"Moose Out Front Shoulda Told Ya..."
What Would I Say To You Now?
Over the past six months, I've undergone some pretty drastic changes. I've moved to a new city, started a new and totally unfamiliar job, and began in earnest the process of trying to piece together what exactly this crazy life of mine is going to look like.
As time has gone on, I've had to make some pretty important decisions regarding what things will stay in my life and what will be jettisoned. It's a process that I took on with trepidation but am now pleased to say has turned out remarkably well. For the first time in a really long time, I'm happy with things. It's not all looking exactly like I wished it would, but I am legitimately and seriously happy.
Back when I first started A Rapturous Verbatim--a blog whose title has, I've come to realize, been laughably ironic--I was not so much on the happy side. I was in the midst of my junior year at Princeton, and things were beginning to get a bit on the dicey side with the onset of my independent work. (I never did regale my faithful audience with the story of how I got the nickname "Fastest Thesis in the West," did I? Another time, perhaps.) I wasn't doing anything creative, and I wanted to have something just for me, something I could enjoy and create.
And, if you'll recall, in my very first post, I made what in hindsight is a stunning declaration:I can't promise everything that ends up here will be polished or even fun to read. I can't promise that my ranting will go anywhere, that any ideas I come up with will ever come to fruition, or that anything I write here will make any sense.
How about that, huh?
It's funny the way things turn out. Before too long, I'd begun treating ARV like a clearinghouse for my most profound and well-reasoned ideas. It was a place to go to do seriously, thoughtful writing. It was an opportunity for me to take an idea and draw it out to its fullest without feeling the obligations of academic discourse.
It was also, ultimately, depressing as hell.
If you look back, you'll notice that within the first couple of months, I wrote not one but two posts declaring fresh starts. (That's right. Two fresh starts in the first four months. A real winner I had on my hands.) And even worse than that, most of the material in there was simply me bitching about how I haven't done enough writing lately.
As it turns out, that's still a legit problem. But over the last four years, I've discovered that whining about your problems doesn't actually, you know, fix them.
Fortunately for my faithful reading audience--and really, you guys are troopers--I figured all this out a couple of years ago. And so my response was to start up a new blog, one that would allow me to be a little lighter, more amusing, less polished (again), and more off-the-cuff. I launched A Tournament of Lies thinking that the two blogs would play off of each other but develop organically. I'd originally envisioned 1-2 posts per week on ARV and 3-4 posts per week (if not more) on AToL. I'd figured on it being a good way to showcase the two sides of my personality.
But, as I've said a few times already, things changed. Things have been changing. And to quote an old song by Mary-Chapin Carpenter (born in Princeton, no less!), "The old way isn't working anymore." As I've become less, shall we say, miserable, I've been neglecting ARV. (Or populating it with mostly book reviews, which it turns out not everyone digs.) All because I felt the blog had pigeonholed itself into a particular voice or style. And while my early AToL posts were fresh and funny, I've been noticing the same things happening over there lately too.
The straw came with my two latest AToL posts. I started by telling what I thought was a silly story--the kind of thing I'd originally intended the blog to do--but I realized that the story was getting more out of hand than I'd expected, for two reasons: a) it was running far longer than I thought it would (I do have a tendency to do that...), and b) it was less silly funny than sardonically funny, way darker than it seemed when I conceived the idea of writing it down (I tend to do that too, actually...).
Don't get me wrong: I think the story was totally worth sharing. But it didn't seem to fit the venue. It was too funny to be posted on ARV, and too dark to be posted on AToL.
Well damn it, now what?
My solution in the past had been to create a new blog, but we see how well that's worked out. I've run into the same problem again, where my style and tone have shifted so much that the things I'm writing don't seem to fit the molds that have been defined by what came before. It felt, I realized, like when I decided that it was time to abandon my old childish, immature Xanga from high school (which is still hanging around there somewhere on the Internet, if you go dig it out) in favor of what I perceived would be a fresh, mature perspective.
And now, dear readers, that time has come again.
I've come to the conclusion that A Rapturous Verbatim and A Tournament of Lies, fascinating and not-totally-ill-advised experiments that they were, have run their life spans to the end. After just over 100 posts on each, I just don't see how I can, in my present state, sustain these two blogs anymore and have them function the way I'd planned--or, rather, the way they've turned out. So the time has come to shut the door for good.
With the exception of one last forthcoming post, this will be the final entry posted on either of these two blogs.
Rest assured that I'm not dropping out of the blogging game. I've been hard at work over the past few days crafting the beginnings of a new, stripped-down project, one that I hope will better reflect me and my daily life and the things I want to write down and share with the world. My goal is to have it be devoid of the kind of defining characteristics that ended up strangling these two blogs as the years have gone on. But time will tell, I suppose.
So really, I'm seeing this as nothing more than the beginning of a new chapter. I have no intentions of taking down the blogs, since I feel strongly about keeping them intact as a landmark of a very specific period of my life. But the fact is, that period is over, and the time has come to move on and start fresh. There's more to say, just nothing more to say here.
Full details will be posted here when the new project is ready for primetime. Until then, thanks for indulging me around these parts for the past few years, and I hope you'll follow along to the new joint and keep up with things.
What would I say to you now? You'll just have to wait and find out.
Early Review: Pretend All Your Life
It's been a long time, but at last I am once more posting another selection I received from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer's program. (I know. You're all thrilled. Restrain thyselves, if you please.)
The latest selection is Pretend All Your Life, the debut novel by Joseph Mackin, which deals with the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in New York City. The novel hit bookshelves on, of all days, April 1. (Unfortunate? Appropriate? You be the judge.) I have posted below, as per standard operating procedure, my review of this slim tome, for those who may be interested.
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Pretend All Your Life is a perfectly okay novel. I suppose that falls under the category of damning with faint praise, but I can't think of any other thing to say that's more apt. Its interest in a significant historical event, one that has only very rarely been handled with both depth and sensitivity, is admirable and brave, but I did not find that 9-11 really added any kind of depth to the story. I left this book wanting to have liked it more than I did, but not able to truly find an substantive reason to give it higher marks.
