“The Worst Book I Have Read in the Past Three Years”
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on March 29, 2009
Filed Under Reviews
In today’s edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, you will find my review of Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones. Let it be known that I did not arrive at my assessment lightly. I am an ardent lover of ambitious literature, and I realize when taking on any review assignment that an author has probably sweated for years on a project. As such, I do everything in my power to attempt to understand a book on its own terms.
But this novel was so atrocious that I was forced to record a video presenting just how this atrocious book left me vitiated. If you haven’t yet seen the video and you’re on the fence about Littell, I strongly urge you to see what it might do to you. For if you have any decent literary standards, you may very well find yourself incapacitated in a similar manner when you reach the end. (I still don’t know how Orthofer got to the end, but his review is also worthy of your attention.)
One other side effect of reading Littell: I was forced to spend half a day staring into space in order to recover from the book’s sheer awfulness. You can find out the specific reasons why in the review. But I must stress that, even if I didn’t possess some modest spirit of decency, I could not possibly recommend this book to my worst enemy. The Kindly Ones still rests in the stacks of spent tomes, sullying the fine offerings of other skilled voices. I have strongly considered burning it.
Comments
14 Responses to ““The Worst Book I Have Read in the Past Three Years””
Leave a Reply
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
- The Super Bowl: Madison Avenue Misogyny
- The Bat Segundo Show: Christian Berger
- Paul Fischer: The Unpardonable Hack Who Charmed His Fellow Junketeers
- February 15th! Reader of a Lonely Heart!
- Knock Three Times
- New Review: Gail Godwin’s Unfinished Desires
- Macmillan: The New Amazonfail
- The Bat Segundo Show: Sue Grafton
- JD Salinger Dead
- The Mountain
that was truly a riveting video. I hope it goes viral and leads to a Nickelodeon sitcom starring you and the kid who played urkel.
Honestly though, it was great to put a video with the voice.
I think I’m going to have to read this one, though I usually abjure books receiving a lot of attention till all the fuss has died down. I’m fascinated by the differences of opinion, especially because I thought Daniel Mendelsohn wrote a very insightful review:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22452
You’ve totally convinced me to pick this up.
Really. What would you rather read: something mediocre-to-good, or something so shit-your-pants bad it caused a relatively knowledgeable palate to recoil in horror?
I fully expect your assessment of this thing to be accurate, but honestly, if I was the author of this book, I’d put this stuff in the press kit right beside whatever positive copy I managed to cadge out of my immediate relatives and whoever I was schtupping.
Thanks for the tip.
I saw the video. It was one of the better moments in lit crit I’ve encountered in a long time. A kind of honest sheer gut reaction one doesn’t get, because even if the reviewer had this reaction they’re rarely so blunt in their actual written reviews.
So I had wondered what book your video had been about. Now I know. It confirms my intuition, when browsing some time ago in Borders, to steer clear of that one.
The narrator is a “doctorate of law” who is “recused from rumination”? What book were you reading? The novel seems to me to be an honest attempt to understand why cultured people (whether germans, cambodians, sudanese, american) do despicable things in wartime. The question of how otherwise reasonable individuals rationalized genocide is pertinent.
good review, i thought this might be the book. i quite liked the review in the new republic as well because it answered the question of what Aue is supposed to represent that a lot of the reviews i’d read had missed and had occurred to me as a possible saving grace. turns out it’s not the case: http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=cdf618b2-f36b-49e0-a8e1-bd6bcae5f5e2
Ed, you have a very pleasant, deep, rich, resonant, dulcet voice. You ever thought of working in radio?
900 page Holocaust novel translated from the French. Based on those three things, I wouldn’t read it. I do, however, have ADD. And I’m patriotic. Patriotic in that I hate the French openly and secretly hate all the Jews. I’ve seen Schindler’s List, though. It was OK.
What did you read three years ago that rivaled The Kindly Ones in badness?
Do tell!
In the review you link to we find:
“Littell repeatedly shows how the Nazis are, in essence, fooling themselves — most obviously when Himmler tells Aue:
I’m beginning to know you. You have your faults: you are, excuse me for saying so, stubborn and sometimes pedantic. But I don’t see the slightest trace of a moral defect in you.
Aue is, of course, a walking moral defect — specifically in the way Himmler means it (most notably — but certainly not solely — as a homosexual who has also slept with his sister !).”
So, having *Heinrich Himmler* say to a deeply depraved character, “I don’t see the slightest trace of a moral defect in you” is the sort of joke the reviewer doesn’t get, then.
I’d guess the answer to David’s question is a thin novel by a Canadian author he read for the LBC.
Someone needs to give Mouschi his dinner.
Wow. You my friend are a total hack. Put down the thesaurus and say something.
I’ve been reading the Kindly Ones, and I can’t say I have a great knowledge of the Holocaust (I’m a highschool student) and I’m just taking the book as it is (a work of fiction); not being quite so history-savvy I’m finding it to be a very good character study, and generally, a pretty interesting story.
I haven’t got a problem with the narrater, he’s obviously romanticized (or the opposite, in this case), but he’s an interesting person, so I’m not adverse to hearing his side of things.
Anyway, even if you did not enjoy the book, you have to admit, it’s extremely well-written.