| Title | : | Big Machine |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0385527985 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780385527989 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 370 |
| Publication | : | First published July 31, 2009 |
| Awards | : | American Book Award (2010), Shirley Jackson Award Novel (2009), Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Fiction (2010), Ernest J. Gaines Award Literary Excellence |
Ricky Rice was as good as invisible: a middling hustler, recovering dope fiend, and traumatized suicide cult survivor running out the string of his life as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York. Until one day a letter appears, summoning him to the frozen woods of Vermont. There, Ricky is inducted into a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard The Voice: a mysterious murmur on the wind, a disembodied shout, or a whisper in an empty room that may or may not be from God.
Evoking the disorienting wonder of writers like Haruki Murakami and Kevin Brockmeier, but driven by Victor LaValle’s perfectly pitched comic sensibility, Big Machine is a mind-rattling literary adventure about sex, race, and the eternal struggle between faith and doubt.
Big Machine Reviews
-
Maybe you just broke up with your boyfriend. Maybe you haven't had a boyfriend in, like, eons. Along comes this guy: good-lookingish, sorta funny, kinda interesting. People you like also like him. You shrug and give him a whirl. You just cannot catch the fever, though. There is something off. Cogs that don't match up or something. Trying to cram a square peg into a round hole. He becomes a placeholder. Someone to sit next to in relationship's waiting room.
That, for me, was what it was like to read Victor LaValle's "Big Machine." It took me an Anna Karenina-ish amount of time to read; I just couldn't commit to it. I probably ditched it in favor of finishing about six other books in the process. It's not cheating if you aren't actually reading it, right?
Recovering addict Ricky Rice is scrubbing bathrooms in Grand Central Station when he is summoned to make good on a promise he made years ago while he was all whacked out in Iowa. He travels to Vermont, where he becomes part of the incoming class of Unlikely Scholars. This collection of former thieves, thugs, and prostitutes are given a living space, a fancy schmancy wardrobe, a food allowance, and spend 9-5 p.m. reading newspapers for evidence of paranormal activity. This group has a long history and it's own biblical creation story. Ricky Rice quickly moves up the ranks, and is given a special assignment: Go to Las Angeles and thwart an Unlikely Scholar who has gone rogue. He is accompanied by one of the Unlikely Scholar's shining stars, a mysterious functioning alcoholic Adele Henry.
Ricky Rice is also flashing back on his former life. He grew up as part of a cult led by the Washerwomen. His parents spend time on the road, spreading the word. This dangerous crew of fanatics is infiltrated by the NYPD, there is an inner cult blood bath, his sister takes a bullet to the noggin. Ricky Rice became a bad man who ends up in a bad situation, left to starve to death and combat withdrawl in a basement in Iowa where feral cats are snacking on his former cult-mate. He escapes, and that is when he experiences The Voice -- the paranormal phenomenon that gives him entry into the Unlikely Scholars. (These flashbacks are the better part of the story. Gritty and gripping.)
On the surface, LaValle's novel is oozing with stuff I dig: cults, addicts, and the supernatural. But much like making soup out of Cool Ranch Doritos, Ginger Cookies, Smoked Gouda, and Jelly Bellys in a Coke Cola broth, it just wasn't right. -
For the first 200 or so pages, Big Machine was my favorite book of the year. It's smart, it's really fucking funny, the world I was pulled into was fascinating and weird and utterly believable, even as it was absurd and playful. And I loved the narrator. Ricky Rice is probably one of the best voices to come out of literature in the last...oh, ever probably. The prose here is stunning, smart, beautiful, and funny in the way that I want it to be:
"This guy was no bigger than a bunion" (32).
"Taking heroin is like sinking into a tapioca hammock" (64).
"Seeing America by bus is like touring the Louvre in a Porta Potti" (250).
"She couldn't have been older than me. Thirty-eight or thirty-nine. And her thighs were so thick that she wobbled when she walked. Now, let me say that I don't mean this an insult. In fact, I mean it as the highest compliment. She was shaped like a bowling pin. The kind of figure that makes a man like me feel vigorous. And if I hadn't seen her at the Washburn Library, I would've asked that thick little woman on a date" (56).
And what I love about this book is that it's still very sad, too, and the emotions are raw. Many terrible things happen, and the action doesn't exclude meditation or reflection or lyricism.
Alas, I must give Big Machine 4 and not 5 stars because I didn't love the direction it took in the last quarter. I wasn't into the turn to the supernatural. Really, I could've stayed in the Washburn Library the whole time and taken the cult history and the feral cats along with me. The final hijinks were just too nutty for me. I will say, however, that I admired that LaValle went wild with this novel. He just did what he wanted to. He's a brave writer, this guy. -
"Horror fiction at its best is in the business of pushing back the barriers, or risking the absurd in order to reach the sublime.”–Ramsey Campbell (from the foreword of Alan Moore’s SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING, book 1)
I need to go back and amend my top 10 books of 2009 list and put Victor LaValle’s amazing and brilliant BIG MACHINE at number one. I mean, compare BIG MACHINE to the pile of steaming mediocrity of some of the ‘big’ books (big= media hype, buzz, and more buzz) I’ve been reading lately which feature lazy writing, slapdash characters, and…well, before I get sidetracked complaining about the overhyped and the supremely-mediocre, let me lavish big love on Victor’s book.