The novel revolves around tortured plastic surgeon Dr. Richard Gallin, whose practice has been suffering in the months since 9-11 ravaged New York City. Beyond his mere financial troubles, he is also mourning the loss of his son Bernardo, who died in the attacks, an event that renews thoughts of his former wife, who passed away many years before. As he struggles to fill the voids, his life becomes complicated by the presence of a journalist looking to ruin him, and the reemergence of a figure from his past who makes an unexpected and uneasy demand of him.
On the surface, the novel seems very interested in giving depth and interest to its characters, but this is not sustained as the work plays on. We get a strong sketch of Gallin, whose frustrations and listlessness are awkwardly but interestingly intermixed with his sexual longings. For a plastic surgeon, this is an interesting juxtaposition, one that leads the reader to expect a depth of profundity that is ultimately not found. Gallin ends up being little more than a puppet, bending to the whims of a cast of supporting characters that are shockingly static. Gallin's girlfriend Ana serves as little more than a token love interest and a source for tears. Conniving journalist Nick Adams is merely a rat whose tendency to walk around rehearsing his moments of triumph is borderline laughable. Even Bernardo's widow Kiran offers little more than a physical body for Gallin to guiltily fawn over. For a novel so invested in the notion of identity, too many identities fall far too flat.
Yet the novel most notably struggles because its B plot, involving Gallin's controversial firing of a nurse who tested positive for HIV, does not seem to match the impact or substance of the A plot. AIDS enters the plot early and its entrance feels lucid, natural. But as the novel progresses, Mackin almost feels the need to militantly explore the notion of the virus, to the point where it feels in contradiction to the questions the novel raises about a world after 9-11. The notion of this very pre-WTC epidemic invading a novel that is so intensely focused on the aftermath of the attacks feels unnatural and manufactured. And in fact, this is what I feel is the novel's greatest weakness: in its effort to combine several "big" ideas into a relatively compact, high-concept narrative, it all feels too convenient, too convoluted, too constructed. The plot feels so disconnected from its underlying meaning that the characters and events feel not like real people and events, but as a series of specific acts and objects that develop because the author needs them too, not because the story logically moves that way. There is little ebb and flow to the novel, only pushing and pulling.
Unfortunately, saying more requires a spoiler alert so, Reader, consider yourself warned. Where the novel becomes most troubling is in its handling of the return of Bernardo, whose demands on Gallin are couched in the language of rebirth and renewal that were commonplace after 9-11. As a cultural landmark, Bernardo's justifications are legitimate and accurate, but as he continually prattles on about how Gallin could never truly understand his motivations, these feelings lose their impact. If Mackin's intent is to characterize how Bernardo's feelings belong only to those who lived through 9-11, this is, at worst, an arrogant and unhelpful assertion, one that reinforces the type of American selfishness that purportedly inspired the attacks in the first place. At best, it is, to be blunt, lazy writing. A novel that deals with deep thoughts needs to explore those thoughts thoroughly, not reduce them to mere clichés. Either Mackin doesn't want to explore these ideas or he can't--either way, he should not if he can't do so completely.
By the time Pretend All Your Life ends, it feels strangely abrupt and, despite its meager but patient build-up, unsatisfying. In a way, this mirrors the suddenness and surprise of 9-11 itself, a singular moment that causes everything to come to a screeching halt. But there is very little sense that anything substantial has happened, or that anyone has been able to realize what they wanted. And the final gesture, one that is surely meant to be dramatic and foreboding, instead comes off as a line that begs for more where there is nothing more to find. I may be in the minority, but I feel this is an ironically appropriate image for the novel itself: it wants to be profound, expressive, and dramatic, but offers little substance beyond its surface intrigue. William Gibson's Pattern Recognition proved that 9-11 is ready for novelistic treatment, and so I'm convinced there's more to find within this story, but I fear Mackin has not unearthed it. As a 9-11 metaphor, it is fitting; as a novel, it is sadly underwhelming.
Mayday
Hi there again, friends. It's been quite a while, I know.
If it's any consolation, know first and foremost that I've missed you horribly. It's been frustrating to think that I've got so much to tell, so many stories to impart, so many ideas bouncing around in my brain--and yet, so little time to let them coalesce and develop and become real and true on the typewritten page. This wasn't how I'd planned for things to happen at all, but the truly funny thing is that, for the last two months, that's been the unofficial motto of my life. Strange, eh?
When last you heard from me, I was riffing on one of my Early Reviewer books. This was way back in 2009, and while I've been quiet for the first four months of 2010, it hasn't been for lack of news to impart. In fact, things have been a veritable whirlwind of excitement.
Let's, for the moment, forget completely about January. It was, frankly, a fucked-up month, with lots of fucked-up emotions and events that could be easily construed as fucked-up. If I was hoping to take 2010 by the horns and start the decade off strong, I failed in spectacular fashion. But, on the upside, I got a start date for that new job I'd been alluding to in previous posts, a date that, I figured, would mark the start of the beginning of a new, exciting, and totally different looking life.
At the risk of messing with my time-honored tradition of narrative suspense, I should let you know that things aren't quite as green and lovely as I'd anticipated. Perhaps ye, O faithful readers who have stuck with me through thick and thin, may have already guessed that something, anything, everything would find itself scattered and awry by the time its implications had managed to enter into focus. But while that pattern--reinforced, no doubt, by years of self-hatred, self-distrust, and self-defeat--was not a shock, the actual events that transpired to mire me, once more, too soon, in a pit of self-created despair did not, for once, have anything to do with me. This time, my friends, I didn't do this to myself.
Which is perhaps why I have returned once more to my writing, to getting these words down and out for others to see, because writing has always been a refuge for me--hell, it's a refuge for me today (but more on that later, I promise). I've come to the realization that I need to devote myself to this work, and I need to do more than to think about it, to say it, to write it in blog posts that, taken as a whole, increasingly sound like an over-and-over-and-over-again repetition of the same broken-record mantra that, despite all the talking, I can't quite seem to put into action.
I can't promise this will be the moment that changes it all. But I've had some pretty substantive moments over the past few months, moments I've neglected to share. Neglect, I shall, no more.
The move to DC has been...interesting, to say the least. The move proper took place three months ago to the day, when, after a day of loading lots of my crap into a fairly cramped bedroom in an Annandale basement, I handed over my first official rent check to my landlord. It's been a hell of a ride since then, one that commenced with an immediate trip to Texas to see Karen and, presumably, clear my mind in advance of the beginning of my job.
