A very special Tuesday evening edition of TDAOC

So, it's Tuesday night, and it's July 12, and by process of illogical mathematical induction, that means I have all sorts of wacky blog-ish business to conduct tonight. So if you happen to be having a terribly slow night--just you, a nice chilled glass of filtered water, and your browser's refresh button--you might check in here every now and then to see if I actually do accomplish any of the things I've been telling myself for the last week that I should accomplish.

The parentheticals (I've really just gotten too lazy to use Advanced Footnote Technology anymore, if you haven't noticed):

1. (The way I see it, it's common blogger practice to warn you of impending and/or apologize for recent lack of blog activity; so I see no reason why I shouldn't warn you of upcoming and/or apologize for imminent overactive blog activity. So, consider yourself warned. And apologized to. Really. I'm sorry.)

2. (Likely is though, I'll plan on interjecting bits of blogging between chunks of Steve Erickson reading, only to find that I've completely forgetten everything I've meant to blog. But, who knows--maybe I'll scratch out something worth your while. Or at least something that won't really annoy you. Being the proprietor of the crappiest lit/Cleveland blog on this side of the river of your choice, I mostly hope to not annoy you too much. Of course, if you're the type of person easily annoyed by warnings, apologies, parentheticals, or 50x50 abstract images of smoke, then I've already failed you. I won't apologize to you for it though. Unless it would annoy you more if I didn't. In that case, and only in that case, am I sorry.)

Steve Erickson's Tours of the Black Clock

I can not, in good conscience, recommend reading all of Steve Erickson's books in a row. Backwards or otherwise.

You see, when I picked up Our Ecstatic Days from the library, it was random. I'd gone to the library looking for some other books. I'd checked the online catalogue and confirmed that those other books were there, at the library. Of course, they weren't. Or, if they were, they weren't on the shelves, not on any shelves I could find. Our Ecstatic Days (along with another novel that has been sitting on my coffee table, untouched since I brought it home with me) was a sort of consolation prize. An "Oops, your first draft pick got stolen from under your eyes, how about you take home this little black volume with the neat title art and that weird typographic stuff going on" book. A book that began whispering to me, when I set it on the back seat of my car. A book that began to beckon with the seductive dance of promise when I set it on my coffee table while I finished Brave New World. A book that emanated waves of my own desire, every time I picked it up to ask it to be quiet a bit longer, just a little while more. A book that was actually holding me, when I thought I was the one with the hands.

This year wasn't supposed to go this way. I was planning on reading broad, not deep. I was going to let reading go for a while when I had to write and I was going to skip a night or two of writing when the endings of novels demanded to be reached and read. I wasn't supposed to give up half a month, a month's worth of writing, filling my head with the logic of memory and altered time until my brain felt full and my pillows seemed incapable of supporting the weight of so much mentally consumed mass. I wasn't supposed to put one book down with one hand while picking up one other book with one other hand.

But here I am, and here you are, and here is where we're at. And you're wondering what the big deal is.

The deal is this: Steve Erickson writes dream-knots of thistles and thorns, knots that tie into each other--knots, themselves, become the string from which dreams are tied. A tangle of ideas and memories, connections improbable and unlikely prose made harmonic. You put the mass in your hands. Your fingers are compelled to untie. But you're untangling nothing. You're only transferring, from the knots, to your mind.

It's said that Steve Erickson's books are unclassifiable. But. From Wikipedia:

The term post-rock was coined by Simon Reynolds in issue 123 of The Wire (May 1994) to describe a sort of music "using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbres and textures rather than riffs and powerchords."

...

As with many musical genres, the term is arguably inadequate: it is used for the music of Tortoise as well as that of Mogwai, two bands who have very little in common besides the fact that their music is largely instrumental.

...

By the early 2000s, the term had started to fall out of favor. It became increasingly controversial as more critics outwardly condemned its use. Even the bands for whom the term was most frequently assigned (for example, Cul de Sac, Tortoise, and Mogwai) rejected the label that it placed on them. The wide range of styles covered by the term most likely robbed it of its usefulness.

That opening line of that article, I've had it stuck in my head for a while now, though the mind and time transformed it to something like: "the use of standard techniques to startling new purposes and effects".

Hold that thought. Now, from a Pitchfork review of an album by Explosions in the Sky (one of my favorite "post-rock" instrumental bands:

Most of us spend our lives sleepwalking through the daily routines, and sometimes it takes the "Jaws of Life" to rip open the perceptive confines that coincide with a life of ritualism. You awake one morning to the braying tone of your alarm clock and drowsily reach over to turn the damn thing off, only to find that the established procedure for doing so causes no reaction. You press the "Off" button two or three more times to make sure you haven't made an error in judgment as your senses become more acute and your emotions inflame. Something has usurped the authority of logic, shattering your rationalizations of many wildly complex and confounding variables, and schooling you in "possibility."

...

"Greet Death" opens the album innocuously enough with inaudible strumming that surfaces just long enough to be devastated by seething drums and scathing, distorted guitars. Such previously foreign abrasiveness is an immediate indicator that Explosions have rewritten their aesthetic principles while leaving their ability to wield a stark melody virtually unimpaired. As the dust clears and the sonic damage is assessed, the remaining feedback segues into a sober slide guitar, denoting a major transition in the song's emotional appeal. The track ends as a burgeoning riff of apocalyptic proportions is suddenly and unexpectedly smeared across the audio spectrum with digital effects.

These structural inversions are a primary signifier of Those Who Tell the Truth's sound. Arrangements are introduced and then dismantled, as though they're vying with one another for the listener's attention. Mogwai's Young Team is an obvious reference point; both records feature similar instrumentation and soft/loud dynamics. But where Young Team was content to methodically construct its walls of jarring white noise, Those Who Tell the Truth builds more erratically and, upon first listen, illogically. But with every subsequent listen, the internal organization of each song becomes more inviting.

"Structural inversions"? "Usurped the authority of logic"? "Erratically...Illogically...Internal organization"? "Possibility"?

Yeah, I think you can guess where I'm going with this.

Steve Erickson writes post-rock literature. A literature that uses the instrumentation of writing to reach a new purpose: textures, timbres. Moments that shift and change before you. There's almost a (sound-)collage effort at work, the way movements are crammed together, the borders between them whisper-dream thin, like cold wars of ideas. His structures, seen from one angle: sloppy. His structures, seen from another angle: awesome, in the service of more of those moments in any single book than some writers might get over the course of their entire careers. Those moments that leave you staring at the page, a "Wow" left unspoken in your gut. (If I ever get to write something as heartbreaking as the loss of Banning Jainlight's family, remind me I've been blessed.) Steve Erickson's literature is ultimately one of possibility. He proves that writing is, foremost, an act of imagination. And in imagining beyond the bounds of more typical works, he reaches the otherwise ungraspable. (The ungraspable what, you ask? Keep asking.)

Oh, yeah. And he makes your head hurt. A lot.

In the good way, of course.

Of course, I say all this somewhat tongue in cheek. The term, yeah, is inadequate. (Any only shmoe could come along here and slap a couple words together and say it's the signifier of Erickson's signifieds, don't make it so.) And yet, I think there's something to it--Explosions in the Sky, and especially Godspeed You Black Emperor!, the musics these bands make seem like cousins to Erickson's books. In an alternate universe where someone tries to turn his novels into movies, I'd be on the phone in a second, asking these bands to soundtrack Erickson's post-rock lit dream-knots.

And for all that, why can't I say: read them all, read them all now? Because, really, I don't have to. You'll read one. And, then you're going to feel one of two things: the need to read another, or the need to never go back. I don't know you well enough to know which route you'll take.

Steve Erickson's Arc d'X

Steve Erickson writes dream-knots.

If enthusiasm is infectious then I've gone off and made myself sick

My friend Chris, who has been mentioned oh once or twice here, finished Cloud Atlas last night. He liked it. (Understatement.) So, if you haven't read it yet because you don't trust the critics, and you got put off of it because you dislike me as a person, at least now you can say you have to read it, because you can trust Chris, that mystery friend of the guy with the crappy Internet site.

In daily TDAOC Steve Erickson news: I picked up his first three novels from the library today--and yes I know I know I should be buying everything and supporting the business of writing and etc and etc but I am poor and Cleveland's libraries are totally sweet and the two just feed off each other so well, and anyways I know I'll wind up buying them all eventually for underlining and note-taking purposes but right now I just need and there's no time to waste on Amazonian free shipping speeds--along with another book by another writer I'll maybe have the heart to read once I get done with the Steve Erickson oeuvre. I made sure to grab the books today because I figured I might need them this weekend once I finish Arc d'X. Which I did begin reading tonight after work--I got about 50 or 60 pages or so into it, and for those of you who have read it, the transition? Uh, yeah. Could this guy just stop surprising me and amazing me for a while? I mean, I knew that it was coming, I've read some stuff and I know a thing or two about how Erickson's books work by now, but holy hell cow in heat, that was one seriously stupendous page. Gosh. Pit Industrial Light & Magic and Weta Workshop against each other in a dazzling battle to the death and neither of them could have come up with a scene transition so totally that. (I mean, it was mega.) All of which is to say that, yes, I remain obsessed, and probably will remain obsessed until I read the last word of his first novel. And then for a while after that. (I've decided, arbitrarily, to save his heavy-emphasis-on-the-quotes "non-fiction" books for a rainy day, for those of you keeping score at home.) I feel like when I'm done I'm going to want to write this big huge draft of an essay of a paper about the works of Erickson and fill it with every thought he's plopped into my poor, inferior, mush brain (including the fact that I think I've definitively solved the question of "What genre are these books?" by appropriating a genre-name from the music world), but then I think I'm mostly just going to collapse and point at the books and grunt and cower for a while and hope the spectacle will convince a few other people to read some of his stuff, or at the very least that the spectacle won't scare all the people away from me forever. That'd be sad.

