1
This is the best book of the year.
But it's not that easy to read.
Readability. It's the number one criterion for a good book. Oftentimes that which is lauded is all about style, plot is secondary, it's like the self-congratulatory publishing industry, and the graduates of the writing factories, can only anoint something that aligns with their values, not those of the public. It's a self-reinforcing game, keeping people away from books, when we need them more than ever before, not only are they a respite from our overloaded, tedious lives, when done right they're instructional, like "Homeland Elegies."
But if you're not employing a dictionary when you read the book...you're lying, or you're skipping over words you do not know. You wonder, does the writer, Ayad Akhtar, really know these words or is he searching the thesaurus to insert a ten dollar word when a dime one would suffice? This is the peril of rewriting. I don't think anybody would use half of these out there words in regular conversation. I looked most of them up, but then I didn't bother, the meaning was clear enough from the context, and the constant journey to the dictionary was hurting my reading flow.
And the flow is another thing that you might find off-putting. The paragraphs are endless. The sentences therein are oftentimes long. However, the sentences are not jam-packed with too many meanings. This is another flaw of the circle jerk of the publishing industry and its acolytes noted above. They believe that writing is about the aforementioned rewriting, and they add so many qualifiers and concepts in each sentence that they ultimately resemble nothing you've ever come across previously. As if you built your pigpen with Brazilian wood and gold nails spaced every inch, when every six will do. It's a goddamn pigpen, WE GET IT!
The foregoing are qualifiers. I don't want you to buy "Homeland Elegies," give up reading it and then inundate my inbox with hate. First and foremost I treasure my credibility. Once you sacrifice that you've got nothing left. Actually, our entire nation is in a crisis of credibility, further hastened by Trump and his antics. What next, declaring that the Rays really won the World Series? Numbers don't matter, facts don't matter, there was some cheating behind the scenes that tilted the tables. And if the Dodgers defend their victory they're seen as monsters who won't acknowledge the will of the people!
But I did not buy "Homeland Elegies," I borrowed it from the library, via the Libby app.
Hmm... This is the disadvantage of physical. One of the many. You cannot go to the library, at least I wouldn't in these Covid days. But with Libby, you can search the inventory, and if you cannot instantly get the book you want, you can reserve it. I pooh-poohed Libby until I used it. I was thrown off by the long wait times, but then I found out frequently they let you jump the line. You can have the hot book for seven instead of twenty one days and...most of the old books are instantly available. So, if I want it now, I buy it from the Kindle store. But if I'm not sure, I reserve it. Actually, I reserve stuff I don't end up reading. I download the book and find out I'm not interested. But I also reserve/download books that my research tells me are good, but don't appeal to me on the surface, like "Homeland Elegies."
Seemingly every publication lists the book in their year's best. But on the surface, it seemed like another of those minority/foreign jobs... Yes, some African books are tremendous, like "Americanah," but too often the cognoscenti embrace books from the oppressed, as if the fact they wrote it is reason enough to focus on it, when oftentimes it is not.
Are you getting the feeling that my reading is exclusive?
I did a book podcast last week. Everything I said seemed to be contrary to what the host was proffering. Like about recommendations. Isn't that why we need indie bookstores? Isn't it all about personal recommendations? I NEVER USE PERSONAL RECOMMENDATIONS! I DON'T TRUST THEM! People rarely have any idea what another will truly like. And reading a book is a significant investment of time. So I do my own research. I read book reviews, I google lists, I'm trying to find consensus, along with what appeals to me. Kinda like my streaming TV choices. I ask people what they are watching and they almost always say what's on HBO and the big Netflix hits. But there's so much great stuff out there if you'd just do a little research. And so much crap too. I know people who watch shows with ratings far below 50% on RottenTomatoes. What do they expect? Of course it sucks! Why buy into the advertising? That's so last century.
But I did get "Homeland Elegies" on a recommendation. I certainly didn't buy it, no way, I trust essentially nobody. But I got e-mail from this guy David Moody, who told me: "I often agree with your views on fiction, and wanted to share this with you - it's the best book I've read this year." So I reserved it. Well, I got on the waiting list. I believe it was gonna be 13 weeks before I'd be able to get it, which was just fine with me, because based on what I'd read, I didn't think I'd like it anyway.
But at the end of a hike on Friday night, I checked the Libby app on my phone, and they were allowing me to jump in front of the line, if I wanted "Homeland Elegies," I could have it RIGHT NOW for seven days!
So I downloaded it to my Kindle.
I don't know the formula Libby employs that allows you to jump ahead, but it happens every once in a while, and it doesn't last, if you don't click to download it when you see it, it often disappears.
Seven days... Enough time to read the book if you start it right away. Which I always do. Because I hate the pressure to complete. Then again, I pressure myself, I do not want the book to disappear before I finish it, no way.
And, the fact I've only got it for seven days is an incentive to jump in. If you pay, you read, at least I do. If you borrow? But if you're gifted the desirable for a brief period? You want to check it out, see what all the fuss is about.
2
It's a fish out of water book. But not really. What it really is is the Muslim experience in America. Until it turns into a spot on analysis of America, better articulated than anywhere I've previously read, and I read a lot. Unfortunately, some of the worst writing is in newspapers. However the absolute worst is that made for internet consumption. On the internet it's just the facts, with maybe a tiny bit of spin. In the newspaper...there's a formula, you lay the facts down drily, from most important to least. Style is...the one employed by the newspaper. The worst is "The New Yorker." Everything's in the same style, dry, over-researched, they could drain the passion from an orgy. What resonates most is when a writer employs their own style to convey the message such that it resonates with, informs the reader. It's often about context. And Ayad Akhtar nails it over and over again.
