And, to pick on Billytea once again, to say that African-Americans had life difficult before the Civil Rights Movement ISN'T trite; it's a fundamental point about society.

I think you're referring to someone else. That doesn't seem to be a response to anything I'd said. (Though having said that, being true, even fundamental, isn't actually a defence against being trite. Which is why sports commentators still have jobs.)

What I did say was that setting the novel in race relations as they were several decades ago obscured for me whether his book said anything about race relations today. I still don't know if he intended his novel to say anything about current society, or if it was all supposed to be a historical perspective.

Surrounding it with a postmodern Chandler-via-Pynchon narrative is also smart, and the most successful part of the story for me.

I imagine this is just a love it or hate it proposition. I still don't entirely understand why the love-its love it, although neither can I come up with a thoughtful analysis of why I am in the hate-it camp. Mostly it boils down to: hush up with that other stuff and tell me what you really mean, with which one might rightly accuse me of gross reductionism.

Just got back from vacation and I have a mountain of crap to wade through, but I wanted to drop in with a couple of quick comments and then hopefully flesh them out a little more.

This book was far from perfect and I found a lot of the reading to be tedious, but I never in a million years would have read this book otherwise, so I already feel like I've expanded my horizons (or verticals) significantly.

I had a couple of problems with reading this book. The first one was an inability to grok the genre. The book was fraught with two-dimensional characterizations (mob boss, thugs, evil corporations, wise old man) that scream out parody but the joke seemed to fall flat because the protaganist took herself way too seriously. Just like Fulton's joke, this book starts out trying to be funny, but slowly moves into a very serious mode. And neither mode is completely satisfying.

The second problem I had was that the world Whitehead creates doesn't clearly define the rise and acceptance of intuitionism, and he neglects to even hint at providing some solid foundation for it. What I mean is, we don't get much background to the struggle of the intuitionists. Here's a "science" that's barely a couple decades old, and we're supposed to accept the concept that not only do the intuitionists have the same standing as empiricists (like democrats/republicans) in the eyes of the majority of elevator insiders, but they have held power at various times, yet Lila Mae seems to be surrounded by only derisive empiricists as if intuitionism is still a rare and untrustworthy method? So which way is it? Presenting it as both just made it confusing.

And I found the concept of intuitionism much more intriguing than the whodunit. And as a result, I was very disappointed in the ending. Maybe I wanted more of the fantastic element because I found the rest of the naarative so boring. I cared less about who had the notebook and more about its contents - which never get revealed.

I don't know if this happened to anyone else, but I was halfway through the book before I noticed the author's picture on the back cover. I had no idea he was black. So for the first half of the book I was oddly jarred by the way he treated his black characters and the amount of times he used the word "ni**er", but after I noticed that Whitehead was black, I felt a little more comfortable. Which made me think, what difference should it make that the author is black or white when it comes to the story? It may be my own subconscious prejudices that a black individual can wield the "N word" indiscrimately, while a white individual needs substantial justification, even when used out of the mouths of characters in a novel. Which on a conscious level seems a little unfair. And maybe it's unfair that I assumed the author was white until I saw the photo. Then again, his name is Whitehead, so that may have contributed. Hard to say.

Anyway, I have lots more to say on this book, but I'll have to put some on hold until later. Hell, we have the whole month.

ETA: Weird thing is I just now caught up in Natter and Minearverse. Apparently (mis)use of racial slurs has been a popular topic the last couple of days.

being true, even fundamental, isn't actually a defence against being trite. Which is why sports commentators still have jobs

Snerk. It's funny 'cause it's true

I had a couple of problems with reading this book. The first one was an inability to grok the genre.

This didn't bug me (although it seems to have bugged others). I saw the lack of a clear genre, but I didn't have a problem with just going with it.

I don't know if this happened to anyone else, but I was halfway through the book before I noticed the author's picture on the back cover. I had no idea he was black.

One bookstore I tried to find the book at had it in the black literature section. That helped to clue me in....

And I'm sorry if I'm repeating, but "uplift" is a fairly ubiquitous and important concept in African-American thought in this country, from W.E.B. DuBois's Souls of Black Folks through Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and even in Malcom X's autobiography and speeches.

See, I haven't read enough about Afriican-American history to be able to make that parallel, so it was completely lost on me. Which is too bad, because I (seriously) like the book more now that I know that Whitehead chose elevators for a reason.

t averting eyes

I haven't read the book yet and so am skipping this round of discussion up to this point...just wanted to say "rah rah!" and say I'll be here in the future.

You aren't alone in the not reading, Kristen. I couldn't find a copy, and I was unwilling to pay for one. I have been fascinated, though, by the varying responses, especially when you factor in the various expectations caused by people's usual tastes in books. I would have taken everything at face value in the story, because the books I read are nearly always laced with unexpected things. It annoys me how people laugh or sneer (no one here, just in the general population) when they run into something that is outside their usual worldview. It's like the way some people will automatically reject SF or fantasy because it's "make believe." I know people who become almost angry when asked to read/see something with a fantasy base, like it's offense to them somehow.

During this lull in the discussion, do you think we should figure out which book(s) will follow Asher Lev?

Whoops, I'll post when I get home. I meant to do it before the discussion, but I've been swamped and with limited access recently, and didn't want to bury it in the middle of Intuitionist. My bad.

We still need to come up with a way to pick the next after that, though.