Enthusiasm, at least, seems to be infectious here in the literary quarter of Cleveland, the quarter I have loosely defined as "me, my girlfriend, and Chris". (There is of course totally more than us three here who read books--David Sedaris packed the house the other night with 700 people, or so the count went--but I neither make friends easily, being of a class of old-school Internet people who got into the computer-net scene due to shyness, nor do I get out very much.) The GF promises me she'll read Cloud Atlas someday, which is cool; because, she is cool, and because she trusts the opinions of the mysterious friend of that guy with the crappy Internet site. And Chris, who read the Mitchell book shortly after reading Ulysses, is all about the experimental literature right now, so he's mentioned his desire to pick up Our Ecstatic Days. (Well, specifically, he's expressed some hesitant interest in reading some Erickson, and I immediately renewed my library copy of OED and said I'd superglue it to his hands ASAP. I was going to tell him to go read some other stuff and come back to me with reports of its goodness or badness so I might have things to look into after I finish with Erickson, but dammit, I like being a pusher too much; if you need me on Sunday, I'll be down on the corner selling copies of OED to the neighborhood children out of my trenchcoat.) I'm kind of hoping someday I'll find a book to love which Chris will hate so I can invite him aboard to do a guest post in which he can offer up a withering, vicious critique of my pretentious claims of so-called "literary taste", in which post he can call me all the bad names in the world; just so long as he doesn't disagree with my assessment of Our Ecstatic Days because then I'd be forced to replace all instances of his name on this blog with the words "blundering doodoo head", if you get my drift, know what I mean, and etc and etc. (I kid, of course. Except, not really. Well, okay. Really.)

In any case. I might take off from Erickson for the weekend--somehow, "three day weekend" translates into "let's plan six days worth of activities" so reading time might scarcify itself for a while. Which means I probably won't post rambling three word posts about how great Erickson is for at least like 72 hours. Hopefully you'll use the time you'd usually devote to reading this blog to enjoy some food cooked on a grill along with a nice glass of iced tea or what have you. Me, I'm going to inadvertently sleep through everything I've planned on doing this weekend, and then grumble about it a lot. Then I'm going to watch some fireworks, because I do oh so love me some fireworks. America might be a pretty screwed up place sometimes but sometimes we can still make with the damn fine pretty.

Oh! But before I go. Speaking of my friend Chris, and speaking of my crappy Internet site, Chris informed me of something a while back, a something I've meant to mention here since, but have forgotten to do so each time I've meant to do so: he mentioned to me in an e-mail that, in that e-mail, when he'd typed "TDAOC", the spell-checker flagged that as a mis-spelling. He then mentioned that the spell-checker suggested that the possible correct spelling might be "Taco". I think this means that someday, we're all destined to get together and enjoy yummy Mexican food as one big happy crappy Internet site writing and reading family. Or maybe it just means that stoners subconsciously equate my blog with a sating of the munchies. You make the call.

Update: The Blogger spell-checker wants to replace "TDAOC" with..."teats". I will, for once, graciously shut up and leave the remainder of this joke as an excercise to the reader.

Steve Erickson's Amnesiascope

[ Okay first let me note: this isn't going to be terribly coherent. Sorry. Second let me note I might never get as coherent about this stuff as I want to. Which sucks. So. Let's just agree to blame it on the sticky heat of Cleveland and hope for the best. I promise I'll try harder when this is all done and over with. ]

--

There's moments of impossible beauty in this book. There's stretches of surprising humor. There's periods of obscure essay. There's chunks of, like, whatever, I didn't get it.

But most importantly, there's moments of impossible beauty in this book.

I'm not sure I can recommend everyone do what I think I'm doing right now, which is reading every novel Steve Erickson's published in one stretch, because, really, he's not writing books for everyone; and, based on what I know now, three down and four to go, I really don't think Amnesiascope should be the first novel someone reads by him, though that might be the bias of someone coming back to the book, having read it once who knows when, and reading it again after reading the two books that followed it. Really, I think Our Ecstatic Days is the book I'd say you'd have to read, of the three I've read so far. Of course, if you like that one, I can safely say you'll enjoy The Sea Came In At Midnight, and, then, you might like Amnesiascope which is altogether less experimental (I mean, one consistent narrator!) but still somehow slippery; his ideas like water molecules, rubbing against each other, the physics change the more you put together, the more you scale up.

Sorry if that makes no sense. I'm still kind of dizzy.

What else I'll say though is that I think I've mentioned that I read Amnesiascope a while back and then promptly forgot every single thing about it, which it turns out was a flat-out lie. There's chunks that, ok, seemed like strangers on a bus, for all I knew them. Then there's chunks where I could just about quote the sentences before I read them. Or when I read them I realized I'd been quoting them in my mind ever since, even without having a better understanding of the framework around them. Re-reading this book now convinces me that Steve Erickson, as much or more than most writers whose writings I've read, writes books that benefit, hell, vastly improve with re-reading. And if that's true, god knows what kind of hyperbole I'll be spewing when I someday come back to Our Ecstatic Days.

Steve Erickson's The Sea Came In At Midnight

Gosh.

Hopefully soon I'll have some time to gather up some of this whole experience and put some of that into words--until then, I imagine, I imagine I'll be having interesting dreams.

Steve Erickson's Our Ecstatic Days

So.

Uh.

Yeah.

Wow...

But you know, "can't" is such a strong word...

So I'm now two-thirds of the way through Steve Erickson's Our Ecstatic Days and the fact that I can't stay up tonight to finish it causes me emotional and physical anguish. Though the physical portion of that anguish might be the result of having eaten one too many slices of pizza a couple hours ago. Urp.

I'm tempted to say this book is Cloud Atlas's step-cousin--the evil bad acid flashback funhouse mirror step-cousin, that is. That's not exactly right of course but this book and that book do have me or did have me exploring similar areas of head-space, the kind of areas where the floor has a tendency to tilt wickedly in one direction or the other without warning or obvious cause in the most fascinating and beautiful ways possible. And those times when the floor disappears altogether? Yeah. Let's talk about those times someday. Somday after I peel myself off the ceiling.

Suffice it to say, ye who run the streets looking for your late-night "experimental fiction" fix should--barring immediate collapse of the book's awesomeness in the final hundred pages--get thee hence to a bookstore or your local library. I know I for one will likely be diving backwards into The Sea Came In At Midnight shortly after finishing Our Ecstatic Days.

Hello...and welcome to Darby phone! If you know the name of the exciting news you'd like to see, press OMG now...

Uh. Yeah. Hi! If you pressed OMG, I'm sorry, I got nothin'. But, I do got random points of potential interest. These begin in five..four..three..

• I've finally (thanks to the insistence of my girlfriend) read Brave New World, which, well, maybe I was missing the point, since I found myself occasionally thinking, "Hey! Sacrifice truth and beauty for happiness? That there ain't so right bad an idea!" Thankfully I managed to keep reminding myself that, hey, truth is beauty, and beauty truth, and that's all ye need to know and yadda yadda. So, no fear: I haven't given up my non-existent writing career in favor of hard drugs and orgy-porgies. Not yet at least.


• Now I've started reading Our Ecstatic Days by Steve Erickson. Me and Steve, we have an interesting history. The guy writes weird experimental surrealist fiction (sort of) which should be totally right up my alley. I actually discovered him in a used book store. (Well, his books. Not Steve himself.) Anyway, I think I thought the cover of Amnesiascope was pretty so I bought like three of his books; I read all of Amnesiascope though perhaps appropriately can't remember a single word of it today. I read part of Arc d'X before I lost track of it some fifty pages into it, and I think I read the intro quotes to The Sea Came In At Midnight but never got into the actual book itself. (One of the intro quotes is from a Bjork song. So.) So I've started this new book by him, because it sounds like it has a cool story line (something to do, I knew before going into it, with a lake appearing in the middle of Los Angeles) and it plays with type layout (somewhat a la The Trick Is To Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway which if you haven't read it you should drop this blog like a bad habit and go read it yesterday) and those are pretty much two things that, when thrown together, means I'm probably going to look at least twice. I read about a third of it today and now I'm not so sure I trust the ground beneath my feet. It's that wild. There's a doctor who listens to the voices of dying houses and the lake itself is a character and a small child who sees the world in the most fascinating ways and it jumps through time and there's lost love and the writing itself is simply stunning and beautiful and he pulls an element of history into the story that I didn't think I'd ever see used in this sort of scenario or way and...yeah it's kind of a trip. I'm tentatively thinking I'll not only finish this book, but I'll remember it when I'm done, and then I'll go on to read The Sea Came In At Midnight sometime soon because I guess this new book is sort of a sequel. Looks like the bizarre is back on the menu, boys.