Racism. What does it feel like to be brown in America?
Well, first and foremost you don't belong. You're told to go back to your own country, even if you were born in the United States. And you have to be on guard 24/7, for fear of saying the wrong thing, playing into someone's biases to your ultimate disadvantage. White people don't think about this. Well, long-haired northerners did back in the sixties, when they journeyed to the redneck south, but the truth is whites rule in America.
But life ain't so good for so many whites either.
When you start "Homeland Elegies," you're convinced it's nonfiction. But right there on the cover it says "A Novel." The truth lies somewhere in between.
So...
Can you ask for money from your parents to keep your passion alive?
Generally speaking, this is taboo in our society. Rich parents might pay for endless schooling, but at some point you've got to jump ship and get a real job, preferably one that will keep you living in the style you grew up in, like at the bank. But if you're an artist? Well-to-do people don't want their children to be artists, which is why so many artists come from the lower classes...when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. But if you take the artistic path, rewards come very slowly, if at all. Can you live on so little money waiting to see if you connect in the marketplace, while your compatriots are buying homes, having families, vacationing on islands?
And it's not about the mind in America, it's about the MONEY!
You may not like this book if you believe Reagan is a saint. Akhtar writes about the schism at that time, when regulations were eliminated and wealth lionized, when shareholder value became everything and the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The elite on the left won't accept this, these "winners" keep saying it's about racism. But is every Trump supporter a racist? OF COURSE NOT! And forget those with money, who just don't want to pay taxes, it's the blue collar people, the workers who the Democrats gave up on. Trump gave them hope! False hope, but hope nonetheless. Do you have hope in Biden's America? I'd like to say I do, but politics is all about money, and if you ain't got none, you're irrelevant. And there are poor people, some fine, on both sides of the fence, and they're disillusioned.
"There is a culture here, for sure, and it has nothing to do with all the well-meaning nonsense. It's about racism and money worship - and when you're on the correct side of both those things? That's when you really belong. Because that's when you start to represent the best of what they think they are..."
It's a club. And most are not in it. And despite lip service to the contrary, it's about keeping the status quo. Liberals don't want the underprivileged living in their neighborhoods, taking the place of their progeny at Ivy League institutions...those at the top CANNOT SUFFER! It's a self-reinforcing paradigm, but it gets worse.
3
There's this story about a Black talent agent, whose father was a law clerk at the D.C. Court of Appeals, who ultimately punts and moves back to Alabama, where he has less power than he imagined, but this is after he is wooed by the right. Yes, every team needs its token Black person, someone with values just like the organization, who will make no waves and fill the diversity slot. And they need all the minorities this way, Arab Americans too...to get them off the hook, so those seeking change will focus on another organization.
So, this guy's father, the lawyer, is working in D.C. during the Bork years, when those on the left were fearful that if the judge got on the Supreme Court, we'd return to the days of back-alley abortions, and separate lunch counters and...
But Ayad details how Bork did not get the seat, but ultimately had more influence on America than if he did:
"It was as an antitrust ideologue - who believed that the only meaningful check on corporate power should be the competitive threat of other corporations and that the consumer's benefit should be the only metric to gauge whether the government had cause to intervene - that Bork and his ideas would fundamentally reshape our country."
You can buy it cheap at Walmart, but not only was downtown eviscerated, so were those jobs. That was the start, in Reagan's 80s.
So...
"Homeland Elegies" is not a polemic. Akhtar does a brilliant job of weaving these viewpoints into real life situations.
Never mind the racism...
Never mind the sex. Akthar does a better job of describing coitus than any I've read this year, maybe ever, because sex takes place in the head, what is going on in the noggin of the participant?
So, Akhtar becomes a successful writer, the son of two doctors who immigrated from Pakistan. But is today's America actually worse than Pakistan? That's a question throughout this book.
4
I don't want to tell you any more, because I don't want to ruin it. But "Homeland Elegies" nails today's America better than any of the bloviating on cable television, on any website. You see politics, government, choices, affect us all, even if we say we're not interested, what does that look like?
Everybody in America should read "Homeland Elegies." Yet, as a result of reduced tax bases as a result of the corporatization, the Walmarting of America, there is less money for schools, and the evangelical and rich want private ones anyway, so how many Americans could even read this book? Not most of 'em, no way. But Akhtar makes today's America come alive. It's peopled by average citizens, being bumped around in the pinball machine of life. Essentially faceless, almost always powerless, beholden to the bean counters squeezing every last penny out of the system for the owners of this country.
Art is the only way out of this mess.
"Mary and I conversed for an hour, mostly about capitalism, the collapse of our national politics, and what part (if any) an artist could play in helping shape the world anew."
He's not talking about BRANDS! And he's not talking about world domination. Akhtar is talking about message. Baked into story. That's what we live for. The music, the movies, the television. But there's no money for the arts in America, it's going to the oil companies instead, art has no value, even though it's America's most influential export.
5
I don't think I convinced you to read "Homeland Elegies." I'm pretty sure most people didn't even make it this far.
It'd be easier for me to recommend some readable junk, the kind this country consumes and spits out, empty calories, like superhero movies. That would move me up the ladder of influencers, which I could brag about on social media to the point I garner enough followers to monetize my reach. Message is secondary, getting rich is everything. But very few can become rich, while the rest of us work 24/7, have trouble making ends meet, and are supposed to be happy playing the online lottery of social media, or Powerball.
Once I got into "Homeland Elegies" I could not put it down. It drew me into a world, more interesting than the one I'm living in during this Covid era. Check it out.
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