Currently Reading: Home Land

Home Land
by Sam Lipsyte
Picador 2004

This book couldn't find a publisher in the United States until it became a hit in Britain, where Sam Lipsyte's brazen self-deprecation and sick, childish humor struck the right chord. Then it really took off, winning the 1st Annual Believer Book Award and almost taking home the coveted rooster (yes, a real live rooster) in the Tournament of Books. Since then it's caused a minor sensation among a certain type of reader (the post-college aspiring bon vivant who's slowly losing faith in the world) by selling out a half dozen printings as a paperback original.

Home Land sort of slugs you in the face with a strong left that you never saw coming, and then it leans back and laughs while you press on your lips to stop the bleeding. And the fucked up thing is you start laughing right along. Because it's actually a series of letters written by a complete loser in New Jersey to his high school alumni magazine, updating his former classmates (the Eastern Valley High School Catamounts) on the sad decline of his existence. You can make fun of this guy all you want, but he's usually smart enough to beat you to the punch and humiliate himself first. All that's left for you is to listen, laugh, and slowly shake your head.

Lewis Miner is the protagonist, and his arch-nemesis is Principal Fontana, a former high school administrator whose failed life is frighteningly similar to Miner's. Faced with crushing disappointments and awkward attempts to find a real human connection, Miner and Fontana can't avoid making pitiful spectacles of themselves in front of the very people (former class presidents and erstwhile paramours) they try to impress. It's the kind of story (populated by wise-cracking stoners and beefy hit men) that usually degenerates into a slapstick of stereotypes. But Lipsyte redeems his main character by writing such insightful and brutally honest reports that you end up respecting Miner, rather than adding to his relentless self-mockery.

Overall it's a good book. Made me laugh. Kind of fucked up at times. Not going to change the world or inaugurate a new kind of literature. But if you're feeling like a total waste of space, it will make your life a bit funnier.

Currently Reading: The Places in Between

The Places in Between
Rory Stewart
Harcourt 2006

Books like this one aren't suppose to happen anymore. The Places in Between is a throwback to the literature of the Age of Discovery, when a narrative about trekking an unexplored continent or sailing the high seas was capable of evoking wonder and provoking political thought. Modern times have convinced us that we have nothing is left to explore, and--even worse--that we should avoid becoming loathsome colonizers by leaving the natives alone. But then a book like this comes along, and everything that was good and valuable about travel writing is made fresh again.

Rory Stewart is walking, alone, over the most treacherous mountains of Afghanistan in the middle of winter. It's a walk that he probably won't survive. But it's also the last segment of a pan-Asian journey that he's been trying to finish for years. Stewart is a Scotsman and a former British soldier with a strong interest in the people and politics of Afghanistan. He enters the country two weeks after coalition troops invaded Afghanistan, intending to annihilate the Taliban and forge a lasting peace among the loose-knit tribes and warlords who have been fighting here for generations.

Stewart writes about his travels the way you would expect an adventurous sea captain to file entries in his log. Without hubris or malice or arrogance, he describes the conditions of his journey and the behavior of the Afghan families who helped him along the way. Fortunately for Stewart, it's a Muslim custom to take care of strangers when they pass through your village. Stewart turns the act of walking across Afghanistan into an excuse to stay with local men and observe the lives of Afghanistan's most far-flung inhabitants. These are the rugged Afghan men who cannot escape their tribal past or the memory of conflicts with the Soviets and the Taliban. These are the men who make Afghanistan such an enigma to the coalition forces and anyone who has tried to conquer the region. By walking among them, Stewart makes himself the closest thing to a Western expert on this isolated--and strategically invaluable--pocket of the world.

As a writer Stewart is humble and observant; knowledgeable and brave; forthright and indefatigable. He focuses on the road conditions and the people he meets, leaving all sensationalism and self-involvement behind. And in the process he uncovers striking paradoxes and uncanny nuances in the lives of the Afghan mountain people.

What could be more important--and riveting--than a truthful account of the mysterious cultures at the heart of today's most far-reaching global conflict?

This was the most satisfying book I have read in ages.

