Customer Reviews

A Regular Guy : A Novel

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

 

 

It is non-sense to write, as the reviewer put it, that Owens is a hybrid between Gates and Gatsby. He is a real guy, and his name is Steve Jobs. If you like reading about Steve as I do, I suggest you buy the book. In addition to the guy saying Simpson stole from Guy Gawasaki, let me reassure, you: basically 90% of the phrases coming out of Owens' mouth are from Steve Jobs. Most of them you can find in several interviews. Even Lisa, Steve's daughter, acknowledges it in one of her articles at the Harvard school of journalism.

15 years on, what probably makes this book memorable is that Mona Simpson derived much of it from the life and family of her brother Steve Jobs. This is /not/ a trivial matter for evaluating this book. It is, in fact, a huge deal and cannot be understated. Steve's daughter Lisa Jobs, who was a model for Jane in A Regular Guy, published an article in The Harvard Advocate in 1999 expressing her dissatisfaction with her aunt's "taking." Even without that, the parallels are brazenly obvious: Owens is charismatic and brassy, starts a huge company, gets kicked out, fathers an illegitimate child he denies, later and has huge feet (Steve Jobs does, did you know?). Even the deeper, unknown parts of his protected private life are in the book-- Jobs' mother died of cancer in the mid-80s, and Owens' mother also dies in a similar way, and the description of Owens' father is similar to accounts of what Jobs' father was like. When Jobs' first official biography, iSteve, is printed in 2012, we might find how just how much Simpson took, and I suspect it'll be more than anyone ever guessed.

Yes, it's OK to derive fiction from real life. But Steve Jobs is different. He /already was/ a character in published books, even if he's real. There are been many Apple books, and these books become much less interesting after Jobs leaves the scene; he is the most important character in the story, and almost a protagonist which drives the action. A few anti-Steve Jobs books told tall tales of his meanness. Even in the early 1990s when he wasn't as successful as he is now, he was a legend (this book was released in 1996).

His story is precious and peerless like gold and diamonds. Simpson could not resist plundering that treasure trove. This is not morally wrong and Simpson can do whatever she wants to her brother and I don't need to make an ad-hominem argument against Simpson (after all, if Steve really is a jerk maybe he deserved it? We don't know her and can't judge her). However, in terms of authorship it is lazy writing because instead of creating her own great characters and story she used as a template one of the greatest characters and stories of our age. The obviousness of what she has done in this book unfortunately casts a long shadow on all her other work: since we didn't know her family, "Anywhere But Here" seemed like a good book because we couldn't know what was original and what wasn't. But A Regular Guy reveals exactly how derivative her work can get, bringing all of that into question, which might be unfair, but it's there.

But Tom Owens is no Steve Jobs, which is a problem because he is the star of the book is and the other women and men orbit him. The author tells us he has charisma and intelligence, but the evidence of it is scant. He is a repugnant jerk. Steve Jobs can get away with that because he's Steve Jobs, but Owens can't. Owens is so difficult that it is hard to feel pity or understanding for anyone foolish enough to become involved with him, whether friend or family. It's true that some people can be good and bad, but it's ruthlessness-- in almost everything scene he is in Owens does or says something cold. Surely someone might notice someday that he is a waste of time, but it never really happens. Even his illegitimate daughter Jane, who didn't even choose to be born, is annoyingly in awe of him to the point that she can't express dissatisfaction overtly even when he fails to express real affection for her over and over. The things that Owens gets away are just plain aggravating because apart from being rich and successful (somehow, it's not really clear) there is no reason why all these other fairly reasonable characters in the story allow him to do and say these things again and again. He is an emotional black hole: other people give him love, and it is sucked away never to be returned. Since this black hole is at the center of the A Regular Guy universe, it makes for a depressing and tedious read.

The real protagonist of the story is Jane, hapless victim of poor parenting from her mother and father. The drama in the book is "drama" in the negative sense. It is truly a feminine book in that every little thing characters do and say has meaning to the point that it is tedious. Male readers will probably find this book difficult to read, and probably some females too. This is especially evident in how Jane learns and grows while watching the women around her. No real kid notices the things she does, not even if she's super-intelligent. Noah, a lovelorn wheelchair-bound professional, is a fairly likable character but it only makes you wish the story were about him and that he wouldn't subject himself to the torture of being around Owens (like everyone else in the story). Although this book came out in the mid-90s, it's safe now to say that Noah is rather "emo," and that gets old fast too.

The women around Tom Owens are generally weak even if they appear to be strong.Simpson does at several points mention the importance of appearance and beauty for women, which is great and probably the thing Simpson gets most right in the book. It captures the tragic misfortune of what it means to be born a woman, which remains with us today. For example, the mother of one character is said to have vowed as a teen to drown her future daughters if they were not pretty, out of mercy. It is harsh yet true that women are valued solely by their looks, and in 15 years not a thing has changed.