• I've pretty much tossed out working on everything I thought I was working on writing-wise this year and now I'm working on a new story and I think it's going to be really damned good, if I stick with it for a while longer. Yeah, that whole churning out a story a month idea I had going on there for a while? Good idea at first, stupid idea today. This story's in third person which usually leaves me feeling like I've brought a golf club to a baseball game, but it seems to be working better right now than anything else had been working for a month or two there, so hey. Why not.

Note to self--realize March ended a while ago

You might remember that, for a while there, I could not shut up about Stephen Dixon. And, while I won't start babbling about his fine, fine books Interstate and Frog right now--I'm still in Frog detox--I will point out that Edward Champion at The Litblog Co-Op recently revealed that his nomination for the Read This! selection was a Stephen Dixon book. Though I haven't read Old Friends I'm sure I will. Someday. Eventually. Then over at his blog, Return of the Reluctant, Ed offers some links of interest about Stephen Dixon, including an "essay" written by Stephen Dixon that should give you a pretty good sense of the guy's style. Let me put it this way: if you dig that paragraph, you'll likely dig his books; if you don't dig that paragraph, then I hope you'll at least still try one of his books, someday. (I suggest, again, Interstate. Mmm. Damn. That there's good readin'.)

While you're over at RotR, check out Ed's take on a James "Who da man? I da man! YOU ALL SUCK!" Kunstler book. (I have a story about Kunstler I'll relate soon. Eventually. Maybe never. It involves him being a dick, if that's any incentive for you to bounce back here again once in a while.)

And, uh, before you run away from RotR, here's a nice post about Angelina Jolie, if you're into that sort of thing.

Love is hard. Writing is hard. Loving writing? Hardhard.

That Oprah post...it sapped all my energy. (Don't ever let 'em say that linking things is easy work.)

Updates soon. But, let me note this: I've shied away from "OMG How To Write And Publish Your Mad 1337 Novel Doodz!!" books since I started writing, since, you know, us "real writers" (note the self-deprecating sarcasm there) know that you can't find the secret to writing in books, of all places (note the noted sense of sarcastic ironic self-deprecation there). I've stayed away from the guides and the how-to's because it seemed pretty obvious that in order to write one must write and that spending time reading about writing instead of actually writing was, best case scenario, counter-productive. (Never mind you for a second the amount of time I've spent playing video games, downloading legal MP3s, or staring off into empty space that could have been less guiltily spent actually writing. Never mind you those hours lost forever for a second.)

That said, the whole me and writing thing, it's been rough lately. At the risk of turning into a whiner: I've got no enemy but myself. I don't find the time to write, I can't settle my mind enough on writing when I am writing, I don't finish what I write, I don't submit what I finish--the list of ways in which I actively thwart my own (already, by the nature of the business, long and cruelly difficult) efforts towards fame, fortune, and potential readerships in the double-digits is staggering. In short (short for me, at least): there's a headspace where a young, daft, and almost comedically good-looking novice writer like myself has to be, but of late I can only occasionally catch a brief glimpse of that headspace somewhere over on the horizon as it mocks me by playing hopscotch with the sun. And dammit all if this Charon guy won't accept a wink and a nod for river-passage payment.

In short (almost honestly for real this time): my mind needs a good smackin'.

Luckily, I've been reading Slushpile (not "the slushpile" but rather a good litblog worth your bookmark) and they've run a few features on a book called 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might, for which I put down my above-noted bias in order to pick up from the bookstore today. (Click here for an intro to the book, click here for a review of the book, and finally, click here for part one of an interview with Pat Walsh, author of the book and a founding editor at independent publisher MacAdam/Cage. I'm looking forward to part two.)

So far I've read about a fifth of the book. I had to put it down because it just hurt. so. good. It's a slender little volume and it's written in a very engaging style--I've already read more little gems than I'll ever have the energy or will to quote here--and, well. It's probably about the strength of the mental slap I need right about now. He starts off with the first mistake he sees "writers" making, which is not actually having a book finished. (On the one hand, I can say I do have a finished book. So I was prepared to breathe a sigh of relief--"I'm zero for one! I'm zero for one!" before I checked the other hand, and realized I can't say much for anything that's happened since I finished that first book. And from glancing at the table of contents I can tell that I'm going to soon be told that you have to move on to the next book once you've finished the first one. Bugger!) Once Walsh gets rid of everyone who just talks about finishing a book, he focuses his attention on the rest of us (if I may humbly include myself in the "I do! I do have a finished book!" category) and starts to point out everything about why you're not actually really finished and/or why you totally suck as a human being and should just give up forever because you're never going to make it. You poser. (I think I'm on mistake 15 or 16 or so and, yes, I've cringed a few times, while responding to many other points with tentative gulps of, "I don't do that. I don't. I don't, right? Do I? Aww...") (And no, he doesn't call you a poser. Or suggest that you suck. Just that your book isn't good enough yet. I didn't mean to put words in his mouth. I'm just feeling a little emo about the whole thing, is all. Harumph.)

So, I can't say much about how this book ranks in the overall "Get Published ASAP And Be The Next Dan Brown!!!" category of books, but so far, in examining my own situation and relating the book to my current headspace, I've found it tentatively helpful, though painful. It's tough love, though. That's something. That's a good something. Right?

The truth can't save you now / The sky is falling down

There's all sorts of interesting talk out there about Oprah's selection of three William Faulkner books for her summer reading club. Maud Newton points us towards a New York Times piece on the story ("Mr. Howarth [mayor of Oxford, Mississippi] nevertheless doubted that much of Ms. Winfrey's audience would make it through a summer full of Faulkner. "With a good reading-group leader, they'll make it through 'As I Lay Dying,'" Mr. Howarth said. "And they'll make it through 'Light in August.' But they're going to start 'The Sound and the Fury' and say, 'What is this?' " He feigned throwing a book over his shoulder.") and a somewhat snooty (though constructive) response by Jesse Kornbluth at headbutler.com ("Good luck, ladies.") TD&OC blogger favorite Tod Goldberg chimes in ("I love the classics as much as the next fellow ("I was just listening to LL Cool J's "I Need Love" this morning: "When I'm alone in my room, sometimes I stare at the wall, and in the back of my mind I hear my conscience call." Classic.) but wouldn't it be nice if you talked about a book that maybe could cause a jump in sales for something Middle America really needs to read?"). The Bookslut blog sends us scampering over to Bookninja thread on the topic with--I gather, from a quick skimming--some fairly negative responses to the selection. (Not that--oh, wait, this is me here, not a quote, by the way--not that anybody's saying that Faulkner is bad or that his novels are bad but that if they were Oprah they'd have done things differently. Just to clarify.

That's a quick list of some notable posts from my usual litblog haunts. A quick Technorati search confirms that lots and lots of people have things to say about this pressing issue. (The Book Standard: "William Faulkner may soon replace Wally Lamb on your summer reading list." Of Life, Education, Ebay, Travel & Books: "I read some Faulkner back in college and he's not the sort of writer I'd tuck into my beach bag or bring along to while away a long airplane flight. He writes literature with a capital L." Mind the Gap: "I like Oprah. I like her book club. And this summer she is choosing Faulkner. I couldn't be happier." Er.. wait. That doesn't belong here. Next tab! Jeri Smith-Ready: "I appreciate her attempt to produce a more literate America, but five minutes with The Sound and the Fury may cause readers to gouge out their own eyes, thereby limiting themselves forever to audiobooks and books written in Braille." Localtint: "Reading Faulkner makes me feel hot, sticky, and uncomfortable, which, in its way, is a testament to his genius. But, innocent Oprahites, Amy Tan he ain't." And then there's this Just Another Smithie post which I'll just link to in its entirety, since it's, you know, positive and all. There's plenty more out there, just head back up to the Technorati link and have at it. Jeez, I'm not going to hold your hand through the entire Internet.)

So, you could click all the links I just posted up there to get a taste of the broad-ranging debate that's overtaken the Internet. Or, you could basically get the whole thing in one place. Here's what you do: you go back to The Great Litblog Co-op Debate Of Oh Five and start reading the comments. Except, in your mind, substitute "Oprah" for every mention of the LBC, "Faulkner" for every mention of Kate Atkinson, and "Those Three Faulkner Novels" for every mention of Case Histories. It pretty much works out to be the same thing.

Though it seems like I'm coming down hard on the Oprah haters--really, I pay no attention to Oprah, other than when someone walks up to me in public and points at my copy of The Corrections, which I keep on my person at all times so that when the apocalypse comes I can carry the book straight up to heaven with me, and they start to ask, "Hey, isn't he that guy that Oprah--" and they don't get to finish because I smack them in the head with the book--really, I ain't going so far as to say I'm "taking a side". I'm allergic to taking a side in issues. Someone usually (always) brings up some point that makes my side look, if not wrong, at least immature, and then I wind up feeling bad, and realizing I didn't know as much as I thought I knew, and then I've got no choice but to go home and cry like a baby. Honest, I just suck at debate, so I try not to debate. (I also suck at trivia, so I try not to be in situations where I'm s'posed to know stuff, either.)

