Paperclip People

Hyperink.com Question of the Month

2012-01-29T22:33:00.001-05:00

The fine folks at Hyperink post a good question: What makes a compelling character in a book or movie?

To me, a flat character is one whoalways acts in the way that’s expected. The good guys shouldn’t always be goodand the bad guys shouldn’t always be bad. But too often, especially withamateur works, the characters do little that’s surprising. The easiest way tospot this trend is by looking at the villains in almost any action flick. I’mgoing to be writing about Percival Everett’s Assumption for the Front Porch blog, but the book is haunting because the main character, Deputy Sherriff Ogden Walker,doesn’t always act like you’d expect a Sherriff to act. This is an importantlesson for me to learn while I’m working on my own novel. Don’t be afraid tomake a character do something, within reason and motivation, that he or shewould not normally do.

Unstuck Magazine and Literary Genre Fiction

2011-11-15T14:06:00.001-05:00

This Saturday, in Austin, I attended the launch party for Unstuck #1.

http://www.unstuckbooks.org/issue-1

The goal of the new magazine is to blend literary fiction with speculative/fantastic fiction. Unstuck will only come out once a year, which is probably good since, at more than 300 pages, I'll be able to take my time with the journal.

The launch party, at the Hyde Park Theater, featured dramatic readings of four stories. "Monument" by Amelia Gray, "Death and the All-Night Donut Shop" by Rachel Swirsky, "Second Grade" by Charles Antin and "An Account of My Neighbors" by Edward Carey.

Each story was read by a single actor, and the Edward Carey story was read by Edward Carey.

"An Account of My Neighbors" will appear in Issue #2 of Unstuck and was the most enjoyable performance of the show. Carey's narrator is a hyper-aware, most likely unstable, observer of his neighbor's peculiar tendencies. For example, one of his downstairs neighbors has a disease unique to fish, and another neighbor has a small dog that smokes Winston Lights on the roof. The narrator clamors for, but seems unlikely to find, peace and quiet. Carey's story manages to be both disturbingly funny and sweet. It's impossible not to feel sorry for the manic narrator even while laughing at his ridiculousness.

The other three stories appear in Issue #1. Charles Antin's piece really stuck out for me and is, hopefully, a good indicator of the type of fiction to be found in Unstuck. Antin's story is narrated by a second-grade teacher whose male students (all but one) have joined the army and are fighting a war overseas. The story is alternately chilling and darkly humorous as we follow the class's slow descent into entropy.

Antin's story occupies that middle ground between genre and literary fiction. The events in his story, and in the Swirsky and Gray stories as well, are not quite realistic. The emphasis, however, is not on the fantastic nature of the events but on the very real, human reactions of the characters living in this bizarre yet recognizable world. We never get an explanation of what war is being fought in Antim's story, or what kind of afterlife the ghosts in Swirsky's story are stuck in.

The point isn't to explain everything, but to tell stories about real people in unusual circumstances. Lovers of pure fantasy stories won't get the world-building they're used to, and lovers of purely literary fiction might be uneasy with all the weird stuff happening in these stories. But that's the point.

Unstuck will be having another reading in Austin early 2012, and the journal is currently in bookstores and available for order online.

Criminal Element

2011-08-09T15:37:00.002-04:00

I'm going to be blogging both here and over on Criminal Element for awhile. My posts for Criminal Element will mostly cover crime films and fiction while over here I'll ramble on politics, writing my novel and other things. My first post at CE is live. It's a little piece on A. Alvarez's classic book on the 1981 WSOP "The Biggest Game in Town."

http://bit.ly/nmVD02

An Important, if Obvious Realization about Dialogue

2011-07-22T11:09:00.003-04:00

OR: A Realization Courtesy of Edward Albee

I'm writing a novel. Sometimes just saying that phrase impresses people, but really, hang on to your impressed face until the novel's done--or even better, hang on until it's done AND good.

Anyway. One element I've been struggling with is dialogue. I mean, I can put two characters in a room and have them talk and their words will sound fairly realistic--not too wooden or strained. But there was still something bothering me about several of the conversations in my book. I'd read the scene, tweak a few words, delete something obvious, move something around, and it'd be better, but still not quite right.

This summer, I'm helping out in an American Literature class at Texas State and the kids are reading Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It's one of my favorite plays, but I hadn't read it for years. Re-reading the play yesterday I realized what was wrong with my dialogue and what was so right about Albee's.

(Here's where the obviousness might start for you fellow writers out there, but I was blown away.)

Too often the dialogue in my novel is about something. My characters are discussing plot points, important facts about their past or their present, they're chattering away about things that should be remembered by the reader.

Now, back to Albee. Virginia Woolf really doesn't have much of a plot--George and Martha have a party, Nick and Honey comes over, everyone's ruined forever. That's pretty much it. And that frees Albee to focus on the subtext, the hidden struggles that the characters are going through. The really dramatic stuff, the plot-heavy stuff, happened long before the play actually starts.

What we have are characters (George and Martha especially) who have already gone through the dramatic stuff, and now they're just trying to live their broken lives. This lets Albee build characters and tension without being a slave to the mechanics of plot and explaining present action.

I think that's why Albee's dialogue is so good and razor-sharp. It's not about anything! The only purpose of a good chunk of the dialogue is just to reveal characters. Here's part of an extended sequence that opens the play:

[Martha looks around their living room.]

Martha: What a dump. [pauses] Hey, w-what's that from? "What a dump!"

George: How would I know?

Martha: Oh, come on, what's it from? You know!

George: Martha…

Martha: What's it from, for chrissake?!

George: What's what from?

Martha: I just told you. I just did it. "What a dump!" Huh? What's that from?

George: I haven't the faintest idea.

Martha: Dumbbell.

George and Martha go on about this movie for several more minutes. Martha says it's a Bette Davis movie, George says it's called Chicago, Martha says he's an idiot and that Joseph Cotton was in the movie, and so on.

It's beautifully written, but it's not about anything at all. This exchange does absolutely nothing to move the plot forward. But what it does is help establish the relationship between George and Martha, and it conveys the contours of that relationship to the reader in a much smarter way than if they were fighting about who ruined whose life first.

This is something that I'm not doing in my dialogue often enough. I should be trying to write dialogue that doesn't have the pressure of moving the plot forward, but that simply tries to show the reader something important about the characters and their world. Let the plot points and history take care of themselves (like in Act 3 of Virginia Woolf) and let the characters just chatter.

Palin Not Running/ Santorum Not Running/ Gingrich Not Dead and Perry's Secret Dilema

2011-07-18T11:32:00.000-04:00

more thoughts on the GOP candidates...

Sarah Palin...still not running for President...still not going to run for President.

       It's pretty clear to me that once she says she's out then the media will stop paying attention to her. Right now she commands attention. She's not going to say she's out and chop off her own publicity at the knees.

       Also, and the press will eventually turn on her for this, I think that she will NEVER actually say she's not running. She'll combine a little bit of Trump 2011 and Clinton 2008 and string along her potential campaign for months and months for the extra TV time (that's the Trump part). Don't be surprised if there's even rumors of her throwing her hat in the ring at the RNC convention (that's the Clinton 2008 part) and of her joining the ticket in the number 2 slot again.

       It is in Sarah Palin's best interests if she remains the legendary GOP savior forever perched at the edge of the race. In no way is it in her best interest to get in the race and have to deal with the actual dirty mechanics of campaigning. She gets the best of both worlds now--hyper coverage every time she says a thing, but not the real scrutiny that derailed her the last time.

Santorum (google it) isn't actually running for President

   He's running for his old Senate seat. This may be obvious to everyone but it just occurred to me. He gets national attention (sort of, or at least more than he'd get if he was just running for Senate) and theoretically gets to look all statesmany and wise. This enables him to pivot to the Senate race (and transfer what money he's raised to that campaign) and say that he traveled the country, has spoke to the people, and now has the broad experiences to make an even better Senator than he was last time. He'll still lose to Casey in the general, but there will be a large and vocal contingent of Republicans who will welcome Santorum back home with smiling faces and open arms.

Gingrich isn't dead yet--he's like a movie serial killer, don't turn your back on him. McCain was declared dead in the primary back in 2007.

Perry doesn't actually want to run.

I've had trouble trying to figure out what Rick Perry was up to. For awhile I thought he actually wanted to be VP and wouldn't actually enter the race. Now, it's looking increasingly likely that he will run for President. But why is he waiting? Is he waiting for the debt ceiling impasse to end? Is he just biding his time for some reason?

Here's what I now think, although I feel less confident in my Perry predictions then in my other forecasts. I think he wasn't planning on running, that he wanted to flirt with running so he could get the attention and then be an automatic, stone cold VP lock.

Seriously, Romney/Perry would be a dangerous ticket.

But then people began to tell him that Romney might not win. That someone Bachmann might win. Someone as conservative as Bachmann will need a relative moderate on her ticket--not Perry. Once Romney's hold on the nomination began to slip, Team Perry realized they needed to make their own noise. That hitching themselves to the Mitt Train was not the only option.

However, I think that behind this hesitation is also the fact that Perry doesn't actually want to run for President. It sucks. It's tiring. He has to go to places like Iowa and NC and SC where he's not automatically worshiped. Perry hasn't had to introduce himself to voters in twenty years, not since he ran for Lt. Gov with W. way back in the day, and he's not eager to start now.

And if he does run, then I think he's going to fall apart because he hasn't had to do serious campaigning in so long. This is the Perry dilemma--don't run and risk your relevance vanishing, or run and risk getting all dirty with the grime of real electioneering.

Something New and Webby

2011-06-12T20:16:00.000-04:00

You don't have to look too hard to find all sorts of accounts of how the internet has changed how writing is distributed to readers. But here's my recent story, which I think is interesting for how "new" it will sound. Some of the terms in this story would have been total nonsense only four or five years ago.

My most recent publication is called "Something Bad and Stingy" and you can find it at SnakeOilCure.com. Briefly, here's the story of how my story made it that site:

1. The First Line
2. Twitter
3. Submishmash
4. Saved Twitter Searches

1. The First Line. No really, the lit journal The First Line inspired the piece, or at least made me write the idea down. The First Line is a great journal with an awesome conceit. They provide the first line of a story and then accept submissions that expand on this line. It sounds gimmicky, and I suppose it is, but the results work and are high quality. Austin people can find The First Line at Book People. Seriously, check them out.

The first line for the issue coming out this fall was "We need to talk." For a few months I'd had an image of a man and woman on a date, but the guy wasn't listening to the conversation because he was too busy narrating his own story in overblown, purply language. I saw the first line and thought it would work for this little scene in my head.

They rejected it.

It's okay, I don't blame them, the draft I sent them wasn't very good and needed a lot of polishing.

2. Twitter. I tweet--I like it, it's fun, get off my back. For one thing, I think it's a great way to stay up to date on book and writing sites.

3. Submishmash. Those of you who write and submit to journals know about submishmash. They're a fairly new web-based submission manager that lit journals, websites, whoever, can use to accept, organize and respond to submissions. Most of my recent submissions for the past six months have been through submishmash.

4. A saved twitter search. I have a saved twitter search for "submishmash" and @litmagnews. This helps me find sites to read and submit to. One of them tweeted about Snake Oil Cure, I clicked the link, read some of what the site had posted and sent them my revised "Something Bad and Stingy."

This is how it works now. Writers networked into a series of sites and staying actively engaged in the internet. As a result of a print journal and twitter my work is out there to a few more people and my circle of writers and writing sites is a little larger.

Why I'm Nervous About The GOP Candidates

2011-05-26T13:59:00.000-04:00

The five guys in the first GOP debate...really.

As of today the frontrunners for the Republican nomination for President are a guy who was a moderate governor who installed universal healthcare, a 75 year old U.S. Rep who wants to get rid of the Department of...well, everything, Newt and a pizza magnate.

Standing on the sidelines of the race, out of it for now, but possibly entering, is a Representative who said abolishing the minimum wage would help unemployment, a Bush, a less-than-half-term-Governor who’d run if he didn’t have more skeletons in his closet than Jame Gumb, and the most famous half-term Governor in U.S. history.

There’s been much gloating from Democratic-leaning commentators and blogs. Comedians from David Letterman to Andy Borowitz have made jokes along the lines of “the Republican race to determine who loses to Obama.”

And at first glance it seems that there’s much to be hopeful about. The Republican Party has moved so far right that Mitt Romney is likely to face an organized Tea Party Revolt, which would lead to their endorsement of someone patently unelectable like Paul, Bachmann, Santorum or Cain. Roger Ailes is reportedly lamenting helping turn the right into a bunch of conspiracy-minded Palin/Beck worshippers (click that link and read the NY Mag article, it's amazing). And the Republicans in the Senate are doing their best to not win a majority next year by nearly unanimously voting to end Medicare, and likely voting to not investigate terrorists who buy guns.

The long primary battle between Obama and Clinton made the Democratic Party stronger across the country. They took the fight, and Democratic messaging to places that hadn’t seen real campaigning and organizing in years. Obama lost Montana to McCain by 3,000 votes, and performed better than any recent Democrat in a number of other states.

Now we’re eighteen months away from the Presidential election, and the Republicans are flying so far under the radar they might as well be driving lawnmowers.

But why I am so nervous?

One problem the Democrats are likely to face is the very thing that so many are currently celebrating. Voters aren’t listening to the actual Republican candidates—they were listening to Trump for a couple days and they still listen to Palin, but they’re not listening to Cain, Santorum and Pawlenty.

One of these guys (I don’t think Palin will win, or run, because, like Huckabee, she learned it’s easier and more lucrative to be a TV personality, and she learned from Trump how long you can ride the media for free publicity) is going to win the nomination and they might win it late in the game and after a very brief (by modern standards) primary season.

This means less time to bring the crazy into the homes of the American voters, and fewer states that get to see the crazy, which means that the Republican nominee will be able to charge hard to the right for a couple months, and then pivot hard to the center once they have the nomination locked up.

It could look something like this:

June-July: The media become even more obsessed with the “these guys are jokers, who’s the real candidate” story line and hyperventilate every time Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Sarah Palin or Scott Brown leave their house.

