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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
He's got soul, and he's Superbad, January 12, 2002
By A Customer
If all goes just right, Ben Greenman should be my favorite writer 10-15 years from now. His sensibilities are my sensibilities, his tastes my tastes, his humor my humor. This is merely a personal matter, but let's face it - what higher praise can you give a writer? I only hope that he and I would agree on where his current strengths and weaknesses lie.Greenman's two major affiliations define the literary worlds his fiction straddles: McSweeney's and The New Yorker. His writing trades in the brash cockiness and occasional absurdism of the former, as well as the staid "contemporary traditionalism" of the latter - but it does this by turns, not simultaneously. This may be because the two are too disparate to be reconciled, but the impression I get is that Greenman's loyalties are simply too divided: he doesn't want to have his cake and eat it too, unfortunately; he's perfectly content with two cakes. The result is a book whose individual pieces are fine for the most part, but whose overall personality feels split. It's not so much that he keeps his "serious" and "comic" pieces separate; it's that he reserves all his insight and substance for the one and leaves many humorous pieces thin and smirky. As is the case with many first books from young writers, it's easy to play "spot the influence" while reading Superbad. Greenman has ingested, but not completely digested, his forebears, especially the three B's: Borges, Barth, and Barthelme (the last of whose estate ought to get a percentage of profits from "In the Presence of the General" and several other pieces here), with a healthy dose of Woody Allen thrown in, and a dash of Calvino for good measure. Hell, "Fun with Time" even seems to owe a debt to Yoko Ono's "Grapefruit." The more overt moments of imitation detract from the originality of the collection, but never from the satisfaction of it. Indeed, the book is consistently rewarding and highly readable. The author is eager to display his range, and the pieces veer from comedic musicals to pseudo-Tolstoy tragedies to mock interviews to celebrity daydreams to Oulipoian word games. This too is typical of smart young writers, who aim to impress and to get the most out of their book deal. There's something to be said for variety, though it does make the book more of a sampler than a themed, consistent volume. Greenman is not equally at home in all these styles, but no piece falls entirely flat. ("Getting Nearer to Nearism" - which lacks a heart and takes easy shots at pretentious avante guardism - comes close, though.) My major complaint, however, has to do with the author's seeming reluctance to give in to his more sympathetic literary impulses. Greenman is smart, he is funny, and he has a strong sense of humanity. But the last of these - which is where greatness lies - struggles to be heard above the other two. This is in part because his brand of humor is often cutting (though never cruel, and his targets are well chosen) and because the oppressive cleverness that sinks so many McSweeney's writers troubles his work too. Of the lot, Greenman seems to have the best chance of overcoming this, if he can master the smart-[butt]... in him and make it serve his literary aims, instead of vice versa. Which is why "Reeling" and "Hart Hurts His Hand," while not the most pleasurable or most successful pieces in the book, may be the most promising. Here Greenman dispenses with clever takes on established genres and hip post-modern irony to tell original (sort of), experimental, and most of all *sincere* stories. This kind of courage is what he and many other snappy young writers most lack; his work - always entertaining - too often keeps a formal distance from both reader and subject, rejecting unaffectedness and wearing humor not as a jester's cap, but as a suit of armor. (Greenman even inserts a comic professor throughout the book, whose quirky critiques mute some of the more serious works.) In these two stories he finds a way to meld substance and humor and the results, though uneven, are for me the most intriguing moments in Superbad. But elsewhere too the author clearly understands and flirts with writing that wants to connect on levels of community, identity, and vulnerability, and this is where he shows true potential. "Ill in '99," "Snapshot," "The Theft of a Knife," "Dolores," and other pieces here all contain some deeply lovely passages. I look forward to the day when he ends his McSweeney's association; his pieces are among the cleverest in the McS stable and they invariably make me smile, but many are slight and lack resonance (like "Stuck on Red" and "Ten Kinds of Things," which here feel like filler) and there are lots of other writers out there doing the same thing (if less imaginatively - who else would produce the delightful "Blurbs" and "Elian! The Musical"?). If the expectations of his on-line fans, a burgeoning cult, have not yet become burdensome to him - and it seems, remarkably, that they have not - they should soon. Whatever McS's other virtues, it is too narrow and stifling a venue for Greenman's full range of gifts. Superbad's "non-McSweeney's moments" (I realize the book itself is printed by the McS's press) point to a budding talent that's worth watching over the next few years. In one story, Greenman (or an authorial character) says in self-praise, "I have good ideas and attach good words to them." It's true. He has not yet found his voice, one to call his own, but the book is full of many sharply observed moments and beautiful turns of phrase, and the author's comedic timing is - to use a favorite Greenman word - unimpeachable. When he learns to synthesize these talents and put honesty above mere cleverness, he could really have something.
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by Sarah Vowell
