Seriously Gobsmackingly Great Book

Some books hit you upside the head. Others split your sides right down the middle. This one does both. I'm not even half way through it and I want to buy a copy for every person I know. That's right, I'm extolling the virtues of a book I'm not even finished reading. That's how I-don't-even-have-an-emphatic-enough-word good it is. It has already delivered more hilarity, more poetry and more ass-kick writing than most of the books I've ever read. I can't buy you a copy, unfortunately, because I'm broke but I urge you to run out and buy your own. For those of you who can't read mirror images, the book is called A Fraction of the Whole, by Steve Toltz.

Like a poltergeist jonesing for a little play time with the living, this book threw me on the floor where I laughed myself silly, and then pinned me there with gut-wrenching tales of bizarre sports-loving-related crimes and more-crazy-than-your-own family dramas. It's told with such tenderness and wit-sharpened insight that I'm convinced the point at which the Jewish diaspora and the Criminal diaspora intersect at the bottom of the earth, where no one is really looking (i.e. Australia), is the point at which the right alchemical ingredients and conditions exist to yield what every book lover seeks: gold.

This book could not have come at a better time. I have been struggling to find something to blog about for the last two weeks. No matter what I did – even brunch with amazing French people


who know how to make the perfect brunch food (high-end baguette with pear and double-cream brie and some kind of dijon and honey sauce, all topped with pecans and then grilled) . . .


. . . and, of course, the perfect latte . . .


. . . and every item colour coordinated because the French are born speaking fluent Style . . .



– I still came up empty for a post. It seemed my mind had gone on vacation but forgot to tell me where it went and when it was coming back. Also, I’ve been sick. Also, I’ve been happy. Depression practically writes itself. But contentment would rather do other things, like eat out, watch Peep Show and stay in bed – with company.

As a so-called writer, however, it's my job to do my job regardless of how I feel, the same way actors and CEOs fake their way through their depressions and recessions in order to get the job done.

So, taking a page from Steve Toltz’s book, I will do as Toltz’s protagonist, Jasper, does and let someone else do the talking. Normally I would say this approach to posting screams cop out, but I know my instincts are right in this case because I simply cannot do the book justice. Toltz is too fucking smart.

Like the inexplicable but compelling stuffed bunny sitting on a shelf of the furnished apartment I am renting . . .

. . . I will let Toltz's unexpected and riveting story stand as its own illustration of the weirdly-hypnotic thing that it is.

A little context: Eight-year-old Jasper (who is eight in the same way I am internationally famous – his hilarious, world-weary storytelling belies his true age) hands a great deal of the storytelling over to his eccentric father, who tells Jasper a story about the coma Jasper's father was in for four years in early childhood. During this almost-dead state/time, Jasper’s father saw and heard things he could not possibly have seen and heard. By way of explanation he tells Jasper, “when there aren’t any waking hours . . . for months or even years . . . it’s possible that the restless mind, desperate for activity, might reach . . . right down to the bottom of the unconscious, dredging up stories of things that were left there by previous generations.” Here’s some of what he saw:

I saw all the dawns come up too early and all the middays reminding you you’d better get a hurry on and all the dusks whisper “I don’t think you’re going to make it” and all the shrugging midnights say “Better luck tomorrow.” I saw all the hands that ever waved to a stranger thinking it was a friend . . . I saw all the men wipe down toilet seats before urinating but never after. I saw all the lonely men stare at department store mannequins and think “I’m attracted to a mannequin. This is getting sad.” I saw all the love triangles and a few love rectangles and one crazy love hexagon in the back room of a sweaty Parisian café. I saw all the condoms put on the wrong way. I saw all the ambulance drivers on their off hours caught in traffic wishing there was a dying man in the backset. . . . I saw all the Buddhists bitten by spiders they wouldn’t kill . . . . I saw all the broken dishes in all the Greek restaurants and all the Greeks thinking “Culture’s one thing, but this is getting expensive.” I saw all the lonely people scared by their own cats. . . . I saw all the funerals and all the acquaintances of the dead enjoying their afternoon off work. I saw all the astrology columns predicting that one twelfth of the population of earth will be visited by a relative who wants to borrow money. I saw all the forgeries of great paintings but no forgeries of great books. I saw all the signs forbidding entrance and exit but none forbidding arson or murder. I saw all the carpets with cigarette burns and all the kneecaps with carpet burns . . . I saw inside all the mouths and it’s really disgusting in there. I saw all the bird’s-eye views of all the birds who think humanity looks pretty active for a bunch of toilet heads . . .

Later in the book, Jasper's father describes Paris:

But Paris -- beautiful poor ugly opulent vast complex gray rainy & French. You see unbelievable women, umbrellas, beggars, tree-lined streets, bicycles, church spires, Africans, gloomy domes, balconies, broken flower pots, rudeness that will ring through eternity, aimless pedestrians, majestic gardens, black trees, bad teeth, ritzy stores, socialists moving their hands up the thighs of intellectuals, protesting artists, bad drivers, pay toilets, visible cheese smells, witty scarves, shadows of body odors in the metro, fashionable cemeteries, tasteful transvestites, filtered light, slums, grim, desire, artistic lamp posts, multicoloured phlegm of passive chimney smokers, demented cobblestone faces in terrace cafés, high collars, hot chocolates, flashy gargoyles, velvet berets, emaciated cats, pick pockets running away with glittering entrails of rich German tourists, & great phallic monuments in the squares & sex shops.

. . . but why is it that when I hear someone make a great philosophical argument I get the same feeling as when I see someone has put clothes on his dog?

Photo credit: My friend Philippe took the bunny photo.