Eat the Document: A Novel [Hardcover]

Dana Spiotta (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2006 | ISBN-10: 0743272986 | ISBN-13: 978-0743272988 | Edition: First Printing

Dana Spiotta, whom Michiko Kakutani called "wonderfully observant and wonderfully gifted...with an uncanny feel for the absurdities and sadness of contemporary life" "(The New York Times)," has written a bold and moving novel about a fugitive radical from the 1970s who has lived in hiding for twenty-five years. "Eat the Document" is a hugely compelling story of activism, sacrifice, and the cost of living a secret.

In the heyday of the 1970s underground, Bobby DeSoto and Mary Whittaker -- passionate, idealistic, and in love -- design a series of radical protests against the Vietnam War. When one action goes wrong, the course of their lives is forever changed. The two must erase their past, forge new identities, and never see each other again.

Now it is the 1990s. Mary lives in the suburbs with her fifteen-year-old son, who spends hours immersed in the music of his mother's generation. She has no idea where Bobby is, whether he is alive or dead.

Shifting between the protests in the 1970s and the consequences of those choices in the 1990s, Dana Spiotta deftly explores the connection between the two eras -- their language, technology, music, and activism. Character-driven and brilliant, "Eat the Document" is an important and revelatory novel about the culture of rebellion, with particular resonance now.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Mary Whittaker and Bobby DeSoto have constructed lives for themselves like Popsicle-stick houses: brittle, unfurnished, painstakingly assembled but made to be snapped apart or abandoned in a moment. The main characters of Dana Spiotta's magnificent second novel, Eat the Document, they were once in love, but spend all but a few pages of the book intentionally distant and out of communication--fugitives after executing a political bombing in the '70s that went awry. Moving often, changing their names more than once, they had to cut off any friendship as soon as it blossomed emotionally and seemed to demand authenticity. Now, in the 1990s, Mary's 15-year-old son Jason (a '70s music buff) begins to uncover his mother's dangerous secret. "Incidentally, if you have never stalked someone close to you, I highly recommend it," he confides in his journal, "Check out how it transforms them. How other they become, and how infinitely necessary and justified the stalking becomes when you realize how little you know about them."

More than a portrait of life underground, Eat the Document derives its power from an implicit comparison of '70s radicalism to the pale protests of present-day consumer culture, somehow upholding the idealism and commitment of the earlier period without advocating its violent methods. Spiotta never lets the novel feel like a history lesson or a diatribe. Its social critique is enacted chiefly through Nash (the former Bobby), whose resistance has mellowed to amused observance of the radical Seattle youth who frequent the independent lefty bookstore he runs. Nash redefines the term "activist" by facilitating a number of brilliantly conceived groups that rarely execute their plans. The Radical Juxtaposeurs, for example, "rent films from Blockbuster and dub fake commercials onto the beginnings of the tapes to imply dislocated, ominous, disturbing things," while the Barcode Remixers "made fake bar code stickers that would replace ones. Everything rang up at five or ten cents. This was strictly for the chain, nonunion supermarkets."

Eat the Document moves back and forth in time, like a fishnet pulling through water, tantalizing the reader with glimpses of Mary and Bobby's past. There are plenty of surprises, not so much in the details of the bombing plot but in the shifting culpability of the actors. Above all, this is a grown-up novel about late adolescence, and about what we take with us‹and what we jettison--on the journey from passionate, reckless youth into seasoned (or soiled) middle age. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly

Lives in the aftermath of 1970s radicalism form the basis of Spiotta's follow-up to her debut, Lightning Field. We meet Mary Whittaker as she goes underground and tests out a series of new names for herself in a motel room. Flash forward to the 21st century, where Mary, now "Caroline," is a single mother whose teenage son, Jason, seems to have inherited her restlessness. (Jason checks into the narrative via his journal entries.) Mary's partner in subversion and in bed was Bobby DeSoto, who, now closing in on 50 and going by the name of Nash, runs a leftist bookstore called Prairie Fire for his friend Henry, a troubled Vietnam vet. The unspoken affection between Henry and Nash and the many nuances of their deep friendship, beautifully rendered by Spiotta, give the book a compelling core. A young woman named Miranda becomes the improbable object of Nash's skittish affection. And when Jason begins to discover bits of his mother's past, Mary begins to resurface—with possibly disastrous results. As plot lines entangle, Spiotta tightens the narrative and shortens the chapters, which doesn't really add tension or pace. The result is a very spare set of character studies not well-enough served by the resolution. A near miss. (Feb.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Printing edition (January 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743272986
• ISBN-13: 978-0743272988
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #492,214 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dana Spiotta is the author of EAT THE DOCUMENT, which was nominated for a National Book Award. Her first novel, LIGHTNING FIELD, was an LA Times Best Book of the West and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Spiotta received the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2007 and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in 2008. The American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy in Rome awarded her the 2008 Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize.

Her third novel, STONE ARABIA, will be published by Scribner in July.

