Sideways: A Novel by Rex Pickett Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Sideways: A Novel
Book Review: Outstanding character study of two severely challenged men
Summary: 5 Stars
In my review of the movie, I suggested that the title was referring to two people walking sideways in the gutter - a euphemism for two people whose lives are slightly askew. Well, either the word sideways wasn't used in the movie, or if it was, only appeared sparingly, perhaps once. The book used the word often, and it's now very clear that sideways refers to being exceptionally drunk.
There are some differences between the book and the movie, which is to be expected. Miles isn't nearly as frumpy and unattractive (sorry...) as Paul Giamatti's character, although he is unquestionably as neurotic and mentally unstable. Also, I didn't recall Jack as having a lot of money. Here it seems he did, as they piled case after case of wine into an SUV. In the movie, it was - fittingly - a convertible.
I loved the movie, and not only because I love Pinot Noir. It was a great character story about two men who struggled to come to terms with their own shortcomings. In that, the movie was unfailingly faithful to the book.
I read the book as if I were being chased by a forest fire. I'm a wannabe oenophile, so reading their discussions on wine - the tastings, the aroma, how the wine showed on the palate, how it finished - all of that was incredibly invigorating. But beyond that, it's just a terrific story.
My only complaint is that the author tosses some big words around, and while it's understandable, to an extent, because Miles is a writer, at times it was a bit much. For example, the word enervate is used several times throughout the book. A word like that shouldn't be used more than once, in my humble opinion. There are other examples, but that pops to mind.
Even though there were slight differences between the movie and the book, the movie was very faithful to the book, and the book was a joy to read. It's difficult to say which I enjoyed more.
The one thing that I definitely missed was Mile's brief monologue on why he loved Pinot Noir. In the theater, when he did that, I wanted to run out to the nearest wine store, grab a decent bottle, and chug it as if it were a beer. I guess I'll have to buy the screenplay. I was really looking forward to reading that description in the book, as I was certain it would be even more detailed, and would make me even thirstier.
Book Review: Pinot envy
Summary: 5 Stars
Miles is an alcoholic and he's a bad role model, or so says an article in the Sunday NY Times today. Thirty-something wine wannabes are packing the Hitching Post and reciting lines from the movie like crazed Rocky Horror Show refugees (especially when it comes to defaming Merlot), according to the Wall Street Journal a few days earlier.. Who would have ever thought wine geekdom could be so hip, so funny, so sexy? Alexander Payne deserves an Academy Award for accomplishing this feat alone, and we'll know next week if he gets it. Among its other nominations, Sideways is also up for best adapted screenplay, and now that I've read the book, it certainly gets my vote in this category.
I'm not sure what was going through my mind when I decided to buy the book after having seen and loved the movie. I guess at worst I thought I could read the stuff specifically about wine and continue sifting through it to see if I could find any false notes (what else would a geek do?) The cheap-looking puke green paperback cover with the unpromising come-on, "The ultimate roadtrip. The last hurrah," certainly didn't compel me.
But my fears were unfounded. The book is miraculously even better than the movie on almost every dimension. The characters are richer, and the story is both funnier and more believable. For starters, Miles is better -looking than Paul Giamatti. Only a truly sideways wine geek could believe for a minute that Virginia Madsen or any other Maya could fall for someone with a puss like that. Maybe the movie should have been titled "Revenge of the Wine Nerds."
The plot of the book roughly parallels the movie, but the details are deliciously different and absolutely repay reading the book. I'm assuming most people who read this review have already seen the movie, so you should be able to relate to the points of departure that follow. I'll do my best to pique your interest without revealing anything that discourages you from reading the book. Miles isn't a teacher; Miles is cute; Maya is a brunette and the Sandra Oh character is a petite blonde named Terra and she doesn't have a daughter; Jack is smarter, richer, and even more charming; Miles and Maya have a scene in a hot tub; Jack's fiancée is a WASP costume designer with a nasty streak, not a saintly ethnic virgin; a memorable character named Brad never makes it into the movie; there is no '61 Cheval Blanc but there is an '82 Latour that isn't consumed alone in a fast food restaurant; Maya seduces Miles with a bottle of '85 La Tache and a Jayer Richebourg he literally laps up (now that's a fantasy that would make any wine geek's cork pop); Jack is disfigured on several occasions but not from a bashing with a motorcycle helmet.