But, inability to debate or make good points or know things or walk down the street without falling flat on my face in front of attractive people who will spill their sodas on me then take pictures and post them to the internet to mock me in a world-wide sort of webby way aside, I've got nothing against posting silly things on my web site here which nobody reads because I suck at posting silly things on my web site, so I'll go ahead and do this next thing, and then I'll get outta here and go play with my imaginary cat. And, of course, in conclusion, as always: I'm just sayin'.

Things that, in America, were, until recently, and arguably might still be, more popular than William Faulkner's novels; an incomplete list:

• The Michael Jackson trial
• Reality television
• Sunburns
• William Shatner
• McDonald's
• Paris Hilton
• Pornography
• Making fun of French people
• War
• Paying taxes
• Grocery shopping
• Not reading challenging literature

And, also...

Click here for a photo of a lemur.

76 brief views of Cleveland: #9

9.

For the longest while, you could enter the apartment building's parking lot from either side of the block. Then for a while, you couldn't enter from the north side, because a yellow chain was draped across the driveway between two yellow poles, sunk into concrete under the grass, to prevent people from using the apartment building's parking lot as their own private cut-through. The chain stayed up until one Friday night, Saturday morning, not so long ago, about three in the morning, when someone drove straight through it, at I imagine a speed high enough to be physically impossible, not stopping even when the impact made a sound loud enough to wake the neighbors, not stopping for a second as the car, truck, van, fighter jet, who knows, dragged the chain and one of the poles straight through the parking lot and out to the south. All that was left behind was the other pole, the one that didn't get ripped out of the ground, the pole that I found, when I arrived, five, ten minutes later, bent at a 90 degree angle, to be left parallel with the ground beneath it. Had I driven in to the lot that night those five or ten minutes sooner--the delay of a few minutes conversation with my girlfriend at the end of the night, the delay of random moments over the course of the entire evening--I'm sure I'd have seen it happen, and then I'd have been there to be, myself, a second, much more brutal, point of impact.

I've had problems; everyone's had problems. But when you try to gain perspective, try to put everything in its place, you realize: there's something troubling about living in a troubled city--a city that, it seems, slaps its own chains into place, chains that keep the city from going that way or that other way. And there's lots of talk of the chains. Of what's to be done with the chains. How to build around the chains. Who should manage the chains. What color should the poles be? How much concrete do we need to pour to hold them in place?

I wonder if what this city really needs is someone willing to slip behind the wheel, rev the engine, and say: Fuck the chains. Someone willing to drive through.

Also...

I may have mentioned my fascination with search engine terms, namely those that, when people punch them into search engines, they somehow then find my web site, in some cases, I believe, having to dive down into the 40th or 50th page worth of results to find my site. Every now and then some phrase that I use that I never for a second thought anybody would ever search for does rise to the top of the results. Like, for a while quite a while ago, I was the number one hit on Google for the term "bernie bernie lyrics". That right there is a point of pride for a 21st century digital Cleveland boy.

But now I've got one that...oh, just, gosh: I'm currently listed on the first page of search results on Google for the phrase "dildo cycle".

Honest.

You can check for yourself.

It's pretty thrilling. I mean, someone out there, was looking for a ... oh, the mind balks at comprehension.

Nothing to see here, really

When I wanted to say, "Hello, world," I learned HTML.

When I wanted to say it with bright shiny colors, I learned CSS.

Now I guess I want to learn to say it with WordPress, for no reason at all. That, it seems, requires learning PHP (because, when it comes to default templates--I quote Wil Smith: "Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww HELL no).

I guess in theory when I feel confident enough with the new set up to make the switch, it should--in theory?--be seamless. As in, when you come here one day, it will be the Blogger set up, and when you come here the next, it will be the WordPress set-up, and all the links and pages and feeds and such should be right where they were originally. Right? Or am I hoping for too much? I'm sure I'm hoping for too much. Bugger.

So if anyone out there has any "If I knew then what I know now" stories about designing a template for WordPress, feel free to let me know. It won't happen anytime soon, of course. There will have to be a weird sort of alignment between me having free time and me feeling motivated enough to learn complex tasks for this to get done. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy learning complex tasks, I mean, you don't just start dicking around with CSS because, you know, you've got absolutely nothing better in your life to do at that time (and, if that's how you learned CSS, I apologize, and beg forgiveness, I do not mean to offend). I dig the process of learning how to make stuff happen (even if actual execution might be sort of a personal downfall). That and, I guess it's marketable skill. Whatever.

Point being--if everything just completely falls apart here at some point, it's a site redevelopment thing, and if you stick with me, things will be okay again eventually. (If you're really bored, you might click on this link now and then to see if I've made any progress on a new layout/design. I wouldn't click it any time soon, though, with high expectations.)

-

Update: After reading several pages worth of googling, I've realized the whole "seamless" importing task might be...scary. Well, not scary. Scarier than I care to deal with. So I might just do a new blog, import all this stuff into it, and leave this blog here with huge notes at the top that say, "Hey, go, over there, for the fresh stuff." Maybe. I dunno. I'm thinking outloud (outblog?) here. I've been thinking of re-naming the blog anyways. As much as I like the title, I'm afraid there's probably a better title I should be using. Fresh layout, fresh title...jeez, I hope I don't get this antsy every six months.

A hello sent from another version of history

There's debate and discussion, out there, about physical books versus electronic books, audio books versus paper books. Can one replace the other, and so forth. When it comes to the defense our precious, physical, bound and printed texts, I think I can safely add this much to the conversation: you'll never be able to mark your page in an ebook with a receipt printed during a different version of history.


Looking for something to read tonight, I turned to the shelf of books I've bought over the last few years but haven't read; random books I needed to buy, not knowing how long they'd lay untouched in my living room or the trunk of my car. In the mood for a longer book, but nothing so dense as Foucault's Pendulum, I grabbed Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra. I couldn't remember buying it, though I've known I've had it for a while--how long, I couldn't have said; I could vaguely remember starting it, once upon a time, then losing track of it right away--for what reasons, I can't say.

Tonight, about thirty-odd pages into it, I found the receipt from Border's from the day I bought it. Not thinking much of it, I set it on the end table next to me, and went back to the book. Then I went back to the receipt. Some vague curiosity about whether I'd bought anything else when I'd bought Chandra's book, some other book I might enjoy reading, the way I'm enjoying Red Earth and Pouring Rain, if I gave it a second chance.

The other book I bought that day was White Noise by Don DeLillo.

I can't remember reading White Noise without remembering when I read White Noise, and as soon as I remembered reading White Noise, a book I probably shouldn't have been reading when I read it, I saw the date printed on the receipt: 09/09/01.


I remember sitting on the patio of the Arabica coffee shop near Case Western Reserve University the night of September 12, reading DeLillo's book by setting sun and dim outdoor lamp lights, reading about chemical clouds and shifting society. I was sick with the differentness of everything. Even as I knew that time and circumstance were doing things to my head as I read the book that weren't entirely healthy, I was enthralled with the book, and I couldn't stop reading it. While anybody with half a brain cell was looking for some kind of escape, those first days after, something that might make them feel better, or at least okay, but definitely not worse, definitely nothing emotionally or intellectually taxing, there I was, fascinated with the patterns in the dirt on the walls of the rabbit hole's tunnel.

It was a strange, powerful time. I suspect I shouldn't have read DeLillo's book when I did. I also suspect I had an immediate perspective on the book that nobody before, and nobody after, will ever have. Clouds on the ground; static in our brains.

Had I known three days earlier what I knew then, would I have still embraced it? Would I have still bought it? Would I have bought anything that day, would I have handed a clerk at Border's my debit card at 4:21 PM on a Sunday afternoon, signed my name on a slip of paper, taken unwitting pieces of my personal history away with me in a plastic bag? Would I be here today, right now, reading a book I don't remember buying, which I bought forty-odd hours before the entire course of my nation's history took a sharp, dodgy turn?

Where does the time go, when it's not being marked by a register receipt, lost between the pages of an unread story?

Read This? Read that. Where's my T-shirt?

Just finished Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, the Litblog Co-op's Summer 2005 Read This! selection. Which I liked. I did. I liked it. And probably wouldn't have read it otherwise, without that recommendation behind it. So.

That said. It's a strange book. I guess it's a mystery with a literary bent; a mystery literary novel, or a literary mystery novel. Whatever. Genre is crap. Take away a handful of conventions from any genre--the private investigator replaced with a guy, the alien races replaced with "other" people, the footnotes and self-referentiality replaced with focus on the tale itself--and all good books are good stories, each with their own ways about getting at bigger things. And I've found as much entertainment, though of differing types, in Stephen King and Fyodor Dostoevsky; don't let anybody suggest that thinking deep thoughts isn't essentially entertainment. Maybe that's all some weird inverted literary snobbery of mine, but whatever. I think it's true.

That said, I don't typically read mysteries. (But aren't all stories, at heart, mysteries? Don't we want to know whodunnit, though in the broader sense of why--why are these things, these things?) So I can't really say how this book deals with the conventions typical to that genre. There's a private investigator (who chain smokes). I can say that someone does get cracked in the back of the head with the butt of a gun. I can say that there are murders and missing people cases to be solved. There are plot twists. Several red herrings. There's even an explosion, which, conveyed in two short sentences, is one of the strangely funniest parts of the book. Beyond all that--can't say much of value.