Funny story: panic attacks have a funny way of not clearing one's mind. Just saying.
Another funny story: ER visits are not the most romantic way to spend Valentine's Day weekend. Again, just saying.
So upon my return to the greater Washington, DC, area, I was filled with a touch more trepidation than I was hoping. As a man of reason and overthinker extraordinaire, I spent much of my time trying to figure out what the hell it was that sent me into a hospital with a raging fit of anxiety. Which left me woefully underprepared for the commencement of my "real-world" life on February 22, when my training began.
Fortunately, I seemed to fit in pretty nicely. Sure, the training was extensive and a lot to handle, but I have also thrived considerably in the classroom setting, and this experience was no exception. By the end of the class five weeks later, I had earned the valedictorian award for having the best cumulative test scores of all my classmates. And I'd earned one other thing: a new roommate.
See, as my fortunes were improving at work and I gained confidence in my decision to come to DC in the first place, that confidence seemed to rub off on Karen, who felt increasingly motivated to join me in DC, find a job, and forge out on our path together. Noble goals, surely, and goals that I was all too happy to embrace, as what more could a guy ask for than to have his woman offer to come thousands of miles to be by his side?
The problem is, as has oft been the case in my life, the moment I let things believe they're going well, that's when they take a turn for the worse. First, despite gaining the approval of my landlord and roommate for Karen's indefinite stay, tension began to mount almost immediately in the form of silly passive-aggressiveness and a general unlikablility from the roommate (who, truth be told, wasn't terribly likable in the first place). We tried our best to not let this enter into our lives, but as the needling became more frequent and the frustration of an increasingly unsuccessful job search mounted, things got a little unsavory here and there. Nothing too bad, truth be told, but just unpleasant. And avoidable, which is really what bothered me most.
But on top of all this came a ray of hope: just as Karen was preparing to hear on a significant and much-wanted offer from an agency in the area, another interview popped up very suddenly--and almost just as suddenly came an offer. Dear readers, I tell you, after so many months of hearing "no," to finally hear a "yes" made me so damn happy for her. Within days, we were looking at an apartment, planning to move out of the basement and away from the toxicity of present roommate relations, and preparing for the page to truly turn on the next chapter.
And then it all turned sour.
Karen has discussed it in detail herself [so I'll not go into any more detail here, as it's not my place] and, with her blessing, I can tell you that something happened. Something catastrophic. To borrow the parlance of our times, a game-changer. Two weeks ago Saturday, April 17, Karen's mom passed away, very suddenly and without any warning. I've long prided myself on my ability to convey feelings and emotions in my writing, as it's a skill not many are blessed with, but I have to be honest when I tell you, faithful readers, that it was such an emotional and mental collapse that I can't even begin to describe it.
And frankly, that's where I've been the past two weeks. I'll confess that I have little room to speak of catastrophe compared to what Karen is experiencing, but in the aftermath of what's occurred, it's been agonizingly difficult to extract myself from the mire. Everything really has changed. The apartment is gone. I'm still in the basement. The job, which has since exited training and entered into real-deal big-time mode, is frustrating the shit out of me. And, as of this morning, I'm once more alone in this God-forsaken room.
I've spoken to lots of people about this over the past few days, all of whom have urged me to stay strong and focused and try not to let things bother me too much--which is easier said than done, but nonetheless appreciated. What hurts the most is how suddenly and quickly everything changed, from the heights of ecstasy to the depths of the darkest despair, with no warning or preparation. It's been one of the worst kicks in the teeth I've ever experienced--and again, I haven't even come close to taking the brunt of it. So on top of all that, I feel horrendously guilty for having taken it as hard as I have.
But the simple fact, which is so impossibly hard to deny at this point, is that everything has changed. I've learned that this whole endeavor has been a mistake--not one I never should have made, I suspect, but one that's going to be really hard to fix. I'm doing my damnedest, because if there's one thing I have learned, it's that complacency is easy to accept but damn near impossible to live with. And at this point, the status quo is not cutting it.
So keep your eyes peeled for more frequent posts to come. There's bound to be another adventure on the horizons, even if I have no damn clue what that adventure is right now. Hopefully it'll come to me soon. But in the meantime, I'll be writing, because that has been very much missing as of late, and if I ever hope to regain the sense of confidence and composure I need to dig myself out of this mire, it's going to have to start from there.
Early Review: Then Came the Evening
Now that my LibraryThing Early Reviewer backlog is at last cleared out, I can finally get back to the business of posting early reviews that are, in fact, early. Well, kind of.
My selection from the November batch was Then Came the Evening, the debut novel by Brian Hart. The book was actually released on this very day, December 22, 2009, and is available in bookstores everywhere. It is written in a very stripped-down bare-bones style, very reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, so if you are interested in such titles, you will probably be very interested in my review of the book, which I've reproduced here as is my custom.
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You can tell that Brian Hart wants really badly to be the next incarnation of Cormac McCarthy. From the very first pages of Then Came the Evening, all the trademark moves are present: a grizzled, rough-edged protagonist, a violent encounter, scorched-earth imagery, and family strife. The first chapter of the novel sets up something that feels both familiar yet new, something truly promising. Unfortunately, the novel, while passable, fails to really live up to those expectations, and ends up feeling more like an imitator than an innovator.
The novel opens with Bandy Dorner, a Vietnam vet with a host of unnamed problems on his mind, awaking in a ditch, piss-drunk and having driven his car through a fence. As his father and two police officers try to wrangle him, one of the cops ends up dead, and Bandy ends up in prison for twenty years. In the meantime, his wife Iona, pregnant with his son, leaves him to live with another man. By the time Bandy gets out, Iona is a widower and a drug addict, Tracy is a grown man, and Bandy is a shell of his former self. All three reconvene on the old family farm, each hoping to find redemption in their new family unit, but the past refuses to die.
The McCarthyian influence that infuses the work is perhaps best seen in Hart's descriptions of the land, which are painstakingly detailed and as vivid as the brilliant cover image on the book jacket. The Idaho setting, familiar to the author, truly comes alive as Hart portrays a hard, unyielding environment that is dirty but hearty, tough but alive. It's clear he wants the land to be a character, and it is, particularly since the landscape plays a powerful role in some of the most important scenes in the novel. However (and I will concede it may be a personal thing, because I have the same criticism of McCarthy), the oppressiveness of the land imagery seems to cast a layer of grime and filth over the novel, as if the whole thing is tainted with dirt. The consistency of that dirtiness, in my mind, gives an unwelcome uniformity to the novel: though things change, everything feels the same.
