Old Reliable TC -- Budding Prospects

I have started, and set aside, three other books on the 2010 list that either didn't entice me into the tale or appalled my sense of decency, even for a picaresque novel. When all else fails, revert to TC Boyle. Budding Prospects was his second novel befoore his masterpiece World's End. With still some echoes of New York (the hero being arrested for an open container in Lake George) the story takes place in northern California where Felix is lured by evil Vogelsang into growing marijuana in remote ravines near a town called Willits. With two hapless buddies, Phil and Gesh, Felix encounters every imaginable adverse meteorological event that diminishes the crop and the profits. Paranoid and pursued by the wicked drug task force cop, Felix rarely ventures forth from the "summer camp," and his journey is more often than not an internal one, reassessing his worst trait of being a quitter and redefining friendship.

All the things I like most about TC crop up: the need to have a dictionary nearby as he scatters Latinate adjectives like a stoned William Buckley; metaphors that twist the corners of your mouth into a smile that erupts into an out-loud laugh; and the ability to draw out of a host of clutter those features that make a room, cabin or landscape jump into high relief. Aligning the elements for its picaresque score, Felix is engaging in an adventuresome quest; Vogelsang and Trooper Jerpbak of the California Highway Patrol are symbols of all that is bothersome about business and policing; Aorta and Vena are debauched sirens; and Felix certainly misunderstands the motives of all the supporting characters. That said, Budding Prospects does not rank among the top three of Boyle's novels (those honors definitely go to World's End, Mungo Park and Road to Wellville. The story fades like the smoke of a joint rather than staying on a high. Felix's enlightenment seems shallow, despite Boyle's command and talent in writing about it:

"For the moment at least I'd been able to put things in perspective, separate myself from the grip of events, see the absurdity of what we'd come to. If the best stories -- or the funniest, at any rate -- derive from suffering recollected in tranquility then this was hilarious. In telling it, I'd defused it, neutralized the misery through retrospection, made light of the woe." Wow.

Not Gritty Enough, Not Picaresque -- Dog of the South

Don't get me wrong, I liked this book even though I have concluded it is not truly picaresque. The Dog of the South, written by Charles Portis, author of True Grit, has several elements: a trip, from Little Rock to British Honduras; a disaffected protagonist, Ray Midge; traveling companion, in fact two -- bail bondsman Jack Wilkie and owner of the "dog" (a magic bus painted white and completely immobile) quack doctor Reo Symes; it has a quest, if only to retrieve his Ford Torino, absconded with by his wife, Norma, and her first husband, Guy Dupree. Sadly lacking, however, are truly debased escapades, a critique of a culture, and a denouement of enlightenment. Ray finds his wife, recuperating from appendicitis in a hospital innudated by a hurricane, finds his car in a junk yard, and sort of finds redemption in finally getting his BA degree. The book really falls off in the last quarter or so, more so at the end. Jack gives up on the pursuit of Guy; Reo disappears without his mother's assets; and Norma runs off again. Maybe this is hinted at as Ray never gets to see the Southern Cross. And so it goes.

Nonetheless, Portis has a talent for turn of phrase: his orders in greasy spoons revel Five Easy Pieces; his depictions of Buicks, little old ladies, cops and Mexican border guards are humorous and expressed in short sardonic sentences. But clever puns cannot make up for characters that are introduced only to be left out in the Central American ether or to be almost extraneous to the plot.

Camouflage, Not Shedding Skin

I read the first 60 pages of this book, Shedding Skin by Robert Ward, thinking it was another WOT (waste of time) and then in chapter 15, it all came together and I reread the first fourteen. Initially, I thought the short chapters were not hanging together or leading up to anything. Through page 59, Ward has introduced his picaro, Bobby Ward, and set the stage of his middle class family in Baltimore in the late 50s-early 60s, with Bobby still in high school but a flourishing gang member/delinquent. After graduating, marrying his high school sweetheart and living with her as she becomes more and more uncommunicative, Bobby hits the road. Some of his encounters are highly memorable, especially early on, such as the Stumps of West Virginia. The people on the road get progressively darker and Bobby ends up in the drug culture of Haight Asbury during the height of hippiedom.

