DJ Cayenne from Baby Got Books weighs in for Round Two: (See also Round One)
I'm excited to be a part of the Special Topics Round Table, and many thanks to Callie for having me over to play. Please jump into the comments and add to the discussion.
I agree with much of what Callie had to say in Round One about Special Topics in Calamity Physics. I agree that parts of the book drag on and that the book was probably too long in general. Some have argued that Pessl tried to cram too much into this book, and I'll give them that. Here and there pieces of the book feel a little forced – like she didn't want to leave anything on the table. Her biggest fault may be that she hasn't yet learned restraint. Judicious editing may have made for a better book. Yet, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel. I think that all of us (many of us? Some of us?) can agree that clearly Pessl has talent to burn.
I didn't get that "hey look at me, aren't I clever" vibe from the book that seems to have turned many people off. I liked Blue, and I found her to be a believable character. Maybe I accepted her voice as "real" after years of conditioning at the hands of The Gilmore Girls. I thought the ending was earned and didn't feel like I had been unfairly duped. As soon as I finished, I immediately flipped back to the beginning to look for clues that I had obviously missed. My enjoyment of the book came from the excitement that I get from reading a book that is willing to try new things. That may be my own lit illness.
I couldn't wait to get my hands on the Special Topics after reading Janet Maslin's review in the New York Times. She called the book the "most flashily erudite novel since Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated." - a book that was easily more polarizing than Special Topics. I'm figuring out that my new favorite sub-genre may be Flashily Erudite. I enjoyed Foer's follow-up, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, (including the flip book at the end) which seemed to anger just about everyone. I've just written a glowing review of Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts that features a flip book and other nifty diversions. I'm a fan of both of Mark Z. Danielewski's books, although his books are flashy in a different way. It seems that I am often alone defending these types of books from a chorus of boos. Hmmm, maybe there's a lesson to be learned here.
A reviewer in the LA Times used the phrase "post-internet" in a review of Raw Shark. That's a great framework for explaining what appeals to me in these books. We're becoming used to having pictures accompany our text. We're able to jump back and forth between hyperlinks, between web sites, and between video/pictures/text/spreadsheets/games on the same page. Why do we become upset when a novelist slips pictures into a novel, uses a flip book to advance the story, or arranges text in a way that we're not used to seeing in a book? Used correctly, and I guess that's the operative word, something as simple as a hastily drawn picture on a Post-It note can be genius.
My appreciation of (sick affinity to?) novelists who want to experiment with new ways of telling stories gives author's plenty of latitude in my judgment of their work. I especially like it when a young author is not afraid to swing for the fences. They seem to be willing to take the biggest chances, because they have far less to lose that established authors. I think that authors like Pessl, Foer, Hall, etc. are expanding the way that we tell stories and what we think of as literature. I'm all for it. If they fall a little short here or there, I still applaud the effort, and I thank them for trying. I thought that Special Topics was an audacious (if flawed) debut, and I expect great things from Pessl down the road.
Before I go, I wanted to throw out something from the book for discussion. The narration of the book was one of the things that interested me. In the beginning of the book, Blue quotes her father:
Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids, because, trust me, there will always be some clown sitting in the back - somewhere by the radiator - who will raise his fat, flipperlike hand and complain, "No, no, you've got it all wrong."
Blue seems to be self-aware enough to realize that she may be considered an unreliable narrator, and she attempt to disabuse of us of that notion from the beginning. Blue uses this quote as a license to annotate away. Her story, which is intensely personal to her, must not be interrupted by the fat, flipperlike hand in the back of the room. Blue's citations, however, were often clearly made up. What do you make of someone who quotes fake references to convince us that they are telling us the truth?
Along those same lines, some of the questions on the final exam are things that Blue either did not/could not know, or she did not tell us about them. Some time has gone by when the exam is written, but has Blue been less than forthcoming about all that she knows? I have a few theories, but I'm interested in hearing what others have to say. Can we even discuss it without giving away huge chunks of the book?
I'd also like to note that we are having a contest to give away two signed copies of the book (in paperback) over at my place. If you haven't read the book yet and you'd like to make up your own mind – for free – be sure to enter. We'll announce a winner on Monday.
