A Little Drop of Poison

Colson Whitehead -- Apex Hides The Hurt. This is a shortish novel about a Nominclature Consultant who is asked to cast the deciding vote on renaming a small town. Whitehead is always funny, on the cutting-edge of cultural satire, but this book strikes me as a bit of a frail cousin to John Henry Days. What this book suggests about advertising, about the white-washing of history (and African-American history in particular), covered more and similar territory as Apex. It's still worth a few of your afternoons, though, and it's heartening to know that Whitehead's masterpiece is still out there in the ether somewhere. He's clearly capable of a great novel of much cultural import, and I look forward to its appearance.

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Dave Eggers -- Zeitoun. So much New Orleans in the last couple of months, what with "Treme" and Shake The Devil Off and, via Netflix some time ago, Trouble the Waters. This is the story of a Syrian immigrant's experience as a hero of Katrina and a victim of Homeland Security. This book made me respect Eggers as a writer, in that his narration set scenes without really ever getting in the way of the story. Given what happens to Zeitoun, there's plenty of opportunities where a semi-conscious reporter or even the Eggers of previous work might be tempted to editorialize or take a long shot at framing a larger context (Shake the Devil does some of this...), but the story arouses frustration and, to some extent, anger all its own without those kind of intrusions. It's a compelling page-turner while also being a shocking story of people at their best, and institutions at their worst. It would have made a great mini-series for David Simon, had he not had other aspects of New Orleans on which to focus.

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Sam Lipstyle -- The Ask. At its root, this is a novel about a mid-level administrator at a mid-level university, married with children, doing his best to achieve some semblance of happiness while still having to work, pay bills, and take his kid to daycare. Through its trunk and branches, though, it is genuinely laugh-aloud¹ funny and of-the-moment. The plot here, such as there is one, is really just a device for situations to develop; the true fun in this book, is the way in which the world drops its heavy boot on top of Milo Berk. Despite his education, relative affluence, and cultural privledge, he still can't quite win, in much the way that many of us can't quite win. Lipstyle has that fatalistic and pesimistic bleak fun that's been missing since Vonnegut retired.

As a mid-level administrator at a mid-level university, married with chieldren and etc., I'm fairly certain that what I love about this book is not the sting of recognition but the joy of shared company. Lipstyle was a great discovery to me, and I'm not even certain why I picked up the book in the first place, but now I'm going to read everything else this dude has written.

Endnote:
1. Not, decidely, to say "LOL."