In much the same way, the characterization throughout the novel is strong, but there's an unwelcome flatness to even the main characters that grows to become exceptionally frustrating. As an openly flawed protagonist, one should probably expect that Bandy will have a very difficult time fostering any kind of change, and much of the tension of the middle of the novel is in wondering whether or not he will. But at the start of the third act, Bandy partakes in something that he knows is wrong, that will ultimately destroy the good faith he has built, and the lack of remorse (or, frankly, of any kind of reaction from him) is maddening and unrealistic. And while Iona and Tracy do end up being reasonably well-balanced characters in the end, Iona's detox from her drug addiction is dealt with so minimally--particularly when compared to the treatment of Bandy's jail time--that it feels almost too forced to seem genuine.
In addition, Hart's attempts to create a convincing portrait of small-town America is, by fits and starts, compelling and unrealistic. While the town of Lake Fork is real, and Hart knows all the landmarks of the area that give it a sense of realism, the relationships between the various people in town don't always ring true. Rather than creating figures that struggle with their ability to accept Bandy when he leaves prison, Hart seems content to rely on types, figures that are static in their responses but that, in summation, give the sense of complexity. Few of the secondary characters, even Wilhelm, the most substantial one, make a powerful impact. And at the end of the novel, when one of the secondary characters is revealed to have done something that resonates with events earlier in the plot, the idea that no one else in the town knew it until then feels awfully contrived.
By the end, the novel feels like it has been an incredible trial, but rather than coming off as redemptive and renewing, it leaves the reader exhausted and overwhelmed. There is a nice cyclicality to the conclusion--one that does, in fairness, feel a little forced, but at least it's forgivable--but the toll it has taken to reach that point doesn't really seem worth it. It's as if Hart wants to beat the roughness into our heads, and sure, by the end, we get it, but when I reached the end of Then Came the Evening, I was almost glad to see it finished. And despite its successes here and there, when a novel leaves you with that feeling, that can't help but give you pause.
Early Review: Flying
The long, drawn out process of catching up on the late reviews I've had to do as a member of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers group is, officially, at an end! And, if I may say so myself, what a way to clear out the backlog.
In what has clearly been a case of saving the best for last--or, more appropriately, saving the longest for last--I have finally gotten around to reading Flying by Eric Kraft, a lengthy tome consisting of three novellas, two of which were previously published, that tell one continuous story. The book was originally released on March 3, 2009, and by the time I received it, it was already on bookshelves, but that does not excuse my delinquency in any way.
And as you will see by the content of my review, the time I've taken getting around to it was the most regrettable part of the read, as I have found it to be one of the best contemporary fiction works I've read in quite some time. Unsurprisingly, it was recently named one of Barnes & Noble's Editors' Picks for the Best Fiction Books of 2009, and if you're a fan of this blog, I believe you will be incredibly interested in reading more about this thoroughly excellent title, and so I present my review below.
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I feel it is my duty to begin this long-overdue review by extending my sincerest apologies to the author, Eric Kraft. When I received Flying as an Early Reviewers book many months ago, I was exiting the swamp of graduate school and simply could not motivate myself to read a nearly 600-page book. And so, despite my solemn obligations, it languished on my bookshelf for months and months. Heaven only knows what prompted me to pick it up on Monday. All I do know is that today is Friday, and the book is complete. And so I extend my apology: I'm sorry, sir, that I did not read this book sooner, because it is an unequivocally wonderful piece of literature.
The novel, which really consists of three parts (two of which were previously published novellas), tells the story of Peter Leroy, Kraft's protagonist throughout all his works. Peter narrates the story of an adventure he made as a 15-year-old, in which he built an "aerocycle" (lovingly recreated by plans found in Impractical Craftsman magazine) and "flew" (the term, he admits almost immediately, is very loosely used) to New Mexico on the pretense of attending a prestigious high school summer program. The program is a fabrication: really, Peter's friend Matthew got the spot because he never told Peter about the program, so Peter invented a new program and deceived the necessary parties into letting him go. As Peter retakes the trip fifty years later, his wife Albertine at his side, he reflects on the places he's seen and the things he has and hasn't done--and the reader quickly learns that deception is an integral part of the tale.
The novel succeeds as a read because it works on so many levels, not the least of which is the detail with which Kraft allows Peter to operate in both a fictional and nonfictional framework. Peter Leroy, we're quick to learn, is the quintessential unreliable narrator, and though the thrust of the book is his quest to right the wrongs that his deceptions have wrought, we see that his stories often are too good to be true--to borrow Albertine's words, they lack the ring of truth. Albertine becomes a great foil for him, a motivation and inspiration for him to try to come clean, but the act of deciphering what is true and what is "embellished" is constantly at the novel's forefront. It's a high-wire act that Kraft executes perfectly: we never feel too frustrated by Peter, and even at his most dishonest, he is nonetheless incredibly entertaining.
What makes the novel so entertaining, however, is the fact that it is legitimately funny, perhaps one of the only novels I have ever read that actually made me laugh aloud. It works because, unlike most funny books, the entire function of Flying is not simply to make the reader laugh. Instead, the laughter comes as the targets of Kraft's satire become increasingly more absurd. At the start, we laugh at the town of Babbington's lame attempt at "redefinition," but as each town Peter visits becomes a more potent example of the commodification of processed experiences, the original target becomes less and less absurd. But, in an expert move, Kraft allows the reader to see Peter as an increasingly absurd figure, a memoirist who tells stories that few people care to hear. Yet the reader is constantly entranced, leading us to laugh a little at ourselves for becoming so involved in the joke--a joke that works on a number of levels and evolves to remain fresh.