It is a picaresque novel full of drugs, rock and roll and sex. His enlightenment, for what it's worth, is canned California EST/yoga boondoggle. While the story is predictable, Ward writes strongly. His picaro companion is Bobby's imaginary childhood friend, Warren, as in "War'n" who acts as his cautionary superego but who cannot stop his eventual deterioration into full blown paranoia.

Already I have decided that the more autobiographical, written in the first person, these picaresque novels are, the less I enjoy them. The message I glean from them is "look at me, use me to justify your being as bad as you want to be because things will eventually work out." Hardly the moral education element I am looking for.

Go With the Original Vs. The Revised Kama Sutra

Already I'm wondering if a whole year of picaresque is such a good idea. A stylistic element that I was not out to encounter keeps popping up: the stupendously aggrandized ego of the author/protagonist. It is too soon in the year to pity these writers. We read to find the universal, the piece of ourselves in the adventures of the main character or the lives of the biographers. However, it seems as though writing about one's life under the guise of a picaresque story by itself permits the author to not just exaggerate and satirize, but to extol his urges as beyond the pale.
Related to this disheartening characteristic of self-promotion is the diminution of other people, as mere foils for the main character's exploitations.

The Revised Kama Sutra was written by Richard Crasta, who calls himself Avatar Prabhu for this novel. (Coincidentally, Avatar is raking in billions of dollars for director Cameron as I read the book.) Avatar is an appropriate pseudonym for Crasta, someone who is uncomfortable in his own heritage and skin, demeaning the European colonialists who imprinted themselves on India, but nevertheless, completely enamored by America of the 1960s. So much of the story line aligns with Crasta's life: his being a Managlorean Catholic; his father being a WWII prisoner of war; his education by nuns and Jesuits. (I switched to this book about an Indian rogue when I was baffled by the language and cultural and geographic reference in Kipling's Kim; I will head back to India shortly.)

Put up against my ten elements, I have to conclude that TRKS is picaresque. In fact, it is too formulaic. What I find lacking is the turn of phrase that begs to be underlined. I was almost 400 pages into the book before I marked anything off: "When one arrives at the point where the rate of memory loss plus the rate of confusion exceeds the rate of absorption of new knowledge, it is time to give up one's quest for understanding ... it was difficult not to come to the conclusion that all quests, including this one, are by definition quixotic, and even insane."

The author/protagonist does end up with some kind of personal growth at the end, despite his dalliance with his publisher. "Fight, fight, and enjoy the fight, but don't take it too personally. Because the Other is also you, and your separateness is an illusion."

Things I liked: his insights and painful disclosures about how prejudiced Americans were to his dark skin when he came to study here; his "whimsical" and "compassionate" glossaries which I should have read when the foot note numbers popped up instead of waiting until the end. It would have helped with the references to exotic food and ethnic slurs. And the six degrees of separation reference to Fowler's English Usage, the best throw away line after reading that absolutely tedious biography of Fowler and his dictionaries.

What I didn't like: the contrived letters to Jackie Kennedy and the editorial comments of his female publisher.

If I hadn't plowed onward and started another novel last night, one that after only 60 pages, I decided was eminently "under-line-able," I would have rethought me 2010 list ... perhaps switching over to 50+ books about food.

Created in No One’s Image: Rubyfruit Jungle

What is it with me and introductions? Once again, the book I reserved at the library was a special 15^th anniversary edition of Rubyfruit Jungle, with a retrospective from Rita Mae Brown prefacing the novel. Brown, like Kosinski did in The Painted Bird, reacquaints the reader with the large social order at the time the book was written and the pains associated with its birth. Brown envisions writing a second introduction to mark the 30^th, wondering how much closer she will have traveled to her self-realization.