What I can speak semi-(semi-semi-semi-)intelligently about is the literary merits of the book. There are literary merits to this book. Whew, that was easy. (Really good writing, by the way. Sort of an occasional fluidity to the prose that reminded of that of Paradise by A.L. Kennedy. Not in the same full-throttle way as Paradise though--just hints of it, here and there; a sort of recognition that a slippery sentence can occasionally be far more tightly compelling than the sharply-defined one. (This, of course, makes far more sense in my head, by the way.))

If I sounded troubled when I said before that I liked the book, it's because I am troubled about it, in that I did like it, even though the book left me feeling troubled. It's an odd book. Though I feel like most everything is wrapped up by the end of the story, I'm still left feeling like I missed major things--which might be related to that impulse to need to re-read the book shortly after reading it the first time that I believe one of the back-cover blurbs mentions. On the one hand, that might all just be me being a flawed reader; on the other hand, it might be right where the book wants me, the bum off the street reader, to be. I suspect this book is pointing towards stories where the plot lines (as there are more than one) can be concluded, but the ideas and thoughts and reactions generated by those plot lines, not so much. Or maybe that in reaching towards conclusions we leave swarmy messes in our wakes; a book itself might be a search for meaning, or a way of imposing structure onto chaos, but when you (say, for example) build a buckyball out of Jenga blocks and chewing gum, some of the construction's left to be completed in the viewer's mind. There's beauty in the breakdown, and all that jazz.

Or, you know, maybe it's just a damn good book, and sometimes damn good books linger in the mind. Whatever. Good choice, LBC. I look forward to reading future selections.

Further proof I shouldn't have an Internet license

If you've been reliant on the Atom feed for getting your daily (semi-daily (possibly weekly (oh so rare))) dose of hot Thumb Drives and Oven Clocks action, things might go all higgeldy-piggeldy for you for a bit, since in solving some previously mentioned technical difficulties I inadvertently broke the Atom feed. I'd like to think this makes me a mad scientific genius--in reality, it makes me a fool. Everything should be okay now, and my apologies if, er, you get inundated with about the entire blog all at once, or something like that. I've no idea how these things work.

Really, they should take my Internet license away. It'd be a shame, too. I got such a good deal on it! Bought it real cheap off the same guy who sold me that pass to the pool on the fourth floor of my high school. I never did find the pool, though. I figure that was only because I was too busy being stuffed into lockers to have time to look for it.

Always late to the party and always forgetting to bring a bottle of mental wine

Having been "off" the blog for over a week, I feel a bit out of practice, and never you mind that I was never much in practice in the first place, anyway. Also nevermind that I spent most of that off time completely failing to read any novels that I could have been ranting and/or raving incoherently about. I can barely remember what the point of this blog is--I know it's got something to do with books, and maybe something to do with how much I suck as a writer (in that I spent most of the last month completely failing to write any stories that I could be ranting and/or mostly ranting about), and maybe something to do with...Solon? No, that can't be right. Medina, maybe? Getting warmer. Anyway, maybe I'm actually supposed to be telling you about my cats, which means I'm in trouble, because I have no cats. Unless I had, before my off time, imaginary cats, in which case, I'm really in trouble, since I seem to be fresh out of imaginary catnip.

Whatever. Point being. Everything sort of fell apart there for a while and I've got the construction teams of my mind desperately trying to re-erect the vague facade that is Thumb Drives and Oven Clocks world headquarters, and while that's happening, I've got, like, nothin', man.

But that doesn't mean that everyone else out there's got nothin'. No way, man, no sir; we don't even have to think about calling Howard on this one. There's been lots of interesting stuff out there recently, and some of it has taken the form of epic blog-post debates, combatants hurling comments back and forth in psionic waves of hurly burly that have left at least twelve coffee shop combatants each an extra buck-fifty short.

Take, for instance, the now 90 or so comments that met the announcement of the Litblog Co-op's first Read This! selection. The discussion is a fascinating read--though don't quiz me on it, since it's been a while since I've read it--and it might make for some good supplemental reading material while the decimated brain that is mine is made fitter, happier, and more productive in this time of introspection; oh yes, this nothingman will be a better man...okay, moving right along.

If you're just looking for a capsule summary: the LBC all got together and were like, "Hey, lets promote some books," and everyone was like, "Sweet!" and then when the LBC started promoting a book, half of everyone was like, "Sweet!" and the other half of everyone was like, "No way OMG! WTF? This isn't what we wanted!" (I'm oversimplifying for the sake of a failed attempt at light humor, one admittedly on-par with the random string of 90's bands music quotes up there.) In all honesty the conversation is an interesting source of material for those interested in the question of where literature stands today--what makes a writer really famous, what makes writing important, and who books are published for in the first place. Maybe someday I'll get around to coming up with an illuminating, carefully considered response to the whole thing, but most likely I'll just get distracted by some shiny bauble and lose track of time for another couple weeks. Shiny baubles--there's got to be a way to buy those things in bulk.

(Incidentally--I'm reading Case Histories now, and I'm enjoying it. I, for one, welcome our new LBC litblog overlords.)

If you're looking for more LBC recommendations--the first of the nominated but not selected titles has been announced which, too, falls prey to the "No way! WTF?" side of the argument, though far less drastically so. (I'm wondering whether the comments in question in this specific post are meant as satire--I suppose it's better that than the alternative, that the phenomenon of the Internet Troll exists even on the bookish blocks of the net; I mean, there's places on the net where that kind of behavior is not only not rude but the norm, net-equivalents to drunken bars where fights are going to break out now and then, whereas I can't help but think of a litblog troll being the equivalent of someone walking into a library and pulling books off the shelves while screaming that librarians are teh suck.) If you're just looking for more LBC fun, the Read This! selection's American editor drops in to chat and answer some questions. And Shaken & Stirred points you towards other blogs that talk more about related things, none of whom refer to imaginary cats, I believe. Which might be a plus or a minus on your score card--you make the call.

And if that discussion isn't your thing, or if 90 comments is just too darned many to breeze through over your lunch hour, head over to Conversational Reading for a briefer, though no less impassioned, discussion on audiobooks, and whether or not listening to an audiobook should really be considered equivalent to or as valuable as reading a book. Again, please don't quiz me, because my memory's a sieve and I lost the pasta before I even started cooking. I do chime in, in there, somewhere, though you shouldn't listen to anything I say in an on-line discussion of that sort, since I tend to forget that I like to believe I subscribe to the belief that people don't really know as much as they might like to think they do, and in forgetting I tend to open my mouth and let words come out which shine immediate light on my own fallible intellect, which is why I should really never enter discussions in which there are positions to be taken. (Plus there's the whole "on-line discussions tend to be done before I get there and when someone responds to anything I say I've already moved on to the next bit of bytes anyway" thing. There really ought to be a litblogger discussion board where such discussions could be taken; I suspect that they'd find better life in that format than in blogpost comment thread format, but then, this being the Internet, I am probably wrong, and someone is probably going to tell me so, and maybe if I'm lucky, they'll tell me I'm teh suck, too.) Check Technorati for other blogposts that point towards the NY Times article which sent C.R. off and running.

Oh, wait...I've got it. Parma! This blog is about Parma! Hmm...Parma...no, I don't know anything about Parma. Hmm...

But please, don't lose that lovin' feelin'. Whoa, that lovin' feelin'.

So due to some sort of technical difficulties (1) I've been unable to post to the blog for the last week. So, if you've been wondering where I've been since, uh, Tuesday, May 17, I've been over in the corner crying because I've had so many important things to say to you kind people, and no way to say them. But, I seem to have fixed the glitch, and things seem to be back in order. I hope.

I apologize to the few people (2) who may have been eagerly checking the web site every five minutes looking for my follow-up post on Never Let Me Go. The post is there now. Or if you just need the capsule summary: Never Let Me Go is a very good book and you should definitely read it soon. Unless you happen to be my friend Chris, then you have to read Cloud Atlas first, because you've owned a copy for many months now, but have been busy reading Ulysses, and are greatly admired by me. Or unless you happen to be my girlfriend, in which case, read it or don't at your leisure, because I'd hate to seem like the kind of literary elitist who goes around bossing his girlfriend about. Or, unless you're someone who doesn't enjoy breathtaking experiences, in which case, you probably aren't reading this blog, because an informal survey of TDaOC readers suggests that readers of this site come for the fun and stay to have their breath taken away. You be Kelly McGillis and I'll be your Tom Cruise.

As for all those important things I've had to say to you kind people over the last week and a half--uhm, I forgot what they all were. But it's cool. I'll come up with more important stuff I have to tell you kind people, because that's what I like to do: say important stuff.

Plus he started his blog only three days before I started mine, and that's got to be worth something, right?

After you've read some of Tod Goldberg's blog posts (even going so far as to laugh out loud on occasion), you'll probably wonder if his books are worth reading, too.

Living Dead Girl, so long as you don't mind stories that make you say things like "Wow, that's messed up" or "Oh gosh, that's, uh, messed up," is worth reading.

(Incidentally, I think this is the first time I've read a book solely because I'd been reading the writer's blog. I'd like to think this will boost some kind of personal karma for myself, someday. Mostly I suspect it just means I got to read a cool book.)