The novel's structure, too, is pitch-perfect as well, as each part of the novel is formed in a different way. In part one, as Peter conceives his plan and builds his aerocycle, we bounce erratically back and forth between the past and the present, with much of the focus on the nostalgia factor of the young Peter's project. The second part resembles a picaresque, in which Peter in the 1950s travels by aerocycle and Peter and Albertine in the present travel by electric car over roughly the same areas, often seeing the exact same locations in each consecutive chapter. This gives the second part a far more reflective, insightful quality. In part three, we contrast Peter and Albertine's abrupt return trip with young Peter's adventures in New Mexico, as he tries to assimilate himself (with some success) into a group of like-minded individuals. In each case, Kraft is careful to draw distinct thematic connections between the past and present, all while pacing the story at an admirably comfortable pace.
But the true joy of Flying is in its language, rich with metaphor and beauty. Kraft's sentences are marvelous, long and flowing, reading naturally and seductively and wrapping around the reader's mind in an intoxicating way. It is appropriate that he alludes often to Proust, for the influence on Kraft's style is obvious, as is the propensity towards digression. Peter is a memoirist at all times, even when he's merely reflecting on memoirs, and the result is that there are brief moments, often of minimal consequence to the plot, of self-contained truths that are so incisive that they stick in your mind. The same goes for the more humorous passages, particular those in dialogue: Kraft proves he is as comfortable with an amusing back and forth as he is with a thoroughly ridiculous and long speech. Kraft has many, many tricks up his sleeve, and he knows not only how to use them, but where to use them to gain their maximal effect.
The result, in case I haven't made it clear enough, is a novel that is an unbridled joy to read. It is long, sure, but it demands to be read, refuses to let your interest slip for a moment, and, despite a rather quick resolution in the end, makes you both satisfied by having taken the journey but leaving you craving more. It is, in that manner, like any good trip should be. One final note: my Early Reviewer copy was missing 16 pages near the end. I immediately went to the Internet, found the nearest library that had it in stock, and went to that library right after work to read the missing pages because I didn't want to miss a word. I was that hooked on Flying--and I suspect you will be too.
For Love of the Crash
I'm going to break with tradition here and give you a very important piece of information right up front. The moral of this post is this: I think I really enjoy AFI's latest album, Crash Love. And while that doesn't seem terribly important--and in fact, in the grand scheme of things, it is probably of very little consequence whatsoever--I feel like there's something to be extrapolated from this experience.
My first AFI album was 2003's Sing the Sorrow. I bought it strictly on the strength of its first single, "Girl's Not Grey," and the fact that it was on sale for $7.99. I figured there had to be more than one good song on there, right? Well, I threw it into the CD player in my car and quickly found it very hard to digest. It was weird and not terribly coherent, and at least half the songs featured animalistic screaming that I just didn't find appealing. The only song I consistently liked was "Girl's Not Grey," and it was hard to justify keeping the CD in my car for one single track when I could just as easily rip the song, put it on a mix CD--yes, ever-nostalgic reader, these were my pre-iPod days--and have one disc that featured songs I knew I liked.
And so I put it aside onto my CD rack, believing it destined to collect dust from here until eternity. But somehow, after a few weeks, I felt called back, like I needed to reexamine the disc, give it another shot. Could one or two quick listens really have been sufficient? Might there actually be a gem on there I'm overlooking because I'm more concerned about dashed expectations than I am with the quality of that with which I've been presented?
I took another listen. Nope, still hated it. Back to collecting dust.
I repeated this process several times over that fateful year, and each time I listened, I felt like I was getting no farther in my quest to appreciate the disc for anything more than a strong single and an incredible purchase value. The tracks were unyielding, unwilling to give me anything that my ears could comfortably grasp onto. The frustration mounted with each new listen.
Then finally, after around ten listens that yielded nothing, I gave it another shot--and it's hard to explain what happened. For some reason, the tracks felt different to me. I was beginning to lose myself in the guitar work and the melodies. Davey Havok's voice began to leap rapturously from the speakers and I found that, despite a year of hating, I was finding the even-numbered tracks (which, interestingly, were the ones that featured the least screaming) to be incredibly satisfying. From there, I began developing an appreciation for several of the odd tracks too, the screaming somehow now fitting the timbre of the song in ways I hadn't realized before.
And then finally, after over a year, the moment came where I realized that I didn't actually hate the disc anymore. In fact, I loved it. And yes, it still remains one of my favorite CDs.
So it was with my first AFI experience: a very gradual, slow development of appreciation. But I felt as if learning to like Sing the Sorrow was a trial that I had passed, that I could now expect to access their other work and be able to appreciate them like I hadn't before. I went out and acquired the preceding album, The Art of Drowning, after hearing that disc's single, "The Days of the Phoenix" (which I will say is arguably the best song the band has ever recorded).
And what happened? You guessed it: I hated that one too!
Now, at the risk of turning this into a novella of music reviews, I'll spare you the experience of what happened with that disc. I'll even admit that, as of right now, I haven't given it the most fair of listens. But when I heard word of a new AFI disc, to be released ominously on 6/6/06, I was thrilled. I had written off The Art of Drowning because I felt like I didn't know where the band had been coming from stylistically prior to that, so I was trying too hard to project Sing the Sorrow on their earlier material, instead of doing it the other way, which would have, you know, made sense.
When the devilish day arrived, I raced to Best Buy to acquire the CD and immediately put it in the car and cranked the volume. And once more, I was shocked and dismayed. It opened with an intro track followed by "Kill Caustic," a vicious, aggressive number in the old screaming style, and then the single, "Miss Murder." A pretty strong start, I'd say. But then the album slipped into electronic tones, techno-style ambient sounds that seemed like the second verse of "Death of Seasons" had been dragged out to album length. I couldn't wrap my head around it at all, and decided that I was, for the most part, disappointed.
But then, after a few more listens, it started growing on me and I became enraptured with that disc too--a disc that even many fans, as well as critics, had written off as not being their best work.
Later on down the line, when I went even farther back into their catalog, to Black Sails in the Sunset, I barely listened to any of it because I couldn't enjoy it. Then I recently burned it for a friend of mine and, lo and behold, I found myself attracted to many of the tracks as I relistened. Once again, it took time.
Which brings us to the present, and Crash Love. This was an exercise in self-awareness: I had figured on hating it from the get-go, so I didn't feel like I entered the first listen with any kind of expectations at all. And sure enough, as soon as I put it in, I was rather surprised. After listening to the whole thing straight through, and being relatively underwhelmed, I could point to two things missing from the disc, two things that had peppered all of AFI's work before that moment: 1) Davey's screaming (yes, dear reader, I had come to actually miss it!), and 2) the call-and-response choruses provided by their fan club, The Despair Faction. Sure, the music sounded like AFI, but it was missing some things that were quintessentially AFI, and I couldn't get behind it in the end.
