26 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Author Blasts His Snarky Readers, July 20, 2006
This review is from: What I Did Wrong: A Novel (Hardcover)
Yo, it's me John Weir. I wrote this book! It's true. My mother told me never to respond to critics - she meant my 6th grade gym class - but, whatever, I can't stop myself, and so I just want to ask: What's all this about my novel, *What I Did Wrong*, not having a plot? Or "much of a plot?" For one thing, it has a lot of plots. Somebody dies, somebody has sex in a doorway, somebody gets a job in Queens, somebody boxes naked with his high school best friend: Is that not enough action for you?
Second of all, who says plots have to be all about physical action in the world? Can't plots also have to do with a character reflecting on his or her life and seeing connections between and among events - learning what her or his life has been about, in other words? Does it always have to be, like, "And in the end it turned out that Rosebud was his sled?" Or, you know, "Guess what? Bruce Willis is dead!" Alfred Hitchcock himself admitted that a plot was a kind of giant false lead that mattered very little in terms of the overall arc of the story. Ever see Hitchcock's *The 39 Steps*? The big mystery is, Who killed the overdressed German lady who picks up Robert Donat at a magic show? That's the ostensible plot. And: What are the 39 steps? Watching the movie, though, you realize pretty quickly that Hitchcock couldn't really care less about murderers and mysteries. Mostly, he wants to show you how a man and a woman who hate each other get handcuffed together and end up sharing a bed and then falling in love. It's kind of a (very) soft-core porno film in the middle of this supposed mystery. Really, it's Hitchcock's wet dream - being handcuffed to a pretty blonde! What does big old Alfred care about "plot?" It's a device put there in order to let us have our sex guilt-free, a roll-in-the-hay in the guise of a "plot."
And, I mean, "plot?" There must be a *plot?* What about the whole history of 20th century art? Ever see a movie by Michelangelo Antonioni? *L'Avventura*! A bunch of rich Italians get on a boat and lie around in early '60s swimwear until one of them disappears. They dock alongside a craggy island and search for her for a while, but, whatever, sooner or later they sort of give up, they never find her, and, in any case, wouldn't you rather watch Monica Vitti wander around Sicily in sleeveless tailored sack dresses than search for someone you hardly know on a cold and rainy island? The movie lets go of its big plot point really early on, just drifts away from it, and then you're free to forget about plot and think about more important stuff, like, "Why are these people so unhappy?" Or, "What's happening under the surface of their everyday ordinary lives?" Or, "Who knew Sicily had so many big empty town squares?" Or, "If you were Monica Vitti, would you sleep with *that* guy?"
Antonioni's movies tease you with plot and then wander away from it. It's deliberate: Once you're denied the traditional conventions of "plot," you're forced to re-think the mechanics of cause-effect, and to concentrate instead, and way more acutely than you normally would, on stuff like landscape, and gesture, and image, and the passage of time.
"Plot," in other words, has been proven long ago to be a variable component of narrative, not a necessary one. The plot of *my* book is hooked to external events, but also to internal ones, and I think the novel's movement is mostly about how people deal with trauma, how trauma disorients us, how it interferes with our own personal day-to-day narratives; how feelings of traumatic loss tend to rupture the linear flow of events; how your whole life can sometimes seem to be happening in an instant. To other people, you appear to be moving through your day, but in fact you're stuck in your head reliving a jumble of moments and events that may or may not add up to who you are right now, or ever were, or want to be.
Okay, and here's another question: Who wants to "identify" with a book? You know, because, I mean, some people are all, "I didn't like that book because I couldn't identify with the characters." Or, "Well, I just didn't see myself reflected in it anywhere. It was not about me." And, all right, I'm as egotistical as the next guy, but: I like to read books that are not *at all* about me. I would rather *not* identify with a novel's characters. Isn't it more fun when a work of art doesn't reflect your experience in any way? Not that I'm calling my book a work of art. Just: What is this notion that every artwork has to "include" us? Isn't that kind of limiting? Do we all have to be spoonfed happy images of ourselves in order to enjoy a novel? The novels I cherish most are books that challenge, frustrate, even appall me. I wouldn't like to think I'm anything like aging, raging-and-marauding Mickey Sabbath in Philip Roth's *Sabbath's Theater*, but it's a beautiful book, spectacularly well-written, all the moreso because it shows you an irresistible character who, in real life, you'd maybe spit on, or cross the street to avoid, or turn over to the police.
I don't think of novels as self-help manuals. I don't get upset when they show me the landscape of places I have never been, or the personalities of people I hope I will never be. I'm not saying anybody has to like my book, but I sometimes wish people would be more thoughtful about the reasons they maybe *don't* like it.
Okay, I'm crabby, Mercury is retrograde, I'll regret writing this in the morning, forgive me, my mother was right, I don't know anything, and, in any case, thanks for buying my book.
Very sincerely,
John Weir.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
disappointed, July 20, 2006
This review is from: What I Did Wrong: A Novel (Hardcover)
Weir is such a good writer it's a shame I didn't like this very much. He has a great eye for detail and a way with a descriptive phrase and a metaphor, but that's the problem. Way too much description. Every house on every block, every street he travels, an entire paragraph describing a car -- the endless details cover up the fact that there's not much in the way of plot, and for a non-New Yorker, a lot of the geography means nothing. And the material doesn't seem new -- a catalog of friends dying horrible slow deaths from AIDS, a best girlfriend, a hard time at school, an improbable crush on a straight kid -- I feel this has all been covered before. Zach, the dead friend who still haunts Tom, was angry and bitter and even Tom admits he didn't much like him towards the end. So why should the reader like him in the flashbacks, without knowing why they were such great friends? The straight kid is a cypher who happens to write poetry. In fact, there isn't much to Tom, either, so I really couldn't care about all the bad decisions he made, and toward the end I was committing the ultimate sign of boredom -- I started skimming. There were some funny moments and some witty dialog, but I really wanted to just shake Tom and tell him to stop living in the past and get get a life. If you relish the beauty of a well-crafted sentence, you'll enjoy this book. If you expect a novel to have a story that involves you, I wouldn't recommend it.
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