BOOKMARKS

NICK
What Is the What
The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng
by Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers is and is not the author of What Is the What. He’s both because this book is both a novel and an autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the many Sudanese Lost Boys who wandered a sub-Saharan desert to escape from the midst of brutal civil war. The story is true, in part, as Deng explains in the prologue, but many of the events occurred so far in the past that time has changed and altered them in such a way that to call the book nonfiction, Deng admits, would be untrue.

It’s fitting for Deng’s story, which is as surreal as it gets: boys being eaten by lions, a man living in a house under the desert sands, women tossing children into alligator-infested waters.

As much as these events sound constructed, they are the most truthful of the book. Eggers constructed the book after months of phone calls, e-mails and face-to-face meetings with Deng. Although it’s unknown how true Eggers has been to Deng’s own storytelling style without meeting Deng in person, the voice is truly different from past Eggers memoir.Yet, Dave can’t shed himself completely of his particular style of humor (a modern absurdity tinged with sympathy and irony), which comes through his emphasis on certain events and organization of the events of the novel (or memoir or autobiography, whatever it is).

The novel’s one unrelenting characteristic is the raison d'être of the book: to tell the story of Sudanese refugees tossed in the mix of a brutal civil war. This was Deng’s purpose in seeking Eggers to tell his story and the reader is reminded of this motive as Deng the narrator consistently relates his story to particular people from his life. He is always looking for someone to tell his story to, for someone to listen to him. At times, the character of Deng is so beset by tragedy that he laments that even God has forgot him or at least has grown apathetic to his struggles, has failed to realize the pain the current state of the world has forced on Deng and his people. Existence is what the book asks for, is what it desires to establish. These things happened, Eggers writes through Deng, and you cannot deny their hideousness, their importance. “I,” Deng says at one point, “know you are there. How can I pretend you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as pretending I do not exist.”

The world, as Deng learns throughout the book, is much larger and much smaller than he could have ever imagined growing up in a small village in southern Sudan. It is that same realization that he hopes to carry to readers of his book, to listeners of his story: I am a face and a story to the tragedy, don't forget me.



JUSTIN
Fight Club
by Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk burst onto the literary scene almost as if he had something to prove already with his first novel Fight Club. The prose moves along at a rockfist pace, constantly hitting the reader with one punch after another. A bit heavy-handed at times, it never strays from its one-two delivery, and that's a TKO on the fighting metaphors for now.

We know nothing of the protagonist's name. We never learn it. All we know is he is dissatisfied with work, love, and life in general. Then he meets Tyler Durden, who radically changes his life and makes him question everything he's ever been taught or even wondered. Their two minds come together and they create Fight Club, a therapeutic men's society where everyday guys beat each other to bloody pulps after Saturday midnights. It's an intense read that has some great twists, with interesting results along the way.

I'm an avid reader of Palahniuk, and I've intentionally waited this long to read Fight Club. I've seen the movie multiple times, but wanted to make sure the characters in the movie were far from my mind when I was reading the book, as I wanted a completely new experience. I got it. There is no real comparison here between liking the book or the movie better, because they're ultimately two very different works, with different endings and orders of events. All I can say is, I loved both. Then again, I'm a fan.

If you want a dive-into-Palahniuk work, this is the one to start with. It was his first novel, and he was already knee-deep in his own style that has since matured and morphed to cover different genres of fiction. If you liked the movie, you'll probably like the book. If you've read the book, yet refuse to see the movie, step down and watch it. It stays true while creating a different world. That's the beauty of mixing media.



DONALD
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

On any given day Gabo’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold would be worthy of a Pulitzer Prize nomination. Journalistically, through a series of facts and firsthand accounts, he crafts a non-linear story just as descriptive and engrossing as any of his romantic epics. Delivering on the promises made by its title, Marquez recants the events leading up to the death of our stories would-be protagonist, Santiago Nasar, a moderately wealthy man-about-town. Masterfully, Marquez manages to tell us the same story more than once and keep it interesting, each go around revealing enough information to spark the reader’s curiosity. We’re turned into silent voyeurs desperately trying to seek out the sordid details of this gruesome murder as Gabo’s nameless narrator pieces together the snapshot in his mind. Every young journalist should be made to read this book if only to explore the limits of the medium. With Chronicle we are reminded that writing can be primarily informative without foregoing the art of storytelling, a lesson that compliments so beautifully the sense of magical-realism present in all of Marquez’s work.