Books, Burritos, and Bacon

Granta 82: “An Education” by Lynn Barber

2010-01-05T21:07:00.000-08:00

I imagine I’ll get around to reading all of the stories in time, but I really only wanted this back issue of Granta because of Lynn Barber’s piece, “An Education.” As I’m sure you’ve guessed or perhaps already knew, this essay was the basis for the film An Education, which was adapted by Nick Hornby. I adore Hornby, as I’ve mentioned a few times here before and An Education was one of my favorite movies of 2009.

The film and essay are about a sixteen-year-old girl who begins dating an older man. He’s a conman who charms her and her parents, takes her to France and treats her to upscale dinners. Although there are signs that he isn’t entirely on the up and up from the moment she meets him, she ignores them. The education alluded to in the title is that moment when we realize that we can’t always trust the people that we want to trust—the sort of education that no one really wants.

The first thing I noticed as I read the Barber essay was pacing. It moves along at a nice clip, which gives it this great journalistic quality. Most of the memoirs I read while I was in school would probably be classified as “creative non-fiction”—which is basically just another way of saying unconventional or resembles fiction. There’s nothing wrong with this kind of non-fiction, in fact, I like it a lot, but there’s something to be said for simple, straightforward writing especially if the content is thematically complex. I can see “An Education” being the essay that I end up modeling my own work after.

The second thing I noticed was how faithful Hornby was to Barber’s story. “An Education” (the essay) is only a few pages in length while An Education (the movie) is over 90 minutes long. The moments that Hornby invented were true to the facts and essence of Barber’s story, which I think takes real sensitivity and a deep understanding of the material.

Postmortem

I wish that it were longer. This isn’t a criticism; actually, it has to do with how much I loved the essay. It looks as though some elongated version of this Granta story is being released later this month.

If only I’d read this before I went to that Nick Hornby book signing. I could have asked him what it was in particular that inspired him to adapt it.

Happy New Year, Bacon Mac!

2010-01-01T12:55:00.000-08:00

Boyfriend and I went to Kincaid's in Oakland for our traditional Anniversary/New Year's Eve Dinner. Usually we just get steaks (you can see Boyfriend's plate in the background) but this year we decided to add a side of Bacon Mac. I only had two or three spoonfuls because I'd already gorged myself on bread by the time we got our entrees; but those were the best two or three spoonfuls of macaroni and cheese that I've ever had. What a great way to start the new year.

Superstud: Or How I Became a 24-year-old Virgin by Paul Feig

2009-12-29T22:29:00.000-08:00

The Paul Feig-Judd Apatow brain-trust produced Freaks and Geeks—a teen centric comedy-drama that is probably the definitive brilliant-but-canceled TV show. (Some may think that that distinction belongs to Arrested Development but I’d argue that that show was at least granted a three-season run. The Emmy-nominated Freaks and Geeks, on the other hand, got the axe after a mere 12 episodes, outraging fans and critics alike. On top of that, almost every member of the Freaks and Geeks principal cast has continued to work steadily with a few—Seth Rogen, James Franco, and Jason Segel—becoming pretty big stars. Their post-cancellation success, I think, is a testament to the talent that these kids possessed and is proof of just how respected the show was in Hollywood.) In my opinion, there were two reasons why this show was so awesome: (1) It was hilarious and (2) most of that hilarity had a lot to do with schadenfreude.

My love of Freaks and Geeks and the delight I take in the hard luck of those who aren’t me, prompted me to buy Paul Feig’s first book, Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence—which may have actually been my first experience with memoir (I was only about 18 or 19 at the time). The book is, by turns, hysterical and cringe-inducing; it is, without question, a comedic masterpiece; and it also happens to be one of the few books that I’ve read more than once (surprisingly, it was just as funny the second time around). If you haven’t read it, you need to go down to your local bookstore and buy it right now. Seriously.

Kick Me, solidified my Feig Fandom, and so, I was really looking forward to reading the follow-up memoir, Superstud: Or How I Became a 24-year-old Virgin.
. . .
I’ll preface this by saying that I didn’t dislike the book. In fact, I started reading it almost as soon as I received it on Christmas morning, finished it in a day or so, and generally found it very engaging. But it was engaging in the same way that reading a stranger’s very, very personal blog is engaging or watching a reality TV show is engaging; I couldn’t put the book down because it’s a confessional I am a voyeur to the core. Superstud wasn’t nearly as funny as Kick Me, which had me laughing out loud, and I often felt a bit annoyed with Feig and his relationship ineptitude. Most of the time his sexual awkwardness wasn’t pathetic in an amusing way, it was just plain pathetic. As much as I like Feig, I can’t help but think that this book was more about a paycheck than it was about making anyone laugh.

The title would seem to suggest that Feig was a nerd and couldn’t get a girlfriend, but he appears to have had very little trouble getting dates. He describes several relationships in the book, a few of which were apparently with attractive girls. His problem, as I understood it, was reconciling his raging hormones with his religion and high standards. He could have lost his virginity any number of times but he chose not to. This is, of course, admirable. If you aren’t ready to have sex then you shouldn’t have sex, plain and simple. But Feig doesn’t spend enough time describing that internal struggle. The book could have been really moving if he would have dramatized his thought process a little more. He leans too hard on that hopeless nerd angle when he should be exploring the reasons why he wasn’t ready for a sexual relationship. Ultimately, that would have probably been more compelling, and possibly, funnier.

Postmortem

Like I said, Superstud wasn’t horrible. If you’re a Freaks and Geeks fan, you’ll probably be happy to read about the real-life incidents that inspired some of the show’s more memorable moments.

Feig—or maybe his editor—makes some interesting formatting decisions. One chapter incorporates his actual journal and the final chapter, which describes his first time, mimics scrpiture.

Burger!

