August 3, 2014 

“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” by David Shafer 

Reviewed by Mark Lindquist
Special to The Seattle Times

Literary fiction rarely seems edgy or even fun these days. One theory is that most of the smart, ambitious and talented writers started migrating to movies and television back in the 1980s.

Go west, young one.

David Shafer, author of “WTF,” missed the wagon train. We are lucky he did. His inventive, comic, dystopian semi-thriller restored my faith in fiction. Remember the TV show “Thirtysomething”? Shafer undoubtedly does. His novel is 30-somethings on pot, dosed with computers and conspiracy theories, zinging with wit and pop culture savvy.

His leading 30-somethings, Leo, Leila, and Mark, are brought together in an effort to oppose the Committee, a corporate cabal seeking to privatize and possess all the information in the world. Leo is a substance abuser with a trust fund, Leila is a former idealist working for an international nonprofit, and Mark is a best-selling and self-loathing self-help author.

Leila is recruited by the opposition, and she helps recruit Leo, who in turns helps with Mark. Leo and Mark are estranged friends from college. After Mark’s book, “Bringing the Inside Out,” became wildly successful, Mark ignored Leo. The book, “pretty basic stuff about how you’re never going to be certain, and there are too many variables to control for, and that probably the work of life is all about balancing,” deeply annoyed Leo.

James Straw, however, the master of the cabal, sees it as a motivational bible. He wants Mark to work for him as “Storyteller-in-Chief.” Straw offers Mark money and luxury. The equally shadowy opposition offers Mark, Leo and Leila “a chance to be part of something grander” than themselves.

Shafer’s writing is hip, wickedly hilarious, cutting edge, and ultimately concerned with old-fashioned notions of morality and redemption. He both mocks and adopts Mark’s counsel, “Build the world you want to be a part of.”

January 16, 2009

“This One is Mine” by Maria Semple

Reviewed by Mark Lindquist
Special to the Seattle Times

Maria Semple has lived in Los Angeles and written for television shows, including “Arrested Development,” “Mad About You” and “Ellen.” According to publicity materials, she recently “escaped” L.A. and now lives with her family on “a little island off of Seattle.”

After reading “This One is Mine” (Little, Brown and Company, 400 pages, $26.99), Semple’s first novel, you will understand why. With Joan Didion’s eye for the bleak, Nathanael West’s ear for the desperate and her own taste for the comic, Semple has penned a scathing vision of show business in a repellent La-La Land.

Her heroine, Violet Parry, appears to have the life she wanted and worked for: she’s an Emmy-winning television writer married to a fabulously successful band manager. She has a child, a nanny and a dog walker. Her husband fell in love with her because, among other things, she was “an artsy chick who read the business section.”

She gave up her career to raise children after she started identifying with the ’80s T-shirt emblazoned with the Lichtenstein-like woman “who realizes, to her horror, OH, NO, I FORGOT TO HAVE CHILDREN.” After a few years as a mommy, Violet imagines there ought to be a follow-up T-shirt, one where the woman “is finally cradling her prized baby,” but the thought bubble now reads, “IT’S ALL ADDING UP TO NOTHING.”

Still, Violet is a woman who can appreciate moments and music and driving in the hills, believing that “music sounded better on Mulholland.” She channels her dissatisfaction, as many before her have, into remodeling their large house.

Life takes a lurching turn when she meets Teddy Reyes, the broke bass player for a two-bit cover band. He’s a hustler, a mooch, an addict and he has hepatitis C.

Violet is smitten, naturally.

Though it’s never clear why exactly Violet dives into a tailspin affair with Teddy the loser, it seems to have something to do with the vibe surrounding her in a city where salespeople snub women with engagement rings smaller than three carats.

Meanwhile, her husband, David, is trying, in typical L.A. fashion, to find meaning in his life through Buddhism. This leads him to a yoga retreat where he has a breakdown of sorts in a sweat lodge, one of the funniest set pieces I’ve ever read.

In another story line, David’s off- kilter sister Sally determinedly plots to lure a savant sportscaster into marriage, something the numbers geek is equally determined to avoid.

Everyone, in other words, acts borderline loony.

This might be off-putting but for Semple’s forgiving and funny voice guiding us through the nuttiness with well-grounded prose. Unlike some former television writers who turn to novels, she employs none of the cheap tricks of her previous trade.

This is not a made-for-TV movie and it doesn’t end like one. People pay for their mistakes, as we do in life, and some of them learn lessons — understanding, forgiveness, gratitude — and live on with their scars. Some leave L.A.

