Don't sell Beautiful Ruins short

Perhaps predictably - M predicted it - book group was pretty solid in its disdain for Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins. I think they underestimate the novel, which in my view is atypical of much contemporary literary fiction - packed with incident, humor, and satire - but not overly sentimental or manipulative, full of some plot surprises (pace comments of one group member on this point), and inventive in plot structure - many strands of a story that do connect in odd and surprising, unlike the "linked" stories in such similar works as the better-received Goon Squad - Walter has some fun with the trend in writing programs for "linked" stories, in fact - his aspiring screenwriter, Shane, was in a program and produced a collection called Linked (ha!) which his agent says just doesn't work. Shane: as a collection of stories? Agent: in English. Anyway, most members found the novel too much of a "best seller" without a real message, such as we take away from much serious fiction. I'm not sure I agree w/ that assessment of "serious" fiction, but I would say that, yes, most serious fiction is of simpler design and usually involved the education or transformation of a character, based on a single action - sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, but always unified, as some have noted, often on one of the two major templates: A stranger arrives in town, or someone sets out on a journey. Beautiful Ruins involves many characters and changes over a great deal of time, which I would not think would work so well, but Waters to his credit writes a novel in which many characters change, grow, learn things about themselves - Pasquale in particular, but also Bender, Dee Moray, Claire, Shane - maybe less so Deane, whose world view is as mummified as his skin. Obviously not a novel for everyone, but I think if you can accept that this isn't Thomas Mann or James Joyce or even Lampedusa, you can get a lot of joy and entertainment out of this novel - and it's one of the best portrayals of contemporary Hollywood - surely as good as the far outdated Day of the Locust, and better than say Robert Stone's attempt to convey this world, better than any recent attempt I can remember in fact.