Less Than Zero

At first, I was skeptical that Ellis could write and publish such an acclaimed book at the age of nineteen. Then, I totally bought into the idea. Then, I actually read the book.

The story centers on Clay, a college student returning home to Los Angeles during his winter break. At first, his biggest problem is resolving his relationship with ex-girlfriend Blair. His hometown is unromanticized, and crawling with characters who are darkly apathetic at best and downright evil at their worst. At first, his friends' depravity seems harmless enough - the typical mischief one would expect of inherently wealthy young adults taking designer drugs. Soon, though, Clay is describing cocaine causing blood to come out of his nose, a torture porn viewing which the other characters discuss with vague disinterest, and ultimately a dead body and a young girl being raped by his friends.

The core plot outlines Clay's attempt to find his friend Julian, who disappears after Clay loans him a large sum of money to ostensibly pay for an abortion. Clay tries to track him down, with many suggesting that Julian has died. When he does finally locate him, Clay finds out that Julian has a major heroin problem and has taken to whoring himself out - literally - to get himself out of debt. Julian's problem is like quicksand, though, and Clay sees how the more Julian struggles against it, the further in he sinks.

Through all of this, Clay's narrative occasionally provides us glimpses into his privileged past as he tries to pinpoint the moment he lost all passion for life. He suggests a summer spent at his grandparents' mansion in Palm Springs may have been the turning point, after which his grandmother died and things began to decay.

Ellis's prose is cold and crisp to the point of harshness, which aptly fitting of the apathetic characters in the novel. As the novel is told through Clay's perspective, everything is viewed through his disinterested and disaffected lens. The novel itself feels very episodic, which could be a flaw if it did not feel intentional. (Wouldn't a life with limitless time and money and lacking any obligation seem like a random string of events connected only by recurring locations and characters? It would to me. But, then again, I'm poor in money and imagination.)

Aside from its brutality and bluntness and the look-what-he-did-at-nineteen factor, the book has some features of literary merit. For example, the theme of individual insignificance in the face of such a cold and cruel city is hammered home in some interesting ways. The punk group X repeatedly pops up which (aside from hopefully inspiring people to go out and buy their music) suggests an anonymity and facelessness to the background noise of these characters lives - the band doesn't even have a real name, just the mathematical variable "X" which could be anything. There is also the not-so-subtle "You could disappear here" billboard which haunts Clay at various intersections in Los Angeles, vaguely reminiscent of the "Eyes of T. J. Eckleburg" in "The Great Gatsby."

I'd recommend this book with one caveat: there are some moments of gruesome brutality which are hard to read. Given the anhedonia of the characters, though, it's hard to tell whether or not the reader is supposed to feel anything in these scenes. And that may be the most disturbing feature of the book.

Read Hard

Five Years of Great Writing from "The Believer"

Edited by Ed Park and Heidi Julavits

For those of you who do not know, “The Beliver” is the monthly, non-fiction left-jab to “McSweeney’s” quarterly, fictional right-uppercut (although, considering I know nothing about boxing, I might have the whole metaphor flip-flopped). This book collects the best (arguably) pieces from the first five years of the magazine’s history and puts them in one place for those of us who either did not know the magazine existed or – as in my case – could not the darn periodical.

I added “arguably” to a sentence in my opening argument not because I did not feel that some of the essays were great, but rather because I could not tell whether some of the essays were great or not. One of the factors that makes “The Believer” such a fantastic magazine – the editors’ lack of inhibition in publishing essays regarding just about any subject or theme – also contributes to the book’s biggest weakness. For many of the essays, I could decipher that the piece was well written – but I lacked the cultural capital to make it accessible. Frankly, in some cases, I had no more than a shadowing understanding of what the essay was about.

The perfect example of this inability to relate to the essay is Franklin Bruno’s piece “In Praise of Termites,” which discusses the life and work of film critic Manny Farber. The article repeatedly referenced Farber’s writings on film theory – which I have not read, and I doubt most non-film major people have read. The article also discusses how Farber interpreted several movies which I have never heard of and, obviously, never seen. By the time I finished reading this seventeen page monster, I only had a vague understanding of Farber’s work.

The book does have many great essays, though. (And, in retrospect, I should have probably started by discussing those pieces instead.) One of my favorites is Paul LaFarge’s explanation / history / personal narrative regarding “Dungeons & Dragons.” LaFarge infuses D&D metaphors throughout the essay to help explain the game (such as “entering the cave” instead of “learning about the game). Yet, after introducing the essence and dynamics of the game to the readers, the essay shifts into a history of how the game was developed and what happened to the intellectual property rights. Finally, the third act begins a personal narrative of how the writer game to play a game of D&D with the game’s most recognized developer (there were many, we learn earlier).

