Glorified Love Letters

Happy Draw a Dinosaur Day!

2012-01-30T12:06:00.003-07:00

Well, why not? Happy Draw a Dinosaur Day to all.

The second one is Jack's rather abstract rendering of his favorite made-up dino, The Nakatori.

Also, I'm not very good at drawing, but at least it resembles a T-Rex, right? And I'm always calling myself a hopeless dino, so it's only fitting to acknowledge the day.

The Detour by Andromeda Romano-Lax

2012-01-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

The Detour
by Andromeda Romano-Lax

What an impressive, thought-provoking novel this is. Set in 1938 Germany and Italy, The Detour presents a man who must weigh his love against his duty, all while existing in the broader picture of pre-WWII. We know what is ahead, and this purgatorial state stirs up all sorts of questions about idealism, loss, connection, art, and the perils of authoritarian states. I hadn't heard of any Andromeda Romano-Lax's work before receiving this book, so this was a fantastic surprise.

Ernst Vogler is twenty-six and a great lover of classical art. Employed by the Third Reich's Sounderprojekt, he is sent to Rome to retrieve "The Discus Thrower" marble statue, as part of Germany's quest to own as much of the world's notable art as possible. He has three days to complete the job, and he is to be assisted by twin Italian brothers, Enzo and Cosimo. Though he is both curious and thrilled to behold this statue in person, his employer's growing power makes him uneasy. At one point, he recalls the words of his friend Gerhard, a man who was mysteriously relocated to the newly anointed prison-village, Dachau:

"The truth is something we savor — usually in private. If you are lucky, Herr Vogler, you'll have many private pleasures in your life which shall make up for some public inconveniences, such as saying things you don't necessarily believe, and purchasing the world's most valuable art for fools who neither deserve nor appreciate it."

The journey does not go as planned almost immediately. For one, he doesn't even get to witness the statue before it's been boxed up by government officials. Enzo and Cosimo seem to have their own side plans for the trip as well. Ernst waffles back and forth between indulging the brothers and fearing for his job.

And this was why, perhaps, the Italians were better off selling some of their national art. Because they too often thought: What's the difference? A few kilometers off the main road, a few hours off schedule, a few pieces of straw from the crate. Everything was flexible, everything emotional. Decay and disaster, one small step at a time. There was no hard reasoning: the packing material had been there for a reason, just as the schedule had been there for a reason. One more bump and the statue might shift, an outstretched marble finger might make contact with wood — and break. That finger, Cosimo, outlasted the rise and fall of civilizations, outlasted attacks by barbarian hordes. But it might not outlast your brother's desire to get under a woman's skirt on a moonless night.

Still, Ernst is going through his own emotional decay — the peeling away of layers from his history. He resists and resists, but cannot fully escape the change brewing within him. Old fears start to transform as he realizes that "Everything is political" and "How easy it is to start something. Too easy."

The writing in this is just... Well, I know I overuse the word "lovely," but that's what it is. Lovely. Full of love for the Italian surroundings, the people swept up in this crazy shift, and none of it comes across as heavy-handed, which might be something of a feat when discussing Nazi Germany. Romano-Lax has talked about how her Italian and German ancestry and her Greek name helped shape her interest in 1938 Europe and "the strange confluence at the time of influential and sometimes dangerous ideas about classical art, genetics, and politics." Hitler was a failed artist, we must remember, and though his presence looms over the book, he is mainly referred to only as Der Kunstsammler — "The Collector." This is a deliberate act on Romano-Lax's part, as naming the man did not have the same connotation in 1938 as it does in retrospect. Ernst tells his story in retrospect, but he wants to make clear that he was once young and unknowing of what was to come, despite how obvious it may have been when looking at the country from above.

With love comes pain, of course, and The Detour does not avoid it. Family, sacrifice and loneliness all play a role here, as well as questions of worth. How does a man succeed? And on this particular mission, what counts as success?

How could I say anything with authority? I could tell you what the German copy cost our government — five million lire. But could I tell you what the German copy was worth? Could I tell you whether it summed up everything that was best in the human form? Could I tell you whether it justified Der Kunstsammler's fanatical interest? Could I tell you whether a nation should have been escalating its acquisitions of fine art, rather than feeding its people, or finding some future for its youth beyond the trench, the munitions factory, or the museum?

I could not tell you, just as I could not tell you with authority how the heart might respond to the Discobolus's representation of the moment — not a moment in action, but a moment just before action, the moment just before the discus flies, when nothing has happened yet, when no one has been judged, and no one has succeeded or failed, won or lost. When everything remains possible.

It is difficult to see the scale of damage a political environment can cause when one is immersed in it. Tiny events snowball into small, small into large, large into catastrophic. People may either willfully ignore the signs, or remain blissfully ignorant when their needs are met at the most minimal level. "It's not so bad," one might say, or, "It could be worse." And yet, the damages keep mounting, unchecked. The Detour marks the moment when that atmosphere has begun to noticeably and irrecoverably shift.

Full disclosure: SOHO Press sent me this book. It was an advance reader copy, meaning that my pull quote could have changed slightly in the final edition. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

#4/26+

This review is part of Pajiba's Cannonball Read IV, in which participants aim to read and review 13, 26 or 52 books within one year. Though I'm taking things easier this year, I expect to surpass the 'Half Cannonball' distinction by the end of 2012.

The Moment: Wild, Poignant, Life-Changing Stories from 125 Writers and Artists Famous & Obscure edited by Larry Smith

2012-01-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

(This review is cross-posted over at the lovely Persephone Magazine.)

The Moment: Wild, Poignant, Life-Changing Stories from 125 Writers and Artists Famous & Obscure
edited by Larry Smith

Though it is of course natural and obligatory, when talking about the major moments in one's life, to discuss the birth of a child or knowing when someone was "the one," they are not my first loves. Wildly and unresistingly able to love, I do not fear reveling within the emotion, but everything beautiful that I have ever experienced comes after a different kind of magic: music. Yes, I am in the business of writing, and have done so since the alphabet was within my grasp, but music? Oh, music is something other. Music is where my moments live, and the biggest moment of them all arrived when I took the train from Spokane to Seattle to see Ryan Adams & The Cardinals and Oasis live. For over a decade, I'd listened and been changed by this music, yet this would be the first time I'd ever seen either band perform. I traveled alone, and I preferred it that way.

Noel Gallagher and Ryan Adams are the songwriters whose work sends a tremor straight from my chest and into my ribs. To hear their songs live, to be in that music's presence — to stand with others who feel as you do and sing — felt like a gift. If Liam Gallagher’s other-worldly, a force to be reckoned with, then Noel’s the one tapped into the deepest part of my brain, woven right into the fabric of everything else. If there’s anything I love, it’s a person who’s not afraid to be the best in the room. They don’t fool around. You find your calling and then, dammit, you go go go until you are the example by which others are measured.

Further details — the hows and the whys and the songs themselves — are beyond the scope of this review, but know that within those words, within those notes, I am most at home in the world. It is personal, and it is unreplicable.

Smith Magazine knows that everyone's life has its standout moments, and operating within their desire to "celebrate the joy of passionate, personal storytelling," they've created a lovely book of reflection. Also known for their work with six-word memoirs, The Moment allows the writers a little more room to talk, though many of the stories are just a few pages. Some are paired with photographs. Almost all of them made me think of similar moments in my life, or how I might react were the specific situation thrown my way. The writers are both professional and not, but each have carved their way into the heart of their moment in an effective way.

Perhaps my favorite story came from Cheryl Delle Pietra, "Gonzo Girl," in which she applies, on a whim, to be Hunter S. Thompson's personal assistant.

What this means, I have no idea. I'll find out later when I'm drinking scotch in a hot tub surrounded by seven key lime pies and a gun: right now I only know that whatever it involves will be better than shaking another Long Island Iced Tea. It will be be better than one more "informational interview" at Condé Nast, where I have failed the fucking typing test twice. It will be amazing. If I get it.

She does. She throws herself "into the fire." What an amazingly odd experience, one I imagine that not too many people were able to have before his death, as he strikes me as someone who was particular about his company. I'm no Hunter S. Thompson expert, but his fierce independence was admirable.

There are other recognizable names in the book like Melissa Etheridge, Jennifer Egan, Dave Eggers, and Laurie David, but many of the stories come from more "ordinary" (though we are all at once ordinary and extraordinary) SMITH readers. Tamara Pokrupa-Nahanni's story, "Motherless," hit me both as an avid lover of cassettes and as a person who has lost a parent. "I was twelve when my mother died," she writes. "A couple of days before she passed, I asked her to record a translation of an English passage into Slavey, the language of our people."

The tape didn't record. She had nothing, just silent playback on a tape labeled in her mother's "beautiful script." It's so final.

A few comics artists also contribute to the book, including L. Nichols, Molly Lawless, and Emily Steinberg. I love personal essays told this way — sometimes there are things that are conveyed better in a drawing paired with only a few words, more so than they are if given a whole paragraph.

The Moment reaches all over the world, asking us to revel in our own lives, to be an active and studious participant in them. It asks us to let our ignored emotions in, and to decide how we will let our triumphant and sad tales affect our course. I've been teased before about my inquisitiveness towards other people — how I ask questions about family, about relationships, about all-time favorite meals — as though I couldn't honestly be interested in what the storyteller might consider mundane. But how are we to relate to one another if we do not know from where the other person comes? We've all been amazing, confused, and terrible at some point in our lives, and reconciling this, I think, will go a long way towards a better existence. We have to seek out what we need.

On the bus home from the concert venue, I overheard a woman talking about Liam Gallagher to the man next to her. "I don't know," she said. "It's like he thinks he's too fucking cool."

It's not a matter of thinking, lady, I thought.

I could've gone anywhere that night — had a few drinks at a bar, wandered around late-night Seattle, anything — but I went back to my hotel room. On the bed, I unrolled the tour poster next to the t-shirt I'd purchased and took a photo. My ears still throbbed with sound, my jeans were soaked from the rain. I could not think of anything but happiness.

Full disclosure: Harper Perennial sent me this book. It was an advance reader copy, meaning that my pull quote could have changed slightly in the final edition. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

#3/26+

This review is part of Pajiba's Cannonball Read IV, in which participants aim to read and review 13, 26 or 52 books within one year. Though I'm taking things easier this year, I expect to surpass the 'Half Cannonball' distinction by the end of 2012.

Taft 2012 by Jason Heller

2012-01-14T22:04:00.000-07:00

Taft 2012
by Jason Heller

On the surface, Taft 2012 sounded like quite the funny novel to read going into an election year. A satire on our political process mixed with a semi-obscure presidency? Sure. Count me in. The end result is an amusing, though not fully baked story.

Mysteriously awakened from a near century-long slumber on the White House grounds, former President William Howard Taft appears alive and unchanged, though covered in mud, during a present day presidential press conference. He is confused as to what has happened to him, not to mention taken aback by all the various modern medical instruments used to confirm his identity. They even "have the unmitigated gall" to take a piece of his mustache. The mustache!

This book has a lot of talk about the mustache. And Taft's eating habits. And how the only thing anyone seems to remember about the Taft Presidency is "the bathtub incident." Also, in this version of Taft's life, he did not live until 1930, but instead "disappeared" on Inauguration Day for Woodrow Wilson.

Taft laughed. "Not the world I remember? Why, I'd have to agree with you there. Today I've been shot, assaulted with strange machines, and spoken to in riddles. I appear to be in a world where the President of the United States can be condescended to like a child. By a manservant, no less."

"Mr. Taft," the man said, "I need you to keep an open mind here, today and in the coming days. There is a lot you're going to need to adjust to. First of all, I am the President of the United States. Not you. Not Woodrow Wilson. Me."

Though the President is not named, we are to infer that this book occurs in a very similar "universe" to the one we are in, with our current President running for re-election and the Republican party still sorting out their candidates. The above conversation is the last we see of the White House, though it isn't long until we are introduced to Taft's great-great-granddaughter, Congresswoman Rachel Taft, as well as Taft historian, Susan Weschler. And because this is like our universe, cable news and the internet basically explode with Taft coverage. A secret service agent, Ira Kowalczyk — the one who shot him in the leg during the interrupted press conference — is to keep an eye on Taft and help acclimate him to modern society.

After some convincing, he agrees to to be interviewed on a cable news show. Things are going mostly well, despite the somewhat predicable craziness of host Pauline Craig, until she surprises him with live footage of people across the country. They're chanting his name.

"What you're looking at, Mr. President, is breaking news. A Raw Talk exclusive. Our investigators have uncovered these groups — small, grassroots, spontaneous — that have sprung up across this great nation of ours, and they've gathered in dozens of spots today to watch this historic broadcast. Your coming out, as it were. They're just beginning to blog and network, and they seem to come from all walks of life and political viewpoints. But they have one thing in common: They want a new direction. They want a return to values and tradition. They want new leadership, one driven by reasonable common sense rather than ego or ideology."

Her voice swelled to a crescendo just as the audience broke into raucous applause.

"In short, they want you."

Never mind that "crescendo" makes the word "swelled" redundant, but what about the fact that no one seems particularly concerned as to how Taft is still alive, not to mention how long it will last? Yes, he seems perfectly fine as though no time has passed, but who's to say he won't just fall down dead tomorrow? Apparently no one, as Taft does not wonder even once.

He also has little trouble adjusting to living a century later. Yes, he finds certain matters of dress odd, and experiences some puzzlement over certain inventions, but fifty pages into the book, he's Wii golfing with little more astonishment than, "That's quite remarkable."

Remember, the earliest commercially sold televisions did not appear until 1928. The real William Howard Taft died in 1930, but this Taft disappeared in 1913. He finds the remote control a "time saver," but no comment is made about the television itself. I know it seems a bit persnickety to call out factual differences in a book that has an unreal premise, but I have to be made to believe that premise by presenting a world that makes sense on its own terms.

Also existent in this world is a food conglomerate called "Uptyn Foods," a name that is meant to recall The Jungle author Upton Sinclair, the man who helped inspire the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, passed by Taft's predecessor Theodore Roosevelt. Taft 2012 mentions Roosevelt passing that act, but Taft only finds that the name Uptyn "did ring a bell somehow." If it's excessive slumber-amnesia happening, it's not explained, but one would think that this Taft would remember someone whose bestseller influenced government policy during a time at which he was involved with government.

Uptyn Foods, however, is the opposite of "pure." They make the most processed of processed foods and sell them cheaply, in mass quantities and varieties, and cause their consumers to become addicted to what is essentially fat, salt, and "chemical synthesis" masquerading as something else. Rachel Taft is trying to pass the "International Foods Act" which would regulate what exactly is put into food, as Uptyn lobbyists have slowly dismantled much of the 1906 act. A disastrous Thanksgiving dinner involving something called "TurkEase" is what restarts William Howard Taft's political passion, as he decides to fight against "Uptyn's festering reservoir of corruption!"

A commentary on our processed food and cable news diet is a fine enough concept for political satire, but somehow, a road trip happens in the meantime. Taft and Agent Kowalczyk start traveling the country — with some vague talk about "real America" — and there's an obligatory New Year's Eve dive bar drunk-fest scene. It has some good parts, but it doesn't really serve the overall story.

Yes, I found this book to be enjoyable, not to mention a light and quick read, but it just wasn't quite as good as it could have been. The first half felt better thought out than the second, and only former President Taft feels close to fully fleshed out as a character. (Pun not intended — I'm not going to make some joke about "fully fleshed out" and his weight. There are plenty of those jokes in the book.) He's quick with the one-liners, misses his dead wife, and has plenty to say about the state our country finds itself in. I don't know how those views align with the real Taft, but in this case, it does not matter because it is one of the instances where the content feels true. It is what this character would say. Or the author, at least.

Rachel Taft fares all right as far as characterization, and host Pauline Craig is an appropriately over-the-top entity, but the rest aren't so clear. I don't need full character biographies or anything, but about all I remember off the top of my head is that Kowalczyk is into punk, and historian Susan Weschler likens her expertise to being "an authority on Luxembourg" — as in, other people tend to pick more popular things to study. I won't even get into the bartender they meet on their road trip, except to say that she's so much of a cliché, she serves almost zero purpose.

Taft 2012 could have worked better as a novella, after another round of some hard-ass editing. That's certainly not to say I didn't like the book — No, I laughed plenty and recognized its potential. I just expected more... I don't know, oomph. If nothing else, I wouldn't have minded more explanation for Taft's second life, and a little more circumspection overall. It's true that history is unkind to quieter personalities, and that the circus pretending to be our government reaches new levels of crazy every day, but there is the underlying unsaid thought running through popular culture: Death is an end, an end that happens to other people.

Present day politicians have the nasty habit of simultaneously invoking our history while also ignoring the specifics. So what happens when that history can talk back? What happens when a man who should be dead lives again? Why does that man get a second chance and no one else? Mortality, legacy and reflection — Taft 2012 should have started there.

Full disclosure: I won this book through The Next Best Book Club in December. It is an advance reading copy, and so some content may have changed for the final copy. The publisher, Quirk Books, is the one who sent me the book, along with a 'Taft 2012' campaign button that my husband thinks is hilarious to wear around town. I thank them for the gesture and I will continue to be fair with my reviews.

#2/26+

This review is part of Pajiba's Cannonball Read IV, in which participants aim to read and review 13, 26 or 52 books within one year. Though I'm taking things easier this year, I expect to surpass the 'Half Cannonball' distinction by the end of 2012.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

2012-01-11T23:30:00.000-07:00

Cloud Atlas
by David Mitchell

About the only review I've ever read for Cloud Atlas that I now know comes close to doing it justice is a tweet from Ayelet Waldman, which I must paraphrase for it was a while ago: "I wish I could re-experience the feeling of reading Cloud Atlas for the first time." The first time blows your damn mind; the first time is what you hope will be the first of many times. I honestly don't remember when a book last made me want to start at the beginning immediately after finishing its last page. I will likely be one of the many people who feel they lack the adequate vocabulary to concisely encapsulate this book, but oh, I'll certainly ramble on and try. Cloud Atlas is a marvel and David Mitchell is a genius, and no, I don't feel that I'm throwing around the terms loosely. I wanted to eat this book, it was so deliciously composed.

To call the six stories within the novel interlinked undersells their connection. What at first seems to be tales stretched across time — mid 1800s Pacific ship life, 1930s music composition in Bruges, roughly modern England and California, engineered Korea so far in the future, and Hawaii even farther beyond — are more like sections of a map folded atop each other. Time bleeds and blends into the different locales, with each at least peripherally aware of the story against which they lie.

Mitchell weaves together so many narrative motifs, and yet they never feel heavy-handed. Different methods of communication shape each story in a way that best suits their time, and on reflection, play into the larger idea of progress, and what sacrifices are worth making in the name of endless innovation.

The opener, "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing" comes across as though Ewing has subconscious knowledge of eventual publication. Still, the details are not thoroughly rendered solely for the benefit of others. With limited methods of record, how else is a person to fully remember their experience? Ewing has boarded a ship headed from colonized islands into San Francisco, where the gold rush is in full effect. The ship's crew mostly act as goods transport from the colonies to the United States, and as was the time, people have no trouble speculating about the inferior mental capabilities of the tribes they've "civilized."

The Moriori's generosity was rewarded when Cpt. Harewood returned from New Zealand with another four hundred Maori. Now the strangers proceeded to lay claim to Chatham by takahi, a Maori ritual transliterated as "Walking the Land to Possess the Land." Old Rēkohu was thus partitioned & the Moriori informed they were now Maori vassals. In early December, when some dozen Aboriginals protested, they were casually slain with tomahawks. The Maori proved themselves apt pupils of the English in "the dark arts of colonization."

It is worth noting that up until that point, the Moriori had not engaged in war in over six centuries, and Ewing wonders if the islands were "closer to More's Utopia than our States of Progress governed by war-hungry princelings in Versailles & Vienna, Washington & Westminster?"

The journal ends mid-sentence, right as Ewing is starting to feel his mysterious illness getting worse. From there, we're reading "Letters from Zedelghem," addressed to a man called Sixsmith, written by a young composer on the lam named Robert Frobisher. He's broken promises and owes a slew of money all over England, and he has run off to Bruges in the hopes of becoming the once-great composer Vyvyan Ayrs's transcriber/assistant/mentee, his "amanuensis," as he puts it. The older man's health has been in decline, and while Frobisher admires the man's music and hates its absence, he of course wants to use the experience to help himself. Writing to his close friend and sometimes lover, Frobisher has an eye on posterity, and so his way with words shows off a bit, but also in the same way that one might try to convince their loved ones that their lives are exciting or that their misadventures will be worthwhile in the end. Letters are also a way to pass the time when one feels so very alone.

Frobisher falls in well with Ayrs, but also starts an ill-advised relationship with his wife, Jocasta, while also managing conflicting thoughts for their daughter, Eva.

E. walked off to the stables, her whip swishing in the air like a lioness's tail. Went off to the music room to forget my dismal performance in some devilish Liszt. Can normally rattle off an excellent La Prédication aux Oiseaux, but not last Friday. Thank God E.'s leaving for Switzerland tomorrow. If she ever found out about her mother's nighttime visits — well, doesn't bear thinking about. Why is it I never met a boy I couldn't twist round my finger (not only my finger) but the women of Zedelghem seem to best me every time?

Completely changing in tone, Mitchell jumps into "Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery." It's a straight-up thriller, complete with a young reporter hot on the trail of a nuclear power company's safety violations, and the silencing of those who might point out those flaws. It is divided into easily digestible short chapters filled with jaded co-workers, italicized internal monologue, double agents, a hit man... Hell, there's even a malfunctioning elevator scene in which Luisa Rey meets Dr. Rufus Sixsmith.

The puzzle solving escapism is exactly the sort of peril one enjoys reading on vacation or during a summer matinee. Bad behavior meets tenacious good. The power plant, Seaboard Incorporated, insists that their new plant on Swannekke Island will revolutionize energy consumption and availability, but:

Luisa forces herself to speak calmly and ignore Jake's mock conviction. "He'd [Sixsmith] written a report on a reactor type developed at Swannekke B, the HYDRA. Plans for Site C are waiting for Federal Power Commission approval. When it's approved, Seaboard can license the design for the domestic and overseas market — the government contracts alone would mean a stream of revenue in the high tens of millions, annually. Sixsmith's role was to give the project his imprimatur, but he hadn't read the script and identified lethal design flaws. In response, Seaboard buried the report and denied its existence."

Ah, but wait! Mitchell wants to simultaneously amp up and dial down the bewilderment. He can write suspense without it reading, as the next narrator puts it, "in neat little chapteroids, doubtless with one eye on the Hollywood screenplay."

No, in "The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish," our title man will most certainly not be running into the fight. In fact, he's headed north to Hull, precisely so he can avoid the thuggish family of the dead memoir writer of Knuckle Sandwich. Cavendish has profited massively from this book as its editor and publisher, and these brothers aren't going to be the only creditors looking for him. One halfway forgets that they were just reading the voice of a young reporter, so steeped in "curmudgeonly middle-aged Englishman" Cavendish is:

Temple of the Rat King. Ark of the Soot God. Sphincter of Hades. Yes, King's Cross Station, where, according to Knuckle Sandwich, a blow job costs only five quid — any of the furthest-left three cubicles in the men's lavvy downstairs, twenty-four hours a day. I called Mrs. Latham to explain I would be in Prague for a three-week meeting with Václav Havel, a lie whose consequences stuck with me like herpes. Mrs. Latham wished me bon voyage. She could handle the Hogginses. Mrs. Latham could handle the Ten Plagues of Egypt. I don't deserve her, I know it.

Of course, as the title would indicate, not all goes to plan. Cavendish speaks like a person telling a story to party guests after the fact. He uses the word "ruddy" — as in "No, that sign ruddy well did send me to this counter!" — what seems like every other paragraph, but instead of being irritating, it somehow comes off as amusing. At first, it's hard to see where this story fits in with the rest, apart from the tangential manuscript connection, but all becomes more clear later.

Secrets, expected behavior, willful ignorance in the name of progress — all of these notions intensify by "An Orison of Sonmi-451." What takes place is an interview between what is called an "xpedience," who records history, and a "fabricant," a human clone genetically programmed to serve a specific function — in this case, a server in a McDonald's-like restaurant. Somni-451 is considered a criminal, for reasons one has to be patient to discover.

The xecs at the Ministry of Unanimity insisted that you, as a heretic, had nothing to offer corpocracy's archives but sedition and blasphemy. Genomicists, for whom you are a holy grail, as you know, pulled levers on the Juche to have Rule 54.iii — the right to archivism — enforced against Unanimity's wishes, but they hadn't reckoned on senior archivists watching your trial and judging your case too hazardous to risk their reputations — and pensions — on. Now, I'm only eighth-stratum at my uninfluential ministry, but when I petitioned to orison your testimony, approval was granted before I had the chance to come to my senses. My friends told me I was crazy.
So you are gambling on your career on this interview?

… That is the truth of the matter, yes.
Your frankness is refreshing after so much duplicity.

A duplicitous archivist wouldn't be much use to future historians, in my view.

This might have been my favorite part of the book. The language, the science, the whole world that Mitchell has created never, ever seemed strained. It did not feel derivative of anything else, book or film, and his word choice? Perfect. One does not need to have an extensive vocabulary to understand what is going on because even if I did not know that "orison" was an actual word (and not a creation like the way in which he defines "soap" in this world), I got what he meant, and I've since read up on its relation to the word "prayer." What makes me want to dive back into the book is partly these little bits of language, all the subtle bits Mitchell has included that further enhance what he's created. (I've fought the urge to start rereading the book roughly one hundred and eleventy-blue times since starting this review.)

Pushing the futuristic motifs and language even further is "Sloosha's Crossin' An' Ev'rythin' After," in which the old man Zachry tells of his childhood, bringing everything back to oral storytelling. Set after an event referred to as "The Fall," Zachry is one of the few humans left on Earth who meets a mysterious older woman, a "Prescient" named Meronym, who knows much about what happened before that Fall. People live in basic huts and exist largely technology-free as they farm and avoid neighboring hostile tribes. Zachry does not entirely trust Meronym at first.

I'd got a bit o' the brave by now an' I asked our visitor why Prescients with all their high Smart'n'all want to learn 'bout us Valleysmen? What could we poss'bly teach her what she din't know? The learnin' mind is the livin' mind, Meronym said, an' any sort o' Smart is truesome Smart, old Smart or new, high Smart or low. No un but me see the arrows o' flatt'ry them words fired, or how this crafty spyer was usin' our ign'rance to fog her true 'tentions, so I follered my first question with this pokerer: But you Prescients got more greatsome'n'mighty Smart'n this Hole World, yay? Oh, so slywise she picked her words! We got more'n the tribes o' Ha-Why, less'n Old Uns b'fore the Fall. See? Don't say a hole lot does it, nay?

The reason why I go into this whole long plot summary/text example is that I just enjoy seeing the variance between the writing styles all laid out, not to mention the subtle connections to the previous stories. Why is it that I tired of heavy dialect in Huckleberry Finn, but ate it up in this book? Was it because it was only one section, a mere 70 pages? Because I was already in love with this book having read the previous 238 pages? Because after reading Mitchell's most recent book last year, I already wanted to hug his face off? It's probably all of these things. (That and a cranky once-upon-a-time high-schooler averse to classics is unlikely to pay too much attention to Huck, I reckon.)

"Sloosha's Crossin'" occurs in the middle of the book and resolves entirely in one spectacular piece. From there, we move backwards, listening again to the orison of Somni-451, then back still until we reach Ewing again. Threads come together, holy shit moments abound. In his cover blurb, Michael Chabon compares the book to "a series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes," which is quite apt. I feel like there are endless packages to unwrap within these pages. Not everyone could write a book like Cloud Atlas, never mind do it so well.

Honestly, we know I could keep going on. I could talk more about the idea of progress, our humanity, our unruly way of cutting off our noses to spite our faces, and also the great beauty and interconnectedness of the world. The remarkable unseen energy that floats through us all is endlessly fascinating to me, and should other readers of this book want to talk specifics, book club-style (side of wine-soaked aha! Moments optional), you've got the comment section right here.

Somewhat predictably, I'm going to have to resist the urge to fall down the David Mitchell back catalog rabbit hole for a little while longer while I move through other reading piles I've accumulated. Three other novels of his await, and perhaps its better that I break up the bouts of online gushing. They will come though, and I will enjoy every moment.

#1/26+

This review is part of Pajiba's Cannonball Read IV, in which participants aim to read and review 13, 26 or 52 books within one year. Though I'm taking things easier this year, I expect to surpass the 'Half Cannonball' distinction by the end of 2012.

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Volume 1 by hitRECord and Joseph Gordon-Levitt

2012-01-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 1
by hitRECord and Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Yes, this book is quite tiny. A tiny, adorable piece of art. Filled with stories no more than three sentences — and many that are just one — it features the work of 67 contributions from the creative collective site hitRECord. Illustrations paired with the stories range in style from notebook sketches to expert pencil work, each in a way that works well with their respective text without interpreting it too literally.

A fair number of the stories are simple, amusing plays on words:

"King Midas often
wondered what would happen
if he touched himself."

"The doctor's wife ate two
apples a day, just to be safe.

But her husband kept
coming home."

Some of the jokes make more sense with the artwork. Others are quieter, sadder thoughts:

"You're gone. No mailing address.
But I send you letters anyway."

"If I read our story backwards,
it's about how I un-broke
your heart, and then we were
happy until one day, you
forgot about me forever."

All of the contributors are listed in the back of the book by their site usernames. The famous man on the cover is listed here as "RegularJoe." It's an interesting idea, doing a creative collaborative project with whomever frequents the site. Online, they had over 8,000 contributions before the making of Volume 1, and work on Volume 2 is already underway. Part of me wishes that more people used their real names over handles, but I understand that the purpose of the book isn't to give individual acclaim. Yes, Gordon-Levitt's name on the cover helps sell copies and makes big publishing imprints take notice sooner, but apart from the intro, it isn't immediately obvious what his portions of the book are. One has to flip back and forth from the resources list in the back to figure it out.

Perhaps some readers might find the content a bit too twee, but I liked it. I like silly word jokes and animal doodles mixed with outstanding detail and inner reflection. This book feels like a good start to even more interesting work.

On a side note: Apart from some sly sex talk that went over my reading daughter's head, both of my kids spent quite a bit of time looking at this book. They, too, appreciate its tininess.

!t Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture and will continue to be fair with my reviews.

(Though Cannonball Read IV has begun, I am not counting this towards this year's challenge. At 88 pages and with very little text, it might be just a tad TOO tiny for the rules of the challenge. Still, I'm happy to have read this one.)

Internal News: E-Book Reviewing Policy

2012-01-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

It seems funny to have a "policy," but I've received enough emails at this point that I may as well lay it out. How do I feel about e-books? If you have written a book that is only available electronically, will I read it?

The answer is... maybe.

