Kaplan's Plot, by Jason Diamond: A Big-Shouldered Debut

You won't find a more Chicago-ey novel published this year than Jason Diamond's debut, Kaplan's Plot. In fact, Kaplan's Plot is actually two Chicago novels in one -- which makes it as overstuffed with Chicago goodness as a Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza or a walk-off home run at Wrigley Field or a double char dog from the Wiener's Circle. (Sorry, I'll stop now.) 

I got to see Diamond at the Chicago release party for Kaplan's Plot a few weeks ago, at which mentioned he always has trouble with his elevator pitch for this novel when someone asks him what it's about. Though he does it very well, I know what he means now. There is a lot going on this book, and it's not easy to summarize succinctly. 

But here goes: Kaplan's Plot is about a disgraced tech bro named Elijah who returns to Chicago from the Bay Area after his partners were indicted and his company folded. His mother Eve, a semi-famous poet, is dying of cancer and Elijah decides there's no better time than the present to dig into his family's past. That past? A grandfather (Eve's father) named Yitz Kaplan, a Chicago gangster in the 1920s and 1930s operating from Chicago's famed Maxwell Street. So these two stories intertwine -- Elijah learning about Yitz and his secrets, and Yitz's escapades happening in-scene. 

The alternating past-and-present scenes, especially when a character in the present is trying to learn the secrets of the past, is a risky structure. It's difficult to parse out information in a way that makes it still seem surprising and fresh both to the characters and the readers. But Diamond pulls it off here. One thing he does well is make each alternating chapter similar in length -- this may be a personal preference thing, but when I'm reading alternating timelines, and we spend 20 pages in one and then 10 in another, I naturally start caring more about the longer section (and it's a subtle signal the writer does too!). But here both stories are given equal weight, and I think doing so helps make the novel successful. 

Plus, compelling characters, a drama-rich plot with secrets and twisty turns, and getting so many great Chicago details in two separate timelines all make this just a lot of fun to read. Not that Diamond's Chicago cred is in question (he grew up in Evanston), but this post on the Chicago Literary Canon on his popular Substack, the Melt, should quell any concerns. 

So yes, if Chicago novels are your thing -- or you're just a fan of well-written family dramas -- this one's for you. Highly recommended! 

Thomas Pynchon Is Having A Moment. Let's Have One with Him

Happy Thomas Pynchon Day to all who celebrate! Today is the day Pynchon's probably last novel, Shadow Ticket is out and in the world. My review of the novel is up at Chicago Review of Books. Here's a little preview:

Thomas Pynchon would prefer not to be introduced. Which is fine, because by now, on the occasion of the publication of his ninth novel, Shadow Ticket, the 88-year-old famously reclusive writer needs no introduction anyway.

Pynchon is one of only a few members of the pantheon of writers whose names are also adjectives. Orwellian (dystopian). Kafkaesque (surreal). Dickensian (includes orphans?).

Please click over and read -- I had A LOT of fun writing this one. My editor called it "a banger." 😅

So yes, Shadow Ticket is out in the world. And woah boy, this is A MAJOR Publishing Event! 

Here is how I know this is Major Publishing Event: First, a couple bookstores around the city, and in Milwaukee (hello, Boswell Books -- one of my favorites!) where the novel is partially set, had midnight release parties last night. When is the last time you can remember midnight release parties for a tricky literary fiction novel?!?

Second: Let me tell you a quick story about just getting an Advanced Reading Copy to be able to review it. Normally, the process is very easy -- you email the publisher, tell them you're reviewing for a publication, and they send you the ARC. This time, I had to prove the assignment, which meant getting the Chicago Review of Books editor to email the publishing team to assure I had indeed been assigned the review. When the ARC arrived, it was an individually numbered copy. Mine is No. 101 of 192 -- which, what an odd number of ARCs to make! I've been writing about books on the internet for almost 20 years, and I've never seen that before. I thanked the team profusely and told them I'd guard it with my life. 

Thirdly, the Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced on Thursday 10/9, and Pynchon is one of the favorites. NicerOdds -- a British bookmaker -- has him at 11/1 odds (the same as Haruki Murakami, by the way -- either of those two winning would make my week!). Can you imagine our boy Tommy pulling down a Nobel on top of everything else? Would he attend the ceremony?!? 