Another fantastic piece – and perhaps my favorite – is “The Sinatra Doctrine” by Rich Cohen. Cohen’s essay fantastically weaves the story of the song “My Way” together with a the song’s most famous performers and how they came to sing it. We are strung along through a history which begins with Paul Anka writing the song as a farewell for Frank Sinatra, explains how that farewell actually revitalized Sinatra’s career, connects Sinatra’s disdain for rock and roll to how Elvis eventually began performing the song himself, and reveals how punk rock’s rejection of Elvis’s cooption of rock and roll’s soul led to the Sid Vicious performing the song. Ultimately, we are lead back to Paul Anka – the original writer (though he stole the tune from an unsuccessful French pop piece) – still performing his most famous piece of music, although he did not make it famous himself.

Other highlights include William T. Vollmann’s meditation on the destruction of war – “And Suppress the Unpleasant Things” – and Joe Hagan’s search for the greatest musician to ever disappear off the face of the earth – “Transit Byzantium.” Ginger Strand’s examination of the history and purpose of aquariums – “Why Look at Fish?” – was cute and enlightening. Jonathan Lethem’s “The American Vicarious” takes a snapshot of Nathaniel West’s short novels and their relevance to modern society, although I felt that it was over before the intellectual momentum began.

I recommend this book, but only for people who are ready for an intellectual workout and are not afraid to find out how little they actually know about significant parts of our modern American (or in some cases, international) culture. At least I can use what I found out I don’t know as a springboard to find out more next time I am at the library.

Listening Is an Act of Love (2007)

A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project.

For those of you who have never heard of StoryCorps: You need to listen to NPR more often! Founded by Dave Isay (who edited this collection), the group's mission "is to provide American's of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of their lives."

Traditionally speaking, history is written by the victors. And not just the victors, but usually only the wealthy and politically powerful victors. So, generations from now, what happens to us - the common man? We decay into statistics and vague generalizations correlating to our time period. And what happens to our private stories of personal triumphs and failures? No matter how wonderful, powerful, or teaching these stories might be, they dissipate into the ether.

Dave Isay set out to stop that vicious cycle. He and his StoryCorps cohort travel the country, giving anybody the opportunity to record a conversation for posterity. In this way, the folk heroes of modern America are given a chance to live forever when all the recordings are stored at the Library of Congress.

This book is a collection of transcripts of exemplary interviews recorded by the project. Although interview excerpts can be heard weekly on NPR (and via the group's podcast), reading these stories presented a new perspective - turning the interviews into true "stories." The nature of these stories ranges from the humorous (a man using a wooden leg to protect himself from a dog) to the powerful (a man returning a favor nearly 50 years later) to the tragic (a prisoner trying to overcome drug addiction). The last section is dedicated solely to tragic stories about September 11 and Hurricane Katrina.

While reading this book, I could not help remembering my grandfather. In retrospect, his experiences in the Great Depression and World War II would have made him an ideal folk hero. Yet, I was happy to read so many stories that paralleled his - people who made it through the hard times with dignity - people never complained about hard work - people who made this world a better place without consideration for individual egos.

I cannot recommend this book for the weak of heart or the emotionally sensitive; some of the stories are downright heartbreaking. But, I wholeheartedly recommend the book. Traced throughout these stories is the strength of the common man during uncommon times. It is a comforting feeling to realize that there are other people who, without glory or commendation, live upright and moral lives. And they live to tell the tale.

Manhood for Amateurs

A few months ago, I stumbled across this new Michael Chabon book at the local book megalopolis and bought it without hesitation, even though I was still in the middle of reading "Maps and Legends" (reviewed here earlier). Surprisingly, although the book was published in October, there isn't much online for it. Rather, the book seems to have arrived without much fanfare or comment. (In fact, if you closely examine Chabon's Wikipedia page, there's still nothing about it.)

The full title of the book is "Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son." The cover depicts a type of "compass" for manhood, which pretty well

Essentially, the book is a collection of essays (and most of them very short) on the topic of "manhood" (at once a dubious term, after finishing reading). The essays are broken into four "movements," beginning generally with childhood and moving through life - young adulthood, marriage (and divorce), fatherhood, and ending with some thoughts on human mortality (not unlike the Joyce classic "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.")

What is amazing about Michael Chabon's work, as always, is his ability to use the mundane and common to signify something much deeper about the human condition. For example, in one essay he uses a description of a gift his father gave him - some old baseball cards - to launch into a reflection on how his father symbolically passed on to him the All-American-Man game of baseball. In another, a question from one of his little sons about how to draw a girl leads into a larger discussion as to whether or not, as men, we can ever truly understand women.

The weakest phase in the book is in regards to middle-age and beyond, though I attribute this to his lack of experience and perspective on those matters.