Brown is more transparent about using her life as the framework for her story. Molly Bolt (hear echoes of Molly Bloom) is an adopted daughter of a poor family in central Pennsylvania (Brown was born in Hanover) who relocate to southern Florida (she similarly moved to Fort Lauderdale). Molly is intellectually quicker than her foster family. She rebels perpetually against the imposition of girlish and womanly activities and traits. She excels at school and aspires to become President, a lawyer or a film maker.

It is because she is so independent, so self-determining, that Rubyfruit Jungle, I believe, is better categorized as a bildungsroman, a coming of age novel. Yes, Molly has outrageous adventures and is able to wield significant powers because of some of them. But her encounters are not accidental or random. She is directing her life long before she makes her first movie.

Brown attempts to make Molly a “picara” via numerous lesbian sex scenes. She has Molly hitchhike to New York and live in abandoned cars and squalid apartments, scrounging for food. But in every instance, Molly is the prime mover, not subject to random threats or spontaneous escapades. She anguishes over her bed mates and is more than picky at the first gay bar she visits. Published in 1973, such a plot created some stir, but expose alone does not constitute a true picaresque. Molly comes across as too iconic, too heroic to be a picara.

Trust the Tale Rather than the Teller: The Painted Bird

The edition of The Painted Bird that I read had an introduction by its author, Jerzy Kosinski, that explained in great length the initial public response to its publication in 1965. It was the height of the Cold War and Communist Poland attack Kosinski brutally for his portrayal of Polish peasants during World War II. Others accused him of profiteering from the Holocaust; still others said the story was plagiarized. Faint memories of these headlines surfaced, drowned out by my association of his name with Roman Polanski and the Manson murders. The introduction tainted my venturing into the book.

But today, while reading another introduction, this one written by John Bayley, to Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, Bayley quotes D. H. Lawrence: “trust the tale rather than the teller.” And reading The Painted Bird decades after it’s blaring headlines, the story holds up quite well as a tale.

In a year where I am reading only picaresque novels for the Slackers’ Blog, I do not expect such outlandish fantasies to be essentially autobiographical. But as a budding author, and after several years devotion to memoirs and biographies, I still search for the kernel of personal experience that affects and directs a writer’s themes and plots. So sure, Kosinski was a young boy in Poland during the War and even before that horror, certainly knew first hand about the poverty, myths, and distrust of strangers found in isolated communities across his country.

Picaresque writing is intentionally exaggerated. I one analysis that insists it has always been a marginalized, suspect genre. Another analysis claims by writing about political and social rascals the author intends to foster their downfall via satire.

Given my ten elements of picaresque writing, The Painted Bird aligns with most of them and falls into this category. I especially liked how the unnamed young protagonist, especially early on in the story, attributes the cosmic reasons causing his abuse: whether it is primal witchery, organized religion, or Communism. Clearly, initially, the boy’s maltreatment is not of his making. He looks different and the peasants label him as either an orphan gypsy or Jew and he suffers accordingly. What is more troubling to me, and at this point in my annual escapade strikes me as a non-picaresque feature, is the eventual attraction to perpetuating insult and torture on others as he enters his teen years … certainly a real consequence of cruelty and domestic violence that is much more acknowledged now than in the mid-60s. With the boy not obtaining enlightenment, the reader is left with the conclusion that yet another generation of hatred comes out of the War.

Slacker Hamagrael read The Painted Bird years ago and is not going to reread it, given the exhaustive list of other novels. She wrote to tell me she still remembers the boy swinging his lantern to scare away wolves and bullies. The adventures are highly visual and I will recall most the boy floating down the creek on the fish bladder, a dark take on Pecos Bill on his catfish.

Finally, I was troubled by the boy’s reunification with his parents. Kosinski uses the metaphor of the bird whose feathers were painted over by a trapper and when subsequently released back to the flock, is not recognized but viciously attacked. The boy is viewed throughout the story as an outsider and assaulted because he is foreign. His coloration because of the War has to be camouflage; yet when his parents can identify him by his “markings,” he does not want to reenter the family. He prefers the “colors” of his gang-like undisciplined peers.

