Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Fiction, 2011

The employees of the World of Darkness got paid on a biweekly basis. On his third Friday in Loomis County, Kiwi queued up outside a small office catty-corner to the Jaws, waiting to ask a question about his paycheck. He whistled the new hit single “Haters Will Hemorrhage Blood!” (Incredibly, this turned out to be a love song. It had a violin in it. Very popular that year, Vijay informed him, at area proms.) Kiwi undid a triple knot on his shoelace that had been bugging him for weeks, which felt as satisfying as solving a crime. A bunch of kids were shrieking as they slide down the Tongue.

This debut novel for Karen Russell was one of three books that was put forth to the Pulitzer board as a nominee for the fiction prize for the year of its publication, only to have the final decision-makers say, “Nah! Nothing wins this time around.” I get why the committee sorting through novels thought this book was worthy, but I find it even more understandable that it was rejected. Swamplandia! often has the feel of a book that is inventively making big statements about the fragile state of modern social institutions like family and capitalism. But I think its darkly colorful approach has an unpleasant distancing effect.

The novel follows various members of the Bigtree family as they deal with the repercussions of their matriarch, the star attraction at their Florida theme park that gives the novel its name. Russell acknowledges her debt to Katherine Dunn, and Swamplandia! often reads like a less twisted version of Geek Love. As with that much-loved earlier work, I found the storytelling to be forced and largely bereft of emotional resonance. Even when the dense cleverness of Russell’s prose is hard to deny, there’s a veneer of overt showiness that I found off-putting, even tedious. Roughly positioned as a mischievous romp, the book is all bloat.

Thirteen Days in September by Lawrence Wright

Nonfiction, 2014

For the last twenty-four hours, Ezer Weizman had sat in the theater at Camp David, watching one movie after another. He watched George C. Scott in Patton five times. He was too anxious to sleep—or perhaps too afraid to confront the truth. Israel’s future was at a crossroads; on one side was peace, on the other, endless prospects for war. Weizman used to believe that war was the only path for Israel’s survival. Then, in 1970, during the bloody standoff that followed the end of the 1967 war, his son, Shaul, had been shot between the eyes by an Egyptian marksman on the bank of the Suez Canal. Shaul somehow survived, but he was permanently disabled. He had once been so bright and promising, but the bullet in his brain pulverized the future he might have had. After he got out of the hospital his thoughts were scattered and his emotions raged out of control. He became a heavy drinker. Every day, when Weizman looked at Shaul, he was reminded of the human cost of the conflict. The experiences had gradually turned him into a dove. So many other sons and daughters were also dying and suffering similar horrible injuries—for what? If peace was really achievable, wasn’t it immoral to fail? The agreement that seemed tantalizingly close at hand now was slipping further away, and to a large extent it was all Weizman’s fault.

Thirteen Days in September is an exceptional piece of historical journalism. Lawrence Wright details the diplomatic tug of war that took place in September 1978 that resulted in a highly unlikely peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. As the book’s title suggests, Wright goes day by day through the nearly two-week span that world leaders spent sequestered at the rural Maryland retreat that’s long been the primary remote office of U.S. presidents. The book is filled with smart, telling details that lend the storytelling a real sense of intimacy, and yet it never comes across as empty dishing. Every fact Wright shares compellingly contextualizes the import of the moment and offers the reminder that these actions of enormous global import are implementing by people with the same foibles as anyone.

Like any classic reporter, Wright approaches the writing with a commitment to conveying what’s important while also forestalling the expense of replacing typewriter ribbon. His sentences are clear and concise, which helps him deftly slalom between the main story of the extended Camp David meeting and mini-biographies of all involved. It’s a relatively slender book that somehow contains an amount of information that could easily fill a weighty tome.