2009-12-28T22:10:00.000-08:00

Finally I feel the sting of the recession as Boyfriend and I could not afford to get bacon on our burgers. Fortunately, the food was tasty and I barely noticed the lack of extra meat. This beauteous tower o' beef is the Burgermeister Colossal. Two thick, niman ranch patties smothered in cheddar cheese that oozes down the sides of the burger like hot lava. Boyfriend didn't believe that I would be able to finish it but he was dead wrong! I also ate the fries. Every last one of them. I am pig. Pig who likes bacon. I am, therefore, cannibal in addition to being pig.

Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne

2009-12-27T19:41:00.001-08:00

I started reading this one months and months ago because I heard that a movie adaptation was in the works. I probably should be ashamed, but that is the reason why I choose to read a lot of the books that I read. The overwhelming sense of satisfaction that I feel when I’m able to leave a theater and say to whomever’s accompanied me, “Ah, that was okay, but the book was better,” is just, well, so overwhelming satisfying. If you think that’s sort of douchey of me, then you are correct, my friend, you are correct! The movie is being released in less than a month so I thought it crucial to finally finish it up. And I’m glad that I did.

Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne is a bit like Bridget Jones’ Diary for the horny, teenage boy set. In his journal, hyper-articulate 14-year-old Nick Twisp, chronicles his obsession with the equally articulate teen goddess Sheeni Saunders, his ongoing quest to be devirginated, and all of his very, very bad behavior. There are also several “thunderous erections” and multiple incidences of oral sex. In short, it’s the kind of genuinely funny, instant classic that all teenagers should read.

And yet, with its elevated diction and Jean-Luc Godard name-check, Youth in Revolt is definitely not YA fiction. It takes a considerable amount of skill to create a teenage character that is both believably teenaged and appealing to adults, and C.D. Payne is able to pull it off gracefully. In the upcoming months, I hope to make my way through the entire Nick Twisp saga (there are apparently three sequels).

Postmortem

Although I’ve been reading this book off and on for a couple of months now, once I hit the half-way point it was very easy sailing.
The ending of the book isn’t really an ending at all but a segue into the second Nick Twisp book. Luckily, the next book is contained within this gargantuan tome.
Youth in Revolt is set in Oakland and, as I’ve said in the past, books set in the Bay Area hold a special place in my heart. I’m predisposed to loving them.
The trailer for Youth in Revolt starring Michael “Mr. Manager” Cera seems v. awesome. I noticed, though, that it primarily focuses on Nick’s transformation into Francois, his impertinent French alter ego. That really isn’t what the story is about (at least not the first one) and Francois does not enter the mix until the book is nearly finished. So if you wanted people to think that you’re the sort of person who reads, I would make sure to bring that to the attention of your comrades. Although called Youth in Revolt, I think the plot of the movie may actually be a combination of the first three Nick Twisp books.

Bacon Sausage Quiche

2009-12-27T15:23:00.000-08:00

Boyfriend cooked this bacon sausage quiche for his family on Christmas and gave me the leftovers the next day. I like how he's taken a kind of hoighty-toighty, Frenchy food and dumbed it down with the bacon. But in dumbing it down, he managed to delicious it up. Boyfriend is culinary god.

Bacon Chili-Cheese Dog

2009-11-28T14:33:00.000-08:00

I would love to take credit for masterminding this little delight but this bacon chili-cheese dog was actually conceived of by my mother, if you can believe it. While moms the world over attempt to get their children to eat broccoli and brussel sprouts and other nasty green things, mine cooks this for me. What a lady, right? What I like most about this hot dog is that it's a work of art and it's delicious.

Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman

2009-11-01T14:36:00.000-08:00

Chuck Klosterman is responsible for validating my debilitating pop culture habit. After reading Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, I started to see entertainment journalism as a viable career option (for better or worse). His essays are droll and chock-a-block full of curious interpretations of everyday objects and cultural phenomena; he’s amusing even when he’s criticizing something that I—unhip lady that I am—enjoy; and he’s insightful but not intimidatingly so—all of his books are conversational, sprinkled with slang and mild profanity, addressing issues that are accessible to the PhD-less. Klosterman, I think, embodies a different kind of intellectualism, a more relatable kind. Armchair intellectualism. His essays impose a deeply philosophical, scholarly, and often, historical context upon banalities sans irony. We aren’t meant to laugh at an elaborate analysis of ABBA, we’re meant to laugh at how legitimate that analysis is—the It’s-funny-‘cause-it’s-true paradigm.

Since the release of his definitive work, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs in 2003, Klosterman has become a bit of a celebrity—ostensibly a part of all that pop culture debris he’s so apt to critique. In Eating the Dinosaur, his latest collection, he overtly addresses that issue in the book’s opening essay, “Something Instead of Nothing,” which is essentially meditation on the art and practice of interviewing and being interviewed.

In the essay, Klosterman who has contributed to Spin, The Washington Post, and Esquire, writes, “For the past five years, I’ve spent more time being interviewed than conducting interviews with other people. I am not complaining about this, nor am I proud of it—it’s just the way things worked out, mostly by chance. But the experience has been confusing.”

Eating the Dinosaur feels like Klosterman’s attempt to replicate the content, style, and success of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. But this isn’t something that he’s able to do. I’m not criticizing him, I’m just saying that his psychic distance has changed. He very literally cannot write the same way that he wrote back in 2003 for all of the reasons that none of us can write or think or behave the way we did in 2003, but also because he is, whether he wants to admit it or not, a celebrity. So while reading this book, there’s this mildly uncomfortable tension sort of haunting the margins. Despite my love for pop culture reportage—I almost would have preferred to read something completely devoted to his transformation into a public figure.

Although, there were a few things that weren’t working for me in Eating the Dinosaur—the discussion of sports, the rehashing of issues discussed in previous work, how meta the whole thing is—I did enjoy the book overall and would recommend it, especially to people who haven’t read Klosterman. There is an articulate, satisfyingly geeky dissection of time travel called “Tomorrow Never Knows” that should go down in history as the authoritative text on the subject.