1. PDF and Doc/Word-esque files work best for me. I don't own a Kindle, or an iPad, or any other e-reader besides my laptop, so if your book is formatted in a device-specific way, I'm unlikely to seek it out.

2. That's not to say I have anything against e-readers. I wouldn't turn down a Kindle Fire or an iPad, but I'm also a hopeless dino who is broke most of the time, so it's not that high up on the desire list. There's another reason for that...

3. I'm not that good at reading e-books. I don't know if it's the chronic fatigue-related brain fog, or some other way that I am wired, but I have trouble reading text-dense items on a screen. That does not mean I don't want to -- No, I'm just slow about it. For that reason, my Google Reader is often creaking with the weight of unread items. Usually, I wait until I'm better able to concentrate, or I catch up while I'm folding laundry or something. Otherwise, lines blur together and I don't hold onto the information as well. That's unfair to your book.

So if you email me and say, "Hey, I've published this e-book. Will you review it?" more often than not, I'm going to decline. If your book sounds really interesting to me and something I'd love, sure, I'll make the effort. But if it's a matter of, "I might like this," I'm less likely to devote the time than I would if a printed review copy were available.

I don't have [much] prejudice against self-published works -- If your request is professional, then I will treat you as such -- but I prefer a physical book. That way, I can give your book a better read, and therefore, a more through and honest review. Your book deserves that, right?

Still, I understand that when you're in the business of publishing yourself, sometimes you don't have the cash for a printed edition. Believe me, I get it. I edit a magazine that primarily exists online for the same reason. So, it does not hurt to ask me anyway. If you've followed my reviews and feel like your book would be a good fit, say so.

The only thing I ask, when it comes to e-book reviews, is that you be patient. Stalk my "currently reading" status on GoodReads, if you want, but know that my turnaround time is not so swift. Really. I've been working on the same issue of Caketrain since July 2011.

I don't know if I would be better able to read e-books with an actual e-reader, but until I'm able to try one out, this is how it stands: If you have a physical book to send me, I'd rather you did that. And I thank you for even offering. Seriously, it's awesome. You wrote a book! I just want to treat it fairly.

I hope that clears things up a bit. Thanks for reading (and writing).

2011 Book Review Roundup / Year in Reading

2012-01-01T17:32:00.000-07:00

Since I finished my reviews for 2011 on New Year's Eve, my roundup has to be on the first day of 2012. Keeping track of my pace and what books I had read was easier than in the past, thanks to GoodReads and their yearly reading goal challenge. I actually read 54 books in 2011, despite only reviewing 53. Tessa Hadley's Accidents in the Home snuck in right at the end there, and while I'm still unsure if I'll give it a full-on review, I will say that I loved it and the pages flew by.

If you are the curious sort and like things color-coded, I have made a PDF of all the books I read this year, divided by author gender and with notes on how I acquired the book. But more on that in a minute.

Top 3 books for 2011:

1. Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy -- Yes, I've been promoting this book to everyone I know. It was my favorite this year, easily. I don't think it got near the amount of widespread attention it deserved.

From the review:

God, I love that phrase – “the calm violence of attraction.” Is there any better, more succinct way to describe it? Van Booy's writing is filled with so many beautiful truisms, that I could spend much of this review listing them, and having little to offer in commentary apart from, “Yes. That.”

2. Just Kids by Patti Smith -- This book deserves all the accolades it has received. Patti Smith is a fantastic writer, and the story of her and Robert Mapplethorpe's life together is the stuff of legend.

From the review:

Just Kids is a love story — a love story between people, a love story about art — and a story of sacrifice for what one believes is their destiny. Patti Smith has talked about the pleasure she had writing this book, and how even though she thought she would only write the one, she feels as though she may have another one in her. I hope she does.

3. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell -- David Mitchell's writing and the way he talks about writing basically make me want to hug his face off. Reading interviews with him led me to this book, and I loved it. Right now, I'm about 3/4 of the way through his Cloud Atlas, which is also amazing.

From the review:

Though I have yet to read David Mitchell’s other novels, I still feel like my favorite has yet to come. That’s not to disparage anything about de Zoet, but for making me love a story I might have otherwise ignored, I can only guess that his more modern settings will leave me lacking in the adequate vocabulary to describe their greatness. This is high and hypothetical praise, I know, but my head and my heart are in agreement.

For the most part, I read some really excellent books this year. However, there's one book I still can't decide how I felt about: There is No Year by Blake Butler. It was so strange, I'm not sure whether to applaud the effort or stare suspiciously at it, at the thought of being "had" for over 400 pages. I honestly have no idea. It is completely, and by no exaggeration, unlike anything else I have ever read.

From the review:

The ending is only a designated cut-off point, the end of the exhibit. Butler's writing comes closer to performance art in some ways, the literary version of disorienting video installations, housed in dark rooms at the MOMA. It would be disingenuous of me to define this book in terms of "good" or "bad" — All I can tell you is that it's an experience.

Now, then! Do you like pie graphs? I like pie graphs.

In early 2011, the literary corner of the internet went a'speculating about the reasons for gender disparity in publishing. Somewhat predictably, I got cranky about it:

[G]raphs like these can be misleading. While of course gender disparity exists in publishing, the amount of women published in these handful of publications are not also featured alongside the number of women who submit. So it's difficult to come away from their graphs with any real sense of what the numbers mean, other than we should be somewhat irritated by them.

Throughout the year, author gender isn't a large consideration when I decide what to read. My to-read queue is an ever-changing thing. It's an unscientific mix of what I'm interested in at the time, what has laid around too long and now I feel guilty, what has just arrived that I'm really excited about, or I'm trying to be fair to an author/publisher and am trying to get a brand new release reviewed by its publication date (I'm not as good at this, but it does happen).

Still, I like to see how the stats shake out, and yes, I like pie graphs. And pie. So let us have some graph, yeah?

That's 54 books for the year. It should be pointed out that there's always a chance my math can be wrong in these breakdowns, but if you notice something and care to figure out what I meant, do consult the 2011 Book List PDF.

I'm writing this through an ~~eye infection, the flu~~ a massive ear infection that's gumming up the works and the usual chronic fatigue, so let's not assume I know what I'm doing with numbers.

How did I get my mitts on books this year? Here's how it works out:

Wondering what the difference between "Requested from Publisher" and "Review Copy from Publisher" is? "Requested" means that I'm the one who initially sent out the email. I saw a new-ish book I wanted to read, tracked down the marketing address for its publisher, and basically said, "Hi, I'd like to review this book. Could you part with one?"

"Review Copy" means that the publisher or author themselves asked me first. They were the ones who sent the email, basically saying, "Hey, we have this book. If it sounds interesting to you, we will send it."

Giveaways are just that -- usually 'comment on this post, and we'll pick someone at random.' I won titles from GoodReads, Boooooom!, Chronicle Books, and BookSlut this year. Used to be, I never won anything, anywhere. So thanks to them.

But because I receive so many review copies, I want to show you all that I do spend my own money on books still, and never underestimate your local libraries. We'd be lost without them.

Here's how the Lady Author stats shake out:

It's a tad heavier on the "I sought it out" side than the "They sought me out." However, I am not figuring in the review copies that I was sent that I have yet to read, so this does not provide a complete picture.

On with the Men Folk:

Here, the "They sought me out" paired with giveaways almost doubles what I sought out. Again, we're not counting books I have yet to read, but this does back up the anecdotal evidence of publishing's heavier emphasis on male authors. Believe me, I'm not disparaging men. I like and love a lot of men just fine, but I think the point of these graphs is to have even just a little more awareness of the institutionalized sexism that has led us to the present.

Still, like I said early last year, I hate that we should even have to pay attention to gender disparity. I find it insulting to have my writing given extra consideration just because I have a set of ovaries. But at the same time, I also hate the still-existent attitude that books with women as main characters are "only" for women. I hate the labels "women's fiction" or "GLBT fiction," as though they somehow change whether or not a good story is involved. Or that we should rate it with different criteria. And on matters of race, the disparity numbers are especially dismal.

I don't really know what the solution is. No writer wants to be professionally patted on the head for reasons other than being a good writer, but the literature that gets widespread attention isn't equitable. We know this. Some presses, like Engine Books, are making a concerted effort to feature books predominantly by female authors. I think that's fantastic, and one way to call attention to the problem. As far as the publishing world on the whole goes? Well, I suppose just talking about it is a start. Discrimination is hardly limited to just publishing, and I'm not in the business of figuring out world peace. Other than to say, you know, it'd be nice.

The above graph basically shows the large number of compilations I read this year. I've been supporting a lot of small presses/journals with my money, and if they can spare a review copy, I like getting those too.

Really, you're not meant to draw definitive conclusions about publishing trends from my graphs and list of books, but they are pieces of the larger scope. A much, much bigger pie graph, if you will. All I know is that I'm going to keep on reading what interests me, and I will tell you my thoughts along the way.

Onward, 2012...

Take Me There edited by Tristan Taormino

2011-12-31T14:04:00.000-07:00

Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica
edited by Tristan Taormino

When it comes to artistic portrayals of frisky business, it's easy to talk about "hetero-normative" viewpoints versus same-sex concerns, and even the stereotypes faced by bisexuals as they try to navigate their relationships. Less often does anyone talk about the people who don't fit into neatly defined gender categories and their physical needs. Beyond male-to-female or female-to-male transgendered folks, there are also those who prefer to hover the line, either in an androgynous way, or in a way in which certain traits fit certain situations. Being a born a cis-woman who feels just fine being a woman, I won't pretend to know all the intricacies of being trans or genderqueer, but I do know that those who identify otherwise are both misunderstood and often ignored. With all the progress being made for non-straight people, legally and socially, it's also great to see trans/genderqueer visibility inching away from salacious daytime talk show material.

Take Me There is an erotica collection, yes, but it's also a very literary exploration of desire. I haven't read a lot of erotica, but this book seems to be out of the ordinary in that the stories aren't only about the act itself. Between all the "fuck me," body parts, toys, and "that feels good," there are also lines like, "It's an old Georgia suburb with porches covered in sand pails, beer bottles and boxes slumping from humidity." ("Somebody's Watching Me," Alicia E. Goranson)

One of my favorite stories was Sandra McDonald's "Sea of Cortez," in which a South Pacific-stationed sailor during WWII longs to be "the woman denied to you by biology." Supposedly straight men on the boat are known to "blow off steam" with other shipmates, but some men know it's more than that. Some try to fight against their sexuality, while others give in and hope that the officers look the other way.

You go find Williams. He's upright, exhausted, his face dark with stubble, a cigarette burning unnoticed in his hand. He's talking to one of the Two Fruits. When he sees you, his face gets all tight. You think he doesn't want to be seen with you. But then he pushes you into his rack and crawls in right after you, an impossibly tight fit, his body crushing yours. You want to be crushed. You want to be held immobile and safe, a woman held safe in the arms of her man.

Some of the stories are better written than others. Though I'm not familiar with a lot of the writers, some of the writing styles come across as "activist/personality first, writer second." As in, they can come up with a serviceable enough piece of writing from a queer perspective, but their main skills lie elsewhere.

A few complaints: Look, maybe it's incredibly square of me, but the few stories that used alternative pronouns like "ze," "hym" and "hir" were harder to get into because I was distracted by those words. I understand why they are used — as our language does not naturally provide a singular gender-neutral pronoun — but reading them felt clunky. Maybe one day our language will have a more commonly used and recognizable alternative, but I'm just not acclimated to seeing it yet.

Also, I could do without the "Daddy"/little girl dynamic presented in more than one story. It's just not arousing to me at all — in fact, it's very off-putting — to see the words, "She's good at giving head, my girl," in that context. There's all sorts of fucked-up psychology underneath that, and it's not my thing. The bondage-heavy scenes are not as much for me either, but I better understand why that gets people off. While there's pain involved, of course, they don't have the same abusive/creepy undertones as the "Daddy" stories.

But I'm no prude — the book still has plenty of hot moments and lusty language, and for the reader who is not personally familiar with trans-sex (as I'm not), the mechanics of it are also somewhat eye-opening. As an erotica collection, I don't know if it will suit the reader who wants to dip in only for a one-handed read because some stories are more "romantic" than "erotic." The line is fine, but it's there.

However, I think Take Me There is an important and necessary contribution to how we talk about and consume sex through media. There are so many varieties of people in these stories that I think most readers, genderqueer or not, will find at least one story that works for them.

(Sidenote: If any of you are on GoodReads, I noticed that they're taking giveaway entries for this book until January 13, 2012, so if this sounds interesting to you, you can enter here.)

#53/53

Full disclosure: Cleis Press sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I aimed for 53 AND I DID IT. The challenge ends today, December 31, 2011.

The Call by Yannick Murphy

2011-12-30T21:06:00.000-07:00

The Call
by Yannick Murphy

I saw The Call mentioned on a year-end list (forgive me for not remembering whose) with the distinction, "Overlooked 2011 Novels." At the time, the novel had a place in my to-read queue for early 2012, but that post re-reminded me of its existence, and I thought that maybe this short-ish and unusual book would make a great way to round out this year in reviews. I'm glad I had it cut in line because it really is worth noting before the year is out.

Set in rural New England, a veterinarian named David makes various house calls to area farms/houses, mostly dealing with horses, cows, and sheep. He's got a good routine going, including his plans for hunting in the Fall, this time with his son, Sam. His wife, Jen, worries that he isn't ready, despite Sam having completed hunter's safety courses. They have two other children, daughters Sarah and Mia. Though David loves his family and has a sense of duty, there is a growing rift of dissatisfaction between him and his wife. Though it's not necessarily the marriage itself that causes the dissatisfaction, there's an underlying tone of, "Is this all there is for us?"

What the children said to me when I got home: Hi, in German.
What I said: Oh, my lieblings, you have been paying attention to your Poppy! German is a great language.
What the wife said: They should speak Spanish instead. So much of the world does.
What I said: Do you really want to know what the Mexicans are saying? I'd rather know what the Germans are saying.
What the wife said: To the showers, mach schnell. That's what they said.
What I said: No, no, they said that during a fascist regime, but they also strived to be the best. Do the very best, they said. Make the very best, they said. That's what I want my children to learn, I said.
What the wife said: Maybe they should learn a little Buddhism. A little maybe it doesn't matter to be the best.

You see what I mean by "unusual." The entire book is formatted in that way: boldface category, followed by the details. Some readers might find it distracting, but I enjoyed it from a writing standpoint — that Murphy had the endurance to write an entire novel this way and make it a satisfying story speaks a lot to her skill. While the beginning is mostly "Call," "Action," "Result," and other straight-up work-related paragraphs, the boldfaced items become more complex as the story does. It's an entirely new way of approaching "the novel," and while of course it would not work for everything, it suits this character. We watch as his stoicism evolves.

After a hunting accident involving his son, the family's life completely changes. Hospital visits and terse conversations are to be expected, but the vet has also been receiving strange phone calls and starts seeing spaceship-like lights in the sky. He does not doubt that these phone calls and lights are happening, but he is unsure who else might have noticed them as well. He wonders if they have anything to do with his son's injuries, however illogical that may be. The following passage is one of the better descriptions of helpless grief that I have ever read:

What the wife asks: How can you read the paper?
What I say: I can't do anything else. You could so, she says. You're right, I could go out, I say. I get my clothes on and grab a flashlight. I tell her I want to find my rifle that I dropped beneath my store-bought tree stand. What I really want to do is find traces of the man who shot my son that the sheriff, when he came back from his investigation in our woods, said were not to be found.. I want to run through the night hitting every branch as I go, kicking up every leaf, punching my fist into the stone-hard bark of all the fifty-foot pines that bore witness, that all saw the man who shot my son, but that cannot speak to tell me his name.
What the night says: Go home.

To be honest, I wouldn't even say that I liked the vet all that much. Although he seems like a decent guy in many respects, he's also difficult to live with. However, what makes him interesting is that he becomes more aware of the difficult parts of his personality and how that affects the rest of his family. The dissatisfaction so apparent in the opening pages becomes something else entirely when no one knows if his son will live. There's a lot going on underneath his spare report of events; we can feel it.

Humor runs beneath some moments as well. There's a kind old woman who lets her sheep live inside the house with her, and then there are lines like "Looked alpaca in the eye by mistake," that are funny if a person has a passing knowledge of animal behavior. Play-wrestling with the kids and the dogs feels all the more true-to-life when the vet says that the dogs wonder "if they should stop what was happening or let it continue because it was fun."

While I'd hesitate to say that The Call would be a universal hit for everyone, it is certainly one that keeps your mind going in between reading sessions. With the different plot elements and the interesting ways that Yannick Murphy presents the characters, I found myself trying to work out what might come next before I had a chance to pick up the book again, much in the same way the vet mentally tries to sort out his problems while driving. The Call is a bit of a puzzle, but a good one, and one certainly worth giving a try.

#52/53

Full disclosure: Harper Perennial sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Hinges: Meditations on the Portals of the Imagination by Grace Dane Mazur

2011-12-27T20:49:00.000-07:00

Hinges: Meditations on the Portals of the Imagination
by Grace Dane Mazur

What a curious little book Hinges is. Written by a biologist-turned-writer, the spouse of a mathematician, it combines art history, the act of reading, memoir and mythology into one accessible package. Grace Dane Mazur explores what happens when we cross the threshold between reality and imagination, and also examines the importance of the threshold itself. Mixing Greek and Christian stories — among other religions/philosophies — with classic poetry and paintings, she demonstrates how other inquisitive minds have tackled the notion of Other Worlds. It is a fantastic and useful read, especially those looking to better understand their own craft.

Stories begin with instabilities — perhaps because beginnings themselves are such unstable conditions. In fact, the opening pages sometimes show the protagonist in a condition of both liminality and entrancement, liminality being the state of being on the threshold. It is as though there is a sense of, "Look, reader, the same thing that is happening to you — now that you are coiled around this book and are about to slip into the imagined world — is happening to this fictional character, who is at the edge of his own altered consciousness, and at the edge of adventure."

Interestingly enough, Mazur has a connection with the last book I reviewed, A Kite in the Wind, in that she has also taught in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Like many of that book's contributors, she maintains that inspiration and understanding of the written word can come from a variety of sources, and that different artists will have different interpretations of similar events. Her main focus lies with characters' first entrance into another world, and she uses paintings from Peter Paul Rubens, Dionysus, Fra Angelico, and more to illustrate her thoughts.

Our entrance into the other world when we read fiction is in many ways analogous to the hero's descent to the underworld, or crossing over to the Other World. I base this on the three qualities that seem most indicative to me of such journeys: the disappearance of boundaries, the distortion of time, and the distortion of language.

She goes on to add:

Like dream time, narrative time is non-linear, looping when it wants, disappearing when it chooses. It is elastic, stretching and contracting, two minutes can take several pages, while one sentence may leap through years.

When writing, we are often told that the best approach to our most climatic or intimate moments is to stretch them out, to build suspense and longing in order to have a greater impact. Slowing down can prolong pain in a good way — the way in which we read books to process the world, pain that can be put away when we need to, in order to go about our day. The same can be said for love, for who doesn't want to draw out, for as long as possible, the best feelings of love? Think of all the kisses, the stories, the trips, the conversations that you wished would never end. Think of all the sights and sounds that can bring them back in an instant.

Mazur's writing is also that of an academic, and Hinges has plenty of footnotes, citations and an index, as well as a timeline for the the writers and painters she mentions. Her points of reference date all the way back to 15,000BC, with the Lascaux cave paintings, up to the year 2000AD, with Charles Baxter's The Feast of Love. She outlines and re-outlines her position, down to the point of better defining her word choices:

The door that is not plumb, not correctly suspended from its hinges, is like a carcass, a side of beef, dead weight; it is pretty useless. It can fall open, but not swing shut. This is why becoming unhinged is such a serious thing. You collapse wildly; you swing heavily askew.

One form that becoming unhinged can take is obsession. Although the etymology of obsession implies that something sits on us or besieges us — from the Latin ob meaning against, toward, over, and sedere, to sit — perhaps one can also think of it as when we sit in one of the rooms of our mind, unable to perform the hinging action to take us to any other room.

Some of the specific examples of hinging into another room are Christ's decent into the underworld (and how different forms of Christianity interpret that event), the Homeric "Hymn to Demeter," and Virgil's story of Orpheus, the man who made a deal with the underworld to have his beloved Eurydice back in the land of the living, only to derail his own plans at the last moment. (Mazur's line, "Descended from the Muses, he is not one for prudent behavior or stolid obedience," made me laugh knowingly.) I will admit that I was not too terribly familiar with any of these stories, but Mazur explains them all in a way that does not seem overly simplistic, nor does she fly right over the head of the classically under-read. Her teaching skills shine.

Hinges is not a long book — just 152 pages, including the index — but it provides plenty to think about. Both academics and creative types can find thoughts applicable to their work, as she articulates what we find satisfying in making our worlds permeable. I'm quite glad I read it right after A Kite in the Wind; the two complement each other well. The lines between writer and reader are also fuzzy for those who are in the business of doing both. We know what it's like to be enveloped by a good story, and yet that story also makes us want to get to work. We also know what it's like to care about a character, yet wish its creator had done a better job. The Writing world and the Reading world co-exist on a greater plane, the Imaginative Universe. Mazur acknowledges these separate-but-overlapping entities, and in the end, elevates the discussion on what art can do.

#51/53

Full disclosure: I won this book through a giveaway hosted by Bookslut. Cheers to them.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

A Kite in the Wind: Fiction Writers on Their Craft edited by Andrea Barrett and Peter Turchi

2011-12-26T16:14:00.000-07:00

A Kite in the Wind: Fiction Writers on Their Craft
edited by Andrea Barrett and Peter Turchi

The novel I've written has languished on my hard drive for two years. Before that, I spent roughly four years and at least as many drafts working on it. A handful of people have read it, and it felt fairly close to "done" when I set it aside to begin the process of moving from Spokane, WA back to Great Falls, MT. And besides, I'd recently started reviewing books, which scratched a different critical thinking (and instant feedback) itch that I'd long neglected. For being a writer, I felt under-read. I would delve deep into one author's back catalog and would completely ignore others for no real reason. Reading a wider variety of writers — newer releases, especially — would help me better articulate what I loved about reading and why I wanted to contribute to the endless pages published. Still, I've struggled — not in the suspected, insecure "Why bother?" sort of way, and not over concerns of "mattering" amongst so many other writers, but struggling against my own foggy brain.

For over two years, my chronic fatigue has inhibited my ability to concentrate, and I have stubbornly used these reviews to fight against that symptom. I realize that I am luckier than those who can't even follow a few lines on a page, much less write about them, but I still hate that I have any trouble at all. With fiction, I feel like the muscle has atrophied. I've been trying to ease myself back into the mindset of my own work, and reading books like A Kite in the Wind have helped me to think about my novel again.

After reading over 100 books in those two years, and many of them excellent, looking back at 2009's version of my book is a little cringe-worthy. The story is there, but now I have to go in and make it better. I am only in contest with myself.

"With one part of ourselves, we would like to be better than we are, but another part of us would like to be left to live like a wild hog in the woods — and the constant, subtle pull between these two poles makes characters feel more like real people, less like illustrations or mechanisms to carry out the story's needs."
--"Self-Awareness and Self-Deception," Sarah Stone

A Kite in the Wind is not really for people just starting out with this whole writing-related madness because there's a certain knowledge base it assumes one has, but it is not an impenetrable read either. With contributions from former or current professors at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the book divides into sections: Narrative Distance and Narrative Voice, Revealing Character, Seeing and Setting, and Pattern and Shape. Though I somewhat recognized a couple names, I am not too familiar with any of the authors' work, and so I did not go in with any preconceived notions about what they might have to say.

My hunch regarding the quality and usefulness of Kite's discussion turned out to be correct, though — either I realized the ways in which I'd already done well with my manuscript, or I was able to make notes on what I should work on during this next draft. There are more good quotes than I can include here, but I will say that it's nice to read professional thoughts that would occur in an MFA program without, you know, actually turning up for class and having to listen to other students and such.

(Don't mind me; I don't even have a BA, and I'm sort of a shut-in.)

Because I tend to prefer character over concept, the chapters on narrative and character felt the most familiar. Exploring how and why people do the things they do, especially the misbehavior, is endlessly interesting to me, and I found many of my views on the process reflected by those sections. For instance, I don't know how many times I've read disparaging opinions on the first person point of view in fiction (which translates to unneeded hostility towards memoir and creative nonfiction, but that's a discussion for another time). The underlying message of these exhortations is that "serious" writers only write in third. Logically, we know this is bullshit, but writers are at once exceedingly overconfident and desperately self-conscious. Sometimes it's easy to forget that only blowhards say there's a limited "right" way to do something, so I particularly enjoyed Wilton Barnhardt's contribution, "First Person:"

Giving voice to central characters like these requires a degree of bravery. The writer may have to expose more of himself than he bargained for as he brings adulterers, social deviants, deadbeat dads, mothers ruining their children's lives, criminals large and small, from mass murdering generalissimos to cheerleaders spreading false rumors, to the page. Make sure when you choose third person close-in over first person you are doing it for greater context and perspective — and not because you're chicken!

First person tends to work out pretty well for me. I tend to live inside my characters' heads while working on their story, to the point where they might infiltrate my dreams and music selection. Because I borrow shamelessly from my own life, even if it's one sentence a person said to me six years ago, the mental lines between fiction and life become fuzzy quite easily. I like it that way; when it works, it really works. I am at my most brave in my writing, especially now, when my speaking voice trails off mid-sentence as my focus disintegrates. ("Did I already tell you that, or did I just think it?" is a frequent refrain.) To be honest, it's easier to think about my characters' bad behavior and wholehearted love, their damaged selves and goals, rather than trying to make sense of my own situation. With this illness, I cannot do much more than manage the symptoms, so in the meantime, if I can move one step closer to articulating the magic of romance, music, and the connections we have with one another? Well, then let that be my contribution.

"Intimacy redraws the characters' map of the world and their place within it. Intimacy snatches you out of yourself, shows you how small you are in relation to the rest of the world. Notice how different this idea is from some of our modern cliches about love — that it should make you "feel good" about yourself, feel confident, feel attractive, feel accompanied, feel, in a sense, bigger. Here intimacy causes the characters to feel uncertain,, off balance, strange, sometimes smaller, sometimes expanded in unexpected ways."
--"The Space Between," Stacy D'Erasmo

The best love is the kind that completely turns life upside down. I want love to knock me over and fill a hole hitherto unnoticed. I am interested in mind-altering, opiate-like love, where all the benefits and consequences are wrapped up in one inescapable and compelling mass. That is where I love having characters live — their attachments are going to be all-consuming, right into the pain that will come along with it. I want to take that enamored confusion and map out its environment. Love and lust for the chronically lonely — those are my favorite tales.

"[T]he habits of worry are borne out through repetition, soothed and then revived. Worry seeks to extinguish the hurt at the same time that it sustains the constant pleasure of the nagging pain. The management of hurt. The embodiment of ache. This is a story of ache, after all, of heartache, of heart hurt."
--"The Heart One Knows by Heart: Operating Instructions for Operating Instructions," Michael Martone

For the most part, Kite does not try to place value over one type of writing/reading over the other, but rather discusses what makes fiction as a whole more satisfying. Anthony Doerr says in his essay on suspense, "Fundamentally, story promises to order the unorderable, to impress a system on the unsystematic. Story promises to impose a meaningful structure on a universe that resists meaning and structure." And that's about as basic as one can get in regards to fiction. Both writers and readers do so in order to make sense of what they know, and also to find respite. We learn how to process the hand we're dealt, however unconsciously, through the art that surrounds us. Some people are stubborn to admit it, but any art can act as therapy, and there should be no such thing as a "guilty pleasure."

So when I came across Lan Samantha's Chang's contribution, "The Breakout Element: Unpredictability and the Novel," I could have really done without her repeated insistence that she once "read only for pleasure." Sorry, but are we supposed to excuse her and what she thinks is an embarrassing taste? Though she makes some good points about the usefulness of taking stories into unexpected territory, the underlying insecurity-masquerading-as-expertise was distracting. There's a difference between saying, "We are all unsure about our work sometimes," and making a big show about how much we've grown and look how knowledgeable I am. Maybe I'm being harsh, but parts of the essay seemed to imply that reading for pleasure was something to be looked down upon, and that once one becomes a writer, that pleasure is to be set aside. Some of us may genuinely like literary bran flakes, but let's not pretend that we should only eat for fiber.

Consider that versus the "Puzzles" chapter, where even though Peter Turchi says genre novels do "not open out into the world" and "It means to amuse us for a little while," he also says:

Genre novels work, to varying degrees, both to satisfy our expectations of form and to stand apart as unique creations. The plotting of a classic detective story appeals to our rational side […] The detective story offers the reassurance of order, of the human mind's ability to make sense of what, at some point, seems senseless. The detective story offers a world of answers and logic, a world in which problems cannot be avoided but can be solved.

Repeatedly, Kite stresses that novels can be both our medicine and our escape; that good writing is good writing, no matter the place in which it lives. During my brief stint in college, I had a grad student creative writing teacher who told us that we would not be writing "genre" stories in her class, with the implication being that they could not ever be "literary." More than one student took issue with this assessment outside of class, even if they were writers of what we call "literary fiction," but one of the more talented writers openly challenged her decree. His story (though I don't remember the specifics too well, a decade later) straddled the line between literary and medieval fantasy in such an outstanding way that it ended up being one of the class favorites. Still, he had to fight her for a better grade. Though I may not read a lot of what is considered genre work, the memory of that course keeps me from ever widely dismissing it. Again, good writing is good writing.

"The tales that come to us from Hans Christian Anderson and Charles Perreault and from the Walt Disney 'Kingdom' are great for us to read, by contrast, because they are more created than made, more designed than crafted. That is not to diminish their worth; I'm simply saying that they are different models we might learn from."
--"The About-to-Be Moment," Kevin McIlvoy

Learning and enjoyment can coexist quite nicely if we let them, for there's not much to be gained by treating knowledge like we did in high school — a drag which we must endure until we're given a diploma. Even if it's to learn what not to do, or to further articulate our tastes, there is value in all art. On the flip side, educating ourselves should not be a competition. Yes, taste is personal, and yes, some works are more universally applauded than others, but snobbery is counterproductive. "Irony is a form of protection," Charles Baxter says in his essay on lush writing styles, "and it's possible that we're now all over-protected."

At its core, A Kite in the Wind is a realistic exploration of what makes novels work. It does not try to prescribe one course of action, and for the most part, it does not come with elitism. Yes, writing well will always be a challenge, but during the process, we can remind ourselves of the satisfaction we get from reading a really great book. We can wallow in a character's life and allow ourselves the to find the truth in fiction. We want to hover in that space of transformation, of insight, and in the end, use art to make our lives full. We want to know that we are not alone.

