Eugene weekly., December 14, 2017, Image 11

the Monkey House” hold up upon rereading as the flat-
out dystopian masterpieces they are (and frighteningly
timely these days), while others, such as “Who Am I This
Time?” reveal Vonnegut, with equal parts generosity and
dark humor, sounding out the melancholy mysteries of the
human heart. For many of us, myself certainly included,
Vonnegut was an initiation into the profound, life-altering
magic of “serious” reading, and this exhaustive anthology
of his short stories can now take its bittersweet roost on
the top shelf — the one dedicated to our most important
and beloved writers. So it goes.
— Rick Levin
The Talented Ribkins by Ladee Hubbard.
Melville House, $25.99.
Full disclosure: I
went to grad school
with Ladee Hubbard at
UCLA and sometimes
we carpooled. On those
mornings, I would
stop by her apartment
down the hall, and
Hubbard would greet
me, slightly weary after
getting up early to write,
but ready for the day.
Those early mornings
paid off. Toni Morrison
calls Hubbard’s work
“wildly inventive” and
“in a class by itself.”
The Talented Ribkins is both a romp through Florida
and a meditation on race, class and politics. It’s a little
bit Marvel comics meets W.E.B. Dubois’ talented tenth.
Johnny Ribkins at age 72 has a week to come up with
the money, stashed around the state, that he stole from
his mobster boss. Luckily, Johnny has a superpower. He
uses his mapmaking skills, and with his niece Eloise in
tow, begins a journey that tells the girl, who has a power
of her own, the story of her family and their involvement
with the civil rights era Justice Committee, wherein the
Ribkins tried to use their powers against racism. Later,
when the committee falls apart, Johnny and his brother,
who could scale flat walls, use their powers for burglary.
As the pair journeys forward, Eloise learns of her past and
Johnny learns perhaps he has a different future.
— Camilla Mortensen
Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami.
Knopf, $25.95.
Nothing noteworthy sets this
short story collection apart from
the earlier writings of Haruki
Murakami, but nonetheless there
is a refinement of form and well-
established voice that I deeply
enjoy. As a longtime Murakami
fan, I found myself worrying,
while reading 1Q84 in 2013, that
he was losing the spark I had
found compelling in his previous
writing. This sense deepened in
2014, when he published a novella from 2005, The Strange
Library, which was ultimately forgettable. Then Knopf
published his first two novellas as Wind/Pinball in 2015,
which I was excited to read, but felt was damning, like
he was growing weary and perhaps taking an extended
break. This collection feels like a return to his older style,
but with a more polished, concise form. I was excited to
think Men Without Women may contain seeds for future
novels, as his earlier collections often had. His usual mix
of oddball, marginal characters graces these pages, and this
is a handsome, hardback volume that would make a great
gift for a loved one who likes Murakami. But I would not
recommend this as starting point for a first-time Murakami
curioso. — Paul Quillen
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Eagan.
Charles Scribner’s Sons, $25.
Jennifer Egan’s
previous novel, A Visit
from the Goon Squad,
was a postmodern
pop opera that cast a
Faulkner-like web of
fate and circumstances
over a group of
interconnected people
moving through New
York’s music scene.
It won the Pulitzer in
2010, and it should
have; it’s a fantastic
work of fiction. Seven
years and, reportedly,
many rewrites later,
and here we are with
Egan’s latest, Manhattan Beach, a sprawling drama about
a daughter’s tortuous search for her missing father during
the Second World War. At the heart of the story are three
characters brought together through the fickle movements
of fate: Anna Kerrigan, a young single woman in wartime
New York; her father, Eddie, a union man; and Dexter
Styles, a mid-level mob boss who takes on Eddie as a
sort of overseer of his far-flung operations. One day,
Eddie simply disappears, leaving Anna, her invalid sister
and her mother to fend for themselves. In subtle and
mysterious ways, this absence becomes the driving force
in Anna’s life, eventually leading her into service as a
diver repairing battleships in New York Harbor.
