Excerpt: Teju Cole's Known and Stranger Things

Teju Cole has a new book out. Whoope! Finally! 

The Excerpt Reader has been looking forward to reading something new from this young and (very) talented writer ever since reading his excellent debut novel, Open City. Whilst waiting impatiently for a new book, I've also read Every Day Is for the Thief, a book which, to my eye, walks the border between Fiction and Non-Fiction. 

So now we have a new book, after 4 years of waiting. It's a compilation of essays Cole has written in the past 8 years, some of which were published in The New Yorker. The title is Known and Strange Things: Essays.

As a customer review on Amazon points out, 'This book of essays by Teju Cole aren’t always essays: they might be scraps of thought, well-digested and to an immediate point.' 

Here's an excerpt from the book. It's the opening chapter.

Judging by the excerpt, Cole's writing in this tome of essays is very intimate, pensive and revealing at times.

In this opening chapter, Cole writes about a visit to the town of Leuk, Switzerland, following the footsteps of renowned writer James Baldwin, who also spent a while in this town, back in 1951. Baldwin recorded his experience of being the only black person in a small Swiss town in his essay, “Stranger in the Village.” 

Being a black man himself, Cole sympathizes with Baldwin:

To be a stranger is to be looked at, but to be black is to be looked at especially [...] To be black is to bear the brunt of selective enforcement of the law, and to inhabit a psychic unsteadiness in which there is no guarantee of personal safety. You are a black body first, before you are a kid walking down the street or a Harvard professor who has misplaced his keys.

In 2013 as in 1951, to be black, indeed to be a person of color in a predominantly white environment, is to be singled out, pre-judged. 

There is one huge difference, though. As Cole rightly points out, the cultural world Baldwin inhabited was still predominantly white. Black art - be it music, literature, or painting - was regarded with skepticism and suspicion during his years as a young writer. Cole inhabits a totally different world, wherein African Americans heritage is given its due place in American mainstream culture, and black people occupy influential positions in all echelons of society. 

Still, there is a huge divide between white and black people, in the US and elsewhere: 

Black American life is disposable from the point of view of policing, sentencing, economic policy, and countless terrifying forms of disregard.

Which leads Cole to end his essay in a very pessimistic tone:

Baldwin wrote “Stranger in the Village” more than sixty years ago. Now what?

Indeed, what has changed?

Excerpt: Derek Haines Milo Moon

The Excerpt Reader is all for landing out a hand to fellow Twitter and Facebook followers and helping them out in this cruel literary world. 


Hélas, there comes a point in every blogger's life when truth must prevail over favorism, and the moment has come.  


Derek Haines (Twitter profile avows he is an "Author, Songwriter, Poet, Idiot. Never too old to Rock & Roll and vandalize words and music") is a self-published author whose writing ranges in genres as wide as fiction, science fiction, historical fiction, essays and poetry. 


Just in the last year, he has self-published no less than 5 books but we are warned by the writer himself of more books to come: "Writing now full time, there are always manuscripts in varying stages of development, but one always has top priority and occupies the current project page of my website." 


No doubt Haines has written all these books all for the drawer and mass-published them on a whim in 3 month intervals. 


Be as it may, he is continuing to write in an alarming pace (warning: his next book is still a 'big secret' but i expect it will be released before the year is over, if all goes well in the Haines writing factory).


It isn't clear whether these books have gained any commercial success, but the impressive followers span Haines gas gained on Twitter suggests there is something to be found in his novels.


The reason, readers, for the inhabitual sarcastic tone the Excerpt Reader is using in this post is sadly the quality of writing we must bear from this over-

fruititious (as in 'fruitful', not gay) and prolific writer. 

Haines' latest published novel is Milo Moon, a historical/scientific novel set in post-World War II Switzerland where medical and physiological experimentation on humans is everyday practice and where (anti) heroes Milo Moon and Mary Seaton set out to save the world and unravel the truth. 


