Mall

Rating:
Summary: A Disturbing Trip To The Mall
Review: Actor/playwright Eric Bogosian is a very talented artist, and I've admired his work for well over a decade. However, he had never written a novel before, until now. Bogosian has concocted a dark, disturbing tale with his first novel, "Mall," telling the story of five people whose lives intertwine on a very violent, bloody day at the shopping mall: Mal is a speed freak who kills his mother at home and then causes more violence & mayhem at the mall, Michel is the widowed immigrant security guard who goes after Mal, Donna is a lonely housewife looking for sex & adventure, Danny is a married businessman with a huge weakness for beautiful underwear models, and Jeff is a teenager on acid who goes off on a philosophical quest.The book takes a little while to get going---about 50 pages or so---as Bogosian sets things up and introduces us to the characters, and it's a bit of a slow read. But once Mal gets to the shopping mall and begins his rampage, "Mall" finally hits the ground running and becomes a riveting book you can't put down, filled with lots of unexpected twists & turns. The book is mostly narrated, with only occasional dialogue from the characters here & there, but nonetheless, Bogosian is a very commanding tour guide as he takes you into the minds of these stressed-out souls (to say the least). Unfortunately, after taking the reader on a bravura ride through a suburban nightmare, the book's ending is a bit unsatisfying & inconclusive, as if Bogosian couldn't quite figure out how to end the story. It doesn't ruin the book for me, but it is disappointing.I don't think you could make a movie out of this book (nor would I want to see one), but for the most part, "Mall" is a very engrossing read. For his first stab at novel writing, Eric Bogosian has created a very good, disturbing dark tale.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth it!
Review: Being a fan of Brett Easton Ellis, and familiar with the works of Douglas Coupland this was a book that caught my eye and seemed to promise further revelations of the suburban american psyche. Once the reviews on the cover were read, all praising this novel as the best thing since sliced bread, this novel found its way into my poessession.
The shopping mall as cathedral of capitailism should have offered the ultimate environment for the fulfilling of the authors intentions, what is revealed however, is the weakest piece of literature I have read in some time.
This novel is essentially pulp with even the (quasi)philosophic passages probably unable to blow even the mind of the brain dead teenagers depicted throughout. One simple rule to observe is do not write about acid and expect it to result in profoundity (anyway its been done a lot better by Irvine Welsh and William Burroughs).
I think that basically the protagonist should have blown his own head off in the first paragraph and saved everyone (other fictional characters and readers alike) a lot of trouble. It is not postmodern american culture that is ever placed as the reason for his actions, but merely the ingestion of speed. Again this focus seems to aim the book at younger readers dealing with experimentation and angst. I'm sure they will encounter more in their everyday life than in this book.When compared with the charcters and stylistic technicques employed by Ellis to convey the vacuous nature of modern existance this novel reveals itself to be in a much lower league.
In common with other reviewers I also found the strongest character to be Donna and constantly found myself anticipating the chapters dedicated to her. This however, was still not enough to stop this work being filed in my nearest waste paper basket. Don't believe the hype.

Rating:
Summary: Not Bad, Not Great, But Worth Reading If You Like Bogosian
Review: Bogosian is creepy, smart, rebellious and brilliant. I truly enjoyed watching the video of his one-man show Funhouse. Also enjoyed reading Pounding Nails In The Floor With My Forehead, and Notes From Underground. He is a very, very good writer. You can tell that he hones his material. He is the type of writer who works very hard on making each sentence run smoothly & quickly. This book, Mall, is not meant to be anything other than a fast paced action-adventure. It's just a bit of fun and a means for Bogosian to express various aspects of his personality. He realizes that this mortal world---especially the American part of it---is a totally misleading, misinforming, two-faced, selfish-minded sham full of lies, disappointments & quiet desperation. The result of this realization is cynicism & rage and therefore much of Bogosian's work expresses the darker aspects of his personality---and thank goodness! But don't get me wrong, he is not the least bit heavy-handed regarding his anger and sick, twisted fantasies. He knows how to make a point without going over the top. Mall is an easy-read. It's not meant to be the novel of the century. It's not meant to enlighten anyone. It's just a good old fashioned action-adventure about a speedfreak who goes on a killing spree. It reads like it was written with the intention of making it ready-made for conversion to a screenplay. Is that a crime? Is it a crime that Bogosian wants to make money from his writing? No. He works hard for his money and it shows. So what if he poo-poos shallow materialism while also wanting to become materially successful by doing so? Consistency, or lack of hypocrisy, is the stuff of small-minded, idiotic, know-nothing mortals who have been brainwashed by college. Bottom line: Mall is a good book. Not great, but definitely worth reading if you are already a fan of Bogosian's other stuff. Right from the start you will recognize and appreciate his unique voice, perspective, and writing style. I certainly did.

Rating:
Summary: Pleasantly mauled by "The Mall"
Review: Generally, I dislike shopping malls; their only redeeming feature is if they happen to have a bookstore. A book titled MALL is not likely to be one I'd grab off the shelf. In this case, however, the title "MALL" on the cover is darkly encircled by the barrel of a gun, an apt image for what follows. Linked by the terroristic revengeful rampage of a drug-hyped low-life, the lives of half-a-dozen characters are examined in chapters which shuffle the events through their various perspectives. Bogosian's thematic concerns and structure here remind me somewhat of Stephen Wright's GOING NATIVE, though with more obviously linked plot threads and far less verbal denseness than the latter. Though GOING NATIVE may rate higher for literary sophistication, MALL is not without that and is definitely more the "page-turner." Between the two novels, the difference is, appropriately, that of shopping immersed downtown in a big city, say Chicago or Hong Kong (GOING NATIVE), and excursion shopping in a suburban mall (MALL). Not to say that Bogosian is sympathetic to the mall milieu; although it's not always easy to tell where his sympathies lie, one suspects he is not entirely critical of one of the character's (Jeff's) view of the mall as nightmare-consumerism rubber stamped across the American dream. The fact that the novel's amorally amuck perp is named "Mal," only an `l' away from his eventual target, is both a hint on the author's sympathies and an example of his occasional heavy handedness in stylistic device.