Unfortunately, the book suffers from a failure to
launch. Unlike Egan’s previous work, this one is addled
by a certain narrative slackness; the plot would suggest
there is much at stake, but it remains something of a slog
to read, a bit waterlogged around the edges, strangely
devoid of emotional oomph. Egan is one of our best
novelists, and one of my favorites, but in Manhattan
Beach she seems uncertain of herself, and it isn’t until
the final passages of the book that her immense narrative
skills kick in, evoking a heady excitement that the rest of
the book sadly lacks. — Rick Levin
kLucky Supreme by Jeff Johnson.
Arcade Publishing, $24.99.
Jeff Johnson’s Lucky Supreme is
a pulp elegy that offers escape
from the monotony of workaday
life. It’s meant to be read in low
light, preferably at night, so that
the protagonist’s saw-toothed
warble might be heard in the
proper context. Darby Holland is
a tattoo shop owner who’s carved
out a hardscrabble niche from a
destitute background. The plot
arises from the tattoo artist’s ethos:
Do not let others take a bite out of
you, lest you want to be eaten whole. Necessary revenge and
bloody affairs follow Holland from the seedy underbelly of
Old Town Portland to the zombieland of Southern Oregon to
San Francisco’s decrepit industrial warehouses and then back
home again. Indigent paupers under the Burnside Bridge
stand defiant against two encroaching worlds: the insatiable
appetites of kingpins and the ineffable seep of gentrifying
urbanites.
In the tumbledown setting, Johnson draws a
sentimental context — a neon fever dream, a decrepit
labyrinth that only the down-and-out know profoundly.
In Holland, Johnson carves a compassionate character —
damaged yet caring, gentle yet vicious about protecting
the kin that populate his world. He wields the lurid pen
of 20th-century crime novelists like Raymond Chandler
and Mickey Spillane, and stands with contemporaries like
Michael Connelly and Walter Mosley to grace the grit of
dark streets. Whether readers can relate or not, they won’t
be able to resist rooting for the charismatic Holland and
empathizing with a man fighting to save his own hide and
the singular denizens of a grimy world. — Matthew Denis
The Others by Matthew Rohrer. Wave Books, $18.
What appears to be a
rather mundane prose poem
quickly reveals itself a
matryoshka doll masterpiece:
wacky, crafty, riveting and,
at times, dark. Matthew
Rohrer is a confident enough
writer to be funny without
humor displacing style or
minimizing complexity.
There is also an extended
list of references to hunt
down — if you like such
things —though, as one who
does not, I still enjoyed myself thoroughly. The narrator
is a publishing lackey who fooled me into believing
this would be an extended meditation on the existential
struggles of living in New York, but quickly announces
a bizarre whirlwind through a splintering narrative
psychedelia, which continuously fragmented around me
and made me feel I was taking a visual tour through a
brilliant mind.
It is weirdly beautiful while being hilarious, with
some disgusting moments. It almost seems like a catalog
of literary time and narrative, relishing in the fun and
profundity of language and storytelling. This is not a
poem, but it is also not quite a novel. It is readable and
enjoyably original and is easily my favorite work of
creative writing for 2017. — Paul Quillen
essays
The Awkward Thoughts of W.
Kamau Bell by W. Kamau Bell.
Penguin Random House, $28.
Comedian W.
Kamau Bell is a
lot of things —
African-American,
heterosexual,
cisgender, left-
leaning, asthmatic,
a blerd (black
nerd), a dad … and
those are just half
the descriptors he
offers on the cover
of his memoir, The
Awkward Thoughts
of W. Kamau Bell.
Bell’s identity is
a mishmash, and
that’s a big theme
in his book — the
intersectionality of
identity that makes us, us. Bell isn’t just a black comedian;
he’s a multi-faceted person with a whole load of other
things going on. Awkward Thoughts is a collection of
essays in which Bell explores different personal topics such
as his love of superheroes and comic books, his parents
and struggling to kick-start a stand-up comedy career. The
book functions as a memoir, and yet Bell finds ways to
relate his own stories back to the world-at-large — politics,
race relations, parenthood, etc. Although he has lived a
life specifically his own, Bell’s storytelling is so layered
and genuine that it becomes universal. In that way, this
collection of essays offers a little something for everyone,
and you’ll definitely be laughing along the way.
— Meerah Powell
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