The book opens with a great scene in an LA wine bar/retail store where Miles typically goes for Friday afternoon tastings that often just serve as an excuse to get blasted for $5. There are sharp portraits of the "regulars," exactly the kind of uber-geeks who populate the fringes of the cult of wine. Compared to these nitwits, like the guy who feverishly records all his tasting notes on a laptop, Miles seems relatively normal and well adjusted. This scene presages a lot of what will unfold in the rest of the book, and it's the one element of the plot I most wish had made it into the movie.
If you liked the movie, I wouldn't hesitate to plunge into Sideways with the same abandon that Jack and Miles demonstrate on their weeklong bender. I suspect you'll experience the same thing I did, which is a curious sense of being slightly tipsy throughout as you observe the movie plot you know competing with the denser, more credible, and ultimately more satisfying storyline of the original. In wine-geek land you often hear vineyards described as "plots," so just as two plots that are right next to each other can produce wines with markedly differing "character," so too the movie and the book will vie for your attention and affection. Which you ultimately prefer, well, as the French would say, chacun son gout.
Book Review: Readable but unremarkable, mundane, and uninspiring. Strongly not recommended.
Summary: 1 Stars
Sideways is a book about a week-long bachelor party as the protagonists goes on a road-trip with his soon-to-be-married best friend to visit the vineyards in the Santa Ynez valley. Miles, the protagonist, is a divorced, failed writer with anxiety problems; his friend Jack is a shallow, successful, womanizing bastard. Throughout their journey, Miles comes to terms with his divorce and Jack comes to terms with his impending marriage while they bond and prepare to part ways after Jack's marriage. The writing is readable but unremarkable, the plot is uninspiring and sickeningly mundane, and the characters are despicable. The gritty, anti-social, imperfect realism is no doubt intentional, but it doesn't really matter--no matter the intent or excuse, the book is still bad. I don't recommend it and I never have plans to pick it up again.
I'm not sure what else there is to say about Sideways. Perhaps my hatred for the text is personal: I dislike sex-based relationships, I dislike drinking, I dislike people that succumb to or create mental illness, I dislike unfaithful relationships, really, I dislike almost everything that appears in the characters and plot of this book. Even with that taken into account, however, I can't find any redeeming qualities that make Sideways worth the read. The first 9/10th of the book can be simply uncomfortable and embarrassing to read, and it's hard to sympahtize with characters who exceed anti-heroes and become downright unlikeable. When the characters finally begin to mature and learn, at the every end of the book, their personal revelations don't make up for the pain of reading the vaster majority of the text. The minimal amount of self-acceptance and maturity that they gain is something that, as middle-aged men, they really should have had all along; it's hard to celebrate with them or even care. It's a lot of uncomfortable and painful reading for very little gain.
Combined with truly unremarkable story-telling and language, the plot and end of this book don't make it worth the time it takes to read it. Avoid Sideways--there are much better books out there, even if they weren't turned into Fox Searchlight films, and there are better things to do with your time.
Book Review: Right There with the Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
After seeing the movie and enjoying it immensely I sort of figured it was irrelevent to read the book. What if I was disappointed? Would my feelings about the film change as well? Finally, I ventured in after a friend said I had to read the book. The book read very quickly. Like the movie it's very likable and entertaining and the pages just turn of their own volition it seems. I think what the book does is that it amplifies on everything in the movie. You sort of see how the book was the true inspiration for the movie -- not just the wine, but the characters, the milieu and all the rest. As with most books the characters are a little more fully developed because the author has an opportunity to spend more time with them in order to provide them with an inner life. The movie benefits from the fact that it can show expressions on the actors' faces and show the world in which they're moving and evoke emotion through music and things that the book can't do. In comparing the two mediums I'd have to say that book and movie complement (and compliment) each other quite well. Miles, the first person narrator, is a novelist who can't get published, but damn if he isn't going to go down fighting (or drinking). In the movie he's given a real job, whereas in the book he seems to be living on fumes -- thus, stealing from his mother, which a lot of readers and fans of the movie objected to -- is a tad more justified. I found in the novel that Miles is funnier and more self-deprecating about his lot in life, whereas Miles in the movie is a little more down-at-the-mouth and depressed about it all, but they both work off of the same sense of lack of self-fulfillment and the failure of their dreams and aspirations. In the film, Miles's sidekick Jack is a bit of a boob. As played by Thomas Haden Church he's not without some sense of self-awareness or feeling for his friend Miles, but in the