Customer Reviews

Eddie Krumble Is the Clapper: A Novel

5 star:		(2)
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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

i loved monteil's "a guide to recognizing your saints" so i gave "the clapper" a try as well. with the very short chapters, i was able to plow through this book in one sitting. i personally expected more after "saints", but it is a good, fun book to read to kill time on a flight.

Mr.Montiel is one of a kind and what an innovative , revolutionary and stoical kind he is
his writing inspires..moves and soothes teh soul.
he is a delight to read and watch (his film work)
already he has made this world a far more magical place..i have no doubt this is just the begining of his monumental positive contribution to the planet.
yes indeed.

I loved this book! There is so many levels to this satire that spark laugh out loud emotions. I had never heard of this author and just by chance happend on this book and man oh man it's truly great! I actually have a cousin that this story could have been written about! Like I said fun and easy reading at its best!

Montiel is best known for his recent award-winning film "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" (and for fronting minor early NYHC band Major Conflict). Here he turns his keyboard to satire, and like many other well-intentioned writers, shipwrecks on the shoals of what is arguably the trickiest genre to pull off. I feel somewhat bad, because I'm sure Mr. Montiel is an interesting and funny guy -- but unfortunately his first novel is neither.

The story is narrated by Eddie, a slacker from Queens who runs away to L.A. with his stoner pal Chris at the tail end of high school. They make a very modest living participating in market research studies and human medical experiments until they find their true niche as "clappers." These are people who get paid to sit through the dregs of TV programming, clapping and reacting on cue in a feeble attempt to boost the profile of terrible talk shows and insipid infommercials. Because these gigs don't pay much, Eddie and Chris have to do multiple shows a day, which means they have to change their appearance periodically so that they can't be spotted on two shows at once by someone channel surfing at 4am. Life is all more or less fine in a slackerish sense, and Eddie hangs out in the evenings with a female gas station attendant he likes.

All is undone, however, when a Tonight Show flunky discovers Eddie's recurring gig, and pieces together a segment unmasking him in various roles. Soon, "The Clapper" becomes a mini media phenomenon, and Eddie's attempts to cool things down only fan the flames. One can see how the premise is potentially interesting, however it's treated at a very superficial level. Obviously TV and insta-celebrity culture comes under the satirical gun here, but neither of these are particularly interesting targets since they're basically self-satirizing to start with, and Montiel doesn't push too deeply into them. Ultimately, the problem is that satire as a genre either works or it doesn't, there is no in-between, and unfortunately, it doesn't work here at all. Characters are flat, the attempted deadpan humor is flat, and the situations are flat. It doesn't help that Eddie's narration is incredibly awkward and fractured, with dialogue rendered in screenplay format, and the narrative chopped into small 2-3 page scenes, each of which is treated as a chapter.

This raises a complaint I have with the publisher. First of all, the book is listed at 240 pages, but only 225 of them actually have words on them -- there are a bunch of blank pages at the end which presumably add up to the 240. However my main quibble is with the layout. By treating each little scene as a chapter, a whole slew of blank pages, half-pages, and and partial pages are created. I took five minutes to take a quick tally, and I estimate there's about 95 pages of "blank" in the 225. So the book realistically clocks in at around 130 pages, which explains why it took me under two hours to read it. This is a clear case of a publisher attempting to disguise a novella as a novel, and it doesn't do anyone involved any credit. Yes novellas are considered commercially unviable, but don't try and mislead the audience by padding the thing out to "book length." It's important to understand that this is entirely the publisher's fault and not the author's.