Whereas the essays in "Maps and Legends" discussed larger cultural issues - the value of genre fiction - the essays in "Manhood" are much shorter and incredibly personal. This is a new side of Michael Chabon. Until now, his novels have remained largely impersonal. We've been forced to interpret him through his plots and characters - such as Grady Tripp's struggles with writing his book in "Wonder Boys" as a reflection of Chabon's own attempts to finish his second novel "Fountain City." (And, as a would-be critic, this reasoning is weak at best and irresponsible at worst.) Still, even here - when Chabon seems to be revealing everything to us - he still hides behind a thin mist of symbolism and metaphor - as though he can't exactly tell us some things directly.

Chabon's writing is still masterful and entertaining. I'm happy to pass this book on to my dad, as well as to re-read it in the years and years to come.

The Gunslinger

Ever since I was a little boy, I’ve always gone to Steven to get my haircut. And as long as I can remember talking to Steven about books, I’ve known that Steven is a Stephen King fanatic. As I started to grow more mature in my reading, Steven’s influence flexed its grip, and I began reading Stephen King as well. Although I’ve read several of King’s novels – including the massive undertaking “The Stand” – I’ve never attempted his series of novels “The Dark Tower.” This all changed when I got a haircut two weeks ago. Steven said he had something for me, and then brought out a bag from Pei Wei filled with the first six books of “The Dark Tower” sequence. Although the bag weighs at least twenty pounds, without representing the entire text of the series, I dove right in, beginning (obviously) with the first book of the series (which is, coincidentally, by far the shortest).

“The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger” begins the epic quest of Roland, the last Gunslinger. As we meet him, he his chasing “the man in black” across a desert in some sort of western-fantasy world. Apparently, Roland has been chasing him for a long, long time and has very recently been catching up. In the first part of the novel, Roland walks into a trap the man in black has set up in a know-nothing town, and the only way out is to, quite literally, kill every person in the small city (including his own lover). Further on, at an abandoned way station in the desert the Gunslinger encounters a boy – Jake – who apparently died in our world (at the hands of the man in black) only to re-awaken in Roland’s world. The Gunslinger allows Jake to join his quest, and the two miraculously cross a seemingly endless desert to arrive at the mountains – with the man in black now in sight. The pair encounters a malicious oracle who suggests that Roland will have to kill the boy if he wants to catch his quarry. As Roland and Jake pursue the man in black through the caverns of the mountain, they are attacked by Slow Mutants (human like creatures with distorted features who glow in the dark) and narrowly escape. With the cavern’s exit within reach, the man in black blocks their egress, and Jake clings desperately to the side of a rail-bridge. Roland has to choose between the boy and the man in black and, painfully, chooses the main in black. The novel ends with the man in black revealing that their dying world is just a single grain on a piece of grass in an even larger universe – all part of an infinitely large and small chain of worlds. Roland is set off on his quest to find the Dark Tower (a nexus between the many worlds) and to face off against The Beast who guards it.

Of course, that’s all merely the main story. Through the course of a few flashbacks and “firelight stories,” we learn a lot about Roland’s past (though many mysteries are also raised in the aftermath). For example, we learn that he grew up in highly regimented and caste-regulated society. This court resembles, loosely, Arthurian legends, although the noble knights are replaced with gunslinging cowboys. Yet, sometime between Roland’s childhood and the “present” of the novel, there has been a devastating war and that world is “dying,” leaving Roland as the last true Gunslinger. There are lots of references to Roland’s father being cuckolded, a vicious trickster named Marten, and a beautiful woman named Susan – but these references remain murky.

The world that King establishes in the first of “The Dark Tower” books can be best imagined as a hybrid between Clint Eastwood’s early westerns (lots of isolated towns, desolation, dirt, and sweat) and King Arthur’s court (class structures, knights and maidens). This comparison is practically invited by the reference to a wizard from our world named “Maerlyn” (think: Merlin). There are also elements of traditional quest stories and poems – notably “The Odyssey” of course. Also, apparently the name Roland is a reference to a Robert Browning poem (but, at this point, I’m too lazy to care about the allusion beyond what is mentioned in the afterword to the book).

There is a strange connection between our world and Roland’s world. The boy Jake somehow leapt between the two worlds. A gas pipe at the way station in the middle of the desert seems to connect the two worlds. There’s even a strange subway-like terminal that Roland and Jake walk through in the middle of the caverns of the western mountains – although the remains of those working at the station have apparently been dead for a very, very long time.

Our protagonist – Roland, the last Gunslinger – provides an interesting point of discussion. He is not necessarily sympathetic – heartlessly choosing his own ambition over saving the boy Jake. Yet, at the same time, we find it hard to judge him. Although we quest with him for 216 pages (at least, in the edition I read), we hardly get to know him. Sure, we know that he was the youngest boy ever to earn the title “Gunslinger” and that something bad went down between Marten (the man in black’s master) and Roland’s father – but, to be honest, that’s all we really find out. We never even quite find out why he’s chasing the man in black – and that goal alone makes up the main conflict of the novel.

