1984: Before I Was Born

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1984, Capote, Harper Lee, history, In Cold Blood, literature, New York City, Pineapple, To Kill A Mockingbird, Truman Capote, Willow, writers, writing

Truman Capote died before I was born.

I’m sure I knew he had, because I had looked it up to tell my students last year. Today, for the first time, I typed his name into the Wikipedia website. I never type things I care about into the Wikipedia website. It feels like I’m cheating on the things I love. A literary adulterer taking the shortcuts to learning.

My husband asked me this week what year my favorite writer died. I said I didn’t know. I said maybe he hasn’t. He could be 87. I felt shame where knowledge lacked. Only hope spoke. Wouldn’t it be neat if he hadn’t died? If I had just sat on the steps of what was once his home and he still was? Truman Capote, alive! Arguably the most prolific writer of our time—alive! The man who changed the nonfiction novel with one controversial work, still wearing top-button-unbuttoned shirts under suitcoats and telling buzzed stories at the most party of all parties somewhere in this city. And we could be sharing air. Ahh…

I knew we weren’t. I just hadn’t learned him exhaustively yet. Or that his life had been exhausted.

All his works, I knew. The quirks of his life piqued my interest. I knew he was a lonely boy, that his friend, our literary hero, Harper had probably modeled her To Kill a Mockingbird character after him. The secret labyrinthical details of In Cold Blood, I had memorized. Dick’s deranged childhood, I’d researched. His special relationship with Perry; I’d asked all the questions there were to ask. The murdered Kansas family and those killers, that was the work that drew me to him.

I just didn’t know that there was no more know to know. Not since 1984, the year before I was born.

On Literature

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Barnes and Noble, books, downtown, free events, friendship, life, literary event, literature, memories, new york, New York City, November, NYC, past, subway, Umberto Eco, Union Square, urban

With my last wish, I’d turn the clock back just four hours today and wait outside Union Square’s Barnes and Noble with hipsters and literary buffs. I’d wait for Umberto Eco, who I wouldn’t recognize if I had a lunch date with him. Still, I’d wait.

I’m something of a literary buff, you see. Or I at least, I play one in real life. But Eco is one Irish author whose name I turn my head to out of nostalgia, not knowledge.

When we first started talking about books, it could have been dead end conversation. It should have, maybe, been dry analysis over red-marked high school essays. She was, after all, nearly five years my junior. I had almost finished college. She hadn’t started.

But she loved Umberto Eco. We used to drink coffee as if we liked it—I think maybe she did—and browse bookstores, where I still love to get lost. Eco was sometimes stacked in hardback beneath a dark-stain ladder. Name of the Rose or On Literature, a cover I liked for its book spine after book spine, all in browns.

I went to a café and independent bookstore in Soho this evening, trying to made good on a deal to myself to get out and see the literary spots in the city. There was a nonfiction reading nearby which I walked to but couldn’t find. Lots of work this week makes my body scream for rest anyway; came home without too much disappointment. And some writing lodged up to boot. Browsing my internet bookmarks, I saw that the Eco event had transpired in Union Square. He had discussed his new bestseller, The Prague Cemetery. I’d walked up to Union Square on my way home from the café. While Eco was happening. We were so close.

I’ve still never read an Eco book. Almost bought the one with the book spine cover once, but I was feeling cheap and put it back on the wrong shelf. But I had this friend once who would have gone to this discussion had she known. Had she been here. She wouldn’t mind about the lines and the crowds and the fandom that tries to drink away the energy from literary nerds of all ages and stages. Or maybe she would, but all of that fades away for the one unique note of brilliance she might be able to hear Eco utter above the buzz.

I think I’ll buy On Literature.

