Awesome

I’ll be upfront about this: I don’t think that an objective review of the novel Awesome by Jack Pendarvis will be forthcoming in this space.  For one thing, the author is the proud owner of original artwork created by me. I’m certainly no artist, and this is the only piece of “art” that I’ve sold in my lifetime.  The author was the only person to bid on my painting at Wordsmiths’ fundraising weekend forever endearing himself to your faithful reviewer.  I think he felt obligated because my robot painting featured a quote from his book – but still…  Secondly, said reading was clearly the most entertaining literary event of the summer, so the author has created a wealth of goodwill around these parts.  I’ll try to let the book speak for itself as much as possible.

So here’s the skinny on the novel, it features a giant named Awesome, his robot ward Jimmy, and Awesome’s fiancee Glorious Jones.  If you didn’t pick up on it, the novel delights in the absurd.  Awesome, our giant narrator, describes himself as being, well, awesome, throughout the book. Here’s an example:

I am a hale man with beautiful teeth.  My doctor always remarks on my superb physiognomy.  I am strong and clean…I am at ease with the lingo of the common folk, explaining complex truths in a down-to-earth slang accessible to all…Deep down I am regular guy.

During the Q&A following the reading, I asked the author if we could believe Awesome’s descriptions of himself. The exchange went something like this:

Me: Are Awesome’s descriptions of himself accurate, or is he one of those unreliable narrators that all the kids are using these days?

Jack Pendarvis:  (Scratches chin and mulls it over) No, I think that we can believe his descriptions of himself.

Other dude: But how can we know? If he is the narrator, we have no other frame of reference.

Jack Pendarvis:  Well – (baffled look) – I just told you so.

Zing! Here are two quotes from the novel that have a literary bent and made me laugh:

When I woke up I had developed amnesia.  I recognized the symptoms of this, the most common disease in the United States of America, from a number of bestselling experimental literary novels concerned with the human condition and the limitations of language itself.

Heh.  I love those novels!  And…

Could it be argued that artistic dudes live by another set of rules?  If the garbage man doesn’t come for a couple of weeks, we all die of cholera.  And yet if Stephen Sondheim had never been born, there would be a dearth of angular melody and complicated internal rhyme schemes in the history of Broadway theatre.  I am not suggesting that Mr. Sondheim should be allowed to shank garbage men in an alleyway, but it is a theory that has been advanced on respectable litblogs.

Philosophical puzzler:  If we were to now advance that Sondheim arguement, would it make us, by definition, a respectable litblog?  Discuss.

The book itself is really, really nice, too.  It’s a little smaller than the typical hard cover, but the publisher has gone the McSweeney’s route and created a beautiful little book.  

Awesome is a wonderfully absurd little gem of a book that contains some brilliant writing.  There is also some incredibly juvenile humor that make you question if your 12 year-old cousin briefly took over the keyboard, but in a good way.  What does it all mean?  I’ll leave the final word on the book to a reviewer in this month’s Believer Magazine who says:

Critics smarter than I am may try to tell you the character of Awesome symbolizes something – maybe the precocity of America in these later-imperial days, maybe literature itself in this age of digital reproduction – but feel free to ignore them.

I’m not sure what that means either.  Which is just the way I imagine Mr. Pendarvis likes it.

Fi Fie Foe Fun

Author Jack Pendarvis, writing on his blog – Jack Pendarvis has a “Blog” – requests that you focus on the this paragraph in the New York Times’ review of his new novel, Awesome:

Pendarvis is a gifted, good-humored writer. He’s wry and silly, his language full of provocative puns, eloquent blarney and tips of the hat to the absurdity of modern culture. At his best, he is neo-Chaucerian. If you’re game, he’ll show you a rude, jolly time in a universe at once fantastic and familiar. Fi fie foe fun!

Pendarvis’ reading at Wordsmiths was a highlight of the summer.  I’ll get my own review of the book up soon — now that the Olympics are over and life can resume again once more.

Awesome Fest 08

Wordsmiths Books is putting together a weekend of events to help raise the necessary cash to keep their doors open. The finishing touches have been put on the opening night’s festivities.  Here’s what’s on tap:

Jack Pendarvis will read from his new novel Awesome.  Pendarvis is awesome.  His short story collection, Your Body is Changing, won the prestigious Pushcart Prize.  I’m reading Awesome (the novel) now, and it is pretty special.  It’s not like anything I’ve read.  The synopsis on the back cover begins:

A giant strides this land.  A giant who builds robots, invents religions, and kisses like a dream…

Remember that “builds robots” bit.  It’s important later on.

Live music by Sealions will follow.  Awesome.

And handcrafted robots – see – by local artists and friends will be sold via silent auction.  Also awesome.

I would have called it Awesome Fest 08.  Instead Wordmsiths Russ decided to go with – ahem – “Saving Bookstores is Awesome!!! Night of Awesome!!!”  And he was fairly insistent on the punctuation.

The evening will be co-sponsored by Paste Magazine and BGB.  Here’s what the poster looks like:

You know what’s not awesome?  The sticky note that Russ decided serves as our logo.  We need a logo.