fiction files redux discussion

I wanted to begin filling this folder out with some of our best homegrown reads. Let's start with Mr. James Patrick Othmer.

The Futurist A Novel

Lauren wrote: "its on my bookshelf!! I just havent read it yet
"

don't bother.

Martyn wrote: "Lauren wrote: "its on my bookshelf!! I just havent read it yet
"

don't bother."

martyn: i have no idea why you thought it would be worthwhile to say just these two words. i am guessing you read the futurist and didn't enjoy it, but lauren may -- we do all have a variety of tastes you know. at any rate, feel free to expand on why you think people shouldn't bother. i'm curious to hear your thoughts on the book. :)

in the meantime, oro's looking for you to help shout down democracy... i didn't realize you were anti-democracy, but hey! apparently i learn something new about my friends every day. :)

I felt The Futurist was very well written, clean and crisp, and not a wasted word. The characters made me think of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of Vanities and Man in Full. My favorite scene is the "beautiful people" posing at a night club in lower class workers' clothes like gas station attendants, hotel maids, gardeners, factory workers... to show that they are too hot looking to let these simple garbs bring down their looks.

I just pulled this off my shelf today to read!!!

it's on my shelf too. if anyone wants to read it with me in a couple weeks, let me know. :)

I'm going to read it again just because Martyn said not to.

I'm just about to finish a book and think I will read this next! Bought it last summer and it does keep winking at me!

I'm about 50 pages into this and this line nearly made me shoot diet dr pepper out my nose!

. . .Greenlandic epithets punctuated by cross-cultural gems like "prostate-milker," "goat-felcher," and "hollow-testicled he-bitch."

Hey James? I'm curious. Are you a surfer? If not, did you have a "surf consultant" for the Fiji portion of the book?

I have to say I really love Yates. He's a fun character, I love the way he handles all his crazy situations, how he deals with people, and how his epiphany has made him accept no more bullshit from himself. I'm enjoying his journey and am eager to find out where he'll end up.

Kerry wrote: "Hey James? I'm curious. Are you a surfer? If not, did you have a "surf consultant" for the Fiji portion of the book?

I have to say I really love Yates. He's a fun character, I love the way he hand..."

Aloha, Kerry: I surf about as well as Yates. Actually gave it a shot again yesterday (on fam vacation on No. Shore of Oahu) and thoroughly enjoyed beating the crap out of myself. I did have a hard core surfer friend read the book and he gave it the pinky-thumb hand wiggle thing. I'm sure I screwed something up, though. One of the first surf books I'd read was Ken Nunn's "Tapping the Source", which I worked on in the early 1980's, and I've had a fascination with the activity and the culture ever since.

pinky-thumb hand wiggle thing

LOL - Nice!

James wrote: "One of the first surf books I'd read was Ken Nunn's "Tapping the Source", which I worked on in the early 1980's, and I've had a fascination with the activity and the culture ever since."

worked on? what does it mean worked on?

Ben wrote: "James wrote: "One of the first surf books I'd read was Ken Nunn's "Tapping the Source", which I worked on in the early 1980's, and I've had a fascination with the activity and the culture ever sinc..."

I wrote the jacket copy and press release for Delacorte Press in my first job out of college. Worked on books for Yates and Vonnegut then as well. And Danielle Steel, but I'm trying to block. Tapping the Source was his first novel and was nominated for a National Book Award.

wow, that's pretty cool. it's a good book up until the entrance of the bizarre satanism subplot! were people talking about that aspect of it? i've always wondered if it was just part of the general inexplicable heavy metal repressed memory hysteria of the time or if nunn actually had some kind of unfortunate run-in with a malibu coven...

sorry to go off subject.

Ben wrote: "wow, that's pretty cool. it's a good book up until the entrance of the bizarre satanism subplot!

Agreed. I read he was a consultant on the short-lived John/Joe/WKRP? from Cincinnati show and remember reading but not loving his follow up to TTS.