BUT ALSO! Have you seen One Battle After Another??? The Paul Thomas Anderson film has been making huge waves in the cinephile community -- and it's "inspired by" Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland. I have not read Vineland, but I saw the movie last weekend. Verdict: It's worth the hype...and then some. I'm far from an expert film reviewer, but it gets two enthusiastic thumbs up from me. 

Finally, all this chat about Pynchon has renewed interest in Pynchon's masterpiece, Gravity's Rainbow. I spent six months tangling with that novel way back in 2010. I felt like I survived GR, more than read it. Here was a conversation (made up, of course) I had with my boy Tommy on the occasion of finishing that nearly impenetrable novel. 

Now I'm off to rewatch The Simpsons, Episode 10, Season 15 for the 782nd time. "Here's your quote: 'Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!' Hey, over here! Have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But wait, there's more!" 😂

Buckeye, by Patrick Ryan: A Sweeping but Intimate 20th Century Epic

Both of my grandparents on my mother's side were born, raised, lived their entire lives, and died in Tiffin, Ohio -- a small town in the northeast about an hour from Toledo. Dick and Dorothy Puffenberger were front and center in my mind as I read Patrick Ryan's debut novel, Buckeye.

Covering a half-century of the lives of two couples and their families, Buckeye is set in the fictional town of Bonhomie, Ohio (though real places I know well from visiting my grandparents, like Findlay, Fostoria, and yes, even Tiffin make appearances). Margaret and her husband Felix, and Becky and her husband Cal are the same generation as my grandparents, so it felt like I was reading a sort of fictional version of the lives of their friends and neighbors.

But even if you're not lucky to have had grandparents who lived in a small town in Ohio, if you enjoy a good multi-generational saga chock-full of secrets, lies, regrets, deception, and drama, you'll dig Buckeye. 

At once sweeping and intimate, Buckeye is about how life even in small town America is not insulated from the effects of massive world events. Beginning with World War II and ending in the 1980s, Ryan tells us the story of the uniquely American 20th century through the eyes of these two couples who become inextricably intertwined. 

One of things that Ryan does well here is making it possible for readers to continue to empathize with good people who make bad decisions. That's such a difficult thing to pull off in fiction -- and especially given how we're programmed these days to write someone off for a single indiscretion. Sometimes good people do bad things. How they respond to those poor choices is the meat of this novel, and Ryan seems to be saying, how they really should be judged. 

My biggest complaint about this novel is that, even at 450 pages, it feels too short. We spend more than two-thirds of the novel on just a few years. But then we sort of do the "fast forward montage" thing and skip ahead too quickly. It felt like there was opportunity to really flesh out the relationships between the couples' kids and give them more room to grow on the page. I'm probably in the minority on this -- no one likes long books anymore. But I felt like this could've been a 900-page masterpiece in the vein of David Wroblewski's Familiaris or Abraham Verghese's The Covenant of Water. 

Still, what's here is fantastic -- and it's already become a huge word-of-mouth hit. Grab your drink of choice, your coziest sweater, and lose yourself in this story. 

Playworld, by Adam Ross: Parents Just Don't Understand

Playworld, by Adam Ross, is a long, often dense, sometimes directionless novel about a teenage actor’s coming of age in early 1980s NYC. But more so, it’s about adults being constantly and consistently disappointing.

I should’ve loved this — it feels like a throwback novel. There are some Dreiser vibes here, especially An American Tragedy (so it’s likely not a coincidence our character here is named Griffin, which is close enough to Griffiths?). Griffin is tossed along on an ocean of circumstance (naturalism, anyone?), and dealing with issues not of his making and far above his maturity level — a gross wrestling coach, an affair with an older woman, paying for his own schooling, a small amount of notoriety from his acting, etc.

This should’ve worked splendidly, but…it just felt aimless. None of Griffin’s individual issues, which are HUGE DEALS, ever really felt like they were given the weight they deserved. Instead, we spend a ton of time on Griffin’s first age-appropriate crush — which, had that been the novel, would’ve been fine (and the book would’ve been about 200 pages shorter).

The biggest issue in Griffin’s life, however, is how every adult he wants to rely on — teachers, coaches, his fellow actors, and most notably his parents — lets him down. It feels to him like every adult in his life is just playacting at being an adult. Others have compared this novel to a slightly more modern The Catcher In The Rye, but Griffin is not nearly as adept at Holden Caulfield at identifying the phonies. So it’s no wonder Griffin struggles. 

