When it comes to recommending books I do not kid myself that I have even a fraction of the influence of an Oprah, Reese, or Jenna, the book recommending colossi of today. I’m sure I even lack the juice of other celebrity book recommenders (Dakota Johnson, Emma Roberts, and Sarah Michelle Gellar among them), but I like to think my endorsements carry at least a little weight.
More importantly, taking the time to champion work that I think is great and which deserves more attention makes me feel good. My platform may be no bigger than a soapbox, but it’s mine. I also appreciate that at this joint and in the Chicago Tribune I’m provided the space to explore what I am championing in a way that is hopefully illuminating to readers, but again because I’m thinking of myself today, is primarily involving for me. I take something that is interesting to me and get to spend some time figuring out why it’s of interest.
(This is the reason I’m champion of viewing writing as “thinking,” and believe we need to give students as much practice with this thinking — as opposed to regurgitating — as possible.)
Anyway, this is a probably too long prelude to the writer and books I want to champion this week. The writer is Ryan Chapman and the books are the recently released The Audacity and 2019’s Riots I Have Known.
I’ve written in the past how there’s a good chance that your absolute favorite book has something like a three-star average on Amazon because this tends to reflect a polarized response. The “best” books are not meant for everybody because individuals are not averages. I looked at the ratings for both of Chapman’s novels, and indeed, he’s just above the three-star threshold, with low rated reviews that betray confusion, and five-star reviews that demonstrate deep appreciation for Chapman’s gifts.
I am in the five-star group.
The reason his work is polarizing is because Chapman is a full-bore satirist who works in a blend of the Juvenalian and Menippian modes, which makes his books funny, but also caustic and judgmental, an exercise in mostly destructive criticism.
The Juvenalian strain shows up in the way Chapman zeroes in on social and political structures. In Riots I Have Known this includes both the U.S. prison industrial complex and the insular world of the creative writing industry. The way Chapman achieves this is by channelling the novel through the perspective of an unnamed narrator who is holed up in a prison media center as a riot swirls outside is inner sanctum.
The narrator is the editor of the breakout literary journal, The Holding Pen, a journal of writing from incarcerated persons that has become a hit among the New York literati, but which has also triggered the riot because of disputes over its content.
The Menippian strain shows up in what is essentially an extended monologue in which the narrator moves from thought to thought, free associating his way subject to subject. The structure of the novel is dictated by the escalating severity of the riot, which occasionally interrupts the monologue, signaling that an end is inevitable, but you wouldn’t confuse this progress with a plot.
Chapman’s disinterest in plot is simultaneously my favorite thing about his work and what appears to be the chief source of frustration for those who do not connect with his novels. You are given access to the mind and voice of another and asked to simply experience that journey with them.
Chapman is committed to his work as a satirist, and because of this, the arc of the stories are not neat. We cannot expect characters to progress or grow or reveal some wisdom of the world.
Don’t get me wrong, Riots I Have Known is hugely entertaining. Some of the individual riffs are brilliant in terms of the sharpness of their observations and the life and rhythm of Chapman’s prose. But if you’re looking for a book that provides a journey towards enlightenment, Riots I Have Known will prove hugely frustrating.
I’ve written in the past how there’s a good chance that your absolute favorite book has something like a three-star average on Amazon because this tends to reflect a polarized response. The “best” books are not meant for everybody because individuals are not averages. I looked at the ratings for both of Chapman’s novels, and indeed, he’s just above the three-star threshold, with low rated reviews that betray confusion, and five-star reviews that demonstrate deep appreciation for Chapman’s gifts.
I am in the five-star group.
The reason his work is polarizing is because Chapman is a full-bore satirist who works in a blend of the Juvenalian and Menippian modes, which makes his books funny, but also caustic and judgmental, an exercise in mostly destructive criticism.
The Juvenalian strain shows up in the way Chapman zeroes in on social and political structures. In Riots I Have Known this includes both the U.S. prison industrial complex and the insular world of the creative writing industry. The way Chapman achieves this is by channelling the novel through the perspective of an unnamed narrator who is holed up in a prison media center as a riot swirls outside is inner sanctum.
The narrator is the editor of the breakout literary journal, The Holding Pen, a journal of writing from incarcerated persons that has become a hit among the New York literati, but which has also triggered the riot because of disputes over its content.
The Menippian strain shows up in what is essentially an extended monologue in which the narrator moves from thought to thought, free associating his way subject to subject. The structure of the novel is dictated by the escalating severity of the riot, which occasionally interrupts the monologue, signaling that an end is inevitable, but you wouldn’t confuse this progress with a plot.
Chapman’s disinterest in plot is simultaneously my favorite thing about his work and what appears to be the chief source of frustration for those who do not connect with his novels. You are given access to the mind and voice of another and asked to simply experience that journey with them.
Chapman is committed to his work as a satirist, and because of this, the arc of the stories are not neat. We cannot expect characters to progress or grow or reveal some wisdom of the world.
Don’t get me wrong, Riots I Have Known is hugely entertaining. Some of the individual riffs are brilliant in terms of the sharpness of their observations and the life and rhythm of Chapman’s prose. But if you’re looking for a book that provides a journey towards enlightenment, Riots I Have Known will prove hugely frustrating.
