Hm. Based on Pistelli's glowing review, I picked up a copy of ROAR and read it all week. It is certainly chockful of good qualities: the naturalness of the nonstop speech, the clever impersonations of celebrity registers, the eruptions of eloquence, and most of all the delightfully intricate meta hijinx--I mean how Wagner wove his story so carefully into the minutiae of 20th-century American culture, not to mention his own career. There is a lot to enjoy.
However, I found myself drained by a big hole at the story's center, the hole that prevents this novel from being more widely read. That hole is Roar himself: he just doesn't seem real! He never comes to life, he never seems like anything but a sliding satirical surface reflecting Wagner's preoccupations. Read in the most charitable light, his strange emptiness could be just an intentional reflection of the secondhandness of the oral history, a commentary on how other people couldn't grasp Roar or just committed the usual act of eisegesis, turning him into their own personal Mary Sue. But I noticed the same problem of lifelessness arose whenever a character appeared too often: the more they spoke, the more they just seemed like Wagner himself, and not in a pleasing meta way, but in the way of badly realized puppet-props, wannabe humans reduced by an imperfect author's too-small conception. The most successful characters were the minor ones, the ones who blazed across the narrative and then disappeared before they could be homogenized into Wagnerishness. Even Bird ended up cloying and impossible.
Also, I get that he wanted to ironize Hollywood sentimentality, but it's not enough to ironize and parody, especially when the book is so long. That's why the climactic internal monologue is so affecting: because for once we are getting some real emotion. Wagner must have done that on purpose, to ease us back down out of his delirious oral celebo-pandemonium, but I came away sensing that he would have been better off putting all that talent into a wildly different book. Give me a whole story about poor Moon--but not Hendrix, who seemed as Wagnerized as his father.
Overall I liked and sometimes admired ROAR, and I'll read other books by Wagner. I certainly found him more sympathetic than many of his more famous contemporaries. I feel I'll like the books most where he is unapologetically in control and center stage, where his prose, his own voice, can rule unchallenged, without going in drag. But I think Roar falls way short of being a masterpiece.
I wonder what Pistelli's take is on Roar the character.
Great overview of one of the most fascinating and adventurous writers in the quality lit game. It’s been interesting to watch his style evolve, from the lapidary prose of I’m Losing You to the free wheeling social media-speak of Marvel Universe, which achieves some of the most arresting dramatic effects of anything I’ve read by him. I recently went back and rewatched Wild Palms. Still hard to believe something that weird and edgy landed on network TV when it did, even with Twin Peaks paving the way. Next up for me is Dark Stars.
Hm. Based on Pistelli's glowing review, I picked up a copy of ROAR and read it all week. It is certainly chockful of good qualities: the naturalness of the nonstop speech, the clever impersonations of celebrity registers, the eruptions of eloquence, and most of all the delightfully intricate meta hijinx--I mean how Wagner wove his story so carefully into the minutiae of 20th-century American culture, not to mention his own career. There is a lot to enjoy.
However, I found myself drained by a big hole at the story's center, the hole that prevents this novel from being more widely read. That hole is Roar himself: he just doesn't seem real! He never comes to life, he never seems like anything but a sliding satirical surface reflecting Wagner's preoccupations. Read in the most charitable light, his strange emptiness could be just an intentional reflection of the secondhandness of the oral history, a commentary on how other people couldn't grasp Roar or just committed the usual act of eisegesis, turning him into their own personal Mary Sue. But I noticed the same problem of lifelessness arose whenever a character appeared too often: the more they spoke, the more they just seemed like Wagner himself, and not in a pleasing meta way, but in the way of badly realized puppet-props, wannabe humans reduced by an imperfect author's too-small conception. The most successful characters were the minor ones, the ones who blazed across the narrative and then disappeared before they could be homogenized into Wagnerishness. Even Bird ended up cloying and impossible.
Also, I get that he wanted to ironize Hollywood sentimentality, but it's not enough to ironize and parody, especially when the book is so long. That's why the climactic internal monologue is so affecting: because for once we are getting some real emotion. Wagner must have done that on purpose, to ease us back down out of his delirious oral celebo-pandemonium, but I came away sensing that he would have been better off putting all that talent into a wildly different book. Give me a whole story about poor Moon--but not Hendrix, who seemed as Wagnerized as his father.
Overall I liked and sometimes admired ROAR, and I'll read other books by Wagner. I certainly found him more sympathetic than many of his more famous contemporaries. I feel I'll like the books most where he is unapologetically in control and center stage, where his prose, his own voice, can rule unchallenged, without going in drag. But I think Roar falls way short of being a masterpiece.
I wonder what Pistelli's take is on Roar the character.
Skyhorse is republishing my novel, The Hermit, originally published last year by Heresy Press.
Great overview of one of the most fascinating and adventurous writers in the quality lit game. It’s been interesting to watch his style evolve, from the lapidary prose of I’m Losing You to the free wheeling social media-speak of Marvel Universe, which achieves some of the most arresting dramatic effects of anything I’ve read by him. I recently went back and rewatched Wild Palms. Still hard to believe something that weird and edgy landed on network TV when it did, even with Twin Peaks paving the way. Next up for me is Dark Stars.