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THE PETTING ZOO by Jim Carroll


jaedmc

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I got through 100 pages in one day yesterday (Canadian Thanksgiving, had the day off) and I've got about 100 pages to go.  There've been a few of these books where the writing seems clunky early on, but then I get used to the writer's style.  This time, the clunkiness hasn't really gone away.  I'm referring mainly to the introspective moments where Billy's thinking about his feelings.  I'll find a specific example later, but there are lots of instances where it just seems like Carroll's trying to hit his quota of words for the day.  There'll be a long paragraph about how Billy feels a certain way, and then at the end of the paragraph he just sweeps those feelings aside and carries on doing whatever he was doing, so never mind those 150 words you just read.

 

Having said that, there is a lot of material about Billy's thoughts on the creative process that I enjoyed.  I like the conversations with the taxi driver and the raven too - putting twists on established religious texts, kind of reminiscent of Rushdie.  There's quite a bit of stuff that's clearly allegorical or symbolic, but I don't know what it's supposed to be representing.

 

The sexual stuff is crazy uncomfortable but it's certainly not boring.

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Thanks for reading SKOS! 

 

I agree with many of your points, but I think it's important to note a few things while discussing the clunkiness of the prose. First, Carroll died while writing the book, and I think it is very clear which sections were edited by him over time, and which were published as found by his literary agent (or brushed up by Patti Smith). That being said, I think Carroll is clearly a poet first and a novelist second, as there are many sections that don't segue even remotely like you mentioned. I think it should also be noted that Carroll first did readings of what would become major sections of this in the early to mid nineties, so if he hadn't passed when he did, I have my doubts that this would have ever seen the light of day. Carroll was a notorious perfectionist, and certainly was never in a hurry to publish anything. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah, sadly my library doesn't have this and has no ILL way around this shortcoming (dirty secret of my participation in this book club: whether I read a book or not is completely dependent on whether I can get it from my library) so I'll have to end up sitting out this one :\

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I failed on this one. No one's fault but my own. I made it about 2/5 the way through and was just too tired to read on the bus. I do have a few thoughts, which is unfortunate because I didn't get all the way through so they can't be at all fair.

 

1.) We've read a few books I'd call "literary novels" for this now and they all seem to be about untrustworthy narrators and really delving into the head of the main character, putting their self-image and perceptions up against reality itself, using various tools to accomplish that. It's making me start to wonder if that's what all literary novels are about or if that says something particular about us, or maybe the sort of thing we would push forward to try to engage each other? 

 

2.) Given the omnipotence (omniscience?) of the narrator, many of the explanations for the main character's mental issues or feelings ended up seeming very cut and dry. "His psyche was like this because of this experience. This experience led to that." I like that sort of logical causality in general. It's nice and neat, but I don't really think life, especially the reverberations of the mind really work like that. I don't know if I'd say it was a combination of explaining away very complex and at least partially unknowable things in a very direct away or maybe just too much telling or not enough showing, but it felt unsatisfying. (This is something that I fully realize could have gotten turned upon its head by the end of the book though).

 

3.) A lot of the actual writing was enjoyable. I liked each new encounter the main character had in the present. I was less drawn in by most of the flashbacks though. I think that's what did me in by the end (though some of the sexual stuff was hard to get through too, I'll admit). I wanted to see him move forward more than I wanted to see him look back.

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1.) We've read a few books I'd call "literary novels" for this now and they all seem to be about untrustworthy narrators and really delving into the head of the main character, putting their self-image and perceptions up against reality itself, using various tools to accomplish that. It's making me start to wonder if that's what all literary novels are about or if that says something particular about us, or maybe the sort of thing we would push forward to try to engage each other? 

 

 

I haven't read this book but in general this seems to be one of the dominant tropes of the past decade-plus or so in various narrative genres.  It likely always existed but is something that caught on around the dawn of the century and in its most blatant form is a bit overplayed (I have to use the term "pulled a Tyler Durden" much more frequently than I'd have anticipated years ago), but it makes sense that it'd be something that we'd come across at least a couple times in the course of this.

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