Crime Novels

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authors, bookcase, books, bookstore, fiction, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, library, literature, reading, recommendation, Schulers, Steig Larson

There are all kinds of books out there, all kinds. If I get to have it my way, most of them will line the walls of my living room. I won’t need to choose wallpaper, regardless of the fact that it’s going out of style in fast forward. I’ll spend barely moments in the paint aisle, choosing colors for our four walls, though I’ve always had fond feelings toward those little matte finished paint strip samplers they give you at the hardware store. My walls will be like secret panels behind floor-to-ceiling bookcases. When we’re home, we’ll be surrounded by spines of all kinds.

But for now, I read what I know. I read books that are like what I already know that I like. I read on recommendation. I join and create book clubs, even when that just gives excuse for you and me to read together and talk on the phone. What I don’t usually read are crime novels.

I met a gal fortuitously, Migsy, who loves the new Steig Larson series about the girl with the tattoo who kicked the nest, played in the fire and all that. I, too, fell to the craze for about seventy pages of the first book in his three-part series. Now, I don’t usually put books down. I even love holding them and fingering the page corners. But it was too slow, too boring, too uneventful and packed with business language of the most painful kind for me. I dropped it and dove into another book that I read cover to cover.

Now, in this meeting, our late-night conversation, Migsy may have turned my sour heart right around and have me picking up the book I buried on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. I like her enough to trust her literary opinion. But seventy pages speak to other way, so I guess we’ll have to see.

In my investigation at the local bookstore, I asked the clerk about authors that Migsy might like. I told her how I hated the book, but would be willing to give it a second try. She explained that my reservations were common, that quite a few folks, I guess, struggle through the first hundred pages. While this seems an oddly anti-strategic writing style, I digress. She directed me to a section of Nordic fiction, Swedes and such who were all in cahoots with the likes of Steig Larson. We stood among crime fiction, a section unfamiliar with the reading-likes of me.

I surveyed the covers, read the back flap synopses and took three books to my café table for some dinner reading. One book, black cover, red letters, had me hooked. I read the first fifty pages while eating my turkey and avocado sandwich, Mediterranean salad without feta, and turkey chili, following Harry, this detective, watching tapes of peculiar bank robberies. Migsy’s gonna love it! And I’m a reader of crime novels, now. Aw, sheesh.

Fiction

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chracters, conflict, fantasy, fiction, genre, literature, love, non-fiction, plot, resolution, storyline, struggle, writing

I asked my students in class the other day: “True or False: We almost always draw from the truth in order to write fiction.” Both of my English classes were divided about half and half.

First of all, who’s responsible for teaching these kids test-taking skills? A question is almost always false when the statement has definitives like “always” and “never” in it. Aside from petty details, they weren’t sure about truth and how much of it belonged where.  That’s fine.  Posing the question was more of a litmus test than a quiz grade. 

The answer is true; we can only create from what we know. We cannot create eh nihlio, which is altogether another discussion for another time.  All we needed to understand was that fiction is, essentially, birthed from pieces and scraps of non-fiction, even though the very definition tells us that it’s imagined or made-up in the mind of the author.  Tricky stuff.

But what about the inverse? The reverse, the backwards.  If we flip it around, are we still so sure? Is there any way to create or even fabricate reality from the fictions we imagine? If we can bend over and steal handfuls here and tidbits there from what is real to create worlds we’ve never lived in and people we’ve never met, people who never were and can’t be met…then can we not just as easily bend back the other way with these double-dipping hands of ours?

If you say I can or that it might work out, I’m turning around.  I’m changing my plan.  I’m flipping my supposed truths, if there’s a chance. I’ll plant my feet firmly in green fiction grass. It’s morning, or dusk, it’s whatever I want it to be because it’s fiction and the rules are mine.  I want it to be whatever I want it to be…so badly.

If this backwards borrowing works, I’ll spend my days stooped over the borders, fuzzy and gray, pulling the things I love and miss from the real into the new. I’ll take friends I can’t leave and foods that I like. I’ll take places I’ve been and ideas that I’ve had. Chicago will come, but only places that are mine: bakeries and cupcake shops, the whirlyball place on Damen. I’ll take the hockey rink on the beach, Lake Shore Drive at midnight, no traffic, thank you.  I’ll take the walk home from work, waiting for my train, but none of the nights when I ran; I’ll take the nights we all closed down the Exchecker, Coronas and limes.  I’ll take an order of sushi from Tank up in Irving Park where, in non-fiction, we don’t live anymore.

