Download And Enjoy Citizen Vince Originated By Jess Walter Supplied As Print
Walter has that "magic something" that puts him a notch above most contemporary novelists, There are so many ways in which this novel about a small time criminal living in Spokane, WA in a witness protection program could have gone wrong.
Basic plot elements, style and charachters could easily have led this book straight into the immense garbage bin where notthatgood crime novels belong, But Walter adds his secret ingredients and this noir story becomes a unique, brilliant, powerful, living and breathing work with the complexity and the cohesion of the best novels ever written.
Some reviewers said this is a book about citizenship as a conquer, and they are right, Some other reviewers said this is a book about redemption, and they are also right, Someone else said this book cannot be categorized or clearly labeled under a genre, I agree with that, too,
What elevates this book, in my opinion, is:
the unusual level of depth many memorable sentences and moments when you think "wow, that is actually right"!
the ability to make his charachters jump out of the page and be true and alive.
You know how sometimes you feel a charachter in a book is being played by a bmovie actor Well, it's as if Walter's charachters were played by some of the best actors who ever lived.
the smart, omnipresent sense of humour,
and, of course, the political subplot, centered on the presidential elections ofand the meaning that political participation can add to an individual's life, Now, let's talk about this for a second, Too often I've seen authors trying to give me the "subplot" thing, while in reality what they were doing was just patching together different pieces of thoughts and failing miserably.
One perfect example of this kind of failure, even if I only saw the movie, is "Killing them softly", movie with Brad Pitt, They tried to infuse that film with a "political subplot", failing in a spectacular way, Tv screens with Obama speeches in the background of many scenes, and a final cynical comment made by one charachter, do NOT make a political subplot.
In "Citizen Vince", Everything converges to that focal point: the relationship between the individual citizen and the wider community, expressed in the right to vote, The meaning of your life as part of a much wider thing, the responsibility that comes with that and the privilege that it is to be a part of the democratic process, without any excessive patriotism or idealism, with all the proper doubts and questions posed at the right time, but with a message that comes out loud and clear despite the apparent simplicity of the plot.
Wow. To know that I will never be able to write like Jess Walter is a childish but really painful thought! I'm bummed, I don't know why I went from reading Jess Walter's "The Zero" to reading his novel "Citizen Vince," when I didn't like "The Zero, " Oh wait. Now I remember. I loved his novel "The Financial Lives of the Poets," and I had read reviews of "The Zero" in which readers said they didn't like The Z.
but they loved C. V. So, I thought I'd give this novel a shot, It wasn't available for my Kindle, so I actually bought the paperback, which is probably why I slogged through it, This made me realize that I'm much more likely to stop reading a book
I don't love if it's on my Kindle, It gives me the freedom, real or imagined, to be choosier,
But eh. What can I say. I disliked this book for different reasons than I disliked "The Zero, " On the one hand, "Citizen Vince" was wellwritten, I thought the characters were vivid, and the writing was steady, This isn't a writer of trashy fiction, He's decent. On the other hand, the story line, the plot twists, the subplots they just weren't that compelling to me,
He reminds me a bit of Richard Russo he is good at creating characters and telling a story, Unlike Russo, he seems a little less concerned about being liked, and that's a good thing for Walter, I don't know if that's a fair comment on Russo, but my recent brief experience with him gave me the impression of someone who desperately wanted to appeal.
"The Financial Lives of the Poets" is still one of my favorite fun reads of the year, . . and now I'm going to move on to a different author! It's the Christmas holidays, and over pizza the other night my mom, brother and I sat discussing what makes literature good an argument that ultimately came down to what we want from reading: my mom wants to learn something my brother wants it to be art and I think of it largely as entertainment, albeit entertainment that can teach and edify as well.
This book does a lot of that at its base, it is a wellpaced thriller that leans heavily on fairly rote mob fare and a good shake of foreboding.
At the same time, though, it has some really interesting reflections on what it means to vote, from the act itself to the process of making a decision.