Some plot stuff: Ricky Rice is a middle-aged heroin addict and janitor at a bus station. One particularly disgusting morning he receives a mysterious letter with a bus ticket and the message: “You made promise in Cedar Rapids in 2002. Time to honor it.” Ricky goes, the bus drops in him the wilds of Vermont where he’s taken to a remote compound of cottages and a main library/building. There are other addicts and criminals there too. The comprise the “unlikely scholars.” A group of rag-tag paranormal investigators, searching for evidence or record of The Voice in daily newspapers. The Voice may or may not be divine. The Voice may or may not be something to be feared.
From there, cross country craziness ensues, with cults, serial killers, terrorist bombings, monsters (or are they?), creepy sewers and tunnels, and genuinely funny, smart, and human characters and dialogue.
Victor revels and rolls around in so many of the 80s big horror tropes and cliches, but he does it so smartly and effectively, with plot twists and characters’ pasts overlapping, intertwining, and muddying both perception and reality. Victor is brave and audacious enough to push toward the absurd, and then go sprinting right past it. There are scenes in this book that literally made me say, “No way,” out loud. I never do that.
The result is this wonderfully weird, funny, and genuinely creepy book. It’s about all our lives, the irrational hope of a voice and a plan being there to listen to and to guide us, and the fear that if we could actually listen to it and understand it, it still would sound like the white noise of our everyday existence: cruel and totally insane, but still, somehow, a little bit wonderful.
Victor gets bonus geek points from me for quoting from Carpenter’s “The Thing” in his epigraph and then thanking Bad Brains, Shirley Jackson, T E D Klein, Stephen King, and Ambrose Bierce in the acknowledgments. -
If you had a really important job that you needed done, a critical mission that the entire fate of your life’s work depended on, would you send a 40 year-old ex-heroin junkie with a bad leg out to take care of it? No? Neither would I. Ricky Rice might have saved himself some serious trouble if he simply asked, “Why me?”
As a child Ricky’s family had been part of a cult led by three women in Queens, and he later grew up to be an addict. Now clean he has been working as a janitor in a bus station when gets a letter referencing an event from his past and a bus ticket to Vermont. When Ricky gets there he finds that he has been recruited to the Washburn Library to be one of their Unlikely Scholars.
The Library is isolated in a rural area, and each of the new Unlikely Scholars gets their own cabin stocked with groceries and a new, if slightly dated, wardrobe. They are all black men and women with shady backgrounds of one kind or another that hit rock bottom at some point in their lives. Their new job is to go through newspapers, looking for odd stories that indicate some kind of supernatural happenings and reporting them to the Dean.
Grateful for the new life, Ricky dedicates himself to the work, even if he doesn’t really understand why they’re doing it. Of course, like most former addicts, he still has a desire to shoot up some of the old smackity-smack and has some heroin hidden in his cabin. Eventually, The Dean explains the history and purpose of the Library and sends Ricky out on a critical mission to stop a former Unlikely Scholar who has gone rogue.
Victor LaValle was nominated for a PEN/Faulkner award for his previous novel so what we have here is a serious writer of capital-L Literature doing a sci-fi/ supernatural genre novel, and the results are mixed.
I loved the overall concept of the novel, and LaValle is a very good writer. However, he chose to tell the story as a combo of Ricky’s present and flashbacks to his history as a child in a cult and as a junkie. If done well, this can be used to deliver big twists late in the book as a character’s current behavior and circumstances are explained via big reveals in their pasts.
However, by keeping the circumstances and mission of even the Library vague until we’re well into the book, and by having Ricky be a clueless bystander who is just going along with everything, we don’t really know the stakes or the full scope of what’s going on until we’re well into the action. That’s the problem with doing a story like this and withholding information until later. If we don’t know what the ground rules are, how can we be shocked or surprised at what follows?
The whole thing seemed kind of like something that would happen if Chuck Palahniuk wrote up a story idea from Neil Gaimen. Good idea and some solid writing here, but saving the big reveals until very late in the book kept me uninvolved and puzzled by the plot.
Random Thoughts
*I liked that the Washburn Library has resources, but they aren’t infinite. Their computers are refurbished, office supplies are in short supply, and they have to use the bus or fly coach, etc. It added a different twist on the idea we usually get when some kind of mysterious large organization is introduced.
*It seemed odd that even though the story is set around 2005, that the Unlikely Scholars use print newspapers and never even mention Google in their work. They’re supposed to have a tight budget, but considering how little reporting is done on minor local stories by print journalism these days, and the cost of newspaper subscriptions, you’d think it’d be cheaper and more efficient for them to troll the net for news.
*Despite all evil crap that happens, living in a remote fully-stocked cabin next to a large library while trolling news for odd stories seems like a dream job to me.