August-September: The polls show that Romney and Pawlenty have become the frontrunners, with Santorum and Huntsman lingering near their ankles, but just not getting the traction people thought. (Gingrich has dropped out due to health/family concerns (or both at the same time) by now) But Romney and T-Paw are so boring that the media doesn’t give them the huge scrutiny and air-time that Clinton and Obama got in 2008 or Bush and McCain got in 2004.

November-December: The Republican electorate becomes so fed up with their choices that candidates like Paul, Cain and Bachmann (who, if she learned anything from Sarah Palin, would be crazy not to run) become dark horse potential winners of Iowa and New Hampshire. Remember, the Iowa and NH GOP primary voters are really conservative, and after those two states come South Carolina, which makes Iowa’s evangelicals look moderate.

The Tea Party leaders don’t endorse a specific candidate (as they recently threatened to do), but they do tell their members to vote for whoever they want, which causes Cain, Bachmann, Paul and Santorum’s numbers to all rise. But if no single one of these candidates can unite the Tea Party vote, then they’re all acting as vote splitters, which keeps none of them from winning the nomination.

This new found traction for Tea Party-backed candidates (who would consider voting for Jimmy Carter ahead of Romney) causes Romney and T-Paw to charge even harder to the right than they’ve already been.

But this rightward charge comes so late in the game that most of the country misses it because a. they don’t care about the Republican race because it’s been so boring for so long; b. it’s the holidays; c. the media hate these Republicans and don’t give them the play they’ve given other primary battles.

January-Februrary: The Tea Party candidates make waves, and maybe earn delegates, but ultimately can’t win any of the early states, ending their campaigns.

February-March: Romney and T-Paw battle for what’s left, but with the threatening Tea Party candidates out of the race or marginalized, both can begin to dart into the political center.

By mid-March one of these guys sews up the GOP nomination, and the wider electorate start paying attention right when the Republicans nominate someone who sounds like a moderate all of a sudden. The Republican nominee can also string the Tea Party along just enough to get a sizable chunk of those voters to support him, but not enough to be painted as a full-fledged Teabagger.

But none of this is a problem for Democrats if Palin and Trump and other prominent Republicans are in there stirring things up and drawing attention to how crazy things have gotten in their party.

I’m worried that the lack of crazy or celebrity candidates—no Trump, no Palin, no Jeb—will keep general election voters from paying attention and truly understanding how far to the right the actual Presidential candidates have become.

This lets a Romney/Barbour or Pawlenty/Perry ticket look reasonable to independent and right of center voters. The Democratic apparatus (not the Obama campaign) then have to go negative/truthful on these guys in a coordinated, effective manner (not our specialty).

Either way, I think President Obama gets re-elected, but every time a prominent Republican or prominently insane person drops out or says they’re not running, that leaves the door open for a relatively unknown candidate to step forward and harness the anti-Obama/scared of the economy vote.

But the other day Trump said he might reconsider running, and Palin has this new documentary about herself coming out soon….my fingers are crossed.

Other Stuff (not mine)

2011-05-13T13:58:00.000-04:00

Rachel Zucker learns a thing or two about poetry from kids who can’t read or write (Poetry Foundation). Also, wondering if you’re a confessional poet? Zucker can help you figure it out.

Does an online reviewer’s grammar matter? Or, would you buy anything that’s awsum? Michael Agger from Slate explores a troubling online trend.

A musical about a bookstore has one indie seller in Jacksonville singing. (The Florida Times-Union)

William Burroughs thought Scientology could be a great way to break free from the prison house of words…until he changed his mind. (via Io9 and Small Press Distribution)

And, finally, from the vaults we have a never-delivered Nixon speech commemorating a tragedy that never happened and Robert Stone’s “Art of Fiction #90” interview from the Winter 1985 Paris Review: “I know it’s all a world of words—what else could it be?”

Thor's Misguided Lack of Diversity

2011-05-10T14:54:00.001-04:00

From EFavata.com

Let's start with a note: there's a boycott of Thor being organized by racist and neo-nazi organizations. They're upset because the movie based on a comic book about made-up deities has cast a black man as one of the important made-up deities. No, really, they're pissed off and organizing a boycott of the film.This post is not about that boycott or about Idris Elba--who is totally great in the movie. No, this post is about a different aspect of Thor's casting.

Thor is set in three equally fantastic realms—Asgard, where Anthony Hopkins and lots of dudes in armor live; Jotunheim, home to the very literally named Frost Giants; and a town in New Mexico that is completely devoid of Mexicans.

Marvel Studios built a fake town and named it “Puente Antiguo,” spanish for “Ancient Bridge.” They also filmed a bar scene in a Santa Fe stripclub (sans strippers) and other locations throughout the state. A look at the film crew's dozens of Spanish surnames shows there are enough people named Gonzalez, Flores, Martinez, Luna, etc that the filmmakers were at least aware of all the brown-skinned people that have been living in that area for the past few millennia.

Go ahead, watch Thor, you should, it’s good, but keep your eyes peeled, watch the background. There’s a nurse who looks like she might be Latina, and one of the SHIELD agents is played by an actor of Honduran descent, but that’s it.

So, why is this a problem?

Isn’t it better to give actors of color prominent speaking roles instead of only limiting them to the busboy or farmer in the background? Well, yes and no. Idris Elba is a great actor, and he’s cool as Heimdall the gatekeeper, and they even have an Asian Asgardian in Tadanobu Asano--both of whom pissed off all the neo-Nazis who've adopted Thor as one of their own.

But the problem is that those minority actors are only used in the fantastic locales. The actual, real-life, Earth-bound human beings are all white and African American. Marvel misses the point of diversity entirely by not casting any Latino extras or principal actors.

Now that doesn’t mean I’m arguing for token inclusion of Latinos. If a film is set during the Russian Revolution there’s not going to be a Montoya chilling in the background.

But for a film set in a town with a Spanish name, in a majority-minority state, and with a crew that has a strong Latino presence, then at some point the filmmakers have got to realize that they’re missing something vital in their film. This absence is made even more stark in light of the open casting calls that happened in Santa Fe.

An obvious response would be to point out that the movie’s not real. That it’s not meant to reflect reality because it’s about a guy in a cape who throws a hammer around and who kills fifteen feet tall killer robot things. But this “lighten up it’s not real response” overlooks the fact that what supposedly sets these most recent superhero films apart is their devotion to reality. These are supposed to be set in a recognizably real world—don’t believe me, ask Kenneth Branagh who talked repeatedly about bringing some reality to the military and scientific aspects of the film.

The “Puente Antiguo” set was built in the northern New Mexico high country near the town of Galisteo, about 25 miles south of Santa Fe. According to the latest Census numbers, nearly half of New Mexico’s population is of “Hispanic” descent, and more than half of the residents of Santa Fe County are of “Hispanic” descent.

Northern New Mexico is home to some of the oldest cities in the entire Western Hemisphere. Santa Cruz was founded by the Spaniards in 1598 and Santa Fe celebrated its 400^th anniversary last year. And of course Native Americans were living in the same area for thousands and thousands of years.

Seriously, this stuff is everywhere.

Let me put this another way—if Puente Antiguo was real, it’s possible it could have been inhabited by Spaniards or Mexicans for 130 years before George Washington was even born. But you wouldn’t know it from watching Thor—there’s not even a Mexican restaurant or green chile stand in the film. As you may have noticed, one thing that Latinos have never really been into is naming cities and then leaving them.

There was at least one Mexican woman cast in the movie. Oscar-nominated actress Adriana Baraza was cast as the owner of the diner where Thor breaks his mug and asks for more coffee. She had two small scenes, both of which were cut from the final film.

At least she OWNED the diner that gets blown up.

I enjoyed the movie, and I’m not calling Kenneth Branagh or Marvel studios racist. But I am saying that their treatment of diversity, while admirable at times, still lacks a basic connection to reality. By having actors of color in the realm of Asgard only, and completely removing them from the town in New Mexico, they’re only reinforcing the notion that diversity is something that’s cute, but ultimately fantastical or impossible.

I feel like this is not a particularly revolutionary statement. When a movie is not only filmed, but also set in a town with a Spanish-name in a part of the country where a near-majority percentage of its residents are Latino, then that should be reflected in who appears on screen. The Avengers film and Thor sequels will also be filmed in New Mexico. Hopefully next time the filmmakers will figure out how to use the other half of the state’s population.

Jane's Blanket

2011-03-17T17:42:00.000-04:00

Also posted on Broadcastr, check it out there.

Today, a woman named Jane came by the house to drop off a blanket she crocheted for my mom. This Saturday there's going to be a fundraiser and silent auction to benefit my mom, and a child with leukemia.

My mom met Jane in outpatient oncology. Jane's husband had leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant--just like my mom. He didn't even lose his hair and was back in near-perfect health two weeks after the transplant--unlike my mom.

Jane's from Lubbock, and sounds like it. She wore a t-shirt with a painting of horses on the front. "Texas" was embroidered in cursive over the right breast--just in case you didn't know that's where horses came from. Her hair was frosted blond, she wore big earrings--heavy, costume jewelry--that had stretched her earlobes down.

She was here for five minutes. She asked why there weren't newer pictures of me and my sister on the mantle. She told us her two-year-old granddaughter has a belly and looks like one of them Ethiopians.The granddaughter's name is Palin.

The blanket is white, with pastel green, pink and yellow trim. I wonder how much it'll sell for.

Park Road between 13th and 14th Street

2010-08-31T13:33:00.000-04:00

Park Market. Corner store with guys wearing tank tops going in to by lotto tickets and 24 oz cans of beer. Beer. Ice. Lotto. Bars on the windows and a cashier behind bulletproof glass. An old one story, blue building with a white overhang with decorative blocks attached to the sides like legos. It’s squat and hard next to the new three-story condo building attached to it with a circle driveway and units with floor to ceiling windows so you can see the size of the tenant’s TVs.

Couples walking their dogs and trying to make conversation with each other while hoping passing strangers don’t notice their dog shitting in public. They talk about whether or not they can afford to leave Columbia Heights and move into the more baby-appropriate areas of Cleveland Park or Tenleytown. They hold plastic bags over their hands like gloves.

A balding man and his friend in a civic run the red light on 13th street. A young woman and her equally young friend pushing strollers stop in the street and yell at the car as it disappears up the hill and towards Maryland. One is white and one is black and both have their hair pinned down onto their scalps in tiny braids that flow down their necks onto their shoulders.

Women walking home from the metro who are still flush the excitement of being young, beautiful and nearly successful in the nation’s capitol. They still wear their heels on the walk home in tight, knee-length black skirts.

Teenagers who slow the sidewalk and shuffle shoulder-to-shoulder while each tries to look more disinterested in their friend’s company than the next one.

Across the corner from the grocery store is a three story orangish pink house with blue trim. The house has turrets and is ornate in a gingerbread house manner. Through the windows you can see a grand piano with a bust of someone facing where the player sits.

Old men who smoke and have deeply lined faces and eyes hiding behind squinty folds stand in front of the grocery store and offer people rides home. The same gypsy cabs everyday. Ma’am do you need transportation? They’re all tall and thick with stomachs that hang over their jeans that don’t fit them anymore. They only thing that changes is the color of their skin and the make of their cars. Old women wearing baggy purple pants and flower print blouses wheel their grocery carts over and call them by their first names while the men load their groceries.

Across the street kids play outside the laundromat while their parents fold clothes inside. There’s a payphone outside with a Bud Lite with Lime ad wrapped around it. A man wearing a Redskins hat, soaked through with sweat and a white t shirt with the logo of a local hospital holds the phone to his ear and talks to people on a different continent.

New baby trees have been planted every 20 feet down both sides of the sidewalks. The sidewalks are newer the closer you get to 14th street.

Four story 100 year old townhomes that have been torn down, rebuilt and broken into million dollar condos blend into the 200 unit 4 year old apartment building with high ceilings that stands on the corner of 14th street. Five years ago it was a vacant lot surrounded by a 12 foot chain link fence lined with plywood and topped with razorwire.

At the corner is a fountain built into a plaza that shoots jets of water straight up in the air. Kids run through it screaming and getting soaked. None of them wear bathing suits and their parents sit on the benches near the fountain and talk with other parents while their kids soak their clothes. Over the fountain are metal trees with solar panels on the top; the trees turn into florescent lights at night and make the plaza grey.

As I cut through the plaza to head to Target, I look to my right and see a Subway sandwich shop tucked in between a shuttered hair salon and a liquor store. Five years earlier, after my mom called me and told me my grandfather was dead, I walked to that Subway and ordered a footlong meatball sub with extra meat and extra cheese. It felt heavy in my stomach and flooded my body with just enough fat and cholesterol to make me feel better. When I made that walk five years before I didn’t feel safe and I knew there was a chance I’d get mugged. Now there’s a crossing guard at the intersection to make sure pedestrians don’t get hit, and a Ruby Tuesday’s across the street.

The Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter

2010-07-26T16:33:00.000-04:00

The newest Spotlight Series blog tour is on Graywolf Press. Graywolf has been around since 1974 and has become one of the largest and most interesting indie publishers in the country. Their catalog is wide-ranging and includes not only fiction and poetry, but a significant amount of cultural criticism and creative writing texts.

The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot by Charles Baxter is (as you might have been able to guess) part of Graywolf’s creative writing “The Art of...” series, which aims to provide small, erudite and useful texts on “a singular craft issue.” The book is aimed at creative writing students, but could be enjoyed by general readers, especially fans of the author’s Baxter spends the most time analyzing.

Baxter defines “subtext” as “the implied, the half-visible, and the unspoken” deeper truths that lie beneath the best fiction. The important stuff that characters, and narrators, only partially admit, but that is necessary for true emotional depth in fiction.

This sounds really vague doesn’t it? And it is vague, as Baxter admits in his introduction, but he does a good job of using multiple examples of different authors employing the same narrative techniques in order to convey the subtext to the reader.

For example, in the first section “The Art of Staging,” Baxter takes Frost’s poem “Home Burial” and analyzes the “staging” of the characters. Here’s the opening lines of the poem:

“He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.”

Baxter’s close reading begins by focusing on both characters being in the cramped space of a stairwell; he advises the reader that putting characters into a tight space is a “profitable situation for a dramatist” because it can spark the characters into interesting actions. He then explains that while the wife in this poem is at the top of the stairs and looking down on her husband, the husband still retains some power because he’s looking at her without her realizing it. Frost gives us a quick snapshot of tension, power and with her over the should glance, a reference to a secret.

