Shoddy New York Times Reporting

Here’s a surprise:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/all-smiles-now-recalling-a-brief-grim-flight/

The above link is to a January 15, 2010 NYT story (granted, it is the City Room, known for not-infrequent errors) about a reunion, one year later, of the crew and passengers from the Miracle on the Hudson. As a reporter for a different NYC newspaper, I was at this reunion event and it’s pretty hilarious how egregious the errors are in the NYT story.

1. Their story says that 20 passengers were at the reunion– it was more like 90. Yes, this was posted in the morning after the breakfast event, at which there were only about 40 passengers (so 20 would still be wrong) but the language used in that sentence does not suggest that they are referring only to the breakfast: “About 20 survivors of US Airways Flight 1549, crippled after its engines swallowed some birds moments after it took off from La Guardia Airport, celebrated the anniversary of the splash landing with a day of reunions and reminiscences.” This sentence states that only 20 passengers ‘celebrated the anniversary with a day of reunions and reminiscences.” Wrong.

2. The story also mentions a “Dan Bostil,” referring to the passenger who started dating a fellow survivor (Laura Zych) after the ordeal. But that man’s name is Ben Bostic. Great reporting by the Times!

The error regarding Ben Bostic’s name is especially pathetic considering that the guy has been quoted all over town since that day, in every article everywhere, so a quick google search would have revealed to them the correct name. But maybe the New York Times is too high-minded to use search engines.

For now, they have yet to recognize their errors, probably because, let’s be real, this wasn’t a huge story and with what’s happening in Haiti right now no other news matters. Once they do figure out their errors, they might change the article, so below is an excerpt, copied from the site at 12:30pm January 18th just for the record.

About 20 survivors of US Airways Flight 1549, crippled after its engines swallowed some birds moments after it took off from La Guardia Airport, celebrated the anniversary of the splash landing with a day of reunions and reminiscences. They began with a thank-you breakfast, to thank the Red Cross for its relief efforts after the emergency landing.

They remembered what was supposed to be a 2 hour 13 minute flight to Charlotte, N.C., that lasted only 90 seconds and got only as far as a chilly stretch of the Hudson River, with Manhattan on one side and New Jersey on the other. They remembered climbing over seats and scrambling out of the airplane, lining up on the wings, tumbling into inflatable rafts and climbing onto ferryboats that came to the rescue.

They talked about meeting their fellow passengers — and some said they had more than kept in touch. Laura Zych and Dan Bostil, who were both passengers on Flight 1549, began dating after a passenger reunion last summer.

Mr. Bostil said he remembered noticing Ms. Zych as they boarded the plane. “She was tall and glamorous,” he said. “Not only did we get a second chance at life, but a chance to have a life together.” He said he would ask the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549, Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III, to be his best man, if the relationship should get that far.

This is a real ad

Let’s point and laugh, this time at the following commercial, apparently real, for Ambien CR. The ad played during an episode of Modern Family I was watching on Hulu.com, the man narrating the ad spoke in a slow, cheerful voice, and basically, I’m speechless:

When taking Ambien CR, don’t drive or operate machinery. Sleepwalking and eating or driving while not fully awake, with memory loss for the event, as well as abnormal behavior such as being more outgoing or aggressive than normal, confusion, agitation, and hallucinations may occur. Don’t take it with alcohol as it may increase these behaviors. Allergic reactions such as shortness of breath, swallowing of your tongue or throat may occur and in rare cases may be fatal. Side effects may include next-day drowsiness, dizziness, and headache. In patients with depression, worsening of depression, including risk of suicide, may occur. Ambien CR, get a great night’s sleep!

Movie Review: ‘Brief Interviews with Hideous Men’

Right away I should say that I saw this movie with a close friend who, like me, is a major David Foster Wallace fan. Because we both went into the movie with certain expectations and background understanding (having read the stories, loved them, remembered them well), we had major requirements for this movie that were almost certain not to be met.

In fact, I think that the experience of people like us (or of anyone else who went to see this as a fan of the book, prepared to compare it constantly to the source material) was probably so completely different from that of anyone who went to see the movie blindly with no knowledge of the book, that I almost can’t evaluate the movie just as a movie; only as an adaptation.

Sure, I can conjecture as to whether this movie would be good on its own as a cinematic experience (I actually don’t, so it fails both tests), but for the most part my reaction and opinions are rooted in how well (the answer: not very) I thought the film succeeded as an adaptation of a major, brilliant work of short fiction (that is, the four ‘BIWHM’ stories in the larger collection of the same title).

Anyway, to get into specifics, I need to mention first of all that the entire form of the film is a crude, forced departure from the story, in which, sure, a woman is interviewing, but not only is there no text for her questions (just a clever Q. each time), but as a character she is absent. Not the case in the movie, where the interviewer is a female character, certainly the “protagonist” of the movie if there must be one, and even the focal point of a number of flashbacks about her personal life and romantic background. I understand that this framing device is necessary for the story to be a cohesive movie rather than just a series of interviews (which would be boring, visually) but that’s why, perhaps, the material should not have been adapted in the first place. I applaud John Krasinski for the effort, but to someone who has read them closely and enjoyed them, it was clear before the film came out, and even more obvious now that it has, that the material does not work on the big screen. It’s literature. This ain’t Twilight.

But okay, move past the stuffy, necessary framing device into the actual interviews. Some are terrific and stay very close to the source (I think even using the exact text as dialogue, a la Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare movies). Ben Shenkman does his bit—about yelling “Victory for the forces of democratic freedom!” during sex—to perfection. Bobby Cannavale is also very well cast as the guy who uses his deformed arm as an “asset” to guilt women into sleeping with him. Dominic Cooper is also a terrific choice for the ballsy student who argues that being raped might be a good ‘learning experience’ for a woman. Finally, Death Cab front man Ben Gibbard is actually quite solid and appropriately cast in his role as chatty-but-shy/mildly depressed guy.

But there are far more scenes that have been botched in the transfer from page to screen. My personal favorite exchange from the book is when one guy tells his friend the story of being in the airport and picking up a girl who was heartbroken after her boyfriend didn’t show up to visit her. The casting is fine; Denis O’Hare and Christopher Meloni fit into the roles well. But the directorial choices are puzzling, because to show the scene occurring is one thing, and makes sense (it obviously wouldn’t be visually interesting enough to just see the man telling the story) but Krasinski chooses to actually insert the two men into the airport scene as random characters, like bystanders and flight attendants. It’s strange and jarring. It would have better, and simpler, to merely show us the Meloni character in the airport (since he was actually there, it happened to him) interspersed with shots of Meloni now telling O’Hare the story later in a cafe.

Then there’s the story about the guy whose father worked in a bathroom of a fancy office building. In the film, it gets a scene in which the father stands in the bathroom while his son looks on and narrates the story (which gets very, very graphically detailed about shit smells, shit sounds, and routines of ass-wiping and hand-washing). As my friend whispered to me during the movie, the scene feels “weirdly racial.” In addition, it’s the only ‘interview’ of the movie that does not revolve around men and women. Women are wholly absent. It’s about a man’s complicated relationship (pride of work ethic clashing with shame of social class) with his father, and it doesn’t belong in the movie. Strangely enough, my friend and I agreed that, in retrospect, this interview was out of place in the book, too, but for some reason that never occurred to us when reading the book. It must, obviously, be better handled in text form.

Yet the most problematic ‘interview’ of all is the final scene of the movie, for which Krasinski cast himself. Taking the best, most emotionally-charged part seems a little self-important but then again, Krasinski said in a later interview that someone else was cast originally but it didn’t work out, so the director jumped in to save the day. Guess that’s pretty valiant, but the scene itself is kind of ruined from what was a terrific bit of dialogue in the book. Krasinski chooses to have the speech take place as a sort of confessional, with Krasinski’s character basically yelling at the girl who has been conducting the interviews. It doesn’t work as well, mostly because the dialogue in the book feels stilted as spoken word—especially lines like “I believed that she could save me!” and, “I see you there, I can see it on your face, well go ahead. Judge me, you bitch!” Kind of awkward and loses the mingling of  effects (powerful emotion with funny irony) that the text achieves. And that goes for most of the movie, though, again, I admire the attempt at adapting such a work. Let’s hope no one ever tries to make an Infinite Jest movie.

Notes on ‘Californication’

I’m talking about the show, not the Chili Peppers album. Great album, though.

I’ve been watching Showtime’s David Duchovny glam project since its inception, and from the beginning, I’ve loved it. Now, in its third season, I have to say it’s beginning to lose me. Much of what I loved about the show in its first and second seasons has been lost. For example, the show continually forgets that Hank Moody is supposed to be a writer. We never, ever see him writing now—there is zero effort—whereas in the first season, there was an interesting subplot involving a memoir Hank wrote (which was stolen by Karen’s new stepdaughter in an appalling move that I never understood why Hank allowed) and in the second, a writing-oriented subplot about Hank penning a biography of a record exec with whom he became close.

I know, many might argue that of course Hank’s not writing, and that’s the whole point, that we as the audience are meant to be frustrated with this. But I don’t buy it. How can we have any respect for Hank as a character if he’s not producing anything? Also, simply on a personal level, I liked the idea of the main character of a television show being a writer. But now, he’s not writing. He’s just a fucker. Literally.

Meanwhile, the more major problem: sexually, the show is getting ridiculous. It’s not just that Hank can get every woman he wants with zero effort. That I can get on board with. It’s the fact that the women he’s bedding are so incredibly spineless. They’ll do anything for him. If that wasn’t obvious enough from the fact that Hank breaks up with all three and they crawl back anyway, it becomes really blatant in “The Apartment,” the episode in which all his women randomly show up—quite desperately—to “surprise” him and try to win him back.

And to have Charlie’s wife have loud, screaming sex with Rick Springfield wasn’t funny, just sad. You see poor Charlie, heartbroken, listening to it—how can we be expected to laugh?

Speaking of Rick Springfield, that entire plot line is more aggravating than funny. He seems out of place on the show, like a celebrity just tossed in for name recognition. Still, the most absurd character of all is Sue Collini. What Kathleen Turner is doing on this show playing a sex-crazed, dominating talent agent is anyone’s guess. She’s a strong addition to anything, normally, but in Californication she just grosses me out. The slightly sickening, graphic sexual comments and innuendos she makes to Charlie are less than palatable.

By the way, the girl who plays Hank’s daughter kind of sucks. For the best evidence (other than every time she speaks in that barely audible, whiny tone) look to the very first episode of the season (or it may have been the second or third, actually) at the very end when she and Hank have an argument. He throws her cell phone at the wall and she says, “I fuckin haaaate youuu!” Seriously bad little actress, but of course they can’t just switch her out at this point, a la The OC’s second season switch of the actor playing Ryan Atwood’s brother.

Of course, everything being said, audiences love all of this. The sexual dalliances, the laziness, the ridiculous characters, crude dialogue, and over-the-top sex scenes, these all have their flaws but they also make the show the raunchy pleasure that it is. So, it’s a toss-up.

[UPDATE, 11/28/09] I should also add, in fairness, that there are some subplots and additions I’ve loved. Peter Gallagher is a hilarious addition to the cast, and I appreciated in the most recent episode when Charlie showed that he had the balls to say ‘enough is enough’ and ditch Springfield as a client. Great moment when he tore apart the bag of coke. I also like Diane Farr, who I remembered as one of Franco’s longer relationships in Rescue Me. The show is not at all a disaster, so I hope I didn’t make it seem that way. It’s still a show that I look forward to watching. I just think this has been the weakest season, so far, for a number of new additions and plot lines that are more upsetting than funny.

Sidewalk pickup attempt

This observational piece ran on The Brooklyn Ink on November 24, 2009.

A man stands with his dog outside of Acqua Santa bar, at the corner of Driggs Avenue and North 7th Street, across the street from the Bedford Avenue subway stop in Williamsburg. He’s a young guy. His red hair splays out from under a blue winter beanie. On his hands are fingerless gray gloves. The dog is a chocolate brown pit bull, and a large one at that, masculine and postured.

A modest crowd of three people has gathered, including an old man and two women, one of them much younger than the other. All three are admiring the dog as the young man fields questions—how friendly this pit bull is, the reputation of pit bulls as aggressive and violent, the age of this one, its name. The owner, meanwhile, is trying to chat up the young woman, who is leaning down to pet the dog.

“And what do you do?” he asks her abruptly, as though she had just asked him the same. But she hadn’t.

“Oh, I’m an artist,” she says, reluctantly.

“Oh wow, so am I,” he says, though quickly tempering it a bit. “Well, sort of. I do graphic design, freelance. Web stuff.” She does not ask him to tell more.

The other man and woman both linger, petting and admiring the dog. “Nice day to walk the dog, huh?” says the older man.

“Yup, just a day out with the dog, that’s the afternoon activity when you’re unemployed,” the man answers with surprising cheerfulness. Again the older woman comments about how taken she is by the dog’s friendliness. She had been convinced that pit bulls are menacing. “No, no,” he insists. “People think that but it’s not true. They’re very sweet. Obviously.”

He turns back to the young woman. “So, do you live right around here?” he asks.

She looks down at her feet. “Yeah, nearby. I just moved here recently.” There is a long pause. The young man starts to take out his BlackBerry.

“Well, have a good day, have fun with him,” she says politely, and briskly hurries off. The young man is left with only the company of the older man.

He ties his dog’s leash around a pole and heads into the bar. Perhaps it’s time for a beer.

‘Billy Elliot’ on Broadway

Exactly one year after its Broadway debut, “Billy Elliot,” the musical version, is still selling out weekend performances at the Imperial Theatre. The show debuted in London’s West End before making it to the American stage, where most theatergoers, I imagine, must be aware of the 2000 Stephen Daldry film from which it is adapted.

In fact, the story actually comes more alive on the stage than it did on the screen, though its original incarnation as a movie was quite good as well. With Billy (played beautifully by 15-year-old David Alvarez on the night I went) and the other dancers leaping around, in the flesh, mere yards from one’s seat, everything becomes more tangible and breathtaking.

The play embraces as its core the working class element of the story much more than the movie did. Billy’s strict father and volatile older brother are embroiled in the famous British coal miners’ strike of the 1980s. As Billy prances around in his own world, police officers and miners face off a number of times in dance scenes that are intricately choreographed and surge with feeling. Both sides are angry, and both sides feel justified, and Billy is caught in the middle, grappling with his dream of going to a ballet academy that his father, on strike, cannot afford. During one particularly memorable song, “Solidarity,” miners line up behind cops who bear long, black batons that both sides proceed to jump backwards over, limbo under, and hand off to one another behind their backs.

The play is not without its flaws. In particular, there is a scene in which Billy and his friend Michael, who reveals to Billy that he is a “pouf,” try on women’s clothing. Soon the moment becomes a raucous, elaborate song-and-dance involving giant pairs of pants and dresses. These articles of clothing, which stand at three times the height of the boys, likely contain two actors (well, maybe just one) inside each, and dance around the stage mimicking the high kicks and twirls of Billy and Michael. The entire number, thought a lot of fun for the audience, seems out of place in a story that is otherwise grounded in realism (save for the moments in which Billy speaks to his mother’s ghost). Autonomous, dancing items of clothing would belong more in a Cirque du Soleil performance. It kind of felt like an acid trip. A bit ridiculous.

There is one other slightly painful number in which Billy’s father, drunk at a town Christmas party, croons a slow English ballad, blubbering through it the whole way. The audience is presumably meant to see that he is a man racked with grief over the loss of his wife. But the “macho man” theme has been pushed too hard, and so, rather than function as a significant breaking down of his steadfast fatherly guard, the song instead feels grating and a bit awkward. Too much emotion, too sappy. Though, thankfully, this really isn’t true of the rest of the play.

Despite such minor grievances, “Billy Elliot” succeeds as an experience due chiefly to its musical numbers and its emotional core: Billy’s relationship with his dead mother. In scenes that will leave most audience members with tissues in their hands, Billy continually turns to his spectral mother (played by the lovely Leah Hocking). In these visions, she and Billy are the only characters on stage, and they sing in slow, warbling tones, vowing to love each other “forever.” Sniffles could be heard throughout the hall.

When Billy finally comes into his own as a dancer, his flights around the stage floor are that much more steeped in both triumph and sadness because the audience recalls his mother, who is gone and unable to balance out her husband’s lack of support.

The play’s refusal to compromise its clear embrace of a cliché boy-beats-the-odds-to-fulfill-his-dreams story is in the end quite charming. Even skeptics will leave the Imperial feeling uplifted, despite their attempts otherwise. The entire cast of characters, along with Billy at its center, functions perfectly in making this tearjerker a success. Really, a nice musical.

Concerns deepen over football head injuries

This ran on November 20, 2009 on The Brooklyn Ink web site.