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is a very good novel

When I first saw the poster for Requiem for a Dream I knew I wanted to see the movie. There was a dynamic to that poster that wouldn't let go of me once it got inside of me: the two images, split across the middle, the extreme close up of the eye up top, the pier pushing out into clear blue sky underneath. Claustrophobia and agoraphobia, uneasily distinguishable, forcibly connected.

So when I saw the movie--having by that time read a synopsis, which made the movie sound horribly drab--I went with a girl I was dating at the time. We were weird together and didn't last long. But we saw that movie together. We survived that movie together. When the movie ended, we both felt the same way; in need of contact, some humanity, something reassuring. I leaned my head onto her shoulder, she placed her hand on the side of my face. Like that, we watched the credits. We were sad and overwhelmed. It was a very good movie.

Sometime later I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The opening two chapters are the bluntest yet best (to my knowledge) literary equivalent to the dynamic of that poster. All, closed in, bursting open. Cancer in a living room and frisbees arcing across clear California skies. Escape never felt so overwhelming.

And it's that same dynamic I can feel working its way through Never Let Me Go. But where those opening chapters of Eggers's book reveled in their bluntness, Kazuo Ishiguro's novel works with a nearly imperceptible subtlety. It's easy to read the book, to feel the intimacy of your relationship with the characters developing from page to page, the normalcy of their story, the closeness that envelops their lives. It's that photo of the eye, if the camera was slowly drifting back, with the frame expanding second by second, but never showing much more than what's there, in front of you: people, and their lives. Everything is delicately yet finely focused, and its almost possible to forget the existence of the frame that limits what you see. But the frame is there, and it's holding out the open airiness of existence, the questions and ideas that crowd and crowd and crowd inward and yet never manage to fill all the available space. This quiet division amplifies the story's impact and makes for an awesome novel.

None of that, though, is what I'll remember when I think of this book, years from now.

What I'll remember is this: that when I finished reading the book, I felt a familiar desire. A desire for a shoulder to lean on. A desire for comfort. A desire to not be alone.

The need to be reassured.

Ignore the reviews and read this novel. Or, don't ignore the reviews. But read this novel. And tell me if I'm wrong.

Overwrought? I'm not even warmed up yet

I'm reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go right now. I'm about halfway through it--though that's not quite the book I want to talk about right now, and yet, it's the point of this post. I'll have more to say when I finish it, which, in a perfect world, one in which I didn't have to wake up far too early tomorrow, would be tonight.

The book I want to talk about is one I must have read about ten years ago. That book was not The Remains of the Day.

Through more than half of high school I worked for a local library, shelving books. It was the perfect job for me. I liked books. (Still do.) I very much, for whatever strange, deeply rooted psychologically disturbed reason, took to shelving them. Reading titles, alphabetizing; placing books on shelves, fronting and shifting. Putting everything in order. Keeping everything neat. It was a delightful way to make money.

It was also a delightful way to come across many books I'd probably have read had I had more time. As is, I can't remember how many I actually did read, but the one that sticks out today is one I liked hardly at all: The Unconsoled. It caught my attention because it was a slightly short yet squat book; I was in that phase of loving big books. Big books mean important books, see. Big books mean good books.

Plus, this book had a fascinating premise. Fascinating at the time. It had something to do with a classical musician (or was it a conductor?) who was caught up in a strange state of amnesia; he wasn't supposed to know who he was, where he was, why he was there, outside of it dealing with the music. (If I'm wrong on this, blame time.) The book, in my hand, sturdy and solid, promised me entrance into a dream; a world of ethereal thought and surreal mental firings. The book, I knew, would be weird, and as much as I liked fat books, I also loved weird books, and to have a fat book and a weird book be, in this case, the same book...well, checking it out was pretty obvious.

And I read it. And I got angry with it. I'm not sure why, now. It didn't do very much, I think I thought. Now I think maybe it wasn't doing much I was able to pick up on, yet? The narrator (or, main character) never dealt with the fact that he had no idea who he was, that he had obvious roles to fill with no clue how to fill them--he never once got scared of his existence. I found it all less surreal than agitating. Annoying. Bad.

And yet, convinced it would get better, I forced myself to read the whole thing. It would be a long time before I'd hit the point when I'd feel like it was safe to give up on a book if I wasn't enjoying it halfway through. I remember sitting at my kitchen table, pushing myself from page to page, convinced if I just kept going, this character would snap to attention, notice he's living in a dream, and freak out. I was waiting, searching, yearning for the freak out. The only freak out to come was my own. I finished the book. I regretted having read it. And, a little bit later, I moved off to college and underwent the transformative freak-out period that awaited me there. (Grew my hair out, gave up on my ambitions of becoming a highly-paid engineer. The usual.)

Several years, some inferior jobs, and a couple haircuts later, I found myself sick to death of the Internet--my long-time constant companion--and all the crap on it and started wondering if maybe there were people using it for things I was interested in. Like, reading books. And writing stories. Sure enough, about two seconds worth of Googling later, I'd been introduced to the lovely and exciting world of the "lit blog".

Oddly enough, one of the first things I found there was a link to a Kazuo Ishiguro interview or article. Seemed he had a new book coming out. I couldn't hold my old grudge against him--I mean, it wasn't his fault his book fell into the hands of some idiot kid who was looking for something in a book of his he'd never set out to do. And yet, a little reading on my part later, finding out that there were other people who saw The Unconsoled as a sort of low-point (or at least as a faltering step) in his oeuvre was...well, consoling is probably too easy a word, but there you have it. Besides, he did write The Remains of the Day, which was, it seemed, a very important book. And he had this new book coming out, apparently. But mostly me reading about where he was, who he was, what he wrote, it felt a little bit like checking in on an old friend. One you were never close to, but you did have that bonding experience once, a long time ago. So what if it involved cussing and eyestrain.

It took me reading a few more reviews of his new novel, Never Let Me Go, for a few things to set in. One--this promised to be a very strange book. Two--this was a book that, despite the old times, I had to read.

So now here I am, feeling like I've re-lived the last nine years in miniature. I forced myself through a book I didn't much care for (A Changed Man--though I don't think I'd have described my experience with The Unconsoled, at the time, so tamely as one "I didn't much care for"). I dropped the next book I picked up about halfway through because my eyes kept drifting off the page and finding more interesting things to look at in the carpet. My hair's probably grown a little bit in that time. My car almost exploded, and that made me kind of freak out for a few days. Then everything turned out fine. And now I sit, ten years/a few weeks later, and I'm back where I started.

Except, not quite.

This time, I'm loving every word of this book.

And that's where I'll cut myself off until I finish the book--laws of averages and bodies in motion staying in motion not withstanding, the whole thing could go to hell before the time's up. I don't feel it's going to though. But I'll stop here before I have to start knocking on wood with every sentence.

All that said, and if you've stuck with me this far, I've got a warning to offer up. Never Let Me Go hinges on a twist. Though not so much a twist as a slowly revealed fact. You could sum up the fact of this book in one sentence. To reduce this book to that sentence is to rob it of its ... I don't want to reduce this book.

So I'll offer up this word of advice. If, you, patient TD&OC reader, are somehow turned on to this book by this post and my (hopefully soon to come) follow-up alone--if, say, you haven't read any reviews of the book yet, and you think you might like to pick the book up, give it a shot, see what my buzz is about--then, please, don't read any reviews. Because the reviews are happy to spoil the fact of the book for you. And while my enjoyment of the book hasn't been reduced by that foreknowledge, as far as I can tell, I can only guess what certain facts of the book would do to a reader who doesn't see them coming. I suspect there would be surprise, and shock, and sadness, and confusion; I suspect in the end, you who reads the book and likes it, and me who reads the book and likes it, we'll still end up at about the same place. But there's something to not knowing where the journey will take you that, well, that's not something I'm ready to take from you.

Spoiling the book a little bit was necessary for me to take an interest in it; if, all things holding up for the last half of course, I can spark your interest in it without spoiling the book a bit, I'd be a happy book pusher.

Addendum

Also, something The Insult made me realize: irony and paranoia are, if not the same thing, at least very close siblings.

With a title like that, it's got to be a Japanese horror movie remade for American audiences...right?

Based on the pretty strong recommendations of Maud Newton, I read The Insult by Rupert Thomson this weekend. (The astute TD&OC fan will note that I've had prior success with a Maud Newton recommendation in A.L. Kennedy's Paradise.) Being a slow reader, the kind of person who can be easily distracted from the pages in front of me by sudden motions or the mere existence of atmosphere in the room around me, the fact that I read the entire book in a two-day span (okay, fine: minus the first fifty pages or so, which I'd read sometime earlier this week) is a pretty good indication to me that I liked it. A lot.

Now, the fun thing about this book, is that it gives rise to really interesting conversation material. The other night (after I'd read the first several pages and before I read the rest of the book) my girlfriend played that song A Perfect Circle (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong) did, the one about the nurse. It's a really strange song.

"I'm reading a novel right now," I said, "that had a strange scene with a nurse in it."