#50/53

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Mental_Floss: The Book: Only the Greatest Lists in the History of Listory edited by Ethan Trex, Will Pearson, and Mangesh Hattikudur

2011-12-11T22:41:00.001-07:00

Mental_Floss: The Book: Only the Greatest Lists in the History of Listory
edited by Ethan Trex, Will Pearson, and Mangesh Hattikudur

Guys, I love lists. Not in the anal-retentive To-Do List way, though I sometimes make those out of necessity. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome often equals Colander Brain, wherein, for example, I will go into Target and buy 10 things I "need," but not actually what I originally came in to purchase (and then I need a nap). Lists are great for mental tidy-making, but I love making fun lists like, "Hybrid Animals with Funny Names" (Caccoon! Geep!) or my Alphabet Soup project of a few years ago. I also love random bits of trivia that would make me a decent pub quiz team member — By the way, did you know that Richard Simmons, Bill Cosby, and Henry David Thoreau all share the same birthday? (July 12, which also my birthday. Mark your calendars, of course.)

So hand me a book with the subtitle Only the Greatest Lists in the History of Listory, and I am all over that, annoying family members by punctuating all lulls in conversation with tidbits such as, "Salvador Dali wore a homemade scent made of fish glue and manure to help attract women." Delicious.

I tried telling my 2-year-old niece that Oscar the Grouch used to be orange, but she didn't believe me. Then again, she chooses not to believe most things I tell her.

Mental_Floss takes their similar love of assorted knowledge made orderly and operates both a magazine and website. The Book commemorates their first ten years of existence. They keep things amusing, but not at the expense of getting information across. This isn't exactly a showcase for the writers' supreme joke writing, but rather about making their work accessible. Anecdotal evidence shows that people are more likely to pay attention to an article when it is presented in list format. Just look at how many things Huffington Post turns into a list slide show in order to rake in the advertising dollars — I mean, don't you want to look at "7 Crazy Facts You Should Know About the Arctic?"

Keeping with the "10 Outstanding Years" theme, Mental_Floss: The Book divides into the following chapters:

- 10 Cheat Sheets For Impressing a Diplomat, President, Or Pope, (ex: "Four of the Largest, Oddest, and Most Useless State Projects in the World")

- 10 Lists That Should Come With a Lab Coat, (ex: "Eight Questions You Probably Need Answered Immediately")

- 10 Lists You Can Share With Your Kids (Or Your Inner Child), (ex: "Seven Things Disney Parks Have Banned")

- 10 Lists To Lighten The Mood at the E.R., (ex: "Three Defunct Diseases You Definitely Don't Have")

- 10 Sports Lists For People Who Can't Dunk, (ex: "Go Cornjerkers! 10 Unbelievable High School Mascots)

- 10 Food Lists To Make Your Mouth Water, (ex: "The Origins of Five Condiments")

- 10 Lists That Mean Business, (ex: "Strange Early Jobs of 13 Famous People")

- 10 Pop Culture Lists To Break Out On The Red Carpet, (ex: "Eight Celebrity Inventors Who Hold Patents")

- 10 Lists For People Who Can't Write Good, (ex: "10 'Q' Words That Aren't 'Q-U' Words")

- 10 Animal Lists That Don't Bite, (ex: "Three Super-Animals Keeping an Eye on Terror")

- 10 Lists To Read Before Naming Your Child, Company, or Alter-Ego, (ex: "Four Irritatingly Inaccurate Names")

- 10 Lists of Lemons, (ex: "Five Articles of Clothing That Caused Riots")

- 10 Lists of Lemonade, (ex: "Four Brilliant Scientific Screwups")

- 10 Lists That Didn't Fit Nicely Into Any Other Chapters, (ex: "Five Oddly Specific Museums Preserving Our History")

Also, did you know that "the original duty of a wedding's 'Best Man' was to serve as armed backup for the groom in case he had to resort to kidnapping his intended bride?" And that Cap'n Crunch's full is name is "Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch?"

This is what my family had to listen to while I read this book. They are remarkably indulgent, it's true. But who doesn't love knowledge‽ (That punctuation mark is called an "interrobang," and apparently my Open Office software doesn't know that's a word. Application: "A sentence ending with an interrobang asks a question in an excited manner, expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or asks a rhetorical question.")

Of course, one has to read Mental_Floss: The Book knowing that some of the information, while it may have been factually accurate at press time, might no longer apply. For example, the book states that "producing a single gram of antimatter costs about $62.5 trillion." A quick search reveals that the estimate was made by NASA scientists in 1999. Much has changed within the study of particle physics in the past 12+ years, and while I'm no expert, I would guess that the cost has changed as well.

It is helpful to remember that any "fact" that includes cost or superlatives like "The Tallest" or "The Bestselling" will change, and perhaps already have. Still, the number of reported and corroborated stories, while I have of course not checked them all, make me confident in the book's overall accuracy. One would hope, at least.

Of the facts that surprised me the most, one struck me as most needing verification: "Students at Brigham Young University need a doctor's note to grow a beard."

This isn't just some rumor concocted by people afraid of Mormons? Really? Yes, really. The school's own Honor Code site confirms it. Huh. Must be rough in this Hipsterific-Movember World.

If nothing else, Mental_Floss: The Book is excellent material for the trivia nerd in your life, and I'm sure I will be using the site's future lists to badger unsuspecting relatives and Facebook/Twitter friends. As in, "11 Examples of Perfect Strangers Fan Art." You're welcome, Internet!

#49/53

Full disclosure: Harper sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

All Over Coffee by Paul Madonna

2011-12-10T21:41:00.001-07:00

(Image used on the front cover, with the title of the book replacing the text. Otherwise, most cover images online were too tiny to be of use.)

All Over Coffee
by Paul Madonna

My introduction to All Over Coffee came through The Rumpus, when they started running the strip February 2011, and where Paul Madonna currently serves as the comics editor. To call it a "comic" doesn't feel right, though it is categorized as one on the site. All Over Coffee is a work of visual art paired with prose poetry. Yes, other comics could operate under this same definition, but there is something so beautiful and otherworldly about Paul Madonna's work that stands apart from the other comics on the site, especially his other Rumpus contribution, Small Potatoes.

(source)

About the strip, Madonna says this in the introduction:

All Over Coffee launched in the San Francisco Chronicle and on SFGate.com February 8, 2004. Immediately, letters of praise, confusion, and disgust poured in. Angry voices brought out voices of support, and debate over the strip took on a life of its own. The strip ran in the Datebook section four days a week for one year, then three days a week for six months before settling into its current position of one day a week in the Sunday Datebook.

The collection comprises of 151 of the 320 available at the time of putting together the book, and I must admit, I wish I could provide more visuals to complete the overall effect. While I have screen-capped a few selections that appear in the book, I hope that my linking back to Madonna's fine art print store will karma-clear me.

The early strips are smaller horizontal panels, primarily divided into two and three panels rather than a single scene. Their backgrounds are smoother and a brighter white, while the blacks remain impenetrably thick. Though there are less fine details compared to later strips, the writing still started out strong. The very first reads:

Maurice sips mocha latte at his
favorite cafe and argues with a
man in shorts

"I'm sick of you unobservant
transients," he says. "San Francisco
does TOO have seasons!"

It almost comes to blows

Almost
It settles over a slice of tiramisu
when they both agree that
Kundera can't end a novel.

I've used the spacing of lines shown in the panels, where it becomes easier to see how Madonna has laid out his version of poetry, down to his lack of periods until the end of the strip. What's great about his drawings is that they are not literal interpretations of the story. The first panel shows a bridge and electrical lines; the second, a cathedral and buildings partially obscured by a dark and leafy tree. The third goes back to a white sky and an industrial building from far away. He manages to capture the right mood between text and picture each time, with the first example reminding me of what a person might see outside a cafe window while eavesdropping.

Though many accused Madonna of loitering in public places and reporting what he overheard, his stories remained fictional. Perhaps it is the level of detail in the art that leads people to believe the words come from real life, or perhaps it comes down to the concept of "truth." Of course, truth is not the same as fact, and when presented with words that feel true to our experiences, we find value in them.

(source)

Eventually, Madonna switched to letting the texture of his paper come through. Working entirely with India ink and ink washes, his depiction of shadows and light are amazing. The book is horizontally aligned to best showcase each strip, and I found myself bringing the pages closer to examine the scenes. His work both invites lingering and inspires one to get to work.

The overall color palate in later strips, I would describe as sepia, but many of the strips have subtle color, as well as a few that have outright bursts. The letters AOC hide in graffiti, door signs and corners, Waldo-style. Some of the stories are slyly funny, others more introspective, and some ache hard.

She was definitely gone;
mornings were the worst

He'd be hungry, but to eat,
he'd need to cook, and to cook,
he'd have to wash the dishes

Everything was too much

He needed something,
but couldn't figure out what.

After all 151 strips, Madonna says, "I chose to write an afterword because I wanted to offer my story and not have it color your experience with the strips before engaging with them. I believe my intentions add insight to how you see the work, but ultimately, each piece must stand on its own." I won't ruin that by detailing too much of the afterword here.

When my family and I planned a trip to San Francisco this past August, I knew we would be visiting City Lights Books, and knowing that City Lights published this collection, I picked it up within minutes of walking through the door. (I wished I could have purchased both All Over Coffee and the second collection of strips, Everything is its own reward, but I could not quite afford two full price hardcovers at the same time.) While I know that seeing the strips on a printed page will not compare to seeing an original piece — it would be great to own one someday — being able to have the book far exceeds reading the strip on a computer screen.

Lately, Paul Madonna has taken to collaborating with other writers. Sometimes he provides them with the image first and asks them to use it as a guide, but most of the time, writers provide the words first. Frequent Rumpus contributors/editors Cheryl Strayed and Isaac Fitzgerald have offered stories for the strip, and I'm very interested in the progression of the strip from here. All Over Coffee is a gorgeous book, an instant favorite, and I cannot recommend it enough.

(source)

#48/53

(Yes, I know it might seem otherwise on this site, but I do purchase books with my own fool money.)

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Crossing The Heart of Africa by Julian Smith

2011-12-04T20:53:00.001-07:00

Crossing the Heart of Africa
by Julian Smith

Can you name the first person to navigate the length of Africa, South to North? Had you ever given it any thought? Neither had I, and I venture that most people have not either, save for the continent's historians. Neither had Julian Smith, travel writer for various magazines and guidebooks, until he stumbled upon the man's story while researching the evolutions of language. In a passage discussing how far men will go to impress females, he read this:

"The young Captain Ewart Grogan walked the 4,500-mile length of Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo in 1899 to gain the hand of the woman he loved. Her family had dismissed him as a ne'er-do-well who would be unable to keep their daughter in a manner to which they thought she should be accustomed. Grogan banked on the fame (if not fortune) that a dramatic adventure would bring him to persuade them to reconsider."

Hell, that's quite something, isn't it? Smith had to know more — he tracked down a handful of biographies and Grogan's own diary/memoir, From the Cape to Cairo. "The more I read," Smith says, "the more the adventure and romance of his story captivated me."

Meanwhile, Smith had a romantic plight of his own. Though nowhere near as perilous, his seven year relationship that included job changes and a cross-country move now hinged on engagement. His girlfriend, Laura, did not want to uproot her life yet again — this time, for a move to Portland, OR — for a man who was too afraid to get married.

No one had ever retraced his route. Perhaps crossing Africa as he had would help me find peace with this radical new direction my life was about to take. Maybe some of Grogan's mojo would rub off on me.

I ordered every book and article about him I could find. I plotted his route in guidebooks and maps, tracked down and cold-called his living descendents around the world. The wedding countdown kept clicking: six months, five. If I didn't go now, I never would.

I was flabbergasted when Laura gave her blessing. She was a gut-level decision maker, with instincts that had yet to steer her wrong. She was also the last person to want to tie her partner down against his will. If this is what it took for me to settle down, she said, hell, she'd buy my plane ticket and drive me to the airport.

Grogan himself was the rebellious and smart child in a large family, a Cambridge drop-out who joined the Rhodesian colonial army (now a part of Zimbabwe) after a stint in art school. Though game for the wide-open, unpredictable terrain, his experience was a largely miserable experience filled with constant battling against native tribes. And despite the advancements in European colonialism, much of Africa remained unmapped, if not completely unknown. He was sent home after contracting malaria and amoebic dysentery, not to mention having a burst liver abscess. He swore he would never return again, and yet, as soon as the stepfather of his love, Gertrude, called him unworthy, he immediately came up with a plan to survey the entire length of the continent. British Imperialist Cecil Rhodes had always wanted to link the country's colonies by train and telegraph, and Grogan's efforts would assist with that plan. Gertrude's stepfather agreed it was a worthy (though insane) venture.

[Gertrude] assured him there would be no other suitors before he came back.

Inevitably Grogan had to return home. When he and Gertrude said goodbye, he said, "I won't hold you to your promise, of course. And I give my word you won't hear from me until I'm successful. I'll send you a cable as soon as I reach Cairo. Then, if you are able to return my love, I shall make you my wife."

"You will succeed," Gertrude said softly. "I know you will. And I will wait for you, no matter how long."

Smith weaves Grogan and his tale together seamlessly between chapters, doing an excellent job of making Grogan's experiences seem just as present as his own. Even the casual student of Africa knows that while the continent has made great strides in some ways, many of the continent's troubles of 100 years ago continue today. AIDS, tribal warfare, and crumbling infrastructure have many countries drowning in poverty. Smith notes that just about everyone he meets on his journey has something to say about how poor people are, even doing so as a conversation opener. He never knows what to say.

Still, there is plenty to see. While retracing Grogan's route, he is able to determine some of the campsites, and even a couple buildings in the more inhabited areas remain. He sees volcanoes, rare mountain gorillas, and a village of pygmies, among other unique-to-Africa things. It's a tough, long trip filled with confusing visa and permit rules, not to mention the crowded, hurry-up-and-wait transportation issues. Still, it's nothing like what Grogan experienced.

In brief, and without spoiling too many specifics, Grogan and his team of men stumble upon cannibals, a charging rhino, various other angry animals and tribes, several bouts of serious illness, and the loss of supplies. Still, he carries on northward.

Both journeys are fascinating, and I'm not sure why I waited so long to pick Crossing the Heart of Africa out of my to-read pile. I do love the romance of it all, the foolhardy and tenacious optimism of such a trek, and the descriptions of the African terrain are excellent. You can almost smell the jungle mud at times.

I've gone on before about being a character-over-concept person, how I love to hear people's individual stories over a more detached perspective. Grogan's story interests me before a research paper on African exploration and imperialism would. Still, even Grogan's story on its own might not have been enough without having Smith's journey entwined with the narrative. It's an honest, though not overly heavy read, and though we know that both parties get married in the end, it's easy to forget that during all the moments of suspense. I highly recommend Crossing's brand of informative wanderlust.

#47/53

Full disclosure: Harper Perennial sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris by John Baxter

2011-11-30T14:25:00.001-07:00

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris
by John Baxter

Whenever discussion turns to productive creative periods in a city's history, I think about how any city has the same potential, if artistic people make an effort. The movements might lean towards a certain discipline — a greater musical scene than a literal paint-to-canvas community — but energy begets energy. Magic can be cultivated anywhere, and it's important to record that magic as it happens.

Certain cities are lucky enough to cycle through continual periods of magic, as though the atmosphere itself inspires the inhabitants. Paris, of course, falls into this jurisdiction. Even someone with only passing cultural knowledge about the city (say, me) can recognize its importance. For a devoted Francophile like Australian ex-pat John Baxter, every street corner can hold significance.

Recognizing that Paris is a pedestrian's city, Baxter maintains that the sights, sounds and smells will fuse themselves to the walker's heart, and a leisurely pace makes the journey all the more significant. After a stint living in car-centric Los Angeles, it took some time for him to realize a walk's value. "As if living in Los Angeles was not enough to turn me against walking, I'd been raised in rural Australia where distances discourage the man on foot," he says. "Well, they discouraged me."

And yet, all it took was one November morning to convince him:

All color had drained from the park, reducing it to a photograph by Kertesz or Cartier-Bresson. Nobody occupied the chairs that morning or sailed boats on the pond. There was none of the gaiety and ease one associated with the gardens in summer. Yet I felt elated. As if, like ultraviolet light, it could not penetrate glass, the essence of Paris is lost if seen through the double glazing of a hotel room or from the top of a tour bus. You must be on foot, with chilled hands thrust into your pockets, scarf wrapped around your throat, and thoughts of a hot café crème in your imagination. It made the difference between simply being present and being there.

Though he appears enthusiastic about much of France's history, Baxter's main interest lies in the Paris occupied by Ernest Hemingway, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Pablo Picasso. When a friend needed a new approach to the Paris Literary Seminar's walking tour, she approached Baxter. After some hesitation, he agreed to participate, and his tours were a hit. The Most Beautiful Walk in the World effortlessly merges the stories of those tours with bits of additional history, as well as stories from his own life, and what the stories mean to him. He makes you want to binge out on all the books and art he mentions, followed by booking plane tickets. In short, he is a very good guide.

Still, he had trouble reconciling himself with the label "tour guide," and all the stereotypes implied with it. After being persuaded to think of it not as touristy entertainment, but rather providing people with the opportunity "to see Paris as only [a writer] knows it," he warms to the idea. Writers are not often averse to money, after all. Besides, he recognized the greater value in what a walking tour could provide:

If, as the flaneurs claimed, walking around Paris is an art, then the city itself is the surface on which they create. And since Paris is ancient, that surface is not blank. Artists paint over their old work or that of others, just as medieval scholars scraped back the surface of vellum or parchment to use it again. Such a sheet, called a palimpsest, bears faintly, however often it's reused, the words of earlier hands. And we who walk in Paris write a new history with each step. The city we leave behind will never quite be the same again.

My husband visited Paris in 2000, back when the franc exchange rate made everything feel super affordable. At least, it felt that way to a seventeen year old now allowed to spend his time roaming the Paris streets, bottle of red in one hand, cheese in the other. He has been dying to get back ever since, but now with two children and minimal disposable income, international travel is not soon in the cards. (Hell, we live just a few hours south of Canada, and the ease of crossing that border is not what it used to be.)

Still, perhaps it's for the best that we must wait. Our kids are not quite of the age to fully appreciate being in Paris. For them, we could be walking in any city on vacation. They hold up better than most kids, as multiple walking-centric vacations have indicated, but the level of atmospheric magic would likely be the same for them as it would be walking around Portland. One day, the mister will be able to share with us "his" Paris, and we can continue the journey to make it "ours."

Baxter recognizes that the best travels are ones made personal, and that homogenized itineraries leave people unsatisfied. They want to feel like they are receiving insider's knowledge, and not something the tourism bureau cooks up by committee. People want to know that you get why they arrived, and they want something that elevates their desires to an unexpected place.

When a group of Texans is unmoved by his literary and historical references, he realizes that food and drink are where their interests lie. They visit cafés and markets, trying a little bit of everything. "Plenty of time when they got home to read Flaubert or a history of the French Revolution," he says. "What they wanted now was to reach out and touch the living flesh — to devour and be devoured."

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World is a great and inspiring book, and Baxter's passion is infectious. Perhaps to an already avid connoisseur of Parisian literature and history, this won't have the same appeal. However, for someone like me, it still holds plenty of interest. I'd like to read his other Paris-related books — Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas and We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light.

As far as cultivating similarly inspiring communities in our own cities, perhaps few cities will ever hold the same romance as Paris, but every place has stories. What those cities need is someone as passionate as John Baxter, willing to talk about those stories in a way that holds people's interest. It's easy to be dismissive and to focus only on a city's problems, but what we have to remember is that we need to give the right people a reason to stay. A vibrant creative class benefits everyone, but only when we're made aware that it exists.

#46/53

Full disclosure: Harper Perennial sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists by Seth

2011-11-27T18:43:00.001-07:00

The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists
by Seth

Given the title of my site, no one should be surprised when I say that I adore love letters. I love it when someone is unapologetically and wholeheartedly enamored with something — or someone — and they decide to make that love known to the world. Love letters, even when intended for one recipient, are an act of commitment. They turn heart swells into tangible objects, something to hold and crease and reread and savor and generate love in return. Here I am, here is how I feel, and oh, let us talk about how there is nothing better.

The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists is a love letter. Canadian artist and writer Seth creates a simple world where comics are revered and treasured, and it is as lovely as a traditional sonnet. Intended as a prequel to his book Wimbledon Green (which I have not read yet), it began as a sketchbook exercise, without much thought to publishing it. It became a single narrator essay in a nine panel grid format, and he had several starts and stops before deciding what would become the published work. He creates a fictional world so believable that I had to do a bit of Google research to see if I'd just been ignorant of Canadian comics history. The bits of reality mixed with Seth's creations feel authentic, and that's all we can really ask of a good book.

"If you should happen to be wandering along King St. in Dominion," our unnamed narrator begins:

Keep an eye open for Milverton Street and take a right on it. Walk along — just a block or two... You'll find a surprising little pocket of banquet halls and private clubs. Follow along to 169 — a tall three story structure... Somewhat past its prime. The G.N.B. Double C. The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists. Erected in 1935.

We are led on a tour through the building, discussing the history of the murals on the walls, the club jackets, the members old and new, and the impressively designed Forest Room. In the Forest Room, "you'll find a wide variety of original cartoon art hanging there. A near-virtual history of Canadian cartooning."

From there, the narrator goes into the stories of several different comics, discussing the authors and their inspirations, as well as the overall time period and reception during which the pieces occurred. It's remarkably wide-ranging — from straight-up superheroes to single strip gags to cheesy family stories to more complex, introspective work — and it never feels as though we are on a pointless diversion.

In this world, comics are better preserved and archived, and more consideration is given to rewarding fine work. It is from these pages that the Doug Wright Award originated, given to honor excellence in comics written in English. Doug Wright's comic Nipper features into the GNBCC narrative, a strip originally published in the 1960s. Wright's inclusion further serves this fact/fiction blur, creating an alternate history in which some real artists (known in certain circles) are revered alongside their fictional comrades.

Seth switches up his drawing style well when showing the work of these different artists. Some of the comics have a simple, pulpy feel, whereas others have serenely beautiful ink work. One of the fictional series mentioned, Kao-Kuk — about an Eskimo astronaut — can be read on the Drawn and Quarterly website here.

It's impressive, the entire universe he has crammed into a little over 130 pages. It's hard to accurately describe the impact the text and image pairings have, other than to say that they are also filled with aching nostalgia. In the literary world, certain works have been heralded for hundreds of years, and much more effort is made to discuss their impact, compared to the treatment comics receive. Seth seems to be of the opinion that we are in danger of losing the history of cartooning, and that it's a shame that the love he feels so strongly is not more widespread. Loving something can also feel lonely, especially when that love might not be commonly understood. With this book, Seth makes it clear that, during one moment in history, at least one person felt strongly enough to pay tribute. I highly recommend this book.

#45/53

Full disclosure: I won this book, along with Daniel Clowes' The Death-Ray, as part of a giveaway on BOOOOOOOM! Cheers to them.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Happy Haulidays Giveaway at Chronicle [In which I hope for (more) free books.]

2011-11-25T22:23:00.001-07:00

(Plenty is also published by Chronicle Books, but it is already on my shelf.)

Over at Chronicle Books, they are hosting a giveaway, and you know how I feel about free books. PLUS, books make excellent gifts because you can never have too many.

Here, then, is the basic giveaway overview:

It's been a tough year for non-profits, libraries, reading rooms, and literacy programs. But you can make your favorite charity's holiday season bright by entering the 2nd Annual Happy Haul-idays Giveaway!

This year, we're not only giving away up to $500 worth of Chronicle books to one lucky blogger and one commenter on the winning blog post—we're also asking the winning blogger to choose one charity to receive up to $500 of books from us. It's just our way of spreading holiday cheer and sharing the gift of reading.

To keep with the literary theme, if I were to win, I would like the Great Falls (MT) Public Library to also receive $500 worth of books. They're a good library, but like any library, they are not swimming in the funds. Since I'd like to support my local book-bearing community (outside of my perpetual late fees), it would be great to help them out.

So what Chronicle books would I love to have?

1.Moleskine Classic Hardcover Ruled Extra Small in violet. Because I love tiny notebooks, and a hardcover would be great for getting tossed around inside my much-abused bag. I hope it counts as a "book."

2. Creative, Inc.: The Ultimate Guide to Running a Successful Freelance Business by Meg Mateo Ilasco and Joy Deangdeelert Cho. The mister is a photographer/artist and I am a writer. This might come in handy.

3. Frida Kahlo: Brush of Anguish by Martha Zamora, Translated by Marilyn Sode Smith. Frida Kahlo is one of my all-time favorite artists, but I don't have any books about her yet.

4. Boo: The Life of the World’s Cutest Dog by J.H. Lee, Photographs by Gretchen LeMaistre. Because Boo really is one of the world's cutest dogs and my kids would love this book. As would I.

5. Instant Iron-Ons by Julia Rothman. All 4 of us would want to stick these decals on everything, thus making it one of the first times I have ever turned on an iron to do anything.

6. PANTONE: The 20th Century in Color by Leatrice Eiseman and Keith Recker. To (probably mis-)quote my friend John (who designed the Electric City Creative logo for me), circa high school yearbook, "I'm going to just go over here and pet the Pantone book until you realize that pumpkin and fuchsia is never a good idea."

7.Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson, Photographs by Eric Wolfinger. I have no patience for cookies or cake pops, but I am quite willing to make a loaf of bread. I've even been told I'm good at it. Let us encourage this with a book.

8. Big Vegan by Robin Asbell, Photographs by Kate Sears. I'm not vegan, but I am lactose intolerant, so I do have some interest in vegan cooking.

9. Quick and Easy Thai by Nancie McDermott, Photographs by Alison Miksch. We have one restaurant in Great Falls that serves Thai food, and while it's fine, I was spoiled by Spokane having oodles of fantastic Thai food. So perhaps I need to get better at making it myself.

10. Turquoise: A Chef's Travels in Turkey By Greg and Lucy Malouf, Photographs by Lisa Cohen and William Meppem. All right, now I'm just making myself hungry, which is apparently still possible after all the Thanksgiving leftovers I've eaten.

11. Rustica: A Return to Spanish Home Cooking by Frank Camorra and Richard Cornish, Photographs by Alan Benson. One more food book. Comida español es delicioso.

12. Revolucion! Cuban Poster Art by Lincoln Cushing. I love interesting poster art.

13. Cats Are Weird And More Observations by Jeffrey Brown. If you are friends with me on Facebook, you know my obsession with stupid/silly cat things. Instead of thinking I am lame, think of it as my way of dealing with no longer having any cats (RIP, Lucy and Hobo).

14. Stuff On My Cat Journal by Mario Garza. Another notebook! With silly cat pictures! COME ON. IT IS BRILLIANT AND YOU KNOW IT.

15. Nerve: The First Ten Years. Okay, back to things that aren't just me giggling at silly stuff. Not only would this book be interesting to read, it has interesting packaging.

16. A Dog is a Dog by Stephen Shaskan. My son would giggle for days reading this.

17. The Boy Who Loved Batman: The True Story of How a Comics-Obsessed Kid Conquered Hollywood to Bring the Dark Knight to the Silver Screen by Michael E. Uslan. All of us would get something out of this one.

18. E-mergency! by Tom Lichtenheld and Ezra Fields-Meyer - Illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld. Both kids would love this one.

19. Kokeshi Kimonos by Annelore Parot. My daughter loves anything to do with Japan, so she'd love this.

20. San Francisco Stories: Great Writers on the City Edited by John Miller. San Francisco is one of my very favorite cities, and the mister and I had our honeymoon there nearly 10 years ago.

21. The Empanada Brotherhood by John Nichols. Hey, a novel! Yes, Chronicle publishes those too. And yes, we're back to the Spanish language and food. What can I say? I like what I like.

22. Stoner Coffee Table Book by Steve Mockus. I'm fairly certain that I will laugh at this while completely sober. The cover image alone...

If my math is right (and let's be real, it might not be), that's $499.28 worth of books. Do you like my picks? Or do you at least know people who would like these books? Comment away, my friends. If I am chosen as the winner, I will randomly pick one commenter to also receive these books. Then we can cook Thai dumplings and laugh at kitties together.

Cheers. xx

There is No Year by Blake Butler

2011-11-23T01:51:00.001-07:00

There is No Year
by Blake Butler

In 2007, when Warren Ellis released his first novel, Crooked Little Vein, he talked about the strange tendency of some reviewers to mimic his writing style in their reviews. The result sounded strained, even pathetic, as though the review writers were trying to impress the cool new kid at school. But if you've read any Warren Ellis — beyond Crooked Little Vein — you know that his voice is singular. The man occupies his own warped corner of the universe, and he does not seem to care if you understand it.

Like Ellis, Blake Butler is the overlord of his own irregular literary land, and judging from some of the cover blurbs, the recipient of his own "emulations." I am not going to tell you to wear Butler "around your neck in wreaths" any more than I would construct some sort of awkward mescaline and Dr. Whiskey metaphor talking about Warren Ellis, despite my enjoyment of his "Good morning, sinners"-isms.

Most importantly, I am not going to pretend I completely understood what the fuck it was that I just read.

I am a stranger in There is No Year's neighborhood, and we barely share the same alphabet. I cannot promise a comprehensive review; I can only hope for an adequate one. Yes, this is a rather lengthy disclaimer to tell you that I am not the book's best audience, but I can tell you this — I am impressed with Blake Butler's ability to redefine what we typically consider "the novel." There is No Year is unlike anything else I have ever read.

A mother, a father and a son move into a house — a house for which the father cannot remember signing the papers, nor can he remember why this house, only the unrelenting desire to own it. They find an exact copy of their family, standing "each in a room alone unblinking." The copy family does not speak.

The father flicked the copy father on the arm there by the window in the kitchen — the window where so many coming days the father would look out onto the yard — the yard where once the copy family had surely moved and laughed and dug and thought and fought and seen the sky change color. The father watched the copy father flinch. The copy father's big ring finger had thirteen copy rings on. In the copy father's eyes the father could read his other's current scrolling copy thoughts:

This is my house.

This is our house.

This is where I am.

The mother disposes of the copy family the only way she can think to do so. From there, linear cause and effect cease to exist. The house undulates. There are rooms within rooms, holes within holes, hair and insects crammed into all crevices. The son has recovered from a mysterious illness, and the ensuing strangeness could be read as the metaphorical aftermath of that illness — Or, the house really does have them caught in an endless, haunted loop. I don't think Butler wants us to know for certain.

What Butler does appear to prefer is that we get sucked into his swirling imagery, lost in the same disconcerting way the family is. The father keeps finding the distance increasing between home and work, and work never lets him go. He is stuck doing an ill-defined job of which he cannot remember the purpose, only that he must keep at it or unknown bad things will happen. He is the wage-earner, the person in charge, the person "supposed" to do things.

