This is a perfectly mediocre book, reasonably entertaining, but absolutely wonderful for understanding today's literature. Its successes and its flaws are all so widespread, it's as if I'd found the Platonic form of the Contemporary Novel. Which means this review got a little out of hand. **I periodically fall victim to an odd complex of ideas when choosing a book to read: * that because a novel is supposed to be about important themes, it will treat them as if they were important. * that a novel ostensibly about history will be about history. * that a novel about radicalism will take some risks. * that a novel ostensibly about ideas will be more intelligent than the average novel. EtheD seems to be well loved, but I can't at all work out why.* Like Jennifer Egan's 'Look at Me,' it's a philosophical novel with all the philosophy taken out; it raises very important questions (here: the history/decline of political radicalism on the one hand, and the morality of revolution on the other), but can't stay in one place for long enough to tease out that idea in any interesting way. The book's structure makes real thought impossible: the main reveal (there are others) is just what our main characters did back in the 70s. They blew up a house with a housemaid in it. Was it worth doing? Since we don't know what they did until the last twenty pages, there's not much time to think about it. I suspect we're meant to be instinctively disgusted by this act. The characters keep insisting that "intentions matter", but ultimately they accept their guilt and go to prison. Meanwhile, we're told that we have to see the complexities of the owners of the homes they blew up, i.e., sometimes you just have to make chemicals that cause cancer and sell them to people. Sometimes you just have to make weapons and sell them and it's not up to you if others use them. They're just so complex!"That's the truth. I showed the truth. The truth is complicated. More complicated than we would like," Bobby said. The novel's form also makes it hard to really think with. As with *so many* contemporary books, we have a rotating point of view, one character per chapter, with only very, very occasional dips into a more distant third person perspective. In other words, the narrator does all s/he can to efface itself. The only perspectives we get are the characters'. But at heart the book doesn't want us to think about the morality of radicalism, because that question has already been answered. Instead it wants us to think about the changes between the sixties and seventies and the 2000s. Then, we had radicals who would fight for a cause and set out on their own adventures and try to live free. Now, we have cynics who'll sell out as soon as is humanly possible. Then, we had the Beach Boys. Now, we fetishize the Beach Boys (and the rest of 60s and 70s pop music), because instead of being good consumers, we're really bad consumers (???) There is a lot to like about the book, too. The sheer breadth of the themes destroy the limits of contemporary literature; you just can't write a book about this stuff that is also just a love story--so the love story is overwhelmed by the story about a chemical company and an adbuster. There is a good depiction of the slide from Flower Power Hope and Smiling to internet cynicism and merely symbolic protest of the "being sad is subversive" or "free yourself from your mind-chains" type. There's good stuff about how nostalgia is merely personal, never political. There's a hint that the main characters' real crime wasn't accidentally killing a woman so much as it was giving birth to the idiocies of the late twentieth century. But really all of this is overwhelmed by the love story. EtheD is somehow sprawling (so many strands! so much jumping around in time!) and obsessively limited (it's really about true love). It's both perfectly historical (seventies communes! noughties vinyl collectors!) and entirely unrealistic. It's perfectly formed (the characters all have their own convincing PoV; the reveals are spaced out) and a complete mess (the multiple reveals have nothing to do with each other). It tries to write about group dynamics and historical change by focusing on individual identities and family relationships. Spiotta tried to do the impossible here: write a novel in a contemporary form that didn't stick to domestic/romantic/existential maunderings. Since Stone Arabia is about rock music and siblings, I suspect she tried to do the same thing there. Perhaps she pulled it off? I'll give it a try.* That's not true, I know exactly why: it's a perfectly generic novel about something cool and interesting. There's a place for that. More often than I will admit, I love novels that are about something in which I'm interested, even if they're really mediocre in every other way.