When Klosterman is good, he’s really good.

Halloween Eve Burrito

2009-10-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

Boyfriend and I went to the Emeryville Marketplace where we ate these massive burritos. So massive, in fact, that this poor little flour tortilla was unable to contain the innards. Afterward, we went to see Saw VI. By now I feel like I’m just programmed to watch these Saw movies. They aren’t even good. This new one is by far the most gruesome and somehow, also, the most tedious. Like I said, I’m not exactly sure why I saw Saw VI but it wasn’t to sit through forty to fifty minutes of lame back-story. Now, I probably should be embarrassed to admit that I immediately recognized that one of the actresses in the movie was Tanedra from the Vh1 reality show Scream Queens. And I probably should be down right ashamed to admit that a single tear ran down my cheek when Tanedra won the competition (and this role in Saw VI ). Truth be told, I'm getting a little choked up just thinking about it.

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

2009-10-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

As I’ve mentioned before, I purchased The Accidental Tourist because Nick Hornby said that Anne Tyler was the author who made him want to write; and because Nick Hornby’s work has had a similar impact on me, I thought it crucial to read something she’d written. At the risk of sounding completely ignorant and in the interest of full disclosure, I will admit to not knowing who Tyler was before Hornby brought her up at his book signing. This is especially embarrassing when you consider that she’s a Pulitzer Prize winner (she’s been nominated 3 times!). But you know, you live, you learn, you read The Accidental Tourist. That’s the circle of life. And it moves us all. Through despair and hope. Through faith and love, etc.

Last week, I plucked The Accidental Tourist out from my Stack O’ Books because I thought it would be fitting—I’m in Las Vegas at the moment—but I had no idea how fitting it would actually turn out to be. Macon Leary, the novel’s protagonist, is an anal-retentive travel guide writer—his books are all about low-impact travelling, showing business-types how to go on their business trips without having to engage with the cities they’re visiting. As it turned out, I spent the second day of this “vacation” in the hotel, never leaving, not even for food—I had a couple of Lunchables in the refrigerator.

(For some poorly thought out reason, I decided to tag along with my mother and grandmother on this Vegas trip; they came for an AARP convention. Being twenty-five years old, I do not meet the primary admission requirement for the American Association of Retired Persons, so I couldn’t go to any of their little events—not that I would have wanted to, anyway. And because we’re staying at an isolated resort, miles and miles away from the strip, I’ve been alternating between hotel confinement and doing granny things like eating at all you can eat buffets and sitting for hours at 1¢ slot machines.)

Though the days here have been lame for sure, the up-side is that I was able to finish the book without any distractions; and I’m glad that I read it (!) Tyler’s prose is unadorned but poignant, proof that plain language can be emotionally affecting (and win Pulitzer Prizes). There was a time when I thought that good writing was heavily poetic, sprinkled with bizarre metaphors and full of big, eruditey words. So in that way, there’s something refreshing about the book.

I’ve been waiting for a while to feel some investment, to actually care about a novel’s characters (!), and this is the first book that I’ve finished this past month that’s accomplished that. Macon begins an odd sort of relationship with this flighty, inarticulate dog trainer named Muriel—a character who was able to crawl so thoroughly under my skin that I really have to applaud Tyler’s skill.

The Accidental Tourist is about life, or I guess what it means to really live—as hackneyed as that sounds—and when a novel’s protagonist is a reserved man who cuts himself off from the outside world, you sort of expect him to find his redemption in some quirky woman with frizzy hair. But Tyler is able to create this very complicated and realistic internal life for Macon; there isn’t anything easy about his journey.
If I’d read this book ten years ago I don't think that I would have said, “A-ha! Now I know what I’ll do with my life. I’ll become a writer!” But I can definitely see myself reading more of Tyler’s work.

The Dead Father by Donald Barthleme

2009-10-21T14:29:00.000-07:00

The Dead Father is dead. I killed it. I don’t know how I did it, but I did, it’s done, I read Barthelme and won (<---unintentional rhyme). In The Dead Father—the most complicated book that I’ve read in the past two months, quite possibly the most complicated that I’ve read since becoming literate—a group of people drag the immense, somewhat dead, somewhat living body of a man known as the Dead Father across the countryside.

D.F. is a pitiful figure despite his apparent size—I don’t think any concrete measurements are ever given but we’re led to believe he’s rather huge, though not too huge—and is often berated by members of his travelling party. Why are they doing this, you ask. Well, it’s all very mystical and, at the same time, not mystical at all. Confusing? Yup! And then you get paragraphs that start like this:

The Dead Father was slaying in a grove of music and musicians. First he slew a harpist and then a performer upon the serpent and also a banger upon the rattle and also a blower of the Persian trumpet and one upon the Indian trumpet and one upon the Hebrew trumpet and one upon the Roman trumpet and one upon the Chinese trumpet of copper-covered wood.

I should have hated this book. But I didn’t. Though, the narrative is untraditional, to say the least—it’s digressive, surreal, and confusing, confusing, confusing—I loved The Dead Father and was actually moved by it. I think, in order to read and enjoy it, you have to be open to what Barthelme’s done and try to look at the book as an experience—an experience that’s going to be pretty rough and uncomfortable for a while.

This is Water by David Foster Wallace

2009-10-17T14:26:00.000-07:00

What I enjoy most about David Foster Wallace’s work isn’t the idiosyncratic intellect—the cleverness of the stuff—although, for me, that’s what initially made him such an attractive writer. I remember reading “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” and thinking here’s a guy who knows what’s up, who understands all of the weirdness floating around in my skull, who can articulate it perfectly, comically. He did things structurally that I didn’t know you were allowed to do in short fiction and that opened up a whole world of possibilities for me. I was invigorated. I wanted to read more David Foster Wallace. I wanted to read writers who were like David Foster Wallace. I wanted to write like David Foster Wallace, have other people read what I’d written and say, “Wow, here’s a girl who really knows what’s up.”