Currently Reading: The Rachel Papers

The Rachel Papers
by Martin Amis
Alfred A. Knopf 1974

When it first came out, people said this was a sexed-up, worthless piece of juvenilia, and they're probably right, but that seems to be exactly what Martin Amis was getting at. I've heard he was only nineteen and twenty when he wrote this, his first novel, which makes it even more impressive that by the end you're hearing the voice of a much older man. It's like Amis is rubbing our noses in the self-consciousness and horniness of youth as a vaccine, so we'll be inoculated and ready to face adulthood.

Charles Highway, the protagonist, is seriously flawed: he is cunning and unwise; bright and shallow; well-educated and under-experienced. It must be the first narrator I've met in literature who is hyper-intelligent and completely unable to parse his emotions. Amis describes late adolescence as a kind of natural autism. Charles has a lot of heady, rushed sex in dank bedrooms, and he launches into an aggressive romance with a simple girl who cannot possibly understand him, all while sloughing off his responsibilities and skating easily into the English department at Oxford University. With the action focused so closely on Charles and his warped psychology (none of the adults in his life are better equipped to handle adulthood than he is, except perhaps his father, a Kingsley Amis figure whom Charles loathes), it should end up being a callow and misogynistic story. But there is some part of Charles (and the 19-year-old writer standing behind him) that acknowledges the depravity of his day-to-day existence, and cannot wait for everything to be solved on midnight of his twentieth birthday, when Charles believes he will suddenly and finally cease to be such a bundle of spunk and gloom.

You won't like Charles Highway, but Charles Highway doesn't like Charles Highway either, and by agreeing with him on this subject you can forge a common bond that will make this story quite an interesting one. The book's ending reminded me of Mark Renton, who walks away with all of his friends' cash at the end of Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, which is another grim and often hilarious novel in which you can't decide if the protagonist should be exterminated from without (by all the forces he has brazenly and foolishly antagonized) or from within (by the almighty powers of self-realization). I really loved this book. Critics might say it reeks with depravity and narcissism, but I say it crackles with contradictions and narrative energy.

Currently Reading: Uncivil Liberties

Uncivil Liberties
by Calvin Trillin
Anchor Books 1983

America likes to think of itself as a nation of rebel thinkers, trend-setters, and entrepreneurs, which is probably why it's so important for us to have a curmudgeon. A curmudgeon is a crank, a grouch, and a sourpuss, but also a perpetual skeptic. He keeps us from getting too far ahead of ourselves. For every high-falutin idea that comes up, the curmudgeon says, "Oh yeah? Prove it," or "Break it down for me again in really simple terms." Often the only way to respond to a curmudgeon is by making yourself sound like a fool. Mark Twain is probably the best example. He was a sharp-witted social critic who exposed the ridiculousness of his times by posing as a dim-witted everyman.

Writing a column for The Nation in the 1970s and '80s, Calvin Trillin filled the same role. He looked at national events like the Bay of Pigs, the gas shortage, the Reagan shooting, Betamax, and preppies, and he insisted that none of it made any sense to him. Of course he understood the political and social factors perfectly well, but like any good curmudgeon, he kept asking simple questions until it became obvious that America was a bit insane.

Trillin plays the sensible fool when he writes about the newly invented word "holistic":

Our friend--I'll call him Tab, even though his name is Bernard--had mentioned meeting the woman he now lives with in a hot tub that belonged to someone who practiced holistic psychology.... I should probably explain that a hot tub is a huge wooden vat in someone's backyard--back where the barbecue set used to be along time ago. In California, I gathered from Tab, people who are only casually acquainted take off all of their clothes, climb into a hot tub together, and make up new words. I was later informed by a refugee from Beverly Hills that making up words is not the only thing naked people do in hot tubs; in Southern California, he said, naked people in hot tubs sometimes snort cocaine while discussing real estate.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri in the 1930s, Trillin was comfortable being a political and social outsider. But he was also a family man and a loving husband. The main strength of Trillin's writing is that he embodies a more American perspective than any of the political figures he writes about. For example, in Trillin's first column after the election of President Carter, the columnist wonders if his family might be better off with a slogan. President Carter is optimistic about a "New Foundation," his brand new slogan for the country, and the Trillin family responds by testing a new slogan of their own: "Zip Up Your Jacket." For anyone who reads the (humorous) debate and unrest that a slogan causes in the Trillin family, it's impossible to take a Presidential slogan seriously.