Inside his car the father felt an awful feeling there was something breathing besides him. Sometimes right there on the backseat, strapped in, needing, shaped like him. He could not bring himself to peek. Through the windshield in his car out in the street among the houses in the light the father watched the car continue forward, scrolling, returning where he'd been again already — no sound — the years inside him itching, eating, and, outside, the years upon him soon to come.

The mother is perplexed by her child, periodically obsessed with mowing the lawn, prone to fits of cleaning and then fits of deterioration, and she is forever searching for a spark. Losing grip on sanity, she tries one thing after another, looking for that "thing" that makes everything better.

The mother had some idea of what she'd say when asked, if ever. Some homes had bells that shook her sternum, or would play a song she knew she knew. Some homes seemed to quiver right along, as would their home, leaning. The mother imagined herself inside each home's walls as she touched them — inside not sleeping, hearing herself at the door. At certain doors she tried the keys she'd crammed fat in her pockets, but in the locks they'd spin and spin.

The son is lost in his own world. His parents have trouble getting him to respond to their calls, and he sometimes feels as though ants are crawling inside his body. He can sit for hours watching the same spot, seeing worlds within worlds, until it all seems to vanish.

The son's flesh rolled between his small hands, doughy. He felt something spark between his teeth and there inside him. A little liquid dripped down from his ears. He heard whirring in his stomach like garage doors. The whole room seemed to squeeze. The son was tired. He was talking to himself. The room seemed to flutter in his eyelids, eyes behind them. The walls would lean or move. The carpet grew long. There was a boulder rolling above the bed. There were eyes on every surface. There was someone in the mattress.

The chapters are short, and the characters are never named. Butler plays with text alignment and line breaks, and even the page color changes on a black and white gradient. There are grainy and dark photos interspersed throughout, each their own version of nothingness and tiny points of light. The book itself, as an object, is part of the narrative, and that I really do like that. Typical page structure would not suit this story at all, and though I could not exactly tell you why one text alignment is used in a one section over another, it does contribute to the overall otherworldly tone.

There is No Year is a challenging read, to put it mildly, though its 400 pages certainly did not drag. However, readers looking for anything resembling a straightforward plot or a resolution are not likely to enjoy the book. The ending is only a designated cut-off point, the end of the exhibit. Butler's writing comes closer to performance art in some ways, the literary version of disorienting video installations, housed in dark rooms at the MOMA. It would be disingenuous of me to define this book in terms of "good" or "bad" — All I can tell you is that it's an experience.

#44/53

Full disclosure: Harper Perennial sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

The Death-Ray by Daniel Clowes

2011-11-18T23:43:00.001-07:00

The Death-Ray
by Daniel Clowes

"I don't feel sorry for myself, but sometimes I think all these tragedies couldn't just be a coincidence. Maybe it means something. Maybe I'm destined for something big."

Daniel Clowes submerges us in profound alienation and the development of one's own moral code in his newest graphic novel, The Death-Ray. It's a sad, thoughtful story that also explores desire and the fronts one puts on when out in the world. It's also a story of consequence.

Andy is a quiet (and therefore, mostly invisible) teenager in the late 70s who lives with his grandfather and spends most of his time with his friend Louie. Both of Andy's parents are dead — his mother from a blood clot, his scientist father from cancer — and besides ailing "Pappy," their housekeeper, Dinah, is the only other parental figure in his life. He likes old music, keeps his room clean, and he writes letters to his "girlfriend" back in California. He lets Louie run the show most of the time.

Louie, meanwhile, hates his drunk father for running off, hates having to live with his mom, and he hates his sister's abusive, drug-dealing boyfriend. He has an awkward Prince Valiant haircut and a scraggly 'stache, and he's equally as likely to call you a pussy as he is to shake your hand. Most of the time though, he pretends he doesn't care what people think of him. He and Andy spend a lot of time just hanging out and talking.

One day, Andy gives in and smokes one of Louie's cigarettes. He throws up, but then:

I woke up at 5am, groggy, but filled with superhuman energy. It's like I could hear the blood coursing through my arteries and everything. I actually thought for a minute that I might explode! It's like my atoms were unstable. I don't know how to explain it exactly, but I was overcome with the absolute confidence that I could do anything, that I was in every way superior.

Going through his dad's old stuff, he discovers that he was treated with an experimental hormone where super strength is activated by nicotine. Super powers, he has them.

Yes. Now what should he do with them? And what else does he need to know?

The ways Andy uses his new abilities are at first petty, then have him grappling with ethics and personal responsibility, before swinging back into jealousy and attempts at loyalty. In short, he does what many people would do — struggle.

The Death-Ray does not have a lot of pages, but the drawings have amazing complexity to them, despite their somewhat simple, nostalgic style. Going back through the book, I noticed new details that I never noticed on the first read, and the storytelling structure is excellent. We see Andy as a 2004 adult, alone and telling us of his life, and we also hear from minor characters, briefly, but directly. The way Clowes weaves together these vignettes of Andy's life is impressive and had I the convenience and the energy, I would scan some of the artwork to accompany my thoughts. The absence of images in a graphic novel review should make you all the more curious and likely to seek it out, I hope.

EDITED TO ADD: Wait, sorry. You'd think I could just CHECK THE PUBLISHER WEBSITE for preview pages or something. Here is an excerpt from the book up on Drawn and Quarterly.

I would hope that the debate over graphic novels being considered literature has largely passed — I honestly don't know, as I tend to keep out of such tiresome discussions — but if anyone truly was searching for a recent example, The Death-Ray is as literary as a text-only short story. However, Andy's story is one that is best told in illustrated form. Underneath the excellent character sketch of someone who so yearning and lonely is a lovely hat-tip to superhero comics. Clowes frames everything around the childhood escape of holing up in your room and reading about fantastic adventures, masked crusaders who make the world a bit more bearable to live in. Andy's sense of justice isn't so far-reaching, but he holds onto the idea that he will one day get his due.

#43/53

Full disclosure: I won this book, along with Seth's The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, as part of a giveaway on BOOOOOOOM!. Cheers to them.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia by Mary Helen Stefaniak

2011-11-13T22:54:00.001-07:00

The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia
by Mary Helen Stefaniak

My fifth grade teacher operated differently from the others. She was twenty-seven at the time, and not yet jaded by the decades passed like many of her co-workers. Ten and eleven-year-old kids did not have to be condescended to, and they could be trusted to handle bigger and more creative projects, all while making an effort to better understand the world around them. She wasn't strict, and the room did not dissolve into chaos. We were allowed to have our own opinions. We made our own hardcover books, we wrote poems and bound them into an edition for the school library, and for research projects, we could pick our own topics (mine included zebrafish and Australia).

One day, I was home sick, and my police officer father came home on his lunch break. He told me there had been an incident at my school. The account I have of what happened is cobbled together from what he told me, what my friends said, and the reaction of my teacher: A boy in my grade had borrowed a BB gun from his friend, and he decided to return it to his friend that day during morning recess. This was 1993 and Montana, so the pre-Columbine, hunting-culture ignorance of a child is more understandable. However, at the same time the boy decided to bring out the BB gun, my teacher happened to be looking out the window. From her vantage point, it was difficult to tell whether or not the gun was real. Not wanting to take any chances, she immediately called the police.

The school principal's reaction was to yell at my teacher for not reporting it to the office first. She ended up crying in front of our class, made to feel horrible for doing the right thing. Yes, the gun was not real. No, the kids did not have any malicious intent. But how was she to know? What might have happened in those minutes it took her to alert the office?

The boy was suspended from school for a few weeks. The principal held an assembly, which I did attend, to discuss with fourth and fifth graders why guns at school were a bad idea. It turned into our class protesting the treatment of our teacher, and also a support session for the boy's sister, who was a fourth grader at the time. It was an interesting hour — essentially we were saying to our principal, "We understand your point about weapons at school, but do not demonize the people involved."

Our teacher gave us a semi-embarrassed "Thank you" once we were back in the classroom, and we moved on with the rest of our day. Later that year, we were thrilled when she told us she would be teaching creative writing to sixth graders, so many of us would have her again in middle school. Out of everyone who taught me over the years, she remains one of my favorites.

The magic of a teacher who comes at the right time in a child's life cannot be underestimated, and Mary Helen Stefaniak's The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia takes that magic and combines it with the 1938 rural South. She weaves together the perspective of an eleven-year-old girl and the adventure from The Thousand Nights and a Night, and in a brief time, a teacher changes the town in a remarkable way.

On the surface, it sounds like a tale that's been done to death. Ah yes, the Flawed-but-Inspiring Figurehead, here to teach these naïve kids about the ways of the world. Won't you show us the error of our ways, enlightened one?

… It's not really like that. Not exactly.

Narrated from Gladys Cailiff's eleven-year-old point of view, Miss Spivey arrives in Threestep, Georgia wearing hiking boots underneath her dress. Unsatisfied with the previous curriculum in the one-room schoolhouse (high school-aged students attend elsewhere), she decides to give the children a more well-rounded, worldly education based on her knowledge acquired in private schools and travels abroad. Gladys finds her fascinating, as do many of the kids, but of course there are more conservative students who balk at her abandoning "the way things are done."

She put us to work at once making invitations for the folks at home on pieces of orange paper cut out to look like pumpkins. With varying degrees of speed and skill, we copied from the blackboard the place and time of the party (from dusk till midnight, which was thrilling right there), as well as words like candy apples and haunts (as in "House of Haunts"), which everybody but Miss Spivey pronounced "haints." She strolled back and forth amongst our desks, offering encouragement and additional suggestions for spelling and punctuation.

Most of us had already written the date on our pumpkin-shaped invitations when Mavis piped up to say, "You can't have no party on October thirty-first, Miss Spivey. It's the last Monday of the month."

Miss Spivey replied, in a particularly pleasant voice, "October thirty-first also happens to be Halloween, Mavis."

"Then I reckon you can't have no party on Halloween," Mavis said.

"Yes, you can!" Ralphord cried. He'd already drawn a pirate costume on the back of his invitation.

"Well, I sure wouldn't," Mavis said, "if I was y'all." She looked around the room significantly.

By now everybody's heart was sinking, except for Mavis's. She was thoroughly enjoying herself, I could tell. She just loved the fact that all the rest of us had been too excited, with the turban and the pumpkin-shaped invitations and all, to notice that October 31 was the last Monday of the month.

In Threestep, Georgia, the last Monday of the month was Klan night.

It would be goddamn ridiculous to have a novel set when/where this one is and not mention the presence of the Klan. Their existence is an unfortunate and undeniable truth, though in Threestep, most people treat them with weariness. No one wants to invite their anger, but at the same time, they are certainly not admired. When Gladys asks her father a question about them, she describes his reaction as "look[ing] like I was asking him something he hadn't given thought to in a long while. He also looked like he would have preferred to keep it that way."

When Miss Spivey makes it clear that she does not intend to treat local black students any differently than the white ones, despite them attending different schools, those in the know hold their breath. And with the success of the Halloween party (though changed to a different date), she has even more progressive plans for the town's spring festival. All year, they work on what will be called the Baghdad Bazaar. Everything leads up to this night and its unknown outcome.

Heavily involved, though mostly in secret, in the designs of the Baghdad Bazaar is Theo Boykin, a talented inventor who finds learning from the dated colored high school’s textbooks inferior. He, along with his brother and mother, are the Cailiff's neighbors, and Miss Spivey takes an interest in his artistic skills and college ambition. His creative and engineering abilities weave nicely into the Thousand Nights narrative, and Stefaniak makes clear that some people are born as legend.

While Georgia is an interesting book, it's not without fault. We know everything about some characters, and little about others. What happens after everything comes to a climax is neither a downhill wrap-up, nor a Thelma and Louise-style cliff jump. Without spoiling anything, we instead start on a different story timeline altogether, before we're jarringly taken back to the original. It's not that the separate timeline is bad or completely unrelated — No, it serves a purpose — but something about the way it is executed didn't sit right with me. Starting over with expository information three-quarters of the way through the book made me glaze over a little, and I wondered when we would snap back to what had just happened. I wish I could be more specific, but the last part of the book was somewhat disappointing, despite the revelations it held. I know that it is entirely unhelpful to say, "Well, I don't know what would fix it, but I wish it were fixed," however true.

Still, Georgia has plenty of merit, and I am not sorry I read it. Though tempered through the eyes of a child, it provides a worthy portrait of the pre-WWII South, mostly unburdened by cliché. A remarkable teacher is a remarkable teacher in any era, and those that are good at their jobs can change the way anyone looks at life. I just wish Miss Spivey's story had been more satisfying.

#42/53

Full disclosure: W.W. Norton sent this book to me for review purposes. I thank them for the gesture and will continue to be fair with my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Q by Evan Mandery

2011-11-08T23:12:00.001-07:00

Q: A Novel
by Evan Mandery

Q: If you could find out how your life will look in the future, would you want to know?

Q2: If you could change that future, would you?

Q3: What are you willing to sacrifice for happiness? For your career? For the person you love?

Evan Mandery's latest offering, Q, is a rather unusual book. I hesitate to use the word "quirky," since the word implies a cuteness not present, and the questions it poses are not so odd. However, not too many literary fiction books dealing with such themes introduce the element of time travel.

Still, I am getting ahead of myself. Our unnamed protagonist is madly in love with a woman named Quentina Elizabeth Deveril, otherwise known as Q. They meet at a NYC movie theater, during the double feature of Casablanca and Play It Again, Sam. Their first conversation goes, in part, like this:

"[...]I have no pressure to speak of, and even still I cannot sleep on Sunday nights."

"Perhaps it is something universal about Mondays, because the same thing is true for me too. I have nothing to make me nervous about the week. I love my job, and furthermore, I have Mondays off."

"Maybe it is just ingrained in us when we're kids," I say.

"Or maybe there are tiny tears in the fabric of the universe that rupture on Sunday evenings and the weight of time and existence presses down on the head of every sleeping boy and girl. And then these benevolent creatures, which resemble tiny kangaroos, like the ones from that island off the coast of Australia, work diligently overnight to repair the ruptures, and in the morning, everything is okay."

"You mean like wallabies?"

"Like wallabies, only smaller and a million times better."

They fall face first into a relationship and engagement, happily living together while he writes and teaches, and while she works at the Union Square farmer's market and tends to a rather impressive urban garden. However, small things eat at the man — such as his less-than-successful novel, an alternate history in which the presidency of William Henry Harrison goes to full term (instead of the President dying from pneumonia 32 days after inauguration). Q's garden is in danger of being sold to developers under eminent domain. Also, he and Q's father do not exactly get along, even though she adores both men. Unfortunately, the two have to spend some time together while they plan the wedding.

"How is your work going?" He pauses briefly after "your" and places a subtle derisive emphasis on "work" to make it clear he does not think either my job as an assistant professor at City University or my gig writing novels satisfies the definition of the word.

I tell him anyway. "I am writing a short story for 9PM Magazine. It's sort of a sequel to my novel. It begins after William Henry Harrison leaves office. He is minister to Gran Colombia and while there joins a backgammon club where he meets Simon Bolivar. They develop a friendship and over time engage in an erudite debate about democracy and the proper use of the doubling cube."

"What's 9PM Magazine?" asks John.

"Oh, it's a mixed-media online journal."

"Sounds great," he says. "I'm sure both people who read your story will love it."

"Thanks."

"Have you considered turning it into a movie no one will see?"

"No," I say quietly, and think to myself that John Deveril is a hateful man.

The narrator's writing sounds absolutely dreary, the stuff of theoretical history enthusiasts to ponder over drinks, and not the makings of a novel. Yes, John Deveril's comments are mean-spirited, but they're also very funny. Similar comments are comic relief in a novel that's rife with formal dialogue.

In the midst of the wedding plans, the narrator receives a note, in his own handwriting, requesting that he make a lunch reservation at a five-star restaurant. There, he meets a very familiar face who insists, "You must not marry Q."

What happens then is a series of decisions and corrections that threaten the narrator's sanity and make him question everything that he's ever done. I don't want to spoil things further except to say it's both interesting and frustrating.

Reading this book, I did not fall headlong like the narrator does with Q, or like he does in describing his latest plans for a book. The man is, of course, preoccupied with alternate histories, and he spends considerable time working on a novel in which Freud becomes a widely known biologist that makes a breakthrough regarding eel testes.

Yeah. Eel testes.

It's a bit funny, but it also made me think, "Oh good lord, would we just get to how this resolves instead of watching him flail?" Still, that need to know what happens never goes away, and for that reason, I kept going. I read it while on vacation, and for airplane/hotel reading, it's a worthy distraction. Yes, it's a bit heavy-handed with the symbolism, but part of me suspects that it's done in a farcical way. Not being able to tell was annoying, even though I wanted to keep reading. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book. Was I more patient with its faults because I was on vacation?

Would I feel differently if I were able to go back and read it under different circumstances?

Oh, I see what you did there, Mandery. Everything comes back the nagging concept of Choice.

Now, would I want to know how my life turns out? In some ways, yes, it would be handy to know if certain things pan out, but I suspect I am too neurotic to really be trusted with this information. I'd dwell. I'd get all existential and moody, and the act of knowing would thereby alter my existence because I would cease my current path and divert to Crazy Town. Nobody needs me to reside in Crazy Town. Even if things theoretically turn out well, I'll still find a way to drive myself nuts, and I do fine enough there without knowing the future. Hell, I can't even tell you if I'll sleep okay tonight, and I've had a pretty good day.

If our narrator's case is any indication, we are all better off not knowing.

Edited to add: I had the feeling they might try to make a movie out of this. To be honest, it might make a better movie than book, if done right.

#41/53

Full Disclosure: I received this as an uncorrected proof from Harper, in which the title was Q: A (Timeless) Love Story. So, much like the title, elements of the story may have changed. You know, after they considered the book's FUTURE and all. *ahem* Still, I thank Harper for sending me the book, and I will continue to be fair with my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Fathermucker by Greg Olear

2011-11-07T22:24:00.000-07:00

Fathermucker
by Greg Olear

The moment one becomes a parent doesn't mean one's personality ceases to exist. We do not cease to be a person who wouldn't mind, from time to time, a break from parenting, to take a step back and say, "How exactly did I end up here?" Greg Olear understands this perfectly in his new novel, Fathermucker.

Living in the crunchy town of New Paltz, NY, Josh Lansky is a stay-at-home dad to 3 year old Maude and almost-5 year old Roland. He is, in short, very tired, especially now that his wife has left town on a business trip. Left in the wilds of solo parenting, there is a mouse living in his bedroom wall, he's been up since 5:03 am, and he can't remember the last time he wrote anything good. A little peace is necessary to start the day, and that peace will come from the Judgy-Mummy abhorred television. "I find myself apologizing for our decision to let our kids watch TV," he says. "If I permit such deleterious activity, you see, I must at least recognize its inherent and unequivocal evil."

The truth is, my kids could spent the next half hour watching the South Park movie, and I wouldn't mind, as long as I got to take a shower and they didn't memorize the words to "Shut Your Fucking Face, Uncle Fucker." If that makes me a shitty parent, well, alert Child Services. That's U-N-C-L-E-Fuck-You. The number's in the book.

I am with this dude. Even though I know my 4 year old son is exactly the type of kid to memorize the words to that song. Meanwhile, my 7 year old daughter would be the one judging me. She's a rule follower, for now, bless her. At least I got one. It's a wonderful day when your kids reach the age — whenever that is — when you can say, "Find something to do," and you don't have to worry about all hell breaking loose. You know, Mama's got things to do like post stupid cat pictures on Facebook. There's yogurt in the fridge. Clean up when you're done.

Speaking of Facebook, Josh uses it to keep up with the lives of his friends, and to finish the conversations started in real life during the perpetual playdate circuit. On this particular morning — for the whole of Fathermucker takes place during one very long day — he will attend a play date at Emma's mother's house. After that, he will accompany Roland on his preschool's field trip to the pumpkin patch. He will be caffeinated. He will persevere. He will conquer this damn day...

"Oh, Josh, I hate to be the one to tell you this. I think... I think she's having an affair."

The "she" being his wife, Stacy. Fellow parent Sharon, mother of Iris, drops this bombshell on Josh, just in time for Maude to have a meltdown, begging to go home. And so he gets to stew, without any further information, throughout a day that is only going to get worse.

Olear has a particular talent for capturing the scatterbrained state of parenting small children — the interrupted conversations, the strangeness of children's programming, the futility of fashion when all you're doing is wiping someone's ass. He knows it's easy to forget how to be a functioning social adult underneath all that. Playdates serve as necessary opportunities to have grownup conversation as much as they entertain the kids.

(Personally, I'm exhausted by the idea of playdates, but I'm exhausted by everything. In other news: it's a good thing my kids like each other, since their mother doesn't exactly provide a social calendar.)

In the case of the small-enough community of New Paltz, these meet-ups provide a side of gossip. Who's having an affair? (Cynthia Pardo, all over town.) Who is secretly eating McDonald's? (Josh, like, every morning.) Who puked all over the bathroom like a college kid? (Meg's husband, "the doucheface," she says.)

So yes, maybe that grownup conversation sometimes reverts to something a bit more, well, juvenile.

There are a bit too many pop culture asides peppering the story. Now, I understand that when your entertainment is derived from the quiet moments where you can steal away to the internet, or flip through gossip rags, pop culture asides are what will stick in your mind. Not to mention, a person who feels ever disconnected from the non-parenting world will cling to whatever cultural things that might show he is still paying attention. My life is not entirely pull-ups, honest. However, when we take that existence and pair it with literature, I start to wonder how well it will hold up over time. I know who the Fug Girls are and that Nick Jr. used to be called Noggin, but will the reader ten years from now know the same? Even the Spencer and Heidi jokes feel a bit old reading them in 2011 — though they were likely fresh when the book was written and presumably when this story is supposed to take place.

I know that worrying about the 2021 reader is an awfully presumptuous thing to do, but anyone who loves books, loves the business of writing them, and has read book after book that is decades (if not centuries) old... Well, of course we think about posterity. I understand why the not-quite-hip culture jokes are there, but there are too many. Josh can show me he's trying to be relevant in other ways.

Still, Josh is quite funny and he'd be the parent I'd want to hang out with, were I subject to such a social circle. I'd much rather talk about whatever silly crap is floating around online than things like attachment parenting and the latest martyr-parenting methods.

And the content can be serious as well. Josh's son, Roland, has Asperger's syndrome, and that affects everything during the day. Transitions must be forewarned, and bedtime must be a specific, orderly dance. Concessions must be made. That in itself can make a parent feel more alone, especially when it seems like "typical" kids develop in leaps and bounds.

Parents of autistic children are more likely to suffer from depression, from parental stress, from psychological stress.

Parents of autistic children are more likely to split up.

The divorce rate for those parents is eighty percent, is what I hear.

Ernest, one of Cynthia Pardo and Peter Berliner's three children, is autistic.

Stacy and I haven't had sex in … how long has it been? A while. It's been a while.

Shit.

Fathermucker is a quick-but-satisfying read, and certainly one with which less-uptight parents will identify. The question of "Is Stacy having an affair?" propels us to the very end, and it goes for self-deprecation over melodramatics. Olear makes us consider the definitions of honesty and identity within our day-to-day life, and I am officially a fan.

#40/53

Full disclosure: Harper sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus

2011-11-06T00:42:00.000-06:00

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution
by Sara Marcus

Born in July 1983, I'm a little too young to be considered "Generation X" and a little bit too old to be considered a "Millennial." In high school, we first heard the term "Gen Y" kicked around, and some sources consider "Millennial" and "Generation Y" to be one and the same. Who decides these things, I don't know, but as is the case with any label, there is no catch-all application.

Such can be said about the label "Riot Grrrl," a movement that began in the early 90s within the indie scenes of Olympia, WA and Washington DC. Wholly defining riot grrrls into a couple of neat sentences cannot easily encompass both the origins and the destinations of the young women who participated. However, in Girls to the Front, Sara Marcus has crafted a rather well-rounded history that captures both the idealism and the problems of this "second wave" of feminism.

Maybe it's too easy to get complacent about women's rights — after the hard-fought battles of the 70s and the resurgence in the 90s, it might seem like a different world. To be fair, it is, a little.

The rape crisis centers and other pro-women organizations we might take for granted would not exist without those efforts, nor would the awareness we have regarding sexual harassment and terms like "glass ceiling."

And yet, still, victim-blaming occurs.
And yet, still, we read newspapers equating sexual assault with a fashion choice.
And yet, still, the internet breeds new forms of misogyny.
And yet, still, women are paid less than their male counterparts, still punished financially for having children, less likely to be taken seriously in male-dominated positions, and on and on and on and on.

There is much work to be done. Still.

However, the progress we have made owes a great deal to the Riot Grrrl movement — a movement that, at ten or so years old, I knew existed, but felt too young and too far away to take part. I saw these girls as unapologetically outspoken, girls who wore what they pleased, played in bands, made their own zines, and appeared to date people independent of gender. They looked artsy and fun, and I wished that I could some day be a part of something like that.

Lost on me, likely due to my age, were the political messages behind the movement. I didn't know, until later, how they reached out to girls who felt bombarded by sexist culture, familial abuse, and any number of horrible things. I didn't know of the true therapy Riot Grrrls experienced by coming together. Too young, living in Montana, and experiencing it only through magazines, all I saw were strong people. Examples. They would help change the world. (Pre-internet!)

However, no group is without its flaws and Girls to the Front does not shy away from discussing them. Sara Marcus was not a part of the original movement and came into it a few years in, growing up near the DC area. "Sometimes it's okay to have a little distance from the center of a cultural explosion," she says at the beginning of the book. "The impact may be reduced, but the burns less severe."

She talks about her frustration with hearing Riot Grrrl referred to as though it were a passé trend populated by girl bands who "couldn't play their instruments." How had this history been lost? What happened to the feelings she had when she first met these girls and knew she wasn't alone?

Talking to these girls, I began to understand that I didn't have to be miserable. Maybe being a teenager was always going to be a bloodbath to some extent, but it did not have to be this particular bloodbath. Its severity and the specific tone of its miseries were political, which meant they were mutable. I felt powerless not because I was weak but because I lived in a society that drained girls of that power.

However, apart from the introduction, Marcus does not veer into memoir territory. If no one had properly explored and recorded the history of Riot Grrrl, then she would do it herself. Through extensive interviews, scouring old zines and mainstream media coverage, she has woven together a complex narrative that avoids fangirl or cynicist traps.

She starts with a prologue, set at a 1992 Bikini Kill concert. They're a band who "has spent much of the past year on the road, building a fan base the way all independent bands do in the early '90s: piling into a van and crisscrossing the country every few months, counting on a cassette-only demo they sell, and on word of mouth, to feed enthusiasm."

Marcus has a particular gift for describing music to someone who has not heard the songs. I am aware of Bikini Kill as a band, would perhaps be able to recognize a song or two if it were played unattributed, but reading the music passages in this book provided a real sense of what the bands sounded like:

The laid-back bassist begins a three-note riff, over which a friend of the band, Molly, reads from a recent newspaper article attacking Bikini Kill: "What comes across onstage is man hate! A maniac rebellion against the world and themselves." Kathleen flails at the cymbals with exaggerated awkwardness, waving her arms like a three-year-old trying break something. Billy taps his foot to keep track of the beat. Erika's movement is almost here. Tobi is singing about rock heroes' approval: If Sonic Youth thinks that you're cool, does that mean everything to you? Then she raises her voice for the chorus, naming that band's iconic guitarist: Thurston Moore hearts the Who! Do you heart the Who too? As if in reply, Billy swings his guitar toward his amp to make caterwauling wolf whistles of feedback and jagged bursts of Thurston Moore-style noise.

The chaos mounts. Billy throws his guitar up high, letting it flip over itself in the air, and then catches it. Kathleen walks to the edge of the stage and leans down to the girls in the front row so Erika can hurl bloodcurdling screams into the mic. The two of them share the mic for a second, Kathleen's woah-oh-oh and Erika's virtuosic EEEEEEE!, and then Erika takes the microphone and climbs onstage. She belongs there and she knows it.

To properly summarize all the different figures that began what at first was called "Revolution Girl Style Now" calls for a review much longer than perhaps my (and your) patience allows. In short, the difference between the feminism of the 70s and the feminism of this group in the 90s was that it focused less on debating labels — "Does labeling something female unfairly change its perception?" and the like — because they were already aware of the disadvantages labels caused, and that did nothing to change the reality of being a girl in the early 90s. They wanted to start something cool and encouraging to anyone interested in equality, and not just the readers of their mothers' Ms. magazines. They wanted to create a new legend, where "[e]verything was accessible, everything was meaningful, everything was available to be discussed and assessed and incorporated into an exuberant and revolutionary worldview."

Olympia's punk scene already had some ties to the DC scene, as some of the key players in Olympia had once lived in Maryland, not to mention the northwest's K Records having close ties to Ian MacKaye's Dischord Records (MacKaye, of course, being the frontman for Minor Threat and then Fugazi). Pen pal friendships sprung up through postcards and zine exchanges, which also led to the fractured collective band known as Bratmobile and Bratmobile DC. With the encouragement from their Olympia counterparts, DC punk girls realized their scene was in need of an overhaul, a movement away from its often violent, male-dominated pits during shows.

It's important to note Riot Grrrl's parallel existence to what ended up being labeled "grunge." Though both incubated in the early 90s and overlapped to some degrees, they had wildly different goals. Tobi Vail from Bikini Kill once dated Kurt Cobain, and some of Kurt's subsequent heartbreak songs made it onto the Nirvana album receiving so many 20th Anniversary Tributes as of late.

The boys of Nirvana has their hearts set on fame and stardom, which made them unusual in Olympia, as did their polished, anthemic sound, all brawny power chords and cataclysmic drumming. Tobi was particularly critical of her friend's designs on success; she had nothing but scorn for "lame career-goal bands," which to her defeated the anticonsumerist raison d'etre of punk rock.

Whatever: Tobi and Kathleen had a band of their own to worry about. They knew from the beginning that Bikini Kill was going to be something special, not a feint at the Top Ten or at bourgeois stability. They had plotted it out carefully in strategy sessions: Their band was going to be a revolution. They would settle for nothing less.

I'm thinking different definitions of "success" might have helped end that relationship, no?

Allow me to veer back into personal territory once more: An old boyfriend and I used to have this same argument about success. He was a big fan of K Records and the Kill Rock Stars label (which is also mentioned in this book). Sure, he liked Nirvana and loved Pearl Jam, but something about the idea of wanting to be widely known didn't sit well with him. He wanted to start a movement of all-ages, indie shows that dealt with cassettes and low-budget tours. He was about rehearsing your ass off, but still getting up and playing shows while you were still learning, and about having something to say taking precedence over anything else. And to his credit, he has gone on to do just that with a label called Tummy Rock — to an acceptable-to-him scale, I don't know, since we're not in regular contact. (In this Facebook age? I know. Unheard of! But it's true.)