Our protagonist, Vince Camden, has always been a felon and thus never had the right to vote, Walter, the author, does a really great job of depicting Vince's conflicting feelings about the whole process, in a way that elevates the book from more standard popular fiction to a book that both entertains and teaches the reader about another perspective.
this is a crime thriller lite, not really a crime thriller, more like the story of a very meaningful week in the life of vince camden, a small time criminal living in spokane, WA, on a witness protection program.
since jess walter is super magical the story is really great, it's funny, sweet, and all sorts of smarts, the week in which walter decides to snapshot vince camden is the week that precedes the election of reagan as US president and the demise of jimmy carter.
there's a lot about this novel that is political hard not to think of bush, who was president when walter wrote this, and of the dominance of greedy, immoral, catastrophic conservatism that started with reagan and eventually got us bush and the war on terror walter is the author, also, of one of the most poignant/novels written in the US, sitelinkThe Zero.
reagan is a thin standin for bush, and carter is something the book exudes and eventually captures very well basic human decency, moral rectitude, doing good things, being honorable.
at the same time it's all very entertaining and fast and occasionally truly funny, and the action is riveting, and the writing so, so good.
but what got me the most is the morality tale, of an america on the brink of disintegration, and men and women who, in spite of their grave limitations, try hard to do the right thing.
I didn't have high expectations going into this book, Sounded mildly interesting to pick it up from second hand and read but not more, But gladly I was wrong, An very intriguing and interesting story and wasn't as mediocre as I first thought Citizen Vince by Jess Walter
Thank you, Jess Walter, for the unforgettable character of Vince Camden in a crime caper that includes everyone from Mafia bosses and thugs to a postman, to Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.
Thank you for a plot that veers from funny to moving and everything in between without ever losing truth because it is written with literary excellence and a love of architecture in all its forms.
This book was thrilling, entertaining, and actually made me forget about the leak in my ceiling for a whole afternoon,
The same friend who recommended this book to me because I needed to laugh, sent me the link to this sitelinkJess Walter essay about Spokane, WA.
Spokane and New York City are characters in Citizen Vance, Spokane lives just as really in the novel as this McSweeney's essay presents it, And as a New Yorker, I was convinced that Walter had lived in my city just as long as I have, Nope. Great writer, that Jess Walter, He makes everything alive. I'm guessing that Jess Walter was as upset about thePresidential election as I was, We handled our disappointment differently: I drank a lot of vodka and he wrote an amazing book with an unlikely hero, Vince Camden is living in sitelinkSpokane WA where he manages a donut shop, He also pals around with local hoods and works a scam with credit cards, He isn't too happy but he seems satisfied until the day he starts counting people he knows who are dead, Things get complicated when he begins to think that he's next,
This is playing out against the backdrop of the sitelinkPresidential election, Vince has never even voted but once he gets his voter registration card he begins paying attention, Unfortunately nobody he knows is remotely interested or informed about the issues, Anyone old enough to have lived through that time will recall just how bitter and divided the country was, Carter's one term had been a disaster and The Great Communicator a B movie actor and corporate spokesman turned governor Ronald Reagan, offered a vision which succeeded mostly because of its lack of clarity.
He looked like a guy who could lead and at least he wasn't sitelink Richard Nixon,
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Vince takes off for New York where we learn all about his sordid past and meet some truly scary mobsters including one called Johnny Boy, who hasn't been right in the head since his son was run over by a rival gangster.
The story shifts back to Spokane and Walter gets off some great lines about Wiseguys trying to adapt to life outside of Brooklyn,
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Vince reminds me of Thomas Hardy's sitelink Jude the Obscure another hapless soul who couldn't catch a break, They're both fish out of water who thought they could remake themselves despite overwhelming obstacles, Vince, like Jude, wants to be part of something bigger than himself neither is afraid to buck the system, yet they both demonstrate some ineptitude figuring it out.
Eventually, Vince has both a vision and a plan, Unfortunately for the country, Ronald Reagan never came close to that, None of us could have imagined just how polarized America would become back in, but luckily, we still have vodka and now we have Jess Walter, too.
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