Swamplandia! is uh, ok

I picked up a copy of this New York Times bestseller way back in October, at the Boston Book Festival--and I even met the author! And I finally got to it last week. And... no offense to Ms. Russell, but I am not that impressed. This novel is good, but way over-hyped; it didn't deserve the amount of praise it got. (Like Jeezus, the first four pages are positive blurbs! Oy)

Swamplandia! has an intriguing setup: a gator-wrestling theme park located in the fringes of Florida, near the swampy Ten Thousand Islands. It's family-run, a modest operation. But when Swamplandia!'s headliner and matriarch dies, the family (and park) experiences a downward spiral, hitting rock bottom more than a year after her death. Swamplandia! closes and the Bigtree clan spends the summer apart: the Chief making money on the mainland to pay off debts, Kiwi working at the rival park, Osceola running off with a ghost; and Ava (our protagonist and mostly-narrator) goes off on a journey to find her, accompanied by a shady character known only as "the Bird Man."

Now gator wrestlers, theme parks, ghosts, and a journey to the underworld seem like a recipe for a delightfully goofy (if somewhat creepy) story. Not quite. About halfway through, the plot takes a dark turn (way darker than I was expecting) that made me want to put the book down for a while. I did not expect rape and fights to the near-death in this story. Hell no. So I thought why the fuck is this shit in here? And the answer is that once you take away all the larger-than-life trappings, it's nothing more than a variant of the coming-of-age novel, lost virginity/innocence and all. There's nothing wrong with being a coming-of-age novel, but you have to be original with more than just your set pieces. So much of the novel is amazingly mundane--especially as we see more of the mainland world--which is still wacky to an extent (especially to the isolated islanders of the Bigtree clan) that it's not that much different from your typical literary novel.

The novel's not all mediocrity though. The depiction of the swampland makes it seem magical, thanks to Russell's vivid descriptions and Ava's childlike perspective (and I love the nakedly ridiculous moments on the mainland).  It's at times borderline cartoonlike in its representation of theme parks and mainland antics (is there an Adult Swim cartoon about a theme park? If not, I call dibs!) I really preferred this as a comic novel, with less heavy stuff--it would have been more fun, at least. I actually kind of liked it until the story took that dark turn.

Russell reminds me somewhat of Stacey Richter, who really cranks up the ridiculousness levels in some short stories, mixing the light stuff up with the heavy. But at least Richter didn't rationalize the incredibility of her stories' premises, writing off ghosts as symptoms of a mental illness and the underworld as a place pervs lure you to rape you (Russell really had me going there--for a minute I believed in the Underworld as much as Ava did, and was probably more crushed than she was when I realized it was a ruse--was I really so eager to believe that something fantastic would happen?) And Richter isn't the best writer, either. I do also see a resemblance of Russell to Kelly Link and George Saunders, whom she does credit as influences. (I was reminded of Saunders' story "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline", which I liked...but I'm also not a fan of Kelly Link. She's good, but her stories annoy the shit out of me. But that's another post.)

In summation, the family separates, and comes back together at the end of the summer. The children have changed, and they leave the island behind. And that's another thing. The ending was rushed and too brief--there's not even a mention of the last time they see their island; the narrator absent of affect, as if that summer robbed her of the ability to feel emotion. She says they'll stay strong, but she sounds so weak. I expect that life on the mainland would be a drag for them, devoid of the enchantment of the wilds. There's no mention of what Ava's doing. So much for a happy ending.

What bugs me the most about it is how ordinary it turned out to be: Osceola wants romance, Kiwi wants a career, and Ava wants to be like her mother. Sound familiar? I felt a strange sense of deja-vu all throughout the novel, as if I've heard the same story from a different voice before.The setting and characters are pretty unusual, but the story isn't. When it comes down to it, the Bigtrees aren't that different from your typical family--they just seem strange because they ran their own theme park, and thus are eccentric. (I can't be the only one who was disappointed that there weren't more theme park shenanigans) In the end the story is tragic--they've lost their mother and their home--and they learn to move on. Nothing too original or innovative there.

