Stone Arabia

I've now read each of Spiotta's novels, and all of them were fascinating period pieces. I don't mean she really caught the spirit of the '90s in her first novel, the '70s in her second, and the '00s in this one. I mean her novels are exactly what people will think of when, in a few decades, they talk about early 21st century American literary fiction. There is much existential angst about meaninglessness, empathy and emotional distance. There is stuff about new media. There is metanarrative. There is some very mild formal trickeration, but not enough to scare anyone. There is tired mumbo about "memory", a theme and abstract noun that should really be banned for a few decades at least.

This is frustrating because (not Spiotta's fault, I know) she's feted as "a major, unnervingly intelligent writer" by people who really should know better (Joy Williams, Sam Lipsyte, Michiko Kakutani, Thurston freaking Moore). That kind of praise made me buy her books. It also set up false expectations.

Anyway, Spiotta is definitely getting better as a novelist. Lightning Field was distressingly bad; Eat the Document was kind of disappointing; the first half of this book is pretty good. The trickeration is contrived, but also entertaining (musical genius brother writes fake Chronicles of his life; average sister Denise writes Counter-Chronicles of those Chronicles--and, eventually, Denise's daughter makes a film about her uncle). Denise is far more entertaining than Spiotta's third person narrator, though far less entertaining than her brother. A book that was just some Chronicles, some counter-Chronicles, and bits of the film could have been fascinating.

Instead, Denise has to worry about the form her Counter-Chronicles take (because metanarrative worrying), which becomes an excuse for shoving bits in to the novel that don't really belong there (mother is dying; world is going to hell but we either feel too sad or not sad enough about it; memory is interesting but also misleading, right?).

How long, dear reader, do you think a novel has to be before it can successfully deal with the themes of: memory, family, aging, death, art, populism vs elitism, imagination, empathy, world politics, new media, self-destruction, CHILD ABDUCTION, THE AMISH, INTERNET MEDICAL ADVICE, POPULAR CULTURE, AND ZOMBIES?

Okay, there are no zombies.

But if you answered 230 pages, congratulations, this is the book for you, and I envy you your ability to think that 'successfully dealing with' is actually a synonym of 'mention in passing'.

I really, really, really hope Spiotta follows her character into isolation for the next twenty years and works on a long enough book for long enough to really fulfill her ambition to write about fucking everything. That would be worth doing. A fourth short book about everything, however... we probably don't need that.

This is a curious little novel seemingly focused on the oddly curated life of a small-time rock star—in actuality, it aspires to examine postmodern culture’s impact on our ability to connect with each other in emotionally meaningful ways.

The majority of the story is narrated by Denise, the younger sister of Nik Worth, an inscrutable musician who seems to prefer living in a fictional world that he curates through self-produced music, ghost-written reviews of said music, obituaries, and “chronicles” that he produces, documenting his not-quite-authentic life. Denise, single, in her 40s, with an adult daughter whose documentary film about her uncle rests yet another layer upon his palimpsest of a life, struggles with her memory—she has trouble recalling names, dates, events—and news stories about tragedies (missing children, terrorism, torture, mass murder) seem to affect her more powerfully than events in her own life or in the lives of her family members.

An omniscient narrator takes over briefly— and rather abruptly—when Denise seems to struggle the most and then relinquishes the narration back to Denise; in addition, the novel’s structure mirrors the circuitous path of Denise’s free-associative mind (her narration is often sidetracked by digressions). It’s never quite clear whether Denise is a reliable narrator, since the story itself frankly questions the nature of memory, truth, and reality. It’s a curious and compelling read that wraps up with an inconclusive mystery, much as it began.

In Stone Arabia author Dana Spiotta examines the fraught bonds between two siblings. Brother Nik is a rock star manqué; as he approaches the age of fifty he is still living out the fantasies of his youth by spending most of his time recording idiosyncratic albums and writing fictitious reviews of them. His more practical sister Denise is his enabler. The plot revolves around Denise's attempts to understand and support her brother, even as he's flirting, as a rock star would, with his own death.

Stone Arabia tells a decent story, and the writing is good, but I was expecting more from it than it actually delivered. The novel contains many references to George W. Bush-era current events, which make it seem dated without being historic. The scene that involves "Stone Arabia" is not striking enough to justify naming the whole book after it. Furthermore, as far as I was concerned, the novel had too much Denise and her pretentious filmmaker daughter Ada, and only glimpses of Nik.