A blurb on the back of my paperback copy speaks of "the hope (Bogosian) manages to elicit from the carnage." If this novel promises any hope, it's a far cry from the way that malls promise bargains but with much of the same result. The most admirable character, Michael, an immigrant and mall employee who goes on a self-appointed chase of the madman (separate from the inept and sometimes laughable efforts of the local law), does have a redeeming vision in the aftermath of his demise, but under local circumstances of stupidity and disregard that belie any relevance it might have to the bigger picture. If the measure of redemption is to be found in the comfort of death-throe visions, Mal's end is no less happy than Michael's.

In some ways, the most disturbing character in the book, and the one who most embodies the consumerist values of malls, is Donna, an uncircumspect, faithless housewife who is utterly absorbed in the consumption of gratuitous food, sex, alcohol, and general self-stroking. Never quite, but always almost, at the center of the horrendous events around her, Donna goes happily on her way eating, drinking and screwing to great excess, generally unaffected by crisis or moral impulse of any kind. If there is any hint that this self-indulgence is anything less than self-satisfying and justified, it would be easy to miss. Donna's credo might be, in a world gone grotesquely awry, don't fight it: Consume and be consumed by it. It works here. At least for her.

Though the violence makes compelling reading, the book may have more to do with addiction than bloodshed. If amorality can have extremes, Donna and Mal must be close to the opposite ends, but both share in common their addictive natures. Neither character, however, leaves one thinking that it's not the addiction, per-se, that's good or bad, but what you do with it. The character whose addiction is not simply amoral, for better or worse, probably because he on some level tries to come to terms with it, is Danny, a businessman whose sexually unsatisfying marriage has contributed to his soft-porn obsession with models of ladies underwear, the J.C. Penny's Catalogue variety. To the extent that he is an unwitting victim of circumstance in the pathetically funny denouement of his personality quirk, Danny's punishment is the one that seems most out of proportion to his crime. He might also be the novel's closest pretension to having a tragic hero. In a world where porn and perversion, as well as sex-for-sale and sell-by-sex, are rampant , Danny's view of his own prurient predilections, self-described and treated by others as perversion, seems naively harsh. If his "nasty" habit is some kind of disease, little doubt is left that it is to some extent a socially transmitted one, as is Danny's own out-of-proportion self-castigation (almost castration). Perhaps Danny will be transformed by his ordeal into a better person; if so, the price of redemption is high. More likely, the future the novel promises him is further self-deflation in a material world, just as it promises Donna continued empty inflation.

Did I like this book? Yes, and this worries me. I could get addicted to this kind of reading. I'm not sure if it's a step up from John Grisham, whose novels I also enjoy but not without a feeling of some guilt that may not be unlike Danny's in MALL (though not to the same degree). I suspect that MALL may be of more lasting literary value than, say, THE STREET LAWYER (with which it shares some thematic concerns). Why? Structurally, it seems a bit more satisfying, though hardly groundbreaking. Also, it seems less morally simplistic. Grisham's novels often leave me knowing what I'm supposed think. This one leaves me thinking.

Rating:
Summary: Smells Like Teen Spirit
Review: I read this book in two nights and it worked for me very nicely. Sex, drugs and existential thinking and a pretty good plot. Bogosian comes from the theater and his characters reflect that. I especially liked the psychotic speed freak Mal. Bogosian (as I've said in my other review of his solo book) comes off as kind of simple, but at the end of the day, I think his ideas are complex. It's the way the whole thing is hung together. Long and short of it is that the book is a hot read and has a couple of good nasty sex scenes in it. I guess he's a genius, but on the other hand, who cares?

Rating:
Summary: murder and mayhem coverge at the mall
Review: Mal is a 37 year old strung-out junkie when he shoots his mom, torches his house and then goes to the mall to spread more mayhem. But it's not random -- he is on a mission, as he believes it was at this mall that the downward spiral to his life began.

There at the mall are Michel, a Carribbean widower who works security, Jeff, a teenager in search of existentialism as he hangs out with his druggie friends, Donna, a bored insatiable housewife looking for approval and lust from men, and Dan, a nice married man who unfortunately liked staring at Donna in the dressing room.

From this modern stage explodes murder and fire of both a mall and all the human emotions (guilt, rage, remorse) ina fiery scene amongst people who are strangers but are connected by an ugly soulless building --- the American mall.

Rating:
Summary: Fantabulous!
Review: This is one of my favorite books of all time that I think tests the limits of what we call literature, it is probably one of the best contemporary novels that I would put into the catagory of postmodernism. We literally mind-surf into several characters heads and see whats going on, the characters all interlink through a story of a much larger scope and Bogosian creates a satire of American culture rival to that of American Beauty or anything in recent memory. This would make a great film, do not believe the naysayers, Bogosian is a very talented writer and I cannot wait until his next novel comes out.