"flimsy little plastic miracles" is another book i came across via emma robert's instagram. the cover definitely enticed me with its books in a bookshelf. it's actually quite clever because the titles used for the books on the cover are reference to events, people, and themes in the story. the author also used one book to namedrop his debut which was a nice spin on "author of". i also noticed there was a book on the bottom shelf that reminded me of "a million little pieces" which i think was a sly reference given the premise of the novel.
"flimsy little plastic miracles" is a novel within a novel. one needs to get into a charlie kaufman frame of mind for a reading. so the book is a book written by ron currie jr. (which is also the name of the author) and his supposed to be the truth about his faked suicide. confused? you should be. another similarity between the author and hid character is that both their father are dead.
so what happens is that the author in the story, ron currie jr., tried to commit suicide and survived but decided to fake his death. the book that he was working on was published and out of nowhere the book becomes a huge success (partially due to his suicide letter going viral). due to it's success, it was then turned into a movie. (btw: i would have never read that book, you know me and the media hype.) then of course it is discovered he is alive. so he writes the book that we are reading "flimsy little plastic miracles" to come clean.
(this is why i noticed the cover that looked like "a million little pieces" because the author of that book, james frey, turned out to be a liar. his book was supposed to be memoir but it was discovered that he made most of it up. and it was an oprah book so the alot of the public was tricked. i picked it up for $1 but then heard it was a lie so never read it. but imagine the backlash especially from mama oprah!)
so this whole book within a book got me googling but the real ron currie jr. never faked his death. so the book was not true in that sense. but it doesn't mean that it wasn't capital T truth in general. all novels has to have a bit of the author's real life in it and contain some capital T truth because if not people would not be able to relate to characters.
currie addresses this opposite the title page. he starred "true" in true story:
it is true though all novels are based on real events. inspiration has to come from somewhere.
he also has a clever blurb about epigraphs. i personally love them but they have become cliché. in high school, one of my favorite books "girl" by blake nelson quoted "breaking the girl" by the red hot chili peppers. once i read that i knew i would love it and i did. so i started trusting epigraphs. one of my recent favorites is the sandra cisneros quote that junot diaz used in "this is how you lose her". but yeah epigraphs are great if used correctly.
another thing that i loved about this book was the format. there were no chapters. instead each time a new idea or story was presented a new page was started. so some pages were only a paragraph.
the story bounces back and forth between four topics: currie's side of his story, the love of his life, emma (who is also the reason he got caught up in his mess), his dealings with his father's death and singularity (when machines take over because they are more perfect than us).
i don't want to give too much but will
say that ron currie jr. in the story was a coward when it came to love but once he was caught reacted with heart and did the right thing. there was one occurrence in the story that broke my heart. i had no idea that it was going to happen. it made me sad because it shouldn't have happened to that character.
i also have to add that i was weirded out by ron and emma's love. not the violent aspect of it but the fact that they first met when they were in jr. high. i am skeptical when people fall in love so young.
last but not least, singularity was a topic discussed. but it's a future i hope that is never achieved. who wants perfection? life is life because of its mistakes. perfection would mean boredom while our errors and imperfections is what gives life it's color. as we see in "flimsy little plastic miracles", it's the errors in life that helps is grow as a person.
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