I’m not sure how the stars aligned to
put two of the oddest, most unclassifiable, and contentious books in the
history of The Mighty Smackdown into the same round, but it has happened. I feel a little spent.
Andrew
Smith’s Grasshopper Jungle:
Hoo boy. I don’t even know where to start with this
one. I’m not really sure for whom this
book is written. I can’t think of one
person that I would actually recommend it to.
Heck—I’m not even sure what I
just read.
How about this: if you’ve been breathlessly waiting for a
book where the perpetually horny protagonist (and who gives explicit voice to said horniness on a near
page-to-page basis) fights terrifying man-sized praying mantises, then, ladies
and gentlemen, we might as well declare Grasshopper
Jungle the winner of this year’s Smackdown, and call it a day.
Did I like it? This is the best I can come up with. I was about the same age as the protagonist
in the mid-80s, and at the time the teen movie industry was burgeoning,
catalyzed by a teen audience that had more money in their pocket than any group
of teens before them, and by the VHS market, which ensured that there was no
end to slight teen movies with plenty of nudity (tame by today’s HBO standards,
but not by those days’ standards), lots of talk about sex, and an eventual
“message” about friendship or kindness or identity that made, I’m sure, the
filmmaker feel like he had created a piece of art. No genre was off limits to this, including
thriller/horror movies aimed squarely at a teen audience. Like Night
of the Creeps. Or Return of the Living Dead. Or Night
of the Comet. Apocalyptic
horror/comedies with plenty of young ladies taking their tops off, and the
repeated use of the word “horny” (you might see now where I’m heading with
this). Movies that you snuck into at the
Cineplex after paying for a ticket to something more family-friendly.
If anyone who had never seen one of
these movies in their formative years watched one of these movies now, they
would hate it. Exploitative. Cloying.
Repetitive. Vaguely (maybe
explicitly?) misogynistic. Sure--agreed.
But, when I watch these movies now, I see all of these
problems, but I still watch it a bit wistfully, remembering the days of the illicit
thrill of the profanity and the endless talk of sex and repetitive fart jokes.
So…Grasshopper Jungle is that.
With all its blemishes and all its puerile glory.
Better than that, of course. Smith does lots of things with voice and
character that no 80s film (never mind 80s YA novel) would have ever dared to
do. And I agree with Mr. McBean that some
of the best moments of the novel are those where Smith sort of cinematically
cross-cuts between various characters of the novel to note where they are at a
precise moment, but then adds another level of complexity by cross-cutting
through time and space (caveat: but,
like almost everything else in this book, I’m sad to say that Smith employs
this device, ultimately, too many times, which drains the [at first] novel
stylistic device of all its impact and vitality). But
then we get the sublime “Four Photographs” chapter about a third of the way
through the novel that is so poetic and moving and smart that I can’t believe it
even exists within this book. Sigh.
There are COUNTLESS things wrong with
the novel: the plot takes much too long
to get going, and even when it does, it does so in awkward fits and
starts. The use of the word “horny” loses
its charm on about page 30, but the author continues to use it as liberally as
Scorsese does the f-bomb (attempted comedic effect? a misguided notion of teen
boy verisimilitude? I don’t know. It
kind of wore me down). Quirks of
character, strange details, and plot devices that are set up for a clever pay
off, only to be ignored. Everything that
is great about the novel is endlessly repeated to the point of irritation. After pages and pages of buildup, the novel
sort of sputters to an inconclusive halt.
BUT, not before, in the last
seven lines, tying up one of the key motifs in the novel in an undeniably
beautiful and profound way. You can’t
write about this book without a lot of sentences that start with “But.”
Sheesh. Talk about the sublime and the profane.
Nalo
Hopkinson’s Sister Mine
Here’s where I have to admit to one
of my greatest deficiencies as a reader.
I don’t understand Fantasy as a genre.
At all. I have tried and tried
and tried, but my “suspension of disbelief” chip was lost somewhere in the
womb. I am the only person I know who
can’t watch Game of Thrones. Not because it is too gory or too intense,
but because I can watch entire episodes without understanding who anyone is or
why anyone is doing anything that they are doing. And I have tried. Really hard.
But, suddenly, a character has dragon eggs, and my brain short circuits,
and I am done. Done.
So, Sister Mine never really had a chance with me. I was lost LONG before we meet the character
who is a shapeshifter (I’m not even sure if I am using the right vernacular
here—probably not) that used to be Jimi Hendrix’s guitar.
It is beautifully written. To be sure.
And I am sure that this is SOMEONE’s
cup o’ tea, but it isn’t mine. Honestly,
I really had to push myself to keep reading.
And, at the end, I just had a big old shoulder shrug. I’m with Tracy here. M’eh. But
I acknowledge this is may be entirely my deficiency. So I’m not sure what to do here.
The
Verdict
Here it is. I know some of you are going to hate
it/already hate it. But I can’t deny
that it has made me think about it a lot more than anything that transpires in Sister Mine. So, Grasshopper
Jungle goes to the next round. It
has my vote, anyway. It is entirely in
the hands of Team 6.
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