*I got a good chuckle when one character refers to the Unlikely Scholars as ‘spiritual X-Men’. -
Essentially you either get magical realism or you don't. I am the latter. So, I didn't really get this book. But the writing is so good and the protagonist is so amazingly written and realized, that I didn't entirely mind. Ricky Rice's back story was so interesting it would have made a fabulous book on its own. Instead, he is dropped into a really strange (but utterly original) story about a mysterious "research" organization staffed by former junkies and criminals that are looking for messages from God. Maybe. The story gets weirder until you finally realize the end is not going to be able to wrap things up to your satisfaction if you are looking for any kind of logical conclusion. Specifically, when I read what really happened to Ricky in Cedar Rapids that changed his life, I knew the end couldn't possibly make sense but I liked the writing so much I plowed ahead. The last 30 pages--well, you'll either get it and probably love it or you'll just be completely befuddled. I give LaValle props for at least trying to give the story some kind of satisfactory conclusion instead of ending with the equivalent of "..and it was a big old freaky mess of nonsense. The end."
I would like to give Lavalle another whirl as a writer someday. But he'd have to abandon magical/symbolic tropes for that to happen. His writing, pathos and characters are what kept me reading this story. -
Victor Lavelle’s Big Machine leaves me grasping for comparisons. I’m reminded of Chicago’s Reckless Records. Years back someone working at the store started stickering new releases with commentary like “a mix of Throbbing Gristle and Teenage Fanclub with some early Yes influence.” I never had any idea of what those stickers meant, honestly, but they became a Reckless tradition that still, to my knowledge, exists today. I don’t know. I haven’t been to Reckless in a good six months.
Anyway, Big Machine is a wild novel by a young (from his jacket pic, anyway) author with great talent and promise. Victor LaValle writes like he’s on the subway and he’s got to get down a great story before the train arrives at his stop. Big Machine is about an ex-heroin addict who finds a cryptic invitation to an empty library in rural Vermont. He’d blow off the invitation but the letter references an event in his past of which no one else should know and his existence as a bus station janitor isn’t much to leave behind. Over the next year he encounters modern prophets, swamp ghosts, unlikely scholars, and questions of faith, doubt, and the presence of good and evil in the world. His childhood in an NYC tenement cult haunts him on his travels and becomes part of an alternate plotline connecting his past with the present.
I would say I’ve never read anything like this, but I’m going to pull a Reckless and say LaVelle reads like a black Murakami (someone on the cover blurbs references Murakami as well) mixed with Vonnegut, Boogie Down Productions, and A Tribe Called Quest. Strands of magical realism meld well with flophouse hotels and the stench of desperation combined with an invisible hope. Ok, Big Machine could probably use a tighter edit but the last fifty pages kept me up way later than I wanted to be in the middle of the week because I wasn’t going to leave the finish for the next day. LaVelle writes courageously and with the passion of a former nerdy kid who refuses to write a bad book. I’m looking forward to his next one.
edit: I just read the GR blurb for this book and they mention both Murakami and the faith/doubt thing. I swear to God I didn't read that first. I swear. -
This is one of those books that cries "orphan" and so leads reviewers to cast about for possible ancestries. The back cover of the book itself sports three. "Gabriel Garcia Marquez mixed with Edgar Allan Poe, but more than that," writes critic Mos Def. "If the literary gods mixed together Haruki Murakami and Ralph Ellison... the result would be" Big Machine, says Anthony Doerr. "If Hieronymous Bosch and Lenny Bruce got knocked up by a woman with a large and compassionate heart, they might have brought forth Big Machine," is the opinion of Amy Bloom.
A piece in the The Nation magazine offers yet another improbable genealogy: "If Thomas Paine and Stephen King had collaborated across time on a novel, they might well have produced this book" (John Nichols).
I couldn't really get further than halfway through, myself; it was intriguing but just didn't really hold my attention. But in the spirit of the reviews I've just quoted, here are a few more suggested lineages:
1) A materialist slapstick of the aetherial realm produced, who knows how, by Emanuel Swedenborg and the Marx Brothers (Groucho and Karl).
2) If Mme. Blavatsky has made herself present to James Ellroy in a seance, with an assist from Caspar the Friendly Ghost, this book is what the ouija board would have spelled out.
3) If you came across a palimpsest on which Zora Neale Hurston had over-written a variant of the canonical text of Dionysius the Pseudo-Aereopagyte's Celestial Hierarchies, Big Machine would have been what you picked out laboriously, one letter at a time.
4) If the National Inquirer had paid Cornell West to make a hip-hop adaptation of Moby-Dick, Big Machine would have been the story behind the headline "This Book Turned My Son Into an Olive."
5) If Max Miller, the cheeky chappy, had encountered Iris Murdoch on a narrow bridge, and hadn't known whether to block her passage or toss himself off, their conversation would have been this book.
