Mercury liked the protagonist, George. Venus liked the floating Indian head, the New England lore. Mars liked the mergings of time and character and dream. It is still ambiguous what Uno, Dos, and Tres thought of this month's book club pick. The story wasn't funny. A reader had to work hard, to think how to read a book while being struck by lightening. What was the plot? Whose Point of View now? And now? And now? Finally, what do we make of the end?
Paul Harding's novel won the Pulitzer Prize. Everyone in the Omega Book Club wondered why Paul's book won while their own book did not.
The Omega Book Club is for losers. To be accepted into the Omega Book Club, you must love Life and Letters, and you must have entered the race and lost. The club chooses only those books that have won major literary prizes. Club meetings involve getting together to boo and hiss, to cry and rub noses with The Nobodies. The group is full of loopy creatures known for their farawayness. All members have joined the club under assumed names.
Mercury identified with George Washington Crosby because he enjoys fixing things, but instead of clocks, Mercury fixes cars. Yes. He hopes that when he is hours away from death, all the grease, the cylinders, the pistons, the exhaust will give him ample metaphorical material for his demented mind to mull over; he hopes to learn that life gives a soul a chance to tune up. Venus says the part about a father leaving his children gave her courage to finally leave her family. Mars says the book gave him a holiday feast, he chewed the clouds and dewdrops upon which the hermit Gilbert fed; and Mars didn't even mind it when his dentures fell to the ocean floor. The book gave Uno seizures that made him bite off his tongue, so who knows--other than some penetrating omniscient narrator--what he thought of the book. And Dos and Tres agreed that every copy of the novel ought to be recalled by the government and then shot up in a rocket to begin some ecumenical, millennial, intergalactic sack race against extraterrestrials.
Come read books with the Omega Book Club. One never knows what pure delight, pleasure, and surprise arises from hanging out with a bunch of losers.
Next month's Omega Club read is THE GHOST OF MADAME YES by Madame Yes, a bizarre novel that surprised the literate world when it won the 2010 Lightman Prize.