Considering that there are at least six more books in this series (more, if King keeps adding to the epic), I’m finding it hard to judge here the value of the entire sequence of novels. Ultimately, “The Gunslinger” provides mere exposition for the longer series, while also allowing us a little glimpse into this strange (but fascinating) universe. I just hope that the rest of the series picks up the pace a little bit, because “The Gunslinger” was painfully slow at parts. At the very least, I can see how “The Gunslinger” provides a lot of food-for-thought for a fantasy reader and gives a rich and unique universe for Roland to wander through on his quest for The Dark Tower.

(The next book in the series: “The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three”!)

Maps and Legends

The first edition of Michael Chabon’s “Maps and Legends” – put out by the great McSweeney's Publishing in 2008 – has perhaps the most interesting cover I have ever seen. The actual hardcover volume has several colorful and uniquely decorated paper dust jackets, each a little smaller than the one underneath, which are spread so that you are able to see a bit of each at the same time.

This opening invitation to inspect and look at each intricate dust jacket, each as its own cover and as part of the larger cover artwork, is a metaphor that can be extended to the contents of the book. Each essay can be read as an individual piece of writing, or as part of the larger book.

It would be irresponsible for me to describe each individual essay of the book instead of encouraging you to savor them yourself, so instead I’ll stick to discussing the larger themes and highlighting a . (Truth Time: It would be TIME CONSUMING for me to describe each essay, and I’m feeling very, very lazy).

The title essay describes Chabon’s childhood fascination with enterprising through his neighborhood and planned wilderness (he practically had a forest for a backyard), and then creating personalized maps for the area. Although my own childhood took place in a grid-structured suburb which left little to actually be discovered, I was still able to relate to the childhood urge to explore, to find and expand boundaries – both literal and metaphorical.

These ideas of adventure, exploration, and boundaries are the central theme of the book, even when the essays are ostensibly about other subjects.

For example, one piece consists of a book review of Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road” (reviewed here earlier) but much of the work attempts to define the “borderland” between genre-fiction and “serious” fiction that McCarthy’s masterpiece inhabits. Another part seems to be an extended review of Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy (which I still haven’t read, and, somehow, lack even a sliver of an urge to read), but really questions the nature of the ever-hazy Young Adult form of literature. There is even an essay about the history of Sherlock Holmes which leads to a discussion of the history of fan fiction and fan fiction’s place in the halls of literature. (There are, of course, parts on the relevance of comic books - one of Chabon's recurring subjects.)

The biggest pitfall of the book is that several of the essays center their argument around very specific subjects (such as Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”). If you do not have the requisite background knowledge, reading these chapters can be like wandering an unfamiliar city without a map (if you don’t mind me using the map metaphor). This is not to say that these parts are not enjoyable, but just that it can be harder to find the intellectual landmarks which make them interesting. (In the language of teaching - which I am occasionally wont to use - cultural capital makes the book understandable.)

Ultimately, in the spirit of the work, I’m going to encourage you to have an adventure – take a jump, explore the book, and make your own map!

You Don't Love Me Yet

After a heavy read like "Blood Meridian," I tried to ease up a bit and read something a little more lighthearted. Glancing at my shelf, I saw a book I had found in the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble, got excited about and bought, and then instantly forgot about - Jonathan Lethem's 2007 novel "You Don't Love Me Yet."

The book follows a few months in the life of Lucinda Hoekke, tracing the rise and fall of her unnamed band. As the novel begins, she is working for an abstract artist answering and documenting phone call complaints. In her free time, she jams with a band which seems to have a lot of potential (in terms of character), but which hasn't written a breakthrough song, or even played a gig. One day she gets a call from a complainer (a recurring complainer, in fact), and she falls in love with him. During the conversations of their affair, she picks up on several unique phrases - such as "monster eyes" - which inspire her to help write some lyrics which eventually become the bands strongest song. The band gets their first gig at a failed art experiment which morphs into a real party and gets them some positive attention Unfortunately, the complainer was also at the party, and leverages his creation of many of their lyrics into making the band let him join. The complainer then sabotages the band's radio appearance, and they miss their big chance. Yet, in the end, everyone is paired off and happy.

(Oh yeah, and somewhere in the book is a subplot about the guitar player kidnapping a kangaroo from the LA zoo and the zoo denying it to save face.)

The book's biggest limitation was the inability to actually hear the band. Very little is ever even said about how their music would sound - there is a distinct lack of sensory detail for the reader's ears (if that makes sense, somehow).

