BOOK REPORT: THE KEEP by Jennifer Egan
Okay, it’s official. Jennifer Egan is the contemporary writer whose new works I now look forward to more than any other writer. She replaces Haruki Murakami in the slot who replaced Martin Amis who replaced Charles Bukowski who replaced Bret Easton Ellis who replaced Hunter S. Thompson in the history of my contemporary literature tastes dating back to 1981.
I still love Murakami and will keep reading everything he writes, but having to acknowledge finally that he is writing the same book over and over, I can’t say I am anticipating each new installment with the eagerness I once did.
With Egan, however, I feel like I never know what I am going to get but that every page she has ever written is like cotton candy, it is such a delight. No scratch that, I don’t really like cotton candy very much. It’s more like ice cream, or if you could have pizza for dinner and follow it with ice cream.
The thing that Egan does that no other American writer I can think of pulls off, is to be formally daring without being even a little bit pretentious. She takes her stories in crazy twists down wild alleys, without ever let the book turn into a writing workshop experiment. Whenever I read something that is labeled “formally daring”, on each page I can feel the criticisms from the other graduate students shaping the story, I can feel information being withheld so the author won’t be accused of being pedantic by his fellow Yaddo inmates. And in the end every one of those damn books I read - from Michael Chabon to Josh Ferris - feels to me like it was written with an audience of grad students in mind rather than people who just want to enjoy a story and don’t need it pointing out to you every page how clever it is.
The inventiveness of Egan never feels forced or show offy, but always like an author searching for what is the best possible way to express something about a character, with a mind that is nimble enough to range freely trying to answer that question. She is also unique in her humor never taking a backseat to make an Important Point. She is the funniest of our major writers, which is what makes reading her so fun. Funny + sincere + (inventive - pretentious) = fun. Go figure.
The Keep is not quite the thrill ride of Goon Squad, but I couldn’t put it down. I don’t want to say a word about the story for fear of spoiling any of it, but you too will be gripped trying to unravel it and surprised to see where it winds up. The Keep is a keeper!
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