Over on Tor.com, Jo Walton (herself one of my
favorite writers) reviews Jack Womack's sorely neglected novel
Random Acts of Senseless Violence, a book I rank with
Uglies,
The Parable of the Sower, and even
The Diary of Anne Frank for being an unflinching, engrossing, difficult coming-of-age story. I've read it (at least) a dozen times, and I find new reasons to love it every time.
Random Acts is written in the form of the diary of Lola Hart, a twelve year old girl in a near-future New York City. As the book progresses she changes from being a sweet middle-class child to a robbing murdering street girl as society changes around her. Presidents are assassinated and money is devalued and martial law is declared as she worries about her sexuality and groans about being forced to read Silas Marner for school. At the start of the book she's writing in standard English with the occasional odd word choice, by the end she has progressed into a completely different dialect, and you have progressed step by step along with her and are reading it with ease. I can't think of a comparable linguistic achievement, especially as he does it without any made up words. (Random example: "Everything downcame today, the world's spinning out and I spec we finally all going to be riding raw.") I also can't think of many books that have a protagonist change so much and so smoothly and believably. What makes it such a marvelous book is the way Lola and her world and the prose all descend together, and even though it's bleak and downbeat it's never depressing.
So, why haven't you read it?
Random Acts of Senseless Violence: Why isn't it a classic of the field?,
Random Acts of Senseless Violence on Amazon
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Womack rocks; I'll pick this one up.
From the description of a narrator changing, I'm reminded of _A Prayer for Owen Meany_ by John Irving.
"I can't think of a comparable linguistic achievement"
Cloud Atlas
Thanks for the link. I'll definitely get it requested at my library.
The whole of the "Dryco" series is worth reading If you are interested in decoding the madness of the 3rd millenium...
(in order)
Random Acts of Senseless Violence
Heathern
Ambient
Terraplane (A Very Mighty Book)
Elvissey
Going Going Gone
I have been evangelizing this series for over ten years. Glad to see Cory is hyping it on Boing Boing.
☺
sound pretty cool... cormack macarthy has a pretty good handle on language variation too... blood meridian was fairly epic in this regard.
This sounds good. I'll check it out soon.
And I haven't read it yet, cause I don't have time? Is that an excuse... and I'd not heard of it till now...
Mindy
Random Acts is a brilliant, heart-breaking novel. Many thanks, Cory, for the reminder. Time to reread.
Nicola
/me goes search a brazillian portuguese translation...
I read Random Acts a few years back, and 1 or 2 of the other DryCo novels. I keep trying to read Elvissey, but so much of it is in his invented language, I get lost.
Which is not a bad thing....
Reminds me of how Burgess introduced language in A Clockwork Orange
In the interests of making this a more interesting discussion, I'll jump in here:
I've never liked it.
I can admire the technical skill of the writing; as Cory says, Lola's linguistic shift carries you with her smoothly, in contrast to far too many near-future novels with jarring and artificial slang. But I disagree that "even though it's bleak and downbeat it's never depressing". I found the relentless bleakness extremely depressing, perhaps because it seemed artificial to me - I didn't quite feel that the world around Lola actually was collapsing of it's own accord so much as because the hand of the Author was visible forcing it.
*** Arguably mild spoilers follow; skip if bothered ***
The problem that, for me, makes it depressing and not just downbeat is that I never feel Lola makes any kind of choice. What passes for decision-making on her part is ultimately superficial and irrelevant; her final descent is not a decision,
just one last reaction to the environment.
You can read the first few chapters, then skip ahead extrapolating in a straight line... the ending will be exactly what it looked like.
Technically skilled writing? Yes. Diary of Anne Frank? No.
(YMMV as always. My sister loves this book. I've no idea why; usually I'm the one who likes my fiction dark. There must be a pattern there somewhere; we have the same argument over Atwood.)
I have to echo EPSAS, the whole Dryco sequence is a set of amazing books that shift your perceptions at every opportunity. I love the use of the future street argot and Random Acts is, to me an amazing book, in part because a lot of what he has written here is about the decent into a corrupt reagonomic/thatcherite (now shock doctrine) environment. Could Lola go any other way? Its not about the opportunity for choices it was about the chaos of economics gone bad.
Anyway, read Going, Going, Gone for the best coda to a sequence, especially the dig about someone having read Neuromancer too many times.
And check out his non-sf, russian novel 'Lets Put The Future Behind Us'.
In Fact, why has he not written any more, more please Jack!!!
Tynam - thank you. Far too much sci-fi suffers from the same malady you've just described.
Jack Womack is near the top of my 'buy/check out on sight' list. He supposedly has a novel in the works, but the last of his series that started with 'Ambient' was published 8 years ago.
I'm in the position that there's about a dozen authors I wish would WRITE THEIR DAMN BOOKS FASTER! But Womack has kept me waiting the longest!
random acts is so menacing because womack's hints of a crumbling government are not very detailed, he compels the reader to naturally assume the specifics which adds to the overall vague, wreckless and expanding sense of doom. this book reads like the orchestral ending of the beatles' a day in the life.
Just bought the last copy at AMAZON.COM!!!
I can't believe I've never heard of this book - sounds brilliant. Thanks for the recommendation.
Oh my, I think I'm salivating.
Um, A Clockwork Orange?
I can't believe how far under the radar this man's genius has flown for far too long. His Dryco series actually altered the way I look at things.
Sounds like a novelization of "Mayhem in ce Klasrum" by Dolton Edwards.