I hereby invite further speculations as to the conception of Big Machine.... -
I seek exquisite, heralding, concise, quantum, stealth stories (reality fiction) to coin my phrase. Plotting and sub-plotting needs to jettison me into outer space and plummet me into hell. I won't be bothered with menial, mundane situations and tongue-wagging dialog. Dull and tedious characters kill the story and bury my interest. Am I asking too much from a writer? Hell no! Time is precious and words manipulate.
Accost me with exhilarating and electrifying characters. You say that's too difficult? Then you shouldn't write. Thrill me with stupefying and invigorating plotting. Not possible for you? Don't write at all. Accost me and thrill me and I'll follow every word you write, every scintillating character you create and every brilliant plot you throw at me. Please, just dazzle me and I'll be your devotee.
As for the Big Machine, none of the above took place for me. I have nothing against Victor LaValle, the author, I'm sure he's a fine individual. I just felt the Big Machine failed with its wordiness, silly unstimulated characters and plotting run-a-muck...
Please, thrill and delight me with skill and proficiency in your novel. -
A book that grew aggravating as it attempted too much...plots and sub-plots and awkward time shifts.
In the end, two swamp devils (or angels) rise to try to direct (or mis-direct) two unlikely and unlikable central characters to do something that by the last 50 pages I did not care about.
The first 1/2 is very engaging and thus pulls you in and I felt committed to finishing the novel at that point. But the plot twisted and turned and characters were introduced that I had no idea why they were in the book.
Just loosely structured and winding....I'm off to another now with some relief. -
I actually quite enjoyed this one -- above all, LaValle has a unique voice, his work is original (thank you), and he is one of my favorite storytellers. The man gets his points across, with serious things to say wrapped up a rather convoluted tale, and his work is definitely worth reading.
In chapter three of this book, there is a bus passenger who is "three-quarters bum" standing in the aisle yelling at his fellow passengers, telling them that there's a fight going on in the country -- a fight about "faith, people. Faith and belief." Before he gets booted off this bus, he has one final thing to say which is this:
"To be an American is to be a believer!...But y'all don't even understand what you believe in."
This one line sets up one of the most offbeat but finest novels I've read this year.
Plot, etc. with no spoilers can be found at my
reading journal; otherwise, just continue on.
What starts out sounding like a sort of Dan Brownish kind of story premise quickly moves into, as one of the book cover blurbs says, a "mind-rattling mystery about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us," and this story with its somewhat crazy premise gets serious really quickly. Reading through, there is a LOT going on here as among other things, LaValle looks at class, race, religion and the institutions that often fail those who depend on them the most. It is a very human story, and as one Amazon reader put it,
"...it's a book that makes outcasts its heroes, and reminds us how powerful it can be to get a helping hand."
I think that maybe the author is also saying that doubt isn't always a bad thing -- while it may be the "Big Machine" that "grinds up the delusions of men and women," it can also serve as an antidote to our penchant for blindly placing our faith in something without questioning, rather than believing in ourselves or reaching out to others.
Big Machine, despite its rather strange but on the other hand optimistic ending, is a gorgeous novel and the bottom line is I loved it. It may not be for everyone, and that's okay, but there was something about this book that really tugged at my insides, making it a good one for me. -
This might sound a tad hyperbolic but this is, without a doubt, one of the worst books I have ever read. The more I think about it, the angrier I get. I start thinking about all the hours I wasted on it. Somewhere around Chapter 30 (when the book starts getting into the back story about the cult) I was tempted to give up, but I kept chugging at it anyway. After all, how could you ignore all the glowing critical praise on the book's jacket? Named the best book of the year by the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post AND The Chicago Tribune?? Surely I can't be the only person who sees this novel for what it really is, which is an overwritten, convoluted mess carried by one-dimensional, unlikeable characters. You would think after spending so much unneeded time on the cult back story that it would somehow tie into the main story. But no, I guess only a sane person would think to be so logical. Instead we get a messy and contrived plot that tries too hard to be clever and makes overambitious plot leaps so puzzling that many times I simply wanted to hurl this book into the nearest garbage where it belongs. Awful. Just awful. I have wasted my life. Thank you.
-
The name 'Big Machine' is actually a title given by a character in this story describing the corrosive operation of doubt on the human soul. 'Big Machine' is also a story that is a religious allegory. Wait, don't run away! At least just listen a minute.
It also has a lot of what could be labeled magical realism. Hang on, wait, stay, please! Fine. Run away then. You're missing out!
Ok, then. Now only us hardcore literary types are still here. Did I mention the book could be defined as a novel which fits in the horror genre category?
Great. Just great. I cleared the room. Oh, one more unpopular message to pass on...
The author is a religious man who seems to be writing only books exploring the nature of faith.
Now that I apparently am writing a review only for my own pleasure, here I go:
'Big Machine' is written by a black author - Victor LaValle. The reason I have mentioned his race is because the impoverished black American urban experience is the literary foundation upon which the writing of the novel weaves a sense of place and voice - ghetto life, poverty, substance addiction, indifferent parenting, poor schooling, religion and religious cults, petty crimes. It sounded authentic to me. However, the book moves past those major plot formations into a metaphysical universe about mental illness, horror and the supernatural. Ultimately, this book is about the desperate desire for, to me, unwarranted, faith by society's throwaway people, btw whatever their color, despite the mysterious lack of fulfillment of hopes or worse, devastating outcomes.
