Indecision

I like reading books that blow me away. Indecision, which I got from the library last week, is one of those. I remember when the book came out last year and I grumbled about having been beat to a post-college life-languishing story, and by another Ben, too -- this one a Kunkel. The similarities end with that most basic premise though, and Ben Kunkel deserves all those write-ups he got in the NY Times when his novel came out.

There isn't a plot to speak of (the typical McSweeney's-inspired voice of generation whatever-we-are), but this Ben has a knack for bundling major life commentary into neat little sentences. My favorite so far (and I wish I had the book in front of me so I could quote), was about how Kunkel's main character, Dwight, has for years mistaken all the hustle and bustle of his hometown NYC for actual life movement. In a twist on Hemingway's famous warning, "Don't mistake motion for action," Dwight is cautioned not to mistake the city's commotion for his own.

It's such an easy mistake to make, really. One I've probably been making myself for a while. Boston has surged up around me in the seven years I've lived here. It's so easy to think of new buildings and new stores, new condos and new restaurants as proof that you're actually going somewhere. But I realize that the new building beside the Pru, although it changes the skyline, doesn't really have an effect on me. And a new streetlight doesn't make me a better person, or even a different person.

I don't know what happens to Dwight, whether he'll pull himself together. I'm only half-done with the book. I don't know what happens to me, either, except that I'm going to pack up and go mistake some other city's commotion for my own, for a while.