Mid-term Book Report: You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon

You Remind Me of Me (the first 3/4ths): Torgo disapproves

So after "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" and "Winning," I've decided to sometimes write my reviews of books before finishing them, because sometimes the end completely changes how I feel and then my review is tainted.

I see that happening with "You Remind Me of Me."

I picked this book at random off the library fiction shelf. I wanted something that was contemporary American fiction. I felt like reading something closer to my present world.

That's always a gamble, I find. If I'm reading a classic, and I can't get into it, or it seems to suck, I'm inclined to stick with it because it's a highly regarded classic, so there must be some merit (except "War and Peace," which I've tried to read twice and failed. Also, "Lord of the Rings" -- tried once, didn't get past the prologue).

I'm becoming something of a grumpy reader of contemporary American fiction, apparently. All these writers seem to be English professors at mid-level colleges. Sure, I'd love to be an English prof who writes books over the summer or while taking a semester off. But their books too often feel like books written by college professors who are just aspiring writers and aren't particularly gifted at either field.

I don't know much about Dan Chaon. But I know I wouldn't want him as a professor. In this book, it's like he's showing off his literary skills while still being bland, formulaic, and immature.

There are distractingly named characters, like Gary Gray and Mike Hawk (say it out loud), and Chaon brings attention to his own "cleverness" in naming characters.

Also, like many contemporary American novels, Chaon tells his story out of sequence, as though that adds depth and purpose to a shallow and slight narrative. It doesn't.

The story is about a guy named Jonah (so named because his mother felt like a whale when she was pregnant -- get it? If not, don't worry, he devotes several pages to how clever that is). Jonah has a long lost half-brother named Troy (so named because his mother longed for names from ancient Greece -- and yes, I think we hear the origin story of every character's name, as though Chaon never taught a fiction class in which he needed to explain that you, the writer, should know these things about your characters, but we, the readers, don't give a crap and, in fact, are better off not knowing every mundane detail).

(Ok, worse still, Jonah's a Biblical reference, Troy is an ancient Greek reference. If there's a handbook for seeming like a high-brow writer, it says to name-drop from these two sources. But it probably also says to name-drop something less common, something a 2nd grader might not immediately get. Read Louise Gluck.)

So Jonah's looking for Troy, finds him. Troy's life sucks. So does Jonah's. Troy has a kid he can't see b/c he got arrested for being a drug dealer. Jonah is all scarred from being attacked by a dog as a kid. Flashbacks to their mom tells us her life sucked, too.

I'm about 300 pages in and this book can end one of two ways:

1) Bleak. There's nothing worse than boring books that end miserably. At least give us the hope that your characters will go on to do more interesting things.

2) Happy. Which would be a total sellout and contradict the tone of everything that's come before.

Yet I keep reading it. Oh well. Maybe the end will someone be great and I'll have to change my disapproval.