(Book #20) Frank McCourt - Angela's Ashes

A few days ago, I finished Frank McCourt's memoir Angela's Ashes. It would seem that I am a few weeks behind in this little project, and even more behind in the write-ups. It's one thing to just read something but quite another to process and come up with some sort of response to what was just read. Some books are more difficult than others to process and get your head around all together and take a bit of time to get through. While this book took me almost 3 weeks to read, it was not because the words were too dense or difficult to grasp, but quite the opposite. McCourt recounted his impoverished youth in Ireland through the literary eyes, ears and words of a child, and what resulted was a beautiful mosaic of emotion and experience. The words gushed with such realism that the book couldn't be rushed; it demanded the reader savor every page.

The narrative of the book actually started out in New York when McCourt gives a little background on the characters of his mother and father, almost opposing forces overseeing the Irish Catholic family. Frank's mother, Angela, is a dutiful woman and traditional housewife with the responsibility over the children (whose numbers rise and fall throughout the book). Their father, who cannot hold a job for more than a few weeks, is an alcoholic whose biggest fault is spending the entire paycheck at the pub. When the family is at their financial end, they travel back to Angela's home in Limerick, Ireland in complete desperation; a reversal of the typical story of the immigrant coming to America filled with hope and in search of a new life.

The majority of the book takes place in Ireland and as we read about every trial, tribulation and difficulty that plagues this family, the reader can only hope that their lives will eventually improve. Each chapter of the story only brings more hardship and a new desperate low. Despite all this, Frank and his brothers manage to live out their childhoods in optimism and making the best out of each situation. As gut-wrenching as much of the backdrop is, there is so much humor and wit injected into the story due to the innocent nature of the children and their inherent sense of hope, that the depressing mood of the overall narrative is diminished.

All in all, I thought Angela's Ashes was a beautiful piece of writing that was well deserving of the Pulitzer Prize and any other accolades it received. It should be required reading for anyone with immigrants in their family, as it provides an honest depiction of the kind of hardship and existence that would bring someone to this "Land of Opportunity". It also serves as a chilling reminder of the difference between necessity and possession. In this age when happiness is often measured by what you own and how you live, it is humbling to be reminded of simpler times when just having food on the table is a blessing.

(Book #12) Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

I finished the book 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius', by Dave Eggers yesterday and have been trying to think of what to say about it ever since. This could be the result of my mixed read of the material, or it could be because I am not entirely excited to be writing this review on a Friday night. Maybe a little of both, but I will try to remain objective.

This book (as have so many others that I have been reading) started with a 30-40 page introduction. Though I was given reprieve from the author that it was not essential to the story and could essentially be skipped, I was not compelled to break the rules of my little experiment and wound up reading it anyways. This introduction, as well as other pre-supplemental material given before the actual content, gave context to the story and was more lively than expected. The tone was fantastic and I finished this extremely excited to read the rest of the "work". The book, as it was introduced, was more or less a memoir, though some areas were tweaked, exaggerated or altered to benefit the overall path of the characters or maybe just Eggers himself.

Throughout the story, we learn of the "heartbreaking" aspects of his life, particularly the early-ish deaths of his parents and the way this affected his life and the lives around him and which started off the chain of events that unfold throughout the arc of the book. I will say that there were many parts of the book that were incredibly human and captured the pain of not only the moments themselves but the thoughts of Eggers and the realities he faced. These were juxtaposed with other thoughts or activities in his life that were less sweeping and more mundane. All of these events, though, were seen through the same filter, having been processed and worked out on the pages in front of the writer. The fragmented stories, judgments and opinions laid out in the book read to me almost like a journal or blog. For whom was this work to be benefitting? Eggers? The reader? The other people in his life? I had to remind myself that this book was written in the pre-blog, pre 9/11 era (2000), that perhaps putting this raw feed of inner dialogue 'out there' was not so commonplace as it is now.

I know this book was hailed as a fantastic piece of modern literature, that its format and tone perhaps captured the zeitgeist in ways other books of the time may not have, and for that I concede that it was worth reading. I might not go so far as to encourage people to read it, but I wouldn't dissuade them if they were interested. To me, it was a mixed bag. A collection of oft-times pretentious thoughts and anecdotes and streams of consciousness that somehow got pieced together to form a sort-of story. I kept wondering to myself as I read, "Why is this person significant? Why do I care about who I am reading about? Do I even care?" Maybe not, but I cannot deny that Eggers captured a slice of Americana that some of us, myself included, might find hard to resist relating to. In the end, I was unsure of how to respond, and I still am even writing this now. Maybe that was the point, to wonder if this writer was indeed something special or if he was just another asshole coming to grips with his past, like the rest of us.