A side note: Spiotta's depiction of Nik is highly reminiscent of the outsider musician Jandek, a mysterious figure, who, like Nik, records in a variety of styles and is the sole artist on his own boutique "record label". Jandek rarely appears in public and communicates with his select group of fans by mail. I don't know that Spiotta has ever heard of Jandek, and she claims in her afterword that Nik is based on her stepfather, but to me the similarities between Nik and Jandek are too numerous to be coincidental.

Stone Arabia is a quick read, so if you are intrigued by the premise, I recommend it to you despite my reservations.

I didn't know quite what to expect from this; it was a random purchase on my part. I enjoyed the author's use of language, but the story, though it was strong enough to keep me reading, never really demanded my attention.

Ostensibly about a brother and sister, he self-obsessed and she obsessed with him, this novel strikes me as a profound reflection on our society as it now is.

Denise and Nik are brother and sister, orbiting one another. Nik is a musician who creates his own world. His music is self-published and distributed to only a few people. His sister may be his complete audience. Nik creates complex record albums, imaginary fans and writes his own reviews. He keeps detailed journals, Chronicles, that blur reality and his fantasy life. While he creates himself, Denise barely seems to exist, except in response to others -- Nik, her daughter, her mother and the people she sees on the news. She seems to have no barrier between herself and the world she sees. And yet her observations of the world ring so true. The book puts all purpose in life, in reality, to question.

Skillful handling of unoriginal material.

This is one of the best novels I've read in the last few years. To me, this is the book that "A Visit to the Goon Squad" wished it was -- the characters are eccentric but fully realized and dimensional within the confines of a somewhat spare tale. The genius of this work lies in Spiotta's depiction of the ways in which the characters' expectations morph into somewhat deflated middle-aged realizations. This is a brilliant meditation on the nature of obsession, memory and most of all the nature of art itself. It is a thoughtful, precisely written novel that encapsulates broad themes within sharp prose. Spiotta also nails the late seventies and early eighties music scene as perceived through the astute lens of her main characters, Nik and Denise. It is a chronicle of genius, demise and persistence.

Denise is the narrator. She is a 47 year old single mom of Ada. She focuses on her brother who has constructed a fantasy world of his imagined life as a rock star and --less so-- on her mother who is slowly descending into dementia--something she is afraid may foreshadow her own future. She is also bothered by how her life has not become what she thought it would be and concerns about how it is even possible to cope with the world today. Her brother has come up with a satisfying way of coping with his failure, but she is still struggling with hers. The ironic title comes from the name of an Amish town in NY where a girl was abducted. The image of how the Amish reject modernity and self-promotion stands as a counterpoint to the LA superficial and rootless lifestyle that Nik and Denise grew up in. Clearly the Amish have a way of coping with the world by withdrawal, not unlike Nik.

I wish Ada and Denise's mom had been developed more. Ada seems to be quite a competent young woman who does not have the self-doubt that her mother has and may have a more realized life--or maybe not? The mother is just an enigma.

Denise and her older brother Nik grew up in the Los Angeles rock and roll scene of the 70's and 80's. Now middle-aged, Denise lives alone and agonizes over her obsession with stories of suffering on the cable news channels and her own perceived memory loss. Nik, who experienced limited success with his rock band experimentations in his youth, has spent his adult life in relative solitude chronically his music and songwriting that he produces solely for his sister and only a handful of others. Nik is truly a vituoso talent, and like other reclusive artists, he doesn't seem to need an audience to create. The author writes "One wonders, or at least I wonder, what happened to these people? Not the one-hit wonders but the no-hit wonders?"

Denise is the responsible one. As she cares for their aging mother who is experiencing dementia, she worries about her own memory. When the author writes of Denise's realization of the memories that we retain, the memories of the body-- of the senses, she truly hits the mark. Perhaps it is because these characters are my age, but I was greatly moved by their experiences and their decisions on how to enter the second halves of their lives. Denise says in my favorite quote--"The second half of my life was just the bill due for the pleasures of the first half." With its shared setting and themes, Stone Arabia makes a wonderful companion read to this year's Pulitzer Prize winner A Visit from the Goon Squad. I may even prefer it.