Half of a Yellow Sun v. Absurdistan
presented by
ROUND ONE
Half of a Yellow Sun
v. Absurdistan
Judged by Brady Udall
Brady Udall is the author of Letting Loose the Hounds and The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint. Connections to authors: If he has any connections to this year’s authors it would be news to him.
A few years ago I was sitting in a hotel lobby across from the writer Elwood Reid, who was reading a book and laughing. Elwood is an imposing, 300-pound ex-football player with a deep nihilistic streak, and while I would never call him humorless, I think it’s safe to say he’s not easily amused. But this book was making him laugh. At one point he raised his big head out of the book and said to no one in particular, “This shit is classic!” I didn’t know what the book was, or who wrote it, but I resolved right then to read it immediately. If it could make Elwood laugh, who knows, maybe it could improve my looks.
The book turned out to be The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, the first novel by Gary Shteyngart. It’s a supremely well-written book, funny on nearly every page, full of zinging dialogue and sparkling description. Unfortunately, the book falls apart in the second half. The plot deflates, the characters become caricatures of themselves, and the whole thing devolves into tepid farce. But I didn’t care; the book had potential. I’ve long been of the opinion that the comic novel is the most difficult literary form, an observation based largely on the fact that there are so very few great comic novels and so very many crappy ones. The Russian Debutante’s Handbook isn’t a great comic novel, but it’s a good one, and it gave me hope.
You can imagine my anticipation, then, when I cracked the spine of Absurdistan, Shteyngart’s highly-touted second novel. Absurdistan is the story of Misha Vainberg, the morbidly obese son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, who is thwarted at every turn in his attempt to return to the Bronx, where his beloved, trash-talking homegirl Rouenna awaits him. Absurdistan has much of what made The Russian Debutante’s Handbook so good: spectacular prose, lushly idiosyncratic detail, and 1,001 witty asides. What it doesn’t have is much of a plot, or compelling human characters, or any real notion of what it’s trying to say or do. Though there are some hilarious sequences, too often the humor comes off as sophomoric, desperate to please. There are inane puns, a lot of off-the-cuff rap (my name is Vainberg/ I like ho’s/ I sniff ‘em out/ Wid my Hebrew nose), and several appearances by the author himself, cleverly disguised as Jerry Shteynfarb (get it?), the author of the hit novel The Russian Arriviste’s Hand Job (get it now?). By the time I finished it, I couldn’t help but feel that the book didn’t work because the characters and their stories suffer at the expense of the author’s admiration for his own formidable wit and charms.
After the zany shenanigans of Absurdistan, I was more than ready for the violence and tragedy of the Nigerian civil war, as depicted in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. The novel is told from the perspective of three characters: 13-year-old Ugwu, the houseboy of a revolutionary college professor; Olana, the professor’s mistress; and Richard, a timid Englishman who pines after Olana’s twin sister. The novel is at its most energetic and compelling in Ugwu’s sections. He is an innocent, one who absorbs the small details of a world that has the inexhaustible power to seduce his sense of wonder, and somehow he is the perfect lens through which to filter the bloody horrors and degradations of war. The narrative occasionally drags in the other sections, often because the author burdens the characters with the task of explaining the war and its historical context. For a war novel there is a distressing surplus of discourse, with characters holding forth in long paragraphs on subjects like Marxism, European colonialism, and tribal politics. Despite its inability to gain much traction early on, the narrative eventually coalesces very nicely into a compassionate and clear-eyed story told with confidence and with the intuitive understanding that true history concerns itself with the lives of individuals.
Advancing:
Half of a Yellow Sun
Match Commentary
with Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner
WARNER: A real pleasure to be back in the virtual booth for the 3rd Annual Tournament of Books. I’ve got my rooster-crest-emblazoned sport coat on and I’m looking forward to seeing which one of our contestants makes a drunken pass at Suzy Kolber on the sidelines.
I hit the books hard this year, effectively doubling my preparation by actually having read two of the titles among this year’s 16 finalists (The Lay of the Land and One Good Turn), as opposed to one last year (runner-up Sam Lipsyte’s Home Land). However, if Tony Kornheiser can join the Monday Night Football booth and George W. Bush can be president, actual experience with what you’re talking about seems unnecessary.
Our first matchup features a couple of up-and-comers whose names I have to double-check every time I type them, which is annoying, but not as annoying as judge Brady Udall found Gary Shteyngart’s The Russian Debutante’s Handbook. One thing I appreciate in judge Udall’s write-up of both books is not only a thumbnail sketch of the plot, but a description of each book’s tone and general approach to storytelling, which gives me a sense for which book I might like, despite having read neither. It’s like this Udall person is a writer, or something like that.
Because he does this, I can confidently declare that Udall has made the wrong call. Chimamanda Achidie’s Half of a Yellow Sun sounds like homework (interesting homework, but still homework). The Russian Debutante’s Handbook sounds like dessert.
GUILFOILE: You know a year ago in this space you and I were discussing Sam Lipsyte’s Home Land and one of us said this:
“Except for not shooting your friends on a hunting trip, I don’t think there’s anything harder than writing a successful comic novel.”
Then I noticed this passage in Brady Udall’s review:
“I’ve long been of the opinion that the comic novel is the most difficult literary form…”
Has Udall really “long been of the opinion” or is he ripping us off? I believe the Tournament of Books has its first plagiarist. Actually it’s less like plagiarism and more like three writers sharing a widely held belief, but this is America, dammit! I want to be aggrieved.
Still, that’s pretty weak. Let me try it again.
In December of 1999, I wrote a piece for the New Republic in which I suggested that since the millennium would really begin on January 1, 2001, not January 1, 2000, we should change its popular shorthand from Y2K to the Roman 2MI. On New Year’s Eve, two weeks after that article hit newsstands, Al Franken went on the air with Peter Jennings and did the exact same bit, lifted right from the page. He had even made up 2MI t-shirts and presented them to an amused Jennings. Have I mentioned this publicly before? No, because I think it’s entirely possible that two intelligent people could have come up with the same lame comedy bit independently, even if Al Franken has seven times been named, “Person most likely to subscribe to the New Republic.” Do I mention it now just as Franken begins his bid for the United States Senate because he might be able to throw some sweet perks my way (in the form of inaugural ball tickets and universal health care) in order to shut me up and avoid a Joe Biden-like plagiarism scandal right out of the gate. Yes. Yes I do.
Call me, Al. All these years later, I’m suddenly aggrieved.