Meanwhile, I was (and am) all about that anthemic sound and cataclysmic drumming. In the church of rock n roll, I want both the intimate, press-against-the-stage gigs and the mega sea of people singing their goddamn hearts out while the band only has to play the chords. My big, loud desires come from a different jurisdiction. I'm arrogant enough to want Rage Against the Machine-esque revolution and recognition — Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me — and to hell with terms like "selling out."

That's not to say that I am right and he is wrong — No, we just had different, incompatible ways of looking at the world.

So, while I'm with the Riot Grrrls in wanting equal rights for women, after reading Girls to the Front, I have the suspicion I would have been frustrated by much of the inner-movement politics, had I been the right age/geographical area to take part. At a certain point, their "Revolution Girl Style Now" began to get more attention from news outlets, and their discomfort with such attention grew even more widespread when they felt the movement was being wildly misrepresented in these more mainstream places. The specifics of the misrepresentations varied, but the underlying feeling was the same: They were not being taken seriously.

And they were right — Riot Grrrl certainly was not a fashion trend or only teenage naïve idealism that should be discarded— but my reaction to misrepresentation is not to institute a communication blackout as they did. I'll ramble and yell and make my point from the rooftops, man. Tell the reporters how others have got it wrong, make them feel like they've got the scoop, and in the meantime, I'll use my own methods to keep churning out my message. Just go, go, go, and do not retreat. I understand that they were anti-capitalist and felt like they didn't need Spin to do what they did, but a Newsweek article is what brought Riot Grrrl to Sara Marcus' attention. Are they going to say that they wish she'd never read it? That her experience of discovering Riot Grrrl is somehow less authentic? Come on.

It's easy to say that when you're not in it, of course. (Though it bears mentioning that, when frustrated with any "scene" in which I might be tangentially involved, I do find my own methods of semi-respectful loud-mouthing.)

Marcus explores the different ways Riot Grrrl fractured — from social climbers, to Midwest incarnations, to women who felt like returning the violence inflicted upon them. Kathleen Hanna, though there at the start, always shied away from being called any sort of "spokesperson" for Riot Grrrl, even though the popularity of her band made it seem natural. Though she was all determination and bravery onstage and in her writing, she found the attention embarrassing. Tobi Vail wondered if, because of the out of context media attention, calling yourself a riot grrrl "even means anything at this point."

The term 'poseur' gets thrown around a lot by people still, and the '90s were no different. Watching their old friends from Nirvana blowing up to be the biggest thing in the world made them uncomfortable, and they hated to see their own work become the latest fad within "lame corporate youth identity bullshit."

That's all well and good, but one can't worry about controlling others' responses so much as one can just go own living their ideals. Maybe that's my post-90s feminist privilege talking, but reading the complaints from some of these women sometimes inspired eye-rolling, "why do you care so much?" reactions. Again, that's easy to say when I wasn't experiencing it firsthand, and the intensity of the teenage experience is so much more overwhelming than that of the late-20s perspective. For all I know, I would've had the same reaction at seventeen, eighteen. It's hard to say.

What is great about Girls to the Front is that it gets one thinking about all these things — what it means to be a woman in 2011, what has and hasn't changed, and how one views their identity independent of gender. A person cannot have a neutral reaction to this book; it causes too much self-reflection.

Yes, feminism still has its work cut out for it. There are no easy answers on how we can change systems that have long been in place, but as with any hope for change, people have to make an effort. For however long we are able, we simply have to keep trying.

#39/53

For further reading wherein I get cranky about gender and publishing, see "Let's make some gender graphs, y'bastards!" Or if you are more interested in me getting cranky about the term "indie" and the term "sell out," please refer to "Indie Accuracy." SPOILER: Sometimes I am a loudmouth pain in the ass. Who knew?

Full disclosure: Harper Perennial sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Electric Literature No.6: Stories by Matt Sumell, Mary Otis, Marc Basch, Steve Edwards, Nathan Englander

2011-10-30T23:03:00.000-06:00

Electric Literature No.6
Stories from Matt Sumell, Mary Otis, Marc Basch, Steve Edwards, and Nathan Englander

After absolutely loving No.5, I had high hopes going into the latest volume of Electric Literature. Perhaps too high, as no ongoing literary magazine is going to be loved by a specific reader every single time. No.6 links together five stories of quiet resignation and detached violence, and though I found the stories and characters interesting enough to keep going, they did not stay with me. They're perfectly fine, well-written stories, but their complications were not the sort of complications I typically enjoy.

Maybe I've been in a bad, unforgiving mood, and I've needed stories that weren't going to tell me how shitty life can be. It's fair to admit that, I think — If you've read this site for any length of time, you know I review books in terms of what they mean to my own life, more so than what they mean to the literary world at large. Though the reviews come from the perspective of a writer who has a hard-ass editorial streak, I'm also regular reader who needs books to provide escape, in addition to creative fuel. No.6 did not provide me with either of these things.

Matt Sumell's "OK" opens with lines that made me sigh in a "So that's how this one's going to be, then. Impressed with itself at how 'real' it can be:"

This is the one where I Amex-ed myself to Ohio to see Fatlegs after she head-firsted her way into the world and forever ruined Tara's vagina — that's what my brother says anyway, and he would know, he's seen it — me calling her Fatlegs because she has fat legs and I'm not clever.

Our narrator has also come to see how his father is doing in the absence of his mother. The house is flea-infested, filled with trash, and his dad refuses to take his anti-depressants and wants to die. They call each other assholes a lot, and there's a scene with a cat and dandruff shampoo that made me think, "What the hell is wrong with you?" Then again, that's also what our narrator is trying to find out, under the guise of helping his cranky father. They are all struggling, and while the story's actually not as impressed with itself as it originally seemed, it was just... fine. And I moved on.

"Where We Missed Was Everywhere," by Mary Otis, is told from the point of view of a seven-year-old girl, dancing as quietly as she can with her six-year-old brother, upstairs and away from a funeral party.

Outside the rain sounds like a lazy person peeing, and everyone else in the family is downstairs — talking, falling asleep, drinking, smoking cigarettes in the broom closet without exhaling, crying quickly and quietly in the bathroom, staring at their fingernails, aching for relief. My brother and I have nothing to do with that.

It's a rather short story compared to the rest in the book, just a little over 2 pages, and it does seem to accurately capture the semi-stream-of-consciousness inside a child's head, where they know what is going on, but have not lived enough to feel the gravity of it. To some children, enduring a funeral is the same level of trauma as having to use the plaque detector their dentist gave their mother.

Funerals carry on as a plot device in Mark Basch's "Three," in which siblings — Kenneth, Lucas and Delia — decide to take a road trip after their mother's funeral. An Alzheimer's patient, she had been living in a long-term care facility and "the other shoe needed to drop; dignity needed to be restored." Kenneth is not so sure he feels her death at all — they had all been watching her drift away for years. The three are calm and detached, and yet, the story opens with the brothers beating up on some kids they catch beating up another kid. Lucas decides to get out a tire iron. Delia is asleep and does not find out until later. There's this unsettling subtext of hero worship, and once Delia finds out what happened, at least she's a voice of reason:

"You probably broke his leg," she said.

"It isn't broken."

"You don't know that."

"I know it. I know what it feels like to break a bone."

"You had no right."

"It isn't about who has a right," Lucas said. He hit the ceiling with the heel of his hand, spilling coffee on his lap. "Fuck." He brushed at the spot of coffee with the back of his hand. Delia's face went dark. "Somebody has to take care of something," he breathed. "There's more than enough pain to go around. I was just redistributing it back to where it belonged. And it felt fucking great, I might add. Never felt better in my life than after doing that. Never better."

In the back seat I heard Delia begin to cry.

Look, I know there are screwed-up people in the world and I know that people take that damage and do stupid things, but I'm never going to be in a place where I can objectively read a story where adults are harming children. That's not to say that those stories will never have any value to me — certainly there are other books I've read where that figured into the plot — but I've got to have something else besides darkness. I wasn't in the mood to be a helpless bystander.

My reading experience began to improve with Steve Edwards' "Daily Bread," taken from the point-of-view of a man participating in a government study during World War II. Joe says he felt like he needed to help out with the war effort, and so he agrees to have his food rationed out by the study's administrators. At first they receive 3,200 calories a day, and then they are brought to the brink of starvation, provided only a slice of bread and a plain baked potato per day. The men are all monitored closely, both medically and socially, and they are all assigned minders to make sure they do not wander around the college campus and cheat.

We're all getting skinny. We've gone grey in the face. We're notching our belts. But it's not even that so much as it is seeing these young men curl up on their cots after breakfast that gets me down. Grown men in their prime, getting up, eating breakfast, then going right back to bed. That's why I still hang around with George. I don't want to be one of those guys sleeping their way through this.

I don't want to be down.

The 'why' behind everything — Joe's participation, the study itself, other participants behavior — is fascinating in the same way some unsettling science fiction is. Since we are inside Joe's head, the starvation-induced delirium does not make for easy information, but piecing everything together does not feel like a chore. In a way, it reminded me of an episode of Torchwood, the way they would flashback to covert and morbid government operations whose repercussions would effect their present case. I don't know for sure if these sorts of operations were happening during WWII, but I believe that they could have.

Surrealism increases with the final story, "The Reader," by Nathan Englander. An unnamed author — male, older, formerly distinguished — has come out with his first new book in twleve years and is embarking on a reading tour. In this reality, no one comes to readings anymore. Bookstore owners shrug their shoulders and tell him, "That's just how it is."

And yet, just as he is about to leave, an old man calls out to the author, "Writer, you came to read."

Author is hesitant to stay, but the man insists, and the author gives in.

Author takes a seat himself, angling the chair farther into the horseshoe, and takes up his book to read.

"No," the little man says. "The podium."

"What?"

"The podium."

"We are two," Author says.

The old man looks back, blank.

"As audience," Author says, "you are one." He holds up a finger to illustrate.

"Dignity. A great author."

"I am?"

"You are. A great author. A mighty author. One or one million come to see you, still, from the podium. Read out. Read strong."

It's an interesting take on insecurity, posterity, and what it means to be an artist. Maybe this is a story written for other creative people, particularly writers, and that is why I enjoyed this one more, despite it being somewhat depressing as well. Of course that's narcissistic to say — Oh, it's better because it has more to do with me — but that's another element of the story as well. Yes, it's about the love for books, but it's also about personal satisfaction, the feeling that one's work matters.

So, yes, what redeems No.6 for me are the last two stories. I may not have fallen in love, but I do love how each volume of Electric Literature I've read has been different. They have a common mood, perhaps — loneliness and conflicted families — but I definitely don't feel like I've read 15 of the same story. Let's see what No.7 brings, shall we?

#38/53

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

How To Be Sick by Toni Bernhard (and My Story of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)

2011-10-29T00:18:00.000-06:00

How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers

by Toni Bernhard

During a trip to Disney World in April 2009, I suffered a massive cold. Almost all of us did — my husband, my daughter (then five-years-old), my mom and myself. Only my 18-month-old son escaped with just a runny nose, but then he had his own porta-crib away from the rest of our germs. All that recirculated air, we said, before downing more Disney-priced Sudafed. Still, it was a vacation, and the adrenaline helped us power through. Soon after we were home, everyone recovered …

Except me.

Not until December 2010 — that's a full 20 months — did I figure out why I felt unrelentingly exhausted, why the lymph nodes in my armpits and along my collarbone felt swollen and inflamed, why the muscles in my arms and legs ached. And why, most of all, these afflictions never, ever went away. After puzzling more than one doctor and physical therapist, and after blood tests came back normal (thus ruling out anything scary/cancer-y), process of elimination led me to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

It's a silly-sounding name, isn't it? Aren't we all tired, one might say. Hell, I have a good friend who worked for three months cleaning floors without a day off — starting at 4 am, no less. Shouldn't he be the one who is "allowed" to be fatigued? Shouldn't I feel silly for having to quit a 17 hour/week barista job because it's "too much?"

The answer is no. We are talking about two different kinds of fatigue. All the days off and good nights' sleep in the world will not cure me. I still need them — in fact, they are a priority — but I will still have a chronic illness.

The commonly accepted definition of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), according to the Mayo Clinic, is this:

Chronic fatigue syndrome is a complicated disorder characterized by extreme fatigue that can't be explained by any underlying medical condition. The fatigue may worsen with physical or mental activity, but doesn't improve with rest.

Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS) is an alternative name given to CFS, partially to give it a more serious name, and partly to specify the group of CFS patients whose immune systems continually produce flu-like symptoms.

Myalgic Encephomyalitis (ME) is the name for CFS that is used in many other countries, and I suppose there is a joke to be made about how Americans have to do things "special." Literally translated, ME means "muscle pain and brain inflammation," but the symptoms are commonly the same as CFS.

And what are those symptoms?

On July 20, 2011, the Journal of Internal Medicine e-published ahead of print “Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: International Consensus Criteria," which the CFIDS Association of America summarized here. It's not a perfect set of criteria, but it has handy visuals and covers it well enough as a start.

But to summarize that, eh, summary, here are some primary and secondary symptoms:

Primary:
Fatigue
Loss of memory or concentration
Sore throat
Painful and mildly enlarged lymph nodes in your neck or armpits
Unexplained muscle pain
Pain that moves from one joint to another without swelling or redness
Headache of a new type, pattern or severity
Unrefreshing sleep
Extreme exhaustion lasting more than 24 hours after physical or mental exercise

The secondary symptoms are not part of the official definition, but are often reported in CFS patients:

Abdominal pain
Allergies or sensitivities to foods, alcohol, odors, chemicals, medications or noise
Bloating
Chest pain
Chronic cough
Diarrhea
Dizziness, balance problems or fainting
Dry mouth
Earache
Irregular heartbeat
Jaw pain
Morning stiffness
Nausea
Chills and night sweats
Psychological problems, such as depression, irritability, anxiety disorders and panic attacks
Shortness of breath
Tingling sensations
Visual disturbances, such as blurring, sensitivity to light, eye pain and dry eyes
Weight loss or gain

I experience 100% of the primary symptoms and around 75% of the secondary symptoms to varying degrees. Some days, my leg muscles ache to the point of making walking difficult and other days, they are mild annoyance compared to the armpit lymph node that feels like it wants to burst out Alien-style (you're welcome for that visual, by the way). Concentration problems abound, and I also have times where my hands forget what they are doing and just let go of whatever I'm holding. (This is also annoying when you've just paid for your drink. Or are making someone else's drink.)

The mental and physical symptoms fluctuate in severity, sometimes by the hour. To put it mildly, I get frustrated. I tire of being tired. This isn't a sob story; I just want to outline the complexity of this condition and to spread general awareness. Not everyone experiences it in the same way, which makes it even harder to treat, and it's a relatively "new" illness in terms of scientific study.

Once I had a diagnosis, I started to do a little research on CFS management and studies related to the condition. More than one site recommended reading Toni Bernhard's How To Be Sick. Bernhard's suffered from CFS since 2001, contracted after a plane ride from California to Paris left her sick and bed-ridden for three weeks. It's enough to give a person a complex about flying.

(Particularly one who has irrational phobias, anxiety, and mild OCD, but I digress.)

Despite my connection to her story, and my connection to Buddhism, I hesitated to buy the book at first. Let's be real — Many self-help and health books are shit, and awards aren't necessarily indicative of quality. However, after reading some of Bernhard's articles on the subject, where she would talk about mindfulness and allowing yourself to admit weakness, I wanted to know more. How could I live with this new reality of mine without going insane?

First, I could take comfort in synchronicity. I've said before, I like it when the things I like overlap. How To Be Sick's forward is written by Sylvia Boorstein, a smart woman introduced to me through Dani Shapiro's Devotion. Boorstein's metta phrases are written on the inside of my current notebook, and it's because of Boorstein and Shapiro that some of Bernhard's Buddhist terminology did not seem completely foreign. I can even draw parallels to Neal Pollack's Stretch, in which I further acquainted myself with terms like samsara. When I often have no set system for my reading queue, I enjoy it when my choices become, in retrospect, orderly. Meant to be.

The first noble truth — the fact of dukkha [suffering] — helps me accept being sick because that fact tells me my life is as it should be. "Our life is always all right," says Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck. "There's nothing wrong with it. Even if we have horrendous problems, it's just our life."

Life education is everywhere, and when we are ready to listen, it will help us bear our load. The world can be sad, scary and disappointing, but it can also be small, compassionate and inspiring. Bit by bit, my reading has helped me make sense of my mental turmoil and physical pain, and it's only been recently that I've quit trying to power through. Treating CFS is a diplomatic summit, not nuclear war.

Even if I never fully recover (very few CFS patients do), my life is still valuable. My life is still filled with love, and I take comfort where I can.

When I was still debating over keeping my job, I had just started reading How To Be Sick. I'd owned it for a couple of months, but had circled around reading it, afraid of admitting my limitations. Research into the condition can be extremely depressing at times, and I wasn't sure I was ready. Luckily, Bernhard comes across like a thoughtful and sympathetic friend, and I was glad that I'd finally started reading.

Then, one bad afternoon, I fell onto the bed and sobbed to my husband that I couldn't stand the physical pain anymore. I hated standing for six hours at work, and even though I truly did enjoy making coffee, my symptoms were always worse on work days.

"I think you need to put in your two weeks," my husband said. I didn't know if I agreed, until I read this:

It's easy to look back and see what a mistake it was to continue working while sick — it probably worsened my condition — but many people who have contracted a chronic illness have done the same. First, there's the financial need to keep working. Second, there's the utter disbelief that this is happening to you (reinforced by people telling you that you look just fine — people who don't see you collapse on the bed as soon as you get home). Each morning, you expect to wake up not feeling sick even though for weeks and then months — and then years — that has never been the case.

I knew I had to quit. I'd survived, barely, for one year, and now it was time to go. The realization, to be honest, made me feel like an asshole. I felt some guilt about the burden on my co-workers, and even more for placing additional burden on my husband. Even though I didn't make a lot of money, the money still helped.

Still, I had to take care of me. Extra money means nothing when I'm too tired to cook my children dinner. This book has helped me continue my self-care, and for that, I am grateful.

Bernhard writes in a very direct, soothing manner befitting a longtime Buddhist who has the benefit of perspective. Already a grandmother when she became ill, her accumulated wisdom over the years helped her adjust. Yes, she is the first to admit that her symptoms — including anxiety and frustration — still get the best of her at times, but Buddhism has taught her how to bring herself back to the breath. We will fail, but we can always start again.

Each chapter is centered around one facet of dealing with chronic illness, loosely centered around the Four Noble Truths, and the approaches that have worked for her. "You need not be a Buddhist to benefit from the practices in this book," she writes in the preface:

If a suggested practice resonates with you, truly 'practice' it. Work with it over and over until it enters your heart, mind, and body and becomes a natural response to the difficulties you face as the result of being chronically ill or being the caregiver of a chronically ill person.

If a suggest practice resonates — Bernhard is not pretending she knows what will work for everyone, and that's an important distinction. There is no cure-all for chronic fatigue, and to claim otherwise would be dishonest.

Lest we think that healing and Buddhism is all serious business, Bernhard provides some funny moments as well. In the chapter "Soothing the Body, Mind, and Heart," she talks about using metta phrases to calm and forgive oneself for being sick. "It's not my body's fault that it's sick," she says. "It's doing the best job it can to support my life."

The trick, however, is to direct that loving-kindness towards others — friends, acquaintances, even those that make us angry — in order to make compassion second nature.

During the 2008 presidential election, Bernhard felt an extreme aversion to Sarah Palin. "I didn't like Palin's political positions. I didn't like her lack of humility when asked about her reaction to being picked as a vice presidential nominee," she says. Soon she realized that her disdain for the woman was causing her unnecessary stress, and she decided to direct metta at her, even if it felt artificial at first.

"Sarah Palin: May you be peaceful. May have ease of well-being. May you reach the end of suffering … and be free by seeing the error of your ways and becoming a completely different human being." This is, of course, not exactly what the Buddha had in mind..."

I laughed out loud at that one.

Elsewhere, Bernhard discusses how Zen Buddhism can help shift our perspective, even if we are not students of Zen. "Zen teachings tend to be short and to the point. In addition to koans, they often take the form of gathas — short verses reminding us of our practice — and haiku," she says.

I also love a book of gathas called The Dragon Never Sleeps by Robert Aitken. His gathas are indeed an exercise in meditation and poetry. Many of them also make me laugh. Poetic mindfulness plus a laugh — great medicine for the chronically ill..

Here's a sampling of Aitken's gathas:

When wayward thoughts are persistent
I vow with all beings
To imagine that even the Buddha
Had silly ideas sometimes.

Hey, the Buddha was human too, after all.

Bernhard also deals with more practical matters such as dealing with the loss of friendships, missing out on social events and ways to let our caregivers know we appreciate them. Constant pain can become awfully crazy-making, I know, and her ideas do help with reeling back in our thoughts that seem beyond control.

How To Be Sick is a book I'd wholeheartedly recommend to anyone dealing with chronic illness, but especially those with CFS/ME, lupus, fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, or any other complex condition that is not easily treated. I'm glad I finally read it, and it's one I'll be referring to every time I need a little extra help.

For more information on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME, check out the following sites, as well as Toni Bernhard's site, also called How to Be Sick:

The CDC's page on CFS
The CFIDS Association of America
ME Association

And to the people in my life: Thank you for being patient.

#37/53

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Luminarium by Alex Shakar

2011-10-26T21:32:00.000-06:00

Luminarium
by Alex Shakar

How does one even begin to talk about Alex Shakar's Luminarium? It is 432 pages of swirling narrative touching upon twins, cancer, the nature of existence, brain chemistry, love, 9/11, synchronicity, and eastern religion. Set in 2006 New York City, post-tech bubble but pre-recession, the wounds of the new millennium still feel fresh.

Fred Brounian has used all of his money to keep his twin brother George alive. Cancer-ridden and in a coma, George was once partners with Fred and their other brother, Sam, as creators of the virtual world, Urth. Urth has since been sold to a military contracting company out of Florida, turning what was supposed to be an online utopia into a role-playing platform for terrorism response. Sam will continue on to Florida, whereas Fred has all but been forced out in George's absence. He's living with their parents and spending most of his time at the hospital when he sees a flier from the Department of Neural Science at New York University looking for study participants. Do you feel your life is without purpose? it asks. Fred checks out the study's website:

Among the healthful psychological qualities associated with individuals who describe themselves as having experienced a "spiritual awakening" are:

- a sense of well-being and connectedness in the world
-a sense of being "in the moment"
-a sense of union with a "higher" force
-a sense of calm detachment from everyday difficulties
-a decrease in negative emotions such as anger and fear
-an increase in positive emotions such as compassion and love

By reproducing the "peak" experiences commonly associated with spiritual awakening, this study hopes to help participants change their long-term cognitive patterns , leading to enhanced self-efficacy and quality of life. It should be stressed that these sessions will not involve religious indoctrination of any kind.

Both intrigued and dismissive, Fred debates over whether or not to contact the study's organizers. He can never really figure out what is the "right" thing to do.

Because if George were the one here, he — George — would have done it in a heartbeat. And because a sizable part of Fred wished it were George here instead of him, felt it should have been. And because, clicking on the link and filling out the questionnaire, Fred was able to feel what George would have felt — a peculiar, tense electricity in his chest and limbs, as though the study's purported electromagnetic signals were already coursing up through the keyboard. Like the onset of panic but without the nausea. Like the opening hole of despair but more like hunger. A sensation so long unfelt couldn't straightaway place it as hope.

At the study — Fred thinks the word "experiment" is more apt — he meets Mira Egghart, a lovely woman who places on him electrodes and a metal helmet. "It's safer than it looks," she says. What happens next, Fred cannot explain.

Another thing Fred can't explain is the email that he received, ten days prior. The subject? Only two words: Help, Avatara. No message. The sender? George. Fred can't help but think it's a server glitch or perhaps a cruel prank. Six months to the day, George has laid unconscious in that hospital bed. What did all this mean?

At its core, Luminarium is about a crisis of place. Faith, family, self-worth — all of it is tied to how we see ourselves in the world. Without the world we know, what is left? Alex Shakar tackles these massive subjects in layers upon layers of symbolism. Even Mira's name means "watch" in Spanish — appropriate for a woman who studies these crises. It's a command, that word.

Please observe that this exists.

Fred Brounian wants so badly to earn his existence.

To make extra money, Fred performs magic shows at parties with his father, Vartan. Vartan has lost the will to further pursue his acting career, and even though at times he has found success, he no longer believes that the theatre and cinema worlds have a place for him. Instead, he suspends the disbelief of schoolchildren, then smokes a bowl in the van parked outside.

Fred's mother, Holly, has become a Reiki master, in part because the practice calms her hand tremors. Her group meets often to heal the "energy" around George. They believe they have done some good, and other patients want that goodness directed their way. Everyone wants that one "thing" that's going to make their troubles vanish.

Emails from George keep arriving. Instant messages. Fred keeps returning to Mira and her study. He believes he is floating above his body and does not know how or why. His other half, his reasoned inner voice, is crumbling faster than he can repair.

This morning he'd dreamt he was eating the inside of his mouth, not just chewing it, but really eating. It was some kind of wasting disease, the action of his molars, a continual self-feeding frenzy. Unless his twin could be found to give him a transfusion, there was nothing that could be done, a doctor was telling a team of residents as they stood over Fred's bed in some sort of strange, high-ceilinged soundstage of a hospital. This mention of his twin was the closest Fred had come in the last six months of actually dreaming of George himself. George used to figure in his dreams all the time. Now he wouldn't even show up to save Fred from eating himself alive. The doctor and the residents left the room. By the time they returned, Fred understood, there'd be nothing left of him but a drool-covered white tuxedo and a pair of jaws.

Luminarium benefits from mental simmering. While reading, we may be just as bewildered as Fred, unsure of where or how all these events will resolve. With time and some additional thought, the real depth of what Shakar has accomplished becomes clear. He has written an extraordinary book, one I've grown to enjoy more once I've had some time away. Dave Egger's blurbs the book and says it's "so intellectually invigorating, you'll want to read it twice." Though I do not know when I will start again, that's good advice. Not every writer can pull off a novel of this scope, but Alex Shakar inspires us to try.

#36/53

Full disclosure: Soho Press sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Other Heartbreaks by Patricia Henley

2011-10-11T21:58:00.000-06:00

Other Heartbreaks
Stories by Patricia Henley

Hardly anyone's life turns out exactly as planned. People who swear they won't get married fall in love and then down on one knee. People who have exercised every day and never smoked still get cancer. Our bodies and hearts surprise us all the time, and no matter what our goals, we cannot control the actions of others. Patricia Henley has taken these fateful detours and written an excellent collection of stories, Other Heartbreaks.

Achingly authentic, most of the stories concern families coming together for an event, oftentimes a funeral or a wedding. The women are young and old, straight and not, and the men are just as tough and complicated. One doesn't always like them, but they remain interesting.

In "Rocky Gap," June has arrived at the family reunion with her partner Tanya, the first reunion since June's alcoholic sister, Peggy, died. June is trying to hold fast to her relationship with Tanya, but the distance is growing. Being with her crazy family for three days, she's afraid, will only increase Tanya's barely withheld judgment and comparisons to her own family.

Tanya's family is tidy and small. She has one sister; an attorney specializing in outer space law who still lives at home. Secretly June thinks: They wouldn't fart in the bathtub.

The stories are full of subtly funny lines like that closing one. The humor is a resigned and exhausted humor — As in, "Well, all of this may have gone to shit, but at least this part is mildly amusing." They're not jokes, exactly, but they show the characters' personality almost more than anything else we learn about them.

I also enjoyed "Kaput" quite a bit. In it, Bonnie is a fifty-eight year old (not sixty — "Fifty-eight is fifty-eight!") on unemployment after the university she worked for closed. She spent her retirement on a five month trip to Europe, and now she's living on school grounds, in her van.

My daughter Willow would leave the room exasperated, spitting out, "Boomers —." I wasn't simply her mother who had lost her job. I represented a generation of people about to enter their golden years unprepared. Willow, Alex, and my friend Kim all thought that I had swerved over the line and hit those hard dots on the highway that remind you: hey, get with it, you're asleep at the wheel.

Kim had sent me a ticket to Mexico. Free! For points! Willow disapproved. She had said, reasonably, "Mom. You've got to stop traveling. You're on unemployment. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, as Aunt Mina would say."

Nevertheless, Bonnie heads to Mexico to meet her friend. Bonnie's life presents itself as a gripping, though slow-moving, wreck. We see so much peril already caused, but we keep watching to see if she'll ever notice those rumble strips and move out of harm's way.

Yes, all the stories are good to different degrees and for different reasons, but what I really want to talk about is the trio of stories headed under the book's title — "Skylark," "Emma Compartmentalizes in Ireland," and "Ephemera." I've reread them at least three times since finishing this book, "Ephemera" especially.

A woman named Sophie March-Gonzales is grieving the death of her husband Luis. Sophie is an artist — oil paintings — and Luis worked for Ceasefire, a group dedicated to ending street violence. They live in Sophie's parents' building in a part of Chicago that used to be populated by Polish immigrants but has since transitioned into a tougher Mexican neighborhood. Her parents, Emma and Joe, have stayed put because it's where Joe grew up, and Sophie has since formed the same attachment. But now, Emma would like to move. She would like to travel Europe. They both wonder how their marriage has reached the state it is, and here Emma is in Ireland, alone:

It comes to her — not all at once like a pearl of wisdom, but in distasteful increments — that complaints that she has about Joe are little stories she tells herself to shore up her own desires. And walking down to find Liam, she blinks back tears, thinking — but not for long — of how she has deceived herself. And will.

And Sophie, poor Sophie, has understandably become a wreck of herself while drowning in grief and memories of her husband. I'm not sure how to fully articulate how much "Ephemera" spoke to me — something about the phrases Henley chose cut right into my chest and I was in it; I felt that grief and love and all-consuming despair of not knowing when she'd ever feel better. When Sophie remembers Luis, it is indeed heartbreaking and lovely:

On her birthday in April he had stuck a postcard in the corner of the bathroom mirror: a black-and-white photo of a broken-down building with a corrugated roof; the sign on the building read CARNAL GARAGE. From Carnal, Kentucky. He liked to say, "Carnal knowledge of you — that's part of my husbandly job description."

Think about the jokes you have with the person you love. Think about the things they do for you only because they know it will make you happy. Think about the things you two have together that no one else will understand.

In his arms, dancing in slo-mo to the tart Spanish guitar, what exhibitionist there was in Sophie flowered at tango. He called out the steps to their students who watched from a tentative circle. The checkerboard tile floor was a little gritty, not smooth as it should be. Buzzing florescent lights imbued their faces with a sickly tinge. A sexual current saturated her back with the pressure of his hand, his response to her ocho, her fluidity, the sharp ping of her heels on the floor. His cologne and the chemical reaction of it with his skin seduced her: the citric-tang of him.

