Customer Reviews

Memorial: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In a world where truthful contemplation might be valued over cheap sentiment, Bruce Wagner would be considered a prophet or great spiritual leader. In this world, well... a LOT of people will probably be offended by this book; it's mordant humor isn't for everyone. Read the first few pages on line or in the store and see if you are up to the challenge. Bruce Wagner writes with the recklessness of the best young writers (like Chuck Palahniuk) but always holds his magnificent structure in close regard. His riffs on drugged psychosis, grand delusions and guilt dredged regret are as spectacular as anything I've ever read.
There are a lot of writers who try to impress with their "smarts" and usually come off as stiff and overthought. It was great to read a book that really is by someone who is a lot smarter than I am, who brings his considerable experience (and a lot of remarkably APPALLING jokes) into play to tell a complicated atory that steers clear of cliche.
I didn't know that people were even allowed to write such exciting material in the "post 9-11 world" but were rather required to simplify and coddle the frightened masses! This book is harsh and terrifying. It is as clear and surprising as monologues from under the influence of morphine. I laughed but kicked myself for it! I cried and nearly couldn't stop. I am haunted by "MEMORIAL" and delighted to have been jolted into such a visceral and emotional response.
This book is MAGNIFICENT!
Mr. Wagner- I can't thank you enough!

I'd read Bruce Wagner's last book ('Still Holding'?) and was on the fence about whether I liked him or not, but heard so much good stuff about this book that I decided to try him again, and thank god i did. This is on most levels an absolutely amazing work, an incredibly ambitious book that tackles an incredible number of 'big issues' while still creating characters that make you want to care about and see what happens to them (even if you don't like them!). There are four main characters, one of whom, Joan, is an architect, and it is in her chapters that Wagner truly shines. The absolute depth of the man's knowledge, writing, and prose literally wore me out, I frequently took breaks after the 'Joan' chapters simply because I needed to process all that Wagner had just thrown at me, and that is a good thing! The last novelist I experienced that kind of 'tiredness' from reading was David Foster Wallace!! Towards the end of the book there are some events that stretch the limits of credulity, but I won't discuss further because they are spoilers. But it still didn't dim the power of this incredible work for me, or diminish my respect for the incredible book i'd just read. This might be genius, I'm still digesting it! Definitely going to go back and read more Bruce Wagner. This may not be for everyone, but if you are looking for a 'big novel' to challenge you that is also a page turner, give this a shot! I was amazed...

Ditto on the book keeping one up at night and thinking about it all day. I was an awe at the wordsmithing, even with stuff that had little or no provence to me. They usually found some sort of mental allocation with me, in the end, which is half the fun of it. The pills Chess and other's were dropping were all unknown to me bar one or two, which had the effect on me of making them more toxic. So I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that glossaries be made by the author for his books, but it might add to the chase.

Big question for me is what the hell was really segueing in the end? I Truly experienced the sight of the guardian columns protecting no-thingness.

Peculiar about this book is that it is dream from end to end without a single snap-to, while still maintaining a healthy professional writer's edge. The sort of concentration necessary for that is something I dip my hat to. Most of all though I sense something older than civilisation here that lends the language/intent the ability to envision the future very precisely and unbiasedly, which is something of great value right now, and the reason why this book is as morninghorrifying as it is crepuscularly joyous. K Gibran said, 'We live only to discover beauty, all else is a form of waiting'.

I also enjoyed the love story part of it - very lightly eluded to (by the author and the characters)- with Marj and Ray, very sweet.

I am a big fan of Bruce Wagner's work. I have read all his previous novels so I eagerly awaited his latest. I was not disappointed. This novel is witty, tragic, beautiful, gritty and somewhat horrifying. Like life, right? Wagner's characters are so three-dimensional, they are so fully alive. You get into their heads and understand their motivations. His references to pop culture and arcane matters keep your head reeling. He writes with such passion and humor. If you are searching for a book that will keep you up all night and thinking about it all day, I suggest "Memorial."

"Memorial" is definitely a very West Coast, Californian, specifically L.A.-kind of book. That's not to detract from the writing style, which is actually fairly original and deeply personal. Wagner writes in the third person, but really brings out his characters' flaws and strengths. The characters in this book are not one-dimensional, the relationships are complicated and multi-faceted and change over the course of the plot, as in any good novel they should.

However, in some ways, the characters are almost cliches of the West Coast stereotype. "Memorial" is one of those books in which you're not really sure if the cliches, the parodies, the factual innaccuracies, the shallow commercialism (the constant references to pop culture and celebrities) are supposed to be critical, supportive or simply illusrative of American culture at the beginning of the 21st century. I should be more specific: greater Los Angeles culture at the beginning of the 21st century. I don't know anybody with a name like Laksmi who had a Jewish father who idealized the Hindu God Ganesh and work as an actress on a pseudo-reality TV show. That's very L.A. and I often had trouble identifing with these characters (with the exception of Ray). Wagner's greatest strength is that he makes these people accessible and relatively believeable.