Ricky Rice is currently an ex-junky and a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York. He was a petty-crime criminal and an associate of criminals. He has found a very unsatisfying niche in life at age forty, but it is safe. He has seen and been through horrific things - as a child, his parents were members of a terrible Christian religious cult called 'The Washerwomen' (although he was happy enough within the cult since he did not understand any other life at the time) which ended up in the news in a bad way. As an adult, he has not had much luck picking friends and associates either (junkies and drug dealers do not make quality friendships). A horrific choice and Judas-betrayal results in a sort of religious vision which saves his life and he feels encouraged enough to stop using heroin.
One day Ricky receives a letter inviting him to journey by bus to Vermont. If he uses the ticket, he will lose his job. On pure faith, he goes.
The isolated library to which he is delivered by a huge monster of a white man, Lake, who met him at the Vermont bus station, is a place of gothic atmosphere. The job, for it is about a job, that Ricky begins is reading magazines and newspapers, cutting out the articles which refer to certain types of paranormal incidents.
He is now part of a small cohort called the 'Unlikely Scholars' - all black people, all ex-criminals and junkies. The boss is a man called the Dean, representing the ancestor family of the founder of the library, Judah Washburn, an escaped Georgia slave of 1775. Judah, who in hearing and following the instructions of a mysterious 'Voice', which spoke of being "the father of the despised child", led Judah to a treasure bag of gold in California. The Voice told him to travel to Vermont and build the library, and cabins to house the special employees who would be chosen by certain characteristics, who would labor throughout the centuries looking for other visitations of 'the Voice'.
Every employee works hard examining articles all day and sometimes night, collecting the ones of possible interest to the Dean in folders. When each worker thinks their folder is full of the paranormal stories of the type the library was looking for, they send it to the Dean. If their folder is accepted, they get a call to visit the Dean - and a new assignment to be an agent of the library traveling to whatever locations the Dean directs - to find people, research events, even seek out creatures. Will Ricky get the call of approval? Ok, yes he does (small spoiler). Will he find angels of a god, or only evil people? Is he working for a demon? Is it possible to know the difference with the frail ability of humans to understand any god's motives, especially since gods seem to use cryptic means of communicating? Doubt, doubt, everywhere doubt....
The washing away of sins and being purified is referenced, I suspect, in names throughout the book, so the question naturally rose in my thoughts about the author's intent in naming so many things referring to water (baptism?) practices. It is also possible the author is regretfully looking at sinning natures, particularly in asking what is sin, and wondering about how dubious the process of atoning for sin can be (how does one figure out if one has atoned appropriately, or for the matter, served the right god in its directives or determined what the directives actually were, since outcomes obviously may not be a reward or a satisfying conclusion or a positive?).
There also is a strong literary look into the matter of the metaphysical messages people receive - are they meant to guide, or only to spur one into decisive action? Are they actually real if they feel absolutely real? If real, and they actually are directions from a god, are they always moral even if immoral by the established rules of religion? How can one know if the voice is a legitimate agent? It matters because so many religious people hear the voice of a Someone, only to discover it leads to a cul-de-sac or a false trail.(Much of religion is internal and subjective, don't you think, gentle reader? There are all of these rules, of course, but it seems people tend to go off in directions more numerous than stars in the universe because of internal 'god' voices - none of whom seem to be heard the same by anyone else.)
I also thought there might be a not-so-gentle jab at the academic process in identifying and deciphering religious proofs (the library).
We all want to matter, be of some use and importance, and having faith in something is a singularly powerful path to being someone who matters - but is this a human fault rather than a good thing?
Below are links to interviews with the author and about the book.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/0...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142... -
“Have you ever known failure so deep, it feels biological?”
I like Victor LaValle. The dude is crazy good. I didn’t read anything about this one prior to picking and digging right in. I don’t really need to with LaValle. I know it is going to be weird, interesting, entertaining and smart. I also know that most of the time I won’t know wtf is going on or where it’s going. The only thing I’ll know for sure is that it won’t be what I think it is…and that’s a good thing.
Cockeyed gospels, soul eating cats, chaffing nipples, heavenly voices, churches made from Clay and an epic road trip with the Grey Lady.
There were elements and concepts here that were truly superb and others that felt a little forced and flat. I still liked it though. Not my favorite of Victor’s, but even that is better than a lot of guys (gals) can do.
“Don’t look for dignity in public bathrooms.” Tru Dat. -
I'm really stymied about how to begin a review of this book. First of all, I had high expectations, having heard that the people who loved it REALLY loved it, and that basically, if you didn't love it, it's because you didn't finish it. I had no trouble finishing, as I was quickly seduced by LaValle's easy writing style, a flair for cliffhangers, and swift plot. Swift as in, things happen frequently and excitingly, but I can't for a second tell you how or why. Half the time I was really perplexed with where LaValle was taking me, trying to make the same presumptions his characters were making, and almost never landing in the same place. I'd heard this book was chock-full of magical realism, but the magical didn't mix into the realism until way past the halfway point. Well, unless you think a supernatural thinktank compound dedicated to ex-con/ex-junkie African-American rehabilitation located in Vermont is in some sense magical. Weird and unlikely, maybe.
