White Noise/The Lonely Polygamist/Tinkers

White Noise - Don DeLillo (1985)
White Noise is my first Don DeLillo read, and of course I know I'm way late to that game. I know that a lot of his work is insanely critically acclaimed, but I feel like, at least with this novel, I've received fairly mixed reviews of his work amongst my friends. Anyway, it's about time I got around to reading this, and I was stoked to discover exactly how fun White Noise is. I was expecting way dark doom-and-gloom musings, but this is hilarious, quirky post-modernism to a T. I'm pleasantly surprised that DeLillo seems to come from the same school of writing and is similarly influenced by Thomas Pynchon as David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith and the like. White Noise is all over the place, covering all sorts of themes (media and technological saturation, family, academia, man-made disaster, fear of death), yet somehow is not completely sprawling. The story flows very well, even if the structure is relatively loopy. These characters remind me of those in The Broom of the System, Vineland and White Teeth, which was very attractive to me while reading. I very much look forward to more DeLillo in the future.


The Lonely Polygamist - Brady Udall (2010)
Brady Udall's 2010 novel, The Lonely Polygamist, is excellent on many levels. The characters are enthralling and thoroughly enjoyable, a majority of the plot events are quirky and thought provoking when they aren't outright hilarious, and fundamentalist Mormonism is presented in a clever, critical and human light. At it's core it is a dysfunctional family story in line with (but not quite as messed up as) Franzen's The Corrections and Eugenides' Middlesex. Our hero is a husband of four and father of many, and in his late forties it all is finally catching up to him and he has a mid-life crisis and (to a degree) nervous breakdown. Considering the polygamy aspect, hilarity and tension ensue equally. The story climaxed a bit too early and got a little too heavy handed toward the end. Regardless, The Lonely Polygamist is easily one of the best books I've read in 2012.

 
Tinkers - Paul Harding (2009)
Somehow, Paul Harding's debut and Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Tinkers, is both stark and overwhelming. It tells the story of a father and son and how they and their families deal with their various disabilities and deterioration late in their lives. While the haunting imagery and poetic prose were impressive, they were not enough to keep me interested and I found myself getting bored and losing focus often. The several stream of consciousness passages were especially trying, and Tinkers runs rampant with metaphors and thus gets too flowery and preachy. Needless to say, I was not a huge fan.