It definitely has that feel of "Magnolia" or "Crash" or those other L.A. movies in which the plots and characters lives overlap with each other. But not a similar film genre like "Syriana", the underlying theme being social and political, and not personal and cultural. Also, it lacks the edge of a story like that - the trials and tribulations of a family dog shot by police doesn't exactly stack up against international terrorism.

Again, after reading the book, I'm not sure if Wagner was trying to condemn this mindset (all this tragedy in the world and all we care about is Nip/Tuck! We're lawsuit crazy! We're obsessed with memorializing our own dead, and don't care about the rest of the world!), or simply illustrate it (this is the way we are). I tend to favor the latter, only because I feel like he draws more from real events than by this alternate-universe L.A. that he created on his own.

If you really want to read a book that has something to say about loss, and is personal, cultural, spiritual, social and political, I would recommend Johnathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."

But again, not a bad book, and a pretty bold attempt, it just rings a little hollow. (But is it supposed to...?)

It was John Updike who said, "Bruce Wagner writes like a wizard" and Updike, no slouch as a writer, chose his words carefully. Wagner can take his fiction to wildly different places with God-like ease. 'I laughed, I cried' is the teeny tiniest tip of the iceberg. There were places in memorial I dropped the book on the ground and walked out of the room, afraid of its power. but also equally afraid of being done with the book, which around 40 pages in I wished were a thousand pages instead of 500, the way a little kid at Disneyland might wish Disneyland were the literal size of Texas. In all of Wagner's books, there will be one or two scenes that take the act of reading to truly new heights, drawing on the power of cinema, religion, gossip sheets, and horror--of the pulp variety and the everyday variety (usually the worse of the two). opposites pull at each other throughout, if it weren't so obscene it wouldn't be so beautiful. If it weren't so funny it wouldn't be so heartbreaking. If it weren't so mundane it wouldn't be so mystical. I really envy those who haven't read it yet, as all I can do is pore over certain chapters like people with the bible on the subway.

Bruce Wagner is a truly original novelist, capable of gargantuan humor, horror and pity all on the same page. His voice is unique and as the critics have noted, Memorial evidences a growing sense of compassion towards his tortured characters.That said, this novel needed a lot of editing! It could have been cut by a third.

I found this book annoyingly, excessively wordy. It read as if the author wrote it while as stoned (or whacked out on Red Bull)as one of his characters and spent way too much time googling references. There were so many television references that will be obsolete in about 2 more years and in 10 will make no sense at all to anyone. I can't believe Ryan Seacrest didn't make a cameo (spoiler alert, the Dog Whisperer has a role). And every urban myth that comes out of incredably minor characters mouths, ahhhhhhhh. Talk about a short shelf life. If this is suposed to represent the LA essence it is amazingly superficial so in that respect it works.

In the inside of the dust jacket it says: "In his most profound and accomplished book to date, acclaimed author Bruce Wagner breaks from Hollywood culture with a novel of exceptional literary dimension and searing emotional depth."

That's sounds pretty good doesn't it? It sounds like something I would really like to read. I read all 507 pages of Memorial and I still wouldn't mind reading the book described above. This sure isn't it.

I was sold on the book by hearing an interview with Mr. Wagner on WBAI radio. (One can find the interview by Googling "Cat Radio Cafe". It's somewhere on that site, or at least it was a couple of weeks ago.) It's an interesting interview. Mr. Wagner is an interesting talker. I wish I could say the same for his writing.

Maybe it was over my head. Maybe I'm not deep enough to grasp the "exceptional literary dimension". Maybe I'm too shallow or cowardly to plunge into the "searing emotional depth". Or maybe the novel is just as disappointing and depressing as I think it is.

So what is it? What did I read and get from it? This is a story of a family divided and yet still connected although through most of the novel they don't know it and one of them never does. We are presented with four interlocking stories. Once upon a time many years ago Ray and Marjorie were married. They had two lovely children Joan and Chester. Ray blew some sort of business deal, felt bad about himself, and quite the family, took off one day unannounced. As we enter the story the two kids are about 40 and the parents are old. There has been no contact with the absent father all that time. So that's the setup and then we get to go with them all through the personal hell or torment of Job. This is a novel where all the bad things you hear about on the news happens to happen to these people and those around them. All this is highly unpleasant and, well, sometimes feels exceptionally sadistic. That might not be so bad if there was a point to it all and since I lack the ability to grasp the exceptional literary dimension of it all, I guess I missed whatever that point or literary pay-off might have been. What I got was a sad, mean, ugly, and cruel story told with a whole lot, way too much, up-to-the-minute mass media hipness. Mr. Wagner sure knows his TV shows and personalities, and his LA gurus. Well, I know about this crap too and I didn't need him to point them out to me. But I don't waste my time actually watching the TV shows he insists on writing about, I just know about them and that's enough. I think Wagner should spend more time reading other novels than watching TV. It might help his writing or dictating or however this mess was produced. I didn't need him to tell me how horrible and sad modern life has become. I didn't need him to rub my nose in it. Everything he says about this country, the economies system, LA, is obvious to me. And he adds nothing on top of that. He just wasted my time with lists.

But then again I may well have missed the point. I tend to like most things I read and hate to have to be so negative, yet this is how I feels about this one.