I remember that there was a lot of negative feedback for Lethem when the book came out. And not undeserved, I can confidently say. This novel pales in comparison to his other novels, and isn't even in the same league as his masterpiece - "The Fortress of Solitude."

But, on the other hand, this novel never really aspires to be that type of book. So how can we complain when it doesn't achieve it? It's more like the outline for a romantic comedy with a twist-of-Lethem (mostly in the names of the characters). It

I can say that it was a nice, smooth read, and that it didn't require a lot of thinking - unlike "Walden" and "Blood Meridian." I can't say that it belongs on the same shelf as those books, though. It doesn't. It just doesn't.

Blood Meridian

It took me a while to slug through it, but I finally finished reading Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel "Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West." It was a brutal read, both in regards to the text and the mental energy expended to read it, but I finish it with a sense of smugness that I have tackled some literary monster.

The book loosely follows the journeys of a character known only as "the kid" and traces his life around his encounters with the antagonist character - Judge Holden (almost exclusively referred to as "the judge"). The two characters' fates are irreversibly intertwined after the judge rescues the kid from a Mexican prison in return for the kid joining the judge's band of scalp-hunters. Most of the novel then follows the scalp-hunters killing sprees, until they are finally ambushed and mostly killed. The few survivors are hunted down, one-by-one, by the judge, until the kid is the only one left. (At this point, the kid is suddenly referred to as "the man" - suggesting that he is beyond the edge of innocence.) In the final scene, the judge has tracked down the kid / the man down in Texas and, although the kid's fate is left unknown and ambiguous, we are left with the impression that the judge has slaughtered him too.

To me, "Blood Meridian" hearkens back to an earlier era of writing - to the era of Herman Melville and (to an extent) Joseph Conrad. Much of the writing is consumed by descriptions of the landscape and weather, with the characters merely traversing these settings. Dialogue is kept to a minimum, with most of the conversations being short and consisting of questions and responses. Yet, eventually, we learn about our characters, even though they are not necessarily the foreground of the picture much of the time. Extended metaphors are also a rarity (which fits with the characters of the novel who are mostly uneducated grunts). The book has a few "extended monologues" though, which remind me of Conrad's regular narrator of Marlowe. This style, then, is well-crafted and exhibits McCarthy's fantastic ability to manipulate the written word to serve his purpose, and it is evident why many critics view "Blood Meridian" as his masterpiece.

The character of Judge Holden was brutal but beautifully created. He is, among all the characters, the one who transcends the intelligence of all the others. He keeps a journal where he documents everything he comes across, trying to learn as much as he can about everything he can. He uses logic and reasoning with the rest of the gang, who are often confused by his statements. Yet, he is also an inherently evil character. It is implied repeatedly (including through his relationship with the kid) that he is a pedophile, and it is explicit that he is a child murderer and a calculated homicidal maniac. He repeatedly refers to the pervasiveness of violence throughout culture, claiming at one point (in essence) that men are not men if they have not been to war and drawn blood. To me, he represents the devil in all his deception and violence. There is even a moment when, while explaining why he documents everything he sees and does, the judge declares that the fact that anything exists without his permission and beyond his control is an insult to him - which reminds me of a passage from Milton's "Paradise Lost" (although I cannot recall the line verbatim).

The novel's ambiguous ending - with the kid's fate left unresolved - was quite a shock to me. Although much of the action of the book had been left ambiguous, I suppose I was expecting some kind of secure resolution, some sense of closure. Yet, the lack of clarity is also a fitting ending to a book which moves through a haze of uncertainty - we're never quite sure where exactly the kid came from, why he was chosen by the judge, what happens to many of the characters. The only thing we know for certain at the end is that the judge survives in all his madness (perhaps still survives, the last line suggests - adding to the impression that he is an evil beyond the earth).

One final note: although much of the action of the book is implied, most of the descriptions of locations and scenes of the book are incredibly explicit. This detail includes the slaughter, dismemberment, and scalping of several people. McCarthy's prose leaves nothing to the imagination in regards to the brutality of these based-on-reality events. This novel is not for the feint-of-heart or weak-of-stomach. I found this brutality interesting, though, in contrast with the way death is treated in most westerns (especially in film). More often than not, someone is shot with a puff of smoke and falls over stiffly. In reality, though, bodies were disfigured, ears and scalps kept as souvenirs, and conflicts were bloody and messy. McCarthy does not stray from reality, and the reader is left with a few horrific images to think about.

Walden

(Although this post is a few months late, I still felt I should put it up, if only to document my reading habits.)