My girlfriend, and my friend Chris, who are both used to me talking, looked at me. Taking this as encouragement to continue, I said, "Yeah, it was weird. There's this guy who gets shot. And he goes blind. But he can see at night. And so his nurse comes in and strips in front of him. But she doesn't know he can see at night. And then he gets off on it. And the nurse smiles at him. And..."

The expressions on my girlfriend's face and Chris's face were changing, though I couldn't quite say how. "It, uh, it was really cool, though," I said. "I mean, it makes sense in context...I mean, it made me want to stay up all night, reading the book, you know?"

And then other things happened. The point here being: if you read this book, you'll get to say weird things, just like me, and who wouldn't want to say weird things just like I do, all the time? Granted I usually don't need a stunningly bizarre literary mystery thriller semisurreal noir Kafkaesque black comedy WTF genre novel written in evocative yet simply-played prose to prompt me to do so, but sometimes I get lazy and like to let something else inspire me to say stuff about, you know, nurses.

See, this isn't a normal book. It's not a book you exactly classify. And it's not necessarily a book you exactly read, either; it's more a book that you let wash through you, that you ride it out enjoying the view all the time wondering where the hell you're going. At times it can seem slow. And I can almost guarantee that when you start to feel like things are about to go too slow, you're just about to hit a wall, and smash through it, and when you wipe the blood from your face and can open your eyes again, you'll find out that the direction on the far side of the rubble is a new one. You're going somewhere else even as you're covered the in the dust of everything you've gone through so far. The book anticipates you, see; every time I think we're about to fall into a trap of the book's own creation, the book trips the wire with a long pole and guides you around it, towards other dangers.

It's all so very oddly compelling. Maud Newton said it more succinctly: "Rupert Thomson writes nightmares." Then there's The Grumpy Old Bookman's take on the book: "I found his work to be curiously unsettling. It made me nervous." I guess if you're looking for a short and to the point quote from me on this book, you can use this: "I've read The Insult. And now I want to read the rest of his books." Has a nice ring to it, no?

And as long as I'm still in my linking-like-mad mood

The LitBlog Co-Op has posted their first Read This! selection. Here's the post recommending the book and here's a post about some of the fun stuff that's going to be happening soon. (And in keeping with my previous post, those are both linked to from my del.icio.us "suggested reading" page.)

It will be interesting to see what happens next and to see how much of a dent this sort of thing will put into the sales-figures and reading-figures. IE, now that that hype's built up to a suggested book, will people--lots of people--read that book? Will that book gain an increased following outside of the lit-blog-o-sphere? I know I plan to read the book, since I promised myself I'd read whatever book they suggested (with some exceptions too not worth going into here), and, you know, if I dig it, I'll tell other people to read it. IE, how much will this first big push turn into extended word-of-mouth marketing? Etc etc. Time will tell. I shall remain optimistic. As a child of the electro-age and as a writer-hopeful, it's exactly the sort of thing I'd love to see work (both in and of itself, and also work for me someday). Because if I've learned anything in my net readings of late, it's that things as they are right now aren't necessarily working as well as we'd all like them to, right now, and it's good to see new things being tried.

Another short delicious post about nothing in particular

If I may draw your attention to the sidebar, down there somewhere in the sections of links to other sites, there's some links to certain tags under my del.icio.us account. The fifth one, "suggested reading", I figure warrants some explanation: the links you'll find on that page aren't about books I necessarily suggest you read. They're about books that someone is suggesting someone read. Or more specifically, they're links to pages that suggest books for reading, said descriptions or books having caught my eye, and leading me, personally, to be curious about the books described; ie, if there's a literal to be read pile--the stack of purchased but unread books or queued library books on my coffee table, for example--then the books described in the pages linked off that del.icio.us page constitute a slightly more metaphysical sort of to be read pile. IE, had I but time and more time, I'd likely read everything linked there, or at least give them a fair shot. And then a few of them would likely make their ways through my mental filters to receive posts here of the "Oh Em Gee! Read this!" category. Plus maybe when books do reach that status, that del.icio.us tag will help me remember who to give credit for when credit is due for book recommendations.

If that all makes sense. Mostly I just wanted to say that the tag name is sort of a misnomer, or at least potentially slightly mis-leading. And that you can use that tag and the links it presents to maybe find stuff you might want to read, if you're looking for a good random sampling of what other people think is worth reading. It's in no way meant to be comprehensive. Had I my way, all of us here on the web would start tagging stuff to del.icio.us via that tag, and then maybe there'd be something like comprehensiveness. Of course then it would also be overwhelming, seeing all the books people out there are recommending all the time, the knowledge that there's no way anybody can stay on top of that sort of thing being depressing and possibly causing people to stop reading altogether. That would suck.

The other four del.icio.us links right now are fed into the links page but I think, unless there's some kind of huge outcry against it, I'm going to just trash that page and suggest that, if you've become reliant on the information presented therein, you just go straight to the source del.icio.us pages. Those all have RSS feeds, too, incidentally, so if you just need to immediately know what articles and essays about books I'd like to read if I had 987987 hours each day to read, you can add the RSS feeds to your RSS eaters and we can all be happy as clams.

Also, I'm doing a little community service right here for you. Lakewood, my Cleveland 'burb, is really surreal, if you check the layer just beneath the surface. The police blotter presents that layer. I add the link to the police blotter web page each week, usually on Thursday evenings, so if you subscribe to that particular RSS feed, well, you'll get the link to that page, and, yeah. Rock on. I'm a big fan of the blotter. I'd love to see other del.icio.us tags devoted to other cities' blotters, if they're on the web. News you need and all.

And in conclusion, if you have no idea what any of this means: this right here is a fantastic primer on what del.icio.us is and why it rocks your socks off. I've probably hyped it before but I'll hype it again. Del.icio.us, like tabbed browsing, has fundamentally changed the ways in which I interact with the Internet and the information it contains. I imagine there's other ways to achieve what del.icio.us has done for me personally, but I care not to consider them, because I'm lazy like that. Think of del.icio.us as being your own sort of personal Internet file drawer, except its one in which you can just kind of toss things in somewhat haphazardly, and still have a decent to great shot of finding particular bits of information again later, and quickly. Plus then due to its social nature you can offer up the information to anybody else who might care to see what's grabbed your eye. Recently. Or ever. Nevermind the fact that I'm not using it even half as effectively as I probably could or should. Of course, many people probably don't use the Internet as much as I do, as often as I do, and probably don't require this level of interacting-with-the-Internet service, and I think maybe I envy those people. Maybe.

And in yet more happenings otherwheres

Gwenda Bond of Shaken & Stirred (one of them there really good lit-blogs) recently posted to the LitBlog Co-op looking for people to post a "memorable experience of the act of reading ... what you were reading, when, why it was perfect at that particular time". I went ahead and replied...and replied...and replied...and when I looked at what I'd submitted I figured I probably should have just posted it here, instead of taking up so much room over there, but, hey. So if you scroll down that page a bit and look for the long comment, yeah, that's me. Feel free to print out the TD&OC title and smoke picture and hold them up to your screen and pretend it's super-fresh content over here. Or go share your own reading story--that would probably be a better use of your time.

Also, I've got to recommend to ye Clevelanders and ye fans of libraries everywhere to get on over to Really Bad Cleveland Accent where Christine Borne's been knocking blog-posts out of the park left and right lately. Of specific note, her take on race issues in Cleveland and her explanation of why libraries are cool, cooler than we ever give them credit for. (Consider this post, in relation to that last link, to be my electronic paper airplane. I'm sure, somewhere in the radio waves and higher frequencies, this post is floating past the Terminal Tower, right...about...now.)

In case of emergency, click links

So you say you've worked yourself all up into a fine tizzy because Thumb Drives and Oven Clocks is updated too infrequently? You've got those certain minutes a day you've set aside to read the new posts and it depresses you immensely when there isn't anything new to read? You haven't been receiving your recommended daily dosage of Advanced Footnote Technology? You're thinking of giving up on this little blog and looking elsewhere for fulfillment?

Hey man--that's cool. Let me show you the door. Two doors, actually. I hope you'll consider not locking them behind you, though; I'll likely start updating more frequently again sometime soon and you might like that; though if you do walk through those doors and leave your keys on the counter on your way out, I won't blame you. I know I suck. Or at least, I suck in comparison. If there were no other blogs on the internet...well, I'd still suck, but that's cool.

One Child Left Behind

Brandon Rogers loves Journey, but despite his claims, that doesn't quite sum it up. He writes the blog I would write if, a, I didn't suck, and b, if I was him instead of me. I've laughed out loud multiple times reading his entries, which never fails to cause people at nearby coffee shop tables to quickly relocate away from the crazy man, which means I'm doing a good job of being a counter-cultural iconoclast, or something. His blog is one of those blogs I'd like to go back to the beginning of and read all the way through, except I fear that might be creepy, and I don't want to have my name associated with the creation of the Blog Restraining Order Act of 2005. Also, like me, he sometimes talks to himself on his blog, but he does it in a good way that doesn't make you want to get away from the crazy guy.

Run Jen Run

I think Brandon Rogers hadn't updated for a day or something and I totally flipped out and I started clicking random links from his blogroll and wound up on Jenny Amadeo's site. She's from Chicago, and I've been to Chicago, and I liked the city, so it seems logical I'd like Jen's blog. She writes about jug bands, lawsuits over the near consumption of one's own index finger, and accepting (or not) food-items from strangers. She tells stories, she tells them very well, and she does her part to topple the Starbucks empire.

