I spent several weeks trying to figure out what's wrong with Mattox Roesch's debut Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same. It certainly wasn't the writing: Roesch is a very talented writer--he's observant, with a knack for capturing time and place, and his prose never draws attention to itself. It wasn't the characters, exactly: Cesar, Go-boy, and Kiana are charming, if not entirely convincing; there were times where I felt the characters had become parodies, like the kinds of people you'd find on a television show. Tragedy is, regrettably, used to little effect--events, meant to reveal his characters' desires, are strung together in such a way that they elicit almost no empathy. I kept wondering where Roesch was going with everything. Events seemed arbitrary, without seeming to serve the novel as a whole.

And maybe a lot of this has to do with me. After all, I can't relate to being a gangbanger from Los Angeles, nor have I ever participated in a gangrape. But Roesch, I think it's safe to assume, has never been a gangbanger or participated in a gangrape, either. We're meant to sympathize with Cesar--he's had a tough time, with a father who doesn't really care and a brother serving a prison sentence for murder--but Roesch, in telling his story and background, seems to have spent more time giving him something to overcome, rather than showing us his true flaws or getting us to truly understand Cesar. We never really know Cesar. We don't know what drives him, or what causes him to change. He spends much of the novel as a bitter street tough who, for all his background and experience, really doesn't have much to be upset about. He drifts through life as an observer, a kid (he's seventeen years old) standing on the sidelines, reporting on what his friends and family are doing. Which is to say, he's not a particularly compelling character.

Yet there's really no reason why we shouldn't care about Cesar and his friends. They aren't distinctly unlikeable, nor are they boring. Cesar's story and family are interesting--the problem is, we never really get to see how it effects him. I felt Roesch was in there somewhere, hiding. The chapters themselves are damnably good, but the novel, the narrative as a whole, was flat. Novelists get the luxury of painting their characters over the entire course of a book. Why did I feel that I wasn't really getting to know the characters? Why wasn't Roesch giving himself this luxury?

And this is what I struggled with: as a novel, Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same doesn't work. It's not very cohesive. All the characters are the same, yet events are rarely linked. There's nothing holding the book together--there's no plot and, at least in the novelistic sense, no story. Only the characters are familiar.

It wasn't until I was more than halfway through the book that it struck me that I could've started at any point, and skipped back and forth, and still been able to follow everything going on. And once I shifted gears and began thinking of the book as a short story collection, I found it far more enjoyable. I suddenly understood why characters seemed so unreachable: they were conceived as characters in a short story. Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same is too disjointed to be a novel (Roesch notes that several chapters were published as stand-alone stories), and I often felt that Roesch was trying too hard to give us a novel. And from a marketing perspective, I understand why: novels sell far better than short story collections. But once I stopped waiting for a narrative to take shape, and instead read each chapter as an individual story, only loosely connected with everything that came before it, Roesch's talent suddenly revealed itself. My reaction was, "Well, there you are!"

Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same isn't a novel. Let's call it what it is: a short story collection. And that's not a bad thing--Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same works so much better when sections are taken as stand-alone stories, not as chapters in a longer narrative. Roesch is a very talented young writer, and one who will undoubtedly make some noise. But his strengths, at this stage, are best displayed in a short-fiction medium. He shouldn't be hiding behind a novel that really isn't a novel.

Comments

[Biblibio]

This is quite interesting. Your description of Cesar sounds a little like a Greek chorus, though I'm not fully sure why that association came to mind... You're certainly right that novels sell better than short story collections, but wouldn't it harm a book more to have readers not enjoy the disjointedness? And if all that changed was your perception of the book, perhaps that says something additional about definitions and perception (positive or negative). Fascinating post. Quite a bit to think about here.

[J.S. Peyton]

Maybe his publisher should have called it a "novel in stories" a la "Olive Kitteridge." That seems pretty hot these days.

[Brandon]

I'm a reader who approaches types of books differently. I wouldn't consider an anthology in the same way I'd consider a novel; they're two different animals. I'm not saying this book is bad; the author is quite talented. He's won some awards. I'm saying 1) the marketing ("a novel by ...") is misleading and 2) trying to cloak a bunch of short stories, as Roesch did here, under the guise of one novel does more harm than good. If you go into this thinking it's a novel--with a central plot and narrative--it doesn't work. But if you put on your short story cap, thinking of each chapter as a stand-alone story, it changes the ballgame, and for the better. It showcases the author's talents in their true light, and you see what the book was probably meant to be. The "novel" concept just seems forced.

And J.S., maybe you're right. I think the problem here was (mostly) out of the author's hands. Like I said upstairs, novels sell better. I almost feel rotten for this review--a friend of mine, who works for the publisher, sent me the book. But I'm not about to traffic in dishonesty.

Funnily enough, after I told her what I thought of this book, she told me that the NYTBR more or less agreed with me. I never read their review--it was only open to subscribers--but she told me they were very kind. And good for him--a kind review in the NYT is nothing to scoff at. So, if he got the Times's attention, you know he'll make a lot of noise in the future. I just don't feel this was his grand, gate-crashing entrance.