Karen Russell has potential--if she keeps at it, this could be the worst book she ever writes (and really, it's not that bad)--but there was no need to inflate her ego with meaningless praise. When you strip away the trappings that make Swamplandia! extraordinary, you have a novel that is saddeningly ordinary. The literary establishment succeeds in fooling us again. 3 stars out of 5.

This Post Was Going to Review Memory Wall, But...

The last book I read was a collection of short stories by Anthony Doerr, called Memory Wall. It's six stories, and they're all linked thematically, to an extent. Memories do play a big role in them, for one. I liked the one story of his that I'd read in a writing class, called "For a Long Time this was Griselda's Story." It was a little outlandish (the title character becomes a magician's assistant) and folktale-y, but was presented in a very real way. I spotted this book in the library, and decided to take it out, even though I really shouldn't have. I liked it, especially the stories that featured women prominently (that was actually most of them) ... But I don't really want to sing its praises. Turns out I'm still suffering from the Franzen fatigue that came over me last September...I'm just not in the mood to read that kind of shit anymore. Or review it, really.

Books: By dudes, for dudes since 1700

Doerr isn't as infuriating as Franzen, as he doesn't use tired and annoying plot twists and character tics and doesn't stick to reality 100% of the time. Doerr actually brought some new ideas to the table, like visions of the Afterworld through epileptic seizures, and memories recovered through clunky cartridges and viewable by machine. I almost feel bad that I'm not giving this book a review; it's not really that bad--plenty of other people liked it, too.

Not to steer the conversation towards Franzen, but part of what I don't really like about him is how much everyone sang his praises--and I hardly heard anything about last year's National Book Award winner, a Black woman. I read this article, published in last week's Phoenix, that criticizes the publishing industry, the New York Times, and NPR for gender bias in terms of who they publish and how much publicity they get. As a woman who likes to write fiction that doesn't necessarily adhere to realistic boundaries, much less convention, it's discouraging that someone like me will (still!) have greater difficulties in rightful recognition than a male writer writing about men (hell, aside from the fact that I naturally gravitate toward writing about women, aren't there enough stories about men?) And I am also guilty of reading more books by men than women, though I often prefer books by women, rather than men.

Anyway, I've been feeling this way since I went to a reading last weekend--five men went up to read in a row. Once I realized that no women had went up to read, I didn't stick around to find out if there would be any--the fact that none had gone so far said enough to me. The worst part was that I hadn't even noticed until the fourth man went up to the mic. There is the idea that women are generally more timid, and therefore reluctant to share their work--after two years of workshops with a bunch of other writers, and hearing how hard it is to be published, my confidence was crushed. Though I know I have more than potential. If women do need more encouragement, then we need to do that. These problems pervade not just the literary world, either--it's a problem in all media, to varying degrees. It's sad that we still can't get past the fact that women are just as capable as men at creating art (sometimes even more so) and that their stories and perspectives are just as relevant. I appreciate writers like Doerr who do bring in other perspectives--in addition to elderly women, he writes about other countries, like China and South Africa--we could also bring in people who've actually had these experiences, with less risk of objectifying and exotifying them.

But there's something else in that kind of fiction, aside from the narrow worldview--it's hard for me to put my finger on what it is. I do know how to describe it: BORING. Finally, after four years of indoctrination by literary "experts," I can finally admit that straight-up literary realism bores me to tears! That's why no one reads these books--because they're all about the SAME DAMN THING. I'll take robots, wizards and warlords over a broody middle-aged man any day!

All told, I think I'm done reading this kind of fiction for a while. This is not the kind of fiction I want to write, so why should I waste my time with it?

*note: this post was originally written a week ago (1/29/12) so temporal references are a week off. I'm just feeling too lazy to change it.