I finished this today and really enjoyed it.

Things I really liked:

1. When Campbell says, "But what if you can't find something you love? What if you don't know what you love? Why not find something you hate and dedicate your life to avoiding it? Then find something else you hate, or at least don't like, and dedicate yourself to not doing that too? And so on. Until maybe you accidentally stumble upon something you can at least tolerate, or it finds you, something with three weeks' vacation, medical, and a pension, and you go from there, settling for considerably less than love. Which is what nintey-nine percent of the world does. Is that what we should do?" - This is totally what I have done in my life, but I have never seen it put so succintly! It's a sad truth, but so dead on!

2. Yates' father's idea that all you have to do is look to the highway to see the state of the nation. Again, so true! I think this statement holds even more truth with the way the economy is today. I'll be watching the highways now, James.

3. Yates' mother. Loved her. My favorite thing? "Don't cast your cynicism on my guilty pleasures." I'm telling that to everyone in my life from now on!!

It's been a while since I read this, and I remember liking it quite a bit, though I may need to read it again for a real, in-depth feedback. A few random, superficial points for now. Loved the style, or voice, or whatever. I remember thinking this is terse, man, terse. And then I had to check dictionary.com to move the word from sub- to conscious. Was a bit surprised the definition had nothing to do with present tense, but the rest was pretty much spot on. I think i was a bit jealous of Yates - I'm a sucker for paid global travels and doing nothing I guess - though this did not lead to annoyance at his "antics," shall we say. Didn't like the whore much, didn't work for me. Also, I remember not feeling the whole Greenland bit. Or rather, the bit itself was fine, but out of all the destinations and globe-hopping, Greenland felt like JP was moving Yates around instead of Yates moving Yates. The rest was pretty much awesome. Blevins was great, and the ending was one of the best I've read recently.

I finished Mr. Yates’ novel Disturbing the Peace last week. How he keeps from dipping into melodrama I cannot tell. The characters again all in a hot bother about maintaining their sanity and not worth knowing as friends - evil, intemperate, and self-serving all – but he pulls it off nonetheless. The writing is almost as crisp as RevRo, and the plot line takes you for a steady ride through the couple hundred pages or so. I’m particularly impressed that the opening episodes in Bellevue are later turned into a play and acted out in a barn in Vermont; a play which is in turn expanded into a movie of 3 acts by the screenwriters we meet in Act 3, neatly describing what we have just seen in Act 2, and more than predicting the final act.

I have to tell you, reading Yates while getting caught up on the past couple seasons of Madmen has been quite the combination. Add to that, I’ve gotten hooked on reading Dave Trott’s blog (found here: Dave Trott) and I’ve stumbled into a serious lead up to James P.'s new release, Adworld. Anything with the title “Creative Director” has got my attention these days.

I am certain Yates is on the must-read list for the writers of Madmen. The pathos under-skirting the show is pure 100% Yates.

Madmen aside, I actually prefer Distrubing the Peace after the action shifts to L.A.; this is Film Noir plus an extra unkind decade; kind of like Judy Garland by the time of her own TV show; Film Noir that should have left the party and gone home 10 years earlier:

“He sat on the living-room sofa, tapering off on beer, waiting for sleep. He was still there, awake and whispering to himself, when daylight crept through the Venetian blinds.”

mm

That's pretty weird how it got posted in two places at the same time.

. . . i'm 50 pages into jimbo's next book-- holy water! hilarious stuff! . . .an excerpt appears in knock (otherwise known as the fiction files yearbook) . . .

just thought i'd update the conversation with a relevant link -- 'holy water' lands in a few days...

http://www.amazon.com/Holy-Water-Jame...

. . . and holy water rules, so just everybody knows . . . even better than the futurist!

I pre-ordered it today!

. . .i read as a ms, but i've got the beautiful hardback cover sitting right on my desk-- it really is a wonderful jacket, perfect for the book!

nice to see comedy alive and well in publishing...