Just Whoa: The Book List

When discussing future reads in this post, I mentioned James Hynes Next, a book that’s been out for a while but I decided to wait until it came out in paperback. And to this I can only ask myself, after reading this stupendous book:

Why?

I also didn’t grasp the plot—I’ve known Hynes for his academic absurdity, and automatically assumed there’d be more of it in Next. While there is a hint of academic pretentiousness, it neither dominates nor is that relevant to the plot. And after enduring nearly six years of academics in another environment, I’m almost glad I misconstrued Hynes’ plot and ended up reading something infinitely more poignant and amazing than academics in full-bitch mode—though that’s not to discredit Hynes’ earlier works because they are still hilarious and worth the read. No, it is that Next is so powerful for what it is—a day in the life of a man wracked by midlife uncertainties, haunted by past loves and failures, and held in fearful breathlessness by the time and place which he inhabits.

Kevin Quinn is a 50-year-old executive editor, stealing down to Austin, Texas, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a job interview. His coworkers thinking he’s out sick for the day, his girlfriend unaware that he’s thinking of moving away (without her, might I add?), Kevin descends into Austin, and so begins his day. Arriving for his 2pm interview at 9:45am, he decides to kill time in a Starbucks when he spots his flight seatmate, a woman who moves like one of his former flings. So Kevin begins to follow her through the heat of the Austin day, reminiscing about the woman she reminds him of, the women who came before, during, and after, and contemplating what his future holds should he win the job in Austin or decide to return to Ann Arbor. On his mind is also the most recent terrorist attack, a coordinated bombing of six European cities on June sixth—666, the media is terming the event.

So the reader follows Kevin, wondering what comes next? What comes next are many things, but what the reader feels most is Kevin’s anxiety as he struggles through his day, making it to interview time, wondering alongside him if the interview is even worth it. Should he just pack it up and catch an earlier flight to Detroit? Is it possible to remake his life in this city with the vast sky, where everything in pinned against it, splayed in the background of blue? As he runs through his memories of the women he’s loved, or the women he didn’t, or the women who didn’t love him, what direction should he take next? And what is this—and Kevin, to an extent—about?

Next is about falling and rising. There’s a lovely symmetry among the beginning and end of each section—if you go back and reread, you begin to see a pattern that’s descriptive of Kevin’s life and of the end of the novel. For example, Part Two, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking, begins: “Don’t sit up.” It ends: “Please sit down.” Hynes uses one phrase repeatedly to describe Kevin meeting a new reality as he makes his way through the hot Austin day (and giving away the phrase, I believe, would ruin the book). What Hynes has created are lovely linkages, hidden until the end when the novel trips you and you realize what you’ve been reading all this time. It makes you pause, think, wake up in the middle of the night, and then reread the last section and the endings to all the sections and then the beginnings because you begin to tease out those symmetries. It really is quite breathtaking, what Hynes has created here, and it is a lit geek’s (and snob’s) dream to be able to delve into a contemporary novel this deeply. There is always something next in Next, even after you’ve finished reading the book. It’s so tightly woven and so expertly executed—I am in envy and awe of Hynes here.

I’m at a loss to describe this book, honestly. I feel, a day after finishing it and after rereading the last section, I’m still digesting. As time goes on, I make more observations and connections and am astounded. Rare is the book that makes me dig, truly dig, like an overeager English lit student, but the thing is this: I have nothing to gain from digging except the sheer joy of it. This is the kind of book you finish, look at the cover closely, and exclaim “Holy shit!” This is the kind of book where you struggle to begin the book list, wanting to just say, “Dear Mr. James Hynes: Holy shit! And yes, that means five stars from WordNerd.” The end of the novel is unlike anything I’ve read in recent times, and I must say that it must have taken some guts to not only write, but imagine and construct.

And I will add this: Kevin’s memories of the University of Michigan, of Ann Arbor, aren’t my own—his time is the mid-80s, while my time was the late-90s. Neither Kevin nor I are much enamored of Ann Arbor as it stands in 2009-2011, but it’s still an apt, funny, and loving portrait. While Ann Arbor wasn’t mine in the mid-80s, southeast Michigan was, so I do remember Farmer Jack(‘s), and yes, sacrificing yourself to save someone else in a Whole Foods-like store would probably just be quintessential Midwestern good manners. As Kevin flits back through time and drives through Stockbridge and Mason, as he contemplates Saline, as he thinks about his drive to DTW that morning, I can say that Hynes telegraphs it all perfectly: Michigan mine, my Michigan. It’s all in there, including the inner bitchiness that every Midwesterner possesses: “A Michigander can be every bit as prickly as a New Yorker, just not out loud. The Midwesterner’s credo: keep it to yourself.”

I imagine Hynes has done the same with Austin because while I’ve never been, the city was vivid in my imagination. Buildings shimmering in the heat, long blocks with direct exposure to the sun, natives and long-term transplants gamely sweating and working and playing through it all. But it remained just as foreign and disorienting as it needed to be for Kevin, as it is for the reader, up until the very end.

Highly recommended. Final verdict: whoa.

Onto the book list:

Finished:

1) Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman
2) Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life’s Little Lessons for Making It Work by Tim Gunn and Ada Calhoun
3) Beneath the Lion’s Gaze: A Novel by Maaza Mengiste
4) Empress Orchid by Anchee Min
5) Destiny and Desire: A Novel by Carlos Fuentes; Translated by Edith Grossman
6) The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
7) Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard
8) Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
9) The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn by Alison Weir
10) Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
11) The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
12) Empire Falls by Richard Russo
13) Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach
14) The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
15) The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
16) The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen
17) The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman
18) Between Parent and Child by Dr. Haim G. Ginott
19) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
20) The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
21) The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir
22) Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell
23) Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later by Francine Pascal
24) A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
25) One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde
26) Different Seasons by Stephen King
27) Unpublished Novel
28) Unpublished Novel
29) The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
30) Carrie by Stephen King
31) Next by James Hynes

Re-read:

1) Threads by Nell Gavin

Currently Reading:

1) One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Waiting To Be Read (Already Purchased, Got as Gifts, Borrowed from My Husband or Otherwise Accessible without the Use of Funds, But Not an Assurance That I Will Read These Before I Buy More Books):

1) Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
2) Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
3) The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips
4) Paradise Park by Allegra Goodman
5) Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes
6) The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education by Craig M. Mullaney
7) Alcestis by Katharine Beutner
8) Saints at the River by Ron Rash
9) Lowboy by John Wray
10) A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein
11) In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
12) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
13) State of Wonder by Ann Patchett