This sort of practical close reading, which focuses on the mechanics of character interaction as much as the words that are being said, is similar to what Baxter does throughout the novel.

Baxter does a good job of mixing canonical writers (Dostoevsky and Melville) with newer authors (Paula Fox and Edward P. Jones), but I think his book could have been stronger if it included more scenes that more readers would be familiar with. I know this runs the risk of excluding important texts, and helps reinforce the troubling notion of the “canon,” but it would also make it easier on the reader. I’m all for including overlooked voices, but his first example comes from Obabakoak by Bernado Atxaga (yeah, I don’t know).

I think the only measure of whether or not creative writing books are useful is if you can immediately feel their effect in your own reading or writing. One of the most striking sections in Baxter’s book, and the one that has stuck with me the most, is the final chapter “Loss of Face.”

Baxter is troubled by the lack of facial descriptions in modern literature. He compares writers such as Dickens and Hardy who take the time to evaluate and describe a character’s face, to modern writers such as Don DeLillo who do not. Oftentimes, in the older, more traditional novels, the face becomes a very literal indicator of the “soul” of the character. Villains have deep set eyes and craggy faces while heroes and heroines have pure eyes and clear skin. But nowadays it feels wrong to “[judge] a person’s character on the evidence of how that person looks.” Socially, we’re all trained (theoretically) to look beyond appearances and demeanor and other indicators that could be class or race-based.

However, while Baxter understands to a certain extent the cultural reasons for our shift away from facial descriptions, he does mourn its loss and sees it as a frequent cop-out by the author. He starts this chapter by quoting a student who says he doesn’t like to write faces because, very simply, “It’s too hard.”

In my own writing I’ve made the choice not to describe character’s physically because I feel like readers picture the characters their own way anyways, and because at times I think a racial/cultural anonymity can create an interesting tension.

But I do have to admit that Baxter has a point, and my hesitance could be me taking the easy way out through fancy terms and writerly excuses. So I’ve decided to give faces to all the characters in the story I'm currently working on. And it’s really hard. After reading Baxter’s book I’ve also become more aware of writers who choose to or choose not to describe their character’s faces. Many of the beginning writers whose work I read in lit. journals, both those stories published and those that don’t make it out of the slush pile, really have abandoned the face. However, I’m also reading Outerbridge Reach by Robert Stone; Stone is a stately, old fashioned kind of writer and we see exactly what all his characters look like, and the effect is bracing because of its unfamiliarity and yet also wonderful when handled properly.

At a breezy 180ish pages, Baxter’s entry is a quick and enlightening read. This book is valuable to creative writers because he reminds us of how important it is to slow down and pull apart a text in order to see how it works. I think many writers are used to doing this anyways, but it’s helpful to have a guide through some examples in order to remind us how it’s done.

Baxter, who is also the series editor for “The Art of,” teaches at the University of Minnesota and has published several novels, collections of short stories, works of criticism and even some poems. More on him can be found on his website.

More about Graywolf Press here. Including a page where you can buy The Art of Subtext.

And don’t forget to visit the other blogs participating in the tour!

The Devil and Sonny Liston by Nick Tosches

2010-07-21T16:53:00.003-04:00

The heavyweight champion means something, and always has.

Each of the men to hold the title has a narrative behind him, and occupies an important historic and symbolic role in American life. Jack Johnson in the 1910’s became a pure, dangerous embodiment of American swagger a couple decades before the rest of the country developed a similar swagger. Joe Louis was an important part of the stoic, hard-working “Greatest Generation.” And Louis’s eventual, heartbreaking descent into irrelevance and drug abuse was caused by America itself, and serves as a warning of what we do to our celebrities and heroes. Ali became one of the most important dissenting voices in American history. The list goes on we could do this all day, and if anyone knew who the current world champ is we could talk about him in a similar way. (On a side note, the fact that the “title” has devolved into an endless maze of belts and divisions and conferences so labyrinthine and repetitive that it renders the idea of a single champ irrelevant certainly fits this digital age.)

In “The Devil and Sonny Liston” Nick Tosches tries to analyze Sonny Liston and redeem his role in boxing history. Tosches is a dynamic writer who has written multiple biographies and novels, and is an editor at Vanity Fair, he’s also likely written the definitive biography of Liston, and the book, much like Liston himself, is seriously flawed, yet still packs a hell of a punch.

You may not know who Sonny Liston is, but you’ve seen his picture countless times. He’s the one on the ground, on his back, in front of Ali’s hooked arm and gaping yell in one of the most iconic pictures of the 20^th century. That picture, which can be found on countless t-shirts, posters (including one up in then-Senator Obama’s office) and computer desktops is Ali’s moment, but it came at Liston’s expense. He has too often been relegated to just the guy that Ali beat in order to become the champ, and then the guy he beat again the next year. Tosches’s book tries to reassert Liston’s boxing skill, and tell the story of a troubled man manipulated by larger forces.

Tosches admits it, Liston’s friends admitted it and even Liston admitted it—Sonny was a bad man. He, much like Foreman and Tyson after him, was out to hurt you, and Tosches often refers to his “dead eyes.” This is part of what made Liston so compelling and frightening in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and it’s still part of why he’s such a dark and looming figure in boxing history. He went to prison multiple times, there were rumors of him being a mob enforcer and murderer, there seems to have been a never-ending stream of accusations of sexual assault and even his friends were scared of him. Tosches quotes Amiri Baraka (back when he was LeRoi Jones) as saying “Sonny Liston was the big black Negro in every white man’s hallway, waiting to do him in, deal him under.”

Tosches doesn’t try to hide the violent and frightening side of Liston’s life and personality, but he does want to tell his story honestly and give the man his due when he deserves it. Tosches does a spectacular job of detailing the meteoric rise of Liston’s boxing career and the dominating skill and power he showed in the ring. Liston comes across as frighteningly strong in the ring, and we get the sad impression that we never even saw his best.

The writing style tries to match Liston’s power. Tosches aims for a hard boiled, noir rhetoric of sharp jabbing sentences that punch the reader back. Sometimes it works (often it doesn’t) and the book has some truly beautiful sentences about ugly subjects: “He was not a fool. No. But what there was of wisdom in him told him that, between breaking one’s back and breaking the back of others, between being the victim of sinful injustice and being its deliverer, it was better to break than to be broken. Fuck right and wrong, neither of which had been a friend to him; and fuck that honest pay shit.”

The book is also very valuable as a history of boxing during its most mob-addled history. Tosches does a great job of untangling the dense web of connections between the mafia, boxers and their managers/promoters. There are countless names, and countless partnerships, and at times it’s hard to remember who’s working for who and which mobster is behind it all, but I think that’s part of the point.

This is one of the best things about Tosches’s book, in detailing the overwhelming influence of the mob on EVERYONE, he also redeems boxing to a certain extent. Rigged and thrown fights are an important part of this book, but Tosches, and some of the people he interviews, challenges the notion that all or most fights were rigged. As Tosches said, when the mob “had a piece of both fighters, it mattered little who won.”

But Tosches does go out of his way to come as close as he legally can to claiming that both Liston/Ali matches were thrown by Sonny. His arguments are very, disturbingly persuasive and are nearly devastating to Ali’s legacy. But his claims about the first Liston/Ali fight are as shaky as his claims about the second Ali/Liston fight are strong.

The first fight was close, with both men landing serious punches that would have incapacitated nearly anyone else in the world. After the fourth round Ali goes to his corner and says he can’t see because there’s something stinging his eyes; he tries to take his gloves off because of the pain, and because seeing is generally important when the toughest guy in the world is trying to kill you, but his manager splashes water on his face and shoves him out there. Ali’s vision clears and just before the seventh round Liston remains on his stool and refuses to fight; he claims his shoulder hurt and the rest of his arm went numb. Ali became the champ.

Tosches presents many tantalizing bits of evidence to support his (not quite explicitly made) claim that Sonny threw the fight, but he doesn’t explain why Ali suddenly went blind. Most other boxing experts point to the Liston corner putting some type of irritant on Sonny’s gloves in order to blind Ali, and some people have claimed to have seen one of Liston’s cornermen put something on the gloves and throw the bottle under the ring. Tosches, in a very obligatory way, mentions the blindness, but doesn’t explain why Liston would try to cheat if he was just going to throw the fight. If Liston didn’t blind Ali, then who the hell did?

He does a better job with the rematch. There’s been much said about the second Liston/Ali fight and the phantom punch that knocked Liston down early and kept him down in a “none too convincing pose.” Even at the time the audience started booing and Ali has faced suspicions about that fight ever since. I hate to admit it, but the fight seems shady and Tosches is far from the first to say so.

What Tosches does well in regards to the second fight, and to his career as a whole, is present Liston as the victim of larger, darker forces. He was disliked by white politicians (such as JFK and RFK) who openly rooted against him because he was such a troublemaker, the NAACP didn’t want him to be champ because they thought it would set race relations back, the police were always after him (sometimes legitimately, sometimes not), the mafia saw him as a huge money maker but also an expensive nuisance and the Nation of Islam saw him as a threat to their man Ali becoming champ. Tosches persuasive claim is that these forces, plus Sonny’s own demons, finally flexed their muscles, and Liston took a dive in the second fight.

But as persuasive as this argument is, this is also where Tosches’s intense Ali-hatred comes in too strong. He dismisses Ali as someone who was too mainstream when he was Cassius Clay and then the darling of egghead intellectuals once he became a dissident. Tosches can’t even admit that Ali was a good fighter, much less an important anti-war voice, and instead paints him as an obnoxious, self-serving, media driven star. Ali may have been all of this, but he also deserves credit for the rest of his career and his fight against racism and Vietnam.

At the same time Tosches goes too far in defense of Liston at times. Yes, he presents us with the known facts around the numerous allegations of sexual assault against Liston, but he has a habit of presenting them straight—just the facts. But when Liston spends an hour at an orphanage, and enjoys playing with the kids and they enjoy him—it turns into a theme that comes back over and over and over again as proof that he was an okay guy. I think Tosches does a bit of a disservice to Liston in his attempts to paint him as someone who was secretly brilliant and kind. He was a bad man, and that’s okay, it doesn’t make him less important or less manipulated by the mob, politicians and American culture.

Tosches’s book isn’t new, it came out in 2000. And it seems to have been written just in time. Many of these interview subjects were in their 80s and 90s when Tosches finds them and their insights are vital to the success of this book. We get to hear it straight from the guys who were there. The cop who arrested Liston? Here he is. The guy who knows who rigged which fights? Still alive (at the time). Sonny’s half brother who remembers him as a child? No problem. Tosches’s leg-work is breathtaking and it’s doubtful that anyone could gather more information without the discovery of someone’s secret archive.

This book is required for anyone who cares about boxing’s past, but this is also an important book about American history and the role of sport in society. And if you’ve admired Ali in that famous photo, then you deserve to read the other half of the story.

Here's just one example of the Ali/Liston poster. When you do a google image search for either fighter, this image comes up more than any other.
Here's the entire second Ali/Liston fight, including the knock out punch and Liston's awkward rolling around on the mat.
More on Tosches, including his Vanity Fair articles.

She and Him

2010-07-09T13:48:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday I saw She & Him in a sold-out show at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. Embarking on their first tour, She & Him set out to prove they were more than just a studio-friendly, movie star-fronted, kitschy novelty act. Over the course of their 90ish minute show I think they for the most part proved themselves to be a “real” band, but with somewhat serious flaws that kept me from being fully invested in the show.

This is Zooey Deschanel’s band. The spotlight, literally and figuratively, was always on her and the rest of the band, including M. Ward, seemed to be part of her group, not vice versa. Thankfully she has enough presence and charm to pull it off. The crowd loved her and she seemed engaged with the audience; after the show it felt like she had talked and interacted with the audience more than she actually had. As an actress she has a presence that she was able to transfer to the stage.

M. Ward was towards the side of the stage and ceded the attention to her. The few times he did step to the microphone to sing on his own, instead of just in a soft harmony with her, were some of the highlights of the show. Ward (who looks a lot like Rene from True Blood, by the way) has a great, vulnerable voice and I wanted to hear more of it.

Any concern that this was not a real band, but a nostalgia act dependent on pristine studio environments, was blown out of the water by how tight the band was. Their musicians are pros and their set was extraordinarily faithful to their studio sound. This fidelity to their sound was nearly a problem though, and I would have liked the songs to deviate a little more from the forms we are familiar with. This only happened a few times and when it did it was great to see such a polished band let their hair down a little bit. They ended the first set with a long version of “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here,” which devolved into a loud, jam session of near Velvet Underground proportions. The musicians were punishing their instruments, pushing the boundaries of the song and Deschanel was jumping wildly across the stage while slapping her tambourine around. They showed flaws, they showed edges and it was wonderful.

Going into the show I was most concerned about whether or not Deschanel’s voice would hold up in a live setting. The beauty of her voice, on their albums, is how incredibly soft and melodic she can be while also conveying emotion. All great singers are great actors, and I think she can bring a quiet emotion to a song. But I was worried that her soft voice would get lost in live performance and be drowned out by the instruments. She seemed to be aware of this possibility and compensated for this by pushing her voice incredibly hard. The woman can belt out a song. Loudly. Really loudly. In fact, and I didn’t see this coming, I thought she was too loud.

At certain moments, such as the beginning of “Sentimental Heart,” she was singing so loud that I couldn’t even hear the melody of the song. “CRIED ALL NIGHT TILL THERE WAS NOTHING MORE,” is a less powerful lyric when someone is shouting it at your face. Hearing her words wasn’t a problem, but with her singing so loudly, and her vocals up so high in the mix, some of the preciousness of her voice was lost in the live setting. At one point when she hit a loud and high note, I saw someone about a foot in front of me flinch and instinctively cover their ears because it was just so surprisingly loud.

