Brock Clarke

I loved this book. The narrator is a humorous self-deprecating bumbler with some down-to-earth views about life and luck. The story is funny and sad. The characters are delightfully weird and flawed. The "mystery" is compelling. The settings are rich and lively. The social commentary is witty. I couldn't put it down.

An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England (2007) by Brock Clarke was the February selection for my alumni chapter book club. It was a divisive book for sure as 1 book club member hated, 1 liked it and 1 said she didn't like but decided it wasn't so bad as we talked about. I'm in the "like it" crowd, perhaps the one who liked it most of the four of us. It has a lot of the things that appeal to me - New England, literary allusions, satire, dysfunctional families, and quirkiness. show more Lots of quirkiness.

The basic gist of the story is that at the age of 18 the narrator Sam Pulsifer burned down the Emily Dickinson house killing an amorous couple inside. He served 10 years in prison, then went to college, got married and tried to live a normal life raising a family in a drab suburb outside of Amherst. Then, mysteriously, other houses of writers in New England suffer from arson and Sam's life falls apart.

Sam is the ultimate unreliable narrator and everything he reveals about himself is that he doesn't have much in the way of social skills. At first I was very irritated by him, but was eventually won over once I got into the groove of the book. Still I can understand what my colleagues didn't like about the book. What won me over is the hillarious asides and the satrical portrayals of New England archetypes: a scruffy Brahmin, uber-liberal academics, and the reserved, independent New Hampshire man. Clarke both parodies these literary characteristics and sets his characters free from being just characters.

So my final judgment is that this is a fun and humorous novel that will appeal to those with a literary bent. show less

Who are You, Calvin Bledsoe? by Brock Clarke is a fun trip through both a highly unlikely series of events and the everyday thoughts we all have. It is that juxtaposition that gives this novel its strength and fun.

The title probably sets up the book as well as anything I could write. Obviously, in asking that question, you know the person is Calvin Bledsoe. So on one level it is a question that contains its own answer. Yet when we ask that question of someone we know, we mean something show more different, we mean something along the lines of "what type of person are you?" or maybe "what is the essence of your being?" This novel delves into both the obvious (which is not always so simple as it seems) fact he is Calvin Bledsoe as well as the process of becoming who someone is, that core that is always becoming yet never really becomes.

While the events of the story are fun because they are so far-fetched, the novel would probably be just so-so if that was the main aspect. But Calvin's thoughts and, sometimes, comments are the things of everyday life. Observations and assumptions, ponderings and musings. In Clarke's hands these are expressed in wonderful terms, sometimes with startlingly appropriate analogies and sometimes with phrases that make you pause to consider the underlying thoughts.

The frequent quoting of John Calvin is also an important part of the enjoyment of the book. A text, no matter what the writer's intention, can be interpreted and used in ways opposed to that intention. First from Beatrice's mouth and then, more and more, from Calvin's, we see John Calvin's words used to explain or justify almost anything. This is yet another fun element of the book.

I don't think this will appeal to everybody (but what book does) though I think most readers, if they can bracket their usual desire of a realistic plot and "likeable" characters, will find a lot to enjoy. This is not genre fiction, so any tropes from whatever your usual genre is won't be present here. Take the plunge, just let the trip take you where it goes, much as Calvin does in the story.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing Early Reviewers. show less

http://andalittlewine.blogspot.com/2013/01/review-ordinary-white-boy-by-brock.ht....

The blurb on the back of Brock Clarke's The Ordinary White Boy could be about me:
At twenty-seven years old he can't dance unless he's had more than a few drinks. His wardrobe is uninspired, at best. He has returned after college to Little Falls, his miserable, working-class hometown in upstate New York...
And we love to read about ourselves don't we?

I've been told, and to a sense I agree, that the history of show more literature is too often regarded as the history of white men. Look at the top ten of the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels: Irish man, American man, the same Irish guy again, Russian man, British man, another American man, a third American man, a Hungarian-British man, another British man, a fourth American man. You have to go #15 to find a woman (Virginia Wolff), to #19 (Ralph Ellison) to find the first non-Caucasian, and I lost interest in searching before I found someone not born in American or Europe.

So, yes: discrimination! But...
I wouldn't say any of those top ten books reflect who I am, beyond the broadest strokes: white men, educated in the Western Judeo-Christian canon, alive in the 20th century...

Sometimes a list of the most important novels of the 20th century is just a list. And sometimes the murder of the only hispanic man in a lily white Upstate New York town is just a murder.

That's the dynamic The Ordinary White Boy explores. And I see so much more of my life in it than in most books.

Stephen Daedalus is exceptional, like Joyce. For White Boy's protagonist Lamar (and for me, and for, I suspect, Brock Clarke) exceptionalism is a less certain thing.

But the expectation of exceptionalism hangs there. Like the narrator of The Zeroes, much has been expected for Lamar from a young age, and his early twenties were supposed to be the launch point. He graduated from college and was ready to set off into the world a man.

Only Lamar wasn't much of a man yet, and he didn't quite set off (the phrase "Failure to Launch" comes to mind). So at 27 going on 28, Lamar is not much more than he was at 22.

He tries. He wants so badly to be galvanized by what is happening in his small town- for a recent murder to kickstart his failed ambitions, as we've seen traumatic events do so often in books and films (think about the long string of films featuring Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell, a genre [I think] subverted by Judd Apatow).

Only the kickstart doesn't take. Lamar, perhaps a little too self-aware for his own good, can't get beyond the reductive drag of modern life. A thing has happened and we should be outraged. And maybe we are, but nothing changes, so when it happens again we can't muster the same level of outrage, and we find that the world goes on just fine in that case too. So long as the tragedy doesn't happen to me, I don't have to care. In fact, it's safer not to care, since no one around you will get all that worked up either.

That's modern life. Caring only as much as is safe.

And that's all Lamar can bring himself to do, and I've read plenty of reviewers that hate him for that. And I agree with their disappointment, and I agree with their indignation. But ultimately, I agree with Lamar- ordinary and safe and predictable bring so many challenges, more challenges than we can possibly overcome, so why bother tilting at windmills? show less