A Modest Construct

¶ The Emperor of All Maladies

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee: Publisher: Scribner; Year: 2010; Pages: 592

I was hesitant to pick up The Emperor of All Maladies; a quick glance at the dust jacket made me leery that the book would devolve into sickly-sweet sentiment. Cancer is, indeed, a terrible disease, and has wrecked havoc on millions of lives; at the same time, the very nature of this problem lends itself to hysterics and tearful reminiscences. I’m not so vain to think that my writings about my father mean as much to anyone else as they do to me, wonderful though my commenters may have been.

In other words, I feared that book All About Cancer would drift into histrionics and phrases like “The War on Cancer”, and too many sad stories about individuals that would quick devolve into the incessantly maudlin. Mothers, brothers, sisters, children; all of this we know about cancer, but we know it also about death in general. What’s interesting to me is where cancer comes from, and where science is looking for answers. A skim through the chapters gave me hope, I gave it a try.

¶ John Dies at the End

John Dies at the End by David Wong: Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Year: 2010; Pages: 480

As a young boy, my brother tended to get Cracked magazine rather than Mad magazine; I think it was probably cheaper for essentially the same content (or so it seemed to a young boy). In any case, he (and therefore I) grew up with Cracked. By the time the magazine itself went under, of course, I had stopped paying attention, but at some point in the last few years, I began regularly checking the new Cracked.com, which I find is much funnier than it likely should be.

At the helm of this new digital enterprise (sans Sylvester P. Smythe) is senior editor David Wong, a pseudonym for Jason Pargin. It was really only via this association that I learned about John Dies at the End, Wong/Pargin’s satirical horror novel, recently rescued from an indie publisher by St. Martin’s Griffin. Given my positive associations with the new Cracked, giving John Dies at the End a shot was a no-brainer. Also, it’s being adapted into a movie with Paul Giamatti.

¶ Freedom

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen: Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Year: 2010; Pages: 576

In my review of Franzen’s previous bestseller, The Corrections, I noted that the story was a thoroughly midwestern one—that is, its character is thoroughly understated and unextraordinary, and yet somehow Franzen’s treatment is surprisingly vicious. It isn’t that the gentle midwestern family hides monsters (as least not in his stories), but that the superficially serene exterior of the atomic midwestern family hides a pathological dysfunction. What makes Franzen’s approach to this dysfunction so unique is that he allows his characters to implode with nary a ripple outside of their clan. It’s simultaneously beautiful and damning.

Freedom is, in many ways, the same story told over again. This time an atomic family in suburban Minnesota disintegrates before our very eyes, beginning (retrospectively) with grandparents and trickling down through the generations, like bad plumbing reaching the floors below. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to reveal that, like The Corrections, Freedom concludes with a sort of uneasy armistice that appears to be a “happy ending” until you stop and think about it.