But nevermind the list of things I’ll take.  This fiction is ours and we’ll remake all the things we’ve shared. What I’ll take are things to show you.  I’ll fill my suitcase with things from when you were gone; things I can give like gifts.  Like my summer in the Springs, every mountain, every time it rained,the dusks I pulled off the highway to watch the sunset jockey with the Rockies, or else I’d have crashed.  With me, I’ll bring hockey lingo I learned and couldn’t share, this idea for a non-profit art campaign that you’d like but wouldn’t listen, new music, this job, fantasies of a first kiss that I’m happy and sad we never had.  Bring something from the apple, even though I found it too big to take a bite. Bring all kinds of music, I love you like that. Bring my stick that you stole, I’m not mad, just don’t forget.

Anything I’m forgetting? Don’t pack light, this is it. We only dip once. One chance to snatch reality, before we’re trapped in our own story.

A story.  Just a story.  Time ticks on, creeping along a line that spells out P-L-O-T.  You and me, the characters tied up in action, tied up in each other, to each other, hopelessly or perfectly, all tied up.  And conflict, conflict, conflict. Every story has a resolution.  It’s test question number twenty-three.  I try to quit wondering what ours will be.  What it will be when our feet are green from romping around in dew-soaked fiction grass, borrowing from the world, writing a story that they simply refuse to publish.

Addiction, Obsession, Infatuation. The Library Book Sale.

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addication, book sale, books, library, literature, reading, used books

Addiction isn’t something to take lightly. I come from a family where it’s branded into the skin of our thighs, seared so deeply with cast iron molds stoked hours in the furnace, that we must live entire lifetimes facing the other direction to overcome the tendencies of addiction. A lifetime is the time it takes for those brands to scar. No, addiction is no game. It’s not to be played with and tossed around in jest and circus.

So, although I find myself addicted as we normally understand the concept, I’ll call myself enraptured. Or maybe obsessed. Infatuated? The point is, I have a problem. The resources here in West Michigan are limited. So, I’m trying to teach classes and live my life. Mostly, teach classes; I don’t have much of a life here yet. I love the library, so I pop in there to get books, cd’s, movies, all kinds of resources because I think myself hip and fun regardless of the complaints from American Literature students that Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe are boring and I find a treasure that we don’t quite have in the Chicago library system. Not to this caliber.

The Spring Lake Library System, near where I live has a special little room near the entrance where they hold a continuous book sale. It’s the first place I go when I stop in at the library. Or when I drive through Spring Lake. Or whenever I turn right out of the driveway or am even entertaining the possibility of leaving the house at all. I told you, it’s a problem. I’ve purchased, to date, somewhere in the vicinity of 15 books at the library in the past few weeks. Yet I haven’t spent the resources buried in a ten dollar bill. How about that?

Two quarters for a paperback. Any yellow sticker, a tiny little dime. There are brand new hardcover novels and creative non-fiction essays in there for a dollar and a quarter! Insanity.

I’m addicted to the low prices. I mean obsessed, infatuated, enraptured. I cannot avoid them. I cannot pass up the book sale. I can’t walk out of the library without a new book. A book, not to borrow, but for keeps. I’m a non-shopper and a generally immaterial chick, so it’s strange that I’m coveting, loving, feeling like I need these old books with torn bindings. But here they come, filling the shelves, my desk, my trunk and backseat. Soon my roadtrips will be only me and my books, no room for friends, assuming I make some around here, riding miles and miles together to escape into fantasies.

Book Log: January 2010

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book, book club, Brouwer, Bryson, CS Lewis, Damrosch, Diamant, entertainment, fiction, Henderson, january, literature, nonfiction, Plaut, review

[Dear Mister Miller, You were my inspiration to launch this section of my blog. My 7 1/2 readers can thank you if they feel so inclined.]