This odd flaw was nearly enough to ruin the show for me; although, I have to admit, I’ve talked to other people who were there who didn’t notice this at all. I think it’s the band’s fault. There was a drummer, a bass player, a keyboardist and the rhythm and lead guitar, AND sometimes Deschanel was also playing the ukulele or the tambourine. Frankly if they developed a more striped-down live sound it would be better for her voice in the long run (she’s not going to be singing for long if she has to belt like that every night) and it would show off her voice’s uniqueness more. This simple sound appeared for the five songs Ward and Deschanel sang together without the band. It was she, him, a ukulele and his guitar, and I thought it was the most affecting part of the show. These quite duets, including covers of “You Really Got a Hold on Me,” “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio” and “Wouldn’t it be Nice,” were the best chance for her voice to shine and for Deschanel and Ward to show off their chemistry. It was the two of them singing to each other, and it was so damn cute that you couldn’t help but love it.

At the end of the night I enjoyed the hell out of this show, and am glad I got a chance to see them live. I just hope that in the future they’re willing to sacrifice some of the melodic perfection in order to preserve and highlight their greatest asset, Deshanel’s voice.

Here’s the official website with info on the rest of the tour. Their next stops are: Atlanta, Birmingham, Louisville and LA.

Here's the setlist.

The Washington Senators

2010-07-09T13:04:00.000-04:00

The driver saw me running for the bus and stopped to let me on. I was wearing a dark blue hat with a thick red capital "W" bordered with white thread. The driver looked at me, "What's your hat for?"

"The Senators, Washington Senators, the baseball team."

"Oh right, yeah, that's nice I like that better than that other joint with the curly W they wear now."

"Me too, I picked it up at the stadium."

I walked down the aisle to find a seat and passed a thin, nearly gaunt, man who looked to be in his 60s. He said in a friendly, grumpy old man voice, "And what do you know about the Washington Senators young man?"

I laughed and sat down behind him, "Well I know about Walter Johnson and about the World Series they won and I know that they left for other towns, twice."

"Did you know that they used to play in Griffith Stadium where Howard University Hospital is now?"

"I did, I did."

The man was tall and thin, his arms and legs like straws. He was wearing white shorts and a loose short sleeve button up with blue lines. He was wearing a beige hat that snapped down onto the brim; he had faint white stubble and had what looked like a bandage or maybe a towel that he was pressing on to the side of his neck. On the seat next to him was a reusable shopping bag and two full plastic bags, I couldn't see what was in the bags.

"Was Griffith nice? I wish I could have seen it."

"Oh it was beautiful, or at least it was to me when I was a boy. My father took me there quite a few times."

He angled his body to the right into the aisle in order to stiffly move his neck to the side so he could look at me; he moved like someone with bolts in his neck or pain in his back.

"It was a chance to watch some ball, eat some cracker jack, drink some pop and he'd even give me a sip of beer." He popped his eyes wide and smiled.

"That sounds great."

"It was fun, you know for a kid to spend time with his dad, that was very important to me. I remember the Senators very well. He died when I was young so these memories of him are very nice."

"That sounds great, sounds like a lot of fun."

"It was, it was. He took me there, me and my brothers, whenever he had a chance. You know my parents did their best, they did a good job, I was very lucky. A lot of people out there can't even raise one kid, much less me and my three brothers and my two sisters, hell. I was lucky."

He kept the bandage/towel pressed to his neck.

"Oh we had it pretty good. I remember my dad taking me ice skating, there used to be an ice skating rink at Florida and New York. But you know, even then I knew we were different. I'd look around and not see any other dads there and knew that, you know, that I had it different."

"Right, yeah I know what you mean." I thought of my mom dropping me off at roller skating rinks in Texas.

He nodded, "Now, now I just don't know I think its gotten even worse. DC was different then, or maybe it was me, but it seemed nicer then. Easier maybe."

We were both quite for a moment and felt the heat on the bus.

He craned back around, "It got rough later in the 70's when I was trying to go to school. I was drafted out of college, and god I didn't want to go, I tried to get out of it, but they told me, 'you can do five years in prison or two years in Vietnam.'" He laughed, hard, like a cough, "And I knew I'd die in prison so I decided to take my chances in Vietnam."

I laughed, "Yeah, well you made it out."

"Damn right I did, I got out in '74, but the economy went down, there were gas shortages later, no one had any money, and I needed a job and damnit I had to go back into the army. I been all over the place, went to Iraq twice, went to Afghanistan and got blown in half, but now I'm out. On the day I hit my 35 years and retirement I said get me the hell outta here i'm sick of killing people, I'm sick of people trying to kill me I want to go home. I was in the convoy on the way to the airport to head to Germany to be processed out and BAM," he clapped his hands together. "Blown to hell, they told me later, and some of those guys were giving me a hard time about it, making fun of me you know, they said I was trying to push my own guts back into my body. I said, what the hell was I supposed to do? It's not like I had a MASH unit in my pack, I did what I had to do. And you know what? I survived." He hooked his bags onto his shoulders.

"Damn right you did."

He stood up to get off the bus, "I'll tell you what it was," he reached up to grab the bar above the seat but his fingers slipped off and he fell to the side and landed on his hip and the side of his thighs, his bags sliding off his shoulders onto the floor.

"I'm alright, I'm alright."

I stood up and grabbed him by the right arm with my hand on his left side and helped him to his feet.

"There you go, you just slipped a bit, you're okay, no problem."

"I got it, I got it." He stood up. "Thanks. Have a good day." And he walked off the bus.

Two young women had looked at him with shame when he fell, and I saw them make eye contact as he stood up, they may have rolled their eyes behind their sunglasses. I sat back down and watched Columbia Avenue go by the window.

Two Thoughts, Similar

2010-06-30T10:13:00.000-04:00

"While we search for the antidote or the medicine to cure us, the new, that which can only be found in the unknown, we must continue to turn to sex, books and travel, and knowing they will lead us into the abyss, which, as it happens, is the only place we can find the cure."

----R. Bolaño

"By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream."

-----V. Woolf

Migraine Links: What Is It? Who Gets It?

2010-06-24T18:15:00.000-04:00

So what causes a migraine? Let's see what the Mayo Clinic says are frequent migraine triggers:

Hormonal changes in women.
Food: alcohol, aged cheeses; chocolate; aspartame; overuse of caffeine; MSG; salty foods; and processed foods.
Skipping meals
Stress
Bright lights and sun glare, loud sounds, unusual smells.
Missing sleep or getting too much sleep.
Intense physical exertion.
A change of weather or barometric pressure
Certain medications

So...according to The Mayo Clinic, migraines can be triggered by eating, not eating, sleeping, not sleeping, light, sound, exercise, medicine, weather, travel....basically, they don't know. It seems that if your parents had them there's a good chance you will have them. (Side note: my parents and my grandparents don't get them.)

Ok, so we don't know what causes them , but what exactly are migraines? The answer there can basically be summed up with "it's when something goes wrong in your brain."

Theories on migraines include such scary sounding things as:

"Cortical spreading depression" in which brain activity is reduced over part of your cortex, which causes your brain to release inflammatory agents to wake your brain back up. During the migraine your (let's just switch to the first person), MY brain becomes depolarized, and the migraine peaks in intensity when a majority of my brain is depolarized. I'll rephrase this: last Friday, my brain's electrical charge reversed itself.

Vascular Problems. Or maybe the blood vessels in my brain were just contracting and expanding when they shouldn't have been. Under this theory some of my brain arteries are spasming shut and the lack of blood in parts of my brain leads to the visual aura. Then when the arteries loosen these same blood vessels get too full of blood and some leaks out (into my brain), my pain receptors spot this and release inflammatories because they think that's a good idea. It's not, because every time my heart beats (which is something it tends to do) blood goes through the inflamed area and results in terrible pain.

Serotonin Problems. Some think that if my serotonin levels are too low then it causes this constriction and dilation of my brain arteries, causing a migraine.

General Brain Problems. Or, maybe just part of my brain stem is sorta irritated and inflamed, which causes my body to release chemicals, which just pisses my brain stem off even more and which leads to a migraine.

Or all of the above.

There's basically no working theory that doesn't involve something going wrong in my brain. There's also a possibility that the chances of me having a stroke (what with all the brain/blood/artery problems) are about two or three times higher than non-migraine sufferers.

(Confession: much of this info came from wikipedia. Get over it.)

So who gets migraines? Turns out it's a lot of people. It's obviously hard to determine stuff like this but 6% to 15% of all adult men are migraine sufferers (meaning at least one a year). Women are more vulnerable to migraines with 14% to 35% of women suffering from migraines. Sorry ladies.

And they get more common later in life, so if you've never had one before don't worry there's still time.

There's a ton of websites devoted to migraine sufferers documenting their experiences. Some of their stories are incredibly honest and heartbreaking. There are people out there suffering a lot more than I ever have, and their coping mechanisms are truly miraculous. Severe migraine sufferers have to figure out how to live their lives, and it's inspiring to read their stories of living with migraines and even turning them to their advantage and finding the beauty in them.

One of the leading sites is The Daily Headache run by Kerrie Smyres who has had a persistent headache and migraine everyday for 20 years. She's amazing and has been blogging about her life since 2004. It's a spectacular site. Also, look at the list of links to other migraine blogs in the right column of the Daily Headache--she lists dozens of people blogging about their migraines and there are countless more.

The NY Times had a short lived migraine blog, which I wish they would bring back. The contributors included Oliver Sacks, Jeff Tweedy and Siri Hustvedt (migraine sufferers all).

This NY Times audio feature has several people discussing their migraines and what they've done to help ease the pain. One sufferer participated in an experimental trial and had an electric device implanted in his spine in order to disrupt the migraines. The operation was successful, he used to get migraines everyday, but now he only gets them once every ten days.

Finally, The Migraine Aura Foundation contains an overwhelming amount of information including migraine art, info on famous migraine sufferers and a ton of testimonials. This link contains some really accurate depictions of the aura. Only 20% - 30% of migraine sufferers actually see auras, and some people have auditory or olfactory hallucinations that accompany the visual aura.

The most interseting part of migraine week on Paperclip People is the number of peole who have said they had no idea what a migraine even really was before reading my posts. They're bizarre experiences, and I hope I've conveyed some of what it's like. I've also learned a lot in researching this post and the rest of them. Thanks for following along. Please leave comments or links to other sites or articles on migraines in the comments.

Saramago Links

2010-06-24T10:57:00.000-04:00

The italicized quotes in this week's migraine diaries are from Saramago novels--they're not all from Blindness.

Saramago was a master at exploring a surreal event (the Iberian peninsula breaking off, a city going blind, death dying) and using it to reflect human nature. His allegorical stories could have easily veered into the shallow waters of bad fantasy writing, but they're grounded in actual human emotions and, no matter how weird they get, they still feel real.

Saramago, who died at the age of 87, was a tireless writer who published a new book every couple of years; his last novel, Cain, was published in Portugal last year and should be in English by the end of this year. His most recent book in English is The Notebook, a collection of his blog postings with special focus on the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.

For all of his mourners, there are many people who are not sad to see him go. An editorial in the Vatican newspaper refereed to him as a "populous extremist" and an "anti-religious ideologue." Saramago's 1991 novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ was attacked by Catholics who felt it inappropriate to portray Jesus as a fallible human being. The Portuguese government refused to submit the novel for any international awards, and Saramago spent the rest of his life living in the Canary Islands. On Sunday, Portugal's conservative president did not attend the funeral of the only Portuguese author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, but 20,000 other mourners did. Saramago was also accused by the Anti-Defamation League of being anti-Semitic after some explosive comments he made after visiting Palestine.

This "Art of Fiction" interview he did with The Paris Review is required reading. He describes his writing process in great depth.

The Guardian obituary.

An article on his funeral and some of the controversy surrounding him.

The ADL press release on Saramago's comments and David Frum's editorial titled "Death of a Jew Hater."

Info on The Notebook and a review.

Migraine Diary, Part Two

2010-06-23T12:56:00.009-04:00

"I don't think that we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing...".”

I make it to my front door and open my eyes wide to make sure I get the key in the lock. The house is hot, I climb the stairs, lock my bedroom door behind me, open the windows but close the curtains, and turn on my fan to the highest it can go.

The headache is starting.

The migraine started before I had a chance to eat breakfast. I reach for my bag, keeping my eyes closed, find the scone and break off a corner. I eat while lying down with one arm over my eyes. I’m not hungry but I know I need food for two reasons: 1. Energy to get through the migraine. 2. So that I can have something to vomit when the time comes.

The scone tastes good. I’m eating while lying on my back and I’m worried about swallowing wrong and having to cough. Coughing with a migraine hurts, I imagine it feels like a piano falling on your head while you’re drowning. I chew every bite for as long as I can. The act of chewing and the flavor of the scone takes my mind off of my head and makes me feel better. I break off another piece and repeat again and again until the scone is gone. When the scone is gone I wish I had another, it pains me that I don’t have another. I stop chewing and press both arms back over my head and it feels like the pain has increased.

It’s not a normal headache pain. It’s not like a hangover. It’s not like the pain that comes from staring into a computer for too long. It has more focal points, more areas that are gripped. It doesn’t throb or pulse or beat. It starts somewhere above the right lobe of my brain and radiates out from there with a steady pressure.

I open my eyes and see my dusty bookshelf and I begin to panic over all my stuff and what I’m going to do when I move. I see a scuff on the wall by my bed and feel like I’m living in squalor. I see the small crack by my bathroom door and think that the house could collapse in on me at any moment. I begin to worry about what I would do if something actually happened just then. What if the wires in the house are frayed and sparking? What if the power goes out and I’m left alone in a hot room over the summer without a fan? What if someone tries to break into the house in the middle of the day? Would I hear them over the sound of the fan? Do I hear someone outside my door?

It’s a deep pain that has an emotional component to it. It makes you feel bad from the inside out. It makes everything worse. It’s not just pain, but an actual change in your personality, in how you perceive the world. Everything seems terrible. It’s too hot, or too cold, or too bright, or too loud, or too quiet. The small becomes magnified and turns into something terrifying.

In 30 minutes I’ve gone from ordering a coffee and looking forward to watching soccer, to writhing in pain, unable to function.

I know what’s coming next. And I know it’ll be bad, but that I’ll feel slightly better afterwards. I pull myself from bed and head to the bathroom. I can tell I’m about to get sick. The effort of pushing food and liquid out of my stomach while having a migraine makes me dizzy. I bend down to the sink, rinse my mouth and let the water from the faucet flow over my face. It’s cool and calming I don’t know how long I stayed under the water. I stand up straight, slowly, and blink. The pain has diminished somewhat, it always does after I get sick. It’s not over, it’s not done, but it’s slightly better, as if there were some toxins I needed to expel or maybe as if the effort of getting sick took my body’s focus away from the headache.

