Book Review: People Tell Me Things

The Book Circle:  November

This month in The Book Circle we’re reading The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach.  The sports-book-that-was-so-much-more is being hailed as a triumph of a debut.  Read it and join in the conversation, which will kick off with my review next week (Monday, November 14).

Posting Schedule

You may have noticed I took a tiny hiatus this week.  From now on I’ll be going from three posts per week down to two, still shuffling book reviews, author interviews, posts distilled, and more.

People Tell Me Things

I was really excited to read People Tell Me Things: Stories, by David Finkle.  I went out of my way to request it through TLC Book Tours.

I have to say I was disappointed.  Of the ten stories included in this volume, nine of them are superficial blathering about people who have more money and social stature than the narrator.

The narrators, who are meant to be several different people, all read as the same voice.  I got the distinct feeling that Finkle himself is starring as the narrator in more than one instance (f not all).  The book reads mostly as a distant echo of Sloane Crosley’s hilarious I Was Told There’d Be Cake, only less funny.

“Social Criticism”

In my opinion, social criticism is at its best when it does more than just point a finger at something we all agree is wrong with society.  In one story, “Stanley Konig writing as Conrad Stamp,” the narrator’s friend Stanley, an author who has published a few literary fiction novels, confides that he is the author of a recent lascivious bestseller, The Cocksman’s Tale, published under a pen name, Conrad Stamp.  Stanley has fallen in love with a woman and wants to marry her, but she recently told him that the author of said bestseller must be a horrible person.  He’s conflicted.

Then his publicist leaks his identity as the writer.  Stanley is transformed into a celebrity overnight.  When the narrator sees him again, he’s broken up with the woman: “‘I did love her,’ he said, ‘but that was the old Stanley. I’m a different person now.’ “  The last line of the story reads, “I recognized … that now he was not only Stanley Konig writing as Conrad Stamp, he was Stanley Konig living as Conrad Stamp.”

Are we meant to be impressed by the narrator’s keen, cutting social insight?  To my mind, he was just stating the obvious.  The whole point of social criticism is that it’s not obvious; it’s meant to reveal things we purposefully hide from ourselves because they’re uncomfortable.  The stories here just left me feeling that the narrator was in on the superficiality, and the stories felt disingenuous.

The Saving Grace

The only story with any semblance of emotional core is the last one, “Memorial.”  To be honest, by this time I was quite fed up with Finkle’s repetitive story framework, which barely varied from a narrator meeting up with another character for lunch (occasionally dinner) at a fancy restaurant, and the other character spilling his guts about an all-consuming ‘problem.’

Anyway, I was skimming through the first several pages of “Memorial” before I realized something might actually be happening!  For starters, this story features two characters who have an actual relationship that goes beyond meeting for a meal (at a restaurant which the narrator never reveals the name of, and always comments on his refusal to do so, either because he wants to protect the gem of an eatery, or because he doesn’t want to give the overrated establishment undue press).  The story traces the interactions of Noah and Paul through what looks like a one-night stand and becomes an actual relationship, then dwindles when Noah leaves New York to travel the world.  The story is told in retrospect after Paul attends Noah’s funeral.

It is by far the best story in the book, and left me with a more positive image of it than I had at the start.