Danger in the Shadows Dee Henderson    
My first endeavor into the Christian fiction genre was this thriller about a gal who had a traumatic childhood experience and is trying to live her writer life with danger still looming over her. The backstory was unveiled with wonderful pacing, and I was drawn in by the details of the FBI-based plot. I thought I’d just abhor the love story I saw budding between the protagonist and a famous athlete who met in a chance elevator crisis, but I quite enjoyed his diligent and honorable pursuit of her. The details were engaging, the emotions of the characters were transferred to me, the reader, and though the end was happy (as expected) there are more books in the series!

The Red Tent Anita Diamant    
Recommended by a friend who was curious about the true Bible facts in this Biblical fiction work, I picked up The Red Tent, excited to discuss the story from the book of Genesis. Early on in my reading, I adopted a cold attitude towards the narrative. I found many details that were quite liberal in the “spaces” they filled between the Biblical truths of Jacob, his wives, and their children. As I continued, my composure softened; I realized that the novel wasn’t trying to rewrite the Genesis narrative but rather tell a fictional story rooted in that historical time period from the female point of view. I came to appreciate the rich cultural details and even some of the suggestions that pose legitimate Bible questions (were Dinah and Joseph childhood friends, since they were close in age?). It’s encouraged me to engage more with the historical fiction genre.

The Four Loves C.S. Lewis    
I began this book over the summer, trying to learn how to best love various friends who were geographically far from me. C.S. Lewis always proves to be a difficult and head-y read. It’s a book I learned intense information from, but I need to read it slowly and methodically to understand the rich concepts that Lewis is suggesting. He presents a great distinction between the loves: affection, friendship, eros, and charity, and makes the connections to practical living obvious.

Service Included Phoebe Damrosch    
All the waiter books I’ve read are all basically the same – it’s the story of someone else living the life I also and already live (yet she’s making a yearly salary from her words, and I still scoop dollar bills off the tables). It’s tough. There are an endless amount of stories from waiting tables, but eventually it all tends to sound the same. This read was engaging, interesting to me because it was set in a dining room much finer than the one in which I work. I liked reading about 10,000 dollar bottles of wine and the sommelier who sold them. A good read, but nothing marking it as a standout from the rest.

I’m a Stranger Here Myself Bill Bryson    
A collection of very brief articles by an American who’s lived the better part of his adult life in England and has returned with his British wife and family to the United States. His fresh eye to all things American and his light, satirical voice had me laughing aloud throughout. This is a wonderful piecemeal read; great for traveling and situations where interruptions are frequent.

Hack Melissa Plaut    
A memoir of sorts about a degree-holding young gal who hates the office life and in her quest to be a real adult, decides to get her “hack license” and start driving taxicabs in New York City. The front end of the book is more impressive than the back half. Maybe it’s like waiting tables – the stories are endless, but after a while they’re all just stories and they lose their luster. She tells about passenger after passenger – some stiff her, most ask her about being a chick cab driver, some are angry, she gets tickets, crashes into other cars, sees a woman stuck under a truck, waits in traffic, and gets the finger all the time. But she’s a cab driver, not a writer, and it shows. Maybe I should drive a cab, for a change of pace? This book wasn’t convincing enough.

Out of the Shadows Sigmund Brouwer    
Another Christian fiction attempt, this one not as thrilling as the last. Brouwer does well as creating anticipation, but saves all that matters for the last few pages. The ending suffers. The suspense is dragged out too long. In Henderson’s book, I wanted to read the pages in between the “now” and the “big surprise”. But in Brouwer’s novel, I often wanted to skip pages ahead to see what he was making me wait two more chapters for. This author also writes young adult sports novels and an adult western series – maybe those are worth a peek.

What Do We Read?