I eat the blueberries and continue to drink water with my eyes closed. I press a pillow over my nose and eyes and breathe through my mouth. I try to relax and force myself into sleep. The anxiety has dimmed, the pain is still strong, but I know that sleep helps.

At night, under normal conditions without a migraine, I have trouble falling asleep. But when I get my migrained self into the sleep mindset it happens pretty easy. I know I can sleep through so much of the pain and my body gives in and I’m out.

I don’t sleep for long. I think maybe only 45 minutes, possibly less, but it’s enough to feel a significant drop in the pain. I sit up, realize that’s a bad idea and flop back down. It’s terrifying to be so sick that the energy it takes to sit up is too strenuous. I have trouble falling back asleep after the initial nap.

I writhe. I keep my legs moving, kicking at sheets that aren’t there, trying to shift my focus. I roll onto my side, I roll onto the other side, I lie on my stomach than quickly onto my back. I move because I have to. I fold my body to the side so my torso is lying perpendicular to my legs the wrong way across the bed. I end up with my head at the foot of the bed. I press the pillow down onto my eyes and forehead and begin to wonder how much pressure it would take to injure my eyes or crack my skull. I ease off the pillow. I fall asleep.

“He will probably be cured by the time he wakes, it will be the same with the others, most likely they are already regaining their sight at this very moment....”

I wake up a few hours later. The light in the room has dimmed in the afternoon. I’m exhausted. I inventory myself without moving. I’m thirsty. I can tell I’ll be very hungry soon. My head still hurts, but the pain has faded into something manageable. I’ve slept through the worst, but I’m still not done.

I turn on my computer and watch the end of the England/Algeria soccer match. Or, I listen to it, because watching hurts my eyes and feels like it could trigger a relapse. As they say, it’s a weak recovery.

And now there’s not much for me to do. I can’t read because the words are too small and it requires too much brain and eye focus and coordination. I can listen to music softly. I can put on a movie and close my eyes through most of it. Listening and squinting a view when necessary. None of these are satisfying. I’m shackled by boredom. I’m only bored when I have a migraine because I can’t actually do what I want. I fall back asleep.

Now it’s much later. The headache has faded even more and I put on Flight of the Conchords to distract myself. I can’t move very much. Standing up long enough to put in a dvd has made me tired. Laughing moves my head and sharpens the pain at my temples. But it’s not as bad as it was and I know I’m almost through with the whole thing.

I need food. I pull clothes on and slowly walk down the stairs. I don’t want to see my rooomates because I don’t want to tell them why I’ve been home all day and where I’m going. I want to conserve my energy for the food gathering. I of course have nothing in the house and decide to try to walk to the deli on the corner. It’s after 6pm and it’s cooler outside than it was when I came home, but it's also more crowded. I feel fragile, but I can see and I’m not as shaky as I was last time I was outside. I feel like a nervous old man.

It’s hard to read the menu, but I order a big sandwich with turkey and bacon. I’m always hungry after a migraine, and I eat the whole sandwich, chips and drink a coke. The food makes me feel better, stronger. I’m eating in order to survive instead of just eating because I’m hungry.

I walk back home and for the first time all day my skin feels good. I watch XMen2 because I can put it on and not pay attention. I listen to some music and try to write but can’t do it yet. I kill more time then fall back asleep for good and sleep for eight hours.

All the next day I feel tired with a slight pressure in the front of my head. It’s not a headache, it’s pressure, like the ghost of the migraine reminding me that it was there and that it’ll be back. I can’t do much, I’m not going to yoga or going out for long, but I’m back to functional again. I can read, I can write.

Erin and I eat dinner outside at night and the lights of passing cars and the streetlight pools of yellow light bother me, but it’s not as bad as it was. It feels like I’ve been out of society, but it was just a day. I drink a beer and I can tell my body doesn’t want it, but it relaxes me a bit, and tastes good so I finish it. I can talk. I can move my head side to side. Small things, small as a quarter, small as three blocks, but they seem fresh and I’ve missed them.

“...there are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything...”

In a way, I'm lucky. Many people have it much worse than me. Mine only last a day not a week or a month. Other people are far more light and sound sensitive than me. Other people fall deeper into despair. I've never had to miss something I really wanted to do because of a migraine. They've never happened while on vacation, or while working on something vitally important. They usually happen in the morning and are gone by the evening.

In the moment, gripped by the pain, it’s hard to imagine how it could be worse, but it could be, many people have it worse. I tell myself I'm lucky.

Migraine Diary, Part One

2010-06-22T11:36:00.005-04:00

“Then she lifted her head up to the sky and saw everything white, It is my turn, she thought. Fear made her quickly lower eyes.”

It’s before 10am on Friday and Ruthie, my co-worker, and I are in Starbucks. We’re talking about their pastries and wondering if they make more of a profit from food or coffee. I look up to order a grande bold roast, then look back down at the pastries when I notice the sparkling spot in my vision.

I get migraines 4 or 5 times a year and they follow the same steps; the pattern is nearly comforting because I can anticipate what’s next and when it will end. The spot is always in the same spot in my upper left field of vision, somewhere around 11oclock if I described things like I was in the air force. In the upper left field of vision, not in my upper left eye, closing that eye doesn’t make the spot go away.

Instinctively I blink and tilt my head to the left but the spot doesn’t move, it has never moved, but I tilt my head just the same.

I take a deep breath, hoping to clear my head, I visualize oxygen flooding my brain and soothing whatever’s happening in there. I hand over the two bills and the quarter I’ve been gripping and I tell myself I can breathe past this one, that I can focus, breathe, get some water and breathe, short circuit the migraine before it actually starts, breathe. I get two dimes and a penny back from the cashier and carefully reach out with both hands to take my coffee.

I put a splash of ½ and ½ into my coffee, still in denial and trying to stick to a routine, the spot has grown, it’s starting to spin and more colors begin to appear. The spot began as little more than a pin prick, but is growing rapidly. We’re walking back to the office now and the ring has grown to the size of a quarter.

It looks like a cornea floating in my vision, staring at me, with a ring of crystals where the eye color should be, and a clear patch in the middle that grows as the spot extends. The ring is like a kaleidoscope, green and pink which occasionally flecks to red or blue. That part of the world is being reflected through a prism and I can’t see what’s beneath the crystals. That part of the world is gone and I get seasick if I try to look through it. The patch in the center of the ring seems grey, like the colors have been leached from that spot into the crystals.

Quarters are small; one can lie flat, completely hidden under the pad of my thumb. But this quarter-sized hole in the world isn’t small. Find a quarter, hold it between your thumb and forefinger, lift it to about a foot in front of your face, at 11oclock, and imagine a dead spot in your vision that makes you nauseous to look at, move your head side to side but keep the quarter in the same place, and you’ll begin to understand how big a quarter can be.

I tell Ruthie that I’m starting to get a migraine and am about to become useless. She says “oh no” and tells me that she was once laid out by a migraine for a month in high school. She’s trying to be sweet so I don’t tell her that her story is not helping. I try to maintain a normal conversation even though all my energy is focused on walking in a straight line. It has been about 5 minutes since the migraine started. We’re at the building and the sparkling-crystal-nausea-death-ring is now the size of a bowling ball, and soon it will take up all of my vision. I let Ruthie call the elevator and punch in the code to our office door because I’m not sure I could find the little numbers on the security pad.

I sit down, email myself a few documents just in case I think I can work later, tell Alex over gchat that I’m going home to die and can’t watch the USA/Slovenia World Cup match. He says “oh no,” then asks me why Jose Saramago is a trending topic on twitter and is it because he’s dead? I say bye and shut my computer down. I stuff a scone I had bought the day before and ½ a pint of blueberries into my bag and tell Ruthie and Jenna I’m leaving.

Closing my eyes in the elevator helps, but I can still see the spot with my eyes closed.

I try to picture what I look like on the street. I dressed up today, which was a mistake since I was only in the office long enough to turn on my computer, go to coffee and then turn off my computer. I have a brown leather messenger bag over my shoulder, I’m wearing dark black Ray Ban wayfarers and am holding a starbucks cup. To everyone else just another corporate asshole or lobbyist shill.

Technically, I’m not actually blind. I can see that I have a don’t walk sign, and I can see my bus pulling into the intersection between me and the stop. The thought of running for a bus with a migraine causes my heart to beat fast and my stomach to coldly sink.

“...they would never even reach the threshold of the door to those ineffabilities longing for expression.”

I can see things, but I can’t really see. I can’t drive because too much of my vision is a blindspot

The bus arrives, I board, pay, take a seat on the shady half , close my eyes and press my hand on to my eyebrows and bring it down to cover my sunglasses.

Light sensitivity is one of the first symptoms of a migraine, it actually happens at the beginning of the day, it could be hours before the spot appears, but I’ve never actually identified it while it was happening. I’d leave the house in the morning feeling thirsty, another symptom, and I always think to myself, “wow it’s bright out here, weird.” But I never put the pieces together until after it starts.

I peek my eyes open because I don’t want to miss my stop, but we’re only five blocks from the office. I have another ten minutes on a bus. 10 minutes is not a long time. But in migraine world, where quarters are huge and seeing is pain, 10 minutes is a galaxy.

I get paranoid when I get stuck in public with a migraine. It’s similar to drunken moments of clarity. That point in the night where you are outside of yourself and can see yourself making a spectacle of yourself, you look down at your feet and know they can’t walk in a straight line, the world begins to spin, you don’t like it and want it to stop but you can barely lift your head. You’re aware of your weakness and the fact that you don’t belong in public, but there’s nothing you can do about it, and if you try to tell anyone they’ll just think you’re drunk and they’d be right.

I wonder if people think the guy in the oxford blue button up sipping his coffee with a hand over his sunglasses is just another Bus Crazy to avoid.

Did Saramago really die? He must have, how else could he be trending on twitter? How many tweets does it take to make a trend? Is he the only Nobel Laureate in Literature to ever trend on twitter? Did he ever write a sentence less than 140 characters long? Would he like the twitter attention? By the time I get to my stop I decide the answer is yes.

Then back into sunlight. I’m walking in the shade but press my hand against my forehead to serve as a brim to an imaginary hat. My hand-brim and the sunglasses block out most light but not enough.

The crystals have grown past my field of vision, but can still feel their effect, the same way Alice couldn’t see the edge of the hole once she fell through but knew she was still in Wonderland. The headache will start soon, but for now I’m in the spot where I think it won’t happen. I hope that this time I’ll just be light sensitive, and a bit nauseous, but won’t get the actual headache. It has never happened that way, but each time I think there could be a reprieve.

The headache will start in 15 minutes or so, but now I have to concentrate on walking the 3 blocks from my bus stop to my house. I do it multiple times a day, every day of the week, but never like this. Light sensitive is the sun turned up past 11 like a long exposure photograph of the desert. It feels like I’m not even wearing sunglasses.

Turn on a lamp, a normal filament bulb, look at a white wall. Turn off the lamp and turn on a fluorescent lamp right away. The wall’s a different color than it was before, more white, less yellow, it’s brighter, there are fewer shadows and you can see little nicks and scratches and grey spots you couldn’t see before. Or better yet, try this while looking at your own reflection in a mirror. Now go outside and replace the sun with a sun-sized fluorescent light.

Everything is brighter, the shadows are less dark, street lights are a sharper green, walls that are normally beige are now a beige that’s somehow brighter, I almost think I can see more details in the cracks of the pavement, everything’s more there somehow. It’s interesting, it makes the familiar more challenging and different, but it’s not worth it.

My eyes are open into slits just wide enough to make sure I don’t wander into traffic or knock someone down. There’s a grey and black cat sitting in a patch of grass in front of a house, it’s staring at me, it’s eyes meet mine and it’s head swivels and watches me as I walk by. I’m sure this is real, but it’s possible it’s not.

I feel like I’m walking down the street in public without all my senses, or with an extra sense that my brain can’t process. I’m extra aware of people around me even though I can only barely see them through my squinted eyes. I feel vulnerable. I can’t react to anything quickly. I can’t move my head from side to side because it shifts my vision and makes my head feel extra gravity. I have a goal and once I get home I’ll be able to lie down and sleep and start the recovery process.

Continued Tomorrow

Jonah Hex

2010-06-21T15:17:00.001-04:00

I saw "Jonah Hex" this weekend. I was going to write a review of it, but realized I didn't actually have much to say beyond: "It was fun, but real mindless."

The rest of my thoughts on the movie wouldn't have led to an interesting review, but, I thought to myself in a moment of insight, they might make some fun tweets!. My 140 character at a time review of Jonah Hex can be found in my little twitter feed to the right.

Monday Night

2010-06-15T16:11:00.000-04:00

Drinking a ten dollar Guiness on the patio of a bar I thought was affordable before they served me a ten dollar Guiness. There's a pair of pigeons clattering around in foreplay on the green vinyl awning covering the patio; their sharp little feet slapping the roof like rice pouring into a bucket. A woman with a creased forehead, pushing a stroller, stopped and said she was six dollars short of getting a room for the night, I offered her the tip I was going to leave the waitress but she said she couldn't take it because someone worked for it. There's joggers going by and I see some of them admiring themselves in the windows of the deli next door. I tried to brush away a gnat and knocked over my beer spilling half of it.

Literary Remix

2010-06-14T10:47:00.000-04:00

I re-wrote a page of "Joe's Luck: Always Wide Awake" by Horatio Alger for Galley Cat's Literary Remix project. I wrote about the project earlier, but the idea is to take an old novel, farm it out to different people a page at a time and ask them to re-write the page in whatever manner they would like. It's an awesome idea and some of the entries have been pretty cool.

Below is my page, followed by the original page.

I wrote the page as if Jim Thompson was in charge of Joe and his world. Which of course changes Joe from a well-meaning innocent to someone who's secretly a psychopath.