When we finally get to some "magical" the writing gets loose and fast, and metaphors I'd been trying to align earlier made themselves much more available. LaValle teaches his reader early on that his narrator is unreliable, and part of his writing style is to starve you of information, only to taunt you with it later on. Sometimes it's satisfying and sometimes, well, is that an intentional metaphor for doubt, doubt in the author who may or may not pay it off later, faith that we will be satisfied in the end, or am I reading too much into this? Is LaValle that subtle? I'm just not sure...
I am sure that LaValle has great talent at telling a story. He's witty, unpredictable, and practiced at tone. But is his theme taking his work to the next level? Is there more here than just a series of wacky, weird events? The fact that I'm having trouble answering that question makes me believe there's something missing, something I want to be reading between the lines, but can't be sure it's there. -
after: Well poo. I'm sorry that I didn't like this more, honestly I am. But it just didn't, well, touch me, as mushy as that sounds.
I mean, major major props for a wholly original, completely unique premise. A group of ex-junkies and -prostitutes and -fuckups receive a bus ticket to a secret retreat in rural Vermont so that they can become "unlikely scholars"? Whoa. After many months of "researching" things they don't understand, a few of the unlikely scholars have to go out in the field to find one of their own who has defected? Damn. Battles in sewers, some kind of wispy angel/alien creatures, bums dousing themselves in kerosene and blowing up piers? Holy shit.
So what's my problem? Why couldn't I love this? I guess I found it to be emotionally distant. I know that too sounds pretty hokey, but I can't figure any other way to say it. The writing is expansive, inventive, compelling, harsh, intriguing, sprawling, strange... but really never beautiful. And I think I need at least a glancing attention to beauty to truly love a book.
before: Not sure why, but this keeps falling off my radar. But I really want to read it! I just need to happen upon a real cheap copy.
From the City Lights newsletter:
A hybrid of low-lifes and high ideals, Big Machine runs on suicide cults and the voice of God taking you straight to the bowels of The Bay and the monsters that lurk without and within. Hard as a gun-muzzle to the jaw, soft as the caress of an angel's wing, this is the first novel of the coming AfroSurreal age...
(I'm not really sure what the 'AfroSurreal age' is, but I still want to read this.) -
This is not a good book. There were some striking passages, almost all in the flashbacks that happened in the second half of the book, but much of the story was under-described and the prose uninventive. Still I read the whole thing. This experience reminded me of a profile I read of Quentin Tarantino a few years ago (my best guess that it was in a 2004 New Yorker). In it, the director talks about his fascination with C movies and their ability to keep you just curious enough to keep watching. That's how I felt while reading this book. It hit the absolute minimum of necessary interest.
The cover is totally great. -
Does anyone else think it's weird that Goodreads doesn't recognize "Goodreads" as a word in its spell check?
Anyway, this book was kind of disappointing. I know 3 stars technically means I "liked" a book, but I guess I mean "like," in this sense, as if I just want to be friends with it. You know, I like the book as a friend. But if it asked me to go roller skating or something, I'd probably have to gently turn it down.
The problem was that it started off so amazing. The first 50 pages or so set up so many intriguing mysteries. Not to mention they introduced a charming narrator, an element of racial commentary that seemed poised to hit hard, and a set of compelling minor characters (though my favorite minor character actually came much later in the book. He was a Belgian named Murder who enjoyed butterscotch candies)
But as we all know, you can't coast on mystery forever. Sooner or later, you have to start answering questions. This is where LaValle didn't really deliver for me. The answers were too convoluted and spread too thin. I liked a lot of the characters' backstories. In fact, I found myself wanting to bypass the unreal to get to past regrets. But the origins of all the supernatural-type-business weren't quite interesting or convincing enough for this reader. To avoid any real spoilers, I'll just say something was lost when the words "Swamp Angels" entered the book.
On the whole, I appreciate the effort to write a book that is as satisfying on a realist level as it is on the level of horror/detective fiction. It was a well-written try. And I got there with the characters but not the genre conceits. Still, as Meatloaf said, "2 out of 3 ain't bad." -
incredible. i am going to add lavalle to the pantheon of the most visionary, prophetic and enchanting contemporary writers in the US of A.
(but did you have to have the bit about loving/liking america at the end, victor?) -
I'm not ready to assign the stars yet. I need to think it over. I'm also not sure that I'm ready to write this review yet, so it's likely to be less coherent than I think I usually am. I'm just not sure how I feel. But, I'm okay with that, as I think it means that I'm exercising the gift of doubt, which will strengthen my faith. My faith in what, exactly, I'm not sure. But I feel like if I keep thinking about it, I might soon understand. Because there is some bigger message that LaValle wants me to understand. I'm just not sure that I do. And I'm not sure if it's because I'm too dense, or because he's being too obtuse. But I'm questioning, there goes my doubt again, so I think I'm getting the hang of this.