What has changed in 15 years is that Steve Jobs has become bigger and more famous than ever. I wouldn't want the same for Tom Owens. However, if Tom Owens is Steve Jobs, then that means that in the unseen future of A Regular Guy, Owens too gets cancer and battles it for years, suffering multiple surgeries and press intrusion in the process. For Steve Jobs, this is horrible and undeserved, but for Tom Owens it's the prefect ending and imagining it makes this book much easier to accept.

I found this novel surprisingly hard to finish or to keep my interest in as I turned the pages. After Anywhere But Here, and her short stories, I kept looking at the cover to make sure it really was a Simpson book. None of the main characters pulled me in, and I never really got a feel for what this novel was about. The narration seemed clunky and uninspired - and much of it read like a first draft, the important parts having not been figured out and clarified yet. This had no energy to it, compared to her other work.

If you've read "The Journey is the Reward", then it's obvious where Simpson gets her ideas from. The infuriating yet magnetic character of Owens mirrors that of the author's famous half-brother, Steve Jobs. Simpson did not create her protagonist because he already exists in human form exactly as she describes him. She even went so far as to steal a quote from Macintosh evangelist Guy Kawasaki regarding Jobs. However, I enjoyed the novel because it was extremely well-written. By far, Owens' illegitimate daughter Jane is the most intriguing character; but I will wait to read a biography of Steve Jobs' illegitimate daughter Lisa before I decide if she's original or not.

This is character study book that reads like a first draft. It's as if the author kept a journal of her brother and niece over the course of several years and then didn't have the heart (or nerve) to go back and read the expose she was about to publish. The story and made up details are flimsy at best, and there is not a consistent story line or plot arc. However, the author does capture the life and times of Steven Jobs, if not the excitement, passion, and sense of destiny surrounding the technology boon and those who made it happen, and if you're curious about the man behind the empire, you'll find this a serviceable read. If you're looking for quality literary fiction, keep looking. One segment I hope is indeed fiction is that where the lead character has sex with a 16 year old---statutory rape in most states. As an aside, what is particularly interesting is that the Jobs character watches an old video of his girlfriend as a child commercial star whenever they are fighting (which is all the time) and then holes up and watches epic movies with cardboard heroes on his television after he is fired from the Apple equivalent. How precient. Less than two decades later, this man has the world staring into IPhones and IPads television-like mini-screens, seeking human contact, Understanding, and solace, and making us as disconnected as he was.

Mona Simpson, the author of "A Regular Guy", is clearly no feminist. The lives of her female characters are dominated by men. I did not find many of her characters sympathetic. Tom Owens, the entrepreneur, is infuriating, but charming as well. Mary Di Napoli, the mother of his child, is also infuriating, but so peculiar that you want to know what happens to her. The only character I liked was Noah, who is confined to a wheelchair. He seemed to be the only emotionally whole person in the novel. Early in the book, Mary decides to to send her daughter Jane to live with Tom, her father. For reasons that are not clear, Mary feels that it would be better for Jane to make the trip without here. So she teaches Jane to drive a truck, and sends her on her way alone. Jane is ten years old at the time. The story of Jane's trip to meet her father is my favorite section of the book. Mona Simpson is definitely an original. "A Regular Guy" may puzzle you. It may bother you. But it won't bore you

I found the book quite readable with an unusual sense of humor. There are insights into complex human behavior that are true but never so clearly detailed. California, the sixties - eighties, money, and idealism provide and interesting mix to watch develop.

I had some difficulty following the narrative. At times the author seemed to be writing in the present, then it was as if she had switched to another timeframe in mid-paragraph. Her word choice was also confusing in places.
However, I warmed up to the characters and could identify with each of their roles - sympathizing with them, loving them, becoming frustrated with them, etc. Jane was particularly endearing, and her character was well-written.
The book seemed to leave some loose ends, and that is my chief complaint. Readers want everything to come together at the end, or at least have questions answered from earlier in the story, and it didn't feel like that happened with A Regular Guy.

After reading somewhat tepid reviews of this novel, I was expecting to be disappointed with it. However, I thoroughly enjoyed it. First of all, it is beautifully written, with some enchanting and poetic turns of phrase throughout. Narratively, it is, at times, a little difficult to follow, and there isn't a tremendous amount of engaging narrative flow to the plot. But it is a wonderful character study and coming of age story.
I found the portrayal of the characters to be creative and original. I felt that I knew each of them very well by the end of the book. And contrary to other reviews, I cared about many of them. And there is a wide-eyed freshness to the book mostly through the eyes of Jane, who I saw as the main character of the book (it could be argued that it is Owens, her father).
There's a lot in this book, and the ride is at times bumpy. But it is consistently satisfying and better than most of the novels that are out there. If you are looking for a straightforward, no nonsense novel, this is not it. But if you want to stretch your mind a bit, the rewards are tremendous!

Mona Simpson's spare writing style was often confusing. I couldn't keep the characters straight and had to reread passages. I struggled about a third of the way through and finally gave up when my mind began to wander. There's too many good novels on my reading stack to waste time on this one. Too bad. I liked Anywhere But Here.