After news of his suicide broke, I couldn’t look at his work in terms of how cool and inventive it was anymore, at least not solely in those terms. It was like a coming of age moment for me, the event that sparks a change in our protagonist’s perception of the world around her. Innocence null and void.

It was impossible for me to separate him from his writing. I was reading his fiction as if it were autobiography. Every character—female or male, named or unnamed—was David Foster Wallace to me and I couldn’t help but see hints of his tragic fate; “The Depressed Person,” which is about suicide, seemed like heavy-handed foreshadowing. I’m sure I’m not the only one who experienced something like this, though, I haven’t discussed it with anyone—I wasn’t purposely looking for clues of his depression in his writing but still there’s something perverse about the act, something shameful about it.

Then I read this article about him in Rollingstone, an article that I was compelled to save. It was ostensibly a portrait of a man with a mental illness, describing his depression, anxiety, and years long struggle to find a prescription medication that worked for him. But it also provided me with some insight into the real David Foster Wallace— what those closest to him knew to be true—not the version of him that I had pieced together by reading his stories.

David Foster Wallace was decent and kind, adored by his friends, family, and students. And he, in turn, adored all of them. After reading the article I wished that I had been in one of his creative writing classes, not because he was this celebrated, ultra-brilliant talent, but because he seemed like he was a good person. So this article, yet again, changed the way I viewed David Foster Wallace’s work. Now it’s impossible for me to ignore the sensitivity of it and that’s what I enjoy most.

This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion about Living a Compassionate Life is a teeny pocket-sized hardcover, each page contains no more than four or five sentences, and it costs way more than it probably should ($14.99). It begins with the following brief publisher’s preamble:
David Foster Wallace was invited to speak to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College on a subject of his choosing. It was the only such address he ever made.

If Little, Brown were being one hundred percent honest with us, the last sentence would probably read:
It was the only such address he ever made, he’s dead now, which means this is a collector’s item, so Canadians fork over seventeen of your Canadian dollars.

It may seem like I’m bitching (because I am) but really the price of the book (and the implicit exploitation of true tragedy) is its solitary defect.

I graduated from college in 2005 and wish that I would have heard this speech at my commencement. (Instead I had to listen to John McCain surreptitiously lay out his political platform.) This is Water is essentially a simple, humorous, effective argument against solipsism. When my best friend graduated from the University of Chicago a couple of years ago, her commencement speaker more or less told them that their degrees made them better than everyone else, that their education had prepared them for life. The best part about this teeny, tiny book is that it’s saying the exact opposite. It’s a scary thought, but it’s true. We have no way of knowing how this life thing will play out and I don’t know if this is a horrible thought but the fact that David Foster Wallace committed suicide may mark this commencement speech as one of the few that wasn’t complete BS.

This is a book that you should read and then pass on to a friend not only because it’s great but because no one will ever have to pay $14.99 or $16.99 (Canadian) for it again.

War Dances by Sherman Alexie

2009-10-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

Sherman Alexie’s classic short story, “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” makes you feel as though someone has Kung-Fu gripped your heart, just really squeezed the hell out of the thing. In the immortal words of John Mellencamp during his prolific “John Cougar” phase, Alexie’s writing hurts so good. War Dances, Alexie’s latest collection of short fiction, poetry, autobiography, and genre defying acrobatics, is no exception.

In "On Airplanes" one of War Dances longer poems, the speaker complains about couples who ask him to give up his aisle seat for a middle seat, so that they can sit together. "How dare you/Ask me to change/My life for you/How imperial/How colonial." But then something peculiar happens. The comedy gives way to an entirely different sort of experience. "But, ah, here is/The strange truth/Whenever I'm asked/ To trade seats/For somebody else's love/I do, I always do." There’s a twist at the end, a unexpected shift in tone that undercuts (or perhaps underscores) everything that has preceded it. That last stanza, for me, as sweet as it is, is like a sucker punch to the gut. Reading Alexie is like having someone caress you with one hand and wail on you with the other.

Alexie is the preeminent American Indian writer—quite possibly the world’s most famous living Indian—and as cool and grand as all of that sounds, it short-changes him; those sorts of qualifiers are unnecessary for genius of this order. Though his heritage has obviously shaped his world-view and politics, though his protagonists are primarily Indians, his talent is ferocious and his themes are universal.

And boy does Alexie loves his themes.

Whether it’s a cute but poignant poem about building the Lego Star Wars Ultimate Death Star with his sons or a somber short story about a Republican senator’s son who places his father’s political career in jeopardy by committing a hate crime, the pieces in War Dances are primarily about four things: fatherhood, the responsibility we have to our parents, disillusionment, and memory. So this would be my only criticism of the book: I understand the need for a thematically cohesive collection but for any Alexie fan this is well-worn territory. It would be intriguing, if nothing else, to see him tackle a few new themes. Notwithstanding this, War Dances is utterly readable (I finished it in just a couple of hours) and several of the stories are actually too funny. While I can waste hours watching trashy basic cable reality shows with the best of them, this is the kind of book that makes happy to be literate.

Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse

2009-10-15T14:21:00.000-07:00

Bertie Wooster, narrator and oddly loveable upper-class twit, is deliciously idle and pals around with other hoighty-toighty wealthy folk who privilege decorum to such an outrageous extent that they inevitably wind up in the goofiest, most trifling predicaments. It’s up to intuitive, imperturbable Jeeves, Bertie’s valet (or “manservant” if you want to be creepy about it) to sort them all out.