book he's a more sentient and more intelligent creatures, even if all the bad things he does in the movie are right there in the book. For some reason he does a better job of justifying them in the book. Plus, in the book -- and this is a big difference between book and movie -- the two of them are drinking quite heavily. Their drinking informs much of their behavior. We don't get the sense that they would act the way they do if they weren't imbibing so much. In the movie, they're drinking most of the time, but there isn't much mention of it, and we never really see them with hangovers -- beautifully depicted in the book -- and straightening up at wine tasting rooms the next day. In the movie, Maya, as lovingly portrayed by Virginia Madsen, is a more complex character, more flawed. In the movie, though a waitress, she's a bit of a male wine geek's fantasy, which is fine. But in the book she does some things that maybe one who's only seen the movie would be a little taken aback by. She's still a small-town fantasy female whom everyone drools over, and she loves wine -- which trait carried over to the movie -- but I found her portrayal in the book more fully 3-dimensional. The one thing the book definitely improves on is the character of Stephanie. In the book her name is Terra and she doesn't ride a Harley and she's not Asian-American. Why in God's name they decided to give her an interracial kid and a white-trash stepmom is beyond me. Fortunatley her character in the movie is so small that it doesn't detract, but it was a mistake to make this change because it makes Jack seem sleazier. In the book Terra doesn't have a kid, she's just a single girl. The movie beautifully captures the setting that's in the book. I'm familiar with the area and I really enjoyed seeing it on screen and reading Pickett's vivid descriptions of it in the book. He's clealry someone who has maybe romanticized the area a bit, but not in a way that's false or anything. The wine details are dead on and the enfatuation with wine very accurate when I think about some of the people I know who are big into wine. I'm only an amateur connoisseur but I could really feel the author's passion -- through Miles -- for the grape. The writing is clean and flows beautifully for a first novel. The dialogue is very real and incredibly laugh-out-loud funny at times. It's no wonder that the author comes from being a former screenwriter where dialogue is probably everything. I think both the book and the movie will stand the test of time. They're the only fictional pieces about wine and wine-tasting that I know about and for anyone into wine they should almost be required viewing and reading respectively. What I liked about the inclusion of wine is that it's both knowledgeable and irreverent, never snobbish or elitist or effete in any way. Pickett almost seems to be encouraging a neophyte to go to wine tastings and wine regions and step into tasting rooms and not be afraid. He makes it fun, has fun with all the "winespeak" -- as does the movie -- but never tries to diminish the fact that wine is also something that one can become very knowledgeable about. As for me, I've stopped drinking beer and have turned my attention to wine. I understand a lot of people have. Hats off to Pickett for getting people to drink something more sophisticated without feeling like they're going to be put down if they don't know what grape(s) they're drinking or from where or what vintage. The last thing about the book is that, aside from the wine and the comedy and the differences between the it and the movie, is that there are deeper, universal themes being addressed here: middle age and time slipping away while we still continue to dream, the sadness of life changing and moving on, moments where we connect and think we've come to some great understanding of everything and then realize shortly thereafter that we haven't really understood anything. Couching all of this in a comic novel, I think, is a stroke of genius. Without being heavy-handed or ham-fisted, Pickett has written a very real book about middle age, and made us laugh at ourselves along the way. But, in the end, he clearly deeply cares about his characters and I, for one, hope he does another with the same two guys. Interesting to see where they land five years from now.
Book Review: See the film first, the novel is a worthy compliment
Summary: 5 Stars
I became interested in this novel after I saw the film adaption. That is to say I became interested in the film when I saw it on cable and almost instantly identified with the character Miles. I rented a DVD and that was it, the film became one of my favorites ever. But after watching it so many times and learning of the novel that came before the film, I wanted to see if I could expand the limitations of the film by reading the novel. So, I purchased it a few weeks ago and haven't set it down since. I read it everywhere - at home, inbetween classes in college, in the car if I'm waiting on someone. It's a novel that I identify with so well. You learn a lot about wine very quick into it, but you'll also realize that the novel is much more wide-open and full throttle than the film. Miles is nowhere near as depressed as in the film, or rather he is extremely bipolar. The chartacter of Jack isn't expanded all that much from the film, but there's a few differences. The novel truly is an entirely different animal. It takes you far beyond the film, but I would reccomend watching the film first as it seems to help you understand more and visualize what's going on better, or at least that's how it works for me.