Everything Changes The Book of Joe

It's pretty apparent from the listings on the left that fiction is an area that neither I nor The Boy spend a lot of time on. It's not from disdain, at least on my part, or really even not having the time. I just don't find most of what's offered fiction-wise that appealing. I don't mean this as snotty or snobbish. I read book reviews in several papers, go to online sites, and the plots and characters that are described just don't sound like anything I would prioritize over other things, too formulaic and predictable, like most entertainment media these days. That's why I do the same with movies and tv and that's why I haven't been to a movie in months and end up watching telenovelas. (Hmm . . . telenovelas and Albert Hirschmann books, no wonder he can't afford to be snotty or snobby).

I love fiction. I've had plays produced in community theater. I have a shelf of novels that I read over and over, some new, mostly old. Captain Newman, M.D. Red Sky at Morning. Dead Solid Perfect. The Man Who Wrote the Book. Plainsong. About a Boy. Skinny Dip. All of Richard Russo's novels and his short story collection. Steve Martin's novels and plays and adaptations. Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe. Second copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. (And, yes, I enjoyed Jane Green's Jemima J my wife and I read aloud on a long road trip.) But the current literary lights and the best-sellers year after year haven't offered me much I wanted. I'm open to suggestions from any kind readers who see the titles above and think of others along the same lines, but I have a stack of nonfiction I haven't gotten through so please make them good.

All that said, there are times when I have to break from the surrounding reality when it feels like it's going to strangle me, and that usually means running to fiction. Work silliness and Wednesday, November 8, have been doing a number on me lately, so I headed to the store for something new to divert me before I turned to the old reliables. And I got lucky. Found two novels by a guy named Jonathan Tropper--The Book of Joe and Everything Changes--that didn't solve work or Wednesday but did give me interesting stories, some laughs, and some thought.

Tropper's audience really isn't a guy like me. I've been married over 32 years (roughly the age of the guys he writes for), and he describes the world of the guy with so much past baggage that he isn't happy with having everything the world says he should want, financial success, beautiful women and beautiful sex, a future that seems assured. In both books his heroes systematically respond to a sudden life crisis (terminally ill relative in one, possibly terminally ill him in another) by blowing up the "successful" lives they've built. Maybe it's because I've sort of done that a couple of times, know the desperation when you know you're on a path that just isn't right (personally and morally), that I enjoyed the books despite the demographic chasm.

I'm sure the "literary" among us can criticize Tropper's books for being too "sitcom" or "movie-ready." In fact, they're both in movie treatment apparently. Before Angelina, Brad and Jen had optioned(?) Joe, and probably would have done it themselves. Aniston would still be great as the female lead who was dumped by the hero after a high school love so he could go off and be a famous author. Now he's come back home 17 years later to a town he trashed in his hit book (pun), and she's one complication he has to reconcile, along with a dying father and a dying best friend (and psychopaths who want to do to him literally what he did to them literarily). I guess Pitt would have been okay as Joe (I've never been that into him, in any way, and have never really seen the appeal, even if he is a Mizzou boy, sorry.) If I'm Jen (may I call you Jen?) and I still have rights to the treatment, call Matthew Perry up right now. Do I have to spell out the PR for you? (Even though Cusack would be the more obvious choice, "Friends" aside.) As for Changes, Natalie and Zach? You have a return call on line 3. (Come on, a guy shafted by a delinquent father who's suddenly turned back up (with a big surprise at the end) thinks he has cancer, lets his feelings for his late best friend's widow come through in time to blow off his marriage to a rich, beautiful daddy's girl--who's going to do it better?)

I've never bought the "too sitcommy" or "too box office" line for books, plays, and movies. I know what they mean and it's a legit complaint at times. But it's too easy, too, like those lines you learn to say in grad school for seminars where you're asked to respond to a presentation that you haven't thought twice about. "I have questions about the methodology." "I'm surprised you didn't mention [put obscure author reference here.]" "I'm wondering if using tobit here was really the right choice." It's a lazy copout and substitutes for thought and real analysis. Both of these books play out quickly and well as ready-to-be screened stories. But so did To Kill a Mockingbird (which, surprise, was a great movie). Steve Martin wrote for tv, so did Woody Allen. I don't think Russo has, but the guy churns out screenplays and his books have moved to screen just as well as these will. The dialogue is sharp, the knowledge of businesses is impressive, the interactions among the characters and settings reminded me of Russo, and the plot turns are handled well and sometimes surprisingly. Plus, he lands the dismounts on the endings, which is the most important thing an author in any medium can do.

Most importantly, his message in both books is something this culture needs to hear and take to heart. His male leads have everything the media tell him he should want, the Playboy girlfriend and/or lifestyle, a future of polish and glamour. And they're miserable because that's not what life is about, despite everything a 30-year-old these days has been told. At the end of each book, they've (re)connected with a solid woman who offers them the internal path of love and responsibility that should be all our goals, the sad and ridiculous Hef not withstanding. They start out as self-absorbed but decent enough to know that it's wrong and there has to be a better way. There is, and through sudden and unexpected turns and surprises they find it. It's the message Natalie Portman delivers in different ways to Timothy Hutton in "Beautiful Girls" and Zach Braff in "Garden State." Grow up, for God's sake. "Sex in the City" and "The Man Show," while very funny, are both very pathetic. Tropper's characters find that out via lives they made harder than they needed to be, blinded by things they thought they wanted but didn't. "Finding yourself" and "I've got to love me before I can love anyone else" is just crap. Most of us become worthy of love through loving others, not loving ourselves first, and what if you find yourself and "yourself" is a jerk? We know how to be good, productive people who leave something that made our being here worthwhile (that global warming thing notwithstanding). Just do it.

His characters finally figure it out by the end. And those are stories that even an old guy in his mid-50's will be his audience for. Please keep them coming. I've cleared more space on my shelf.