And speaking of Jim Thompson the new film version of his classic novel "The Killer Inside Me" is coming out this summer. The film stars Casey Affleck and Jessica Alba and is directed by Michael Winterbottom; when the film premiered at Sundance some people walked out and there were widespread complaints about the violence. Either way, it's a new adaptation of a great Thompson book and I'll have more to say on it soon.

My version of page 129:

"Twenty-five dollars to-day," Bickford looked at me with his dopey grin. We'd been here a week, and his cloying sweetness was tugging on my mask. "That pays better than hoeing pertaters, Joe."

I screwed my mask on tight and kept up the act. "Yes, Mr. Bickford," I grinned big and sweet. "I am afraid you will lose on our partnership."

"I'll risk it, Joe." He was risking more than he knew.

Then there was Hogan. "Can't you take me into partnership?" he whined like a half-blind schoolteacher in the dark.

"We can, but we won't," said Bickford. This was my chance to keep Hogan. He'd be worth something yet, even if he didn't know it, even if he ended up in the electric chair, he'd still be worth something.

"Save your money. Buy some tools, instead of gamblin'." Bickford was preaching, and the last person a degenerate wants to hear from is a preacher.

"A man must have amusement," grumbled Hogan. "Besides, I may have luck and win."

"Mr. Hogan, if you want to start a claim I'll give you the tools," I said it with that smile that works so well on Bickford. Just ole Joe, loose a few screws maybe, but harmless and sweet as a button.

"But of course you will have to find your own vittles," Bickford was going to ride Hogan, and I'd come in and give him a way to get back at Bickford.

We had set up this little firm, just for tax reasons, it didn't amount to nothing. Bickford and Mason. When I told Bickford to put his name first you should have seen his eyes mist up with emotion. I had to look away I was so sick. We cut Hogan loose of the firm. Hogan was born a failure and he didn't even know he was about to die a failure. My mask of normalcy that Bickford loved so much was beginning to itch, and I knew I'd be taking it off soon. Hogan would see it come off.

Hogan scraped together enough to eat on and spent the rest of the time grumbling over his bad luck. Bickford kept poking at Hogan, agitating him, getting him stirred up like a dumb kid with a hornet's nest.
"If you'd work like we do," said Bickford, "you wouldn't need to complain. Your claim is just as good as ours, as far as we can tell."

----------------------------------------------

Alger's version of page 129:
"Twenty-five dollars to-day, that pays better than hoeing pertaters, Joe."

"You are right, Mr. Bickford. You are ten dollars ahead of me. I am afraid you will lose on our partnership."

"I'll risk it, Joe."

Hogan was the only member of the party who was not satisfied.

"Can't you take me into partnership?" he asked.

"We can, but I don't think we will, Hogan," said Mr. Bickford.

"It wouldn't pay. If you don't like workin' for us, you can take a
claim of your own."

"I have no tools."

"Why don't you save your money and buy some, instead of gamblin' it
away as you are doin'?"

"A man must have amusement," grumbled Hogan. "Besides, I may have
luck and win."

"Better keep clear of gamblin', Hogan."

"Mr. Hogan, if you want to start a claim of your own, I'll give you
what tools you need," said Joe.

Upon reflection Hogan decided to accept this offer.

"But of course you will have to find your own vittles now," said
Joshua.

"I'll do it," said Hogan.

The same day he ceased to work for the firm of Bickford & Mason, for Joe insisted on giving Mr. Bickford the precedence as the senior party, and started on his own account.

The result was that he worked considerably less than before. Being his own master, he decided not to overwork himself, and in fact worked only enough to make his board. He was continually grumbling over his bad luck, although Joshua told him plainly that it wasn't luck, but industry, he lacked.

"If you'd work like we do," said Bickford, "you wouldn't need to complain. Your claim is just as good as ours, as far as we can tell."

----------------------------------------------------

Here's the full text of the original Alger novel.

Here are some other entries in the remix.

Awkward Book Covers...

2010-06-08T14:27:00.000-04:00

The covers of the Penguin UK James Bond novels are absolutely stunning. They are simply great triumphs of design. The photos are often unexpected stills from the films (only the Sean Connery films...) which manage to play off the history of both the films and the novels.

Check out the cover to Thunderball, which shows a Sean Connery so gaunt and tired that he's almost unrecognizable. The Bond character in the novels gets tired, he messes up, he gets hurt and he doubts himself; you don't really see that in the films, but this cover photo grabs it.

Yet, despite how beautiful the books are, there's no denying that I get weird looks on the bus when I'm reading a novel with a naked Ursula Andress on the cover.

Check out the rest of the covers here:

AND: they've actually all been redesigned in the past couple of years, but using the same photos, and you can see those here.

The Mynabirds @ Black Cat Backstage

2010-06-04T11:33:00.002-04:00

Laura Burhenn

On Wednesday night I saw The Mynabirds at The Black Cat Backstage sweat through a great set of songs led by the impressive voice of Laura Burhenn. Burhenn used to be half of famed DC band Georgie James, but she left DC, moved to Nebraska and wrote a new album, "What We Lost In the Fire We Gained in the Flood," now out on Saddle Creek Records. If I had to slot The Mynabirds into a current musical category I'd put them in with bands such as The Duchess and the Duke, She and Him or even Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. These are all bands who are making music that sounds like it was made in the seventies, but not in the traditional "seventies" sense of generic classic rock riffs or disco (there's plenty of bands already forcing us to listen to that, and yes I'm talking to you Kings of Leon). Instead, they're drawing inspiration from people who were big at the time, but that have faded somewhat from memory. Burhenn owes much of her style, and some of her vocalizations to Dusty Springfield, but there's also a very healthy dose of Neil Young and other loudish folkies with some Nancy Sinatra (especially the duets with Lee Greenwood) thrown in for good measure. Also mixed up in there are some of the classic female Motown and R&B artists as well.

Not Laura Burhenn

Mynabirds songs sound familiar without being derivative. It's a fine line to walk but Burhenn and company do it well both on the album, and in the live show. Their songs have a big, nearly Southern Gothic, feel that is nearly hypnotizingly melodic. Burhenn's voice is incredibly strong, and she can hold a note or a sweetly pained wail as good as any of her influences. Laura played the keyboard, and was joined in the vocals by harmonizers Susan Sanchez and Pearl Boyd who occasionally busted out the tambourine (obviously) and a kazoo (less obviously). Ben Brodin played a great lead guitar and had some interesting riffs that I didn't remember being on the album. The backbone of the band was Dan McCarthy an awesomely mustachioed bass player, and John Kotchian hidden behind the singers on drums.

The opening act, Black Telephone, was less tight but they did a pretty good job considering this was their second show ever and first in a serious venue. A DC band with great potential, Black Telephone is Holly Tegeler on bass and most of the vocals, Tom Collier sang and played a drum machine (seriously, he played it like a bongo and hit different buttons for different sounds--this worked surprisingly well) and Rory Carroll was on guitar. They had a poppy sound that was somewhat sparse, but it worked and is somewhere in the neighborhood of Belle and Sebastian and a really happy Eliot Smith.

The Mynabirds did a great job of recreating the depth of the recorded songs in a live setting. They have a near Wall-Of-Sound style, and the band was very tight. Everyone sounded like they had been together for years, which is amazing considering that none of the touring band appears on the album. Burhenn and her producer Richard Swift seem to have done nearly everything themselves on the album, and the ability of these musicians to present this material as if it was their own was really impressive.

If I have any reservations about the group it's the fear that their strengths could eventually turn into a weakness. Some of their songs sound very similar, especially the slower songs for the first few bars. When they started one towards the end of the set I thought they had made a mistake and were going to play the title-track twice. The slow songs tends to start with Burhenn's slow tinkling keyboard and her strong vibrato voice slowly joining in. What saves their songs from being repetitive is the break that comes, almost without fail, about 45 seconds in. It might be an interesting bit of feedbacky guitar, or maybe some loud drums or a surprisingly funky bass line. These musical flourishes make the songs more interesting and instead of getting boring the songs keep you hooked. However, it's possible they'll end up falling into the trap of making the same songs over and over again. And it makes sense, they have a style and they do it well so why change it up--the problem is that won't work in the long run, just ask Nancy and Dusty who fell into the same trap.

They put on a great show and are clearly a professional group. This was definitely one of the hottest shows I've been to. I mean temperature wise--seriously Black Cat open a door or something it was terrible in there. In between each song the whole band would desperately try to cool themselves off by fanning themselves or lifting their hair off their shoulders--it didn't work and every time a song ended they looked like they were suffering. But once the next song started they were back in the game and the heat didn't impact their performance at all.

The Mynabirds just started this tour, and are going to be all over the place for the next two months. They're opening for Josh Ritter in the South, and are playing a few festivals, but many of their upcoming shows are at small places for basically zero money. I don't know what The Neurolux in Boise, Idaho is, but it must be a pretty cool place if you can see this band there for five dollars. They're on the road until August 1, and you owe it to yourself to catch them while they're still playing tiny venues, next time they come through town they're going to be bringing their big sound to bigger places.

Upcoming Mynabirds shows.

Here's an interesting road-journal that The Mynabirds are keeping.

And here's a great interview with Laura Burhenn from Paste Magazine.

Here's Black Telephone's website.

Paperclip Quotes

2010-06-03T11:15:00.000-04:00

"That spring a sculpture student had, as his thesis project, decorated the Commons with oversize office supplies--a stapler in the dimensions of a limousine, a log painted as a number two pencil, and a pile of facsimile paper clips each the height of a human being, fashioned out of plastic piping and silver paint. I suppose the work was deriviative of Claes Oldenberg, but the result made an impressive spectacle."

Jonathan Lethem, "Super Goat Man," in Men and Cartoons

Other Stuff (not mine)

2010-05-26T16:00:00.000-04:00

Liza Kurwin, who everyone knows as the curator of manuscripts at the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art, has a new book out of lists made by famous artists. For Flavorwire she has compiled her top-ten favorite lists, all of which are much cooler than the to-do lists I make on post-its that generally still have older lists still on them. I think my favorite is the list Picasso made for Walt Kuhn of artists to see at the 1912 Armory Show.

In 1963, William Zantzinger killed Hattie Caroll at Baltimore's Emerson Hotel. Zantzinger died in 2009, at the age of 69, and this is his obituary. I'm struck by the fact that Zantzinger is a year older than Bob Dylan who immortalized him as a villain in "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll." Zantzinger, who for some reason was not a fan of being the bad guy in one of the most famous protest songs of the century, had a colorful life after his six-month jail sentence. Zantzinger came from a wealthy tobacco family, used to own a nightclub, belonged to a country club, went into real estate and was a slum lord for a few years.

Fritz Lang's Metropolis is being re-released into theaters. This epic film is an incredible achievement and the new version contains 25 minutes of footage discovered two years ago in a basement in South America (really). When the film was originally released it was repeatedly chopped down in order to make it more "marketable," and even the current version is not complete. Even in its butchered form it became one of the most influential films ever made and still has powerful statements to make about class, gender and technology. Much of the philosophical and physical conflict of the rest of the 20th century was explored in Lang's 1927 film, which was ahead of it's time both technically and artistically. The trailer for the restored Metropolis is hypnotizing and shows off the visual effects, which are still impressive.

The Obscure, The Forgotten and the Unloved has polled a bunch of movie bloggers to create a list of the Top 40 films that are critically acclaimed but that few people have seen. Check it out if you want to feel insecure about your film knowledge. (The picture above is taken from a famous movie, anyone recognize it?)

And finally, The Poetry Foundation, was published a cool profile of Ann Mikolowski and her mini-portraits of poets. They are very small, and they are very cool.

Michael Caine and Harry Brown

2010-05-24T15:17:00.000-04:00

Michael Caine, at 76 years old, is in the midst of a career renaissance that should completely cement his role as one of the most important British actors since the 1960s, and in Harry Brown he has delivered a classic performance that is evocative of previous roles yet doesn't resort to self-imitation or parody. Next to Laurence Olivier, who he more than held his own with in Sleuth (1972), Caine could be the most important British film actor ever. Watching just a few minutes of Caine at his prime in the late 1960s explains everything that his current disciples, especially Jude Law and Ewen McGregor, have been trying (and failing) to do ever since. Jude Law hasn't even been subtle about following Michael Caine's career path and has stared in two (and counting) Caine remakes.

Since hitting British film like a shotgun blast in the mid-60s, Caine has, to name just a very few, played one of the cruelest protagonists in film history in Get Carter (1971), became one of the suavest of ladies men in Alfie (1966) and effortlessly became a cloistered intellectual in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). The reason why Michael Caine has been able to cover this range lies in his unique ability to convey a blend of tough-guy grit and intelligent cool; he's like Sean Connery but with a greater range of emotion (a.k.a. the ability to act). Much of it lies in Caine's voice. He has a strong cockney accent, which is instantly recognizable and can stop a train in its tracks when his anger gets up to full speed. But Caine has never used his distinctive voice as an acting crutch (like, say, Al "Let's Yell Every Fifth Line" Pacino over the past fifteen years) instead, he takes full advantage of silence, and some of his most powerful lines are whispered or delivered extremely slowly. Harry Brown, his first truly starring role since the underrated The Statement (2003), allows Caine to revel in anger, and also gives him some of the quietest and most poignant scenes of his career. The film is carried by Caine's performance, but it's also a complicated story of revenge and justice, that poses important questions while not preaching to the audience.

Harry Brown, a retired former Marine (this detail is important), lives in one of those British housing projects that seemed like a great idea after WWII. Designed to provide affordable housing to working class people, more than a few of whom had their houses blown up by the Nazis, many of these council estates now have reputations as high-crime areas with serious drink and drug problems. Brown's estate has been overrun by teenagers who terrorize the locals. The film begins with a very graphic video shot on a camera phone of teenagers smoking crack (maybe meth? it was hard to tell), killing a woman and then driving head-on into a truck.

Brown's morning routine involves quietly making himself tea and toast, eating alone and then putting on a suit to visit his dying wife in the hospital. Brown then goes to the council pub to play chess with Leonard, who seems to be his only friend. The relationship between Brown and his wife is only briefly sketched out, and a little more depth would have gone a long way. Yet there's no denying that you feel for Harry when he finally gets the call about his wife. The night she dies Harry has to rush to the hospital, and he must decide if he's going to take a pedestrian subway that runs underneath a large road. The subway, which looks like a drainage ditch, is where the council thugs hang out at night, it's a faster way to the hospital but he could be beat up if he goes through it. The scene where Harry is standing in the rain at night trying to decide if it's worth it is a heartbreaking moment. He goes the long way, and his wife is already gone when he gets there. The film doesn't condescend to the audience by saying something like "oh if only you got here two minutes ago," but the thought that maybe he could have made it in time is powerful enough.