On the face of it, The Code of the Woosters is 286 pages of unbridled hullabaloo (the bulk of the conflict revolves around a cow-creamer that several of the older, haughtier players of this farce covet for indiscernible yet clearly trivial reasons). But dismissing the book as insignificant fluff is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh, so dreadfully wrong. P.G. Wodehouse’s intentions may not have been as lofty as those of some of the writers that we so nerdily dub “literary,” but there is still something special about this book, something special about Wodehouse. I’ve always felt that it is far more difficult to tickle the funny bone than tug at the heartstrings (though I will waffle a bit here and say that it takes a considerable amount of talent to do either effectively). Page for page, I don’t believe that I’ve ever read a book quite as quippy asThe Code of the Woosters; it’s just brimming with wit. And while every gag may not be a howler, there’s no denying Wodehouse’s comedic artistry.

The humor is thoroughly British—often very reserved and satirical but also very, very silly. The dialogue has this enjoyable rapid-fire quality, and even though I, of course, believe that literature has its own inherent worth and books are perfectly fine in their God-given form, The Code of the Woosters just lends itself to cinematic/theatrical adaptation (I’m currently watching the third season of Jeeves and Wooster on DVD).
And the language, ah, the language! There is a terrific rhythm to Bertie’s narration and the diction, well, I suppose it’s 1930s English slang, and I loved it. Some of the Bertie words and phrases that I marked include:

“Five hundred’s pretty good sugar, if you ask me.”
“But that’s just what I’m driving at. That’s just where you’re making your bloomer.”
“The gravity of the situash had at last impressed itself upon her. She uttered a squeak of dismay, and her eyes became a bit soup-platey.”
“He opened the small suitcase, and I lit a cigarette and proceeded to stress the moral lesson to be learned from all this rannygazoo.”

On the front cover of my edition, there is a quote that reads:

“Wodehouse is the funniest writer—that is, the most resourceful and unflagging deliverer of fun—that the human race a glum crowd, has yet produced.”

Another critic says:

“He who has not met Wodehouse has not lived a full life.”

There is a heap of praise that I would like to heave onto the pile—The Code of the Woosters is a fantastic bit of social commentary, the characters are exquisitely rendered, etc.—but I don’t think that I would be able to articulate it any better than this, so I’m going to stop right here. What I will say is that I’m glad to have finally read a little Wodehouse.
(for anyone who cares, here is a great interview Wodehouse did for the Paris Review, published in 1975)

Sherman Alexie Book Signing

2009-10-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

This week is sort of unofficially "Author Week." I just got back from one of the most phenomenal readings ever.

This is what I learned:
Sherman Alexie is a funny human being, hilarious even.

I was a TA for a Native American Literature and Film class this summer and we devoted nearly half of the session to Alexie's fiction, poetry, and films. The humor in his work is always sharp (and seamlessly interwoven with all of the cultural criticism and drama) but I never expected him to be as funny as he was. I laughed more tonight than I do watching Comedy Central stand-up.

To quote Smoke Signals, one of my favorite films, the evening was a “fine example of the oral tradition.”
…and he was nice enough to sign books for everyone in attendance (the place was packed, so no small feat).

I’ve only read a few pieces in War Dances but tonight has inspired me to try and finish it up this weekend. Or at least read it in conjunction with the Wodehouse, which I started last night.
Yay for my (lack of) photography skills...

Nick Hornby Book Signing

2009-10-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

I just got home from the Nick Hornby book reading/signing/Q&A at the El Cerrito Plaza Barnes and Noble. It was fantastic and even though Dave Eggers is going to be accompanying Hornby on stage @ the Herbst Theater tomorrow night in the city (of course, it's sold out), I definitely enjoyed the intimacy of tonight's event. Hearing him read from Juliet, Naked changed some of my opinions of the book. There are subtle layers of humor that I may have overlooked or sped through when I was reading it on my own. Maybe in a few years I'll read it again and be able to appreciate it on an entirely different level, which is an interesting thought considering the book's plot.
Here's the rundown:
-Hornby is v. proud of An Education (he wrote the screenplay). I was under the impression that the source material was book length (something that I suppose could have been cleared up with a simple Google search), but apparently it was just a 10-page piece published in Granta. Like his novels (and I guess most British cinema), the film is dialogue heavy. I didn't think that I could be any more excited about this movie than I already was, but tonight has put me on the brink of mind explosion. Peter Sarsgaard. Nick Hornby. This movie is going to be so awesome, I just know it (!) Thanks to the internet(s), there's some Oscar buzz surrounding it and tonight while I was staring at Hornby, who seems to be a v. sweet guy, I was just thinking about how cool it would be if he were nominated for an Academy Award. Fingers crossed.
Here's the trailer....

-His advise for writers=do 500 words a day, which doesn't seem like much, but over three months you'll have finished that novel, or at least reached a novely-length.
-He didn't say anything bad about any of the films that have been adapted from his work (including the Farrelly Bros. helmed Fever Pitch). Like I said, he's v. sweet.
-He's short-ish.
-He's a Dickens fan and says despite their length, the books have punch. As far as Dickens on film/TV goes, he recommends the recent adaptation of Bleak House starring Gillian Anderson.
-Anne Tyler is the writer who made him want to be a writer.