Lately, everyone is talking about brain damage in football.

New medical evidence has surfaced that suggests a direct link between playing football and brain damage later in life. Autopsies of a number of former NFL linesmen showed signs of Alzheimer’s and other problems caused by years of hard tackles. High school players, of course, are not immune. It’s enough to terrify a mother.

 

** The above is just an excerpt. See the rest of the article here on the Ink’s web site.

Book Thug Nation

There’s a new bookstore that I just discovered in Brooklyn, and it’s pretty awesome. It’s only been open for three weeks.

It’s called Book Thug Nation, which is pretty badass. The store is for used books, exclusively, and it’s very tiny—the size of my apartment’s living room (and my apartment isn’t so big). Books line the shelves, wall to wall, and their fiction section is especially impressive, with rare finds like really old editions of Philip Roth’s early stuff. One wonders where they even found these books.

The shop is at 100 N. 3rd Street, between Wythe and Berry, in Williamsburg. Figures it’d be Williamsburg, right?

Three guys are running the place, and one can only imagine that they’re brothers (they look vaguely alike) with some family money, because they describe the store as “doing pretty well,” but even when doing ‘well,’ could a store that sells only used books—most of them $4—bring anyone a living, never mind three grown men? So they must be free financially to have fun with this.

For now, the place doesn’t even have an official web site, but go check it out in person. Or don’t…

Veteran’s Day in Brooklyn Heights

The first section of this observational piece was published earlier as an add-on to a Brooklyn Ink veteran’s day report.

At 3pm in Cadman Plaza Park today, a young father stood staring up at the 24-foot tall memorial wall that honors Brooklynites who served in WWII. The wall is flanked on each side by a giant stone sculpture—one is a male warrior bearing a sword, the other a woman holding a child. The figures are meant to represent victory and family.

The man standing here today is illustrative of both qualities, as his two young daughters stand at his side. One grips his hand as he reads aloud part of the engraved inscription on the monument wall:

TO THE HEROIC MEN AND WOMEN OF THE BOROUGH OF BROOKLYN WHO FOUGHT FOR LIBERTY IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR

“That’s my grandpa,” he tells his daughters proudly. “D’you understand? Daddy’s dad’s dad.”

Meanwhile, on the park’s central lawn–a long strip of grass in front of the monument–there is a circus of athletic activity. A big bunch of children, chaperoned by two women, run around playing tag and giggling. Public schools are out today for the holiday, so one can imagine this is a preschool class or day care group, though most of the children are probably unaware of the reason for their day off–the same reason for the presence of the man with his daughters, standing mere feet away from them.

After twenty minutes or so, six lanky high school runners show up and begin doing strides from end to end of the field. After the boys stop to rest, some of the children actually begin to come up and play with them, tugging their shirts or chasing them. Within seconds the big kids have joined the game of tag, but the break is short-lived. Their coach shows up, and shortly they all set off on a mile loop around the park. The coach explains that they are cross-country runners from Packer High School. Their season is over, but they’re doing this time trial for fun.

On the other side of the monument, a separate group, of four little boys, plays bunyan (or ‘wall ball’). They chuck a blue ball against a low wall and try to avoid getting pegged by each other when they run to tag up. “I’m safe, I’m safe!” insists one, and they argue in high voices, oblivious to the action on the monument’s other side.

The Morning After in Bed-Stuy

This ran on November 4, 2009 on The Brooklyn Ink web site.

This morning, in Bill Thompson’s home base of Bedford-Stuyvesant, people admitted to feeling frustrated. ‘Thompson for Mayor’ signs still hang from traffic light poles. “Endorsed by President Barack Obama,” they say.

For many, the fact that Thompson challenged Bloomberg to such an extent—he lost by a mere 4.6% and won the Brooklyn vote—only heightened the impact of his loss.

** The above is just an excerpt. See the rest of the article here on the Ink’s web site.

Clash Persists on 86th Street in Bensonhurst

This ran on October 27, 2009 on The Brooklyn Ink web site.

On the north side of 86^th Street, Bensonhurst’s main commercial shopping drag, some stores have taken advantage of the generous sidewalk to display their products well out into the walking space. This has created something of a turf battle, and all parties are heated. Both merchants and pedestrians wonder: Whose sidewalk is it, anyway?

** The above is just an excerpt. See the rest of the article here on the Ink’s web site.

Trailer for formulaic ‘Valentine’s Day’ raises issues, like: When will Topher Grace be a movie star?

So much to say about this trailer. First, watch it right here. Discussion beneath the vid.

Okay. Can anyone say He’s Just Not That Into You? Instant comparison is inevitable. Series of vignettes that become intertwined. List of A-level Hollywood stars, all on board with minor roles, recruited purely to enhance “big-name cast.” There’s even overlap with specific people (Bradley Cooper). And when the movie doesn’t use the actual same person, there’s an appropriately similar stand-in celeb that makes a good physical double for someone from the other film. They’ve swapped Jennifer Garner and Anne Hathaway in for brunette/nice gal character Jennifer Connelly, the Jessicas (Alba and Biel!) in for sexy/seductive character Scarlett Johansson, Patrick Dempsey in for scruffy/husband-material character Ben Affleck, and finally, the cute/harmless/boyfriend figure, played to perfection by Justin Long in the earlier incarnation, is now given to Topher Grace.

But wait— Topher Grace doesn’t even earn a credit in the big name-roll 40 seconds in! Everyone gets the obligatory flash of photo & name, because this is the part of any trailer where they shout: “Look how many people you’ve heard of are in this movie! You need to see this movie!” But Topher Grace still isn’t legit enough! After they’ve just showed us a clip of him lying in bed with Hathaway, who does make it into the credit montage! He wasn’t good enough in Spiderman? Maybe not. But In Good Company! Give the kid some credit. Then again, guess ‘McSteamy’ (Eric Dane) ain’t a big enough deal either, because he missed the cut as well. Are we to take it he and Grace are relegated to the same level as other non-stars in this movie like Taylor Lautner, Queen Latifah, Taylor Swift, and George Lopez?? Ouch.

Meanwhile, a second comparison to an earlier hit film (well, not that HJNTIY was a “hit”) did not occur to me until Ashton Kutcher said his absurdly cliché, infuriatingly stupid line: “Love is the only shocking act left on the planet.” The comparison became especially apt when the little boy says he’s “lovesiiiiick” (aww) and you realize that even children in this film will be involved in romance problems. Ready? It’s Love Actually. Seriously, this movie is, quite unsubtly, attempting to market itself as the second coming of that 2003 crowd-pleaser. Another all-star cast of lovers in love, all loosely connected and bumbling into one another in myriad ways.

Long story short, we’ll just have to see. Looks to me like it could/will be a big flop.

Wait, though—I have to finish, as the trailer foolishly did as well, with that Jessica Biel zinger: “My closest relationship is with my BlackBerry… thank God it vibrates!” Really, New Line? That’s the line you want to end the trailer on (much less put in the movie)? And of course they give that one to Jessica Biel. Poor, poor Jessica Biel, stuck with a corny sexual innuendo worthy of comparison to Katherine Heigl’s embarrassing “electric panties” scene in The Ugly Truth.

D-line subway scene

This observational piece ran on The Brooklyn Ink on October 16, 2009.

Sunday afternoon. The subway ride to South Brooklyn is a quiet one. People sleep or try to read.

But on this Sunday, the D-line is undergoing renovation. At the Prospect Avenue stop, the conductor makes a garbled announcement about this becoming an R-train. Passengers snap up from their stupor and look surprised, annoyed. This was poorly advertised; there weren’t many signs up at previous stations.

The train will be splitting off at 36^th Street and continuing on the R-line down to Bay Ridge. Coney Island passengers have to stay on until 59^th Street, where they can transfer to the N, which runs out to Bensonhurst and finally Coney Island—different parts of town, however, than where the D-train would normally bring them. It’s inconvenient.

At 36^th Street, the conductor repeats the service announcement. A chunky Asian teenager removes his iPod ear buds and turns to the woman sitting closest to him. “This became an R train?” He asks it a bit loudly; people turn to look.

“Yes, they make it an R now, you have switch at 59^th to go N,” she replies. She speaks with an unmistakable Russian accent. She wears a thin, gray cardigan and pinned onto her right chest is a badge that reads:

PERSONAL WELLNESS COACH

Ask me about our package offers

“These trains always switch up without warning,” the teen continues.

She agrees: “Always. It’s been that forever.” Both are in a state of complaint, but neither one seems particularly angry. “When you live all the way out,” she continues, “you know, it’s tough.”

He puts his ear buds back in and turns away, but a few minutes later when she sneezes he says, to her surprise, “Bless you.”

Movie Review: ‘Where the Wild Things Are’

I got to see this three days before it came out in theaters, at a special screening. I was very excited. I really, really wanted to like it. Unfortunately, the movie falls incredibly short of all the hype that has been building for so many months.

At the very least, the film is visually stunning. It is indeed “beautiful,” as many have called it. The world of the wild things is a treat for the eyes, and it doesn’t look fake, either. A scene in which Max tromps across the desert is especially striking, as is a moment when petals fall all around.

Camerawork and visual effects, however (for me at least), cannot save a movie. Where the Wild Things Are is a major downer. I don’t recall the book being like this, and I don’t understand why just for the sake of being avant-garde or ‘quirky’ Spike Jonze needed to take what I remember as a charming, fun story and make it so goddamn miserable.

The beginning part of the movie is perfectly done. As many have said, it captures accurately the turmoil of childhood—one minute everything is happy, Max is having a friendly snowball fight with his older sister’s friends (and they’re paying attention to him, so cool!), and the next they jump on top of his snow fort (still without malice, I’d argue, but they just got too rough) and Max is bawling as the older boys drive away callously. All of this is great stuff.

But as soon as Max gets to the isle of the wild things, the movie goes sour, and stays it until the end. First of all, sorry to be unsentimental but when he meets the wild things and begins telling them about his “powers,” it just feels silly. All these claims Max makes about how he can control certain things (in response to one of the monsters asking, “Can you make the loneliness go away?” in one of the more morose, overwrought bits of dialogue) are just stupid. And the monsters buy it, natch, and everyone in the theatre around me was oohing and aahing, like, “Oh, so cute and beautiful and touching, oh, oh!”

Considering that Max is with the wild things for a whole six pages in Sendak’s book, and there’s no text, just wonderful illustrations of them romping around, it’s a bit much to have to watch Max play psychiatrist to the monsters’ relationship problems. Not only is the film depressing, it frequently makes no sense. I suppose, again, that’s Spike Jonze’s “genius,” but bits like an entire subplot involving K.W. (the sad female wild thing that Carol, the sad male wild thing, has a crush on) and her two friends, is really unnecessary. The friends, of whom every mention makes Carol suffer with jealousy, turn out to be two owls. K.W. speaks to them and understands them, but they can’t talk, it’s unclear if she’s pretending or not, Max can’t understand them, then she brings them to the other monsters and the question of whether all the wild things can communicate with them is answered when Carol says, hilariously but bizarrely, “I don’t apologize to owls.” Weird enough for you? And no, don’t mention Being John Malkovich or Adaptation to me—those are “weird” movies that make sense, and their weirdness serves a function.

Finally, after such a strange journey of constantly fluctuating emotions and mood shifts, the film could at least give us a happy ending. I suppose that would be too pedestrian, though, so instead there is zero resolution, zero sign of the monsters forgiving Max or feeling as though his visit had any effect, positive or negative. Carol, as Max sails away, is just as miserable as he began. As are we, the audience.

Kudos to Catherine Kenner, though, and to Gandolfin and Paul Dano for standout voice acting. Good costumes, great music, beautiful cinematography, funny/random cameo from Mark Ruffalo as the ‘boyfriend’ with one line. But overall, though it’s a movie most will want to see “just to see,” Where the Wild Things Are is a big fucking drag.

Slate movie critic Dana Stevens summarized the story perfectly: “Fuzzy guys build a stick fort, sit inside it, and mope.”

Book Review: ‘The Humbling’

Philip Roth’s new novel has only been out a couple weeks now, but I knew I had to read it right away. It was a quick, breezy read—a tiny novella, like Indignation in its almost aggravating brevity—that only clocks in at 140 pages. And those are small pages with absurdly large type.

To get to the point: its small stature unfortunately matches its effect, which is minimal. The novel is entertaining, if you love Roth as I do, and very readable as his books always are. Yet it’s a failure, and his only book out of the ten I’ve read that I would not recommend.

The extremely simple plot involves Simon Axler, a 60-something (like every other protagonist in every other Roth book) theater actor who feels he has lost his stage confidence and can no longer go on acting. He gets involved with a woman 20+ years younger than him (like every other old man’s sexual dalliances in every other Roth book). This is all there is to the story—his lack of stage confidence and his taboo sexual relationship. When you reach the grim, morose ending, you are thoroughly unsatisfied and realize, too, that the surprising twist you expected did not come, that the plot was indeed just as pedestrian as you feared, from start to finish.

First of all, the book seems to have a lot of unrealistic dialogue, which is surprising considering how spot-on Roth usually is in his portrayals of spoken discussions (take the meetings between Zuckerman and Swede Levov in American Pastoral). The earliest example comes when Axler is visited at his home by his agent, who is even older than he. The agent has come to beg Axler to return to acting and take a part being offered him. Axler insists that he really and truly is done performing, but in the process we get a lot of false exposition: “Don’t think that my career’s been cut short. Think of how long I lasted.”

Here the speech could stop, because he’s addressing his agent, who of course knows very, very well just how Axler’s career went. But Roth has his character continue to outline the entire arc of his career, for the reader’s benefit. This is a clunky device, a tactic that high school students learn to avoid in the most basic of creative writing classes. Usually roth does better. See: “When I started out in college I was just fooling around, you know. Acting was a chance to meet girls. Then I took my first theatrical breath. Suddenly I was alive on the stage and breathing like an actor. I started young. I was twenty-two and came to New York for an audition. And I got the part. I began to take classes.” It goes on like this for another page, with Axler recounting every step along the way. It’s forced.

There is more stilted, unreal spoken language about thirty pages later in an exchange between Axler and his hot young thing, Pegeen. “Is this something you really want, Pegeen? Though we’ve enjoyed each other so far, and the novelty has been strong, and the feeling has been strong, and the pleasure has been strong, I wonder if you know what you’re doing.” No real person would speak this formally to someone in an intimate, one-on-one conversation. So many clauses! It feels more like Axler’s words would be found in an analytical essay about their relationship.

Toward the end, when a character describes her sister’s nervous breakdown and mental state on the phone with Axler, she says something so unrealistic that Roth nearly alienates the reader irreparably. It’s not any phonecall that would ever happen in reality. She says, and we are expected to take it as a natural, spontaneous thought: “There’s a great crash going to occur. She won’t be living behind this placid mask for long… I’m frightened of what’s coming next.” First of all, that bit about the “placid mask.” Give me a break. In addition, who actually uses the word ‘frightened’ in speech? Ive never heard it said before. It’ perfectly natural in a bit of literary description, but not in a verbal exchange.

That this phonecall would be poorly written is specially strange since an earlier phonecall between Axler and Pegeen’s father, Asa, is pitch-perfect and has far more real, authentic dialogue.

There are, of course, examples of terrific dialogue. When Pegeen inevitably walks out on Axler, what he yells at her is very real: “So it was an experiment, right down to the end. Another adventure for Pegeen Mike.” Then, when she makes an accusation he counters: “That’s the most ludicrous bullshit I’ve ever heard. And you know it. Go, Pegeen! If that’s your vindication, go!” This indignation (ha!) is all very real and accurate, and the dialogue works.

Overall, the ending, which I imagine is meant to be quite shocking, is merely upsetting, flat, and surprisingly obvious. An early description of the novel, released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt a few months ago, mentioned that the plot involves a “counterplot of unusual erotic desire.” That’s a laugh, because the desire is neither ‘unusual’ for a Roth book, nor is it really a ‘counterplot.’ It’s the only plot, and it’s kind of lame.

The ending is also intensely grim; a real downer. What was moral/point of story? I had a similar experience with the ending of the also short novella Indignation—though that book was far, far better until the final reveal. Still, it shows to me that perhaps the apparent choice to move toward quick, tiny novellas that he fires off (Indignation, The Humbling, and the forthcoming Nemesis) might be a poor choice. Roth, perhaps, ought to return to longer, more complex and sprawling masterpieces. This one just didn’t work, but of course, that’s okay. All wonderful authors are allowed to have a flop or two—Ishiguro had Nocturnes, Murakami had After Dark, Updike had Toward the End of Time. Roth is still my guy, my very favorite. But skip this new one.