Think about how good the person you love smells. Think of how it washes over your mind, how it makes you high. Think of the way your breathing catches when you experience even a split second of that scent. Think of how the scent's absence aches.

He had stripped off his insulated shirt and draped it over the back of the chair. A Saint Chris medal gleamed against his white undershirt. He could tell you that Saint Christopher protects travelers and bachelors, boatmen, bookbinders, bus drivers, cab drivers, epileptics, fruit dealers, gardeners, porters, sailors, and anyone at all against lightning, hailstorms, toothache, and sudden death.

Think of all you have indulged. Think of all the things you've learned because of those indulgences. Think of how beautiful the person you love is in your eyes, and how you do not care if it is the same way other people see them. Think of how you will lay down next to this person, listening, for as long as you can.

His angularity presses against her softness. Like John Lennon and Yoko. Iconic lovers. His hard-on has a nickname: Señor Amor.

"His angularity presses against her softness" is the best sentence in the entire book. It encompasses everything. When it comes to love, would that time let me, I would stay in that moment forever.

Anything ideal will not arrive easily, and ideals change over time. Other Heartbreaks is an excellent portrayal of the journeys we take to feel whole — the process we must recognize in order to do so. Henley's work is honest and resonant, and it is work to which I will return again.

#35/53

Full disclosure: This was an uncorrected proof sent to me by Engine Books prior to the publication of the book. I thank them for gesture and will continue to be fair with my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Devotion: A Memoir by Dani Shapiro

2011-10-09T19:34:00.000-06:00

Devotion: A Memoir
by Dani Shapiro

When I was ten years old, I decided I would, for the most part, no longer eat pork. Partly brought on by the appreciation for the animal itself, I realized that I'd never much liked pork to begin with. Rather than say to people something like, "Well, I hate pork chops, but sometimes I end up eating sausage when my mom makes red beans and rice," it was easier to eliminate it entirely. (The exception being pepperoni — which is a magical amalgam of more than one meat and entirely different from its more unappetizing cousin salami.) Now, I don't even eat turkey versions of typical pork products. To avoid extended "but whhyyyyyy" conversations with strangers (this happened more often than one might think), I would start telling those strangers I was Jewish. It would shut them up. Either they did not want to offend me by pressing further, or their brains hiccuped over whatever preconceived notions about Judaism they had, and how that related to me. I don't do this anymore, as I'm more comfortable now with owning my peculiarities, but I still like having a set of rules for food, some of which are kosher.

Being a spiritual fence-sitter, falsely claiming Judaism didn't interfere with any beliefs I had. Apart from the Church of Rock n Roll, I'm rather non-participatory and non-deistic when it comes to matters of faith. Bits of Judaism make sense to me (Rituals! A drinking holiday! Really having a day of rest!), as do the compassionate parts of Christianity (The Golden Rule! And Christmas presents for everybody!). Even the one-with-nature elements of some pagan religions seem all very well and good, but like a lot of categories in my life, labels do not neatly apply to my beliefs.

I'm married to a Buddhist, and over time, learning about the practice behind it, I've started to lean in its direction. There is incredible solace to be found in its patience and quiet peace. And ever since I've been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, its meditative qualities feel more important than ever. In that regard, this is all a very long preamble to tell you that I read Dani Shapiro's Devotion at the perfect time. It is a fantastic book, worth all the personal introspection it produces as a side effect.

Having grown up with a deeply devout Jewish father and an angrily secular mother, Shapiro's drift from her faith felt all the more pronounced when confronted with the life-threatening illness of her son. Paired with her unrelenting anxiety and loneliness, despite a happy marriage and eventually healthy son, Devotion traces her journey to discover what beliefs would help her find greater meaning in her day-to-day life. Shapiro writes with a wonderful intimacy, and she owns up to her failures. Her process is not so tidy, and she wants others to know that it's okay; we can all be untidy, and the world will not stop spinning.

Sometimes I want to run away: have a few drinks, take a sleeping pill, buy those overpriced stiletto heels. Anything to sedate myself — to mute the endless loop of stories. And sometimes I give in and do exactly that. The clarity is too painful, and I want to forget. The problem is, it doesn't work. Not in the long run. There is no permanent forgetting. Though the world of things is persuasive and distracting, the stories always come back, circled in neon. They are all the more alive for having been hidden.

Yes, giving in to sedation is easy and often feels preferable. I don't know how many different ways I've tried to temporarily forget about how much my body hurts. Everyone has their struggles, of course, but as a person with a father who died too soon, as a person who has a mysterious and frustrating chronic illness, as a person who wants to be good mother and spouse, despite the often unrelenting anxiety and depression, and as a person who thinks faith must be nice for those who have it — Well, to say I identified with Shapiro's journey might be underselling it. Though I know logically that I am not alone, I find comfort in the direct reminders.

Deep within my body, the past is still alive. Everything that has ever happened keeps on happening. I might be meditating, and then, suddenly, instead of sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor in Connecticut, I am standing in a New Jersey hospital room, hearing the news that my father has died.
[…]
It's a seductive idea, closure — but I think it's a myth.

In multiple interviews, Shapiro has talked about how she used to think that people who took selections from different religions and folded them into a patchwork belief system were somehow inauthentic or "intellectually lazy." But during her own struggles, she started to wonder what more could she learn. She already practiced yoga — what more from Buddhism could help her? Then, at a meditation retreat, she met Sylvia Boorstein, a Jewish Buddhist teacher. Boorstein talked about how she would always be "complicated with Jewishness" and to deny her heritage was futile. Instead, she turned her attentions elsewhere:

"The whole world is a lesson in what is true," she said. "Everyone is struggling. Life is difficult for everybody. Once you're in, there's no way out. You have to go forward. And we all die in the end. So how to deal with it?"

Yes, how to deal with it? How do we wade through the bittersweet, the debilitating, the heart-wrenching, and the loves so true that they cannot help but ache? For everyone, whether they are aware of it or not, it is a process. Boorstein devised a series of metta phrases (loosely translated as lovingkindness) to guide her. No matter what was going on in her life, she could repeat these words to help bring her back to peace.

May I be safe.
May I be happy.
May I be strong.
May I live with ease.

"I wanted something I would always be able to say — in old age, in sickness — and have it be realistic," she told Shapiro. "No matter what happens, I can always wish for strength."

The words are so simple, they can encompass most every healthy wish a person can have. I cannot wish away my medical condition, but I can learn how to take care of myself within that condition in order to feel stronger and happier. I have to learn to do what's right by me.

Around the same time I stopped eating pork, I started giving myself challenges, little things I could do that were beneficial in some way. For awhile when I was around 11, I decided to see how long I could go without eating fried food. I don't remember exactly how long I lasted — maybe six months — but post-swimming hunger made me forget in the face of french fries. But I'd gone for awhile, and knew I could, and that was satisfying enough.

The challenges are not all food-related. I've completed the 50,000 word National Novel Writing Month challenge six times, just to get my ass in the chair and to make the words fly. These book reviews, the number of them for the year, are their own challenge. My goals are not of the marathon variety. It's not really about control or triumph of the human body. For me, any small challenge is more about "What would happen if I tried this? Will I be happier for having done it? How long is enough?" I may never eat ham ever again, but I'm more likely to say that a life without hashbrowns is just not worth living. And I will always write, and if I have to create self-imposed deadlines and arbitrary numbers to keep myself motivated, then so be it. When it comes to my body? I have to keep faith that my efforts will not be wasted, that incrementally I will gather the whispers of wisdom from so many sources, and I will continue to find strength. I'm here, and I'm in it for the long run, so it's time to cultivate my own peace.

#34/53

Full disclosure: Harper Perennial sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

The Modernist edited by R. Klanten and H. Hellige

2011-09-30T22:13:00.001-06:00

The Modernist
Edited by R. Klanten, H. Hellige

We would go to Barnes and Noble and crouch to the floor, pawing through the bottom shelf where they kept the graphic design books. "Look at this," he would say whenever he found something that would set his brain alight. "So pretty."

I was in love, and I knew exactly what he meant.

We would study the magazines and shamelessly pilfer ideas from Apple ads and Entertainment Weekly. We were new millennium teenagers careening into adulthood, and I hoped the world would know just how good he was. He and I were never meant to be partners, but through him I learned to know good design when I saw it. And though I may not have the same level of visual imagination as him, I learned how to lay out a double page spread and I credit him for what skills I have. Maybe if my process had happened differently, I wouldn't romanticize graphic design in the way that I do, but then, romance is part of enjoying anything, isn't it?

Because my soft spot for futurism mixed with nostalgia can be downright mushy at times, I loved the work featured in The Modernist, from the very first page. There is everything from re-imagined movie posters and book covers, to visual representations of TV shows, commissioned event flier work, to personal projects from a variety of graphic designers that are breathtaking.

(by M.S. Corley from The Modernist, Copyright Gestalten 2011. Click to enlarge.)

As I was perusing this book in an electronic format, I could see how it would be easy for a viewer to flip through the pages quickly, hungering for more. However, this is also the sort of book worth lingering over during repeat reads. There are so many little details to absorb, and it's inspiring for my own work. I've always loved a well-designed promo poster, and I used to have a stack of hand drawn fliers from local punk shows. Even now, whenever I visit somewhere that has free fliers or postcards lying around, I'm likely to take the ones that look interesting, even if I can't attend whatever is being advertised. I'm slightly envious of people who know how to do just do good visual artwork. My approach is more of the "Eh, poke around and drag and drop and see if this works?" variety. But first, I have to see something I love, and that gets my brain going.

Still, I wish I could afford to pay a stable of graphic designers as good as the people featured in this book. In my magazine, Electric City Creative, I employ basically the same self-made template and it evolves slightly along the way. I would love to be able to do interesting things with interesting fonts and big, bold graphics on the cover, and to utilize a more sophisticated design in general. Alas, we are a staff of two right now — a writer/editor who masquerades as a designer and a photographer/writer. We're not quite there yet, but we can look around for ideas in the meantime.

(by La Boca from The Modernist, Copyright Gestalten 2011. Click to enlarge.)

The Modernist is unabashed in its influences. Some images are made up to look like old library books, complete with yellowed tape holding together the "cover." Others take directly from 60s-era visions of the future, while others revel in simplistic images that wouldn't look out of place on National Parks signage.

Looking over the pages on a decent 21" LCD monitor was fine, but I would really like to get my mitts on a physical copy of the book. Currently, I am attempting to behave myself and to move through the stack of books I already have here before I make any more purchases, but I would wholeheartedly recommend The Modernist as a gift for anyone in your life who loves visual art. Design similar to that featured in the book is becoming more present in so many places — everywhere from product packaging to album covers, and I would love to see more work like this hung in galleries. How many people do you know who would love a print of these Black Swan posters?

(by La Boca from The Modernist, Copyright Gestalten 2011. Click to enlarge.)

My visual arts education is largely informal. I have learned by observing people who know what they are doing and listening to what they have to say. From there, I can only go with my gut. Art is everywhere, and it can be accessible to everyone. The more effort we put into bringing good work into the world and spreading it around, the more likely we are to reach a teenager who is looking for that one thing that makes them say, Yes. I want to do that.

(by Brandon Schaefer from The Modernist, Copyright Gestalten 2011. Click to enlarge.)

#33/53

I received this ebook as a review copy from Gestalten. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Quarantine: Stories by Rahul Mehta

2011-09-27T12:23:00.000-06:00

Quarantine: Stories
by Rahul Mehta

But I had made headway with the headstand. I could get into the pose and even hold it. I was up to two minutes. I thought of Ravana, standing on each of his heads for a thousand years, trying to convince Shiva he was sorry, even if he wasn't sure he was. I pictured Thomas doing the same pose at his ashram in India. I imagined the two of us, simultaneously inverted, on opposite ends of the world.
— from "Ten Thousand Years"

What links together Rahul Mehta's nine stories in Quarantine is the longing for connection. Each story's protagonist feels at least one degree removed from their own life, either through their romantic relationships or their familial situation. Writing from the point of view of Indian-American gay men, "otherness" arrives without effort as Mehta tackles themes of loyalty, tradition, and yearning. The stories are both immersive and contemplative, and exactly the sort of lonely romanticism that my literary brain loves.

Everyone in the stories feels a little bit (or very) adrift, oftentimes within family dynamics. In the title story, the narrator (if he his named, I didn't catch it) must act as though his boyfriend, Jeremy, is just a friend during a visit home, in order to make things easier around his grandfather. Notoriously difficult to those around him, his grandfather, Bapuji, has made his daughter-in-law miserable with his constant criticism. When the narrator and Jeremy decide to visit the nearby Hare Krishna commune, Jeremy suggests bring Bapuji, saying it will give the narrator's mother a nice daylong break. While visiting, Bapuji's demeanor changes.

When we return to the temple, the aarti has already begun. The curtains have been lifted, revealing a gold statue of Krishna in the center and Hanuman and Ganesh on either side. They are layered with garlands and surrounded by candles. My grandfather is standing in the front of the room before the statue of Krishna. To our surprise, he is leading the aarti, chanting "Hare Krishna, Hare Ram." He is holding a large silver platter with coconuts and flowers and a flame and burning incense, and he moves the offering in clockwise circles. He seems to weak to carry such a heavy platter. I wonder how he is managing. Everyone is watching him, following him, echoing his chanting. Jeremy and I sit back silently.

Afterward, several devotees talk to my grandfather. They want to know about India. Are the temples beautiful? Has he been to Varanasi or to Mathura, birthplace of Krishna? He is smiling and gesturing and he has more energy than I have ever seen. It is only with great difficulty that we are able to pull him away.

The story opens the book and sets the tone for the simmering discontent that follows.

However, that's not to say that Quarantine is an entirely unhappy book. Small moments of joy punctuate many of the stories, during the moments when the characters feel at ease and snugly nestled into a comfortable life-groove. Perhaps my favorite story in the collection is "What We Mean," in which the playfulness of Carson and Parag's relationship dissolve into a final breakup. The two meet at a Halloween party, with Parag dressed as Peter Pan, and Carson dressed as a green lawn, complete with a "Keep Off!" sign.

Towards the end of the night, after Jeff realizes we want to be alone and excuses himself early, I tell Carson I want to bury myself in him. He removes the sign and asks, "Front yard or back?"

I say, "I don't care." I whisper in his ear, "Plant me."

Though Parag's grip on sanity slips throughout the rest of the story, the entire thing is filled with such excellent wordplay, I'm not sure I've ever read a breakup story quite like it.

Overall, the collection makes me curious about what Mehta would do with a full-on novel. The intimate way in which he writes would do well in long form, I think, despite his short story style being more about snapshots into characters' lives. He could do a lot with the ideas of searching for home, complicated love, and travel. I know I'm speculating, but I sense that Mehta has a grand and sprawling tale gestating somewhere in his head. Maybe he's already begun; I do not know. Whenever it arrives, I will read it.

#32/53

Full disclosure: Harper Perennial sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Lucky Peach Issue 1 - Ramen (Summer 2011) edited by David Chang, Chris Ying, and Peter Meehan

2011-09-21T09:28:00.006-06:00

Lucky Peach Issue 1 — Ramen (Summer 2011)
edited by David Chang, Chris Ying, and Peter Meehan

Lucky Peach represents what can be great about the magazine industry. Founded by Momofuku chef David Chang, the publication brings together his passion for innovation and his loyalty to doing singular, often simple, things well. Issue #1 is ad-free and dedicated almost entirely to one subject — ramen. The good stuff, the real stuff, straight out of Japanese back alleys and from old-school noodle masters. Perhaps only through McSweeney's could this sort of indulgence be encouraged on a large scale. As someone who publishes a magazine composed largely of my own whims, I love what they've done.

Though I do enjoy cooking and talking about food in general, what initially got me interested in the magazine was Anthony Bourdain. I've been a major fan of his for several years, and I love that he's made a career out of being both a professional smart-ass and a romantic. He has two features in this issue — a short "joint" called "Chang: The Rise of Ramen Boy," and a conversation between himself, Chang, and fellow chef Wylie Dufresne, "Mediocrity: A Conversation."

If you think Mr. Bourdain can be cranky at times, these other two make him look sunny by comparison. The three get together, get drunk, and get vociferous about food culture and those who are comfortable not challenging themselves.

Wylie: I mean, I get in trouble over a lot of things. But I'm not equating farm-to-table with mediocrity. I'm saying that it's a symbol of the mediocrity that exists at a certain level in kitchens, particularly in New York City.

Anthony: Farm-to-table is saying right up front that it is — to use the dreaded phrase — ingredient-driven rather than chef-creativity-driven or technique-driven. It's saying the most important thing is where it comes from, how it was grown, who grew it, and not what you do with it. It's basically patting yourself on the back for being there.

Wylie: But that's not cooking. We're talking about cooking. We are cooks. We should have a responsibility to cook. The fact that we're talking about what people are doing with the ingredients is a mistake. Do something to it. That's showing that you have a skill.

[…]

Wylie: Let's encourage people to cook. I mean, what's your favorite place to have sushi?

Anthony: In New York? Anywhere, ever? (pauses) Jiro in Tokyo.

Wylie: Yeah, because he makes the best fucking rice you've ever had. That's cooking.

Anthony: He has it grown especially for him. And he cooks it, yes. He makes the best fucking rice I've ever had.

Wylie: Right. Not because he knows a guy that fishes the best fish out of the water, because he cooks the best rice. It's not about the fucking product, it's about cooking.

I support organic farming and more restaurants localizing their ingredients, but I see both sides here. There's a certain level of smugness that comes with food culture (or any culture, really) where its participants want to feel better and more important than their counterparts. It's true — what does it matter if your lettuce was grown on the roof if that lettuce tastes like shit? At the same time, as Mr. Bourdain points out, "Sometimes I don't want to think when I go out to dinner! I don't want to think. I just want to sit down, eat a crust of bread, and have a properly made pasta rather than a fucked-up pasta or a tweaked-up pasta — I just want a well-made pasta that's got some good bite to it. To me, that makes me happy."

Exactly. I don't really care so much if you lovingly spoke to your tomato plants or watered them with your Earth-loving tears — just don't make shitty sauce. Let's just get quality ingredients that make a positive impact on the community, and then spare the congratulatory song and dance.

What it comes down to is that Chang and Dufresne are a different breed of human. They do not idle well — if they are not constantly challenging themselves and the standards around them, then it is not a good day's work. To them, "good enough" is defeat, and fear of failure is abhorrent. Of course no one wants to fail, but they get off on taking something familiar and making it extraordinary. The recipes that Chang includes throughout Lucky Peach reflect that.

Just for ramen broth alone, Chang includes five different options one could use as a base beneath the noodles — the Momofuku ramen broth, bacon dashi, Tonkotsu-style broth, carrot dashi, and a good chicken soup base. I don't eat pork, so it was nice to see options that didn't require it. (However, I'm sure that if I were in Japan and presented with a big bowl of good-smelling ramen, I'm sure I'd just eat up without asking too many questions about the ingredients.) These broths would be challenging for the beginning cook, but someone with an average amount of skill could handle it. There are also a lot of different egg recipes, for those who like their ramen topped with additional gooey protein.

Also included is "A Recipe in Haikus" by Peter Meehan for corn with miso butter and bacon. It makes me want to see what other recipes can be shaped into 5-7-5 form:

I.
Render the bacon,
Add the corn. Jump and sizzle
As gold turns to brown.

II.
Miso and butter
Join'd in equal proportions
Plop! into the pan.

III.
Splash stock, then toss. Glaze.
Crack slow-poached egg to crown like
Hokkaido sunset.

The magazine has a lot of literary and artistic elements that elevate it beyond other food publications, including things like the illustrated tale "Bigger Than You: The True Story of Ryuji Tsukazaki and The Little Pleasures of the World's Biggest Man" by Matthew Volz (whose drawing style reminded me a little bit of Wendy MacNaughton). There's also some fantastic artwork by Mike Houdon depicting "Tokyo Ramen Gods," and the entire magazine has interesting illustrations and photographs from a variety of people. In the closing pages, there's even a short story: "The Gourmet Club" by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. It's a somewhat morbid tale that talks about a group of overfed, over-monied meal connoisseurs who are always looking to to impress each other with their discoveries.

Lucky Peach is a really solid, interesting collection of food talk, and I'm considering getting a subscription. As a quarterly publication, I'm curious to see what other themes Chang and company take on, and I'm always wanting to read more from Anthony Bourdain. And though I'm not so naïve as to expect less pork products in future issues, I look forward to seeing what other dishes they feature that I may want to try on my own. It's a different sort of food porn, this magazine, and it's both aspirational and reassuring. "Look, we may be working professionals," it seems to say, "but everyone — everyone — can always do better."

#31/53

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

The Believer: Eighty-Second Issue: The Music Issue: July/August 2011

2011-09-17T17:05:00.003-06:00

The Believer: Eighty-Second Issue: The Music Issue: July/August 2011
Featuring a CD of new work by contemporary composers, among other interesting things like words from David Mitchell, Nick Hornby, Martha Wainwright, and David Byrne

Anyone who wants to tell me that a magazine shouldn't count toward Cannonball Read has clearly never read The Believer. Most of the images are small and hand-drawn, and the reading is usually involved. That's not say it is humorless — sidebar lists like "Members of The Decemberists with Unusual Feet" attest to that — but it's certainly not like cracking open Spin or People, not to mention there's considerably less advertising. I don't have a subscription to The Believer, but I've purchased the music issue for the past three years. What can I say; I'm a sucker for publications with a free CD.

Let's talk a little bit about the CD first. I have limited knowledge of classical music — and by classical, I mean the composers we've all heard of like Beethoven, Handel, Tchaikovsky, etc — and I know very little of contemporary composers, outside of some who are known for movie scores. It's not my field of expertise, so I welcomed the mini-education the CD provides. Being a former cello player and a former dancer, my listening was less emotional and more physical. Either I could feel bow movements, or I could picture potential choreography. There's so much potential performance in many of these songs.

Tyondai Braxton's "Uffe's Woodshop," the disc opener, is mechanically ordered, yet chaotic in a good way. There's so much going on with all the electronic looping and orchestral noises, but I liked it a lot. From there, we immediately calm down with Sarah Kirkland Snider's "Nausicaa," taken from her Penelope. YouTube is not all that forthcoming with many of the songs from many of the composers, but this is in a similar vein to "Nausicaa:"

Shara Worden's vocals are just gorgeous, and I'd gladly take a whole album of this music. And speaking of interesting vocals, Erin Gee's "Yamaguchi Mouthpiece" (part 3) recalls Björk's Medulla experiments.

Owen Pallett's "Scandal at the Parkade," which combines impressive violin-playing with looping pedals:

And then there's "Save My Death," which stems from this:

TIMBERBRIT is a full-length opera starring fictional versions of Britney Spears and her erstwhile lover Justin Timberlake. In an alternate pop universe, Britney's latest breakdown has propelled her into her final hours. Justin learns of her imminent demise and rushes to her side to profess his undying love. The music of TIMBERBRIT is inspired by incredibly slowed-down versions of Britney's own songs. Composer Jacob Cooper stretches the tempo to its breaking point, infusing the familiar pop structures with a deranged, nightmarish intensity. Breezy tunes about teenage crushes become statements of mortality and supreme love, much like those common in traditional opera.

That is both ridiculous and awesome, and I love it. Other highlights from the disc include Ted Hearne's "Snowball" (jazz with strings), Jozef Van Wissem's "Aerumna" (atmospheric and meditative), and Nicole Lizeé's excerpt from "King Kong and Fay Wray" (ominous, brief).

Probably my favorite from the collection is Bryce Dessner's "Lincoln's March." Filled with french horns and other muted brass, it reminds me of some of the stuff I used to play in orchestra. Dessner is the guitarist for the National, a band I keep hearing is brilliant, but I've yet to check out. I wish YouTube or Vimeo had this song.

About the only song I just flat out did not like was Daniel Padden's "Ship Sarangi." I sort of understand what he's doing with non-traditional sounds and instruments, but it trips all the wrong switches in my brain and just feels like noise. It's not for me. I'm not super crazy about Tristan Perich's "Momentary Expanse" either, but I like the title, and if I'm in the right mood, I keep listening when it comes around. Overall though, this Believer disc is well worth the cover price even before one gets to the magazine content itself.

And what of the magazine content? Listen, as soon as I saw that David Mitchell was involved, that was enough for me. The few interviews and one book (so far) I've read have made me hopelessly literary-enamored with him. And he's cute, and sometimes I am shallow.

He talks to Brian Eno, a musician I find interesting, even if he's more of a background figure in some of my listening. They talk about the evolution of ambient music, inspiration from dreams and otherwise, the variables involved when a person listens to music, how they interpret and feel connected to it, depending on their environment. It's lovely and fascinating, but this might be my favorite bit:

DM: Novels are palimpsests written over earlier versions, red herrings, wrongly barked-up trees, and still somehow contain the ghosts of the novels that didn't get written in order for this one, the finished one, to emerge. In a not-dissimilar way, one senses the thought behind an Eno composition — all the paths not taken to find the uncluttered path that is taken.

When I do listen close and hard to your work — as opposed to writing to it — I feel watched. I don't know where this is going — a confession of paranoia, perhaps! — but your music has a particular hold on its listeners, and we hanker to know why.

1. Fiction writing is often rearranging ghosts, yes — of other books/stories and our histories.
2. The act of listening closely is a bliss that rivals the joy of finding great music to which I can write well.
3. He said the word "hanker." I thought I was the last person on Earth to use the word "hanker."

Much like myself, The Believer is fond of lists and bringing together seemingly disparate things together under one theme. There is a whole article about songs that feature the telephone, either conversations on or the noises associated with it (busy signals, dial tones, etc.). As someone who has made lists of songs that all have the same title, or songs that feature clapping, I am familiar with the undeniable categorization urge.

Lists carry over into Nick Hornby's "Stuff I've Been Reading," which have thankfully made a return to the magazine's pages. For those not familiar, he lists the books purchased that month, and then the books he read. Sometimes the two lists overlap, sometimes not. This time, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and Whoops!: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay by John Lanchester were both purchased and read in the same month. I've read his collected volumes of columns, and together they do end up flowing together nicely, in a way that I would imagine a lot of people who write books for a living would manage to do. The trouble with reading a standalone column is that I just end up wanting to read more.

There's also a great longer article about the unloved bassoon, "The Farting Bedpost." Writer and former bassoon player Eileen Reynolds wonders and researches how the bassoon became the go-to stand in for clown-like noises and its place as the "Rodney Dangerfield instrument." Having played in a full orchestra quite a bit, I was aware of how a bassoon could sound outside of "dopey pet food commercials," but I'd never given it much thought before. Then I remembered that I used to refer to my strange sounding '88 Volvo car horn as "an out of tune bassoon."

David Byrne's conversation with Brazilian musician Tom Zé is fascinating, even if I suspect I might not like all of Zé's music. Now, don't hold me to that, as I have yet to investigate, but maybe with my noise sensitivities, I tend to be a bit leery when it comes to someone who has used a floor polisher as an instrument. However, I definitely respect innovation mixed with tradition, and that is something with which both Byrne and Zé are familiar. They get a little technical at times, discussing musical theory and things like "integral serialism" and "radicalize the twelve-tone method," and I admit it went a little bit over my head. Still, their enthusiasm is infectious, and I particularly liked this exchange:

DAVID BYRNE: Is music taught in secondary schools in Brazil? What kind of music is taught?

TOM ZÉ: Music education has not been a requirement in Brazilian schools for many years. This year it will be reinstated. Some schools already included music in their curricula. For example, the Colégio Construarte, here in São Paulo, has an elementary curriculum for students up to nine years old who receive musical education. They learn about the use of one's own body to make sound, voice as an instrument, the practice and recognition of rhythms, the identification of rhythms with corporal movement, and the recognition of sounds produced in nature and by instruments. In 2011, musical education will be restored in all schools.

DB: This is great news! Sorry if it is a surprise to be asking about music education — it fascinated me at the moment. Art and writing and other creative endeavors seem to be getting let go of here and in the U.S. at the moment; there are big cutbacks going on. I think it's particularly sad, as I think it turns us into a nation of art, music, and writing consumers, as opposed to creators. It turns us into passive beings who accept the assumption that others can always make better stuff than you can. Encouraging students to flex their creative muscles doesn't mean they necessarily have to be artists or musicians, but it opens up neurological pathways — ways of thinking that are useful for all sorts of careers. That's not a question, I know, it's a rant. I'm glad to see Brazil is more enlightened in that respect.

Every time I read about the decline of music and arts education in the U.S., it makes me so glad that I have moved back to a school distract that values it. Both of my kids are very creative in their own ways, and I'm glad to know that some form of both music and art are still requirements for students here, all the way through high school. Part of the reason why I played viola for three years, and then cello for four, is that I didn't want to be in choir. It's not that I disliked singing — I just didn't enjoy many of the songs they ended up having to perform. But kids had to be in choir all the way through 8th grade if they didn't want to be in either band or orchestra, and once high school started, there were a certain amount of fine art credits one had to acquire, but there were a variety of choices that were not solely music-based. Between those requirements and vocational requirements, I feel like kids in the Great Falls School District get a more well-rounded education compared to districts that cut these classes. That's not to say that they do not experience cuts around here, but the fine arts classes do fare a bit better on the whole and the community is likely to support those efforts.

I also enjoyed Greil Marcus' column "Real Life Top Ten: A Monthly Column of Everyday Culture and Found Objects," as well as the interview with Trey Anastasio. I'm not much of a Phish fan, but I find the culture and dedication surrounding the band interesting, as well as Anastasio's thoughts on creative collaboration:

BLVR: You guys have interwoven music into social life.

TA: I have. I think that's the truest thing that has been said in this interview so far.

BLVR: There's no on and off switch.

TA: Yeah, but that can be dangerous. People in my immediate family think I'm losing my mind because I don't know how to turn it off. I really don't. As a matter of fact, I've been encouraged by my wife and those around me to, on New Year's Eve, hand over my phone for a month. This is actually something I've never talked about before. This what I've done to my life. Anybody who comes into my life, I start collaborating with.

To a milder degree, I am married to someone like this. Or at least, to someone who has a million projects in mind.

Just when I think, "Yes, I have covered all that I really liked about this issue!" I remember something else. Martha Wainwright is also interviewed in this issue. My dad was a longtime fan of both her mother and father's music, and I bought several of her brother Rufus' albums before her first album came out. Musical families fascinate me, and despite a chaotic upbringing, I think it's great that they've all been able to perform together at one time or another. Martha talks about her mother's death from cancer, the effect it had on her pregnancy, and the difficulty of writing songs without being able to call her. It's a lovely, informative interview, and it just serves to remind me that I have some catching up to do when it comes to owning her music.

Is that it? Is that all I have to talk about with The Believer Music Issue 2011? Have I spoiler-ed it plenty already? Have I made you want to buy it and further investigate its content, as the content inspired me to further investigate its subject? Yes? Good.

