Livability

I am no critic. I read to enjoy. Jon Raymond's Livibility leads you never quite knowing where you will end. He isn't writing to bowl you over with his artistry. He creates characters that engage you. Set aside your expectationbs and go with him to places you have not been before. Moreover, you will learn a bit about yourself because he understands the beat of the heart of being human.

Jonathan Raban wrote an excellent review for this book and for the film "Wendy and Lucy" -- which is based on one of the book's stories, "Train Choir" -- for the New York Review of Books, March 26, 2009 issue. The review is available at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22470. Here is a brief excerpt: " . . . Raymond is a prose maximalist. Although his characters have difficulty relating to each other, they relate to the reader with unbuttoned, occasionally garrulous, intimacy. To the reader alone, they entrust their memories, thoughts, feelings, landscape descriptions, even as they explain to the reader why these private riches can't be shared with the person closest to them in the story. At the end of 'Benny,' the narrator considers talking about his dead friend to his Vietnamese wife, Minh: "'I heard her walking around in the kitchen and I knew she'd be happy enough if I came up and told her what was on my mind. I stayed put though. I had plenty of stories about Benny I could share, but I didn't really see the point. Why bother?... It was too late for Minh to understand what Benny had meant to me. It was too late for her to understand that we might as well have been brothers.' "The cumulative effect of this, extended over nine stories, is to immerse the reader in a varied society of compulsive and fluent interior monologuists, who experience their lives with articulate intensity, but find it uphill work to communicate satisfactorily with their fellow loners." A podcast of Raban is also available at nybooks.com. Based on his review, I'm ordering the book, and look forward to seeing the film ...

I make my living as a screenwriter. And, honestly, this book made me think I have a tremendous trek ahead of me to get to this level. The stories (save perhaps one) are astonishing. The Suckling Pig in particular punched the wind right out of me. There are no enormous events - as the critics note, it's the slipping of shadows across the room, the subtleties - but they are clinging with me in a way I can say no fiction has in some time. Highly recommended reading.