Book Review: ‘Downtown Owl’

Klosterman’s non-fiction is great, as so many of his fans know, but he has stuck with the same authorial voice for his first attempt at a novel, and it doesn’t really work. It doesn’t work, but still the novel manages to entertain. It grabs you, though you never get sucked in enough to ignore the clunky writing.

The characters are all relatively flat, but that’s on purpose, and it kind of endears you to them. Kind of. The story floats along, following these three people in the typical format of all stories that follow a set of strangers whose stories become slowly intertwined. But in this case, strangely, they don’t really become connected. The three people, all residents of Owl but strangers to one another, never really cross paths until the final chapter, and even then, they don’t meet; they just meet similar fates.

The way I see it, the problem with the novel isn’t in plot or characters. Unfortunately, it’s in the writing (which is a shame because one common criticism of some big classics is that the plot or characters are boring, but the outstanding writing saves the book, here it’s the opposite). And the writing isn’t bad, it’s just bland, and it’s because Klosterman has not shifted his voice at all for the new venue of fiction.

There are two distinct categories of mistakes Klosterman makes in the book repeatedly. They are errors of style; again, I mean nonfictiony, opiniony, gimmicky self-referential writing that is in the tradition of an album review.

First is the issue of writing that is cutesy/gimmicky. It happens when Klosterman decides it’ll be fun to pick a colloquialism and weave it throughout a paragraph. It’s a recurring issue. Here’s one spot: “And this (of course) made him seem like the only attractive man in the entire town. And that (of course) is a romantic cliché, which (of course) only serves to illustrate Julia’s damaged self-perception. It was all (of course) too predictable to believe.” Of course, this is not fabulous writing. The reader tires of that parenthetical quickly. Here’s a passage that essentially uses the same trick, simply with a new phrase: “Edgar Camaro was Lucifer. Or at least an idiot. Or at least he was when he rolled dice, or at least that’s how it seemed to Horace.” Come on, Chuck. This isn’t too imaginative. It’s not cute, either.

Finally, here is the granddaddy of all gimmicky passages from Downtown Owl. I challenge anyone to say that the below is a smooth and artful literary technique.

“You are going to pay for what you did,” the brother (allegedly) said. “Serpico is gonna make you bleed, fuckwad.” Upon that (alleged) declaration, the brother released Serpico’s leash. The hound jumped for the jugular, which was his (alleged) nature. But Serpico didn’t make it. Cubby (allegedly) caught the dog by the throat, and smashed its snout into the pavement. He (allegedly) squeezed its windpipe with his left hand; he (allegedly) hit Serpico until Serpico (allegedly) stopping twitching.

The second flawed element here is writing that contains knowing references or allusions. They are almost always music-related or film-related, and they are all relatively obscure and old, as though Klosterman is trying to impress. Again, it feels as though he’s forgotten it’s a novel, and is writing an album review for Spin. Here’s one such line: “There were multiple conversations happening at the same time; it was like an Altman film, although nobody inside the car had ever seen an Altman film (and four of them never would, mostly by choice).” The author is directly addressing the reader. Some might like this strategy; I don’t. If the characters haven’t seen an Altman movie, then Altman movies shouldn’t be mentioned. Another example, really the same thing: “Inside her skull, words and sentences sounded like side three of Metal Machine Music, an album she had never heard of.” Again, this silly, self-aware detail. All this serves to do is remind us of Klosterman’s presence. If this were visual, like a documentary, he’d be there, in the corner of the screen, addressing us and narrating the action. In a novel that shouldn’t happen.

Finally, there is one other major section of poor writing, and it’s when Klosterman spends two pages giving a category of townies who have earned nicknames, and providing a history of the origin of these nicknames. It’s exhausting, and most of the characters do not appear again anyway. They are barflies, and we don’t need the info. It’s like some mock attempt at a Homeric “Catalogue of heroes.” Here’s one of ten bios provided: Here’s a couple of the ten bios provided: “Derrick Decker. He was ‘Bull Calf.’ [because when he once pulled his groin he moaned like a baby bull, though how people in town knew what a baby bull sounded like is beyond me]… Brian Pintar. He was known as ‘the Drelf,’ which was an abbreviation for the Drunken Elf.” Gee, okay.

There is, however, good writing here. In small pieces. Occasionally, Klosterman can really turn a phrase. These bits are wonderful, but rare hits among a collection of misses. Phrases like: “The air was damp wool,” (so good, right?) and, when a kid thinks about his football coach: “He was an upright Gila monster wearing a polo shirt.” That’s dead on, imaginative, solid writing.

I also love this moment, when one of the main three, Julia, daydreams a scene that could maybe (but never does) occur between her and a guy she likes:

“We need to buy a bigger bed,” he would suggest sardonically, and they would lie on the mattress and laugh and laugh.

That’s a terrific image, and very plausible fiction because, indeed, it’s just the sort of moment someone with a crush would create and enjoy picturing. Here’s one more cogent moment of realistic character psychology: Mitch is asleep, in that dream world, that wonderful, cozy state of sleep, but then his alarm goes off for school, and Klosterman writes, “And then he was not in space. He was in the world, and it existed.” Exactly.

So there are problems, deep flaws with Klosterman’s fiction. And for a second novel he’ll have to work a lot harder to adapt his style for fiction. He can’t just do the same thing he does in his columns for Esquire, clearly. That being said, somehow, inexplicably, it’s a nice read. It doesn’t pull any punches with the ending, either—it’s actually kind of brutal. But it works, and you’ll enjoy reading it, if you can stay calm and overlook the winking in-jokes about obscure 80s music. So, with major reservations, I think I actually would recommend it.

By the way, I must add that I do love the cover art. I’m talking about the hardcover version, with the eye hole and the quiet street scene of a small town. The paperback version is more busy, with a jukebox and eighties-style font, and I don’t love it as much.

Outstanding teaser trailer for ‘Up In The Air’

Okay, so what makes this the best movie trailer I’ve seen in recent memory?

The short answer is: everything. It’s perfectly edited, so smooth, all the different components working together so that it’s completely epic and stirring and yet doesn’t feel like it’s trying too hard.

First of all, the music. It’s so subtle, so pretty, and so fitting to lie underneath Clooney’s monologue. The track is “Genova” by Charles Atlas (I already bought it on iTunes, ha). It feels a lot like one of my other favorite instrumental piano songs, “Cloud Watching” by Lol Hammond.

Then we get Clooney’s speech—specifically what he is saying is so original (the backpack anecdote), so engrossing and convincing. Interwoven are specific images from the film, brief moments that make this look like a real film of human relationships—a film that will probably be pretty sad, but also uplifting. And all set to that goddamn pretty music.

Finally, the clincher: the lack of plot revealed by the trailer. My major problem with movie trailers for years now has been just how much they reveal about a movie—what happened to being a bit mysterious? Keep some cards close to the chest. But no; coming attractions now are, for the most part, insanely long, and once it ends you feel as though you’ve already seen the movie. This trailer for Sorority Row is a great example; it gives you the whole plot of the movie, with only the exception of the final twist (i.e. Who is the killer?). It even contains, all in the trailer, pretty much the entire first scene of the movie. This one, though, gives you no concrete idea of what the film is about, other than that it clearly involves a lot of airplane travel, and that the hot chick from The Departed is in the mix as Clooney’s love interest.

The entire trailer feels like the American Beauty scene with the plastic bag floating around in the breeze— you know what they’re doing to you, but you don’t care, it’s working, you’re falling for it. You suspend your natural tendency toward skepticism.

As a post about the teaser trailer on the web site InContention.com posited, “It’s a beautiful piece that really captures the tone and spirit of the film. I generally prefer trailers put together by filmmakers (Paul Thomas Anderson does it a lot) because they tend to be free of the usual marketing tropes and have an artistic value unto themselves.  Reitman didn’t do the actual editing (he gives credit there to the folks at Acme, who also do his opening credits sequences).  But still, it clearly comes from the same mind that conceived the film.  You don’t get that very often.”

Indeed, I don’t think “beautiful” is a stretch here. Of course, all this is ruined by the longer theatrical trailer, Trailer #2, that was released a month later. In this one, you get the standard BS—longer length (2:35), voice over that describes the character’s profession, plot laid out in a detailed way, more upbeat, campy tunes. Lame.

Anyway, we’ll see if the movie lives fulfills the promise made by the first preview.

Hell’s Kitchen predictions

Okay, I’ll make this brief since the number of people who both a) visit my blog, and b) are following the current season (U.S. season 6) of Hell’s Kitchen is probably in the single digits.

Anyway, we’re down to the final four, and it’s the right four, I suppose—though maybe I’d have expected Van to be here instead of, say, Tennille. But hey, she’s been clawing her way back, and Van kept messing up the one food supposed to be his specialty—fish. You get booted for failures like that.

I’ll go ahead and put it out there: my money’s on Kevin. I’d like to say Dave, but I think the ruined wrist injury is too convenient; that is, it’s totally impressive that he’s made it this far with the cast (and just think how good he’d be with both hands free) but it would be too much of a Cinderella story if he actually won.

From the beginning, I said the frontrunners were the male trio—Dave, Van, and Kevin—and that, with no sexism meant, just honesty, the women seem to be pretty weak overall. The only women who looked good from day 1 (and not even that good) were Suzanne and Ariel, and sure enough they were the ones left at the end (well, Suzanne’s gone now and Tennille’s still here, but pretty close). So next to go will be Tennille. But then it’s hard to tell. The truth is that the final two should be Dave and Kevin, but I worry that the show will boot one of the guys simply because they need to cater to viewers of both genders by ending every season with a final two that includes a guy and a girl.

I think that’s pretty weak, and I’d like to think they wouldn’t keep anyone based on political correctness or any other reason other than merit—but that’s wishful thinking. More likely is a final two that is mixed gender, unfortunately. So I’m gunning to see Dave and Kev face off, but I’m betting it’ll be Kevin and Ariel for the final 2. Thoughts?

[UPDATE, 10/8/09]

Tennille gone. No surprise there—well fought, nice that she at least won the kiddie challenge, but a fair outcome for her. I’ll miss her absurd shouts and celebrations in the confessional room. Next to go should be Ariel, but due to television politics I expect it’ll be Dave. Unless Kevin fucks up massively. Final two: Kevin and Ariel, winner: Kevin. As I said though, my boy is Dave. But sometimes what you want to happen is different from what you think will happen. And I think TV networks are crowd-pleasing bitches. So it can’t be 2 guys in the finale.

On Jay-Z’s new album

There are some great tracks on this, but they are few and far between. Overall, the record has too many straight-up bad songs, and the bad ones are not just bad, they’re really bad; so bad it’s laughable.

That being said, I think the Pitchfork review—which fires off: “The Blueprint 3 is so certainly Jay-Z’s weakest solo album, you’ll be tempted to wonder if Kingdom Come was somehow underrated”—is too harsh (in addition, I personally loved Kingdom Come). How about a track-by-track analysis, in the sequence they appear on iTunes.

“What We Talkin’ About = This one’s okay, but not great. It certainly doesn’t deserve to lead off the album. The rapping feels like typical Jay, not his best, but certainly listenable. I think the beat in the back, which has an eighties/GTA: Vice City soundtrack feel, is nothing special. I also do not like the weird refrain (first heard 1:20 in), which is softly whispered, repetitive, and embarrassingly simplistic (“they talk, we live, we see what they say, they say, they say / they talk, we did, who cares what they say, they say, they say”). Not one of the album’s “bad” tracks, I suppose, but not a song Jay can be proud of.

“Thank You” – He’s back in form. Right off the bat, the jazzy beat and Jay saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” this could have led off the album. It has a “Welcome to The Blueprint 3″ feel, and the lyrics are snappy and light (i.e. “I just got ten #1 albums, maybe now eleven?”). This one’s infectious, catchy, instantly likeable.

“Death of Auto-tune” – It feels strange to be commenting on this song now that the album is out, as if it’s something new. We’ve been hearing it for months. But that’s the point; it’s great. I feel the same way about the next one, which became the album’s other pre-release radio single. Both are very solid. I like “D.O.A.” both for the message behind it (which I support completely; sorry T-Pain) and for the sweet music video it spawned. The only part of the track that I don’t like is the “Na na na na, hey hey heyy goodbyeee” refrain. That could have been left out, but otherwise the verses are quick, forceful, meaningful, and inflammatory, like good Jay-Z songs always are (hint: “I know we facin’ a recession but the music y’all makin’ gon’ make it the great depression”). Love the saxophone in the background, too. For a great re-thinking of this track from a political perspective, find the song “D.O.A: Death of the Ayatollahs” by Iranian rap group Revolution of the Mind.

“Run This Town” – Just like with “D.O.A,” there’s a reason we’ve all been bumping this one long before the album release. Great beat, one of the few rap songs that, after total overplay on Boston hip-hop radio, still has me playing it voluntarily on my laptop. Also, I’ll go there, even after the Taylor Swift debacle—I love Kanye’s verse. The best part is the very first line he comes in on: “It’s crazy how you can go from bein’ Joe Blow to everybody on your dick, no homo.” This is one of the album’s best.

“Empire State of Mind” – Nothing negative to say about this one. It may be my favorite. And Alicia Keys returns to hip hop! I love it. I even like the quick segment Keys gets all to herself—not the repeated chorus, but the verse she sings alone. In my own New York neighborhood (by Morningside Park en route to Harlem), I’ve already seen, three different times, cars roll by that are blaring this one. And that defines the song well; this is indeed the song to do it with. Great shouts to various landmarks all over New York, too. Okay, hold up—one small, nitpicky criticism: Keys’ chorus, which is totally uplifting and even pretty in a way, does feel a bit, ah, cheesy at times, like an after-school special: “These lights will inspire you,” or, “There’s nothing you can’t do” (’cause, yeah, sky’s the limit if you’re an insanely rich rap artist), and finally, “Let’s hear it for New York.” That aside, let’s hear it for this song. It’s back to basics for Jay—great beat, fabulous vocals by a female guest, and basic, no-frills lyrics about the city he loves.

“Real As It Gets” – Eh, good enough. And yet, that really isn’t good for a Jay-Z album. The beat is great, but the chorus of “HEY! HO!” and the entire series of lines about “putting your hands in the air” are both too cliché in rap (think Master P’s “Make ‘Em Say Uhh”). Jay’s raps are good on this one, but I wouldn’t have let Jeezy kick off the song. In general, this one passes muster, but it doesn’t stand out, and inferior rap artists could have (and have) made similar-style tracks and succeeded more with them. I do like when Hova says he’s the “audio equivalent of braille,” of course.

“On To The Next One” – Let the “bad” begin. I feel as though this song stands at the gate to the record’s second half—most of which is very poor. The repetition of the title line could, in another context/song, be cool and catchy, but here it feels annoying, and worse yet, lazy. Pitchfork’s review perfectly describes the Swizz Beats background beat: “hyperactive.” The track feels too loud and crazy, with no direction and no talent. I worry that here Jay sort of rushed it and just needed filler. “On to the next one,” like as if he said, “Okay guys, let’s lay down a quick, dirty song here, nothing great, and move on.” The track title says it all: skip to the next one.

“Off That” – Eh. Jay’s verses are okay here, but the futuristic theme (reinforced by the lyrics and beat) fails. I suppose with more musical expertise I could better describe why I don’t like this one, but for now all I can verbalize is that it’s unexciting. “Welcome to tomorrow, biiiiiitch!” Jay lamely cries as it bleeds into the quick, rapid-fire refrain. “Tell Rush Limbaugh to get off my balls, it’s 2010 not 1864.” Huh? Not great.

“A Star Is Born” – Most people seem to love this song. It’s not bad, but I’d argue it’s nothing special, either. I like the way it begins, and in general I love J. Cole’s smooth singing. I also like the title, and the way its sung, but I do not like Jay following it each time with that, “Clap for him, clap for him” bullshit. It’s kind of lame. And Jay’s lyrics, most of which are shout-outs to other performers, fall flat. In general, the track feels like more filler.

“Venus vs. Mars” – Here we go. This and the next track are a pair of gems among the otherwise shitty second half of the CD. This song in particular is, well, sexy. It’s all Jay, which, when he’s good, is all you need. The verses, as the best rap songs do, tell quick stories. The refrain, by unknown backup singers, certainly helps—a hawt sidekick to Jay’s flow. Lots of knowing, cool references too—like the Outkast shout (“she lives in my lap”) and the reference to his own, older track (and the movie) “Bonnie and Clyde.” I really like this one, and I may be wrong but I think it’ll be the track that women love most. God knows Beyoncé had to have been an influence here.

