In choosing to tell a police procedural from an attitudinal sock monkey‘s POV, Penn Jillette makes novel’s promise disappear:
On some level, the story has potential. Sock isn’t a standard police procedural, because the Little Fool isn’t a cop; he’s an obsessive, unhealthy outsider, redefining his relationship with a dead woman in order to give his life meaning, and in the process, reconstructing his perspective on the world in potentially revelatory ways. But the sock-monkey-protagonist gimmick twists his perspective from intriguingly off-kilter to disturbingly off-kilter, and throws almost as much obfuscation into the mix as the punchy writing style and the song lyrics and movie quotes that pop up in nearly every paragraph. Rather than giving Sock a place in the pop-culture lexicon, the nonstop referents and endless rabbit trails feel like meaningless noise, a magician’s distraction from the real sleight-of-hand going on under the table.
Rake sez: Still easily the best sock-monkey-protagonist novel of the last few years…except for this one.
Magic Hours by Tom Bissell: This marvelous collection of essays chronicles everything from film shoots to novelists rescued from oblivion. (The essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, with its portrait of raucous factions, unexpectedly reveals how soft today's literary world has become.) But if you peer between the cracks of these smart pieces, you may very well see how cultural lives are formed from the most unexpected life choices. And as we follow Bissell's development as a writer over the years, that goes for Bissell as well. (
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway: Harkaway's latest novel greatly improves on his previous book, The Gone-Away World, which I'm already on record as praising. Angelmaker adopts genre elements without ever feeling like a genre book, and it leads me to believe that Harkaway is well on his way to a narrative grace close to China Miéville's. Yet inexplicably this very fun book, which includes an eightysomething badass named Edie Banister, a mysterious mechanical object that may destroy the world, farcical scenarios involving lawyers and the police, and some unexpectedly moving moments about fatherhood, doesn't appear to be getting much attention in American newspapers. Nothing from the snobs at The New York Times Book Review, nothing from The Washington Post. And since I can't get Harkaway on Bat Segundo, I hope this Jump Up and Down mention gets you hopping as well.
The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel: Unless you're really pressed for time, forget Jonah Lehrer. If you want to understand creativity and its relationship to neuroscience, then the bowtie-wearing Nobel laureate is your man. In addition to being a physically beautiful book (you will drool over many of the paintings), there are helpful overviews on optical illusions, science, biographical backgrounds, and many vital figures from the Vienna Secession. Kandel's enthusiasm (and his call for greater unity between the humanities and science) is contagious.
I beg to differ, sorta, though it’s definitely not easy reading.
I see this as a blurb on the paperback (is already a paperback?):
“easily the best sock-monkey-protagonist novel . . . – The Rake”