It had been languishing on my CD rack for the past two months. Occasionally, I would listen to the bonus tracks (which I initially felt were far stronger than the album tracks), but I couldn't even get behind the single, "Medicate." Even my adventure to DC for the job interview, where I was hosted by a good friend who is an even bigger AFI fan than I am (the same good friend of two paragraphs previous), couldn't sway me, despite listening to Crash Love a few times in her car. The familiar story was repeating itself again.
Then yesterday, I found myself drawn to the CD again, for reasons I can't explain. I had been substitute teaching on Monday and Tuesday, and had heard no music over those two days, but I somehow found a chorus from Crash Love in my head. It prompted me to grab the CD and put it in my car, where I started from track one, "Torch Song." And a remarkable thing happened.
As I drove, the chorus came up: (Anything!) I'd tear out my eyes for you, my dear / (Anything!) To see everything that you do, I'd do. And, son of a bitch, I was singing along. Like I knew the words instinctively, like I had all along. On the next track, "Beautiful Thieves," the same thing happened. By the time the fourth track, "Too Shy to Scream," came on, I was full-on rollicking. It was, I realized, the song I'd had in my head that day, and I was finally satisfied to have heard it at last.
Just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, I listened to those tracks again last night. And sure enough, they were stuck in my head and resonating strongly, just like they had been earlier that day. It was no fluke. And even though I've only been really obsessed with the first half of the album recently, I think it's safe to say the rest of it isn't too far from coming around.
Which brings us to the aforementioned moral of this post: I think I really do enjoy Crash Love.
I know what you're thinking. That can't be it, can it? I read all of this just to find out that it's nothing more than a music retrospective? What's the point!
I can't promise I can assuage those concerns in a few short paragraphs. The truth is, when I first conceived this post, I thought it might be funny to look back in time and see how, despite different perspectives and lessons learned over time, the same exact thing happened. Silly Dave, not learning from his mistakes--that doesn't sound familiar at all, does it! I really thought it wouldn't go much farther than that.
But as I've been writing, I've also been reflecting. And after much reflection, I've decided that maybe the real moral of the story is patience above all else. It doesn't matter how much I knew, what I was expecting, or what I had planned. I needed to be patient and let the albums take their course over me before I could really come to appreciate them. In a way, that's not too dissimilar from my own present situation. I'm in the midst of great transition, with some prospects ahead that are making me equal parts thrilled and apprehensive. I've never been one to particularly like the idea that I don't know what's going to happen, particularly when that outcome isn't guaranteed to be a good one. That does not, however, make those moments any less worth experiencing. It's worth it to see those things through and to appreciate the adventure they provide, without so obsessively looking towards the outcome. It's been said before, but it bears repeating: if you look only for the destination, you'll miss the whole journey.
And so I preach patience, a commodity I'd like to think I have but could always do better at exercising. The way things are going now feels good and right, and that's enough. If I can focus on truly savoring the experience, on living in the moment as opposed to for the moment, the juice will be that much sweeter. And all those great things that I've been dreaming of and wishing for--all those things that drive my fears, when I feel like I'll never realize them--well, they could be right around the corner. Like AFI, and like those beautiful thieves, when they happen they'll be the things no one suspects at all.
On Thanks and Giving
Several weeks ago, after publishing my last post, I realized that October was at an end. It was a realization that I reacted to with a strangely mixed emotion. For one thing, it meant that my fortnight in Texas--a trip I have been reticent about, for no particular reason--was about to end, and this did not make me particularly happy. But it also meant that November was about to begin, and November meant the beginning of autumn's wane into winter. And though I am not a fan of winter, I am an outspoken fan of the holiday season.
It also meant the beginning of a month in which casual writers the world over buckle down and commit themselves to a professional-like writing schedule. Some tackle that long-brewing novel in their heads, others strive to compose one new entry to their blog per day. Whether they commit to NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo or any of the other NaWhoKnowsMos, a not-professional-but-sure-would-like-to-be writer such as myself can't help but be inspired by such an endeavor. As for me, I pretty much knew I would not be able to commit to a daily blog posting (I rarely have anything that interesting to say), nor did I suspect I would be able to stick to a daily writing schedule while working on the novel (my unscheduled life, nice though it may seem, rarely leaves me the time to settle down and be free to just write). It was a bizarre realization, honestly: me, with no schedule, unable to use a month where everyone artificially creates a schedule in order to, you know, begin establishing a schedule. That, my friends, is a very special kind of screwed up.
But while October, and particularly its end, was rather spectacular, the current month has not, by and large, been a negative one. Once the glow of Texas wore off and I realized that I was no longer there and that I needed to settle back in to what my life has turned into (for better or worse), things started coming together in the most unusual way. It occurred to me that, with the holidays forthcoming, I could use some source of income to be able to finance the holiday gifts I was planning on getting for people. Because, truth be told, I find the giving part of the holiday season to be much more rewarding than the receiving. It's nice to put thought into getting something for someone, and the effort I place into my gift-giving makes me feel a lot better about the commercialization of the holidays: suddenly, a venture to the mall isn't a trial, it's an adventure. To me, the magic of the holiday season is the genuine spirit of altruism that infects us all for that sadly short period of time--and wouldn't we all be a little better off if we were more altruistic?
When it came time to settle in and get what I had framed in my mind as "just any old job," I hit a major mental snag. I had printed out the application for a particular retail establishment (whose name I've opted to omit) and began filling it out when I was overcome with a powerful sense of defeat. Had it really come to this? I thought. I mean, don't get me wrong, I have very little to complain about in my life, and the things I do complain about are pretty small potatoes in the grand scheme. And sure, no one ever likes to hear an Ivy Leaguer complain about anything (because, unbeknownst to me, the words on your diploma limit or delimit what you can and can't do in your everyday life), but I was disheartened. Sure, the economy's tough, but I really thought my education would give me an edge in an exceptionally competitive environment, and it hurt that, to that point, it hadn't. It was that strange mingling of pride and denial that kept me from completing the aforementioned application. I had dived headlong into an existential crisis and I did not like it.