“Already Home” – Again, like I said, a fabulous track hidden amongst mediocre songs that all seem to be lazily tacked on here at the end. I love Cudi’s refrain, though I have to say (as others have noted all over the blogosphere) that he sounds just like John Legend, and one has to wonder if it’s on purpose. But even if he’s jacked Legend’s silky voice for this one song, he gets a free pass, because he does it so well. He sounds great, seriously. I’d even take away Jay’s constant repeating of his words (i.e.”oh!” “stop!” “drop!” “no!” “gone!” “already!” “hey, I’m already home!” “already home!”) but it’s all right. Jay’s rapping is sweet, too, especially since he starts off so strong coming after the refrain: “These niggas want me to go. Don’t they know that I’m gone?” This one reminds me of some of the best collaborations off Kingdom Come, like “Beach Chair” with Chris Martin, and “Do U Wanna Ride” with John Legend. It’s a great track, good effort by both men on it, and a great example of a successful duo. Also gotta appreciate Jay’s unafraid reference to The Game’s beef with him (“They call me a camel”). If only the rest of the album were this strong.

“Hate” – Worst song on the album. Could anyone possibly disagree? This one is shit. As Pitchfork’s review wondered, the track’s so weak it “has to be the result of some bar bet.” The reasons are obvious, but let’s rattle ‘em off: bad beat, even worse flow, and worst of all is that constant techno voice (reminiscent of some of the worst tracks off Kanye’s 808s album) that says, “Hater, hater, hater, hater…” Guess I’m a hater, ’cause this one sucks. I’m embarrassed for Jay.

“Reminder” – Almost as bad as the previous song. For real, this one made me laugh. I thought it might be a joke when I heard it from the leaked version of the record. I hoped it wouldn’t really be on the album when it actually came out. The girl saying, “Remin-DERR” and Jay’s obnoxious, almost parody-like “awww” is just painful. But the worst part is when Jay begins actually listing years for which he has been successful—”‘96, ‘97, ‘98, ‘99, 2000, 2001 and beyond. ‘02, ‘03, ‘04, ‘05, ‘06 and 7, ‘08, ‘09.” Shut the fuck up. This track is garbage, for real.

“So Ambitious” – Another “just okay” entry. I like the piano at the beginning, but it becomes formulaic as the song goes on, because it remains constant, getting louder at the same moments in Jay’s pedestrian verses. And I typically love Pharrell on anything, but this song doesn’t really sparkle enough. And that repeated line, “I’m so ambitious!” Eh. It’s like, well, sure you are.

“Young Forever” – This song is fun as hell, and everyone likes it. But you know, it’s not really his. It’s a conundrum, because it’s both a good way to close up the album and also not a good one, since it ends his record on something that mostly isn’t his. I mean, yeah, Jay and Hudson twisted with it, but riffs and covers of ‘Forever Young’ are a dime a dozen (it’s been done). And the song reminds me a lot of the Ataris cover of”Boys of Summer.” Still, good rapping by Jay—restrained, nostalgic lines about summer. I’d say this song ends a weak album on a strong note.

So yeah, I’m disappointed. By my count, 6 (7 if we’re nice and include ‘Young Forever’) legitimately good tracks, out of a possible 14. That’s half, or 50%, and that score on a high school exam gives you an F. To yet again refer to the Pitchfork writeup, I’d say that their score of 4.5 (out of 10!) is pretty tough, but not that tough. If I had to assign a number, I think it wouldn’t clear 7.

But the good songs, as always with Jay-Z, are real good. Just skip those piece-of-shit tracks, and boy, there are a few. Seriously, don’t even download ‘em, or unclick that little box so your iTunes skips over. If you delete the weak sections, and above all else “Hate” and “Reminder” (I couldn’t get rid of those quick enough), then after a while (I’m sure this’ll happen to me) you will have only good things to say about The Blueprint 3.

Brooklyn Musician Shows Solidarity with Iranians

A reporting piece of mine has been published in a small Brooklyn newspaper.

From today’s edition of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Arts section:

Brooklyn Musician Shows Solidarity with Iranians by Brooklyn Eagle (edit@brooklyneagle.net), published online 09-25-2009

First-Generation American Performs At Anti-Ahmadinejad Rally By Daniel Roberts Special to Brooklyn Daily Eagle BUSHWICK — With long bangs almost covering her eyes, Sara Kermanshahi sits behind the stage, waiting. Her hands are on her kneecaps, and she anxiously taps her fingers and feet as the sea of green roars in front of her.

** The above is just an excerpt. See the rest of the article here on the Eagle’s web site.

Living in the Internship Era

This ran in Debatable Magazine, a Middlebury College publication, on May 7, 2008.

The task of finding a summer job rolls around every year, usually by March or April, and it is a burden that always seems to weigh heavily on the minds of American college students. Some teens find a job that involves only light work—scoop ice cream down the street from their beach house, maybe babysit here and there to make pocket cash. Others challenge themselves with a more demanding post, perhaps working construction every day or waiting tables at a fancy restaurant. Still others give up completely and spend the three months watching TV on the couch, lying out at the beach or pool, and generally sponging off Mommy and Daddy for money.

Yet everyone, it seems, shares a general knowledge that at some point down the road, they will have to “get serious,” which, according to general consensus, is code for “find an internship.” Somehow, this was ingrained in us years ago. We have also been trained to understand that the point at which this “getting serious” needs to occur is right around, oh, the summer after junior year.

My summer preference has been, for the past five years, to work as a camp counselor. As far as I can tell, this position affords the best of all worlds. I get to work with kids, spend all day out on the tennis courts (which keeps me fit and tan), live away from home, and still feel like I’m working hard and earning my keep. Of course, as soon as last summer ended I knew the fun was over: my junior year was about to begin, and with it my plans of doing anything enjoyable over the summer would die.

Why the need for an internship? To get a job, of course. A 2006 NY Times op-ed gave this analogy: an internship is to a first job what community service hours were to college. You need to get some under your belt in order to nab the prize you actually care about. Companies have bought into this system like never before, prompting many social commentators to call this the “Internship Era” for today’s unlucky college students, and let me assure you “unlucky” is exactly what we are to find ourselves in this environment. The competition for internships has never been more grueling, and the percentage of college kids who will complete at least one before graduating has never been higher (that percentage is 78). Clearly, we have all been convinced to participate in this system. We have no choice. But the system is flawed. In fact, forget “flawed,” it’s downright ridiculous.

First of all, the completion of numerous internships during college is no longer a “bonus” that might help a recent college grad in the job market; it is now an expectation. As Peter Vogt has written, “Internships are no longer optional, they’re required.” This fundamentally favors the rich. Think about it this way: let’s agree that an internship is not a “job.” An internship is an “opportunity” that forces a college kid to work his or her ass off, cooped up in some office all summer, scrambling to make photocopies and hoping to God that the adults are impressed and ultimately wooed. The vast majority of these positions are completely unpaid, which is laughable when one considers how hard the interns often work.

By expecting college kids to do summer internships if they have any hope of nabbing a full-time job, companies have established a standard that punishes any students who normally need to make money during the summer. Those who come from wealthy families are fine, because either their spending money during the academic year comes from their parents, or the parents promise to pay them some sort of stipend as a reward for taking an unpaid internship.

Meanwhile, those kids who rely on a legitimate summer job to provide their spending money during the year are forced to either take an unpaid internship and puzzle over how to afford their books in September, or ignore the internship craze, knowing that it may screw them down the road when they are scrambling for a post-college job.

In addition to favoring the private-schooled, non-financial aid, over-privileged Nantucket elite, the internship system also undermines some of the most basic tenets of job hunting. It used to be that when a person applied for a job, there would be an interview during which he or she could flex their charm and demonstrate what makes them tick. Whatever it is that makes you want this job— and makes you so sure you deserve it— would come out in a face-to-face sit-down with your potential employer. Now, all that is lost, because as soon as those scrutinizing eyes scroll down your resumé and see only one or, god forbid, zero internships listed, they write you off completely.

Where, then, is the drive to learn? To take what you’ve been given from education, to gather up your book smarts and your street smarts and apply them to something, hoping to rise to your potential? What happens to this if the new system relies solely on a scramble for summer internships, piling them up so as to cash them in later like chips at a casino window?

Something about this system has to change soon, or else investment banks, magazines, publishing houses, fashion design offices, and law firms everywhere are going to be filled only with recent college grads whose daddies were connected enough to get them internships back in college. Meanwhile, some possibly better-qualified candidates will be “getting by” doing Teach for America because they chose to spend their summers in other ways.

Tired of the Tire Sculpture

This ran in Debatable Magazine, a Middlebury College publication, on December 3, 2007.

Since the day I returned to Middlebury this past September, I have publicly lamented the presence of what has been nicknamed the “Tire Monster,” the “Trash Sculpture” and even “Tire-rrhea.” The work is Solid State Change, an atrocity to some and an eco-friendly work of beauty to others.

So on October 25, when the artist, Deborah Fisher, was scheduled to give a lecture on her sculpture, I knew I had to attend. After all, it was only fair to hear her out.

In truth, Fisher said very little about the piece’s meaning. She had been looking at charts of Vermont’s geology, and she did illustrate for us how the shape of the piece vaguely resembles Middlebury’s bedrock. Yet in terms of the piece’s symbolism, and what it attempts to do, she insisted on repeating that it was all about “moving towards a greater understanding of the environment” and the world around us as whole— investigating the “outside” of ourselves. Yet the question remains: how does a heap of recycled tires accomplish this?

The lecture really took off when we arrived at the Q&A period. One person asked Fisher politely what she felt about the common criticism that her piece does not use the space well— that it looks more like trash, and less like art, because it sits heaped against a wall. Why not put it out in a public space, perhaps on a platform? Fisher answered that this would put the work on a pedestal, and this is not what she wants. She elaborated that she would not even like it to be on a bed of gravel or something similar, because this would put it on a stage. And yet, it is a work of art that the College spent a lot of money on— why not put it on a stage?

Then biology professor Steve Trombulak asked, “Your choice of material may be appropriate for New York City, but not for rural Vermont. What do you say to that?” Fisher was speechless. I couldn’t help but feel Trombulak’s question was a fair one. After all, Fisher revealed that in New York City, she lives directly next door to a tire recycling plant that gave her the materials for free. This has to make one wonder if the choice of tires was not meaningful, but rather just convenient. Trombulak added, “I ask this because the work was commissioned for a specific place and you were paid to create this specifically for Middlebury. It’s not like you made this on a whim, brought it to the flea market, and then the board of trustees walked by and said, ‘Ooh, we want to buy that for the College.’” Fisher answered, “It is what it is. It’s 6,000 pounds of garbage that I screwed together all by myself.” Exactly.

Finally, they said they had time for one more question. I cautiously raised my hand, and Fisher noticed me. I asked, “So you label yourself an environmentalist, and you purport to make environmental art, and I just wonder how you reconcile the fact that a very rich college paid you a lot of money to make this sculpture. Doesn’t that contradict the whole environmental mindset and reinforce commercialism?” Rather than taking offense, Fisher said that indeed, “That’s the question to be asking right now. It’s true, it’s a great point.” Her avoidance of any real answer is fair— what could she really say? No single person can decide how art can or should be taken in conceptual terms.

After the lecture, some professors approached me to invite me to a dinner with Fisher and some other art-interested staff and students. We ate our meal and discussed other artwork, as well as philosophies on art and life in general. Fisher was a genuinely interesting woman who had numerous compelling things to say about art, and I found myself intrigued.

I would love to say right here that eating dinner with Fisher and speaking with her face-to-face made me change my mind completely about the sculpture. Yet the experience did not at all lead me to “see the light.” I respect Fisher as a person, and I understand and admire the College’s efforts to find provocative art for our campus, but the truth remains: this thing is ugly and detracts from the beauty of our lovely school.

The main defense that people kept making at dinner when we discussed the work’s reception was that, “It got people talking.” This phrase was repeated as though the sparking of resentment alone creates merit for something’s existence. I cannot agree. By that regard, the homophobic hate speech spray-painted on the walls of Ross Dining Hall constituted valuable artwork on our campus, because it inspired discussion and debate.

It’s like Fisher said at one point during her lecture: “In a cultural movement that feels like individuals have no power, I believe Solid State Change is one person’s way of making an impact.” It’s true, she did make an impact; she got us talking. There was a physical impact as well— she plopped down some trash onto our otherwise pristine home.

Book Review: ‘Man Gone Down’

What is the problem with this book? It made the NYTimes ‘Top 10 of the Year’ list— a credential I admit to being easily wooed by — and the praise seems to keep flooding (Kaiama Glover’s glowing review is just the tip; the book also grabbed the Impac Dublin Prize, which brought Thomas a cool $140,000 reward). So what’s the issue?

I think the praise, unfortunately, might have been unwarranted, or at least was too easily given. I will say that for all its faults, this novel does give us a character we can really root for (namely, an unnamed black man who is clearly a surrogate for Thomas himself, and a thinly-veiled one at that, it seems, after reading up on the author’s background). The story, however familiar, is stirring and keeps the pages moving, though not at breakneck speed.

Indeed, there are some wonderful parts to this novel. As a whole, it’s easy to finish the last page, close the book, and forget the many, many clunky moments. It seems like most of the reviewers chose to do that, but personally I could not forget the many bumps along the way. Let’s get into those.

First of all—and this, I suppose, doesn’t need to reflect on the book itself, since it doesn’t change the plot or the emotions or the tone, but I do think it just plain looks bad—my copy (the standard white paperback from Black Cat/Grove Atlantic) was rife with type-Os and editing errors. It was strange, in fact, to be reading a novel and find so very many mistakes. I kind of couldn’t believe it. I’m sure many people could have overlooked these, or seen them and not even minded, but careless errors always leap out at me, and in this case they tinged my reading experience from the start. One common mistake involved erroneous quotation marks, such as on 68 when a character says: “Can you make more than a full-time sitter?” The next line, not a spoken quote, reads: She fumbled.” It happens again further down the page: “Why don’t you? She slammed the table with her hand and went to kick it, too, but she stopped. I fingered my sternum.” The quotation marks after ’sternum’ actually need to go after the question, obviously. Everything after “Why don’t you?” is not spoken dialogue, but narrative description. Someone dropped the ball here.

On 146, we run into an error that seems even more egregious: “I went for long runs along the Charles. It had seemed different when I was a boy… but now, traveling it’s narrow paths afforded me a quiet timelessness.” Oy! Confusing its and it’s is a school-boy mistake. So why did I find it in a sophisticated, award-winning piece of high lit?

One of my favorite mistakes was the following sentence, which some people might be able to stomach but I personally would not allow in a modern novel. This comes when the character goes down to the river at night to send off his mother’s ashes: “I drop the book of matches in, take off my coat and boots, and wade into.” Wait, a period, there, really? Wade into what?

Similarly, on 147, we find a word that isn’t a word: “I drank and waited, wound up hospitalized for exsposure, wandering through the late streets of wintry Cambridge.” How did that first ’s’ make it in there? The problem of a random, incorrect letter being thrown into a word happens again on 217, and at a crucial moment when the narrator is actually describing a misunderstanding about syntax. He recalls when he was an English teacher and liked to read aloud to his students the following quote, “The bone’s prayer to God is death.” However, he explains how, “One day… some student raised his hand” and said that the sentence actually reads, “The bone’s prayer to death its God.” Then the narrator describes wanting to slap the boy because he, as a teacher, was embarrassed to have been reading the quote incorrectly for years. But clearly that “its” in the second iteration is meant to just be “is,” because the point is that he confusedly switched the order of the two terms. Perhaps Atlantic Grove needs to fire their copy editor and hire me instead. Elisabeth Schmitz, Thomas’ editor, has not at all earned the warm “thank you” that Thomas gives her at the end of the book. In fact, I think he might have been better off without her.

But type-Os are the least of Man Gone Down’s issues. And after all, they may not have been Thomas’ fault. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt, except on that sentence about “wading into.” More unfortunate are some of his stylistic devices. One of these devices, one that he favors enormously, repeatedly, and ad nauseam, is that of repeating a line or thought, word-for-word, multiple times, often in the same couple pages. It becomes incredibly, outrageously annoying, and I just can’t believe no reviewer mentioned it.

Thomas establishes many of his gimmicks very early on. The repetition begins on page 9, when the narrator says, “I wonder if I’m too damaged.” He says it again, word-for-word, at the end of the same paragraph. Finally, at the bottom of the page, he riffs for the third time: “I fear, perhaps, that I’m too damaged.” At this point, of course, I did not feel I was picking up on a problem, but rather assumed I had noticed a one-time thing, a powerful phrase repeated for strong emotional effect in this scenario only. However, all effect is lost when Thomas begins to use the same trick over, and over, and over. Did I think three times was a lot? I had seen nothing yet. On 76, the narrator tells us, “It’s a strange thing to go through life as a social experiment.” Twenty pages later—so much that you have to wonder if Thomas figures you will have forgotten already seeing the phrase—he says for a second time, “It’s a strange thing to go through life as a social experiment.” The very next paragraph begins with number three: “It’s a strange thing to go through life as a social experiment.” Do you get the message yet? The character feels he was a social experiment! Do you get it? If not, it’s there a fourth, fifth, and—my god—sixth time, all of the repetitions coming within the next ten pages so that you’re sure to figure out what he’s doing, and to be impressed by it. Other phrases that fall victim to this gag: “I wonder what it feels like, falling out of love” (3x), “I don’t know much about rivers, but I think that I am a strong, brown god” (2x, verbatim, and another time, quoted from a song), and, finally, the granddaddy of all repeated phrases in this book, variations on “teeth sucking.”