I finished the summer by reading Henry David Thoreau's key project "Walden; or Life in the Woods." In all honesty, I could not tell you what impulse moved me to read this book at this point in my life, other than the random chance that it was sitting on my bookshelf at an opportune moment. I had read it once while I was in high school, but that was mainly to show myself as a pseudo-intellectual and not because I had any real interest in the philosophies and musings scribed by Thoreau. In fact, until I re-read this book, the most detail I could have given in review would have been "it's about a guy who lives in the woods by himself for a while and thinks a lot about life and happiness." (Actually, it would have been quite impressive of my high school self if I could have written even that much about it.)

The book chronicles, in only a general chronological order, a period in Thoreau's life in which he abandoned the shackles of city life to begin anew in a self-built cabin by Walden Pond. During this period, he works to prove that a person can be almost completely self-sufficient, needing minimal contact with society and even that only for social purposes and not for physical or personal sustenance. He builds his own cabin (from the remains of another cabin), grows his own food (mostly beans) and lives the ultimate simple life. He provides us with some interesting insights into our own lives, calling us to examine how much we really need to survive. (Ultimately, though, he does return to civil society, but as a renewed and completely transformed man.)

Thoreau's book is well-written and very powerful. There are a few moments where I had to realize that this wasn't just some fun experiment for him, but was a total surrendering of his life to his personal beliefs. In these moments, though, Thoreau becomes a bit preachy and self-righteous. (Anyone who can completely sustain their life with no income aside from occasionally selling some leftover bean crop has the right to be self-righteous, I suppose.)

I am very intrigued by his ideas of poverty being a form of wealth. From my understanding, Thoreau viewed owning an item - let's say, a bookshelf - as a form or reverse possession as well. You may move the bookshelf wherever you like, but you bound to that bookshelf through your ownership. The more you own, then, the more you are tied down. Especially interesting was his discussion of the costs of simply going anywhere. A man who walks across the country could get coast-to-coast faster (according to Thoreau) than a man taking a train (or, in modern times, driving or flying), assuming that both men start with nothing. The man who chooses to walk has to pay nothing, but the man who drives must pay for the car and gas for the car, as well as for his place to live while he works and saves the money to pay for the car and gas.

The question that comes to my mind, immediately, is the possible applications to the modern world. Thoreau's ideas would be in direct opposition to our contemporary consumer-based society (somewhat gelled by the current economic crisis), which, in some ways, would paint him as a socialist or communist. Yet, "Walden" takes no such political position. (Thoreau's other great work "Civil Disobedience" would take an incredibly conservative position in regards to politics, but that is another essay for another day.) The book merely presents the epitome of the American ideal of "rugged individualism." Including the doomed experiment of Christopher McCandless (documented well in the book and movie "Into the Wild"), most modern "rugged individualists" are often part of a lunatic-fringe with no real philosophical base. Somewhere between then and now, the true spirit of Throeau's experiment was distorted.

Finally, as with all non-fiction, we must question the authenticity of Thoreau's writings. Every writer has a purpose in writing. Thoreau's was to prove that a man needs no support from society or government to thrive. So, we must ask, was anything exaggerated to prove his point? Was any part of his experience conveniently left out? I imagine that any winter cold enough to freeze Walden Pond would be cold enough to make most people incredibly uncomfortable - yet Thoreau's discussion of the winter time makes it seem as though the weather were mild.

I'm glad I re-read this book. It was a refreshing way to end the summer, and it has given me a lot to think about though the fall and winter.

Inherent Vice

Although it did not take me very long to read Thomas Pynchon's newest novel, "Inherent Vice," it has taken me a long time to absorb it and develop anything coherent to say about it. Coming in at just over 350 pages, it's Pynchon's shortest work in quite a while, and, maybe as a result, it is also his most coherent and readable. (Of course, considering Pynchon's prior work, everything is relative - "Inherent Vice" has already produced a pretty comprehensive wiki.)

The best way to sum up the book is: Raymond Chandler noir crossed with an acid trip.

The book starts with the protagonist - Doc Sportello, a private detective who spends most of his time high - being approached by an ex-girlfriend who suspects that her boyfriend's wife (read between the lines there) is up to something fishy. Of course, a day or two later, there's gunfight which ends with the boyfriend - a highly influential real-estate developer - as well as the ex-girlfriend missing and his bodyguard dead. Stoner's logic leads Sportello to try to unravel this mystery despite the fact that he knows he will not be paid, which leads to even more mysteries and subplots which include an undead saxophone player, a brainwashing center disguised as a rehab hospital, a half-developed futuristic commune in the Nevada desert (which might also be a portal to other dimensions), an "Atlantis" myth for the Pacific, and the "Golden Fang" which is simultaneously a building, a dental group, a drug cartel, and a boat. In the end, nothing is really resolved except a mystery which at the beginning is a passing comment. Yet, in true postmodern fashion, th

ere is a sense that "all's well that ends well" because none of the major characters are dead and life goes on.