Here is what I loved. I know these characters. They are people that I walk by, interact with, work with every day. And they are people that I don't think have ever been written about in a work of fiction in quite this way. These characters could easily populate the pages of all that so called urban lit. But in those books, they would be clowns and minstrels. Ostensibly giving voice to the "real life" but in reality doing nothing more than perpetuating horrible stereotypes and dragging down another generation of readers who start to buy into the cycle of self-oppression. But LaValle also avoids the other things that happens to characters like these in other novels. They are not romanticized. They have not become noble savages or magic negroes.
LaValle has done nothing more and nothing less than choose people who are unpopular in our world, and write a novel that shows that they are people. As with all people, they are nuanced, they experience development, they have dreams and nightmares, and wishes and motivations. And they are different from me and they are the same as me. And I can learn much about life, society, the country, the universe, just by paying attention to any of the people around me, no matter how I might want to label them in a novel, on a corner, or my personal life. Amazingly, LaValle has me thinking all these things in the midst of a plot that on the surface is about something much different.
So, why am I confused or doubting or prevaricating or procrastinating in my ultimate "star rating?" Why can't I say "I loved it!" or "I hated it!" or even, heavens forbid, "It was just okay?" Well, because even though all the deep thoughts in the novel have me feeling like Jack Handy, there is still the surface plot to contend with. This is still a novel that is essentially a caper tale, with a sci-fi/fantasy/magical-realism tint. I just didn't feel that engaged in the actual mystery and machinations of the little adventure the characters were going on.
So, I'll continue to think about it. And if I can't figure it out, I'll just have to stick it with the "unrankable" tag. ha. -
I would not know how to summarize this book because it feels like five people decided to write it but each time they would introduce yet another element or angle that didn't fit within the original set up. First there is a man who seems down on his luck, then he is being seduced by a supervisor with no boundaries, then he in the woods in Vermont, then he reads newspapers all day, then he talks about his traumatic childhood in a cult, and then some more stuff happens like he gets really nice clothes. Somehow this ends with swamp monsters...?
I do research for my job so the idea that scanning newspapers for stories of weird happenings and then going to "investigate" (in the year 2005) without backing any of it up with say - historical records, or interviews, or more context, or even encyclopedia entries - seemed really insulting. They may as well be browsing wikipedia entries and old geocities conspiracy sites and calling that research.
I would have been more impressed had the entire story hinged on the protagonist speaking about his traumatic past and how it makes him the person he is in the present story. Instead, he's kind of a smart ass but doesn't have any reason to be, he doesn't seem to have any charming or redeeming or attractive qualities so I'm confused that women keep falling for him in some senses. I'd skip this one even if you find the summary intriguing, just walk away and you'll have saved a lot of time. -
Doubt is the big machine. Now you don't have to read the book.
Rick Rice is started life in an improbable cult and then keeps stumbling into others. One is the Library, founded by a blind, black man who traveled with two chests of gold in the late 1700s from California to Vermont because it's the only free state. And things just get stranger from there.
Other characters who grace this work are mostly some kind of criminal or are society's dregs. At least they all have a unique name! If you like magical realism novels, you may like this one, otherwise I'd give it a pass. -
I will be reading more by Mr. LaValle!!!
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"People hear that you grew up religious, and they can’t imagine you’d have a complex relationship with faith. If you believe one part, you must believe it all. But who gets more chances to see the absurdities than the devout? An answer that’s satisfying on Sunday becomes contradictory by Wednesday night. Belief is a wrestling match that lasts a lifetime."
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DISCLAIMER: This book was sent to me for free via Random House Publishing as part of a Goodreads sponsored contest.
Author Victor Lavalle starts with a great premise by creating an unlikely "hero" - Ricky Rice, a Utica, NY bus station janitor -- who receives a mysterious envelope with a cryptic message and and a bus ticket to Vermont sending him off on a X-Files-like mission. Ricky is the last person one would expect to be thrust into the middle of this kind of an adventure, so Lavalle hooks us right from the start.
Lavelle certainly owes a little to Kinsella's "Shoeless Joe" (aka Field of Dreams) with his band of misfits following the mysterious instructions of "The Voice" and also to King's "The Stand" whose outcasts are on a good-vs-evil mission of their own. Though a little derivative, the premise is still compelling, and the characters unique and well-developed.
I had a little problem with the way Lavalle voices some of Ricky's inner thoughts ("the faint whiff of filth, like a corrupted soul, haunted me") which didn't exactly sound like they came from the unconscious mind of a blue-collar custodian, but rather from film-noir dialogue, but maybe this was intended as an homage. Later, Rice refers to a truck as type that could haul "the whole Magilla" up a hill -- a term that seems more appropriate for a retired furrier living in Boca Raton than for an African-American former junkie, but hey, what do I know. As character-inappropriate as dialogue like that may seem at times, I will give you that Lavalle definitely has a stylish and confident way with prose. For example, of a drunken bus passenger, he writes, "I'll bet you could get tipsy licking the sweat on his forehead".