Tags

1980's, American Psycho, authors, books, Bret Easton Ellis, entertainment, excess, genre, literature, reading, Rules of Attraction, social satire, writing

A stack of twelve-teen books from the library sit on my desk. Which ones do I read?

A list of books three pages long, three columns wide, size 10 font, Times New Roman typeface is saved on my computer in alphabetical order. It’s been growing at a rate much faster than that which the strikethrough lines have been inching their way through titles since my second year in undergrad. Which ones do I read?

I have a file in my drawer of hanging files for writing related things that says “fresh ideas.” In there are upwards of twenty pieces of chit paper from the receipt printer at the restaurant that have handfuls of favorite book titles written by dozens of co-workers since 2005 to the present and counting – books these individuals who I come to love think I should read. Which ones should I, then, read?

***

It’s been years since I’ve seen the movie American Psycho.  I guess I don’t remember distinct series’ of scenes like you sometimes do from movies you watched years ago that made an impact.  I remember the cover –  Christian Bale’s character, a rich face sliding out from behind a gleaming knife blade and all of it rising from a dark, ominous background.  I remember him living a lie.  I remember addiction in everything.  And too much of everything.  But I never did read the book.  Maybe with intention, maybe not.  But I also didn’t believe in much of anything then – and that plays a part.

Bret Easton Ellis was recommended to me by a friend more recently, however, and I reevaluated my reasoning for abstaining from this literature…any literature for that matter.  Let me break for a moment to be very clear.  I love to read. Love.  Love.  Love.  Forget time management and graduate school and the fact that lately, I’m notoriously tired despite the twelve hours of sleep I’m getting each day.  I still worship the written word and have upwards of nine items on hold in the South Suburban Library System at any given time.  I consider my reading palette vast and open-minded and I try to keep it that way intentionally.   I enjoy reading about things that I don’t know about; after all, isn’t part of the fun in it all the fact that we are humbled by the thrill of learning more than we know?  Okay, since we’re all clear on that, we can return to our regularly scheduled program.

Ellis writes novels like American Psycho based primarily on a style called social satire.  There are a number of views on this style and even more nuanced views when Ellis’s particular work comes into play, none of which I am going to spend any time slicing and dicing.  I explored them and if you care, you can – but you won’t.  Because this was my little project and research component to make a relatively small personal decision about my own reading habits.  And it worked, and I did, and Ellis got the boot.

Most of my skepticism is in the fact that I don’t really buy into Ellis’s concept of social satire as a justification for how he breaks the rules of literature.  I’ll use another author here as a foil.  I think my favorite author is David Foster Wallace.    He recently died tragically by suicide in his forties, a brilliant man.  Wallace broke all the rules.  They do say in writing that you have to know the rules in order to break them.  And that you have to follow them for some time before gaining the respect to prance around as an acclaimed rule-breaker.  Both true  to the deepest degree of Wallace.  My historical background of Ellis isn’t strong.  It’s weak, in fact.  But those who talk him up to me attach Rules of Attraction to his name as a foundational work – you know, one that will cause recognition to bloom in hesitant faces.  Rules of Attraction follows no rules.  From what I’m learning about Ellis, he’s not a guy who cares one lick about following literary rules.  Maybe he just has his own plan to follow and it’s a smidge out-of-context with the American literary scene.  He seems a bit self-obsessed and it crawls into his novels about every third publication, so maybe that’s a factor.  I’m not sure.  But he’s too rebellious of a genre and an art that I respect for me to support his riots.

In essence: Ellis produces this piece of artwork (his novel, American Psycho) that claims to be a social satire on the era of excess that the 1980’s spends its days spiraling towards.  The novel is a hit with a huge crowd of folks for its brilliance in capturing the overwhelming concept of excess hidden behind a day-to-day facade.  The form and shape that excess takes in Ellis’s novel borders literary pornography, with violence in detail far beyond a plot-driven need.  The excess that society has derailed into is disgusting, true to a fault.  But Ellis does not capture this.  Ellis fails to socially comment on excess, but instead adulterates the literary functions that artists with his gift are offered with the pen and the page.  Using violence, or any other display of excess, I think Ellis could have depicted a rise above this pattern of social demise and cleverly commented on American excess in the 80’s.  Instead of commenting on the nation’s patterns, he participates shamelessly in them.