As testimony, here's a short excerpt from the novel, which testifies to the literary style Haines employes as well as to the traits of his novel's 'hero':


Being a nobody was Milo's specialty. If he had been average it would have made him happier. But this wasn't to be. His hair was receding, thinning and had a nondescript type of mousy grey color about it [...] At five foot three he made no impression whatsoever, and was well accustomed to being overlooked. [...] no one ever noticed Milo anyway. If anyone had taken the time they would have discovered a very polite, honest and boring young man with a somewhat childish disposition who rarely smiled as there was no reason to it in his mind. 


And this is just the first page..


Reading Haines makes you think again about our age of mass-publishing and the inherent advantages of publishing with a big publishing house, where those efficient editors, sorting the wheat from the chaff as it were, come in handy...


True, The Excerpt Reader has avowed (well, at least to himself) to read a full excerpt before passing any judgement upon a given novel, but having read the first few pages of Milo Moon, i believe the job sufficed (so much so, that a thought has occurred, to devote one's time to reviewing bad books, if only for the humane purposes invested in it, that of warning innocent souls. A suggestion for the blog's name: BadBookReview).


VERDICT: DON'T BUY (Unless you already bought and read all dime store novels out there and are looking for some more..) 

Excerpt: Martin Amis's Experience, A Memoir

I've recently read the first few chapters of Martin Amis's Experience (and abandoned the memoir), so i feel a short review of this book's excerpt is quite in place. 

Amis has recently published his twelfth novel, The Pregnant Widow. 

The following excerpt is available from the New York Times (for online subscribers only, but it doesn't take more than 1 minute to register)and is taken from the book's first chapter.

The young Amis of Experience's first chapter is a young, poshy and opinionated brat in the process of intellectual and individual 'growing': he's thinking of living on his own but he's still highly dependent on the opinions, as well as allowances, of the 'higher powers'; his father, the author Kingsley Amis, and his second wife, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. 

The general tone and subject matter might not be characteristic of the whole memoir (the narrator in the first chapter is a very young and inexperienced Amis who's going to grow up into a much appraised and successful author) but reading the book's excerpt you get a pretty good idea of what it's going to be like sticking around for the next 400 pages or so, like a guest invited to a party solely for the host's amusement sake, or in order to help clearing the dishes afterwards...

Even considering that this is an autobiography, and that the author is supposed to ponder endlessly upon his favorite subject - himself, there is not too much for the average reader in the first few chapters of Experience. 

VERDICT: DON'T BUY (unless you're an avid Martin Amis fan..)

Excerpt: Bret Easton Ellis' Imperial Bedrooms

I've been debating with myself whether or not i should read Bret Easton Ellis' Imperial Bedrooms for the pastmonth or so, so when i saw this excerpt from the book Idecided I better give it a go before I say Nay or Yay.

I've only ever read 2 of Ellis's novels, American Psycho 
(i still can't decide which is better, the book or 
the film) and Glamorama, so my read into the Bedrooms excerpt 
is a slightly partial one, as i am not that familiar with Ellis's 
array of fictional characters and plot schemes.

Bedrooms's excerpt is taken from the beginning of 
Ellis's last novel and is, in sort, a return to the author's first 
couple of novels, Less than Zero and The Rules of Attraction.

The narrative point of view is that of Clay, once an 18 year old student at Camden College (circa Less than Zero) now disillusioned screenwriter living in L.A.

Given its axis is set in Zero and Attraction, the excerpt constantly refers to the characters and plots described in those novels, so a brief preparation-read will be needed if you're one of those readers who like being in the loop while the book is still held between your fingers.

The prose itself is very fluent, which makes Bedrooms a very easy and enjoyable read (if you're into black humor and morbid insinuations, that is), a good candidate for a short and saucy flight book to replace that Esquire or Vanity Fair copy (the book's 192 pages can easily be read in 2-3 hours if you're a fast reader, or 4-5 if you're slow like me.)


Other that that I don't have too much too say about the book as I fear that the 'slimness' characterizing its excerpt is also apparent in the book itself (more a novella than a novel, really).


You're going to have to make up your mind about this one. Sorry.

VERDICT: BUY IT but only if you're an Ellis enthusiast