So I’ll Know It When I See It

I am beginning to feel like the Supreme Court now that I’m reading the second book on the 2010 list and not really sure that it stacks up all that well as picaresque. As I’ve been researching the selections and checking synopses and other reviews, many sound bounder-line: either adventure stories, tales of coming of age under difficult circumstances, or expressions of political philosophies clothed in assumed persona.

Putting together a list of elements that I think should be found in the perfect picaresque novel will keep me true to my search and give me a checklist against which to decide if a particular book readily is assignable to this genre. I also intend to find some kind of scholarly tome used in advanced (or at least entertaining) English courses to see how my array of required ingredients compares to other’s studies.

So far, the two books I’ve started are both great reads, whether or not they represent the ideal rogue.

Here are what I think are the primary characteristics of a picaresque story.

A naïve protagonist
A quest
Bizarre adventures
Deprived encounters
Danger
Sex, debauchery, crime and other lack of morals or breakdown of society
Skin of the teeth escapes
A traveling buddy
Misunderstanding of events and motives
Eventual enlightenment or maturity

While I haven’t fully fleshed out each element, there seems to me to be nuances and variations within these fixtures. The hero/heroine’s “innocence” can be attributable to youth or senility, class, or substance abuse/addiction. The protagonist’s confrontations with depravity should seem random and not intentional, even when there is an underlying attraction towards evil. The story should be populated with ugly, malformed, amoral, oversexed characters, or such stock characters as witch, conjurer, priest, or outlaw. Danger should arise from the land itself, its political setting or crisis and from people who are both natural enemies and zealot enforcers of social order. The protagonist must express a personal, simple misinterpretation of events, defining the motivation of others against his/her own misguided code of ethics.

The stories should be fast-paced and highly visual and sensual. Plot can advance either by stressing the importance or irrelevance of segue, tying the progress of the character either through a logical or random series of situations, but the more random and less self-directed the better.

As the list has been compiled, the adjective picaresque seems to be applied more readily to more recent publications. I am looking for books that hold true to a somewhat formulaic structure; otherwise, the novels will seem to have been written by bad and egotistical boys and girls, eager to air their sins for their shock rather than redemptive value. Or worse, end up being tales of growing up or traveling in a pro forma dysfunctional family or hostile country.

Another Kind of Journey: 2010 the Year of Rogues, Rascals and Roues

Stretching the point, 2009's list of 50 States was a kind of journey across America, looking to find what might account for regional differences, local oddities and inter-generational traits. Any overarching theme was not something I had used to guide my travels. I did run across whole towns of unusual, sometimes bizarre, people: think the Beans of Main, the entire town of Knockemstiff, Ohio, and the medical quacks of Charlatan. Strangely enough, those surprise encounters became the germ of my idea for the 2010 book list resolution: to read novels where the main character is on his or her own personal journey towards some idealistic goal and is continuously detoured by a whole world of immoral, corrupt, diseased and otherwise disgusting fellow travelers.

Theophilus North, Thornton Wilder's late in life alter ego, aspires to be one such rogue, el picaro, but the good citizens of Newport, Rhode Island are way too tame to hold their own against more notorious picaresque classics, and North's heroics are way too well thought out, too Ivy League. But that book was a great segue and his quote about the attractiveness of being a bit of a rascal is included in last year's posting for RI.

So without further ado, here are another 50-odd books classified as picaresque. All will be novels, but intentionally selected to represent many countries literary best, to include well-known authors who have ventured into this comic structure as well as a host of books published more recently. As with 2009, although listed by year of publication, there is no compulsion to read them chronologically, merely as they can be obtained from the library or wherever. And as I did last year, if one or another is particularly bad or unexpectedly good, I will add alternates or supplements to the list.

