Lookout Cartridge

Rating:
Summary: Not for me- maybe for Pynchon fans
Review: A man takes a photo, then thinks he may have witnessed a crime. That's the premise of "Blow-up", a movie that asks questions about art and reality, and ranks as one of the great films of the last century. "Lookout Cartridge" is a long, long book about a film-maker who begins to wonder why so many people appear to be interested in the documentary he's making with a friend. Is this book one of the great novels of the last century? It depends on whether you like this kind of fiction. The film-makers are in no way believable in a realistic sense; most of us are familiar with independent film-makers, or, nowadays, perhaps we all *are* independent film-makers, and no one would make a god-awful film like this one (about the flow of "power", including footage of Stonehenge, of a baseball game, of people in a "marvelous country house"), and no one in the real world would fund such a film. The film is therefore a symbol, and has to be treated as such by the reader. The action is rather far-fetched (unless you really believe someone could be impaled by walking into a car antenna), but if you think the coincidences are ridiculous, then you aren't paying attention to the author's intent. More harmful to the book is the lack of personality of the characters; they are just cogs to move the plot forward. The reader never cares much about them and the danger they may or may not be in. Although the narrator may be said to change over the course of the novel, as he develops a God-like sense of understanding of the interconnectedness of all things, you may simply get tired of him, and find his revelations not worth the number of pages you have to read to get to them. The prose is dense, and rather amazing, but if you don't find the themes compelling, your head may begin to ache. This book, written in 1974, has new relevance in the post-9/11 world, but if you are looking for a realistic portrayal of terrorists and their motivation, this isn't the book.

I hope I won't be the only one to review this book, because I'm sure there are people who will enjoy it more than I did; people who like the works of Thomas Pynchon, for instance. This is a book about the elusiveness of meaning, and perhaps about what an individual must sacrifice in order to understand reality, but I wasn't convinced, ultimately, that Stonehenge and liquid crystals have anything to do with it.

Rating:
Summary: Not for me- maybe for Pynchon fans
Review: A man takes a photo, then thinks he may have witnessed a crime. That's the premise of "Blow-up", a movie that asks questions about art and reality, and ranks as one of the great films of the last century. "Lookout Cartridge" is a long, long book about a film-maker who begins to wonder why so many people appear to be interested in the documentary he's making with a friend. Is this book one of the great novels of the last century? It depends on whether you like this kind of fiction. The film-makers are in no way believable in a realistic sense; most of us are familiar with independent film-makers, or, nowadays, perhaps we all *are* independent film-makers, and no one would make a god-awful film like this one (about the flow of "power", including footage of Stonehenge, of a baseball game, of people in a "marvelous country house"), and no one in the real world would fund such a film. The film is therefore a symbol, and has to be treated as such by the reader. The action is rather far-fetched (unless you really believe someone could be impaled by walking into a car antenna), but if you think the coincidences are ridiculous, then you aren't paying attention to the author's intent. More harmful to the book is the lack of personality of the characters; they are just cogs to move the plot forward. The reader never cares much about them and the danger they may or may not be in. Although the narrator may be said to change over the course of the novel, as he develops a God-like sense of understanding of the interconnectedness of all things, you may simply get tired of him, and find his revelations not worth the number of pages you have to read to get to them. The prose is dense, and rather amazing, but if you don't find the themes compelling, your head may begin to ache. This book, written in 1974, has new relevance in the post-9/11 world, but if you are looking for a realistic portrayal of terrorists and their motivation, this isn't the book.

I hope I won't be the only one to review this book, because I'm sure there are people who will enjoy it more than I did; people who like the works of Thomas Pynchon, for instance. This is a book about the elusiveness of meaning, and perhaps about what an individual must sacrifice in order to understand reality, but I wasn't convinced, ultimately, that Stonehenge and liquid crystals have anything to do with it.

Rating:
Summary: Hard even on sympathetic readers
Review: I bought this book with every intention of liking it. McElroy has a devoted coterie of fans who consider him a genius, and this book is supposed to be one of his best, as well as his most readable. Apparently several people think it's the best American novel of the 70s. So I went into it with a fair amount of determination, anticipating the ego-boosting pleasure that comes with discovering the value of any talent that has been vastly underrated by most readers.

Well, after putting this book down several times and forcing myself to read it for page after page, I'm afraid I have to join the people who don't much understand what McElroy is trying to do, and get no pleasure from reading him. He isn't a "difficult" writer in the sense that Joyce, Gaddis, or Pynchon are difficult: the surface of his prose is fairly clear, and the occasional standout sentence shows that McElroy clearly has some sort of literary talent.

The difficultly lies in knowing where in the world the book is going. The plot hinges around a tedious documentary art film that the narrator has made with a few friends (and, like the other reviewer, I am baffled by who would make or fund such a movie) and its destruction by a shadowy party. Like in Pynchon, various connections start forming, and the reader sees the outlines of a massive conspiracy the whole of which is impossible to grasp at once.

There are several differences, though. Pynchon is funny, and even while you're confused about the situation (which is rarely totally illuminated) you're laughing from scene to scene. Here everything is dry as dust, and the narrator is as featureless as a camera. Impossible scenes take place (a man runs impales himself on a car antenna, apparently by accident) and are quickly dropped - things are vivid without being truly interesting, and are soon forgotten since they aren't mentioned for hundreds of pages. The narrator's paranoia doesn't particularly concern me, or seem particularly convincing, because I don't care about him or his world - and really don't believe in the existence of either, since they're both so obviously constructed by the writer.

In any book like this, one has to admit the possibility that one's just missing something, and that a closer reading will reveal the book's quality and cohesion. I have my doubts, though: any book that doesn't offer a single character worthy of memory, or even the slim consolation of an entertaining scene, is likely to continue to gather dust.