Trillin loves to use his children as foils for his curmudgeonly persona:

"Daddy, why did the Marines invade Cuba?"
"Invade Cuba! Marines! Why doesn't anyone tell me anything?"
"Didn't you promise Mommy you'd quit answering questions with questions?"
"Did I?"
"Yes."
"For breakfast this morning, we are offering Cheerios, Product 19, some yucky health cereal and Rice Krispies. The management wishes to inform you that the Rice Krispies, while completely inert if left to themselves, will react to the addition of milk by going snap, crackle and, occasionally, pop--and so may not be advisable for those who have particularly sever hangovers."
"Little girls don't get hangovers, Daddy."
"Ah, the miraculous recuperative powers of the young."
"Daddy, please answer my question: Why did the Marines invade Cuba?"

After Trillin's latest, and possibly last book--a touching memoir about his late wife, Alice, and the power of their marriage--he will be remembered as a family man and an accomplished writer (who got his start working for William Shawn at the New Yorker). But I hope he's also remembered as a smart curmudgeon who saw the best aspects of America reflected in his wife and children.

Barack Obama: Not Black Enough for President?

So Far, Obama Can't Take Black Vote for Granted
New York Times
February 2, 2007

link

I understand that Barack Obama has a different racial background than your typical African American, and this is indicative of a present-day schism with African immigrants (like in higher education, where "blacks" are mostly African ex-pats). But what is this shit?

"I've got nothing but love for the brother, but we don't have anything in common," said Ms. Dickerson, who wrote recently about Mr. Obama in Salon, the online magazine. "His father was African. His mother was a white woman. He grew up with white grandparents.

"Now, I'm willing to adopt him," Ms. Dickerson continued. "He married black. He acts black. But there's a lot of distance between black Africans and African-Americans."

Since when do you have to have the same background as your elected officials? When did the slavery of 150 years ago become a common experience of all African Americans (as people quoted in the article say)? And most importantly, if you're a black person and you stick up your nose at Barack Obama as a black candidate, what alternative can you possibly offer?

I'm kind of pissed at the NYTimes for running such a race-baiting non-sequitur of an article.

Yalephobia

Firestorm over Yale attack
by Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross
San Francisco Chronicle
Jan. 14, 2007

link

Basically, a male a cappella group from Yale went to a house party in San Francisco on New Year's Eve. They sang a few songs. Some of the other partygoers taunted them, and later two of the singers were beaten up. One of them broke his jaw, and they both got bloody lips.

And this has become a small national scandal.

It happened right in my neighborhood, where I was born and raised. And a bunch of kids from my high school (and our rival high school) attended the party. Who knows: they may have been the culprits. Also, I used to sing in an a cappella group in college, so I know what it's like to be heckled for singing like a girl.

So many things are wrong with this whole fiasco, it's hard to know where to begin.

First, it's not a gay thing, like some people have claimed. The "assailants" (who are actually a bunch of high school kids who picked a fight, let's be honest) called the Yale singers "homos" under their breath, and now the gay rights advocates are saying it was a hate crime. Bullshit. At a certain age, everyone calls everyone else a homo.

Sean Hannity has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the assailants (who are still at large) because he believes this is an American Pride issue. That's because the Yale singers gave a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner early in the evening, before they were beat up. Sean Hannity is calling this a case of rampant anti-Americanism among the San Francisco youth. Again: bullshit. Every choir in America knows the Star Spangled Banner. You can't turn this into a question of patriotism.

But the only reason this event got so out of hand in the first place is because the Yale singers, after they left the city and went home to their East Coast campus and families, decided (after the fact) they had been mistreated. And they raised a stink with the Yale administration and the local papers, who in turn raised a stink with the San Francisco Police Department for not doing enough to protect their boys, and now the Mayor and the Police Chief are giving daily briefings about the status of their manhunt for a couple of high school ruffians. Fuck the Yalies. I hate to see a guy break his jaw, but these undergraduates went home and told their mommies and deans about the mean kids at the party, and now it's a coast-to-coast scandal? There is a serious worry that this event could affect San Francisco's image and damage the tourism industry.