Although the complexities of noir fiction are nothing new to Thomas Pynchon (see "The Crying of Lot 49"), this book is much more "real" than his prior work. It is set in a (mostly) real place - 1970 Los Angeles - and features (mostly) real locations - such as Pink's and the Original Tommy's. Yet, these places are rendered as unfamiliar because the narrator is inherently unreliable due to his drug vice (pun intended). So much of Sportello's time is spent drinking, smoking weed, or dropping acid th

at it's sometimes hard to tell which parts of the story are the true, underground conspiracy and which are just waves of drug-induced paranoia. The sense of real provided by the setting, then, becomes an illusion.

Almost humorously, Pynchon seems to reference his real life elusiveness through the character of Coy Harlingen. When we first hear about Coy, we find out that he was a saxophone player for the band The Boards who just recently (in book time) died of an overdose. Yet, as the plot unravels, he keeps popping up everywhere - even being shown on television getting arrested at a Richard Nixon rally. Eventually, Coy even re-joins his old band, but nobody recognizes him. His logic, then, is to hide in plain sight: nobody recognizes him because they all think he's dead. Anybody who s

uspects that he faked his own death would never think to

look for him at the same places doing the same things he previously did. Coy, in a way, comes to represent Thomas Pynchon - he hides in plain sight. Pynchon has admitted doing normal, everyday things. He even recently had lunch with Salman Rushdie and has appeared (dubiously) on "The Simpsons". Yet, he's managed to maintain his anonymity despite his celebrity. Although his books always make the bestseller list and his name is synonymous with postmodernism, his face is a paper bag with a question mark on it. He is a voice, a book cover, a name. Yet, he is also human and does human things. He is "dead" t

o the world, yet he lives the way he would if he were "alive."

I'm still not quite sure I understand all of what "Inherent Vice" was really about (assuming it was about anything - which is a valid point in Pynchon's work). At once the novel seems both nostalgic for 1970 while at once pointing to its hollowness. Doc starts out to solve one mystery, becomes a part of another, and helps to solve a third one while the original one plays itself out - and so he is both a major player and a completely helpless pawn. Coy is both stone cold dead and vibrantly alive. So, what are we to make of these contradictions? The closest we get to a solution comes from the character Bigfoot Bjornsen when he says (which could be echoed by Pynchon himself):

"If I didn't know, I would never admit it to you. And if I did know, I would never tell you."

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

I finally made my way around to reading Michael Chabon's 1988 novel "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh." I had tried reading through this book a few years ago, but got bogged down about halfway into it and distracted by other things, and eventually it made its way back on to my shelf. I picked it up again (literally) a few months ago, and put it in my car with every intention of reading it, but but before I could read it, it got buried under the myriad and sundry things that eventually end up in the backseat of every car. Finally, it was discovered and I committed myself to getting all the way through it. (But enough about that...)

The book covers one summer in the life of Arthur Bechstein, as he discovers new friends and lovers in the college areas of Pittsburgh. Jobless and aimless and recently graduated, he gets caught up in a whirlwind of activity surrounding his new friends. Although he falls madly in love with the exotic librarian Phlox, he also struggles with homosexual feelings for his best friend, Arthur Lecomte. Bechstein bounces between the two lovers through most of the novel. Meanwhile, he is also trying to keep his past - specifically his mobster father - away from his newly developing personal life. But, when Cleveland - one of the new friends - forces Bechstein to introduce him to his father, things begin to sour on every front. Phlox and Lecomte force Bechstein to choose between the two of them, and Cleveland gets caught up too heavily in the mob scene and meets a tragic end. In the end, we learn that Bechstein chooses Lecomte and they move to Europe, although it is also revealed that Lecomte leaves him there and the novel ends with Bechstein reflecting upon his abandoned relationship with Phlox and what might have been.

"The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" was the first novel that Chabon read, and that becomes painfully obvious while reading. The voice and tone of the novel is unrefined and seems to change regularly, as though Chabon wasn't quite sure where he was going from chapter to chapter. He relies too heavily on archetype to create his characters: Phlox - the exotic woman; Lecomte - the forbidden lover; Cleveland - the rugged man; Jane - the ideal upper-class beauty. Cleveland's dramatic death represents the climax of the plot, somehow, even though he was only a slightly-higher-than-minor character throughout the book - rather than the climax being Bechstein's choice between Phlox and Lecomte, which the entire book was building towards but ends up being delegated to a few sentences in the resolution. There are also moments of beautiful metaphor and description that do not seem to add to the novel in any way except that, well, they're the type of thing a novel is supposed to have and so they were thrown in to the book.

Of course, part of the reason I blast "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" here is out of jealousy. The book is better, by far, than anything I could ever write (me being the same age now as Chabon was when it was published). Clearly, Chabon is setting the stage for his later great writings involving similar situations - the ensemble cast in "Wonder Boys" (one of my personal favorite books of all time) and the love triangle in "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" (although that was a minor subplot).

