.  Janie's frustrations out of love & concern for her son are understandable.   Help from professionals only offers psychotic medication which she is reluctant to use.  Searching the internet she comes across research by a Dr Anderson purporting evidence of reincarnation.  Desperate to help her tormented son, she reluctantly agrees to meet with the Dr who himself is suffering from degenerative aphasia.  The Dr seizes the opportunity to meet with Noah as his last chance to leave a legitimate legacy of his life's work.  Together they search for answers that lead them to another family & an unsolved murder mystery.   Guston's novel contemplates notions of reincarnation.  More interesting is the focus on the brain: who knows why it remembers what it does.  Also fascinating are glimpses of human nature.  It's a human trait to disregard & dispute evidence.  As an engaging, easy read, Guston succeeds.  As lofty philosophical prose, it sinks.  

"The Wangs v the World" Wacky Asian/American Family Road Trip

"The Wangs v the World" is about an Asian/American family with patriarch, Charles Wang.  Wang left his native Taiwan for CA where he prospered as a cosmetics entrepreneur & raised his 3 children: Saian, an artist in upstate NY, Andrew an AZ college student & aspiring comic and Grace, at boarding school, a self-obsessed fashion blogger.  Self-obssessed with overblown egos is a shared family trait.  It is infuriating in Charles but less so with his offspring.  Their wealthy, privileged & vain lives have not deterred a fondness for one another that is endearing.  Author & journalist, Jade Chang (b America of Asian heritage) makes her debut with this off-beat & outlandish parody of the American dream as seen by Charles, the Asian immigrant with indefatigable drive.  His relentless work ethic & overblown ego lead to immense wealth & then to financial ruin.  Chang also lampoons contemporary life in the U.S. through the eyes of all 3 siblings and their step-mom, Barbra.  Barbra had her eye set on Charles as a young man in Taiwan.  When she learned of his beautiful wife's untimely demise, she hustled herself to the states & became his bride.  Greed is an overriding theme in this entertaining & unconventional novel.  This funny & perceptive novel lambasts human traits as we hitch a ride with this zany brood on a desperate, cross country road trip. Charles & Barbra take an old mercedes (back from their housekeeper) after everything they previously possessed; businesses, property & bank accounts have been repossessed by the bank.  He's a man that can't be derailed from his plan.  The couple get Andrew & Grace from their schools (where tuition is overdue) and set their route from CA to NY where Saina may prove to be their sane, saving grace.  Andrew sums it up "my family's bankrupt and I'm in the middle of a cross-country road trip in my dead mom's car because my dad might be delusional."  Dad is quite mad and he's filled with rage & envy for all that was once his.  Saina gained early fame in the contemporary art world in NYC which just as quickly turned against her.  She retreats to an old farmhouse where her family is about to descend upon her.  Chang exposes the art world for its alchemy "every successful artist is the product of mythmaking."  The pratfalls of pride are priceless.  So too is  the hypocritical idealism of Communist China.  Charles travels to China to reclaim his families' rightful land & legacy.  Charles' views are often astute.  He believes there are 2 types of people, passive or  those who seize opportunities.  This is an impressive first novel that is unique with tongue in cheek.  But the sentimental ending is rather meek. "In the end all we had were the people whom we were beholden."