I finished this book and my first thought was "What the hell?" I even flicked over the page thinking maybe I had missed some final paragraph of illumination. Nope, still bewildered!I'm tempted to consign this book to my 'intellectual experiment' folder, but that would be an injustice. I cannot deny that Dana Spiotta can write and her mind must be a very interesting place to be! Her writing style is quite masculine, but I mean that in the sense that more men that women write in her style, and not to mean that I think her writing unfeminine. I found her prose quite cold and angular at times, but then she hits you with a passage of such achingly beautiful word-precision that you forget why you were dissatisfied with it previously.This is the kind of book that one is compelled to continue reading. The main characters remain aloof and half-formed, but this suited the transient, half-life that both were forced to lead. They were forced by circumstance to live lives of proscription, of flitting along the edges and never really committing to anything. However, they are surrounded by a cast of characters who are also in flux, trying on different coats for size and finding out what is pleasing to them. This book raises many questions for me about identity and the definition of self - what are the consequences of betraying one's true identity? Is the concept of a 'true identity' a fallacy, or is this book a prime example of how the conscious casting aside of identity leads to malignant dissatisfaction? Can one hide from oneself, re-invent oneself, or does the truth ultimately burst from one's pores? How much of the journey of self-discovery and growth predetermined?Perhaps I am not hard-wired to fully understand a book like this, but I became reconciled to never fully entering a state of knowledge and understanding, of flitting from shadow to shadow with Spiotta's characters. Life in the half-light isn't so bad.
What do You think about Eat The Document (2006)?
this is a solid look at radical politics and counter-culture as they relate to pop music, exotic collecting habits, fashion and general contemporary geekiness. the book works best as an obsessive's look at history. i loved the parallels between mary - the weather underground-ish activist turned melancholic quasi-soccer mom - and jason, her precocious, beach-boys-obsessed son. spiotta does a nice job of documenting (no pun intended) the way the 60's have been archived in people's memories - as an uncertain sore spot for an ex-militant on one hand, and as a treasure trove of obscuro-commodities on the other.the narrative hurries along a little quickly in parts. i wish it were a little more plotless, to be honest. the time that's spent on henry, a sickly, wealthy, secretive vandal with strange halluncinations, felt a bit peripheral to the overall narrative. and needlessly surreal at times. i wish that time have been spent on deeper character development instead. for example, there's something uncharacteristically nostalgic about ex-radical nash's may-december romance with a young, skeptical-but-ethical sweetheart named miranda. i wish their relationship had fleshed out in a more complicated way. i wanted to know more about nash's desire, etc.anyway, this is a fun look at popular culture as it relates to the left - or what happened to the left, if you'd like. and it's custom made for pop culture geeks. if you own any of dennis wilson's solo albums, you'll probably get something out of it.
—Dan
The 1970s were a pivotal time for those in my generation, so I was drawn to "Eat the Document: A Novel." I participated in my share of protests against the Vietnam War and the tragedy of Kent State.From the synopsis, we learn: "In the heyday of the 1970s underground, Bobby DeSoto and Mary Whittaker -- passionate, idealistic, and in love -- design a series of radical protests against the Vietnam War. When one action goes wrong, the course of their lives is forever changed. The two must erase their past, forge new identities, and never see each other again."As the story opens, Mary has put five states between herself and what happened. She is using the name "Caroline," and it is obviously an informal kind of name change, as we will discover later how she makes the change more permanent. And what that kind of change feels like...as if her life, as she knew it, is now definitely over.The story sweeps back and forth between the 1970s and 80s and into the 1990s, and we see some similarities between the protests back then and those in the later era. The story spotlights some characters living in Seattle, like Nash, who manages a bookstore called Prairie Fire Books, and the store owner, Henry, who seems to have some dark urges governing his days and nights.We focus a bit on Jason, the 15-year-old son of the newly recreated Louise (who was once Mary, then Caroline, and a few other reinvented selves). From Jason's point of view, we see that he is struggling with what he feels are secrets his mother is keeping. He senses something.Will Jason discover Mary's past? Will Nash and Mary connect at some point? Who is Nash? Mary/Louise's movements through the 1970s and onward have brought her to Washington, closer to what is happening in Seattle.As the past converges on the present, we can look back and feel the flavors of the times as they were changing...and appreciate how, in the present, there is still something of the past that lingers. A captivating read that kept my interest, except for a few chapters that introduced some of the 1990s characters. 4.0 stars.
—Laurel-Rain
This is a fabulous novel that compares youth culture and activism now versus the late 1960's when war raged in Vietnam. There is a wealth of observations I found accurate and revealing. Spiotta is a gifted writer who is skilled at revealing truths in poetic language. She uses her ability as a novelist to impart important American history, the continuing (one hopes) struggle against corporate hegemony, through the life experiences of characters we care deeply about. As she did in the more recent Stone Arabia: A Novel Dana Spiotta captures the feeling of what is really happening in America, the America I live in.
—Lemar