This one was my least favorite of the Dryco books so far - that said, I thought it was a heartbreaking novel (especially after having read the earlier books). Very sad - I don't think I'll read it again.
So far, "Elvissey" is by far my favorite. I'm just getting ready to read "Going, Going, Gone."
Haven't read it because:
A. Never heard of it before.
B. Can't find it as an eBook.
Try reading it on a New York City subway some time. People will clear a space around you.
Oh, and like everything of Jack's, it's a damn terrific book.
Damn you Corey!
Mostly based on how much I liked your "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" I followed-up on your recommendation.
$84.93 CDN later, I have all 6 books in the Dryco series coming from Amazon.ca.
Just don't do an Oprah and make the Cory Book Club a regular thing, eh?
Amazing coincidence! I'm about to start a few weeks of vacation, and last night when thinking of books to read during my time off, I recalled seeing this novel on the shelves of a bookstore years ago. Sadly, I drew a complete blank on the title, and I could only remember the author's last name, "Womak."
In an oddly paranoid schizophrenic way, this post seems tailored specifically to my predicament. I won't fight the synchronicity, I'll pick up a copy of the book tonight.
It's a fantastic series: I really wanted to recommend it to a friend the other day, and blanked on the name. Thanks!
I read it in highschool. Can't say it was my favourite, but I read a lot, and this is one of the ones that stuck with me.
I picked this up after William Gibson recommended it on his blog a couple years ago.
I still need to pick up the other half of his novels...
Any advice on whether one should read the Ambient series in order of publication, or in order of the narrative? I read and loved "Elvissey" and managed to pick up the other five over time, but haven't started in on any of them.
Here's one reason few people may have not read it in the NYC area -- the two copies in the NYPL library system are listed as "missing" and in Queens they don't even have it in their choice selection.
But I'll go see about digging up a copy via Amazon, since I've got no other choice and this is right up my alley....
How about ''Flowers For Algernon''? Narrator goes from moron to genius, back to moron. But it's not a book; it's a short story.
Here's one: Ken Kesey's Chief Bromden narrates and slowly goes from batshit crazy to the only sane guy in the cuckoo's nest.
The one thing in ''Random...''that stuck with me is that they were STILL making kids read ''Silas Marner.''
Have this book on my shelf, read it when it first came out. Thanks for the reminder to read it again.
Buddy66 @30: There is an expanded novel version of "Flowers For Algernon", and you're right - it's another book in which the language transforms naturally as the main character does.
(Actually, "Algernon" is a very nice counterpart to "Random Acts", almost exactly the converse. It's still a coming-of-age story, it's an ascent rather than a descent, and the ending is downbeat without being bleak or depressing. And it's another book which everyone should go read immediately, if they haven't already!)
Random Acts of Senseless Violence is one of the books that I keep finding myself going back to reread. I'd definitely recommend it. I read them out of order, and especially liked Terraplane, but Random Acts of Senseless Violence is one of the books I can tell you exactly where it is at any time, where I'd have to go looking around a bit for Terraplane.
@29, You won't regret ordering it. I can see why someone would take it out from the library and not want to part with it.
This book is definitely awesome. I liked Elvissey too but I think Random Acts will resonate with a wider readership. I think i have an ancient review of it on amazon.
Now there's an unanticipated coincidence... today, my four-year-old daughter Simona went to the Liberty Science Center with four-year old Lili Womack... Jack's daughter.
I read Flowers for Algernon (the short story) in English class in junior high.
I was absolutely wonder-struck to stumble upon the novelization in a Union Mission store.
I read and love it. In fact, I love it so much I gave it to a Russian exchange student whom I worked with at McDonald's. He was nonplussed at the spelling mistakes. It was the foreign exchange McDonald's, at least at the time. Sorry Dmitri. Hello Sergei, Ivan, and Vitaly.
I don't think they liked Charleston, WV, too much.
Read that book for like 6th grade free reading assignment. Found it randomly at the library. When I told my teacher the title, she looked appalled. XD
Good book. I really still think that might be how things turn out.
This series is amazing and i cant believe it has been 8 years since his last novel. I have read and re-read every one of these stories and always discovered new things in them. Thanks for the post!
Yup. Great book.
Now where are all the other Cyberpunk and Slipstream books from 1985 to 2000? Seems like they're all remaindered and none are actually available any more. I bought and read an awful lot of them first time around, but how am I ever going to find Dad's Nuke, or Deserted Cities of the Heart? Can you actually buy Kalimantan or The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter any more?
It's not just music that gets locked up in the publisher's copyright vaults.
Random Acts is one of the best books I've ever read. I picked it up in 1997 when I found out that William Gibson was a fan of Womack's. It remains, to this day, one of the books I'd take to a desert island for its intense imagery, its powerful unflinchingness and of course, the incredible evolution of Lola's writing style.
If you haven't read this book, you shouldn't get to call yourself a true fan of cyberpunk.
TYNAM has it exactly right here. I would add one more point. While i am impressed by the tranisition and coming of age illustrated by dynamic invention and use of language...i am more intersted in the tranisiotn itself and the choices and the reasoning behind the choice.
take for instance, Z for Zacharia. Its written by Robert O’Brien and not dissimilar to Random Acts except there is a clear choice by the protagonist to cross lines that are debateably not be crossed and equally to restrain from taking other actions that equally could be justified.
I found the latter a much better treatment of a very similar concept - coming of age for young girl in a apocolyptic/post apocolypse USA