I'm even too confused to come up with a good title for this post

A Changed Man, a novel by Francine Prose, bothered me.

First I have to admit, I knew it was going to bother me from the get go. I couldn't get into the style of the novel's language. It wasn't that the style was ever bad, rather, that it never sang, for me. I was trying to separate style from content for much of the time I spent reading the book. That's not really the best way to read a book, because ultimately the style affects the way we read the story. I mean, it is the way we read the story. And, stylistically, here, the novel felt like thin paint: color, sure, but no real depth.

What made this problem for me a bit more difficult was that the third person narrator remained basically the same, no matter which character's perspective was being presented. Sure, the words changed, but the mode of the language itself never seemed to do so. Like the narrator picked up specific key words appropriate to the individual characters' perspectives, but wasn't entirely sure how to use them, to develop the voice around them that would make for convincing transitions and compelling voice.

The fact that, about a small chunk of pages prior to the halfway point, I took a quick look at some of the reviews for the book didn't much help matters for me, either. Even glancing down the blurbs that Metacritic extracted from the reviews is enough to see a common notion: that the book is satire, that it's supposed to be wickedly, darkly humorous. The fact that I was nearly halfway through the book and I hadn't laughed once had me wondering if everyone else had it wrong, or if I just wasn't getting it. I spent the rest of the book looking for humor where I probably wouldn't have found it before. And though I guess I saw it, maybe was able to pick it out of the lineup, I couldn't help but hang on to my perhaps naive notion that this book wasn't meant to be satire, but essentially realist.

There's a few reviews out there that, I think, make me feel less bad about not finding the book funny, and also, in retrospect, also point my way out of this morass of negatives and towards the positives. Take, for instance:

The novel has been touted as a biting satirical work of fiction; "mercilessly funny" and a "brilliant new comic novel" say the critics, but as far as I can see, the comedy just barely bubbles beneath the surface. It's an interesting story, and that's about it.

- PopMatters Book Review

And:

Francine Prose is often referred to as a satirist, but that label is more an artifact of our age than an accurate description of her work. Prose's new novel, "A Changed Man," features a quasi-reformed neo-Nazi as its protagonist, more or less, along with a rich and self-absorbed Holocaust survivor who runs a global do-gooder organization called World Brotherhood Watch, a multitasking 40-ish soccer mom who's barely holding her life together, and a handsomely tailored African-American talk-show host who's part Oprah and part Phil Donahue. Throw in the sexy Latina New York Times reporter, the Holocaust survivor's Viennese-aristocrat wife and the mouthy teenager who shocks his school by writing a paper suggesting that Hitler might have been gay, and yeah, it does sound like we're in the realm of larger-than-life Tom Wolfe pastiche.

The thing is, we're not. Does any of that sound even slightly implausible? If "A Changed Man" is satire, then so are lots of other things, including "Anna Karenina," "Middlemarch" and "Our Mutual Friend." I'm not suggesting that this novel is playing quite in that league, but I am suggesting that Prose is striving for the same kind of large-scale social portraiture, and that her desire to capture contemporary Americans, with all their internal contradictions, solipsism and general screwed-upness, is guided more by the spirit of compassion than by that of mockery.

- Salon

What I'm getting at here, is that, despite everything negative about the book I've tossed out here, I was still intrigued and compelled to finish the novel, to find out what happens to the characters. In fact, I actually kind of cared for them, even if I was alternately unconvinced and unintrigued by them. ("...more by the spirit of compassion than by that of mockery.") I wanted to know how things were going to work out, which often drove me to wish the novel would get to the working-out part a little bit quicker ("Unfortunately, as the novel progresses, one can’t help feeling that the ride would have been twice as enjoyable, and infinitely more bracing, if it had been half as long." - L.A. Weekly). When there is a rather climactic moment near the end of the book, I actually felt bad. (I think I literally said, "Aw, no, why'd you have to do that?" out loud, and I wasn't talking to the author--I was talking to the character in question.)

So, when I say that the book bothered me, it wasn't a question of content, or ideas, or anything like that; it was probably more the act of reading the book, of being torn in multiple directions at once--wanting to put it down so that the language style would stop having the chance to infect my own writing, wanting to keep reading through to the end because the characters weren't so bad and almost kind of likeable. Not to mention the sudden revelation mid-way through that I might be reading the book different from everyone else, or, perhaps, even, wrongly altogether. All things added up, I just feel weird about the whole thing.

Like I've said a billion times already, I'm no pro book reviewer, I'm just some guy who reads stuff and tries not to diss on stuff without good cause. In general, I'm as much interested in giving you, faithful reader, a picture of me reading the book as I am in giving you a picture of the book itself. In this case, though, maybe the experience of the experience became a bit too much for my usual taste. I really could go on for much longer, but then I'll just get incoherent, which, of course, I usually am anyways, so, you know, right-o, move along.

76 brief views of Cleveland: #7-8

7.

You want to do what, now? You trippin? No, seriously: are you high on acid? You aren't. Hell, I think I heard of someone who did that once. Nearly cost 'em a bumper. And their life. I'm pretty sure they were high at the time. Now you're here sober as a baby lookin' for advice on how to do it yourself. Well, yeah, I'll tell you what I know, but you ain't gonna like it. Here's what I can tell you: don't even think about it. People dream about pullin' it off all the time, but nobody actually ever does. Oh, sure sure, I know what you're going to say, you've heard the stories, people sayin' and people talkin', but...

Let me ask you: do you love your car? You love your car, yeah, well, here's some advice: stop it. Don't love your car. People get weird when romance comes into play. You love your car, that means you want to treat it right, be nice to it, oil changes and no crazy stunts. Listen: stop loving your car. Because to do what you think you're going to do means giving your car up. This is nothing less than full surrender, one you're going to be committing the moment you hit the end of the entrance ramp curve at what, 20, 30 miles an hour? You can never take that ramp fast enough. Stop loving your fellow man, too. Stop loving everything. Forget love. You've got to be a real hard-headed bastard if you're going to make it. An ounce of love will get you a pound of killed.

And once you're free of love you're free to start over: love the insanity of your task, love the road beneath your wheels, love the fact that you're going to be crossing three lanes of high-speed rush-hour traffic without once looking in front of you. No, I mean it: you look in front of you, you're dead. Your neck's going to be twisted the whole time you're merging, and don't think it won't. You're going to be parallel parking your car between cars less than a car's distance apart when you're all going to be doing upwards of 65 miles an hour. If you're even able to get up that fast in the first place. And that's just for merging off the ramp!

You say you're not scared. Well let me tell you, to get to I-480 east, off Grayton Road, during rush hour traffic? It is to know the cold motion of fear.

Now give up love.

Now love the madness.

8.

It's the end of a ribbon unfurling at the end of a night, the twist of the exit. The shoreway bridges lifted you up and the road brought you back down, the wind's been slapping at your car and the lake's been smacking at the shore. Then you're almost there, the Lake Ave exit carrying you away from Edgewater. You're slowing down, and then you're straight-away, and then you'll feel it, the road twisting beneath you. Keep your car to the center and you'll feel the left side dip out from under you before the right tilts you back up, the calmest tenth of a mile you'll drive all night, the one you slip right off of as you turn back to the left, back towards the surface streets. You're almost home now. You've known the romance of the drive.

Well, this is interesting

Seems I'm now working on two stories simultaneously.

I guess it's not a horrible thing. I guess maybe this means I'll be spending the next two months working on both stories? Unless I go way overboard on the productivity front, and wind up finishing both this month. This certainly isn't something I'm planning on doing, but if it does happen, uhm, no time off for good behavior, I'll just have to keep plugging away at a new story next month.

It's also probably appropriate. Though also potentially dangerous. Since these stories, this year's worth of stories, are supposed to all be neatly stand-alone and yet still intertwined--connected in ways the reader shouldn't realize is likely to happen until the entire collection has been read, or at least until after the specifically connected stories have been read--it could be specifically productive and illuminating in this case to write the stories at the same time, so that they could literally be commenting simultaneously on each other and themselves, rather than my feared feeling that the stories kind of pile up on each other as you go through them. This story gives you something then the next gives you what the last story didn't and does it more honestly. And so on. Rather than that maybe the two stories are more subtly and directly connected than that. Or. Or something. I'll quit while I'm ahead, here, and get back to the story. Stories. Whatever.

Also, it's not a, not a story ring, though, I'm seeing concerns and ideas and, dare I say with a slightly bad taste in my mouth, themes, that kind of loop through everything, maybe bringing more of a unity to the theoretical collection than I might otherwise directly intend. Or, or, or something, I was quitting while I was ahead, wasn't I?

In other news I'm some five-eighths through A Changed Man by Francine Prose and I've got lots of things to say about it most of which I probably won't because by the time I'm done with the book I think I'll mostly be happy to be done with it and on to one of the other books that are starting to pile up on my newly-clean library card's head. Suffice it to say: I'm not entirely convinced I like the book, though I'm not completely certain where that is a) my fault b) the book's fault or c) the critics' fault.

"Interconfuselled" seems to be the word of the day here at TDAOC World Headquarters.