In the articles about this incident, the victims are always refered to as "Yale students," as if it's somehow especially harsh to beat up kids from an Ivy League school. Wookie Kim, a Yale sophomore, is quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying: “I couldn't believe that anyone could do that to a Yale student.” Who gives a fuck, Wookie? Beatings are always a bad thing, even when the victim’s family is not paying tuition at Yale University. As one of the editorials in the SFChron points out, there have been at least 11 homicides in San Francisco since the Yale students were beaten up, and nobody is placing those homicides in the media.

But what really chafes my balls is the way people are talking about my hometown. An assumption is being passed around (among the out-of-towners) that nobody ever gets beaten up in San Francisco. The Chronicle quotes another Yale undergraduate as saying, “You wouldn't expect to find anti-gay sentiment expressed so openly in San Francisco, of all places.”

San Francisco gave birth to the gay rights movement, but that doesn’t mean it has become a liberal paradise. In fact, with so much gay pride in the streets, there is bound to be a backlash. It has always been this way. San Francisco is proud of being gay-friendly, but it’s even more proud of being heterogeneous—a place where anything can be “expressed so openly,” as the Yalie says. In this city, “of all places,” people are free with their opinions. That's why it's so easy for things like common homophobia to turn ugly.

So I want to apologize to the Yale students who got in a fist fight. We should not be subjecting them to the perils of real life (San Francisco house parties! What an underworld) until they are in a better position to insulate themselves from it. But this whole mess is based on stupid assumptions about the nature of my hometown. Once this story dies down, I think somebody is going to need a good punch in the mouth.

Currently Reading: Severance

Severance
by Robert Olen Butler
Chronicle Books 2006

I always believed that getting my head chopped off would inspire me to say “FUCK!” or “HOLY JESUS ON THE CROSS MY BLOOD IS SHOOTING OUT LIKE FIREWORKS,” but apparently there’s more to it.

Severance combines two medical facts (1. you stay conscious for a minute and a half after you’re decapitated; and 2. your brain puts together about 160 words a minute) to create a small book of 240-word stories, written in the voices of people who are recently beheaded. Robert Olen Butler is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a college professor, but this book—in case you haven’t already caught on—is really freaking cool.

Each of these stories plays out as a headlong (ha!) rush of unpunctuated words, but the surprising thing is they don’t always deal with the decapitation itself. A lot of people, in Butler's opinion, spend their last minutes of consciousness remembering the most evocative parts of their life—often a love affair. The sudden thud of their skulls hitting the floor seems to be far from their minds. Butler’s protagonists are concerned with sex, secrets, glory, sex, graphic violence, missed opportunities, and sex. One guy actually uses his last minute and a half to ponder the metaphorical relationship between a guillotine and vaginal penetration. These are brief, punchy stories that remind us to have incredible sex while we’re alive, because it will be the last thing we remember when our necks are bursting open in a wanton explosion of blood. I told you this book was cool.

Severance is strongly biased toward Western culture: beheadings set in Rome, France, and England are the most frequent. But on the whole, the book raises a lot of interesting points without even trying. It reminds us that Western civilization took a turn for the worse after the Roman Empire, and we didn’t recover until…well, there’s still hope. It also shows a remarkable lack of accidental beheadings throughout the middle period of history: after a saber-tooth tiger rips a man’s head off in the first story, all of the killings are perpetrated by other people…until we arrive at the modern era, with its car crashes, train wrecks, and elevator accidents. There’s also a lot of attention paid to current events at the end, with terrorists and their bloodthirsty ilk making a strong appearance.

But after you read a few dozen beheadings in a row, you start to notice the other things, like our tendency to cherish love and regret above all other memories. What I take away from this book is a close network of emotional connections among all kinds of human beings, in all eras of history, who have arbitrarily found themselves robbed of a head. Butler does a great job of letting the gruesome aspects speak for themselves, while drawing our attention back to the beautiful moments that cap off our lives.

As a final note, Chronicle Books did a bang-up job on the design. Chronicle is known for its glossy and artistic books, so I’m pleased to see them bring that same talent to a collection of stories. Each story is held on a single sheet of white paper, and separated from its neighbors by a full spread of completely black pages, so that flipping through the book is like repeatedly opening and shutting your eyes. It’s a great way to visually distinguish between the interconnected stories. I could say more, but basically Chronicle rocked this one, and it would be a shame if other, more established fiction publishers didn’t notice and follow along.