#30/53

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Book Blogger Appreciation Week 2011: An Interview with Sarah Sammis

2011-09-13T12:30:00.002-06:00

Book Blogger Appreciation Week began in 2008 as a way to recognize the efforts of those who dedicate online time to reviewing and talking about books on a regular basis. Every September, reviewers are encouraged to talk about their process, and one of the ways of doing that is to do an interview exchange with other sites. Through the sign-up on the BBAW site, I was paried with Sarah Sammis, creator of Puss Reboots.

Sarah reviews a wide variety of books, and her content dates back several years. She's even taken the time to tag each review with genre or general category, which makes it easier at a glance to see what sort of books she often talks about. Here are my questions for her:

I noticed your page header mentions that your site has been around since 1997, which nearly makes you Australopithecus in internet years. How did you get started with book reviewing?

My web site back then wasn't a book blog. I was trying my hand at freelance web design. Although I eventually abandoned freelancing, I kept the site. I started using it as a blog in 2004 and started book blogging in 2006.

What were earlier versions of your site like, back in the days before easy Blogger and WordPress templates? Were you an Angelfire or Geocities kind of gal?

My site has always been hand coded, although the design of the site has evolved over time.

You have a wide range in the type of books you cover, but I noticed there's special emphasis on children's books, which one doesn't often see in online reviews. Why is it important to you to cover books for younger readers?

The books I review reflect the books I'm reading. In 2006 my youngest child was born and you'll see in those earliest days of book blogging I was reviewing a lot of board books. I don't review every single book I read with her or with my son, just my favorites.

What do you make of the current popularity of YA books with adult readers?

I'm old enough to remember when there was very little good YA fiction. I think it's wonderful that there's such a wide selection available now.

What's your policy on acquiring review copies from publishers?

I don't do book tours. I don't review kindle only books. The full policy is on my contact me form.

How has reviewing books changed the way you read?

Reviewing books hasn't changed my reading habits but being a library science student has. I'm starting to think about the effects books might have on readers and how they can be used as teaching devices. In the spring I took a very grueling materials for children 5 to 8 class that continues to influence how I write reviews and how I select books to read to my children.

What has been the best kids' book you've read so far this year? The best book for adults?

The book for children is The Secret Letters from 0 to 10 by Susie Morgenstern. The best adult book is Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand. Neither book was published this year. I'm way behind on reading currently published fiction.

You love cats. I love cats. Tell me why cats are awesome. ;)

Cats don't slobber. Cats are beautiful. Cats like to snuggle.

Anything else you think I should mention?

I'm finishing up my last year of library school. By summer I can call myself a librarian book blogger.

To see my interview with Sarah, head on over to Puss Reboots.

That Day in September by Artie Van Why

2011-09-10T19:39:00.004-06:00

That Day in September
by Artie Van Why

Grief and patriotism are personal, not a pissing contest. No one else can tell you how to feel when a momentous event occurs, and in the event of a national tragedy, snark is disrespectful to those personally involved. Artie Van Why contacted me a couple of months ago about reviewing his book That Day in September. "I lived in New York City for 26 years and I worked across from the World Trade Center. I was there in the streets the morning of 9/11," he said. "All along this endeavor has been, one, my way of processing and working through that experience. And secondly, and to me more importantly, it is my personal contribution to assuring we never forget that day. That Day In September is my personal tribute to honor those who died that day."

Normally, political books are not my field, and one would think that any book dealing with 9/11 would feel political, but Van Why's book does not discuss national policy or even much of the larger picture surrounding the event. Adapted from a one-man show he performed in Los Angeles and Off-Broadway, his approach is entirely in the memoir field. When so many people have their memory of the towers tied up in television, Van Why felt the ground shake firsthand, and it's entirely reasonable that he would want to get his story out there.

The man who had been running behind me from my right reached me and stopped. I turned to ask, "What do we do?" and was aware of someone falling on top of a pile of clothes just across the plaza. It took an instant to register that it wasn't a pile of clothes. The person had fallen on a pile of bodies that were already lying there. I stood and stared as one body after another fell.

After the second plane hit, Van Why found himself running up the street with other people, some falling over each other, others crawling beneath cars to avoid the falling debris.

Up ahead of me, a man was lying in the middle of Fulton Street. He was a heavyset man in a suit, lying on his stomach. Everyone was running right past him. I started to run past him myself, but for whatever reason, I stopped and ran over to him. I dropped to my knees at his side. It was then I noticed all the blood and where it was coming from. His skull had been split open, and the top part of his brain was protruding through the split. Blood was gushing out of the wound. Amazingly, he was breathing. I saw, lying near him, a putty knife — a regular putty knife that had an even line of blood along its blade. I thought, oh my God, is this what hit him?

This isn't grief or heroism porn, and I believe Van Why when he says he just wants the details out there as a matter of public record. Self-published in 2003, That Day in September reads like fleshed out emails to those who asked what happened, emails that did indeed lead to the first drafts of his stage script. It's a slim book, and he dedicates little time to his life before or after 9/11. In some ways, that makes sense, as it keeps the focus on one day. On the other hand, if 9/11 was the day that started Van Why's process of returning to theater and moving closer to family, I did desire a bit more. If I had been his editor, I would have suggested restructuring and elaborating some portions of his life outside of that day. I would have suggested that the narrative experience more personal journey. Given that it was written in 2003, he may have been riding that line of post-traumatic stress recovery, and had just enough time passed for retrospect. I don't know. I would be curious to know what he thinks of his delivery now, reading his writing 8 years later. I suspect that the writing comes across differently in its theatre incarnation, but not having seen it, I can't say for certain.

Still, for those looking for a firsthand account of 9/11, Van Why contributes an important voice. It is not that our memories of watching tragedy via television are invalid; it's that they are all very similar. We were going about our business and someone turned on the TV. Me? I was in college, fresh from a walk of shame and the subsequent shower, and there was a message from my roommate's dad. "Turn on the TV. The world is ending." There are thousands of stories like mine, and yes, they all contribute to the picture of that day. However, Van Why's account puts reality into our discomfort. It is one thing to imagine how horrible it must have been, and quite another to escape the horror yourself. That Day in September is not the best written account you will ever read, but it is his story, one that I suspect does not have many like it.

And here we are, a decade later, swimming in a sea of "Anniversary Specials" that run back-to-back on television, prodding at the wounds of those who were there. Some events will provide genuine tribute, and others, a contest to see who can draw out the "best" profit-turning mix of pain and patriotism. And here we are, a decade later, still with a hole in the ground surrounded by red tape. I hope we can do a better job taking care of ourselves than we have. Grief is a long, complicated process, I know, and everyone handles it differently. You and I do not make the rules.

Still, whatever you find yourself doing tomorrow, do so with respect.

#29/53

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

This review also appeared on Pajiba itself on September 12, 2011.

Monkeybicycle8: Spring/Summer 2011

2011-09-08T22:14:00.003-06:00

Monkeybicycle 8: Spring/Summer 2011

With work by:
Summer Block, Matt Briggs, Aaron Burch, E. Michael Desilets, Ori Fienberg, Jesús Ángel García, Scott Geiger, Michael Hickins, Steve Himmer, Blake Kimzey, Ben Loory, Annam Manthiram, Laura McCullough, Michael Mlekoday, Dustin Luke Nelson, Ben Nickol, Steve Peacock, Jonathan Redhorse, Vincent Scarpa, Curtis Smith, Rosalynn Stovall, and Andrew James Weatherhead

Let us not pretend otherwise: I totally started paying attention to Monkeybicycle because of their name. Maybe that was their intent, but as soon as Twitter suggested them in their semi-randomly generated sidebar, I thought, "Well I have to see what something called Monkeybicycle is." Thank Godtopus, they did not disappoint. Yes, through the magical strangeness that is Twitter, I have my mitts on a rather satisfying collection of short stories and poems.

And what makes a satisfying collection? Certainly, the easy answer is character voices that consume from the first paragraph. MB8 opens with Blake Kimzey's "Donald Mason's City Inspection and the Stakeout Standoff," and it comes with an entirely familiar breed of single-minded curmudgeon. Donald Mason isn't entire uneducated — he ponders the difference between cumulonimbus and stratus clouds — but he's also prone to saying things like "some far-flung European socialist/commie hot spot like Monaco or London."

Donald has received a notice from the city about his unshoveled walk, and he's convinced it's from his supposed rival from technical school, Dan Lowery. Dan's a city employee now, while Donald works at a crappy Italian restaurant. Donald thinks Dan has it out for him. He wants to confront him.

Now it's just a matter of time, like Dan and I are caught in a two-man tug-of-war and within the day one of us will be singing the blues and Dan is essentially Napoleon sending his troops to Russia at the height of winter and does not know the scorched earth plan I have in store for him or that a guy from technical college who is smart enough to mix a metaphor is certainly smart enough to checkmate him.

Kimzey makes insecurity, alcohol, and assholeish-ness funny. I really didn't like this guy but he made for a great read.

Also compelling in a fucked up way is Jesús Ángel García's "jesusangelgarcia meets ticktockclock." Taken from García's novel badbadbad, a man who shares the author's name answers an ad for a woman who needs someone to impregnate her because "I can only be satisfied when my uterus is a food factory."

Her skin was pasty, legs rippled with cellulite, purple veins, feet and fingers pink, calloused. Her breasts sagged, her face painfully blemished, eyes dark-ringed. In truth, I wasn't physically attracted to this girl. But when I shut my eyes and moved my body with hers, I could feel oceans of emptiness. This drew me close.

I'm sure García gets adjectives like "unflinching" and "real" thrown at him all the time in reviews, but they are apt descriptors. The girl in this excerpt is rough and not unfamiliar. If you've ever worked retail in place where a wide cross-section of people shop, you've seen someone like her.

Elsewhere in the morbidity department, Aaron Burch's "Sacrifice" explores grief and pain through the head of a man who has just lost his brother. This man cuts off his index finger in an effort to cope, but the thoughts surrounding this action are interesting.

In the days after, he grew antsy and impatient around the house and so started going to the library to pass the hours.
[…]
He moved to books on Dante, whom he'd always felt a distant curiosity about but had never researched. The ninth level of heaven, he read, was closest to the Divine presence, and also, as "the last of the digits." The number nine marked the end... the conclusion of the matter... the end of man, the summation of all man's works... the number of finality or judgment. His fascination with numbers redoubled and everything felt newly connected and filled with meaning.

Other highlights from the collection include Summer Block's satire "The New Yorker Fiction Section Presents: Killer Robots From Space," Ben Nickol's "Exceptional Red Canoes," and Annam Manthiram's "Variations on a Blossoming Marriage."

However, I think my favorite pieces from the book are Scott Geiger's "Inventory," and Curtis Smith's "Lenin!" Both are a bit strange and lonely, and neither make it clear from the outset how the story might turn out.

“Inventory” takes the form of a letter to a woman named Judy from a co-worker, a fling gone wrong. “This message is a violation, I know. Mark it down with everything else I've done,” he says. Someone they worked with, Nolasco Ingersoll, has committed suicide, and the circumstances are strange. Police have come into the office to learn more about Nolasco.

“What happened is that we visited Mr. Ingersoll's residence on Rosalie Street this past weekend and encountered something unexpected.” Scenarios popped into my mind. Hitchhikers decomposing in the walls. Children tied up in the basement. “Many of the rooms in the house, they were closed off behind a fabric wrapper nailed tight over the doors.”

“See, he talked to Ty and me about this,” said Fischer, looking at Tyler. “Nolasco said his wife put up the curtains to divide their house. He said 'curtains' to us. So she wouldn't have to see him anymore.”

“But there was no wife,” I insisted

.

There's a lot going on with narrative, how different people perceive facts, and who can be trusted as reliable, including the narrator himself. Geiger puts a lot into this short story, and it's one worth rereading.

Curtis Smith's “Lenin!” made me think about the movie reviewers at Pajiba and their critiques of how entertainment feeds into politics, and vice-versa, and how those in a position to make a profit will set aside either personal morals or basic dignity in order to perpetuate the moneymaking cycle. It also explores the chaos that ensues when entertainment somehow manages to snowball into a frenzied Twilight-esque movement.

Lenin! is the comeback film for an Oscar-winning child-actor, Connor Phelps, now grown and already through the rehab circuit. People loved him as a child, and now both he and his audience are adjusting to seeing him on screen again. A Reverend watches his performance onscreen and finds the experience strangely hollow.

Back in his study, he put the sermon he'd been working on in a drawer and pulled out a blank page. He wrote not about Connor Phelps or Hollywood bt about the dangers of foisting one's hopes upon an unsuspecting soul. How unfair it was, both to ourselves and those we projected upon, and to illustrate his point, Underwood offered the story of himself and Connor Phelps.
[…]
Neither in the pulpit nor on the air did the Reverend Underwood mention 'boycott,' but it didn't take long for his most strident followers to pick up the word as their rallying cry. The bloggers, already keen to swoop upon the movie, posted their takes, many citing the nonexistent boycott declared by Christians Championing Traditional Morals. The bloggers' cries spread, a wildfire swiftly parroted on conservative talk radio.

Take a minute to think about our current political climate --- the climate we've found ourselves in for at least a decade --- and tell me this doesn't ring true. Do you even need the full minute? Smith's story might be the best one in the book, and if it isn't, it still makes for a hell of a closer.

So, yes, Monkeybicycle is a silly name that gets your attention, but they offer plenty of substance, at least from what I've seen in Volume 8. There are hundreds of literary journals out there, more than one could probably every read, but I'm glad I found this one.

#28/53

Full disclosure: Monkeybicycle, an imprint of Dzanc Books, sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy

2011-08-10T18:04:00.001-06:00

Everything Beautiful Began After
by Simon Van Booy

Love can arrive anywhere. It breaks through calcified pain and loneliness, and it will nourish our souls when we recognize its many forms. Love will heal us, love will show us the way through, and in the end, it's true – love is all you need.

To love again, you must not discard what has happened to you, but take from it the strength you'll need to carry on.

Let me be clear from the start: Simon Van Booy has written an extraordinary novel. Everything Beautiful Began After is both a stolen kiss and the aching memory of the best stolen kisses. It is about adoration, grief and – my number one literary wheelhouse – the chronically lonely. If there is one book published this year that you read, let it be this.

For the lost souls of the world, Athens is a place not to find themselves, but to find others like them.

In Athens, you will never age.

Time is viewed in terms of what has been, not what is to come.

Everything has already happened and cannot happen again.

Rebecca has arrived in Athens from France, carrying her art supplies and the desire to reemerge as a stronger person. Abandoned by her mother as a child, she and her twin sister were raised by their grandfather before she spent two years working for Air France. After taking a yearlong break back at her grandfather's cottage to collect herself, she decided to “live in exile with her desires.” With her move, she could finally feel whole.

Not long later, she meets George, an American in love with ancient languages and who is prone to excessive drinking. “His voice was slow, and his mouth held onto the words for as long as they could.” They fall into an easy, affectionate friendship. They eat supper together and have long, late night conversations. George, so shy and awkward, falls in love. But:

Her body did not change when George was close. She did not feel the calm violence of attraction she had felt with the Dutch pilot in Moscow. That was something outside themselves, something to which they had mutually conceded – like a particular hunger, brought on and satisfied only by one another. Rebecca did not feel that visceral intensity with George, but his arm on her shoulders made her feel safe.

God, I love that phrase – “the calm violence of attraction.” Is there any better, more succinct way to describe it? Van Booy's writing is filled with so many beautiful truisms, that I could spend much of this review listing them, and having little offer in commentary apart from, “Yes. That.”

What marks the difference between affection and full-blown enamoring clear to Rebecca is how she feels when she meets Henry, a young archeologist studying Athenian ruins with a longtime professor friend. They meet each other at an outdoor market, reaching for the same rare, uncut Colette first edition. He buys the book, but gives it to her.

When Henry took her hand and led her through the marketplace, she not only let him take it – but held on. He was certainly handsome, but for her it was more, as though in every moment, in every word and gesture she found herself thrilled – as though a spell had been cast and his mere presence filled her with an unimaginable happiness that was without reason or condition.

Yes. That.

Each person comes from their own personal tragedy, and each reaches towards the unknowable future with a mixture of hope and resignation. Rebecca, George, and Henry's lives overlap in a wonderful, though heartbreaking way – a way in which I cannot specify further for fear of spoiling the story.

Van Booy does interesting things with point of view and writing style, shifting to second person present about halfway in, and the intimacy afforded by it is lovely. A less talented writer would not be able to handle the transition so well, but here, the way in which he lays the words on the page feels absolutely necessary.

Sometimes you carry out a bowl of coffee in both hands and sit very quietly. Sitting there makes you feel good. Your lips see themselves approaching the reflection of the coffee. You find steam beautiful.

When I reviewed Van Booy's edited collection Why We Need Love, I said, “All love is true; it’s only the varieties that change.” I stand by that, and this book is an excellent example of that sentiment. Ask me why I love you, and my answer will be sincere and no less valid than the answer I give another.

The same is true for pain – No pain is invalid, and grief cannot be quantified and arranged into a tidy hierarchy. If there is anything we should afford our fellow human beings is that our feelings are personal, and while we are free to share them as we like, we do not need permission from others to experience them.

People at work will see a shy young man of about thirty.

Someone will have a secret crush on you.

Nobody will know that you're really a broken old man, a ruined man with a sadness so deep it's like unbreakable strength. And when someone comes to you with bad news – their grandparent, an aunt with cancer, a cousin suddenly one morning in a car – you'll have to pretend any reaction beyond indifference.

The deep fog of our feelings, both positive and negative, will always impact our approach to the everyday. This is not an argument to say that every feeling is healthy or beneficial, but sometimes... Sometimes we should allow ourselves to just be, to swim in that great chasm of love and heartbreak, and the rib-shaking power of our connection to the world. Everything Beautiful Began After welcomes this state of existence and explores it such an honest way that I'm still thinking about the book, weeks after reading it. The best literature, the best art in general, makes us more present, but also more reflective. The best teaches us compassion, not only for others, but for ourselves. We can treat ourselves better, and we can love better and more, and we can keep on heading towards that next perfect moment.

He reached for her hand in the darkness and together they fell from this world and into another.

#27/53

Full disclosure: Harper Perennial sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude by Neal Pollack

2011-07-26T14:00:00.003-06:00

Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude
by Neal Pollack

Yoga, despite my best intentions, is an activity that I've never done with any regularity. A cranky body mixed with limited flexibility made it easy for me to get discouraged and give up any sort of schedule I'd made for myself. And yet, simple stretching is one of the few exercises that someone with chronic fatigue syndrome can regularly do, so I am trying to get back into some meditative basics. With that in mind, I finally started reading Neal Pollack's Stretch, which had languished in my to-read pile for the better part of a year. Pollack details his yogic journey from skepticism to borderline evangelism with a great sense of humor, and like the best "sport" memoirs do, he makes it interesting to a person who has no idea what asanas are.

Pollack first made a name for himself as one of the writers in the first issue of McSweeney's, as well as the author of the satirical The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature: The Collected Writings of Neal Pollack. He spent much of his time making fun of other, more successful writers, and generally tried to be Mr. Rock n Roll, up until the point the New York Times made fun of him for doing so, calling him an "ordinary humor dork, yet another doughy, 35-ish white man with a goatee and thinning hair."

That was the worst possible thing anyone could have said about me. Oh, boo-hoo, you might think. Poor wittle baby got a bad review in the Times. I know. I know. In context, though, it hurt a lot. I may not have been The Greatest Living American Writer, but I certainly thought I was better than ordinary. Somehow the world had missed the Pollack point. Whether or not I was a doughy 35ish white man, I could still make my mark. Something unordinary had to lie ahead for me. I couldn't bear the idea of living otherwise.

[…]

All the grief and anxiety of the past four years poured out of me in a great neurotic wave.

When it was over, I picked my face up out of a viscous puddle of salt water and boogers. I looked up at Regina, sniffling, my eyes lost and pleading.

"What now?" I asked.

"You should do yoga with me," she said.

Though his wife would later lose her dedication to yoga, she remains generally supportive of Pollack's new obsession, with only a few jokes about his new "yoga brain" and about becoming a "yoga widow." Pollack starts only leaving the house to attend Dodger games and attend yoga classes, which make quite the change from his usual haunts of bars and clubs. He finds himself searching for the right kind of practice and right kind of teacher that best suit his personality.

For one thing, Pollack's still a stoner and a bit of pessimist, so anything too touchy-feely, straight edge, or activist has him rolling up his mat and searching elsewhere. Still, he takes the time to talk about the different practices offered by so many different teachers explaining some of the history and terminology of that particular yoga flavor. He tries out everything from the super-hot Bikram to political Jivamukti to his preferred lower-key methods, hatha and ashtanga.

Not every bit of Sanskrit wording is explained, but I liked seeing some of the attempts at English translation, as I have bits of Sanskrit tattooed on my body (including the phrase hatha yoga, which translates to "willful union," and is accompanied by my date of marriage). Mainly, it's because I like the font, but being married to a Buddhist adds significance. Sanskrit has always struck me as an economical, but also lovely and thoughtful language. Pollack is not Buddhist either, but like me, he appreciates and incorporates many of its practices into daily life.

In general, English, a fine language for profanity, political speeches, and broadcasting baseball games, is a poor translation choice for profound lyrical sentiments from ancient texts. To wit: the subtle humiliations of shul, which I attend in the reform tradition because the services are pretty short. When I chant Hebrew prayers, I feel like I'm tapping into an ancient culture of devotion, bonded through ritual to multiple generations of long-forgotten ancestors. When I try the prayers in English, it sounds like I'm reading promotional material from Yahweh, Inc. The same applies to Sanskrit, which says beautifully, in three or four words, that which requires seemingly endless blather in my native tongue.

Perhaps Pollack's biggest success as writer is being able to take one of his obsessions and turn it into something for which he is paid. Before long, publications like Yoga Journal are sending him to cover different events and to interview major players in the yoga world. Not only is he paid, but he gets to travel and reap the benefits of free classes. Pollack fully admits his cheapskate ways, and as a writer with a few obsessions of her own, I think, "That's right, Neal, make no apologies for free swag!"

Principles are easier to stand by when you're no longer wondering how to pay all your bills and still eat.

Stretch is a fun, informative journey to contentment, complete with a side of holistic questions. Yoga, Neal discovers, is not about desiring more "things" in your life — stature, wealth, and the like — but rather finding contentment in the now. It is not about dismissing goals, just reframing them. While death may be inevitable, one must be aware of their life's path, and trust the goodness when it comes. As someone who operates with a near constant sense of impending doom, I have a lot to learn. One cannot control a bad review from a major press, but after the smoke and sobbing have cleared, the next step is nothing but possibility.

#26/53

Full disclosure: Harper Perennial sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

A Witness in Exile: Poems by Brian Spears

2011-07-15T14:36:00.002-06:00

A Witness in Exile: Poems
by Brian Spears

In my continuing quest to read more poetry, and also to offer continued support for The Rumpus, I purchased Brian Spears' collection A Witness in Exile. Spears is the poetry section editor for the site, and I have always enjoyed the way in which he includes so many different voices and styles there. I'd read a couple of his poems featured on other sites, and they seemed in line with the poetry I enjoy most often. His work is warm, introspective, and clear. I knew I would enjoy the book when I read "According to Studies" on page 2.

(I hope he doesn't mind if I share it with you in whole right now. If you like the poem, I encourage you to purchase the entire book.)

According to Studies

I will die.

I may lose my mind first

I may have a genetic marker for obesity which can make
it difficult to maintain a healthy weight which can lead to
sleep apnea or diabetes or high blood pressure all of which
can cause deprivation of oxygen to the brain which can
lead to early onset of senility in many cases

I will continue to diet and exercise

I may be susceptible to Alzheimer's disease since it
apparently runs on my father's side of the family

I will continue to do crossword puzzles daily since keeping
the mind sharp is one way of reducing the effects of
plaques and tangles

I may become less effective as a thinker because of the
effects of information overload and too many distractions
multitasking which no one really does anyway though
we think we do and we become frustrated and lose our
ability to concentrate and remember what we were doing
just moments before and did I take my Vitamin B today
11 new tweets who's online is the mail here the damn ice
cream truck is back I'm going to check the mail

I will take a walk in the park this afternoon and enjoy the
breeze and the hawks and the ballers and the conversation
and burning the calories from the biscuits and gravy I had
for breakfast and the lemon cream cake I had for lunch

I will look closely at any scientific breakthrough which
involves downloading my brain into a cyborg body at some
future point

I will die some day but I am interested in whatever can put
that day off for as long as possible

I do not want to go mad first but if I do, I would like it to
happen while my consciousness is housed inside a cyborg
body

I do not know if the crossword puzzles are helping much
anymore

I've mentioned elsewhere — though not here, I don't think — that I have chronic fatigue syndrome. In addition to being excessively and unrelentingly tired all the time, the condition also involves muscle aches and a state which is termed "brain fog." Some days, it's like having a horrible flu. Other days, it's like a mid-range hangover, minus the puking. And other times, I exist as though being suddenly awoken and asked a question like, "Quick! After kingdom and phylum, how do you group together living organisms?" …. Wait, what? Who are you? Why are you in my house?

Reading this poem made me laugh in a sad, knowing way. "Did I take my Vitamin B today?" is a thought I have daily. There are a lot of pills involved to get me moving in the morning, in addition to three cups of coffee. So far, I've resisted the urge to go all old lady about it and get one of those days of the week pill dispensers.

Spears considers his mortality and the mortality of entire locales throughout many of the poems. Written around the time of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, he talks about the long-term effects of the disaster on coastal states, particularly his home state of Louisiana and his residence (up until recently) in Florida.

Florida and the American South has turned into an unintentional theme in my reading as of late, and having visited the state many times, I can "see" the words quite well. I keep mentioning "humidity" as a component to writing about Florida, and Spears captures that heavy, semi-tropical air so well.

No diving rods needed here,
this land where water fills in
a child's shallow footprint,
where mold grows thick
as Augustine's grass, water
which will drown us all
one day.

--from "Florida"

With discussion of cities that will one day fall away into the water, the abandonment of buildings, and witnessing changes through travel, Spears writes a lot about impermanence. He wavers between sadness for and acceptance of the changes, a process which mimics his struggles with faith.

Raised as a Jehovah's Witness and having "spent his life entrenched at prayer," Spears eventually found no comfort in his given religion, and his stepping away from the church involved stepping away from his family as well.

The elder's son's expected to
be like his father, tall and able.
The elder's son is tired of hearing
he has potential.

The elder's son woke up one day,
found he was married, had a job,
two kids, a wife, some bills, but no
belief in God.

The elder's son has left the church,
doesn't preach from door to door.
The elder doesn't talk to his
son anymore.

— from "The Elder's Son"

That disconnect, the "exile" in the collection's title, permeates every poem, and there is an incredible loneliness, even when he is traveling with his second now-wife across the country and enjoying what he finds in poems like "US Route 50" and "Canyon."

Spears poetry is more accessible for me, and I do not mean that as a backhanded compliment. More "serious" poetry readers might call it laziness, but I don't enjoy struggling in order to understand a poem. When I read, well, anything, really, I want to feel something — empathy, happiness, enlightenment, heart-stabbing truth — that is not confusion. I don't want to have to keep trying different angles of entry until I slide into understanding. For that reason, I enjoyed A Witness in Exile moreso than I did Otherwise Elsewhere by David Rivard, the last collection of poetry I read. It's not that I didn't enjoy Rivard's book, but it was a certainly more of a challenge to read. Some readers want that challenge, yes, but I am not always in the mood for it.

A Witness in Exile flows beautifully from poem to poem, and the result is cohesive instead of haphazardly assembled. For anyone looking to expand their poetry reading, Brian Spears is an excellent poet with whom to start.

#25/53

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Internal News:

2011-07-13T21:28:00.004-06:00

My short story, "The Place I Come From" is published at the very lovely literary site Used Furniture Review.

A previous version of this story also appeared in the RiverSpeak zine NEST in February 2010, but as that was published as an edition of 50 (limited edition, maaaan), most of you reading did not see it.

For a handy roundup of other things I've written and where they've appeared, take a gander at my previous shameless self-promo roundup.

The Gospel of Anarchy by Justin Taylor

2011-07-12T14:15:00.003-06:00

The Gospel of Anarchy
by Justin Taylor

I'd never met M apart from a few conversations through instant messenger over the summer. He was a friend of a friend, and happened to live a few blocks up the road from my college dorm. Shared with two friends from his hometown, the house was a delightfully rundown rental with an enclosed porch and a constant parade of people. "Come on over," he said two days after I'd arrived in town. "We're starting some Shadowrunner."

What that meant, I had no idea, but I needed the escape. That is to say, I wanted to ignore the lingering feeling that my long distance boyfriend and I should have already ended, and I wanted fun that had very little to do with anyone that I knew from home. Though I had friends there at school with me, some dating as far back as kindergarten, I was still consumed by unrelenting loneliness and the feeling that all those friends had each other. I felt like an afterthought in their social planning, and loved them though I did, I withdrew. I wanted new people. People who had only faint knowledge of who I was. Did I know? As much as an eighteen-year-old with undiagnosed depression can, I suppose. And so I arrived at M's house, intent on connecting with someone. Anyone.

Shadowrunner, it turned out, was a futuristic role-playing game. I'd heard of Dungeons and Dragons, and the requisite jokes about its nerdiness, but I'd never known anyone who played. Witnessing a game where one names and creates a character, then imagines their actions through a set of given rules, did not seem so very strange, as a writer. The crowd was a mix of goth/punk-lite and also unremarkable t-shirts and jeans. M acted as the semi-official patriarch of the group, not only in leading the game, but in his overall demeanor. He directed conversation, made grand declarations, and presented himself as the Man with the Plan. No one had a problem with letting him dictate the house environment; rather, they seemed to enjoy it.

There were three other girls there besides myself, all participating. R was beautiful in a way which made my tongue stumble over itself. With women, I felt twelve-years-old again, all nerves and embarrassment. I wanted her to sit next to me, for her to wrap her arms around my exploding ribcage, and to tell me to stay. The guys respected her — she was dating one of them — and I had no idea what to do about liking her, so I drank cheap liquor instead.

I started talking to S, another eighteen-year-old and the most awkward guy there. I sensed that he had very little romantic experience, and in my conversational vetting, I discovered he had a comparable music collection. This was enough; I had him marked for easy prey. By the end of the night, we'd started a very ill-advised and very brief relationship, thus often placing me in that house with his friends. I admit, I did it because I could. In my misguided search for community, I wanted in on the one these people created together. I wanted to feel good again. We went to movies as a group, dinner, the gym. The grocery store for late night snacks. And it did feel good, for a while.

What I failed to see was how they were another group-since-childhood, flailing their way through new adulthood, also grasping at anything that made them feel connected and whole. S and I turned out not to like each other very much, and within two months, my presence at the house became unnecessary. I had hurt him, they said, and I didn't argue. They were not my tribe. I saw M and R here and there after that, but it was never the same.