This tooth-sucking phenomenon cries for its own separate blog post. As I kept reading on, I had a sinking feeling that it was a bit overused. A quick search through the entire text using Google books yielded just what I had been fearing. Prepare to be horrified (and not even just by the presence of this phrase so many times in one novel, but by the fact that every single over-praising reviewer failed to notice this or mention it).

She shakes her head, slowly, sucks her teeth, like some sex and maternal hybrid. [49]

He sucks his teeth and shakes his head. He’s very slender, jockey sized. [129]

Bing Bing sucks his teeth, though not nearly as loud as KC. [194]

He points at the baker, sucks his teeth, then points vaguely at the first few windows. [194]

“Boy,” teeth suck, “I don’t know how you g’wan clean dat.” [195]

“Yeah, don’t touch anything, she says.” He sucks his teeth again. [195]

KC’s teeth sucking, or the idiot rasping of me endlessly sanding metal. [198]

KC and Bing Bing suck their teeth in unison. [281]

He sucks his teeth and shakes his head once violently. [281]

Feeney turns to go, which draws another teeth suck. [282]

He sucks his teeth and focuses on a point just above my head. [397]

He can’t tell, but he sucks his teeth and shakes his head slowly. [403]

I’m not wrong to be appalled, am I? Could anyone possibly think this isn’t a bit much? The book’s title should be Sucking Teeth! That, or maybe Pulling Teeth, because it started to feel that way. This is worse (though in the same league) as the David Carr potato-metaphor scandal (which you can read about, in all its shock and hilarity, here and here)! By the way, what is this tooth-sucking thing all about, anyway? Is that an action people really perform so often? I don’t think I do it, but even if we give Thomas the benefit of the doubt and assume that it is common, what kind of a guy obsessively notices and chronicles each time a person does it? And how can you hear it, anyway? It happens inside the mouth!

Moving on to the next fiasco, Thomas incessantly inserts song lines into the narrative, always in italics just so you know you’re being educated with jazzy, hip references. The problem is that shoving one line of song lyrics into the middle of a paragraph disrupts the story, and no, not in that Ulysses-esque, artsy, ambitious way of doing it for jarring effect. The narrator talks about winter, and the cold, and then: “The winter wind is blowing strong, my hands ain’t got no gloves…” Or when he thinks about driving in Boston and notes that the roads are mostly straight, he adds, “This is a man’s world…” Always italics, always with the ellipsis, always unnecessary and less effective than Thomas imagined.

Finally, the major connection to a greater, wonderful piece of literature—Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. This, for me, was both a positive and negative current flowing through Man Gone Down. Of course, many have pointed out the similarities, and many seem to find it perfectly fitting, natural, and skillful that Thomas references Ellison’s fabulous work in his book. However, Man Gone Down is less a new novel than it is an homage; in fact, there are so many knowing allusions to Invisible Man (as someone who just read it mere months ago I think it’s possible I caught more of them than most readers would) that at times it felt like Thomas might have decided, “I’m going to take Invisible Man and kind of just re-write it in a modern setting.” Each time that a scene or phrase or action seemed to directly parallel one from Invisible Man I wrote I.M. in the margins, and flipping through my copy, I see that I.M. maybe eight or nine times. As I said, it’s not totally ineffective—in fact it’s probably a smart idea to link your debut novel to such a towering, important, and readable classic—but he might be stretching it too far. Specifically, there is a scene reminiscent of when Ellison’s Invisible Man gets booted from college, a scene similar to when the Invisible Man walks through the streets of New York examining people’s faces, and also numerous mentions of light and dark and isolation (obviously these are themes not just particular to Ellison’s writing, but relating to race in general, and they’re very relevant here, I know that), and finally an obvious imitation is Thomas’ choice to not give his protagonist a name. Yet the most major Invisible Man reference of all comes when the hero goes golfing at a fancy country club with some white men, and he’s about to swing and remarks, “I hear them pleading, exhorting me to hit the ball straight and long, just as I hear the founder rasping from his canvas on the greak oak wall— “Swing, nigger, swing!” —and his brothers hissing in unison, “Amen.” This mention of “the founder;” who could this be? I suppose he means the founder of the country club, but that phrasing, that mentioning of “the founder” without any qualifier like “the founder of…” can only be a conscious reference to the “founder” figure in Invisible Man, who plays a central role and constantly looms over the Invisible Man’s actions and struggles, judging him, making him question his path.

Anyway, I always like to get “the bad” over with first (though of course in this review that ended up being a bulky list) so that we can get to “the good.” And this book does have some wonderful elements to it. Specifically, even though I didn’t like his writing style, there were some individual scenes and passages that blew my mind. First of all, during the chapter called “Big Nig,” the main character, after being called a “big nig” by a clumsy white guy (who gets his face punched in for it, this being another great scene in the book) begins writing his own fiction on napkins in a café. He scribbles down these short scenes (calling them “notes for a novella”) about a character named Big Nig (reminds us of Bigger Thomas from Native Son). These small scenes, which almost function like a book inside a book (the main character, writing them, already being a version of Thomas himself, now also becomes a writer, like Thomas) are just wonderful, and I’d even venture to say that the writing is better than in the rest of the book, which begs the question of why Thomas saved his best stuff for quick, italicized scenes that are meant to be hurriedly jotted down by his character. Here’s a great one: “Thursday afternoon we limp to bars after work. Happy—seemingly easy and free. Then Friday breath and bile from protracted happy hours; more drinking perhaps or perhaps sleep. And you know, in your mind, the dream of weekend empire are all lies.” Wow; pitch-perfect prose. It continues to be gripping, more compulsively readable, when the ‘Big Nig’ story begins on the same page: “Big Nig was a schizophrenic, that’s what he was told. So one day he stopped taking his medication. Nothing happened. So he went out, to be himself—walking streets that seemed familiar and strange at the same time.” Very, very simple, but compelling. Had Thomas followed this more straightforward, bare-bones style for the body of the actual novel (rather than the repetition of phrases, song references and lyrics, and constant flights of fancy into long, abstract reveries), it may have been a different (better) read.

The other seriously excellent scene, and I would argue the crowning achievement of this book, comes at the very end and lasts for a good fifteen pages. It takes place at a fancy golf course, to which the hero is dragged by his friend Marco, to play eighteen holes with three combative white guys. The entire day is described so well, and is so incredibly entertaining and surprising, it seems as though from a different book. Here’s just a taste: “I take the five iron I’ve been fondling and climb up to the tee. They try not to stare, but they do. It must looks ridiculous—at least unusual… although Marco is my friend, I still haven’t dismissed the notion that this is all a setup… I wonder if they can see my legs shaking. Even the black kid is watching, and I can’t help but think that he has something invested in this moment, too—from a perverse claim to caddy shack bragging rights to the complete emancipation of his people.” He’s so nervous, and when he finally does take his first swing on hole one, and it goes extremely well, we suddenly get this surprising, moving gem: “Buster says nothing. Both caddies grin stupidly. The black one snaps out of it and reaches for my club. I wave him off because I can tell I’m about to cry… My people were on that ball.” This is great stuff.

But as I said, moments like those are few and far between. On page 252, in fact (just over halfway through the book) I see that I had written to myself or to some future borrower of my copy, “starting to get very tired of this story right about here.” The golf chapter, if anything, felt like a reward (at last!) at the end of the book for making it this far, surviving 370 pages of tedium and repetition to suddenly reach a surprisingly compelling, well-narrated story of a dramatic, tense golf outing. I have to wonder if the critical success of Man Gone Down has been yet another case of overly-generous reviewers (see the fabulous NYTimes article from last year about there being too many sparkling reviews given these days, I can’t find the link), or if maybe I simply missed something wonderful here. I suppose I’ll never be sure, but I can say I’m relieved to be finished with it. I don’t regret picking it up, though.

Ortiz on 2003 positive list

So as everyone has heard by now, the NYTimes reported today that Sox slugger (or slumper, this season) David Ortiz tested positive for PEDs in 2003.

This is obviously very, very troubling news for baseball. As a Sox fan, I can say that when the Manny steroids news came out, it was surprising but not shocking. Most people around Boston said that it had been obvious for some time. But Papi, I think it’s fair to see, would be a real shock. Ortiz has been one of the greatest guys during his time here—a cordial player on and off the field, kind to fans and loyal to teammates and the organization. Of course, most sports analysts are already noting how quickly he went from being a nobody with the Twins to an all-star hitter in Boston, so it all fits.

But still. I hope it’s not true, though I know that if the news is out, there’s not much left to say. Then again, this all still begs the question of why we can’t just see the other 100 or so names—no one seems to understand why this list is concealed, or at least, if it is and has been concealed, why now does one name trickle into the public sphere every few months or so? Even the NYTimes admits befuddlement:

Baseball first tested for steroids in 2003, and the results from that season were supposed to remain anonymous. But for reasons that have never been made clear, the results were never destroyed… the information was later seized by federal agents investigating the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs to professional athletes, and the test results remain the subject of litigation

Why can’t the MLB or government or whoever now has the rights just publish the entire list, kick every guy out or suspend ‘em or whatever it’s going to be, and we can all wash our hands of the steroids era?

I do have to give props to this hilarious user comment from ‘Leo’ on the NYTimes story:

“Based on the way I have lived my life, I am surprised to learn I tested positive.” Translation: I have been very careful to not get caught. I am surprised I did.

“I will find out what I tested positive for.” Translation: I’ve done many PED, I just don’t know what I am on record for.

“Based on whatever I learn, I will share this information with my club and the public. You know me – I will not hide and I will not make excuses. Translation: Being that I got caught. I will accept that I took whatever substance they caught me with but I need to know first what that was so I don’t just spill the beans about the other things I took.

Probably posted by a Yanks fan, but hey, very funny. Though I’m not yet at the point where I’d be able to laugh it off if the news is officially proven true—and not just because a suspension would hurt the current Red Sox season, but because Ortiz is a local hero who, even during his embarrassing batting slump this year, was supported by nearly everyone because of what he has given to the Fenway faithful. The sad postscript to all of this is that, if true, this sad news will bring down the entire team, not just the one man at fault.

And wait, it won’t just hurt Ortiz’s teammates. The Fenway crowd is going to suffer a major attitude change, or at least, if they don’t, they’re going to look foolish. Will we still hear the fans erupt in chants of, “You do steroids!” when A-Rod steps up to the plate? When Manny was “outed” the fans didn’t really have to change up their style, because he was no longer one of our own. In fact, even though he clearly did it while in Boston, we were rid of him and could almost laugh it off. But now, if Papi’s in the same boat, I don’t think we can get away with ridiculing any of the other 100. Because if you didn’t believe it yet, believe it—this list goes deep. And I’ll bet, too, there’s a good handful of guys shaking in their boots who aren’t even on the list, who may have started using after the ‘03 test. So just imagine how terrified the monsters who are on it, and know they’re on it, must be right now. They figure, and so do I, that one way or another this thing is coming out, and when it all comes out it’s going to be a mess.

More to come, I’m sure.

Book Review: ‘Pygmy’

When I reviewed Snuff, I swore I was done with Chuck. I also called him a “one-trick pony.” However, with Pygmy he has rolled out a new trick, and believe it or not, it paid off.

Palahniuk has created a novel that is creative, laugh-out-loud funny, and even, dare I say, smart. It’s all thanks to the jumbled language in which the foreign narrator tells the story.

Of course, as with any Chuck book, there are flaws. Highs and lows. But, for the first time in a while, there are many more highs. First of all, a brief summary, though it’s kind of obvious from the jacket (which, by the way, looks great. The guy who does Palahaniuk’s cover art, Rodrigo Corral, is a good match for Chuck’s work). The title-character is a trained terrorist (that doesn’t give anything away) of age thirteen who has been sent to America to live with a host family and “infiltrate” American society while building a WMD and preparing an attack on the U.S. Hilarity ensues.

Pygmy tells the story in a jilted foreigner’s English—all the correct words are there, but out of order. At first, I have to say that my impulse was to think of the confusing syntax as a cheap gimmick, something uninspired and over-ambitious (I kept comparing it, unfavorably, to A Clockwork Orange, which relies on a similarly botched English but actually contains its own newly invented lexicon, as opposed to Pygmy which just rearranges the proper diction). However, as the book goes on, understanding the sentences is no longer a challenge. You get used to it, and reading becomes a pleasure as you begin to see just why the lingual style is perfect for deadpan humor, such as when Pygmy’s host sister, whom he lusts after, asks him to be in the Model U.N. assembly, as a favor to her. “Swear, I’ll owe you big-time,” she tells him. Then he thinks to himself: “Perhaps as redeem favor, fulfill obligation, could host sister open vagina for deposit seed of operative me.” Okay, yeah, it’s raunchy, but that’s Chuck. It’s also hilarious and, in a strange way, cute. The jumbled language endears us to Pgymy right away.

As Pygmy tries to learn about the Americana he sees around him, so too do we get to see how our country—its customs, social trends, and institutions—would look to a completely uninformed, naive stranger (or at least, one very plausible take on how it might look). When Pygmy describes things, we laugh, but we also see some scary truth in his reactions. In this way, it’s a social commentary, and although this is what Chuck always tries to do, never has he achieved it so well as he does here. Pygmy reflects during his first gym class: “American education rituals especial efficient at task segregation youth of superior intellect removed from youth gifted superior physical prowess. Best example, ritual label as ‘dodgeball.’ Therein all peer males engage mock battle under witness fertile peer females… males boasting superior musculature inflict injure upon males typical of superior intellect although suffering inferior height-to-weight ratio, body mass index, and stature.” Sure, accounts such as this one are very funny, but you don’t just think here, “Haha, he doesn’t understand dodgeball at all,” you also realize, “Hmm, yeah, I guess dodgeball would look pretty strange and pointless to someone completely unfamiliar.”

When Pygmy thinks back to his rigorous training back in his home nation, he recalls the commanding officer, who informed them: “American devils no squeamish of any possible genital acts. Forever tunneling rodents inserted rectums even top famous movie actors.” Again we see hilarity, but also truth; it seems possible this could indeed be the way that some foreigners view our country, due to certain representations in film and television. Uh-oh.

There are problems with the novel, as I mentioned. For one thing, Pygmy continually remembers quotes of famous dictators and tyrants, like Lenin, Hitler, Trotsky, and Mao. He quotes them to the reader during times when the relevance of the quote is absurdly obvious. Then, after mentioning the quote, he repeats the quote, verbatim, at the end of the chapter. This happens in nearly every chapter—it’s a gag Palahniuk loves dearly (see Survivor, Snuff, and Fight Club) and as in the past, it is overused here and overbearing. The host sister herself tells him near the end: “Real smarts begin when you quit quoting other people.” Palahniuk ought to listen.

The only other major problem I have is with a pivotal scene in which a high-tech vibrator goes rogue and starts attacking kids, running around, hissing steam and spouting fire—it’s too much of a stretch. I can imagine a vibrator going haywire, sure, and maybe even spouting off steam or catching fire. But the thing begins chasing people and then even attacking them, and it’s too much of a fantasy in a novel that is otherwise very grounded in reality.

No other major issues. This thing is funny, provocative, compelling, and it actually has what you’d call a traditional “happy ending,” which is new territory for Chuck and I’m sure was difficult for him to accept. But it works wonderfully. I’m not giving too much away here, I don’t think, but let’s just say that what happens is just what you hope (but don’t expect) to see.

I’m not saying this is “high lit.” It wasn’t even reviewed by the NY Times (I know, maybe not a fair indicator, but that’s kind of my benchmark for judging an author’s reputation), and regardless of how much I liked it, Palahniuk is no Updike, Roth, or Toni Morrison. He’s not even a Dave Eggers (modern, hip, but still highly artful and award-winning). He’s a genre writer.

All that being said, Pygmy will absolutely hook you, and after suffering through some major garbage of his (Haunted, Lullaby, Snuff) but also really liking a couple (Rant, Choke) I can say that for my money, this is his best book yet.