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

2009-10-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

Motherless Brooklyn is more character driven than Fortress, the plot is more engaging (though, Lionel, the Tourette’s inflicted narrator, is more engaging than the whole of the who-done-it detective plot), and in the end it was just a more satisfying read. I can definitely see why Edward Norton would want to adapt it. But still, a lot of what I’ll call its Letheminess—simply meaning, superior prose masking a lack of emotional depth—got in the way of making it a book capable of moving me. That’s why this quote on the front cover is so confusing:

“The best novel of the year . . . utterly original and deeply moving.”---Esquire

While it may have been the best novel of whichever year it was published and there’s no arguing with its originality—although, I might take issue with the use of the word “utterly”—I can’t for the life of me figure out what could have moved this particular critic. On a sentence-to-sentence level, Motherless Brooklyn is beautiful. I can’t imagine ever being able to write as well as Jonathan Lethem so perhaps his sentences moved Mr. Esquire. But for me, a moving novel inspires more than admiration. A moving novel stirs something up inside of me, shifts me, forces me to re-read the last page or sometimes the entire thing all over again immediately. When a book moves me, I miss it as soon as the last line is read. Motherless Brooklyn was a good book, maybe even a great book, but it wasn’t moving.
I started this Lethem thing because of an article about his upcoming novel Chronic City—the description made it sound incredibly cool, as magazine descriptions are wont to do. Now, after finishing two of his most acclaimed novels, I’ve begun to look upon October 13 with some dread. Chronic City is going to be a long one according to Lethem and if his new batch of improbably named characters are as distant as the ones in Fortress andMotherless, I don’t think I’ll be able to finish the book. The weird thing about Lethem’s characters is that even when he gives me tons and tons of background info, even when he plainly lays out their psychoses, I still feel nothing for them.

Maybe that’s just a personal problem.

A side note: I think Lethem may have been channeling Watchmen with Motherless Brooklyn. Lionel is kind of a Rorschach character—the guy everyone thinks is crazy, the one who’s just a little too earnest. Also, the group of superheroes in Moore’s graphic novel were called the Minute Men, right? And Lionel calls the group of low-level thugs he belongs to, Minna Men. After reading Fortress and Motherless, practically back-to-back, I do believe that I’m starting to figure out who this Lethem guy is; and he likes his superheroes.

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

2009-10-03T11:04:00.000-07:00

…was finished in two days. I suppose it wouldn’t have been too difficult to read in a day but I’d rented the Emmy-award winning Little Dorrit miniseries early last week and the pull of those first two discs was astonishingly strong. (My Nick Hornby fanaticism’s primary ingredient, it would seem, is weak sauce.) Andrew Davies is responsible for this incredible adaptation and after some light googling I discovered that he also adapted the Colin Firth, A&E version of Pride and Prejudice—which is, of course, the adaptation that all other Pride and Prejudice adaptations are measured against. Judging from the bit of Little Dorrit that I’ve just watched and the one other thing of his that I’ve seen, it would appear that Mr. Davies can do no wrong.
After watching the first half of the miniseries I turned back to Mr. Hornby’s book but all of those wonderful Dickens characters lingered in my mind. Although I was reading a decidedly modern novel wherein much of the conflict revolves around the internet(s), thoughts of all those soot covered Cockneys persisted.
Dickens appeals to my most primal entertainment needs, this very basic desire to experience a great story—one with twists, turns, romance, humor, and debtors’ prisons. Everything about his work takes me back to this really innocent place. For a start, my earliest contact with his world was via Oliver and Company and then in 9th grade when we did Great Expectations, much of it was read aloud in class.
No one reads aloud anymore!

I don’t know but for me at least, there’s just something very wholesome about reading aloud (even when what’s being read aloud involves elderly shut-ins catching on fire).

As I made my way through Juliet, Naked, I was already plotting my next read. Dickens(!) My plans were only solidified when one of the characters in the Hornby book turned out to be a Dickens fan.
So I finished the Hornby quickly. It was good. Not mind-blowing or anything, and definitely not as enjoyable asHigh Fidelity, but it wasn’t a total disappointment—my (dubious) allegiance to Hornby remains unaltered (or something). (I will say this, though: Because one of the three protagonists is a self-doubting artist type there were some meta undertones and I couldn’t help but think that Hornby was using this book as a way of preemptively justifying any of its shortcomings.)

Anyway, that was on Thursday and my next move was to purchase David Copperfield or Bleak House or whatever. But Jesus, those books are thick. With no grade on the line I don’t know that I’d have the motivation to finish one. I’m going to need a little time for mental preparation, to build up my reading endurance before I tackle one of those bad boys. Or maybe I’ll just chuck the idea all together, finish the last two discs of Little Dorrit, and then go see the new Jim Carrey 3D version of A Christmas Carol next month.

Eh…

I’m currently reading Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem and I already like it more than The Fortress of Solitude. My initial impulse was to attribute this to its more traditional structure; it’s more straightforward and feels less ambitious than the other one, so it’s easier to get wrapped up in. But that’s not fair. I think it’s just as ambitious as Fortress but that ambition is less transparent.

Me and Mr. Hornby

2009-09-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

My thing with Nick Hornby began senior year of high school when I read About a Boy. Up until then I’d only been reading the classics assigned to me in English class, and Hornby’s book was my first experience with adult contemporary fiction. Oscar Wilde was my favorite author at the time (mainly because I’d written the definitive 12-page-double-spaced-1-inch margined research paper on him and believed (though, I don’t think erroneously) that I was the preeminent 12th grade scholar on the man’s life and oeuvre); but after About a Boy it was clear that Hornby was making significant gains in the Amber’s-favorite-author department.

Years later, fresh out of college, I read High Fidelity. This initial reading prompted a second and I found myself underlining passages (this is something that I probably shouldn’t have done since it was a library copy (then again, I’d stolen the book so it was a perfectly all right thing to do)).

I read Fever Pitch, a book that I’d been resisting because of its non-fictiony-ness, while I was working on an autobiography project for grad school. I thought that it might help me figure out how to articulate my own “life story” and yes, it sort of did that, but really it’s noteworthy because it ended up being the book that cemented Hornby’s place in my heart. He discusses a subject that I know and care very little about—English football—and still, the book rates exceptionally high on the can’t-put-it-down-ability scale.