It is perhaps appropriate then that, in the midst of my greatest hopelessness, I should find the most poignant restoration of my faith. For lack of a better term, I bitched openly to several of my closest friends, one of whom mentioned that, though it was not my area of expertise, her company was hiring and that she could arrange for me to have an interview if I was interested. There was a risk involved, as the position would entail relocating to the Washington, DC, area, but there was also a set of opportunities opening up that I hadn't been presented with in the six months preceding this. So I took her up on the offer, and found myself in DC a week later for the interview.
Now I find myself in New Jersey again. Employed. In the process of planning my relocation. And preparing for the greatest life change I have known so far.
Of course, those who have made the transition before will, like so many others, argue that I still have nothing to complain about now. And this, for the most part, is true. It would be unkind and untrue to say that I'm "complaining" about what's soon to transpire; the fact is, I'm thrilled to pieces. It's the beginning of a career, it's a chance to assert my independence, it's an opportunity to see a new part of the country. But most importantly, it's a chance to prove that I have what it takes to do the growing up that I don't truly think many people believe I'm capable of yet. And sure, it's alarming to think that I have a lot of growing up to do, and that I haven't really had the opportunity yet at age 24 to have to start growing up. But the time has come to start proving the naysayers wrong.
The fact of the matter is that I've reached the point in my life where I need to start staking out what I want my life to look like. I've been complacent for too long, not because it's been in my nature but because I haven't really had to be anything but. I realize now that most of the things I've wanted out of my life--except, perhaps, my choice of graduate school--have gone the way I wanted by virtue of my desire and effort. But sometimes, desire and effort just aren't enough. I wanted to work in publishing, and I applied to most every position I was interested in and qualified for over six months...and it still didn't happen. But that's life. And sure, the common expression is "Shit happens," but not everything that doesn't exactly go your way is shit.
I prefer Karen's variation: "Life happens." Because that's what most of life is: you plan and you plan and you hope things will go that way, but you also need to be prepared for the unexpected. The people who succeed aren't just the ones who work hard and dream big and do all they can to make it happen; they also know how to roll with the things that don't quite go the way they'd hoped. They stay true to themselves even when the chips fall the wrong way. One of my idols, Walt Disney, failed miserably at almost every turn as a cartoonist, being accused by one of his editors of lacking creativity and having no good ideas. But he stuck with his work, made the best of what he had, and ultimately created one of the most recognizable images the world has ever known.
But more than that, he knew the value of risk. An old story says that he sold his prized possession, his camera, in order to buy a train ticket to Hollywood, where he hoped to go to set up his studio. It didn't matter that failure would have left him with nothing, or that he had already had one attempt at starting a studio fail. He had to take a chance to accomplish what he dreamed of, and he took it. And with greatest risk comes greatest reward.
The time finally felt right for me to take that risk, to take a chance on staking out on my own. Who knows how it'll go, or what will become of it? I know what I'd like to see happen, and I'll try my damnedest to see it through, but the bottom line is that I'll never make it happen if I don't try. So here I go. Time to jump, sink or swim.
So this holiday season is especially significant, and particularly bittersweet. My uncle's job has necessitated what is shaping up to be a permanent move for the whole family from New Jersey to Florida. Going to their house for Thanksgiving and Christmas has been a long-standing tradition, one that we all look forward to each year. But now, between my impending move to Virginia, their likely move to Miami, and the myriad other changes that I've observed in my little suburban hometown, things look like they're about to take a drastic turn. I don't know much, but I know 2010 is going to look a lot different than 2009 did.
I'm glad, though. 2009, in retrospect, has treated me a lot better than 2008 did. And I had no reason to believe this year would really be much better. My life twelve months ago looked very different than it does now, and I'm very glad it does. Despite the bumps in the road, I'm going in a positive direction, and I realize I have a lot of positive things and people surrounding me, influences that are guiding me and helping me and supporting me throughout the maze-like twists and turns I'm experiencing now.
I don't feel nearly as alone as I used to.
That alone is more than enough cause to feel generous, more than enough reason to be thankful. So while the pages of the calendar may have been flipping a little faster than I'd really taken note of, and I've perhaps been a bit hesitant to embrace the spirit of the holidays this year, I know in my heart that the time and the season are lining up pretty darn well this year. And while I tend to shun the winter chill and dread the coming of the cold, this time around, I've got a good fire going in my soul and I've got a lot to look forward to.
Early Review: Ambrose Bierce's Write It Right
Having fallen horribly behind on my Early Review books for LibraryThing, I am proud to say that I am, perhaps for the first time, publishing an "early review" for a book that has not actually been published yet!
The lucky recipient of my first timely review is, interestingly, a nonfiction work, Ambrose Bierce's Write It Right: The Celebrated Cynic's Language Peeves Deciphered, Appraised, and Annotated for 21st-Century Readers, edited and annotated by language maven Jan Freeman and due to be published on November 10, 2009. I have reprinted my review below for the benefit of language lovers like me who may want to pick this title up.
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If you're anything like me, the most exposure you've ever had to Ambrose Bierce is his famous short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," and it's hard to tell from that story alone what one would expect from this particular volume, particularly since texts on grammar and style tend to be more caustic than constructive. That would be the case with this edition, an "annotated" version of Bierce's original work with contemporary commentary that reads far livelier than one would expect.
After a brief foreword by Jan Freeman, our scholarly guide, the text consists of Bierce's original introduction, followed by his so-called "Black List" of words and phrases that are, to put it bluntly, never to be used in print. Bierce's original entries are, as you would expect, inflexible and definite: he wraps quotations around constructions that ought never see the light of print and, with few exceptions, his explanations for why the errors are as such are extremely terse and rather didactic. Those familiar with classic grammar texts like Strunk & White's The Elements of Style will find many familiar examples herein, as well as plenty that are baffling but, according to Bierce, equally damnable.
Freeman, as the annotator, does a fine job in several respects, the first and most obvious of which is lending readability to a work that is otherwise almost devoid of interest as a cover-to-cover read. Since Bierce's words are often so brief, she does an admirable job of trying to elucidate the reasons why Bierce would object to a particular construction, attempting to provide a type of narrative to the many individual points he harps on. In that respect, she gives the text a fresh update--even if it's at the expense of making the book feel less like a textbook and more like a history lesson.