In fact, come to think of it, before reading Pygmy I always said that Palahniuk’s greatest work was Rant. Now, I see the major similarity: Rant, too, was written in an experimental form. It was an “oral history,” comprised not of chapters but of brief, quick statements by a myriad of characters. Pygmy, too, is an experiment, due to the language in which it is told, and it works just as well. I think if Palahniuk keeps experimenting, he will continue to impress us.

Sarah never fails to entertain

Headline from today’s Boston Globe: Palin steps down as governor to write book, build a coalition.

I was chuckling before I even started reading. Here are some gems that paint such hilarious mental images I need not explain them much further:

1. “stepped down yesterday as Alaska governor… to write a book.” Wait, this from the woman who could not name a single print source that she reads on a regular basis?! Not one! Don’t worry about her book being trashy, though, because as she said herself, “We have a vast variety of sources where we get our news to.”

2. “wants to… continue to speak her mind on the social networking site Twitter.” Ha! What do her tweets say— “Huntin with todd, then watchin evil biased CNN while I furiously cuss at TV & hack away @ moose carcass! America, fuck yeah!” Well, that’s what they should say, anyway. How did she hear about Twitter when she’s never read a newspaper or magazine? I guess there’s always the blogosphere. I wonder if she visits Gawker.

3. Addressing journalists: “How about, in honor of the American soldier, you quit making things up!” Yeah! Take that, liberal media! You bastards! How dare you faithfully cover all aspects of that dirty, disgusting campaign she sullied with six separate scandals! How dare you.

Approval ratings may be down to around 50% for the O-man, but that’s still far higher than they ever were for Bush, and I still argue it won’t be enough to ruin re-election. Of course, he’s got 3+ years to either clean it up or blow it, but it’s still fun to speculate. Plus, all of this is on my mind because my father recently said there is “no way Obama will get a second term.” I disagree, and not even because I’m your cliché, allegiance-sworn Obamaniac (I’m not really), but because I just don’t see who could beat him. Mitt fucking Romney? I don’t think that sleazeball has it in him to try again. I’d say that ole #44 is nearly guaranteed eight years in office.

And if this broad is his competition? Well. You know.

[UPDATE, 7/28/09]

No one says it quite as well as Maureen Dowd. From her column today:

“Sarah, who was once a blazingly confident media darling, came across [at her farewell picnic in Fairbanks, Al.] as aggrieved, paranoid and press-loathing in her new role as bizarre babe-at-large, a Nixon with hair extensions ranting about “American apologetics,” which sounds like a cross between apologists and Dianetics.”

[UPDATE, 7/30/09]

Wait, wait, now I’m up to speed. Somehow I head read for days about how she was using Twitter, I had a good laugh, and then neglected to even check it out for myself. But the results are even better than I imagined. Here’s one of my favorite tweets from her archive:

W/kids in camper; on World’s Best Rd Trip!To soar by Mt.McKinley&rushing rivers,we remember all of AK is BIG/WILD/GOOD LIFE;feel freedom here

Yes, feel freedom! Yeeeaaaah! Oh man. Her picture is even better—she stands on a background of Alaska’s landscape overlaid by an American flag, wearing a tight-ass business suit and… oh, just look for yourself. She even autographed the photo for us! This truly is candidate marketing at its most scummy. Plus, do you see that she’s wearing a polar bear pin? The irony! Of all fashion accessories, this on a woman who lobbied to drill for oil off the coast regardless of how much harm she was told would come to the polar bear population. This stuff is comedic gold.

Simple attempt to buy a DVD leads to aggravation

Recently my mom has gotten into the show Entourage. What a hip mom, right? I’ve seen all seasons, natch, and am already on to the current season (thank you MegaVideo), but I re-watch them with her. Recently we’ve been getting through a few episodes a week, and because we don’t get HBO, and don’t want to watch on my tiny laptop screen, she splurged for the DVDs.

Yesterday we finished Season 3, Part 2 (HBO split them onto two separate DVD sets, each with a measly 8 episodes, those con artists). Today she was feeling sick to her stomach, so I thought, ‘Hey, I know, I’ll go surprise her by picking up the next one—season 4.’ Not so easy.

Before I left, I checked Amazon.com, obviously, and found that the price was $18.49. Now, I’ve always said that for books or DVDs, there’s no reason to buy an item anywhere other than here. They’ve got the best prices and selection (it’s a web site, so they have everything, in stock, right now), always. And I mean always.

That being said, I know that sometimes you want something now, in your hands, without waiting for shipping. In those cases, for DVDs at least, I always say Best Buy. They’ve got the best prices of any store, apart from Amazon. I knew that in an actual store the DVD would be a bit more expensive, but I figured the different wouldn’t be more than, say, $5 dollars. WRONG.

I drove all the way to Best Buy over at Fenway and found, to my horror, that the Entourage Season 4 DVD was priced there at $34.99. I could not believe it. I said to the woman, “$35 dollars, you’re kidding right?! Did you know it’s like $19 on Amazon?” She kind of smiled weakly and said, “Yeah, Amazon’s tough to compete with… they can sell stuff pretty cheap.” I wrestled with the idea of buying it as I had planned, because after all, I was there in store, and there’s something to be said for walking out with the item rather than waiting for an online order.

But no. I’d have to be a moron to pay $35 for something I can have for $19, right? Apparently, then, there are enough morons to keep Best Buy in business. I turned around, walked out (trying to look as angry as possible), and drove home. On the way, I called my dad to bitch about what had happened, and he asked why I hadn’t tried Borders in the Atrium Mall. I told him that I had thought of that (which I had), but figured Borders would be far more expensive than Best Buy, because in the past I’ve always skimmed the DVD shelves there and laughed at the ridiculous prices, most of their standard, single-film DVDs being $29 where they would normally be $19.99 at Best Buy.

But after being so appalled by the price at Best Buy, I was willing to try anything. Besides, Borders couldn’t possibly be trying to pawn the thing off for more than the outrageous $35 Best Buy was asking, could they?

Yes they could, and they were. I called Borders, and learned that their price for the Entourage Season 4 DVD was $39.99. Forty dollars for an item that’s eighteen on Amazon! This was getting unreal.

But it was real. And it was still real when I called the only other place I could think of that sells DVDs in my area—Newbury Comics in Needham. The girl on the phone told me that they didn’t have the Season 4 set new, but sold it used! ‘Great,’ I thought, ‘That’s actually fine because it’ll be mad cheap, and I can get my hands on it today.’ What was the price for it used? $25 dollars!

Gee, okay, I’ll buy it used for 25 when I could get it brand new for 18? I don’t think so.

I guess the bottom line is that I seriously cannot grasp why anyone would buy a book or DVD in a store when there’s Amazon.com. I’m well aware I sound like an employee or a half-assed Billy Mays making an endorsement, but I don’t care. Their selection is infinite, their prices are the very lowest of any outfit around, and shipping is free once you spend $25. And come on, you’re pretty much always going to reach $25. If you only want one item and your total is short of $25, just toss in a paperback you’ve been wanting and boom, you’ve made it to free shipping. So why go anywhere else?

I really want to announce this to the entire world, because I’m just so puzzled to think about so many suckers paying these absurd mark-ups at store locations. Poor, poor suckers. And I can’t even laugh at them, because I’m too baffled.

“Will Amazon-com be around when grandma’s gone, Mom?”

Yes.

Book Review: ‘The Road’

Well gee, I’m about three years late on this one, but after all the hype, I finally had to give in and read The Road. I would toss in some links here to back up my use of the term “hype,” like maybe the absurdly glowing NYTimes review (in which she of the often questionable judgment, Janet Maslin, swoons: “written with stripped-down urgency and… stunning, savage beauty. This is an exquisitely bleak incantation — pure poetic brimstone”), the Oprah’s Book Club announcement, or the Pulitzer news release from the day this thing won, but it’s unnecessary because it’s just a fact: hype is exactly what has surrounded this novel from its first release in 2006.

Why did I wait so long to give it a shot? A quick skimming when it first came out led me to scoff and walk away. I was in Ireland and saw the book on the bestseller shelf of Hodges & Figgis. I stood there and read a few random pages—the writing was terrible! I couldn’t believe it. I know, I know—graceful simplicity, right? No, I had seen that before in the likes of The Sun Also Rises. This was just plain simplicity, no frills, no great artistry, nothing deeper behind the short, childish sentence fragments. This was a far cry from the terse, fully-loaded syntactical style of Hemingway.

Then it just kept cropping up—I saw people reading it on the T in Boston, I listened to one of my Middlebury profs praise McCarthy and say her favorite book of all time is Blood Meridian, and then, finally, I discovered that Harold Bloom, whom I admire and respect, listed McCarthy as one of the four greatest American novelists alive today, along with Phil Roth (I agree), Thomas Pynchon (I need to read a bit more of his stuff) and Don DeLillo (disagree). I suddenly felt embarrassed I had never read anything by McCarthy, whereas before I had just felt matter-of-fact about it, like, ‘Oh, haven’t gotten around to it.’

Welp, I wish I hadn’t given in. The Road is nearly all hype, and I’m baffled as to how it tricked the Pulitzer judges. I’m being hyperbolic here, sure; there are definitely some strong points. But the Pulitzer? I don’t think so.

My first problem, as I mentioned (and I suppose, really, it’s my only problem, but it’s the entire thing) is the writing style. The book is sick with incomplete sentence fragments and run-ons that completely lack necessary punctuation. The literary establishment seems to think this is bold, creative prose, but it’s actually just bad grammar. Take this sentence: “He dreamt of walking in a flowering wood where birds flew before them he and the child and the sky was aching blue but he was learning how to wake himself from just such siren worlds.” I count maybe five or six things wrong with this sentence, the least of which is the use of the overblown, showy phrase “flowering wood.”

There are many, many other examples that I bookmarked, and I’d actually like to include most of them here, because it’s just too fun, and also too difficult to select only a few. How about: “They got the fire going and spread their tarp and hung their wet clothes on poles to steam and stink and they sat wrapped in the quilts naked while the man held the boy’s feet against his stomach to warm them.” This quick, rapid-fire kind of sentence makes sense when describing some kind of excited, rushed action or frenzied event. But here, McCarthy’s recounting for us an entire list of actions, a series of events that took an hour! The run-on is out of place, and encourages the eyes to skim.

Don’t even get me started on the refusal to use quotation marks. I’ve seen it before, like in stuff by Eggers, but in that case it works okay (though even there it was clearly a bit pretentious). Here, it’s unbearable. It’s one thing to omit quotation marks, but often the dialogue isn’t even given its own line: “The boy kept pulling at his coat. Papa? he said.” This doesn’t look clever to me, it looks lazy, like McCarthy just wanted to bang the thing out, was tired of hitting the ‘return’ or ‘tab’ key. Maybe it was even a sloppy error and then the editor, like all the others who have convinced themselves he’s a genius, figured it was intentional and cooed, “Oh, how original!”

Finally, there’s the story. I wish I were able to say, “In addition to all the grammatical problems and trashy writing, the story isn’t even interesting! It’s boring and flat!” But I can’t say this in good conscience because, as both fans and detractors of this thing are aware, it is in fact very compelling. It’s not so much that it’s a new idea; after 28 Days Later, I Am Legend, Cloverfield, and now the forthcoming Y: The Last Man and The Book of Eli, the disaster/wasteland epic is old and tired (though it still clearly sells box office tickets). It’s that the angle from which it’s told this time—the father and son bond—is very gripping.

There are moments, then, that are emotionally moving. However, they are usually ruined by the poor writing. Here’s the best example, and it comes when the father hands the son a gun and tries to leave him alone for a bit:

Stop crying. Do you understand?

I think so.

No. Do you understand?

Yes.

Say yes I do Papa.

Yes I do Papa.

He looked down at him. All he saw was terror. He took the gun from him. No you dont, he said.

I dont know what to do Papa, I dont know what to do.

Wow. A potentially sad, powerful moment, but personally I was too distracted by the numerous errors to enjoy it or get any real effect from the emotion of the scene. First of all, that “yes I do Papa” garbage. That line should read: “Say, ‘Yes I do, Papa.’” Then the boy should respond: “Yes I do, Papa.” But it’s all streamlined, all rushed. Then towards the end: “He took the gun from him. No you dont, he said.” The reader isn’t even aware that someone is speaking until we get the “he said.” Oh, and did you notice that McCarthy, who apparently is above proper English, doesn’t feel the need to include the apostrophe in “don’t?” He just doesnt feel like it, he wont do it, you cant make him do it! It’s mildly offensive to someone who cares about proper usage.

Basically, it’s a really bold, gripping story, but “high lit” it is not, though the rest of the world seems certain that it is. It’s a “sheep” moment—a few high-minded intellectuals decided The Road is great, and the others all followed suit because they figured that if they just couldn’t see its merits, they must be stupid. I’m not embarrassed, though. This thing is overrated. And by the way, here’s another secret that somehow no one wants to admit: it’s a sci-fi book! If the same exact text had been written by someone without Cormac McCarthy’s golden reputation, it would be dime store trash, sitting on the sci-fi shelf next to Terry Brooks. But hey, it really tugged at Oprah’s heartstrings, so that’s saying something. As we know, an Oprah seal of approval means instant financial (and usually critical) success. Congrats, Cormac, you’re now in the company of Eckhart Tolle. Let’s hope the old ‘modern classic’ Blood Meridian, which will be my only other McCarthy attempt, does better.

The implications of celebrities on Twitter

“The whole world is watching,” said Ashton Kutcher amidst the frenzy of the hotly-contested race between him and CNN to see which Twitter entity could reach one million “followers” first. Kutcher won by a good thirty minutes. Surprised?

Something is happening on the Internet, and it could be big, and you have to check it out. It’s Twitter, for those who haven’t heard of it (though if you’re reading a blog, then you’re the kind of person who absolutely has heard of it). Laugh at the name all you want—derisive mocking is the standard reaction I get when I try to tell my college friends about it—but it doesn’t seem likely to go away anytime soon.

Twitter has existed for over two years now, but only in the past six months or so has it truly exploded (is that fair to say?), and it seems to be seeping into the national news media more and more every day.

The key to Twitter is that everything is entirely public. There are no friend requests like on Facebook, so it’s not just the same as Facebook “status updates,” which are actually just a blatant copy cat idea. To subscribe to a person’s feed and see all of their updates, you simply click “follow.” As soon as you sign up, Twitter offers you a list of Selected Users that “you might have heard of.” When I joined in January, this included: Greg Grunberg, the TV actor from Alias and Heroes; the NBA’s own Shaquille O’Neal; faux-news site The Onion; Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight on The Office, and sci-fi author Neil Gaiman.

Twitter has so much going on—some people just use it to stay in touch with friends, but then there are politicians on it, businesses tweeting about offers, and even college coaches utilizing the service for recruitment purposes.

But what gets me interested is the celebrity angle. At first, of course, you want to doubt that all of the celebrity accounts are actually run by the real people, until you see that Shaq (whose username is THE_REAL_SHAQ in case you’re a cynic) uploads bizarre, random photos of himself lying in bed late at night or sitting next to his pal Steve Nash on the Phoenix Suns team bus—photos from his iPhone that only he could have taken. He also announces funny contests: “I’m eatin lunch outside in downtown Dallas. Whoeva touches me first gets tickets to tha game.”
Is it a waste to be on this thing? I’m not so sure. To me, there is actually a fascinating personal opinion question raised by the presence of so many celebrities on Twitter. Everything that they do, depending on just how personal they choose to get with their tweets, is announced for perfect strangers to see. Just by clicking “follow,” you can find out, if this information would appeal to you (not me, but hey), what Shaq ate for breakfast today (answer: an egg white omelet). This changes everything about celebrity fandom.
Then there is a second level of fascination, on which the celebrities communicate with each other.  These interactions occur on a live stage for all to see. Take Oprah’s first tweet, for instance, to which Shaq responded hilariously. I mean really, who would have the balls to tease Oprah fucking Winfrey? Shaq, that’s who:

Celebrities have traditionally seemed like massive, special figures who inhabit a world above our own, but now they are broadcasting details about their personal lives to the masses, the peons.
The question, then, is of how to view this celebrity-fan interaction. I believe there are two possible choices. You could harshly judge this entire network to be just another form of celebrity worship, something sick and strange. That’s the cynic’s route, the easy/apathetic way. And I’ve heard it all many times already: “That thing is so lame” or, “Why would I want to waste my time online reading about the boring shit people do all day?”

However, there is another way you could look at this. What if the celebrities crawling all over Twitter are actually participating in something fascinating, whether they realize it or not, and not because the actual content of their updates is interesting necessarily, but because of what their participation suggests.