His writing is so fluid, so funny; he’s extremely clever but never opaque. He’s a celebrated author but admits to not being very well read. That brand of honesty is endearing. I also like the fact that he’s bald.
So I say that Nick Hornby is my favorite author but my own—hopefully endearing confession—is that I haven’t read everything he’s written. I didn’t read How to Be Good because I heard that it wasn’t, well, very good, I hadn’t touched any of the stuff he’d written for The Believer, and Slam, his young adult novel, was purchased but then sidelined when I entered grad school and no longer had time for casual reading. In anticipation for this, Juliet, Naked day (!), his appearance at the El Cerrito Barnes and Noble next week, and the release of An Education on October 16, I decided to attempt to fill in a few of these holes. I finished Slam in about a day. It was a pretty mellow read and I think the perfect follow-up to Lethem’s dense Fortress. After that I bought Housekeeping vs. The Dirt—also light, easily digestible, easily read at work with little to no subterfuge.

I’ve just spent the entire day walking around San Francisco—I am completely insane and walked up Lombard Street from Embarcadero and then down to Aquatic Park—so I am exhausted and don’t think I’ll be cracking open the new one tonight. Luckily, I have tomorrow off and have definitely fit enough exercise into this one day to last me until the weekend. Tomorrow is therefore the official start of Juliet, Naked Day.

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

2009-09-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

I finished The Fortress of Solitude on Friday and making my way through those final chapters kind of reminds me of this seven day backpacking trip I went on the summer before I started at Northwestern: total hell but with this underlying feeling that I was going to be a better person for having had the experience. The book was good, and I stick by my earlier assessment of the first half of it. But the conclusion was so unexpected, structurally speaking, that I have yet to make up my mind about how I feel about the book as a whole.

Most of what has been written about this book (and what will be written about it in the future) focuses on content and I suppose the “cultural work” that a book about a white boy growing up in an inner city Brooklyn neighborhood is doing. It’s important to highlight that aspect of it, for sure, but in my opinion, The Fortress of Solitude is Lethem’s attempt at reinventing the novel (or at the very least opening up some new possibilities).

Part One is written in the third-person and though it becomes clear that Dylan Edbus is the protagonist, the book has this Dickensian omniscient narrator. It’s funny, but when I was in grad school we were encouraged to stick to one point of view character (though, I don’t know if that was just because I was doing short stories). It seems that a lot of what I’ve been reading—or rather, a lot of what I’ve been reading and enjoying—employs this sort of narration. I don’t think that Lethem is being gimmicky though. Brooklyn is a character in this book and it’s crucial that we get that full panorama.

The second part of the book called “Liner Note,” is just that—Dylan Edbus has grown up, he’s in his thirties, and in addition to being a journalist he writes liner notes for CD box sets. The idea behind this section is very cool—I felt like I was reading an artifact from the world of the book. This being said, liner notes are boring as hell. Unless you’re one of those people who lives and breathes music, I doubt you’ve ever even read a liner note. On some level I think that this section is a commentary on that while also underscoring Dylan’s complicated relationship with black culture.

All and all, “Liner Note” is about authenticity. There can be a sort of douchey quality to liner notes when it seems as though the writer is trying to educate the reader—this is essentially what Dylan is doing. It makes me feel a bit uncomfortable when I read a white writer’s exegesis of some portion of black culture (or Asian culture or Latino culture, etc). In spite of all of the research that may have been done, I can’t help but think that what’s being discussed lacks legitimacy—I’m sure that Lethem knows that I feel this way. Here Dylan is, a white man writing about a black musician—one he actually grew up next door to. He came of age in a primarily black neighborhood but does that make him more qualified to talk about this stuff? Can he somehow claim this history? “Liner Note” is interesting because it begs these questions but I didn’t want to read what Lethem/Dylan had written. Maybe if it was, like, four pages long but not fifteen or twenty or however many it actually was.
Part Three, “Prisonaires,” is Dylan’s first-person narration of his adult life. Even though it lacks some of the force of Part One, I actually preferred this section. I like dialogue driven fiction and that’s what this is (mostly) and the action has moved from Brooklyn to Berkeley. Maybe it’s narcissistic but I love it when something somehow related to me or my life or the things that I like pops up in something that I’m reading. It validates my existence. (OK, I guess that’s totally narcissistic). My favorite part of the book was this single sentence: “I had California girlfriends, a California apartment, and after I’d dropped out of classes from sheer disinterest, a California newspaper career, as a music critic for the Alameda Harbinger, the job an extension of some work I’d done revamping KALX’s moribund gazette.” I grew up in Alameda (the Bay Area’s answer to Mayberry).

The story takes a surreal turn in this final section—this is where that “superheroes” bit from that back cover blurb really comes into play—but this isn’t what troubled me. Like I’ve said before, I prefer surrealism and admire authors who are able to blend it with realism. What bothered me was Lethem’s brief shift back to the third-person. It was kind of abrupt and I’m still processing it, trying to decide if it worked for me.

So I continue to meditate on this book three days after finishing it. I don’t know, I think that’s a sign that Mr. Lethem did his job.