Look, Ross is a magnificently astute writer -- he's really good at crafting long (again, often dense) paragraphs teasing out a single idea. I loved these and often looked forward to them more than the next plot point. And I will definitely read whatever it is he does next (though it's been 15 years between novels, so who knows), but this was a miss for me. 

Five Thoughts Upon the Occasion of Finishing Lonesome Dove

Earlier this summer, I put up a poll on Instagram asking which "dead white guy" book I should read this summer: Lonesome Dove, The Grapes of Wrath, or The Brothers Karamazov. Lonesome Dove won in a landslide! I had no idea so many people -- and so many people from a WIDE swath of otherwise disparate literary tastes -- had read and loved this book. I heard from writers I admire, readers with whom I hadn't talked in months, even an old friend from college -- all said Lonesome Dove was one of their favorite novels of all time.

Parallel to this was another thing I didn't even know about, but soon discovered: Lots and lots of other people were also reading Lonesome Dove. In March, Esquire even published a story titled "Why Is Everyone Reading Lonesome Dove?" The easiest explanation, and these days, the one immutable rule of book trends: When something weird happens, blame TikTok. BookTok may partially explain it, and Larry McMurtry's death in August 2023 certainly helped renew interest, but likely the biggest reason: It's just really freakin' good. BookTok occasionally leads us astray (cough, Colleen Hoover, cough cough), but in the case of Lonesome Dove, it led us to the promised land. And I'm super glad for once to be caught up in good book trend. 

And so in mid-June, I began my Lonesome Dove journey. I spent about six weeks with this novel, whittling away its 858 pages a chapter or so a day. I finished it yesterday. I absolutely loved it. Here are five random thoughts. 

5.  The Lonesome Dove Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is real -- After I started reading the novel, I began to see it everywhere. Sports personality Ryen Russillo posted on Threads just a couple days ago, "Lonesome Dove really picks up after the first 300 pages" (he's not wrong). Host of NPR's "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me" Peter Sagal recommended it to someone on Bluesky. I got fed an ad for Peacock with a promo for the late-1980s miniseries with Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones (not gonna lie, that creeped me out a little). And so, whether it really was, or I was just noticing it more, Lonesome Dove was/is ubiquitous. 

4. The "head hopping": A craft no-no that somehow works here -- McMurtry does something here with his omniscient narrator every writing teacher you've ever had has warned you against doing: Head-hopping. What that means is that sometimes he jumps from characters' thoughts to characters' thoughts from paragraph to paragraph. At first this was a little distracting. You have to pay attention to be sure you know whose having a think now. But eventually you just learn that's how this book is going to be and you deal with it. Pulitzer Prizes won by Larry McMurtry 1, Pulitzer Prizes won be me 0. So who am I to nit-pick?

3. Man vs. nature -- I feel like this is a too-easy comment, but I have to say that I sure would not have made it as a cowboy. Not only do I not like to go more than a day without showering, I hate snakes, bugs, and anything with more than four legs. In this book, there's a scene where a dude dies after being attacked by water moccasins. There's a several-hours-long grasshopper storm. A bull and a bear engage in a fight to the death (which consternated the Chicago sports fan in me). And that's just the tip of the grassy plains. Yikes. No thanks. 

2. It's a very long novel, but it doesn't feel long, and it's deep, but the pacing is just right -- It only took me a while to read, because I was reading lots of other things concurrently. But man, when you sink into this book, you really sink in. Such an amazing adventure. One of my biggest surprises in reading this novel was the depth of character. There is a ton of interiority here! I don't read a ton (any!) Westerns, and the blurb on the back tells you that if you're only going to read one Western, make it this one, and so that's advice I'll probably follow, but I was really impressed by how fully realized these characters feel, especially because there's so many of them, and especially because some of them are women.

1. Gus McCrae is now one of my Top 5 favorite characters in all of literature -- If you judge your protagonists by how much you'd like to have a beer or six in the bar with them, as I do, well then that's why Gus is now in my top 5. The wise-cracking, long-winded former Ranger is as quick with a quip as he was on the draw back in his day. But now that he's older and has hitched his wagon permanently to the irascible Call, he's more about the chat than the chase. And that's just fine. Because this guy is infinitely entertaining. At least to us. Not so much to Call.