Magic (Nothing about) Christian(s)

Tags

Bob Dylan, books, character, Christian, Christianity, Jesus Christ, literature, Magic Christian, music, novel, story, Terry Southern

There’s a book by Terry Southern. The margins are thick, lots of white space, less than a hundred pages of goings-on. It’s called The Magic Christian, a name which is a whole hearted misnomer at face value.

The little white novel is said, though verified to what degree – I can’t be sure, to have been the book that Bob Dylan used to have with him all the time as he was getting cleaned up and, however nominally, faith-based. He’d carry it under his arm maybe as a pretense, or maybe because he was leafing through it for a third or fourth time, who’s to say? But I thought reading it might give some insight further into his elusive character.

As it turns out, the book is a thousand surprises. It hardly carries my curiosity page after page to find out how the absurdities of this character, Guy Grand, will come to mean anything at all. My curiosity, you see, is strong.  And it’s not quenched by a monotonous plotline with no peaks in the action, or in my below-sea-level of intrigue.  It’s just that, too many pages of this Guy Grand and his antics without explanation begs some questions.  The protagonist is strange.  No, it’s something more than that, further off the charts than your day-to-day out of place person. If I knew him, I’d hear people call him out of his mind, and say he’s lost his marbles. Insane! Ridiculous! Unbelievable! Asinine! We, today, wouldn’t tolerate his games for even a second.  Yet he carries on in these frivolous pranks of his, unexplained, and without clear motive or resolution.

I can’t tell if he thinks they’re a good idea.  Or if he thrills at fooling America’s brightest bulbs.  Why doesn’t he earn a reputation for failure?  Can his money really buy such a clean slate time and time again?

For example, to simplify the particulars of my favorite trick: he buries hundreds of thousands of dollars, in bills, deep within a city block-long pile of warm manure and urine mixture.  And after painting a sign that says “free money”, he pays off the police to turn their heads for the morning, gets on a plane, and flies across the country to his home. No motive as far as I can tell, just a lot of money and some kind of unearthed desire towards the impossible.  And the chapter, of course, ends without the faintest explanation.

The “Magic Christian” doesn’t appear until the final few chapters of the novel.  It’s a boat.  A yacht or Titanic sort of enterprise that Guy Grand buys, as he does repeatedly to large corporations and organizations throughout.  Passengers have to apply for a spot on the cruiseship.  It’s only for the most elite.  But, there’s an element of facade to all of that, because Guy stows away half a hundred outcasts and weirdoes below deck, for release among the pristine passengers a few days into the trip.  He creates a plot of kidnapping and abuse through this video feed of the boat’s captain which, as planned, pushes passengers to see the mental health doctor aboard ship, who must be in on the plot.  But, for what, I cannot discern.  Guy Grand, himself, is on the boat as it turns into total chaos, but he just ignites protests among the unknowing passengers.  On and on it goes, until the boat returns home and Guy, as he has done for each prank thus far, pays off anyone who knows the truth in order to keep things hush hush.

So why this clustermess of a story under the arm of this legendary singer-songwriter?  I toyed with the idea that he sees some tongue-in-cheek parallels between the facade and the truth of Christianity, but I can’t even find the details to put together that simple theory.  I could be Dylan’s sincere view of Christianity, unreflective of Christ in any way, which would explain a pretty little thing or two.  It could also be that the whole situation lacks a single connection, and I’m tearing my hair out for nothing.  The book has nothing to do with Christians, Dylan’s never read it, he never even carried it like they say.  But.  I can’t shake a feeling that there’s something beneath the vanity of Guy Grand’s ideas.  I can’t get at it just yet, and can’t fathom how Dylan had it figured out.