A few days after his wife's funeral, Leonard is killed in the pedestrian subway. Leonard was tired of being scared by the teenagers and he took a military bayonet into the subway in order to stand up to the kids. Brown is devastated, and Caine does a good job of presenting his character's grief honestly and without mawkish sentimentality. He's lost the two most important people in his life in the span of about a week, and he cries, and then he gets really drunk. This is Brown at his most vulnerable; he's stumbling, with a mixture of age and drink, he looks pale and weak. It's more than a little shocking to see Michael Caine in such a vulnerable position; even playing the elders in recent films such as The Dark Knight (2008) or Children of Men (2006) he still has his wits about him and looks strong. On his drunken walk home he's confronted by a junkie with a knife, the junkie lunges and Brown, instinctively yet realistically, turns the knife on his attacker and kills him.

And that's when Harry realizes he can do something about his friend's murder. From there he goes on a revenge spree that's as satisfying for the viewer as it is terrifying for the gangs. Revenge films, which run the qualify gambit from The Last House on the Left to Taxi Driver, are most effective when the audience is made implicit in the revenge by approving of it, yet also feel guilty for cheering on such terrible violence.

It's hard not to root for Harry, but the film does complicate our feelings for his crusade. For example, there's one member of the gang, Marky, that draws our sympathy. We learn that Marky has been in multiple foster homes and made allegations of sexual abuse, and he's still being abused by the estate's main heroin supplier. Marky is shy, nearly confesses to the police and generally appears to be the nicest of these vicious gang members; especially compared to the gang leader Noel, played brilliantly evil by Ben Drew. Yet Marky is also the one who filmed Leonard's murder on his camera phone, and ultimately he didn't step in to stop the attack. So what should we do with Marky? Clearly warped by abuse and the poverty of his surroundings it's hard not to think that if anyone deserves a second chance it's him. But ultimately....well I bet you could guess what happens to him.

A major flaw in the revenge film genre is it's treatment of the targets, which borders, and sometimes flagrantly flies into, the racist, classist and generally offensive. Oftentimes the targets of revenge are poor (Harry Brown), not-white (Death Wish, Gran Torino, multiple westerns, etc) or both. The bad guys seem bad for no reason, and these films don't take time to examine why crime happens in housing projects nor is the film particularly interested in exploring alternative methods of justice. It wouldn't be quite the same film if Harry set up a literacy program instead of wreaking holy vengeance on the assholes who stabbed his friend, and we never root for the actual cops in any of these films. So with a film like Harry Brown I think we have to ask if the film is fair in its depiction of lower class youth and families in Britain? The answer is, predictably, no of course not, are you crazy?

It's therefore incredibly tempting to write Harry Brown off as another blood soaked revenge film that is meant to appeal to the worst in humanity. But I think there's something a little more interesting going on here and it ties into Brown's military service. Over the course of the film we learn that Brown's Marine service, in which he clearly learned how to kill very effectively, was done in Northern Ireland. Not in Vietnam or Normandy, but Northern Ireland. Brown references his service only twice; first he tells a story about a fellow soldier who was shot in the stomach and died a terrible death. And at the end of the film he says, "Those people over there [in Northern Ireland] were fighting for something, for these people [here in the estate] it's just entertainment." So not only does the film not even attempt to explore why things could go wrong when you stack hundreds of low-income families together into bleak, decades old, monolithic housing projects without much of a social structure around them, but it goes out of its way to call these people savages.

Choosing Northern Ireland as his scene of deployment was a very purposeful choice, it could have been anywhere, or even just some nameless war zone. But picking Northern Ireland places Harry into the role of imperialist. He becomes a representative of a crown, of an occupying force in a land that didn't want him there; he was on the wrong side of history in that battle and his admission that the Irish were "fighting for something" implies that he knows he was in the wrong. The imperial theme is emphasized in one of the scenes in the police station when two file boxes are prominently displayed to the camera; the boxes are labeled "Project Empire" and "Project Dorado." The police, who are repeatedly called ineffective by everyone from Noel to Harry, and whose actions in the estate are incredibly ineffective, become another invading force by the end of the film.

Harry Brown may be seeking righteous revenge for his friend and he is undoubtedly ridding the estate of seriously bad people, but he's also an embodiment of the colonial impulse and the violence that often attends it. He learned to kill in Northern Ireland, and now he's turning against his own countrymen. I'm not going to give away the details, but I think the ending, especially the last shot, also refuses to wrap the film up neatly with a bow. Was Harry a raging lunatic or a crusader for justice? I'm still not sure, and that ambiguity about his position, and the possibility that he was in the wrong and things aren't better, adds a welcome dimension to the film.

It's hard to imagine any other actor playing this role. Michael Caine is a convincing killer, yet he also doesn't turn into a man of steel either. This isn't the same Caine from Get Carter, this one gets tired when he tries to run, and this one sometimes misses when he shoots. Michael Caine's appeal as a tough guy has been partially rooted in his quiet, and the sense that many of his characters have a vulnerability about them, which makes them more endearing. Harry Brown allows him to use both of these tools, and it's a magnificent performance. Michael Caine has been nominated for at least one Oscar in each of the past five decades, and at this rate I'm not betting against a sixth.

Person

2010-05-21T14:36:00.000-04:00

"Man Said to Be Author Is Found Dead in Hotel," Nightmare Alley by William Lindsey Gresham

2010-05-20T16:33:00.001-04:00

I reviewed Nightmare Alley as part of The Spotlight Series on NYRB Classics. The goal of The Spotlight Series is to draw attention to independent presses and raise the profile of their catalog. The full list of other reviews can be found here.

Nearly relentlessly pessimistic and with an overwhelmingly negative view of human nature, Nightmare Alley doesn't compromise, and Gresham's brilliant novel stands as a great testament to a writer's life cut tragically short. Thankfully, New York Review of Books Classics has just republished a restored edition of Gresham's only novel with a new introduction by Nick Tosches.

By all accounts Gresham was a seeker. In Tosches introduction we learn that Gresham repeatedly attached himself to different "cures" including psychoanalysis, Christianity, alcohol, Alcoholics Anonymous, Marxism, Buddhism and the occult. Gresham seems to have been constantly striving for a place he could feel whole. He never found it. Nightmare Alley seems to be his attempt to work through his pain, and the different vices and fake salvations he fell victim to.

The novel opens in a traveling carnival where Stan Carlisle, a charming young man, handsome and blond, is trying to earn his keep doing cheap sleight of hand tricks and helping in other routines. But Stan is gripped by ambition, and he's not only learning how to control a crowd, but why they want to be controlled: "Think out things most people are afraid of and hit them right where they live....They're all afraid of ill health, of poverty, of boredom, of failure. Fear is the key to human nature. They're afraid."

Fear is the central theme of Nightmare Alley, and Stan soon becomes a maestro at not just tapping into that fear, but also monetizing it. To Stan, all people are marks ready to have their fortune "read" and their wallets opened, "the outline of the sky's edge around the fair grounds change but the sea of upturned faces always the same."

In the carnival Stan seduces Molly, a vulnerable young woman who falls in love with him. When he and Molly leave the carnival, Stan Carlisle transforms into "The Great Stanton" a spiritualist "minister" to the very wealthy. Molly helps with the cons and plays a ghost when the need arises. Molly's character is a bit thin, and is one of those slightly-annoying female characters who always seems on the verge of tears. Yet, she's so innocent that even when pulling a con that's making them a lot of money she still feels guilty about it; her exaggerated purity, which at times strains credulity, is a useful counter-balance to Stan's unending pessimism.

Part of the joy of the novel, and for all its darkness this is actually a quick and at times very fun novel, is seeing Stan's tricks and putting the pieces together aftewards. Gresham doesn't insult the reader's intelligence or slow down the break-neck narrative to explain step-by-step how Stan does something. Gresham trusts us to figure it out and to keep up with The Great Stanton.

Stan is a damaged man with a level of mom and dad issues unrivaled this side of Greek Tragedy. The novel is repeatedly interrupted by near stream-of-consciousness interludes that pull us directly into Stan's head and forces him and us to confront his tragic past. While it's not a pleasant place to be, these breaks, in which Stan almost loses his mind, allow Gresham to deploy the full range of his rhetorical power: "Ice in the river, piled against the piers of boat clubs, a dark channel in the middle. And always the click of the rail joints underneath. North south east west--cold spring heat fall--love lust tire leave--wed fight leave hate--sleep wake eat sleep--child boy man corpse--touch kiss tongue breast--strip grope press jet--wash dress pay leave--north south east west..."

Gresham has tight control over his narrative, but I absolutely loved the times he took his foot off the brake and let the novel coast wherever it wanted to.

At the end of one of these near-breakdowns, Stan appears at the office of "Lillith Ritter, Psychoanalyst." The Ritter scenes allow Gresham to explore the power of Freudian psychoanalysis, one of his own near-salvations, and make some not so subtle connections between Ritter and Stan. Ritter is one of the coldest and most withdrawn femme fatales in noir fiction, and the power she has over Stan is (like much of the novel itself) impossible to look away from. The scene where she "punishes" Stan by making him paint her toenails walks that Lynchian line between erotically charged and nausea-inducing.

Stan and Ritter (with Molly's unwitting help) set their sights on Ezra Grindle an industrialist with a secret. The Great Stanton comes out in full force while he attempt to separate Grindle from a large portion of his money. Grindle's role in the novel is slightly ambiguous. He's definitely the mark, and part of the reader wants Stan to con him, but for the most part Grindle's not presented as a villain. Nightmare Alley has very little in terms of a moral center, and Gresham makes it difficult to like any of his characters. We begin to feel for Stan, but that doesn't mean we like him. Grindle at times comes off as vulnerable and sympathetic, until he reveals a darker side of him. The most we can hope for is that Molly and maybe some of the other minor characters from the carnival will make it through in one piece.

The title comes from a recurring nightmare Stan has had since he was a kid, "He was running down a dark alley, the buildings vacant and black and menacing on either side. Far down at the end of it a light burned; but there was something behind him, close behind him, getting closer until he woke up trembling and never reached the light. They have it too--a nightmare alley." The "they" is a reference to Stan's marks, but Gresham means all of us.

Gresham himself spent his whole life looking for a way out of his head through new experiences and new philosophies. They're all burned by staring too hard down that alley, and it not only ruined Gresham's characters, it ruined Gresham himself. Tosches references a letter Gresham wrote years later, "Stan is the author."

Yet, perhaps surprisingly, there is an actual glimmer of hope at the end of this extraordinary novel, a character who comes and goes in the blink of an eye but hints that maybe things will get better. Stan's life is saved by a young African American man riding the rails and heading to work in the Grindle factory. Stan tries to do a quick "reading" of the man and scam him out of a nickel, but the "young hobo" doesn't fall for it. Stan begins to complain about how tough life is and how "to get yours you got to pry 'em loose from [their money]." The nameless man is perhaps the only character in the novel that isn't swept up by Stan's oratory and reveals himself to be a "labor agitator." He says, "Someday people going to get smart and mad at the same time," and that's going to change everything.

At the end of the chapter the African American labor organizer, an embodiment of capitalism's nightmare alley, is hiding under a train heading to Grindle, "A spectre was haunting Grindle. A spectre in overalls." This clear reference to the first line of The Communist Manifesto ("There is a spectre haunting Europe-the spectre of communism.") is one of the few blink-and-it's-gone glimmers of hope that Gresham allows. The stranger saves Stan's life, and maybe he will do his part to save the rest of us.

Gresham couldn't personally maintain that optimism. Sixteen years about publishing Nightmare Alley, Gresham, sick with cancer, checked into a hotel in Times Square and took an overdose of sleeping pills. There was a small story about his death in the next day's New York Times with this headline: ""Man Said to Be Author Is Found Dead in Hotel."

After Nightmare Alley was published it was censored significantly, and NYRB Classics should be applauded for bringing back this important post-war novel in its full form.

Other Stuff (not mine): Lost Classics

2010-05-17T15:09:00.000-04:00

I wasn't trying to unify this week's collection of links around any particular theme or idea. Or, at least I didn't think I was until I realized each entry involves work that has been lost in some way. Culture moves on quickly, and for every artist or creation we choose to venerate and enshrine into our collective culture, there are dozens of other major works by important artists that fade into the dust. Maybe it's inevitable, not everything can be a classic obviously, and some work just doesn't stand the test of time. However, today's links examine a series of objects that should be re-evaluated.

Hulu has full-length episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." The teleplay for this episode, "An Out for Oscar," was written by the great David Goodis. Goodis is best known for writing the books that "Dark Passage" and "Shoot the Piano Player" were based on, and I think he was one of the great American novelists. Goodis wrote more than 15 novels and worked in TV and the movies for a few years, but it's rare to find full episodes of his shows, and this is definitely worth checking out. A spoiler-heavy review of "An Out for Oscar can be found on Mystery File.

Penguin Books is 75 years old, and this article lists the first ten books they published. Some familiar titles, but most of these have basically been forgotten. It's an interesting view into the beginning of one of the best publishers in the world, and a sort of sad look at how easily the major works of today are lost to the past

Later this week I will be participating in the Spotlight Series tour on New York Review of Books Classics. My blog will join a couple dozen other book blogs in posting reviews of a book from the NYRB catalog. It's a great series and I hope it draws attention to the great (and beautiful) NYRB series, which re-issues really important books from around the world. The tour started today and here's the list of blogs to check out. I think Hard Rain Calling by Don Carpenter sounds like a great read. .

And finally, there's a new biography of Jack London, Wolf, by James Haley, reviewed in The Wall Street Journal. London is criminally overlooked and has been relegated to the "literature for boys" section of modern literature. Perhaps not as dismissed as Horatio Alger, more on him soon, but still not nearly as respected now as at the turn of the last century. Haley's book seems determined to remedy this, and while it appears to have some problems, it sounds like a riveting read that I can't wait to get my hands on.