August 15, 2008

“Pharmakon” by Dirk Wittenborn

Reviewed by Mark Lindquist
Special to the Seattle Times

Dirk Wittenborn is the literary equivalent of the Velvet Underground, the 1960s band that didn’t sell many records but was famous in certain circles because almost every kid who bought a Velvet Underground record started a band.

In the early 1980s, Wittenborn published “Zoe,” a smart, funny, hip tale of a young model navigating her way through the starry glamour of New York City. It didn’t sell many copies, but several Wittenborn fans I knew became professional writers.

Weirdly, there is nothing in the publicity materials for “Pharmakon,” his new novel, that acknowledges “Zoe” or his first novel, “Eclipse.” Instead he is promoted as “the Emmy-nominated producer of the HBO documentary ‘Born Rich’ and the author of ‘Fierce People,’ for which he wrote the screenplay.”

OK, Wittenborn may be a producer and screenwriter now, but “Pharmakon” (Viking, 403 pp., $25.95) proves his fans were right about him as a novelist — he’s first-rate, even if he hasn’t been working at his craft much in the past three decades.

“Pharmakon” is smarter and funnier than “Zoe” and much broader in its scope, doing for the United States and pharmaceutical drugs what “Zoe” did for New York City and recreational drugs.

In the book, William Friedrich, a 1950s Yale professor of psychology, discovers a drug that appears to be the mother of all anti-depressants. Called “The Way Home,” the drug is culled from a plant indigenous to New Guinea, and it is reported to be the secret to the happiness of an obscure tribe of cannibals.

Before this discovery can be properly distilled and developed, and thereby make Dr. Friedrich as rich and famous as he desires, one of his test subjects runs amok and commits murder, and the drug never makes it onto the market.

From here the book becomes a family drama that covers nearly half a century of medicine, pharmacology, psychology and nearly every neurosis you can imagine, all told through the knowing voice of Zach, Friedrich’s youngest son who becomes a writer.

Zach has two brothers, one of whom dies, and two sisters. His siblings each have a strong, startlingly unique personality, and a talent for aggravating their father.

“Governments hire me to think about their [expletive] problems,” Zach’s father complains to him. “You’d think one of my children would listen to me when I give them advice.” Dr. Friedrich also likes to say, “We are complicated creatures.”

And drugs in this book — and there are more drugs per page here than in a Kurt Cobain biography — only serve as a temporary reprieve from the inescapable madness of life, whether the drugs are pharmaceutical or recreational.

“There had been no miracle cures. Wonder drugs for the mind came and went out of style like the hemlines of ladies’ skirts and the width of men’s ties. Ultimately, they were remembered as ill advised as last year’s fashions.”

As a footnote, I have to point out that Wittenborn’s father was, like William Friedrich, a professor of psychology at Yale in the 1950s and, again like William Friedrich, had a troubled patient who composed a death list that included the professor. I don’t know how much of the rest of Wittenborn’s story is true in the literal sense, but it all rings true in the literary sense.

Entertainment News: Sunday, August 15, 1999

“Not Ready for Prime Time” by Brent Askari

Reviewed by Mark Lindquist
Special to The Seattle Times

In his book “On Becoming a Novelist,” John Gardner, the writer and teacher who was a mentor to Raymond Carver among many others, had this advice for writers:

“One of the most common mistakes among young writers is the idea that a story gets its power from withheld information – that is, from the writer’s setting the reader up and then bushwhacking him.”

Bushwhacking is an unfortunate technique of playwright Brent Askari in his first novel. He ends chapters with sentences like, “And when I did find out the truth, it blew my mind.” This is especially unfortunate because his story does not need cheap tricks.

Justine Nichols, the narrator, a 22-year-old lead singer for an all-girl band, is a charming and engaging character. Abandoned by her parents and raised by an alcoholic aunt, she’s an intriguing study in dysfunction. Askari’s writing continually rings true in this territory.

Justine’s bandmates are drawn equally well: “Tara didn’t fit in with any of the high school crowds. Even the angst-ridden life-sucks-so-let’s-dress-in-black-and-worship-death crowd didn’t like her, because they thought she was a downer.”

I would have liked to spend more time with the band, but the story moves, as it must, to Justine’s confrontation with her mother, a TVstar Justine has never seen in the flesh. Their face-to-face comes in the hospital where the mother is staying after a suicide attempt. This scene, like most of the emotional high points, is handled with grace and wit.

Through the course of the story, Justine has two boyfriends who are her dysfunctional equals, but she is clearly not ready for love. By the end, having confronted her past and herself, she may be.