He writes in short episodic chapters that are crammed full of interesting characters, great metaphors and invariably end in teasers which keep you wanting to read more. But I feel Lavelle wasn't sure who is reader is: sci-fi, noir, mystery-thriller ala Dan Brown. He succeeds sporadically at each of these genres, but the result is that the book doesn't really have a cohesive style and the narrative lacks a consistent "voice". I never lost interest, though, and Lavelle's talent for narrative prose succeeds even when his stylistic consistency fails him.
PERSONAL NOTE: I must really be getting old, because the 9pt font just doesn't cut it for me anymore. I know that larger fonts means books have more pages. That equals higher expense for the publisher, taking up more shelf room at a book store, killing more trees. But come on Random House, if you want people to read hard-copy versions of your books, print them in fonts that are large enough to read without squinting ... please! -
Victor LaValle is one of the up-and-coming (or has he arrived? He's new to me, and his website bio is evasive.) GenX black male authors (Mat Johnson and Colson Whitehead amongst them) exploring genre fiction, and it's an exciting adventure to go on. I especially appreciate the shout-outs to Shirley Jackson and Octavia Butler in the end notes as inspirations for the book. But beyond the shout-outs, I think LaValle does an amazing job of creating something out of the juxtaposition that both those authors encompass: on one hand, a taut, psychological thriller and, on the other, a sci-fi-esque, spiritual oddity.
That core strength of this work is very much the kind of book that I love, a book about the supernatural but rooted in the super-real. I am not sure I understand the criticisms found here about the reality component, as that's essential to make the reader nervous about the work being done at the Washburn Library in Vermont. Connecting this juxtaposition to race and addiction would be stereotypical in less deft hands, but here, LaValle provides a spiritual as well as a substance abuse detox.
Modern life might be full of bland, dumb, and soulless people, but LaValle is interested in exploring those who still have, or have rediscovered, their souls, most especially characters that are not often elevated to leading character status. These are tough characters, who have survived tough experiences. The level of depth LaValle imbues in them is amazing, but the way that he works to resolve the emotional baggage of that trauma is equally as amazing.
The novel swoons a tad schmaltzy/ Jesus-y in the last few chapters (hence the one star reduction), but it ends on a sufficiently vague note to counter some of the sugary aftertaste. -
This is a strange book, but I liked it a lot. At the end the author tips his hat to horror writers who influenced him, and this book certainly delves into the paranormal and spiritual realms, but the focus seems to be more on the characters and their personal journeys rather than things that go bump in the night. (Nevertheless, things do go bump in the night.)
The Washburn Library in Vermont gathers its unlikely scholars from the downtrodden and destitute ranks of former prostitutes and drug addicts. Founded by a former slave who heard a Voice, the library's employees are dedicated to finding out more about the will of this Voice. When Ricky Rice and Adele Henry head for Garland, California, they're hot on the trail of a rogue Library worker named Solomon Clay. Clay's got his own interpretation of the Voice and his own dangerous plans for the populace of Garland.
Because the book is set in contemporary America among folks struggling to get by any way they can, the author has the opportunity to examine the nature of the problems in our society. Why do some people succeed and some fail? How many chances to people deserve? Can people change? What is more important, faith or doubt?
It's a book that tackles big questions with an unusual premise, and while I didn't fly through the pages I did enjoy the time I spent with it. -
LaValle employs an old trick: the "to be continued" zinger. The chapters are between 3 and 8 pages long, and the end of nearly every chapter contains a seat-gripping one-liner (such as "and that's when we chose our costumes"). While this can be effective, he's addicted to it, delivering the reader endless shocking, confusing, and sometimes outright misleading statements--(like the one above) to keep her involved. LaValle uses this approach, but he rarely delivers on the hype. The novel is written in first person past, so the narrator knows what is going to happen as he tells the story. The tagline of the novel itself "you made a promise in Cedar Rapids" wasn't addressed for as far as I could get in the book. Now, this is reasonable enough for me if it's one piece of many that goes unaddressed. However, LaValle engages in a form of information starvation that became tiresome by the third or fourth chapter. For several chapters, the only reason I continued reading was in order "to find out what happens." We've all been there, but when this is the absolute, only reason I'm reading, then I'm staring down a red flag. When the "what happens" isn't enticing enough to begin with, I put it down.
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I use the term "read" very loosely. I ended my misery at pg 186 when I decided my life was worth living! Oh Victor LaValle, just no! This felt like I'd wandered into one of my husband's computer games, accompanied by Charles Bukowski and William Burroughs as the only means to help me out! I can't even pick anything out as a "highlight". It was all just too painful. I've got wine now and cheese n chive pop chips so I'm all good and recovering. Tara!
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Not all the plot points were convincing, but the story kept me engaged. The concepts presented as part of the story in the first half of the book were more interesting than those presented in the second half.