History, however, is clearly Freeman's strong suit, as the text betrays the fact that she is extremely well-read in points of grammar and usage. In addition to a nine-page bibliography of recommended reading at the back of the book--a selection of works that spans multiple centuries--Freeman incorporates specific points of order from newspapers, magazines, and books by other authors throughout her annotations. The result is a work that is highly scholarly but doesn't always read like it is.
If there is criticism to be had, it is in the often uneasy balance between lighthearted commentary and fierce criticism of the original work. Though the annotations are essential and, frankly, pleasurable to read, Freeman often gives very little credence to Bierce's points. While her research is very adept at providing reasons why Bierce is bunkum, it does become a bit tiresome to read over and over why a particular rule is rubbish. (More often than not, it can be attributed to Bierce's background in journalism.)
Even more frustrating is Freeman's tendency, while putting down many of Bierce's rules, to reduce grammar to something that is perhaps far more flexible than a grammarian would want to admit. Certainly Bierce was a radically bitter cynic--one would think a true grammarian could be no less--but Freeman is often guilty of claiming that, because others have written with a particular word or phrase, then either usage is technically correct. It's a bit too loose for my liking, the kind of thing that irks writers of Standard Written English when confronted with the idiosyncrasies of spoken language. One senses that Freeman's playing fast and loose to counter Bierce's strictness, but the result is not necessarily balance as much as it is discomforting dissonance.
Ultimately, if there is a problem with the text, it is that it's a bit unsure of its identity: does it want to be a grammar text, or does it want to be a well-researched look into Bierce's ideas and thoughts? Truth be told, when it tries to be the latter, it succeeds in spite of its flaws. Freeman seems to know that she, like all great grammar cynics, is never going to be authoritative, and she treats Bierce's source work with the appropriate amount of reverence and respect while also keeping it as contemporary as possible. As an artifact of language change, Freeman's annotated edition of Write It Right is a both valuable and entertaining contribution to the never-ending language wars.
Ill. Advised.
I hate being sick.
I'm pretty sure it, like all substantial psychological issues, stems back to my childhood. I recall getting the chicken pox in kindergarten, just after my third-grade brother got over his bout of the itchy spots. He had just over ten spots, which is commonly seen as the bare minimum to guarantee you won't get them ever again. I had them all over my body. It was not the first stroke of poor luck against my grossly malnourished immune system--the myriad ear infections I suffered as a toddler, which necessitated an early myringotomy, come to mind--and it most certainly would not be the last.
Next came the flu in second grade. Then came countless incidents of strep throat, which have scarred me enough that any time I have a sore throat (as I do now, for instance) I immediately pull out the flashlight and check to see if there are spots of white along with the red discoloration in the back of my mouth. Factor in the fact that the vicious spasms of stomach flu never lasted the requisite twenty-four hours but would strike me for a minimum of three days of violent gastrointestinal distress, and perhaps you can begin to understand why the prospect of getting sick fills me with dread.
Of course, if there has been any upside to a childhood filled with viruses and diseases, it's that my once-feeble immune system has proven itself to be quite a champion in recent memory. I've managed to go through long stretches without illness, which has been a blessing, but the coinciding downside has been that the illnesses I do get tend to be pretty intense, even if they are as simple as head colds--as is the case with the cold I'm suffering from right now. They are also characterized by an awful sense of timing, kicking in during such inopportune occasions as, say, the week of the actual performances of the plays and musicals I acted in during middle and high schools. (True story: I was ill for at least one night in seven of the eight performances I participated in, most often with--you guessed it--strep or sore throat. And the one show I was healthy for, 2006's Godspell, I ended up spraining my ankle during the first act of the last performance and, while I completed the show, I couldn't walk without crutches for two weeks afterwards.)
So here I am, less than a week removed from a lovely trip to Walt Disney World, with at least two posts in my to-be-blogged backlog (backblog, perhaps?), and I'm instead lounging on the recliner--because my room is too damn warm and I may or may not have a bit of a fever--bitching to my surely dwindling readership about how under the weather I am. Awesome.
The problem with my present illness is that, for the first time in a long time, I once more have reason to engage in unabashedly optimistic thinking. On Monday, when I first started coming down with the sniffles, I was faced with a difficult job-related decision. It wasn't an optimal situation for me because it was far from full-time employment, and that was what I was seeking. I was debating how best to approach this when I received another e-mail on Tuesday--this day, more sick, but, as my Twitter indicated, not so sick that I couldn't play eighteen holes--indicating that a full-time position had opened up, if I was interested in it. Naturally, I was, and today--full blown feeling-like-shit, the kind of feeling-like-shit that had me in the recliner almost all day--I received another e-mail telling me I could come in on Friday for an interview.
Before this much more ideal opportunity presented itself, the former was very much worth wrestling with, particularly given my inability to get much more of a lead from anywhere else. As many of my friends and former colleagues have been lamenting, the job market has been horrendous, no matter how much the pundits have been claiming that the economy is, at long last, climbing out of the crapper. It was very difficult to simply say no to an offer just because it wasn't "perfect," no matter how much it may have been, as my parents wisely noted, a stepping stone to something better.
But what I've been realizing as I've had the time to reflect today is that the very significant changes I've been promising myself haven't quite happened yet--and that's perfectly fine. None of the things that I'm looking for are going to happen overnight: I'm not going to finish my novel or screenplay tonight, I won't be rail thin tomorrow, and I'm not going to be making the big money bucks at a job next week. Change, as much as it may pain me, is a process, not an occurrence, and this is why I think so many people tend to fear it. I think we all have particular idealizations of what we'd like things to be like, but we get frustrated by the fact that it is going to take not just work but prolonged, consistent work to get there.
Is constant fluctuation the ideal situation to be in? Of course not. But neither is stagnation when one's present situation is dissatisfying. And the way I see it, things aren't going too badly right now: I've finally got myself a viable possible job opportunity; despite certain disagreements I've had with fitness-related video games lately, I'm losing weight at a slow, steady pace; and my writing projects are still proceeding, even if they are doing so at a slower rate than I'd like. The change I wish to see in myself isn't going to just happen all at once, but I'm finally starting to see myself embodying the act of changing. And if that leads me to the things I'm really dreaming of, that just may be the real cure to my ills.
