D. J. Waldie

Describing childhood in suburban California, a poignant portrait of growing up in the grid of tract houses and carefully measured streets illustrates the good, the bad, and the difficulties found in being ordinary.

Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir

heleen de boever

Holy or not, I definitely cursed this book to hell. Waldie's prose is as unimaginative as the grid of the city he writes about. If I understand the idea of this book correctly ‒ an exploration of how the place one lives in shapes one's life ‒ there definitely is something wrong in its execution. Waldie prides himself on 'telling stories', the stories of the suburb he lives in. However, he devotes large parts of the book to the history of Lakewood's construction, including more numbers than narratives. To be honest, I do not want to read about the size of a house, park, monument and/or shopping centre five pages in a row, nor am I particularly interested in the building costs of all those things. If I were to believe Waldie, California history is indeed 'mostly about building materials', cf. section 221 and Lakewood 'a $250,000,000 planned community' (91) rather than a city. I also suspect Waldie of having written Lakewood's wikipedia page, which, like his book, consists almost entirely out of numerical facts. 
	There are some sections, perhaps six or seven in total, where Waldie succeeds in grasping the spirit of the suburb by relating little stories about his neighbours. I found the story about the woman who doesn't dare to ask any of her neighbours to help her cutting her Christmas tree in half beautifully poignant. It thematises the loneliness of a Christmas without family and friends. It thematises how, no matter how much these suburbs are designed to encourage community, people tend to retreat in their own solitary square. 
	Another character that intrigued me was Waldie's mother; the woman who wanted to live in a house where nothing could be taken from her, yet everything was. I wish Waldie had zoomed in more on how architecture shapes character and community dynamics, instead of focusing so much on the facts (facts facts facts everywhere) behind the town. 
To summarise: Lakewood's wikipedia page is just as interesting as Waldie's 'literary' exploration of it ‒ not at all. Holy Land was an entirely forgettable reading experience, were it not for its excruciating boredom.

Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir

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