Strikethrough

Gravity's Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon
Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition

After all that fuss, I’m going to have to say “fuck Thomas Pynchon.” I became terribly nauseated trying to read Gravity’s Rainbow on the subway and I had to set it down.

Obviously he’s a virtuoso writer with a stunning intellect, but aside from that I’m not gaining anything from Gravity’s Rainbow. The historical setting feels like a cardboard backdrop. Pynchon's narrative is leading me down an ever-narrowing alley of extravagant minutiae and semi-wacky character traits. He's one of those guys who won’t let you get a word in edgewise, even though you have no idea what he’s talking about.

Here is the paragraph that almost made me void my stomach on a stranger’s shoes.

"St. Veronica’s Downtown Bus Station, their crossroads (newly arrived on this fake parquetry, chewing-gum scuffed charcoal black, slicks of nighttime vomit, pale yellow, clear as the fluids of the gods, waste newspapers or propaganda leaflets no one has read in torn scythe-shaped pieces, old nose-pickings, black grime that blows weakly in when the doors open…)."

Those are Pynchon’s ellipses, not mine.

So goodbye, Gravity’s Rainbow. I don’t believe in seeing a bad book through to the end. We’ll meet again if you can stanch the disgusting word-hemorrhage and stop grossing me out.

Democratic Presidential Candidates

“The Starting Gate”
by Jeffrey Goldberg
from the New Yorker, 15 Jan 2007

Like many people, I have been excited about Barack Obama as a presidential candidate. He speaks brilliantly and with conviction. He embraces the complexities of an argument instead of clinging to a cautious refrain. I love that he got an AIDS test in Africa in order to encourage other Africans to do the same. Senator Obama has smarts and a heart. He feels my pain.

But he’s not right for president.

That’s how I feel after reading Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the New Yorker. Goldberg compares the early campaign strategies of Senators Obama, Clinton, and Edwards—where they stand, which votes they’re courting, and what the odds are. Although it doesn’t endorse any of the candidates, the article had a strong effect on my loyalties.

Senator Edwards, first of all, is hardly a serious candidate. His experience with foreign policy is minimal (although Bush got elected on less) and his campaign barely addresses the fiasco in Iraq. Edwards simply insists that we bring our troops home as soon as possible, which is no strategy at all. He is focused almost exclusively on domestic and economic issues—things like increased wages, job protection, and a something vaguely resembling “growth.” Edwards seems to believe the upcoming election will be decided by a single farmer in Iowa—a nearsighted, crotchety old man with an ethanol engine in his tractor. Senator Edwards cannot be taken seriously.

What surprises me is that Senator Obama is only slightly better. We have pinned so many irrational hopes on him that he’s become reluctant to take a stance on the most pressing issues, so that nobody will be disappointed. Obama is cautiously disdainful of Iraq, and he still hasn’t articulated a national security agenda. On other issues, like abortion and health care, he skews toward the extreme left, which is where I stand. But the Senator’s campaign is still not advancing a plan; they is simply offering a person.

But the real kicker is Senator Clinton. At first she supported the war in Iraq and the destruction of personal liberties. She is also responsible for a couple of boneheaded measures like the plan to censor graphic violence in video games. But she knows what she believes in. She has an impressive amount of knowledge at her fingertips, and she explains her arguments in light of current policy and international events. If you ask Clinton a question that she doesn’t like, or if she doesn’t immediately have an answer, she will refuse to respond until she’s been able to investigate the matter.

Clinton supports a radical change in Iraq, which will probably include the withdrawal of our troops, but she views the issue in terms of Vietnam, the Cold War, and international politics. She wants to combine our military solution with a far-sighted plan to foster global stability. It you still think of Senator Clinton as a lightning rod for controversy—which is how salacious pundits like Bill O’Reilly have portrayed her—then you are at odds with her colleagues in both parties of Congress, who consider Clinton a staunch and clear-eyed ally.

I don’t agree with everything on Senator Clinton’s right-leaning domestic agenda. But she is the only candidate who seems capable of fully considering the facts and making a bold, sensible decision. I don’t know what else could possibly matter. She has balls. If the election were held today, she would also have my vote.