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| View Larger Image | Memorial: A Novel
by Bruce Wagner
| | List Price: | $26.00 | | Price: | $6.99 | | You Save: | $19.01 (73%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 719256 | | Studio: | Simon & Schuster | | | Binding: | Hardcover | | Number Of Pages: | 528 | | Publication Date: | September 05, 2006 | | Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
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CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 7 reviews)
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Memorial 
Ditto on the book keeping one up at night and thinking about it all day. I was an awe at the wordsmithing, even with stuff that had little or no provence to me. They usually found some sort of mental allocation with me, in the end, which is half the fun of it. The pills Chess and other's were dropping were all unknown to me bar one or two, which had the effect on me of making them more toxic. So I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that glossaries be made by the author for his books, but it might add to the chase.
Big question for me is what the hell was really segueing in the end? I Truly experienced the sight of the guardian columns protecting no-thingness.
Peculiar about this book is that it is dream from end to end without a single snap-to, while still maintaining a healthy professional writer's edge. The sort of concentration necessary for that is something I dip my hat to. Most of all though I sense something older than civilisation here that lends the language/intent the ability to envision the future very precisely and unbiasedly, which is something of great value right now, and the reason why this book is as morninghorrifying as it is crepuscularly joyous. K Gibran said, 'We live only to discover beauty, all else is a form of waiting'.
I also enjoyed the love story part of it - very lightly eluded to (by the author and the characters)- with Marj and Ray, very sweet.
May 09, 2007 | |
Original and compelling, but not a masterwork 
"Memorial" is definitely a very West Coast, Californian, specifically L.A.-kind of book. That's not to detract from the writing style, which is actually fairly original and deeply personal. Wagner writes in the third person, but really brings out his characters' flaws and strengths. The characters in this book are not one-dimensional, the relationships are complicated and multi-faceted and change over the course of the plot, as in any good novel they should.
However, in some ways, the characters are almost cliches of the West Coast stereotype. "Memorial" is one of those books in which you're not really sure if the cliches, the parodies, the factual innaccuracies, the shallow commercialism (the constant references to pop culture and celebrities) are supposed to be critical, supportive or simply illusrative of American culture at the beginning of the 21st century. I should be more specific: greater Los Angeles culture at the beginning of the 21st century. I don't know anybody with a name like Laksmi who had a Jewish father who idealized the Hindu God Ganesh and work as an actress on a pseudo-reality TV show. That's very L.A. and I often had trouble identifing with these characters (with the exception of Ray). Wagner's greatest strength is that he makes these people accessible and relatively believeable.
It definitely has that feel of "Magnolia" or "Crash" or those other L.A. movies in which the plots and characters lives overlap with each other. But not a similar film genre like "Syriana", the underlying theme being social and political, and not personal and cultural. Also, it lacks the edge of a story like that - the trials and tribulations of a family dog shot by police doesn't exactly stack up against international terrorism.
Again, after reading the book, I'm not sure if Wagner was trying to condemn this mindset (all this tragedy in the world and all we care about is Nip/Tuck! We're lawsuit crazy! We're obsessed with memorializing our own dead, and don't care about the rest of the world!), or simply illustrate it (this is the way we are). I tend to favor the latter, only because I feel like he draws more from real events than by this alternate-universe L.A. that he created on his own.
If you really want to read a book that has something to say about loss, and is personal, cultural, spiritual, social and political, I would recommend Johnathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close."
But again, not a bad book, and a pretty bold attempt, it just rings a little hollow. (But is it supposed to...?)
January 02, 2007 | |
Too sad for little payoff 
In the inside of the dust jacket it says: "In his most profound and accomplished book to date, acclaimed author Bruce Wagner breaks from Hollywood culture with a novel of exceptional literary dimension and searing emotional depth."
That's sounds pretty good doesn't it? It sounds like something I would really like to read. I read all 507 pages of Memorial and I still wouldn't mind reading the book described above. This sure isn't it.
I was sold on the book by hearing an interview with Mr. Wagner on WBAI radio. (One can find the interview by Googling "Cat Radio Cafe". It's somewhere on that site, or at least it was a couple of weeks ago.) It's an interesting interview. Mr. Wagner is an interesting talker. I wish I could say the same for his writing.
Maybe it was over my head. Maybe I'm not deep enough to grasp the "exceptional literary dimension". Maybe I'm too shallow or cowardly to plunge into the "searing emotional depth". Or maybe the novel is just as disappointing and depressing as I think it is.
So what is it? What did I read and get from it? This is a story of a family divided and yet still connected although through most of the novel they don't know it and one of them never does. We are presented with four interlocking stories. Once upon a time many years ago Ray and Marjorie were married. They had two lovely children Joan and Chester. Ray blew some sort of business deal, felt bad about himself, and quite the family, took off one day unannounced. As we enter the story the two kids are about 40 and the parents are old. There has been no contact with the absent father all that time. So that's the setup and then we get to go with them all through the personal hell or torment of Job. This is a novel where all the bad things you hear about on the news happens to happen to these people and those around them. All this is highly unpleasant and, well, sometimes feels exceptionally sadistic. That might not be so bad if there was a point to it all and since I lack the ability to grasp the exceptional literary dimension of it all, I guess I missed whatever that point or literary pay-off might have been. What I got was a sad, mean, ugly, and cruel story told with a whole lot, way too much, up-to-the-minute mass media hipness. Mr. Wagner sure knows his TV shows and personalities, and his LA gurus. Well, I know about this crap too and I didn't need him to point them out to me. But I don't waste my time actually watching the TV shows he insists on writing about, I just know about them and that's enough. I think Wagner should spend more time reading other novels than watching TV. It might help his writing or dictating or however this mess was produced. I didn't need him to tell me how horrible and sad modern life has become. I didn't need him to rub my nose in it. Everything he says about this country, the economies system, LA, is obvious to me. And he adds nothing on top of that. He just wasted my time with lists.
But then again I may well have missed the point. I tend to like most things I read and hate to have to be so negative, yet this is how I feels about this one.
December 19, 2006 | |
A Unique Voice 
Bruce Wagner is a truly original novelist, capable of gargantuan humor, horror and pity all on the same page. His voice is unique and as the critics have noted, Memorial evidences a growing sense of compassion towards his tortured characters.That said, this novel needed a lot of editing! It could have been cut by a third.
November 20, 2006 | |
Wagner's Opus
I am a big fan of Bruce Wagner's work. I have read all his previous novels so I eagerly awaited his latest. I was not disappointed. This novel is witty, tragic, beautiful, gritty and somewhat horrifying. Like life, right? Wagner's characters are so three-dimensional, they are so fully alive. You get into their heads and understand their motivations. His references to pop culture and arcane matters keep your head reeling. He writes with such passion and humor. If you are searching for a book that will keep you up all night and thinking about it all day, I suggest "Memorial."
November 10, 2006 | |
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