I go with the latter; I choose to view all of this Twitter activity as having major implications. In the past, news about celebrities is delivered in trashy tabloids or gossip sits like PerezHilton and TMZ. Now, those “Hollywood gods” can actually take control by choosing, voluntarily, to disperse information about themselves or their daily routine directly to the fans. Hollywood fanatics, meanwhile—whether its movie buffs who care about actors, fashionista girls who want to see who is wearing what, or teenybopper Gylenhaal-adorers—they, through the process of response tweets, become not star-struck sheep, but equals who engage in back-and-forth repartee with their sports and screen idols.
The Ashton Kutcher/Demi Moore marital duo is a big story in and of itself. Both actors joined around the same time and have separate usernames, from which they post sappy, painfully romantic messages to each other. Kutcher (aplusk) pulls antics like posting a sneaky photo from his camera phone (a “Twitpic”) of Moore’s ass when she was leaning down and wearing only underwear. At the same time, the two of them have also racked up achievements of actual value. Recently, Moore (who uses the sickeningly adorable moniker MrsKutcher) grabbed national news attention when she essentially used Twitter to help authorities save a woman who was about to commit suicide.

Twitter is also interesting not just because of the celebrity presence—in fact, many would say that is the least interesting thing about the service—but because of how it affects the way we consume news media. Stories are now “out there” as soon as someone on the inside tweets about it. People want their news now, and they don’t want to wait for an official news site or hard-copy newspaper to get it. Twitter satisfies this demand, and additionally allows people to ignore certain media outlets. Users can pick favorites by following, say, NYTimes and NPR but not CNN or FoxNews. Users can also respond to one another and edit tweets, essentially allowing people to get involved in the news and report and comment on stories as they are happening. This is live, engaged, modern citizen journalism.
Of course all of this worries journalists because there is a fear that the public will now get its news exclusively through 140-character online yelps, but personally I choose to believe that there will always be a place for longer feature stories, and that if a person cares about a story, she won’t be satisfied reading a miniature summary of it, but will want to pursue a link to a daily online paper or blog to learn more details.
A fabulous example of how Twitter delivers news ahead of the pack comes from last year when Joe Biden was still a presidential candidate and Tony Messenger, a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, tweeted Biden’s now-infamous blunder in telling Sen. Chuck Graham to “stand up and let the people see you,” before realizing that Graham is confined to a wheelchair.

In terms of critics, they’re out there. Many of them, it seems, are almost angry that Twitter has become so popular. There is a hilarious animated video on YouTube called “Twouble With Twitters,” (below) in which Twitter users are made out to be pathetic losers with no friends. The main idiot arrives at work and sits down at his computer, screaming every few seconds, “Just got to work!” and “Sitting in my chair now!” After his annoyed co-worker reveals he has not heard of Twitter, the first guy pulls him up into the sky, where mindless zombie-people float by muttering lame, uninteresting things like, “watching TV with my cat” and “I forgot how much I like pickles.” Check it:

The parody is extremely well-done, and I started to think that if I had seen the video before giving Twitter a chance, I probably would never have joined.

But the video’s criticism goes hand-in-hand with all the people who resist the service by arguing, “If I wanted to know what my friends were doing, I could just call them.” Yeah, but you don’t. People just don’t use cell phones that way anymore.  They rarely call each other just to see what’s up; instead, they might send a text. Twitter gives you a way to satisfy the casual thought, “I wonder what Ben’s doing.” You check Ben’s Twitter, and his recent post is “in Chicago for a med school interview.” Simple enough. If you want to hear the whole story, you can call him later.

There are so many interesting things happening on Twitter every day. As an avid consumer of pop culture, I am intrigued by the celebrity presence and the apparent process of normalization that occurs when larger-than-life famous people send personal messages out to their fans. Meanwhile, as a student of journalism I am also dying to see where this outlet is going and how it will continue to affect the media and, specifically, news reporting. The future is bright… or is it dim?

When Apathy Comes Easy

This ran in the December 20, 2008 edition of The Middlebury Campus newspaper.

This column was written for the first-ever all-Green edition of the Campus. This week’s paper, in which every piece focused on environmentalism, grabbed attention all over the web and was mentioned in a story on the Tree Hugger blog.

For this special all-environmental issue of the paper, I was asked to write something relating to environmentalism. Makes sense, right? But I worried, “What could I say about eco-stuff that would be interesting? I don’t know much about it, and I don’t care.”

That’s when I realized that my very apathy itself is what provides for a compelling conversation. Sure, I’ve always refrained from littering, and separated plastic from paper (thank you, dorm room double trash bin system). But there are so many other measures we can take, and I know I should start getting involved. But it’s just so hard to care.

I know that I’m not alone in my apathy, because in my years here I (and countless other students) have often mocked “hippies” and scoffed at Sunday Night Group, Weybridge House, and other environmentally-conscious students who I now sort of envy and admire.

A big influence on my sudden decision to care about nature was when my academic adviser was discussing a new book he’s working on about ecological references in Shakespeare. He explained his passion for the subject by admitting, “Like any other liberal professor in the Northeast, I think we have been fucking up our environment and we have to do something!” In the moment, it didn’t sound cheesy at all, but actually convincing and inspiring.

A big motivator was also the election of Obama, which really showed that a bunch of educated, globally-conscious people can have an impact if they team up. I have to believe that part of the reason he won was because voters could see that the other guy, the old guy, didn’t care at all about “green” issues.

The decision of whether or not to care about helping the environment recalls David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon in 2005. He said: “Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting… Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of.”

The challenge is to overcome this inadvertent self-centered approach to the world. I’m still trying to learn, but from what I’ve read there are so many ways to “get green.” The idea is to select a level of participation that works for you. For example, I found a web site on “how to green your bathroom.” They recommend turning the faucet off while you brush your teeth. I can do that! Then they encourage you not to shave in the shower, because it wastes water. That one is also doable. But next, they suggest that, in the shower, “Try shutting off the water while you soap up!” Nope. I’m just not going to do that.

And that’s okay, right? It’s all about doing whatever you can. It’s like the guy who doesn’t vote in elections because he figures, “What could my one vote do? It doesn’t have any power.” He’s right that a single vote doesn’t swing a presidential election (regardless of what the new Kevin Costner movie would have you believe). But his attitude is wrong because if everyone thought that way, then no one would vote, and then one vote really would be an impact.

Let’s say you like to get food from Ross Dining Hall and take it to your room, so you use plastic utensils—like a spoon, a knife, maybe two forks a day. That’s 4 a day, 28 a week, 420 a semester. Now imagine shoving those 420 utensils into your desk drawer. They’re not going to fit. Damn, that’s a lot of trash you made in utensils alone. Imagine if the school stopped picking up your trash. How fast would your dorm room fill up to the ceiling with plates, empty bags of chips, water bottles, and condom wrappers? You’d be swimming in garbage.

Sure, that’s a lame, preachy way to put it, but it can be surprising just to think about your impact. What’s harder is to think about everyone else whom you can’t control; so don’t. Just focus on your own efforts. It’s like how at Weight Watchers (this reference is funnier if you know me), they anticipate that people will be skeptical and think that losing two pounds is nothing to be proud of, no big feat. So they tell you to fill a Ziploc bag with 2 lbs of butter, because you do it and it makes you say, “Holy hell, that’s disgusting. And so heavy!”

Anyway, I’m going to start trying, and so should you. I’m going to stop buying Fiji water bottles that get thrown away, and instead buy one of those Sigg metal bottles. And I’m going to stop using harmful CFCs in the chemicals that run my giant corporate factory. Just kidding.

Book Review: ‘The Abstinence Teacher’

I’m not quite sure what went wrong for Tom Perrotta this time around. I happen to have really liked the two books I read by him before this one. Joe College was heartfelt, funny, and pretty deep for a story ostensibly about such lighthearted fare as college social life. And Little Children—I say this with no exaggeration—was fabulous. That novel was well-paced and strangely riveting.

Unfortunately, The Abstinence Teacher is far less successful. In summation, just to get it out into the air now: I thought it was boring, in the most basic sense. Now, obviously that’s not typically a valid indictment of a book, since a novel’s subject matter can be mundane or slow but still described in beautiful prose (not the case here) or interesting for other reasons, such as social or political implications or relevance to current events. This latter appeal of sometimes-boring stories is what Perrotta seems to be going for here by broaching the ‘hot topic’ of abstinence education, but he does so in an uninteresting and non-controversial way.

Yes, each side of the argument is conveyed (the teacher who feels that abstinence curriculum is a disservice to kids, versus the school board in a small, conservative town that feels it safer to withhold true sex ed). But Perrotta doesn’t choose sides, as Liesl Schillinger acknowledges (“Perrotta has never been one to cast stones”) in her NYTimes review. His refusal to give any sort of answer at all at the end of the novel is annoying, and rather than interesting (i.e. “Some issues cannot be resolved!”) it is actually unimpressive, and kind of seems cowardly.

We’re left to draw our own conclusions, I suppose, about who is correct—the secular crowd (led by reluctant abstinence teacher Ruth Ramsey, who continually gets brought up before the principal for straying from her assigned curriculum) or the religious zealots (led by the other protagonist, Tim Mason, a one-time drug addict who has found Jesus and sworn off booze, pot, porn, and everything else that might be fun). But as I said, Perrotta does not choose a side, and neither can his characters, who at the end are still where they started, essentially.

Sure, Mason leaves his goody-goody church-going second wife, but he never officially leaves the church. He does experience a sort of meltdown in which he returns to his old ways by smoking a joint and having a few beers, so the implication might be that he has seen the foolishness of his religious worship, will leave the church, and has ‘come around’ to Ruth’s side. But all of this is unclear; Tim takes no real action (on the final page he cowardly sits hiding in Ruth’s house while Pastor Dennis bangs on the door, demanding to speak with him) and Ruth does not exactly join the church (though she respects Tim and she allows her daughters, who develop an interest in Jesus, to attend church). So both characters do nothing. Perrotta does nothing with them, just sets up some mildly interesting plot developments (Ruth reconnects with an old chubby-but-lovable high school flame only to discover he has lost weight and become an arrogant prick, Tim begins hanging out with the ‘wrong crowd’ of poker-playing manly men, to the dismay of his obnoxious pal Pastor Dennis) but in the end, nothing changes.

What happens, I believe, is that you’re left agreeing with whichever side you sided with before you began the book. Perrotta’s story doesn’t at all change your views, since the views of the two main characters are not changed. The core driving force of the novel is the battle between religious and secular (or abstinence education and proper sex-ed, conservative and liberal, whichever angle you choose it’s all one battle), and yet neither side prevails. Throughout the book, I felt as though the religious characters who walked around spouting phrases like “This is a good day for Jesus” were ridiculous and deluded, and I identified with Ruth Ramsey, who wants her children to stay far away from those crazies. But when we see into the minds of those religious freaks, whose thoughts are conveyed through third-person omniscience, they are described with equal sensitivity and consideration, so I would bet that a person who supported abstinence education and loved Jesus—say, Sarah Palin—would read this same novel and conclude that it is the Ruth Ramseys of the world who have it wrong and are destined for Hell.

And, again, beyond all that less-than-interesting hooey about religion, the book is plain unexciting. I was never compelled to turn the pages, or stay up late reading. There are isolated moments of excitement (mostly the sex), but the rest is rather uninteresting, and it often feels like Perrotta tries too hard to remind us how much research he conducted. This is most evident in the sections about the procedure of the church services (complete with full sermon!) and in one especially drab three-page account of Tim’s job in loan management.

Perrotta has never been a fabulous writer, in the sense that he’s not showy. His vocabulary is limited, and you won’t find much symbolism or subtle imagery. His novels read more like magazine features. But he is considered a good writer for other reasons, mostly for the dead-on way he portrays average life. In Little Children, for example, he deftly describes the suspenseful build-up that leads to an illicit affair between two married people. You turn the pages rapidly as the two characters continue to meet and flirt but resist being physical, and then, finally, when they do have sex, it’s shocking and steamy. Meanwhile, the central affair is surrounded and bolstered by additional threads of plot, all compelling, including a pedophile’s presence in the town, an ex-cop’s struggle to deal with his anger, and the plight of the spouses of the two protagonists. Each plot line is tied together and interwoven, all are dependent on each other. It all comes together as suspense reaches a boiling point for each subplot, and then climaxes in a wonderful, rewarding unraveling of every character’s best-laid plans.

The Abstinence Teacher lacks that suspense, and even though it’s about a man and a woman who feel that classic love-hate spark (their opposing religious views cause them to clash quite publicly, and yet they are inexplicably attracted to each other), we cannot call it a love story because the two never come together. In fact, they never even kiss. The entire story builds up to their coupling, but Perrotta refuses to give us what has to be coming: the story ends with the two of them in the house, friendly, but not physical. Some would probably praise this, and say that the unfinished romance is the whole point, and that Perrotta is brave to leave us unfulfilled, but that’s garbage.

Plus, there are none of the interesting subplots that we get in Little Children. It’s pretty much all Ruth and Tim, save for the addition of a gay couple Ruth befriends, who break up and then make up, all without any surprising turns or interesting lessons to convey. Ruth’s daughters are intrigued by Tim’s devout behavior (he’s their soccer coach) and so they beg Ruth to allow them to go to church and see what it’s like. She consents, but we never actually find out what the girls felt, or if they liked it, or if they’ll be religious in the future. It’s yet another subplot that gets thrown in but leads nowhere. It’s all dead ends here.

And yet, the book has received great reviews. I can only conclude that this is a classic case of reviewers thinking a book is better than it is because they have been conditioned to think the author is a good writer who puts out good books. After Election, Joe College, and Little Children were all big hits, book critics must have just expected this one to be great as well (talk about highly anticipated, the film rights were purchased before this thing was even published). Then, they reviewed it accordingly, without stopping to acknowledge that it falls flat.

There’s clear evidence in the reviews themselves. Check out the praise that covers the paperback version—all the quotes are about Perrotta’s writing in general, rather than the book itself. Time writes, “Nobody renders the world of soccer moms and sprinklers and SUVs like Perrotta. He’s the Steinbeck of suburbia.” Flashy catch line, yes, and the alliterative title may be deserved, but Perrotta already established that reputation. This book doesn’t have any soccer moms, sprinklers, or SUVs. The comment praises Perrotta, not The Abstinence Teacher.

Again, just below that one, a quote from the NYTimes Book Review calls Perrotta “a truth-telling, unshowy chronicler of modern-day America.” Yup, that he is: truth-telling, indeed, and definitely unshowy. But what about this book? What truth does it tell? That the battle between religious and secular rages on? Why did I need an unremarkable novel to tell me what I already knew from the news?

The other quote on the back cover, from The Seattle Times, tops off the group: “Those who haven’t curled up on the couch with this writer’s other books are missing a very great pleasure.” Yeah, maybe his other books.

I wish the many people who raved about this one would read it again, and pause for a moment to think about how bored they are when slogging through it. The Abstinence Teacher was unfortunately disappointing. I cannot recommend it, though I’ll probably still give Perrotta’s next novel a chance. After all, Chuck Palahniuk keeps fucking up, and I keep going back for more. And this was only Perrotta’s first failure, in my view.

NYTimes 2008 book cover selections

Just a brief note: Over at the New York Times Book Design Review blog (actually the site claims that the BDR is not affiliated with the NYTimes, which is puzzling), they’ve posted their 27 choices for the best book cover designs of 2008. You can even vote on them up until December 31.

For what it’s worth, my favorite is the cover for Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life, which is holding its own in a tie for second place. The design is by Steve Snider and Douglas Smith, image below. The design is appropriate for obvious reasons (assuming you’ve read The Metamorphosis), and I like the clever “book within a book” idea created by the beetle reading the book itself on the cover, sort of like those paintings of a painting within a painting within a painting. Or when you gaze into a mirror that is facing another mirror, and that ‘hall of mirrors’ effect is created, where you can see an infinite number of reflections stretching into the background.

Unsurprisingly, as is often the case with contests like this, I detest the design that is currently (miles) ahead of the rest. It will almost certainly win, and I think it’s actually rather tough on the eyes, but maybe there’s something going on, some clever statement it broadcasts, that I just haven’t quite gotten yet.

Honorable mentions: As far as the other choices go, I also like the covers of Sharp Teeth and Soon I Will Be Invincible.

The problems with ‘Entourage’ continue

Let me begin by assuring everyone that like every other American man (an exaggeration, I know, but most of the ones I know), I love this show. Or at least, I did originally. I was pulled in by the chummy male cameraderie, the hot girls, the zingy one-liners, and of course by Jeremy Piven, who carries the entire program on his back.

But last night’s Season 5 finale was just too disappointing to keep watching this show. I mean, I say this knowing I’ll probably come back for more, but really what matters is the very fact that I’m even considering swearing it off for good. They may have lost me, and I’ll bet I’m not the only one.