More information can be found at danaspiotta.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Document of Contemporary Culture, May 18, 2006

By 

Zachary A. Hanson "Jazzpunk" (Tallahassee, FL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eat the Document: A Novel (Hardcover)

Dana Spiotta's novel is satisfying on so many levels. Like her predecessor Don DeLillo, Spiotta manages to create a story that is entertaining, deep, and bold all at once. Special kudos go to her for managing to pull off parallel narratives as seamlessly as she does. On a somewhat more subjective note, this is the ideal novel for anyone who is obsessed with the intersection of popular and underground culture, which is to say many of us.

Here's how it works: We see the stories of two generations of resistance culture, both the '60s and '70's hippies and the more punkish subculture of the late '90s. Spiotta, from my vantage, depicts both of these periods spot on, tho' Jason, the son of the fugitive Mary, might be a little more articulate than most any fifteen-year-old I've ever met. Regardless, his obsession with the music of his mother's generation rings true for a mid-adolescent intellectual. His paeans to the Beach Boys are especially compelling. Any fanatic will identify instantly with Jason's reverence for his heroes.

It is not only Jason who is too smart for his own good, it is the entire cast of teenagers who hang around Nash Davis's Prairie Fire bookstore, another delightfully-drawn aspect of _Eat the Document_. Miranda, a punker in her late teens who falls for the middle-aged radical Nash, is painted with true emotional depth, perhaps the best portrait of a countercultural woman of the '90s that I've read. She ends up being torn between Nash and the more conventional Josh, someone who is her own age, but who ends up co-opting his more radical impulses to work for "the man." Nash, on the other hand, never gives into the man. Then again, we might question whether he accomplishes anything at all, as tied into creating ludicrous resistance groups out of his bookshop as he is (a few of the humorous examples of the fun that Nash has with acronyms and organizational monikers: SAP [Strategic Aggravation Players and/or Satyagraha by Antinomic Praxis] and the Neo Tea-Dumpers Front).

For all the humor here (which by the way is not overdone--like so many other aspects of this book, the humor works in naturally), there are all sorts of wonderful philosophical issues being explored, placing Spiotta near the forefront of her postmodern peers. This book is all about living on borderlines, especially the borderline between popular culture and counterculture, a place that really takes maneuvering, as anyone who has truly experienced the counterculture knows. For all the desire to make new vistas for culture, one can't help but buy Starbucks here and there or like "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys, even though it is the quintessence of pop. To stick with the Beach Boys, they are the perfect figure for this book to explore, as they never completely lost their clean-cut aura, even as Dennis Wilson was hanging around the Manson family. Dana Spiotta mines this seeming anomaly forcefully and shows the humor, wisdom, and pathos that arises from two generations of outcasts trying to negotiate their place apart from (yet invariably in) a world driven by consumerism. From what I say in that last sentence, I hope you don't get the impression that this is a dry intellectual screed, because it is not. Spiotta has created that relatively rare wonder of prose that explores some of the most spiky of social issues while managing to keep the authorial voice warm throughout. This makes hers a document that not only our generation should read to get a sense of itself, but also generations to come. As highly recommended as contemporary prose comes.

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Please don't let on that you knew me when..., January 31, 2006

By 

Christine Healy "reader" (NYC, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eat the Document: A Novel (Hardcover)

Eat the Document is about hippie activists in hiding, yes, but it is also about longing and loss, identity and authenticity, and the inescapability of destiny. With astounding detail, Spiotta is equally rhapsodic on the fads and follies of two generations of countercultural rebels, but spares neither her sharp eye for hypocrisy, futility, and misplaced desires. All of this she accomplishes with searing wit, virtuosic joy in language, and ultimately, real sensitivity for lives lived on the run. A sweeping, stunning book, from a writer who is beyond smart and who is just hitting her stride. Masterful.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great premise but ultimately a let down., December 22, 2006

By 

DevJohn01 (Somerset, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eat the Document: A Novel (Paperback)

I was very excited to read Dana Spiotta's 'EAT THE DOCUMENT' not only because the premise sounded great but also because of all the praise it had generated. Unfortunately this novel did not live up to my expectations at all. The first three fourths of the book was, in my opinion, nothing more than words on a page. It did not set the stage for the heart of the story nor was it very interesting. So many times I considered putting the book down never to pick it up again, however, an unfinished book nags at me therefore I was compelled to complete it. Only the last hundred or so pages, where the focus was more on the main characters Mary Whittaker and Bobby Desoto, made the book at all redeemable. I would have loved a lot less of the pretentious social commentary and more of an in depth look into SAFE the 70's radical group that Mary and Bobby belonged to as well as a better look into Mary's life not only for the first few years after she went underground but in present day as well.

Although this was not the fast paced thriller about two fugitives separated not only by time but irreparable actions that I thought it was, I am glad that I finished the book because if I hadn't I would have missed the best part of the story. However, this book takes a lot of patience. If you are not into the history of the 70's radical movement and how it relates to today, this may not be the book for you.