Zap by Paul Fleischman--
It sounds tacky, but this book was fun fun and I can honestly describe it as a ROMP. Fleischman's foreward left me dubious--cribbing seven plays into one? Sounds confusing. But he successfully took a mess of typical genres apart and slapped them back together. The cross-play travel reminded me of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books, if anyone else has read them.
I think my favorite part was when the actors broke character and/or allowed a layer of their personal reality to influence the scene. The fishbowl scene was hysterical.
This was a short book, so I don't have a lot to say besides I really enjoyed reading it and Fleischman continues to amaze me with his myriad storytelling abilities. So many genres, so many methods.
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Books We've Read Already
- The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
- Absolutely, Positively Not - David LaRochelle
- Zap - Paul Fleischman
- Stay with Me - Garret Freymann-Weyr
- Blow Out the Moon - Libby Koponen
- The Book of Lost Things - John Connolly
- American Born Chinese - Gene Luen Yang
- Kalpana's Dream - Judith Clarke
- The Body of Christpher Creed - Carol Plum-Ucci
- The Canning Season - Polly Horvath
- Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist - Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
- Wrecked - E. R. Frank
- Burning City - Ariel & Joaquin Dorfman
- Stuck in Neutral - Terry Trueman
- Criss Cross - Lynne Rae Perkins
- Sandpiper - Ellen Wittlinger
- Looking for Alaska - John Green
- Full Service - Will Weaver
- Black Hole - Charles Burns
- Autobiography of My Dead Brother - Walter Dean Myers
- Geography Club - Brent Hartinger
- So B. It - Sarah Weeks
- A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray
- Bound - Donna Jo Napoli
- Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem - Marilyn Nelson
- The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place - E. L. Konigsburg
- Chasing Vermeer - Blue Balliett
- The Gravedigger's Cottage - Chris Lynch
- House of Stairs - William Sleator
- HOOT - Carl Hiaasen
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6 comments:
I don't have much to ramble on about either, except for the fact that I finally obtained and read a book on time for once! I really need to re-prioritize.
I do want to note for our new members that if you enjoyed Zap at all, you should definitely get your hands on "Seek," which is a radio play by Fleischman. Other than the fact that it contains scripted dialogue and jumps around a lot, it bears no resemblance to "Zap" in tone or subject matter... it's a wonderful, serious, funny look at adolescence and identity.
"Zap" was fun. I bet it is fun to perform and fun to watch. I have to stop saying "fun" now.
I dunno. I liked it. No big questions. What a change. :-)
I second the plug for Seek, which I adore. I also like Breakout very much.
Fun fun fun! It is addictive!
Unfortunately I am too anal to enjoy a book where the play falls apart. It gave me stress. I was really into each and every play (except the Shakespeare one because he really never gave you a chance to be into it) and then they started falling out of character. At the end I was kind of disappointed that I really didn't get to find out more about the characters. I really found the bored girl who did the crossword puzzle interesting and would liked to have learned more about their situation. Each of the plays left me hanging and wanting more. I realize that the actual plays weren't the point of the book, but that is what I was into.
I actually went to a local play once which had commercial interruptions. Someone would come out and give a brief monologue trying to sell you something. By the end of the play the characters would interrupt her, make faces at her, steal her product, and try and distract her and that play ended up going to hell as well. The commercial interruptions annoyed me, but the interruptions gave me axiety. I couldn't enjoy that play either.
Yeah, I'll have to give this one a "meh." I applaud what Fleischman was trying to do, but there's no way an 85-minute play with zero plot, zero character development, will replace Grease on a high school's main stage. And in my opinion, it shouldn't. Zap seems to be the drama department's fall show that crosses boundaries, has fun, makes the audience think. And that's great, and I hope that high schools do start performing it, but you can't think that a play like this will be the huge community draw like Grease or West Side Story or Godspell or whatever. Part of the reason why those shows are so popular to perform is that people already know the story -- they go because they want to hear the music, see the high school's particular take on it, be a part of the community. Very different from why people go to see productions by a drama department (as opposed to a music department). Anyway, enough of that. I think Fleischman's intentions were great, and if he's okay with it being a drama play performed for a smaller audience (or maybe not even, just not the BLOCKBUSTER OF THE SEASON), then great.
In terms of the play itself, I thought it was very gimmicky. It's completely revolving around a gimmick in the first place, and none of the stories are developed at all. In fact, the stories are just the vehicle for the gimmick -- there are really no plots, let alone any plot development, and there is no character development. I know that the scenes itself weren't the point, but can't they be? Like mundane4life, I found myself wanting more. Yes, I found myself amused at a few parts, especially near the end, but I found myself wanting more when the play finished. It almost felt like a cop-out -- Fleischman got away with "writing" seven plays without really writing a single one, including the one that combined all of the seven.
Sorry to be a buzzkill. I remember liking Seek but not being that impressed with Breakout. I love Marc Aronson, but maybe I'm just not a huge Fleischman fan. But I really do appreciate the fact that he is willing to try new things and shake things up. I will always support that, even if I don't particularly love the end product.
When I read in the beginning that Fleischman was combining seven plays, I thought I would have a hard time keeping track of everything, but I think he did a really good job with it. He didn't give us a lot of time for development, but I still found myself really liking all of the plays (except for the performance character, but that particular genre isn't my favorite) and was rairly confused as to who belonged to what play. Some of the crossover points were funny, but I think I liked it better at the beginning when the plays were self-contained, since they had really good plots. I thought mixing the crossovers with the actor's real lives was a bit much, since then it was like they were crossing over twice--for some reason that made it less plausible (if you can use that word here) for me.
I was wondering how hard it would be to perform it with all the 'zaps.' A high school technical crew would have to be really good to get everyone on and off stage in a short enough time for the audience to still be surprised by the 'zap' and not get annoyed by any delays, especially near the end when it zaps after only a few lines or no lines at all. I can see the stage manager crying and walking off in a huff. Hey, maybe that would have been the way to end the play! Overall, I did enjoy reading it, but I was hoping for a bit more resolution. The characters could have gone on a hunt for the murderer or found new love interests or something, but it just stopped in an awkward, jumbly sort of way. I'm fairly certain the audience would be waiting for something else to happen after the last 'zap'--they'd probably assume technical difficulties instead of an ending.
I'm glad, though, that poor Richard finally got to talk about his horse. He didn't get enough respect!
Oh Susan, I love you best when you're a buzzkill!
To be honest I guess the fact that I only used one adjective to describe it, and it wasn't "ZOMGFABULOUS" isn't a particularly good sign. I guess I almost didn't consider it "important" enough to criticize, which is silly. Even fluff ought to stand up to criticism, and you are right that none of the parts was particularly well-formed of themselves.
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