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

2009-09-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

I usually just sit around the house watching TV on DVD (Northern Exposure, Six Feet Under, King of the Hill, et al.), eating quesadillas, while my boyfriend is in the other room watching football (or baseball or basketball, depending on the season) and don’t ever find myself in the kind of social situations where books are being recommended to me. Not since I finished grad school several months ago have I heard anyone discuss books or writing at length. In a way, I’m totally thrilled by this. I was so thoroughly swamped with reading during my two years at USF that I’d actually begun to despise the very thing that had brought me to the MFA program. Actually, it wasn’t the obscene amount of reading that caused all of that disdain it was really the fact that I wasn’t allowed to choose what I was reading. Now that I’m finished with school (hopefully: my thesis is still being reviewed) and still toiling away, two days a week, at my IQ draining minimum wage job, I have a lot of free time on my hands, a lot of time that I’d like to devote to reading. A writer is a reader, or so I’ve been told, and I foresee my writing making all sorts of tremendous leaps and bounds by the end of 2010 if I am able to fill this time with books and books and books (I imagine myself sitting in front of my laptop and having all of these clever and unexpected metaphors appear instantaneously on the screen—something akin to divine inspiration).
I’m running into a ton of problems on this journey. The joys of napping and TV on DVD are tough to deny but the biggest roadblock is book selection. Although, I have several stacks of unread and half-read books on my shelves and bedroom floor, it’s hard to commit to reading any of them. Most of these books are at least 400 pages and will take me, roughly, a week and a half to finish. I want that week and a half to be enjoyable. So enjoyable that I’ll be upset when I read that final page because I’ve become so invested in the plot and characters. This makes choosing a book pretty impossible. The anxiety and apprehension surrounding the book selection process is similar, I think, to the anxiety and apprehension that I feel in my life in general—wanting to start on this next phase in my life but not sure of where to begin. Excuses and excuses, piling up.

Blah.

The most obvious place to turn to is the bestsellers list. I’m not really one to read those sorts of books but I have purchased a few recently, desperate to find the book that will consume me. I don’t have anything against bestsellers but I’m more drawn to genre fiction and those books don’t usually rate with the American public unless the author is J.K. Rowling (I’ve already read all of her books and I’m not ashamed to say it) or Stephen King (as prolific and rich as he is, I don’t believe that he’s a very good writer). My favorite book is Douglas Adams’ classic piece of British, Sci-Fi humor, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (my love for this incredible book has sparked tattoo consideration—maybe a “42” or the words “Don’t Panic” emblazoned across my wrist for forever?) But I don’t know that I’ll be writing Sci-Fi/Fantasy when I finally begin to write-write and I’m not sure that my beloved Adams or authors like Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, as entertaining as they might be, are going to push my work forward. I started Good Omens a couple of months ago and despite its humor I didn’t feel like I was learning anything (I abandoned the book 70 pages in, but hope to return to it if only for the sake of finishing-something-that-I’ve-started). One of the down sides to studying literature in an MFA environment is that it makes it hard to enjoy fluff. I have this Bruce Campbell book on my nightstand that I was dying to read last year but the writing is obviously not on par with that of Virginia Woolf or Russell Banks, something that’s difficult to ignore. I’m fully aware of how pretentious that sounds but it’s the plain, stupid truth.

Trying to find a book that challenged me and also incorporated the surrealism/fantasy that I tend to prefer, I started reading Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase. One lazy day, early this summer, I went on a Google bender. You know, where you Google something random out of boredom or devotion to idleness like “how many calories are there in a bacon-ultimate-cheeseburger?” This triggers a thought that is paradoxically entirely related and unrelated to the initial Google search and leads you to Google something else. This goes on and on for hours, maybe even the entire day, until you’ve somehow wound up singing along to a karaoke version of “Killer Queen” on YouTube.

On this particular day though, my mindless googling brought me to Kat Dennings’ blog. Now, Kat Dennings is an actress, I think most famous for playing the titular Norah in the teen comedy Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. It was clear from the small portion of the blog that I read that this girl was intelligent and had a quirky sense of humor not unlike her character in the aforementioned film, although I can’t recall what specifically led me to believe this about her. She made a few music recommendations and then a few book recommendations, one of which was A Wild Sheep Chase—she’d described it as her favorite. I wouldn’t say that I’m a fan of Ms. Dennings’—I wasn’t even compelled to search her site’s archives and I don’t think that I’ve ever said her name aloud—but I suppose there is something slightly exciting about reading a book that someone (moderately) famous has recommended (this may be some of the appeal of Oprah’s book club). It makes the world feel a little smaller, like the distance between myself and the actors and actresses I see on TV or in the movies isn’t so great. Here Kat Dennings and I are, reading the same book.

Wowza.

After finishing A Wild Sheep Chase, it was painfully obvious to me that Kat Dennings (who Google tells me is three years my junior) is smarter than me. It was a difficult read, to say the least. Strangely though, it was also fascinating. I know that I understood maybe 20% of it (if that) but at no point did I consider abandoning it. It was unlike anything that I’ve ever read and perhaps it was that novelty that kept me going. Or maybe it was like a piece of abstract art—totally impenetrable but you can’t help but think that if you stare at it long enough you’ll finally “get it.”

Simply put the book is about a man who must find a sheep, a special one that has the power to insinuate itself into a person’s body. There are long-winded descriptions and histories that seem completely irrelevant. But, given the title, I think that was Murakami’s goal—the reader’s journey through this insane book is supposed to be mimetic of the unnamed protagonist’s quest for the elusive sheep. I want to say that it’s a book that I’ll understand better when I’m older. But I’m already older and I’m not sure that I’m going to get more intelligent. If anything, I’ll probably become dumber and the book will make even less sense to me. I wish that I would have discovered it when I was in elementary school. I could have written a book report on it that would have terrified my teacher. I wouldn’t have been able to grasp any of the book’s philosophical themes, of course, but the summary would have made her look at me a little differently.

In A Wild Sheep Chase a Japanese man and his girlfriend, who has the most beautiful ears in the world, look for a sheep with a star on its back. If they don’t find the sheep the man will be in big trouble. Along the way they eat at different restaurants, have intercourse, meet an old man who was once possessed by the sheep with the triangle on its back and another man who is sort of half human, half sheep and maybe dead. My favorite part was the chapter about the large, depressed whale penis.

Really, I can’t do the book’s weirdness any justice. I would recommend it, though. I never fell in love with the characters—Murakami purposely makes them distant and unknowable—but I felt like I’d truly accomplished something after I’d finished reading. For a girl who’s seen her post-college ennui mutate into an alternative lifestyle choice, feeling as though I’ve persevered or actually done something—as insignificant as that something may be—is wonderful.

Baah.