Million Writers Award

2010-05-15T22:27:00.000-04:00

My story that made the Million Writers Award Notable Story list was not chosen as one of the top ten stories of 2009, which is okay because ten really good stories were. Here's the list of the top ten stories, and you can vote for the story you think is the best of the best here.

The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry

2010-05-13T16:35:00.000-04:00

The Manual of Detection wears its influences on its sleeve--or maybe on every inch of its black suit and fedora. There are labyrinthine archives, a confused man in an unrelentingly mysterious city and people who have a lot more of the answers than us or the main character. To call the book Kafkaesque or Borgesian would be painfully obvious, but it's also true. There's also strains of Saramago (especially All the Names), a bit of Dash Hammett and in the acknowledgments Berry gives a shout out to William Weaver--the main translator of Calvino and Eco . Berry combines the noir aesthetic and the confused loneliness of someone like Joseph K. into a mystery novel that's addictively mysterious and thoroughly satisfying.

In a nameless, rainy city Charles Unwin is a clerk for The Agency. Endlessly bureaucratic and purposefully, elusively intimidating, The Agency prides itself on towering (literally and morally) over the people; there might be a police force in this city, but if so they seem to stay out of The Agency's way. Unwin is a clerk for Detective Travis Sivart who's generally considered the agency badass and has solved some of their most high profile cases.

But suddenly, Unwin is promoted to detective and realizes that Sivart has gone missing. He then finds a dead body, is given an assistant who's more than a little narcoleptic and is soon on the run from both Agency goons (who think he's a murderer) and criminal goons (who want to murder him). Unwin is determined to find Sivart, clear up his promotion (which he assumes to be a mistake) and be back at his clerk's desk before day's end. Along the way, Unwin encounters the remnants of an old carnival which has become the center of criminal activity in the city. Carnival residents include an evil ventriloquist, a beautiful torch singer who has a unique power over the men in her life and a chilling set of ex-conjoined twins who don't need to sleep and are always in a very bad mood.

Unwin isn't interested in being a detective, as Berry describes him, "He was tenacious in his way, insightful when he needed to be--but only into things already written down." Action is not his specialty. Guiding Unwin through his case is the eponymous "Manual of Detection"; a mysterious little book that he keeps meaning to read, but can't quite find the time to get through. Each chapter of Berry's novel has a quick excerpt from the Manual just under the chapter headings. These epigrams help set the menacing, yet clever tone of the whole novel: "At this stage of the case, your enemies know more than you know--this is what makes them your enemies."

The motto of The Agency is "never sleeping," which is meant to be ironic because it seems that everyone in the novel is always sleeping. From the dozey assistant, to the zombielike custodian who keeps appearing where you don't expect a man with a mop to be, to, well pretty much everyone. And this line between sleeping and waking, and between dreaming and real life plays into one of the clever themes of the book. Berry's novel seeks to explore the differences between multiple binaries: the Agency and the Criminal, the carnival and the city, clerk/assistant and detective/watcher. The differences between these "polar" opposites proves to be as thin as a maple leaf, and ephemeral as a dream. One character sums up the main conflict of the novel this way: "'The sleeping king and the madman at the games,' she said. 'On the one side a kind of order, on the other a kind of disorder. We need them both. That's how it's always been."

This tension, more than the plot, is what kept my attention. I was at least halfway through the book before I realized that I didn't know what the central crime was. Unwin is trying to solve something, but he doesn't know what. There is a plot here, there is a grand scheme, but the details of that plot are not the driving force of the book, and it's when the "mystery" needs to be cleared up that the novel loses some of its steam. The details of the big plan by the bad guy are spelled out in a relatively few number of pages at the very end of the book. Solving the mystery proves to be not as satisfying as Unwin's journey towards the truth.

One of the important functions of the first wave of detective fiction (approximately AC Doyle to Agatha Christie) is to present an orderly world (a country manor) thrown into disorder (a murder), but then rebuilt by a dedicated and morally superior detective (Sherlock Holmes). Unwin's character is clearly modeled after these detectives, but his city is too corrupted to be put back together again in. By the end of the novel the "mystery" is solved, but order remains elusive and in many ways everything is more confused than it was before.

Caribou and Toro y Moi

2010-05-11T11:32:00.001-04:00

Last night I saw Caribou and Toro y Moi in concert at The Rock and Roll Hotel. But, I'll admit it, I really did not want to. For reasons involving birthdays, West Virginia and a river, I was not ready to rock it out. Of course once Caribou took the stage my exhaustion disappeared in loud loops of synthy goodness.

NPR was there recording the show, and were lovely enough to share it with us here.

Led by Dan Snaith (a math PhD no less) Caribou's live show was louder and more impressive than their already densely orchestrated studio recordings. Their playing was incredibly tight, and they had their long psychedelic songs completely under control. Even with looped mics and echo on the guitars and distortion on top of it all, you could tell that these guys knew exactly what they were doing. The pounding drums and deceptively simple-sounding keyboards never wavered, and everyone hit their marks dead on last night. Snaith's songs also refuse to fall into the traps of many current dance-inflected indie songs that can often sound cold and too laptoppy. Caribou's songs combine the warmth of genuine 60's soul with a modern computer-crafted sound, and it translated into a really excellent live show.

Opening for Caribou was Toro y Moi, a South Carolina outfit led by Chaz Bundick. TyM songs start as dance hits from the 80's (at one point I honestly thought they were about to launch into a Hall and Oates cover) but quickly are drowned out by overwhelming echo and distortion pedals. Bundick's vocals were impossible to discern last night, his mic was constantly echoed (even as he was addressing the crowd), and I couldn't tell you if he has a strong live singing voice or not. They seemed a bit hesitant and weren't the tightest band I've ever seen--which could be the result of Bundick being the main composer and lyricist. There also appeared to be speaker issues that distracted them, which in turn distracted me.

So despite the Rock and Roll Hotel's annoying shoebox shape and low stage, which keeps everyone not in the first ten feet of the stage from being able to see the musicians very clearly, Caribou roused me from my stupor and put on a great show. During some of the long sequences of the songs when Snaith had "nothing" to do--meaning that he had looped his keyboard and the rest of the band was playing the song he wrote--he'd stand up and walk to the side of the stage. Nodding his head to the music, and in approval, he'd take a huge swig of water, smile and then charge back into his keyboard. It was the smile of a musician who knows he's killing it, and he was right.

"What Would Horatio Alger Do?"

2010-05-03T18:55:00.000-04:00

I'm taking part in Gallery Cat's "World's Longest Literary Remix Contest." The project is taking "Joe's Luck: Always Wide Awake" by Horatio Alger and "remixing" it into a variety of different literary styles. The rules are simple: 1. Those who signed up (there are about 150 of us) are given a page of the Alger novel. 2. We re-write it in a new style (pulp fiction, soap opera, western, Petrarchan Sonnet, etc.). 3. In the end we will have created a "new" work that has the same plot but presents it in a bizarre and likely hilarious new way. This "Star Wars" remix was the inspiration for this all (the trailer looks amazing).

Participating in this project got me thinking about the myth of the self-made American and what that looks like today.

I've read one Alger book previously (the unfortunately named, but presumably not unfortunately named when it was published in 1886, Ragged Dick, or, Street Life in New York).

Alger played a key role in the creation and popularization of the "American Dream." He wrote dozens of novels and his works were incredibly popular and were read across the country. Most of his main characters are young boys who, after a series of struggles and run-ins with layabouts and greedy people (often immigrants, naturally), decide to work hard and live healthy lives. And then a rich man sees how wholesome they are and takes them in (in a not-creepy way supposedly) and gives them a chance to attain hard-working, middle-class respectability. Alger's books are basically the opposite of everything that happens to Karl in the novel Amerika by Kafka.

Alger's "rags to riches" tales are deeply ingrained in American culture despite the fact that no one reads them anymore. The myth of the self-made American man (and of course all of Alger's heroes are men), from Gatsby to Vito Corleone, is an important component of how America sees itself. I'm looking forward to a project that updates that vision and by tweaking it allows us to think about everything the book represents, and whether or not a work like Alger's is even still possible.

Alger's books never aimed for subtlety; he knew the legend he wanted to perpetuate and he knew the formula he needed to follow, and all of his books deliver the same satisfying tale. And despite how stilted and predictable the books look to us 150 years later, there's no denying that the guy was on to something.

People loved reading about characters that found fortune through hard work. But, do we still?

I think the true measure of how successful Alger's fiction has been is the fact that we no longer make up these stories about fictional characters; instead, we make up Alger-ish stories about real people. And we not only believe these stories, but we repeat these stories over and over again even when they're untrue (thanks cracked.com). Celebrities and public figures know that crafting a tale of rising up from the pits of desperation to the greatest of heights is inherently compelling--read the stories in the previous link for just a few examples.

And even if public figures don't craft these narratives on their own, then the media and the rest of us do it for them. One of the best of these myths can be seen in how President Obama's mother has been presented. What most people know about his mother is that she's white, she's from Kansas, she was a young single mother and she died of cancer when the President was very young. What many people don't know is that she also had a PhD in Anthropology, wrote a dissertation that has just been published by Duke University Press and was way ahead of the curve on the whole micro-lending phenomenon that is slowly changing the world. I don't bring this up to slight Ms. Dunham or the President in any way. But there's no denying that the image of the single struggling mother has trumped the image of the scholar who traveled the world and fought for economic equality for women.

Why don't we know this about her? Because it makes the President's story that much more inspiring.

Of course there are still fictional rags-to-riches stories out there, but they often fall along the lines of Slumdog Millionaire, or various winning-the-lotto films, which don't show the characters working for success, but instead lucking into wealth and fortune.

Perhaps the greatest current representation of the Alger narratives can be found in reality television. Many of these shows are contests that draw their emotional weight from the chance to see the contestants "earn" their way to fortune by being the best model, chef, dancer, etc, possible.

My argument is not that America is no longer intereseted in Horatio Alger and the myths that he helped instill into our national and cultural DNA. Instead, I believe we're so interested in Alger and his mythos that we're no longer satisfied with letting fictional creations have all the fun. America thrives on these stories, and it's such serious business that we can't entrust them to people who aren't real.

And maybe this is what happens to myths. Perhaps literature can become so important that it occurs first as fiction, and then as reality.

One of mine!

2010-04-27T18:12:00.000-04:00

A story of mine ("The Need for Other People Faded") was named one of the "Notable Stories of 2009" in the Million Writers Award. I'll know in the next couple of weeks if it made the list of top ten stories. I'm very excited to be in such good company, and the journal it appeared in (> Kill Author) was singled out as "Best New Online Journal."

Other Stuff (not mine)

2010-04-27T16:08:00.000-04:00

Every blog has a collection of links to interesting articles and ephemera of the internet, and here's mine:

At least once, Dostoevsky met Dickens.(Brandywine Books)

Hispanics in Arizona are already getting hassled due to the new law...and this happened before the law was passed. (Crooks and Liars)

TriQuarterly (Northwestern University's famed literary journal) stopped publishing last year after over 40 years of existence. But! Now it's back online. Their first issue (version? post?) includes a review of the National Book Award finalist American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell. American Salvage is an amazing collection of strong short stories, and this review, even though it's more about the reviewers Kindle than the book itself, is worth a look. Here's the review and two excerpts.

PopMatters is digging really deep into Blood on the Tracks.

Jezebel breaks down the new insane abortion restrictions in Oklahoma. For example, it's now legal for doctors in Oklahoma to not tell you if your baby has birth defects.

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and Magical Beautiful

2010-04-27T13:00:00.001-04:00

On Sunday night I caught these two bands at The Black Cat Backstage; they're on tour through the first week of May and I'd recommend them to anyone fortunate enough to live in one of the cities they're visiting. Songs, info and tour dates for CFTPA and for Magical Beautiful . This is DIY/laptop rock at its best, and a chance to see two great indie groups on a national tour.

The lead singer and keyboardist of Magical Beautiful, Tyson Torstensen, has a strong baritone that he makes even more interesting by occasionally running it through a few effects pedals. Every instrument in the band is at some point wrung through a loop, or an echo machine, or one of the other multiple boxes of gadgetry on the stage with them. Even the drum kit had some echo on it and was turned up loud--rendering each smashing note that much deeper and sharper. These guys crammed more wires and little black boxes on the stage than you'll find in an average jumbo jet. Yet the songs, for all their drone, are surprisingly tender; Tostensen's voice is strong yet beguiling enough to suck you into these mini-operas.

The average song (and "song" seems an inadequate way to describe the loud angularity of the music they're producing) starts with noise (a hum or drone of some kind) that is slowly joined by a thumping drum, striking guitars that come and go throughout (often resisting forming a rhythm line) and Torstensen's vocals and keyboards bring it all together into something that you almost think you can dance to.

Seeing bands in a tiny space like The Black Cat Backstage can be a mixed experience; sure you get to be super close to the guys on stage, but is that always what you want? I find the small stage (just a couple inches off the ground) can sometimes dim the impressiveness of a performance--turning mysterious musicians into just normal guys, and therefore losing some of the magic of the live show. But these are both such DIY bands that the Backstage was the perfect spot to catch them in.

The CDs and vinyls for sale were charmingly simple and homemade. No factory production here; Magical Beautiful even had tapes for sale that I'm sure they recorded themselves at home. Before the show, and during the Magical Beautiful set, Owen Ashworth (the lead singer and composer for CFTPA) was manning the merch table. He set it all up, took my five dollars for the Magical Beautiful CD I bought, and signed some of the CD's and shirts that were sold. CFTPA is totally his band, he writes the lyrics, draws the pictures for the merch and on the albums he accompanies himself on all the instruments.

In the live show Ashworth was backed by Magical Beautiful and they seemed perfectly comfortable playing Ashworth's tunes. The bands have a similar sound, but CFTPA gets a bit slower and introspective. Ashworth's voice is interesting for its fragility and his ability to continue singing so slowly that it almost seems like he's wandered off the melody; all of which matches the somewhat depressing nature of his lyrics. This was two solid hours of indie rock at its finest; talented guys making the music they want to make, and doing it all on their terms. After the last song Ashworth said thanks a lot and then hopped off stage to get back to the merch table.