Like a teenager shaving with a straight blade for the first time who nicks himself several times in the process, "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" isn't perfect, but it marks the beginning of an already great career, highlighted by a Pulitzer Prize honor, but not yet punctuated. (And with that poor imitation of a Chabon metaphor, this post is over.)

The Road

A few days ago I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Road"(first published in 2006), but it has taken me a few days to really absorb it.

You'd think that with a cover like this, I would have at least a hint of the unnerving bleakness that was the theme of the book. But you'd be wrong.

The novel is set in a post-unnamed-cataclysm world, in which some catastrophe has led to the atmosphere being encased in a smoky cloud cover, effectively killing all the world's plant life (and, thereby, all the world's animal life). The few remaining humans are left to scrounge the earth for the remaining cans of food and other resources, such as fuel for fires (because, apparently, without the sun, it gets pretty cold during winter).

Through this dark world (pun intended), the reader follows a peripatetic man and his son, as they relentlessly follow a tattered map to the coast, where the man has hung his last best hope of finding any sort of civilization (although it is clear to the readers that this hope is completely unfounded in this fictional reality).

A story about a relatively silent man and boy walking around in a world without sunlight would be pretty boring. To add intrigue, then, McCarthy has them encounter various other survivors and horrific situations including a bit of cannibalism (because humans are the last source of meat on earth). This book is not for the faint of heart. McCarthy's prose is as stark and as brutal as the story described, but also hauntingly beautiful - as if the descriptions and metaphors used would be the type of literature a survivor would write.

The book itself is chilling in the way it portrays many of the darker sides of the way we live today, as well as presenting terrible choices that nobody hopes to ever make. In a dying world, would you be the type of person to keep surviving through the killing of others, or to kill yourself (which is what the man tells the boy to do if he were ever to be confronted by the cannibals), or to just keep moving on and clinging to baseless hopes? Would you rather wander the earth silently on your own to eventually die by yourself, or would you take a companion or join a group and risk their betrayal the next time the food runs short? After reading a scene in which the boy drinks what is perhaps the last soda in their molding world, I slowed down to savor my next Dr. Pepper and appreciated something I so often take for granted.

I am still puzzled by the novel's final passage, regarding the trout that once swam in the world's streams. The book ends with the line "In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed with mystery." It is the only point in the book which does not focus on the man or the boy (or, does it?), and I am not quite sure how I am supposed to feel about it. (Based on the rest of the novel, though, I doubt it's meant to make the reader feel bright and bubbly.)

I will not soon forget this book, its words, and the characters and world and images it presents. One passage in particular strikes me as one morbidly worth sharing and contemplating (although I don't know why):

He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the interstate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it. (p 130)

Harsh sentiment, good writing.

Lies My Teacher Told Me

Last week, I finished reading Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen. First published in 1995, the book analyzes twelve common high school American history textbook in regards to both the actual facts presented as well as the way in which the history is presented.

The opening volley of the text uses history textbook treatment of Christopher Columbus's voyages to condemn the textbooks as Euro-centric by pointing out the ways in which they omit certain facts, distort other facts, and (in some cases) invent undocumented facts. Most of the rest of the book follows this same pattern. There is also a breakdown of the process of "heroifcation" that takes place in textbooks, in which historical figures are presented as unblemished and ideal, rather than the flawed figures that they are. For example, the book points out that while most history textbooks mention Helen Keller overcoming her blindness and deafness, but not a single one mentions that she became a noteworthy radical socialist.

One of the more interesting chapters (actually, pair of chapters) discusses the disappearance of race (both racism and anti-racism) in American history textbooks. There is little to no mention of the history of explicit racism which saturates American history. In doing so, then, the textbooks prevent students from understanding complex historical figures. For example, the abolitionist John Brown is always presented as being a lunatic when, in fact, he was a highly intellectual person. But to discuss his intellect would reveal to the students that he spent much of his time arguing against racism, which is a taboo subject, so the students are only given a simplistic view of the man, which prevents them from truly understanding his motivation.

It is also funny Loewen points out how textbook authors strategically use the passive voice in writing, which effectively prevents students from seeing any causality in history. For example, he cites one textbook which, in discussing the Korean War, claims simply that "in June, 1950, war broke out" without any discussion of how the war broke out or what caused the conflict.

The title is a bit misleading because the book really condemns the American history textbook publishing industry and state textbook adoption methods (of which teachers are only a small part). But I guess a title along the lines of "Lies My American History Textbook Presented Me With and Which the State Textbook Adoption Board Approved, Making Them Complicit in My Miseducation" would have been a bit clunky.