Though I started dating my now-husband later that year, and a decade has since passed, I have yet to solve my fundamental loneliness. Yet I've discovered that, while my experiences are my own, I am not alone in my feelings. At the heart of so much art is the creator's unrelenting need to articulate that sadness and desire for community. We all want to know that someone has our back, even if we have to behave in unhealthy ways to confirm that loyalty.

I circled around reviewing The Gospel of Anarchy for a long time. I didn't want to talk about M's house or spending so many nights with S because I find my behavior embarrassing and needy. How could I, someone who has prided herself on her individuality, become so desperate for inclusion? And still, that portion of my life is all I could think about while reading Justin Taylor's tale of punk-meets-religion. His characters struggle so much with finding value in their lives, and their acute sense of standing apart creates an environment that is both insular and crying out for affirmation.

The Gospel of Anarchy occurs at a similar time to my own story — 1999 — but in the humid, landlocked city of Gainesville, Florida instead of Missoula, Montana. David is 21 and listless. He's just quit his job as a phone operator for a survey company, and he has no idea what to do next.

I had let January's official end of an already-dead-in-the-water relationship become an excuse for letting my grades go to hell, which resulted in my dropping the entire spring semester. Now it was the dead of summer. I had to re-enroll, sign up for classes, do the whole back-on-track bit. Problem was, the mere thought of stepping back onto campus, much less into the office of some admissions counselor, with her cat poster and candy dish, induced apoplexy. There would be forms to fill out. I would have to choose classes — be more interested in one thing than some other. I'd have to be interested, period. I couldn't visualize that. All I could generate, in fact, was TV static, accompanied by the rough white noise of the sea, as if a pair of conch shells were strapped to my head.

All of that is so true, it hurts. The thought of talking to an advisor, to sit there and insist I could remake myself in their image, made me want to puke everywhere. Being on campus made me twitchy, prone to self-destructive behavior, and all I wanted to do was hide, hide, hide.

Ah, but then David runs into an old friend, Thomas, retrieving expired-but-edible food from a restaurant's dumpster. With him is a lovely but timid girl named Liz. The two friends live in a ramshackle house called Fishgut that remains steadfast against the sea of encroaching corporate-run apartment buildings, and it has become a cultural hub for those who believe in anarchy, freedom, and love. Returning to the house with Thomas and Liz, David is instantly smitten. He ends up in the shared bed of Liz and Katy, and a week passes without trying.

Since he met them, life has been one unrelenting miracle. He'd like to blot out everything before last Sunday and believe himself newborn, reborn, in a world itself newly established, exactly one week old.

Apart from some old hippies who live in a van out in the yard, Thomas, Katy and Liz are the only permanent residents of the house. Their former leader, Parker, has been missing for quite some time, and they are anxious for his return. Parker sees anti-capitalism and anti-consumerism as a spiritual calling, and in his quest to be closer to God, he seems to have slowly lost his mind. In his absence, Katy has become his most loyal disciple, and Liz is Katy's.

Taylor switches points of view from first to third person, while also moving from one character to another. Only David is given use of the first person, but the entirety reads like a stream-of-consciousness collective. Given the subject matter, this makes sense, but it was a bit jarring when jumping from first to third. I had to flip back and confirm that I was still reading about David. For a moment, I had him confused with Thomas.

And in a way, David comes to inhabit a role within the house with which Thomas never felt comfortable. Though Thomas loved Parker's ideas regarding personal freedom, he does not share Parker's religious views. He wonders why he is still living in the house while Katy is going crazy with weekly "services" and new age-y evangelism. She remains unshakeable in her faith that Parker will one day return, and together they will bring their movement to the masses. David falls into her philosophy completely and abandons his old life, while Thomas begins to look elsewhere.

Thomas has a somewhat different interpretation of Parker's flight. He thinks that a basically good punk finally let his bullshit get the best of him and lost his fucking head. He likes to think that Parker will come to his senses, develop some genuine revolutionary consciousness in place of all this hoodoo. Or that maybe he did, and that that was what sent him running — escape from the tyranny of Katy's eager discipleship. He could be out there doing stuff with Earth First! Or something else awesome. He could be with the Ruckus Society, getting ready for Seattle in November. But that's probably just Thomas' romantic streak talking because it's where he wants to be […]

This "I is we and you are me" way of living borrows much from the CrimethInc. Collective, whom Taylor acknowledges in his author's note. "Since all CrimethInc. Works are anticopyright and published anonymously, I felt free and even encouraged to plagiarize and pirate as I saw fit," he says.

To expect Taylor to devise an entire philosophy out of nothing along with the novel itself would be naïve. As I've made the argument many times before, expecting fiction to arrive completely out of the imagination misunderstands the act of writing. Even the most speculative or avant garde fiction hopes to connect with its readers, and readers connect when they can identify. The best fiction contains so much truth and honesty, but affords itself the benefit of creating its own facts. Taylor took an existing philosophy and manufactured a world to surround it. He lived in Gainesville between 2000 and 2004, and the description of the university town drips with humidity and rising mercury. The pressure builds in each character in a way that mimics the Florida summer. Borrowing from an existing group of people is no less valid than borrowing from an existing city.

Also spending time at Fishgut is a college student and writer named Anchor. She worships Thomas in a quiet way, but does not wholly participate in the house's fervor. She is an observer searching for community.

Thomas, David, Anchor — their parents don't punch time clocks. They came to Gainesville through the VIP door, i.e., the college, and it's a very hard thing to be fresh from that, or still partway in it, like Anchor is, and have to figure out how to look these truly fucked people in the eye and call yourself kin with them — brother, sister, ally — and not secretly believe you're just a lifestyle tourist, an interloper, a piece of duplicitous shit like the girl in that rad Tilt song "Molly Coddled," or that Pulp song "Common People," the latter of course being too techno-ish to ever cop to having listened to, much less enjoyed, but still. Anyway, what's the solution?

Ten years ago, I'd tried to join a new tribe and it didn't work out. It's not that the people were bad — with the exception of S, who can still sod right off — it's that I so mishandled my desires. However, I don't necessarily regret that time. It did hasten the end of that dying relationship. A mutual friend reported my deception, and that was that. Through that house, I met another man, a neighbor, who treated me well, though we were never serious. He was a calm, brief rest on my way to the life I have now. Like those who arrived and ultimately left Fishgut, my experience in that house still served a purpose. If nothing else, I gained fodder for future fiction. For that, I cannot complain.

#24/53

Full disclosure: Harper Perennial sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love by Andrew Shaffer

2011-06-23T16:21:00.004-06:00

Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love
by Andrew Shaffer

If one ever needed further confirmation that smart people don't necessarily make outstanding mates, Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love is a great starting point. Andrew Shaffer has assembled the lacking love stories of 37 philosophers, mostly male, whose words may have stood the test of time, but their ability to personally connect did not. From 350 B.C. and Diogenes the Cynic's chronic (and public) masturbation and defecation habits, up until Louis Althusser "accidentally" strangles his wife in 1980, there's a lot here that will have you muttering, "These guys were absolutely mental."

Each entry is short — There's a photo or artistic representation of the person, followed by a brief history in regards to their love life, followed by a bit of their own words. The stories and thoughts are both hilarious and worrisome:

Meanwhile [Jean-Paul] Sartre adopted his Algerian mistress, Arlette Elkaïm, as his daughter in 1965. Neither he nor [Simone de] Beauvoir had any children of their own, and the adoption was a legal necessity to ensure the sanctity of his literary legacy. Elkaïm was named the executor of Sartre's estate upon his death in 1980. Not to be outdone, Beauvoir adopted one of her own lovers, Sylvie Le Bon, as her daughter after Sartre passed away — and named Le Bon the executor of her estate.

Despite the uncommon nature of their romance, Beauvoir and Sartre are forever linked by virtue of being buried together in a shared grave in Paris.

Lovely.

Elsewhere, there's the coldness with which Ayn Rand and her affair-mate Nathaniel Branden inform their spouses that they'd like to have an emotional affair. Branden wrote of the moment by saying that Ayn spoke with:

[...]the persistence of a drill cutting through granite. After Barbara and Frank flared up in angry protest, Ayn became still warmer, gentler, and more implacable. She acknowledged their feelings, conveyed compassion for their pain, and tried to make them accept the situation with the single-mindedness of a military commander.

On one hand, one could sort of respect the chutzpah of just laying it all out, but on the other... Damn, that's harsh. Of course, the two did eventually end up sleeping together for awhile, Rand with her "single-tracked concentration with which she did everything else," until Branden began seeing a fashion model named Patrecia Scott. Predictably, Rand puffed up with arrogance and swore that Branden would be nothing without her. He went on to publish a bestselling book, The Psychology of Self-Help.

Further on the side of existential, lovelorn despair, we have Nietzsche and his madness by way of untreated syphilis, Heidegger joining the Nazi party despite having a Jewish mistress (she left him, unsurprisingly), and Sartre seeing several women at a time, in addition to the aforementioned Beauvoir and Elkaïm. "It's amazing that he ever found the time to write," Shaffer says.

There's also a fair share of misogyny, chastity, and closeted sexuality, and Shaffer covers a sizable chunk of the philosophers that most people have heard of — Thoreau, Socrates, John Locke, etc.

There's not really a lot to analyze here — If you dabble in psychology or philosophy, or if you want to send a funny gift to a student of these subjects, this is a decent book. Shaffer also makes his living as a off-beat greeting card writer, so the site for the book has plenty of amusing merchandise that ties in with quotes from the people mentioned in the book. It's a quick read and the anti-chinstroke to other books on the subject of the historically notable in love.

#23/53

Full disclosure: Harper Perennial sent me this book. I thank them for the gesture, and I will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives by Brad Watson

2011-06-23T01:09:00.003-06:00

Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives
stories by Brad Watson

Sometimes, we are strangers in our own skin. Life becomes disorienting, and before we have a chance to change its trajectory, we look around and have no idea how we landed where we did. Brad Watson's collection of short stories, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives, ache with confusion and loneliness, and the result is akin to a lucid dream. Each of his stories recall the recent past, a pre-internet stillness that amplifies his characters' disconnect. While I enjoyed this collection, I finished with some uncertainty over what I'd just read. Not every story stuck with me, but the ones that did have made me curious to seek out Watson's other work.

I know that I'm "supposed" to judge a book on the writing alone, but I feel a certain kinship when the author hails from an oft-ignored state. Brad Watson currently lives in Wyoming, a state that is even more ignored than Montana. Hell, here in Montana, we even try to claim Yellowstone National Park as our own, even though only a fraction of it resides on our side of the border. When I think of Wyoming, I think of long, straight and endless highways. I think of wind. I think of nothingness, and I think of that time a Wyoming Highway Patrolman was rude to a friend of mine, saying, "I know they do things different in Montana..." Sometimes I wonder what it's like to live in a place that, to non-residents, is just a stretch of land on the way to somewhere else. To have book filled with characters that struggle with their discontent and feelings of standing apart makes sense, when you think about it.

Sometimes I looked into windows at night, but only at ordinary things. People eating supper, or watching television. No undressing or showers or such. I only wanted to experience the mystery of seeing things as they were when I essentially did not exist to alter them. If you were quiet and still, it was almost as if you weren't there. It was like being a ghost, curious about the visible world and the creatures in it. As if you were dreaming it, and not part of the dream but there somehow, unquestioned or unknown.
-- from "Alamo Plaza"

(The above sentiment could very well be said about the act of writing, when the going is good and the words just happen, seemingly on their own.)

Don't mistake the author's locale for the stories' settings; so many have the deep, saturating humidity of the American South. Palmetto trees, steadfast religion, the Mississippi Coast, and damp moments lying in the grass — they all make appearances, and you can smell the salt air. Other stories could occur anywhere, as the gravity lies not in the location, but in the characters themselves.

Bad decisions arrive in full force, decisions made by people who often know better but cannot stop their momentum. In "Vacuum," three brothers try and mostly fail to make their depressed mother feel better, and in "Terrible Argument," a couple cannot stop themselves from fighting and it stresses their already fragile dog. In "Visitation," Loomis cannot grasp how his life has come to the point where he has to fly to California every three weeks to visit his son. Why, every day, he cannot shake the feeling that the rest of the world is not meant for him.

Loomis had never believe that line about the quality of despair being that it was unaware of it being despair. He'd been painfully aware of his own despair for most of his life. Most of his troubles had come from attempts to deny the essential hopelessness in his nature. To believe in the viability of nothing, finally, was socially unacceptable, and he had tried to adapt, to pass as a believer, a hoper. He had taken prescription medicine, engaged in periods of vigorous, cleansing exercise, declared his satisfaction with any number of fatuous jobs and foolish relationships. Then one day he'd decided that he should marry, have a child and he told himself that if one was open-minded these things could lead to a kind of contentment, if not to exuberant happiness. That's why Loomis was in the fix he was in now.

Readers prone to depression/anxiety may nod knowingly during many of the stories, and in the wrong (right?) mood, they are effective enough to exacerbate those feelings. I suppose that's a sign of a good writing, however detrimental.

My favorite portion of the book was the title story, which is really more of a novella in length. "Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives" is dreamy, disorienting and baked in the heat of summer. Set some time in the sixties, a teenage couple get married in secret, figuring that it's best to have secured an apartment and have a plan for their life together before telling their parents that she's pregnant. And then, things get a little strange:

Something woke me up a few hours later I saw I'd left a light on in the living room, so I shuffled in there to turn it off. That's when I saw the man and woman sitting on our sofa. They wore identical pairs of white cotton pajamas and looked sleep-rumpled, and older, in their forties or fifties. They looked familiar, though I couldn't say I'd ever seen them before. I didn't know them, that's for sure. A rush of fear went through me. My scalp prickled, I felt myself shrink up in my boxers. I kind of hunched over, ready to run or fight. But then the woman raised her eyebrows like she'd forgotten something, and waved a hand at me, as if passing something before my vision, and I felt myself relax somehow.

"Who are you?" I said.

The man and woman just sat there smiling at me.

I don't exactly know how to describe this collection accurately, or what to say about each individual story. I know that I liked it — I didn't love every offering, but I did not dislike any of it. Bits of each story floated about my head long after reading them, though I wasn't always sure of their source, a side effect of reading before bed, I think. The sadness and confusion feel very real amidst surreal situations, and so in that way, the cover blurb comparison of Flannery O'Connor meets David Lynch is apt. Watson respects and roots for each of his characters deeply, and it's a lovely thing.

(On a related note: Largehearted Boy has a playlist to go with Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives, and it's quite good. Do take a gander.)

#22/53

I received this book from W.W. Norton for review purposes. I thank them for the gesture, and will continue to be fair in my reviews.

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

McSweeney's 36 including work by Michael Chabon, John Brandon, Colm Tóibín, Wajahat Ali, Adam Levin and more

2011-06-18T17:39:00.003-06:00

McSweeney's 36
including work by Michael Chabon, John Brandon, Colm Tóibín, Wajahat Ali, Adam Levin and more

I do not have a subscription to McSweeney's quarterly publication, and I usually purchase things from them when they run sales around Christmas. However, two things compelled me to pay full price for #36: Michael Chabon's annotated chapters of his abandoned novel, Fountain City, and the fact that the issue is contained in a head-box. A somewhat disturbing head-box where one can lift open the scalp and rummage through its contents. It is gloriously morbid and I wanted it.

(After I bought it, it went on sale for around $5 less. Because of course it did.)

Let's take a tour of the contents:

I love the fish postcards (What is it with us and fish lately?), and the fortune cookie scroll is fantastic. The very first one reads, "Oliver Platt is your real dad. Sorry for the late notice." I also liked "You pregnant," and "Please make yourself seem like less of a shit."

First thing, I started in with Michael Chabon's Fountain City fragment. Chabon has been one of my all-time favorite authors for around a decade now, and I will gladly consume whatever he puts out. He is the sort of writer who is so good that I often hover perilously atop the line of "Yes! He makes me want to get to work!" and "Now I know I am so talentless." I realize the latter is irrational, since of course all writers hate what they are working on at some point. Fountain City provides a window into that pre-published state where even the most gifted get bogged down with fruitless plot lines and inconsistent details. Chabon spent five years and 1500 pages on this book about "the vanished notion of home," before finally abandoning it for Wonder Boys (a book, in part, about an author who has been endlessly working on a 1000+ page novel).

Every novel, in the moments before we begin to write it, is potentially the greatest, the most beautiful or thrilling ever written; but in the long dying fall after we have finished it (if we finish it), every novel affords us, with the generosity of a buffalo carcass affording meat, hide, bone, horn, and fat, the opportunity to measure precisely, at our leisure, the distance between it and L'Enfantesque dream. Our greatest duty as artists and as humans is to pay attention to our failures, to break them down, study the tapes, conduct the postmortem, pore over the findings; to learn from our mistakes.

The text of the book itself was interesting enough — though who knows how a whole book would've been — but you can bet I pored over every footnote. I know that some people liken it to the process of lawmaking and sausage, but I love seeing the bones that went into someone's work, and how the author's everyday life affected its contents. If you know me at all, you know I have already shamelessly pilfered our relationship to each other for writing material.

Neighbors, arguments with my ex-wife, meals eaten, hostels haunted, shoes I used to have, all made their way into the book, invisibly and unknown as such to anyone but me. I also found all kinds of bits and pieces of my childhood and life before my work on the novel began, stories and anecdotes and people and settings that, having served nobly and without complaint to feed the needs of the failed novel, receded or vanished completely from my own lived memory, until I rediscovered them, touched by the reunion, in the page of Fountain City.

Chabon also touches on the frequent occurrence of gay and bisexual characters in his stories, and the friendships they have with straight men. He is often asked about his sexual orientation — as though a person who is straight couldn't possibly be interested in writing about not-straight characters — and he admits he's given various bullshit answers over the years. My favorite book, Mysteries of Pittsburgh, details the first post-college summer of Art Beckstein, his complicated relationship with his father, his dating a semi-nuts girl named Phlox, and his all-out adoration of a man named Arthur. Chabon has a lengthy footnote comparing the character to himself, the assumptions other people made, and why he decided to have Art continue the sexual relationship with Arthur, when he had not with the man he loved in his own life.

Art's relationship with his Arthur seemed to need the heft and the active sexuality of his thing with Phlox, or else the reader would discount it as somehow lesser. So bisexual Art became — just like, in other words, in some real, mild, and I believe, universal way, his creator.

I realize I've gone on at length about a mere 1/6th of the head-box, but I've already burned through most of Michael Chabon's back catalogue prior to my book reviewing days. I haven't yet had the chance to tell you all how I love his work, and feel a kinship with his marriage, as I, too, am married to someone in a creative field, someone whose opinion I trust. And while I wish he were online as often as his wife, Ayelet Waldman, perhaps it's better that I know him through his official writing. It's hard to say. I'm not a very good judge for healthy amounts of attention, as I often do my damnedest to OD on anything that pleases me.

And speaking of overabundance and 1000+ page novels, I was pleased to have an excerpt from The Instructions by Adam Levin included in the head-box. A book that long requires some serious faith, and despite the many good reviews I'd seen, I did not know if I wanted to read it. Concerning Gurion Maccabee, a messianic 7th grader in the "special" behavioral class, the first chapter details his fight after gym and his crush on a girl named Eliza June Watermark. Levin writes in such a true way, the flashbacks to middle school were almost uncomfortable.

I thought that maybe he didn't know who I was — most Aptakisic students outside the Cage didn't — and I wanted to tell him, "I'm Gurion Maccabee, best friend of your number-one enemy, Nakamook," before I'd said anything, he was walking away, and before he walked away, he'd chinned the air a second time, and I'd chinned back, without even thinking, and felt just as brotherly and bothered as the first time.

"Baaaam Slokum," Desmorie said as Slokum turned the corner.

I made the noise Tch = I am not your audience.

Desmorie made a noise back = "You're lucky you're not my son."

I said, Hnh = That happens to be true, but not because you say so.

When I started the chapter, I really didn't know whether or not I cared enough to want to read the whole book. Gurion is flat out strange, and could I handle 1000+ pages of strangeness? By the end of the 40 pages, I wanted in. Bring me that behemoth of a book when I've caught up on my book queue, and let's do this.

Really, why should I be afraid of devoting time to a very long novel? This issue of McSweeney's is over 600 pages in total, according to GoodReads, and though it took me some time, I made my way through it all, with one exception.

Another book excerpt comes in the form of Ma Su Mon: An Oral History of Resistance in Burma, edited by Maggie Lemere and Zoë West, which is taken from the upcoming Nowhere to Be Home. Part of McSweeney's Voice of Witness series, it details the story of Ma Su Mon, a woman who became involved in Burma's pro-democracy movement in the mid-90s. She was arrested and spent nearly a year in prison, and since her release, she has relocated to Thailand to continue her work as a journalist. "I don't think I can go back home again, but I hope that one day it's possible," she says. "I hope that all my family members stay alive, and that I stay alive to see them again. If my family had a problem, I don't know if I could go back to help them. If I died here in Thailand or somewhere else, my editors or my collegaues would have to take care of the funeral — I have no family here. Maybe my family could come, but they might not be able to get a visa. I don't know."

Now, Jungle Geronimo in Gay Paree by Jack Pendarvis? I … pretty much hated it. I don't use that word lightly with art, but apart from a somewhat amusing introduction, I tried and failed to get into the rest. I am willing to give just about anything a fair shake, but this was just ridiculous for the sake of being ridiculous. I quit about 20 pages in, I admit. I'd quote something from those pages to illustrate my complaints, but that means I'd have to read it again. And make the effort of typing it. I'm not going to bother — that's how much I disliked it. I had to move on.

Only slightly more enjoyable was Bicycle Built for Two by Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington. Written as an imaginary screenplay for a Mike Myers/Dana Carvey buddy comedy about pro baseball players on the title bicycle, it is another example of ridiculousness for the sake of ridiculousness. I finished it, but I don't know, maybe I just like my silliness in the form of television. I know that it's supposed to be a joke on the emptiness of movies that try to cash in on previously used formulas and cliches, but that doesn't mean I'm going to enjoy reading 80 pages of it.

I'm going to have to revisit "Early Morning at the Station" by Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd because, while it was a very slim fold of paper, something about it made it not great pre-sleep reading. I couldn't absorb any of it during the first pass through, but that may not be the fault of the content.

Luckily, in terms of other brief offerings inside the head-box, Sophia Cara Frydman's "Don't Get Distracted" illustrated piece was quite lovely. The level of detail in her drawings is beautiful, and the random encounter between two people on the street reminds me of my own random conversations with people. It's funny what sticks, the small moments we use for creative fodder.

Take family, for instance. Wajahat Ali's play The Domestic Crusaders uses the lives of a Pakistani-American family to tell the story of traditions versus the modern age, discrimination, and perspective. I enjoyed it a lot, and I'm not typically in the habit of reading plays, though I do go see a live theater production at least once a year. Ali works in Islamic expressions, as well as lines delivered in Pakistani, without them seeming out of place or overly deliberate. I believe one can buy the play on its own through McSweeney's as well.

The book of McSweeney's 36 itself is one of the true highlights of the entire head-box, if for Colm Tóibín story "The Street" alone. Malik is a relatively recent arrival at a Barcelona barber shop that employs Middle Eastern immigrants. Eventually, Baldy has Malik selling phone cards rather than have him clean up inside the barber shop, the reasons for which are vague, but it still feels like a promotion. He stays with other employees at a dormitory of sorts, headed by their boss Baldy. There's a shared bathroom, but in general, Malik does not mind the arrangement. One night, he retrieves a glass of water for a sick roommate, Abdul.

He whispered to him that he would get him more water if he needed it. Abdul did not reply, but squeezed his arm and then moved his hand down and touched Malick's thigh.

In the morning, when he heard one of the others say that Abdul was too sick to go to work, he felt that something had happened between them. It had only been a second, but the touch had made him feel warm and comfortable, more so than if Abdul had spoken.

It's a lovely, quiet and conflicted love story, and I wanted to read an entire book with these characters. Tóibín's one of those writers whose work I always mean to read more, and I think "The Street" has finally confirmed for me that I need to make a more active effort.

The other stories and letters inside the 36 booklet are varying degrees of good, particularly the strangeness of Ismet Prcic's "At the National Theater," but if I expound any more on the contents of the head-box, I will be in danger of having said too much (if I haven't already). This isn't a perfect collection of work, but the novelty of the packaging and the pieces that I enjoyed immensely made it worth far more than its retail price.

#21/53

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.

Electric Literature No. 5: Stories by Kevin Brockmeier, J. Robert Lennon, Ben Greenman, Lynne Tillman, and Carson Mell

2011-06-14T11:10:00.005-06:00

Electric Literature No. 5
Stories from Kevin Brockmeier, J. Robert Lennon, Ben Greenman, Lynne Tillman, and Carson Mell

I hope it's not only because I've read a few less-than-satisfying books lately, but I really enjoyed Electric Literature No. 5. From the first paragraph of Kevin Brockmeier's "A Fable For the Living" until the last line of Lynne Tillman's "The Original Impulse," I remained so glad that I'd purchased a subscription to the quarterly publication. (Well, their March sale didn't hamper my decision any either.) While Alison Elizabeth Taylor's full cover "The Gamer" — I've cropped it here to make this review safe for work — is certainly attention-grabbing, after reading five stories filled with loneliness, a naked man playing video games makes so much sense. What do appearances matter if you are the only one looking? Or rather, even if someone were to pay attention, are you past the point of caring?

In Brockmeier's "A Fable For the Living," people are able to communicate with the dead through writing. Some talk about everday happenings, some confess everything they ever wanted to tell the person, and others just like knowing that their loved ones are available in some form. During the summertime drought, deep rifts form in the ground, and into those rifts people slip their messages. They do not expect replies, only a sense of relief. The story focusses on a woman who lost her husband not long after their engagement.

That first summer, immediately after he died, she had barely been able to pick up a pen, but by the time the earth split open a year later, she had amassed three heavy baskets of letters. One afternoon, she went to the parched field where the fair sat in the autumn and the soccer team practiced in the spring and dropped the letters into the deepest opening she could find. The ground swallowed them as neatly as a payphone accepting coins, except for the last page, which continued to show through the dirt until gravity gave it a tug and it slipped out of sight. That was where her heart was, she thought, cradled underground with the roots and the bones. As she stood in the dust listening to the insects buzz, she dashed off one last note and let it go: Are you even out there?

The next morning she received her answer.

Without spoiling things further, it's a haunting and beautiful story, and easily my favorite in the collection.

"Hibachi," by J. Robert Lennon, gives us the passionless-yet-newlywed marriage of forty-one year old Philip and forty-three year old Evangeline. Five months after their wedding, Philip is run over and dragged several yards from a crosswalk by an inattentive woman driving a large SUV, and he is now confined to a wheelchair. What little spark they had between them, and the few friends that they had before the accident, have disappeared as they adjust to their new life. Still attempting to make an effort with their relationship, they go to a hibachi-grill style restaurant for their anniversary.

A familiar dread came over Philip, the same one he felt whenever he was about to witness any kind of performance, whether on a stage or at his front door, behind the Book of Mormon. He turned to his wife to express his feelings but was brought up short by the expression on her face: one of rapt attention and giddy anticipation. It would have taken a trained eye to detect these emotions, but a trained eye was what Philip had, and he kept his mouth shut.

The way Lennon explores how a person can grasp onto and even become slightly obsessed with one pleasing thing is excellent. He gets right into how a person manages any form of grief — even if that grief does not come from literal death, but a longterm handicap — and it's captivating.

Also dealing with themes of pain and obsession is Carson Mell's "The West." Eight-year-old Dan travels accompanies his father on a trip with a man named Mr. Horselover. Mr. Horselover wants to open up a burger chain, and he's decided they should take a trip from Phoenix to somewhere in California, sampling every burger joint along the way, in order to determine what makes the best, most moneymaking burger. Horselover is, to put it mildly, quite fat and a source of wonder and bewilderment for young Dan.

As Horselover ate, he stared into the long, narrow window between the lunch counter and the kitchen. He was chewing fast, breathing hard through his nose. He almost seemed to eat automatically, his arm swinging the food up, his mouth chomping down to catch it, his throat working it down. It was like these parts of his body worked independently of the rest.

I liked this one, but really, the endless eating is morbidly fascinating instead of sympathetic. Horselover is so odd, you really do want to carry on and see how it all plays out.

Also car crash-like in its drama is "Come Out" by Ben Greenman. A group of middle-aged friends gather for a party at Bill and Louisa's house. Louisa dated two of the friends in attendance, Carl and Jim, and once she and Bill married, the friends grew apart. Bill and Louisa are childless, and in an attempt to distinguish themselves from the rest of their neighborhood, they've filled their yard with vintage bathtubs.

Bill serves the drinks, puts out the bowls of nuts and olives, gets to grilling. Steve is telling Julie about a study he read that explains why some species eat their young. "They are culling," he says. "If you eliminate a third of the eggs, the rest have a better chance of surviving." He pops an olive in his mouth illustratively. The party has just started, and already the talk has turned to survivial. Everyone is huddled on Bill's deck like it's a ship. One thing about the tubs is that they are theatrical. They demand a certain level of energy. No one just wanders out into the yard; people venture. There are too many people and none of them is Jim. Bill works the meat on the grill and wishes that some of the guests would leave. "Culling," he says.

It's an interesting story about expectation, and how people compare themselves to others in order to feel more at home in their quiet insanity. Greenman writes with a lot of resigned sadness, and I almost wished I had more than a short story to get the full picture of these people. That's not to say that the story felt incomplete or poorly excuted — No, I just wondered more about from where it came and where it might be headed.

The last story in the collection, Lynne Tillman's "The Original Impulse," picks up the esoteric, speculative story of love that "A Fable for the Living" introduced, still fraught with loneliness and longing. Here though, the difference is that Katherine is unsure if she's ever found a great love, much less lost one. She feels a longing towards the past, and a longing for a man she had a brief relationship with, and she doesn't understand people who dismiss history. She has trouble moving forwards.

Her time was full, adequate, hollow, fine, and she felt content enough with love and work, but no one lives in the present except amnesiacs. Her history was a bracelet of holes around her wrist, not a charm bracelet like her mother had worn; that was gone.

Electric Literature No. 5 is a fantastic collection, with all five stories bleeding into one another to make a cohesive whole. Each one deals with people trying to fill some void in their life, some unspeakable absence, even when their methods for doing so are unhealthy. These are flawed, interesting individuals, and I couldn't ask for more in a collection of short stories. I flew through this slim volume, and I am eager to read No. 6 when it arrives in my mailbox.

#20/53

This review is part of Pajiba’s Cannonball Read III, in which participants attempt to read and review 52 books over the course of one year. In order to make up for last year’s 51 books, I’m aiming for 53. The challenge ends December 31, 2011.