Thinking ahead to the end of 2010, I do have expectations and a model of what I think we should find in the story that is most picaresque: a lead character, replete with human weaknesses and foibles, with a heart of gold, no malice, and best intentions; a supporting cast of characters that surprise rather than repulse; and a reconciliation or insight by the lead character at the conclusion of the tale.

For 2010:

1. Satyricon, Petronius Arbiter
2. Golden Ass, Apuleius
3. Don Quixote, Cervantes
4. Gil Blas, Le Sage
5. Moll Flanders, Defoe
6. Joseph Andrews, Fielding
7. The Luck of Barry Lyndon, Thackeray
8. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Fielding
9. Candide, Voltaire
10. The Algerine Captive, Royall Tyler
11. The Adventures of Hajii Baba of of Ispahan, Morier
12. Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol -- April 16, 2010
13. Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens
14. Sentimental Education, Flaubert
15. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain
16. Kim, Kipling
17. The Good Soldier, Jaroslav Hasek
18. The Enormous Room, by e. e. cummings -- February 28, 2010
19. The Good Companions, J. B. Priestley
20. Zorba the Greek, Kazantzakis
21. The Adventures of Augie March, Bellows
22. Path to the Nest of Spiders, by Italo Calvino -- February 21, 2010
23. The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass -- March 26, 2010
24. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller -- April 10, 2010
25. The Painted Bird, Kosinski -- January 6, 2010
26. The Witches of Karres, Schmitz
27. Flashman, Fraser
28. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter Thompson --February 19, 2010
29. Rubyfruit Jungle, Rita Mae Brown -- January 6, 2010
30. The Great American Novel, by Philip Roth -- March 10, 2010
31. St. Jack, by Paul Theroux -- February 10, 2010
32. Nightwork, by Irwin Shaw -- April 10, 2010
33. Palinurus of Mexico, Del Paso
34. The Dog of the South, by Charles Portis -- January 1, 2010
35. Budding Prospects, T. C. Boyle -- January 25, 2010
36. Eva Luna, Allende -- February 9, 2010
37. Sot-Weed Factor, Barth
38. Solomon Gursky Was Here, Richard
39. Dirty Weekend, by Helen Zahavi -- May 3, 2010
40. Book of the New Sun, Volume 1, Wolfe
41. Faserland, Kracht
42. Breakfast in Babylon, Martin -- February 9, 2010
43. The Puttermusser Papers, Ozick
44. Hotline Healers, Vizenor
45. The Revised Kama Sutra, Prabhu -- January 13, 2010
46. One of the Guys, Young
47. The Autograph Man, Zadie Smith -- March 31, 2010
48. Chancey on Top, Wareham
49. The Disinherited, Ong
50. The Lies of Locke Lamora, Lynch
51. All the Tea in China, by Kyril Bonfiglioli -- March 3, 2010
52. Last Last Chance, Maazel

Okay, I'm getting carried away but I found a dozen more picaresque from a genre search through the local library. Here's more, 2010 will definitely be a pick and choose rather than a "to-do" list.

53. Illywacker, Carey
54. Headhunter, Timm -- gave up on page 294 after several renewals September 25, 2010
55. Imperial Kelly, Bowen
56. On the Contrary, by Andre Brink -- May 8, 2010
57. Diary of a Humiliated Man, de Azua -- July 8, 2010
58. Ripley Bogle, Wilson
59. Childhood: A Novel, by Andre Alexis -- March 4, 2010
60. Meely LaBauve, by Ken Wells -- April 20, 2010
61. The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, Udall
62. X Out of Wonderland, by David Allan Cates -- February 20, 2010
63. A Rogue's Life, Wilkie Collins -- July 24, 2010
64. Mr. Vertigo, by Paul Auster -- April 12, 2010
66. Shedding Skin, by Robert Ward -- January 14, 2010
67. Hey, Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky?, by Baxter Black -- February 20, 2010