First, the problems I’ve had with the show all season:

1. It hasn’t been what it once was—exciting, thoughtful, compelling. The program seems to have lapsed into the same circular plotlines again and again. Vince gets a movie, it’s a big hit, next movie, it’s a dud, he’s back on the B-list, desperate for an offer. He gets another one, it looks to be huge, the filming goes wrong and it tanks. Whatever.

1a. A sub-problem here is that the fringe characters are also too often ignored. When will Turtle be involved in something interesting? And how can we believe in him as a character—a perfectly normal, funny, social guy who’s content to be his rich actor friend’s chauffeur bitch? I don’t buy it. Perhaps these types exist in Hollywood, but if they do, they wouldn’t be interesting enough to get a spot on a hit television series. They need to give Turtle, and Drama too, some more stories. Especially when the “main character,” Vince, is so dull. This brings me to another huge problem that I’ve had since season 2:

2. Vince sucks. I used to say that it’s the character, not the fault of Adrian Grenier, but now I’m pretty convinced that Grenier himself is a shitty actor. But it doesn’t natter which is true—Vince as a person is not likeable. He has no spine, cannot make his own decisions, acts cowardly, and generally says uninteresting things. What does he do on the program besides bang hot girls and smoke weed? He is not the protagonist in terms of who we the viewers care about, and he hasn’t been in a long time, so the show just needs to recognize this now and remove him from the action as much as possible. From what I can tell, the audience loves Ari, E, and the Drama/Turtle friendship. Kevin Connolly, by the way, is fabulous in this show. Totally underrated.

3. The celebrity cameos are becoming, for me, too frequent. It’s like, we get it, the boys of Vince’s crew are well-known around Hollywood (in this fake universe)! Enough. I fear that Entourage could be headed for Simpsons territory, that is, a show which in its twilight years has turned more and more often to hammy celebrity appearances to draw in viewers.

4. Another issue this season: what happened to Drama’s TV show?! Last we heard, in season 4, it was a hit, but now, in season 5, he’s been around for the entire shooting of Smokejumpers! So Drama’s been once again relegated to a Vince cling-on? Let’s see him out on his own facing drama on the set of Five Towns.

Spoiler warning: If you haven’t finished Season 5 yet, read no further.

Let’s get to the finale tonight, specifically. My problem is with the ending, which by definition is a deus ex machina, or divine intervention. Let’s review the facts: Vince sunk all his money into a project that did not pay off—Medellin. It turned out to be a shitty movie, everyone in the Entourage world agreed, and no one wanted to hire him. Finally, through finagling by Ari, he gets Smokejumpers, and through various factors that were totally unfair (or were they? The asshole director Werner told Vince he can’t act and you know, I buy it, because it’s Grenier) he got himself fired from the movie.

So again here he is, hopeless, and we’re all bracing for a sad, sobering ending and then—poof!—like magic, Martin fucking Scorsese calls him on the cellie and offers him a part in Gatsby? I don’t think so. That’s just too easy, and after four years of pretty high-quality television from this series, I expect far, far better. It’s just not plausible. Maybe they need to get Marky Mark back, because that shit will not fly for another season. Too. Damn. Easy.

Here’s hoping it’s better next year.

[UPDATE, 7/22/09]

While reading up on the Entourage controversy that has arisen from Turtle’s recent skewering of Seth Rogen (which, by the way, was indeed a low blow and outdated; New York Magazine’s Vulture blog had it right when they said that the inordinate amount of time spent debating the plausibility of Seth Rogen coupling with Katherine Heigl puts Entourage “two years behind the zeitgeist”) I came across this reader comment that very nicely sums up the fact that all the problems I outlined above two year ago are still in play:

Watching ‘Entourage’ in Season 6 is like eating a mildly filling but tasteless cupcake. It’s not disagreeable, but you wonder why you did it in the first place.

Thank you, user ‘Why Am I Still Watching.’ The show still lacks legitimate conflict, exciting drama, or any deep storylines for Drama or Turtle to sink their teeth into (the Jamie-Lyn thing feels cheap and doesn’t count so much as a fun new storyline for Turtle, because he’s dating her in real life). Things better heat up quick, and reuniting Sloane and E would only be a start.

Book Review: ‘The White Tiger’

When The White Tiger nabbed the Booker earlier this year, I knew I had to read it right away. The book was compared to Invisible Man and Native Son, two towering works of racial/cultural tension. Plus it was getting rave reviews.

But it was also stirring up controversy back in India, where the author is from. Numerous articles went on and on about how the book portrays India in a harshly negative light, and that Americans and Brits have applauded the author’s honesty, while critics and readers in India were rather furious and claimed that Adiga had made India out to be worse than it is. Adiga, for his part, argued that he was actually peeling back the curtain of what he believes is the false image of India that much of the West has developed. People in India refute that Adiga exaggerates the bad conditions of Delhi and the Indian culture in order to serve his message about the caste system and the problems of servitude. I haven’t been to India (and after reading this it’s not high on my list of vacation spots), so I can’t say how accurate or embellished Adiga makes his setting.

But having finished the book, I can say that indeed, the message is the dominant feature of the novel, and that in a way, it ruins The White Tiger as a fictional experience. Before I continue, let me make a caveat: I am not, essentially, giving the book a “bad” review (or perhaps I am if you’re looking for a “novel” in the traditional sense). The book itself, as an exercise in storytelling, is quite good. It’s engaging because Adiga is a good writer, and it’s an exciting read. It’s also very funny.

But in terms of a novel—and I mean novel in the sense of a fictional experience that takes you to another world, gets you involved with its characters, transports you—it’s not great. Rather, The White Tiger is more like a polemic against the injustice of India’s traditional system of servitude-by-caste. The book is more like A Modest Proposal than the classic bildungsromans to which it has been compared (like Ellison’s masterpiece). The characters are flat and serve more as symbols of certain types than as deep, realistic representations of real people. Balram Halwai is the stock servant—a poor victim of the rough system. His master, Ashok, is the typical rich bastard giving bribes to government officials. His family is just what you’d expect—hurt that their son has gone off to Delhi to work and forgotten about them—complete with a typical guilt-trip inducing grandmother.

The Guardian review mentions that:

Talk of “lessons” should not be taken to suggest that The White Tiger is a didactic exercise in “issues.”

I don’t agree. I think that the book does feel like exactly that: a didactic exercise. And I didn’t feel this way through the first hundred or so pages! I was enjoying the story, and the narrator Balram’s unique, intimate voice. I was also loving the occasional hilarious one-liners, plus the subtle humor we get from Balram’s resentment of both his masters and his fellow servants. Here’s a good laugh that comes after Balram figures out that the servant one rank above him, Ram Persad, is a Muslim, and reports him to the bosses, who fire him promptly:

I thought, What a miserable life he’s had, having to hide his religion, his name, just to get a job as a driver—and he is a good driver, no question of it, a far better one than I will ever be. Part of me wanted to get up and apologize to him right there and say, You go and be a driver in Delhi. You never did anything to hurt me. Forgive me, brother. I turned to the other side, farted, and went back to sleep.

Moments like these are very clever, but infrequent. More often, Balram will do something or see something that provides a good example of the hazards and outrages that befall servants in India, but then Balram will verbalize the injustice and reflect on how unfair it was, thereby pointing it out to us yet again, bashing the message over our heads. This repetition really crystallized for me about halfway, from a scene in which Balram finds his master Ashok washing his own feet, and Balram leaps into action, obsessively insisting that Ashok never wash his own feet, demanding to know why he didn’t ask Balram to do it, attempting to stop him as if the situation were dire. Ashok gets furious and says he just wants to be left alone, and the message is clear: that Balram’s instinct toward subservience is so strong that it is nearly innate, and holds a scary power over him. We get it. But still, Adiga makes us hear about it further, just in case the point was too subtle (it wasn’t): “The way I had rushed to press Mr. Ashok’s feet, the moment I saw them, even though he hadn’t asked me to! Why did I feel that I had to go close to his feet, touch them and press them and make them feel good—why? Because the desire to be a servant had been bred into me: hammered into my skull, nail after nail.” Yup. Just like this notion of “the Darkness” and India’s problems has been hammered into the poor reader again and again.

Only twenty pages later, we get another example of the tiresome repetition that makes one wonder if Adiga so doubts the intellectual capacity of his readers as to think they need constant reminders in order to pick up on a thematic trope. Our hero has just had to pour whiskey shots for his masters, who are sitting in the back seat, and then reach back and hand them the glasses, all while driving! In case we missed the absurdity, Balram explains: “Have you ever seen this trick? A man steering the car with one hand, and picking up a whiskey bottle with the other hand, hauling it over his shoulder, then pouring it into a glass, even as the car is moving, without spilling a drop! The skills required of an Indian driver! Not only does he have to have perfect reflexes, night vision, and infinite patience, he also has to be the consummate barman!”

The NYTimes review by Akash Kapur gets much closer to the truth than any of the others have. Kapur praises the book’s excitement and powerful tone, but also notes, quite honestly:

Adiga… is less successful as a novelist. His detailed descriptions of various vile aspects of Indian life are relentless — and ultimately a little monotonous… Every scene, every phrase, is a blunt instrument, wielded to remind Adiga’s readers of his country’s cruelty.

The characters can also seem superficial. Balram’s landlord boss and his wife are caricatures of the insensitive upper classes, cruel to and remote from their employees. Although Balram himself is somewhat more interesting, his credulousness and naïveté often ring false… The novel feels simplistic: an effective polemic, perhaps, but an incomplete portrait of a nation and a people grappling with the ambiguities of modernity.

Bingo. This is a good book—it attempts to convey a strong, controversial message, and it succeeds in relaying that message. It sets up a character that represents the author’s opinion quite strongly, and the character delivers a compelling narrative, full of action and humor. Yet it fails as a novel, because it does not pull you into a fictional world. You are constantly aware that this is a story constructed by a man who has a political agenda, and that establishing this agenda is his number one priority.

But it’s worth reading.

Laugh at Obama? Yes, we can… maybe

Holy hell, we are finally going to have a president that we can be excited about. Even Bush called the victory “uplifting.” And one staunch McCain supporter I know admitted that even though Obama wasn’t his choice, he’s excited for the country, and proud to be an American. Tuesday was a night that I’m sure all of us will remember as long as we live.

But enough gushing. Already, Obama (who wasted absolutely no time celebrating) is hard at work choosing his cabinet, and the pundits and journalists are examining his every step. One question that’s come to the fore recently has been about political humor—how will we be able to ridicule a President Obama? Are Colbert, Stewart, Leno and Letterman all out of a job? Well, no, but I mean, maybe. The evidence suggests that in trying to mock Barack, comedians are going to have some real trouble.

These guys never knew how good they had it for the past decade. We may not remember it now that he’s become a stout, lovable advocate of the environment and generally worshiped genius, but in 2000, Gore was an easy target—a robot with no emotion or facial expression. Plus, Tipper Gore. ‘Nuff said. Then John Kerry came along, with the Ketchup maiden by his side, and no one could let up about his three Purple Hearts (and to his own detriment, neither could he). Plus, through it all, beginning in 2000, the “liberal elite media” (thank you, Palin) had George W. Bush—a gift that God handed them on a silver platter. There was the pretzel incident, and there were the monkey faces, and there were the countless verbal mistakes (“misunderestimated,” anyone?) that came to be known as “Bush-isms.” This guy has practically been a stand-up comedian, albeit unintentionally.

Of course, there’s a long tradition of ridiculing politicians that goes back to before 2000. Bill Clinton? Even before the Lewinsky scandal, he was a figure as mocked as he was adored. And before him there was Dukakis, with that infamous photo in the army tank. The laughs came easy with these guys.

But a President Obama presents a problem, because, well—he just doesn’t really do anything wrong. He doesn’t embarrass himself. He speaks eloquently. He went to Columbia, then Harvard Law School. After college, he spent years toiling for others. He doesn’t have sexual dalliances a la Clinton, Spitzer, or Edwards. Instead, he has a beautiful wife and two lovely daughters. And he’s buying them a puppy.

And, in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s black. As Jimmy Kimmel told Maureen Dowd, “there’s a weird reverse racism going on” that has spared Obama from ridicule so far. Indeed, when all the comedians on late night television are white (and they gave Conan’s Late Night spot to Jimmy Fallon? How about Chris Rock, or anyone else who’s actually funny?), there’s certainly a fear, incited by political correctness, that we need to walk on eggshells. Remember how awkward it was when Ludacris wrote that new rap song in which he boasted that Obama would “paint the White House black, and I’m sure that’s got ‘em terrified!” Obama’s camp couldn’t have possibly distanced their candidate from the video quicker.

Maybe with the political correctness bug so rampant, this presidency will actually give comedy back to the many hilarious, talented black comedians who are so forgotten by most mainstream television. If the white guys are afraid to joke about Obama, and feel (unfortunately) that they don’t have license to ridicule anything relating to his blackness, it could be a chance to see some great black comedians surge to popularity.

Forgetting the racial tension, there are still some areas that comics could, and will, desperately try to expose. There’s that bit in his first memoir, in which he candidly revealed his use of “a little blow” in college. These are some new times, huh? Times in which a guy who admitted to doing coke can get elected. And then there’s the liability of his own name (we elected a president who shares a middle name with a fascist dictator we just executed?), but these seem more like things that should make us impressed he was still able to gain the presidency. They should inspire admiration, rather than ridicule.

Another option (the only one, right now) is to tease him for how perfect he seems to be—you know, like: ‘The guy’s a law school professor, brilliant orator, and he can swish three pointers, too! What is he, Superman?’ But that can only last so long. Once we’ve laughed at how great he is, all we can really do is celebrate that greatness, and broadcast our pride at having elected him. And that pride isn’t really so funny; it’s serious, and wonderful.

Political humor is always a slippery slope, and undoubtedly the ‘funny guys’ will work hard to come up with clever ways to taunt the 44th president. But they’re going to have a tough time of it, unless he gives them fodder for jokes by faltering terribly in the early months of his presidency. I don’t see that happening.

[UPDATE, 7/23/09]

“…unless he… falter[s] terribly in the early months of his presidency. I don’t see that happening.”

Oops. My bad.

Cover contest for ‘Island at the End of the World’

So apparently the novelist Sam Taylor (who I’ve never heard of, and can’t decide if I should have or not) has a new book coming out in 2009, called The Island at the End of the World. Here’s a teaser plot summary, courtesy of the publisher:

A chilling novel about the near future, where most of the world has been destroyed by catastrophic floods. As a father and his three children begin to rebuild their lives alone on an island, his youngest son Finn begins to question how they arrived there and why they alone have been spared. Finn’s search for understanding takes an unexpected turn when a strange man named Will swims ashore, and he appears to know quite a bit about this family and the circumstances that surrounded the floods. But Finn’s father is determined to keep him silent and is willing to do anything to prevent Will from disturbing his family’s idyllic life on the island. Sam Taylor’s The Island at the End of the World is a riveting post-apocalyptic tale that explores the darkness that lies within the hearts of men.

…Sounds pretty much like a novelization of the show Lost to me, but hey. Anyway, everyone loves to judge a book by its cover, and yet another Penguin Contest has yielded some pretty damn gorgeous covers.

You may remember when I posted on the 2008 Penguin Design Contest, which asked art students to design their own cover for one of a handful of well-regarded books, including On the Road and On Beauty. Following that contest, I reflected that I felt some of the “honorable mentions” and other entries were far better than the three winners. I also expressed surprise that the reward for the winner was not a reprint of the book that used their cover.

This time around, it’s a bit different, and not merely because all the covers are created for one single book (which does make it more compelling, and easier to judge the entries). It’s different because the prize this time is the use of the artist’s cover on the actual book, which makes the stakes high.

Again, however, I don’t love the winning design. That’s right, a winner has already been chosen, but you might want to check out the 25 finalists before you scroll down and see the winner. After all, what makes it really fun is flipping through the images and trying to predict which one beat the others (In case you’re wondering, I picked 5 that were, for my money, the best ones, and the eventual winner was not even in my 5). The winner (by Matt Taylor, no relation to the author I hope) wasn’t my overall favorite, because (again, I obviously haven’t read the book, so I can only gather plot details from the synopsis) I felt it had a bit too much going on. It looks more like a design you might see on a Threadless t-shirt (in fact I feel like I’ve seen that very design before) than the cover of a serious new novel put out by Penguin. Still, it’s a gorgeous creation:

Matt Taylor

Like I said, very well-done… but not the most appropriate cover, I’d argue. My bet is that they picked it because it’s very eye-catching, so it might sell copies out of sheer curiosity. Thus, a marketing ploy. Below are two of my favorites. Check out all 25 for yourself. I just love interesting book covers.

Ben Thomas

John Hobbs

Wordle

If you don’t yet know about Wordle, you should go check it out.

Wordle describes itself is “a toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like.”

I first discovered the site from the blog Steamboats Are Ruining Everything, where someone cleverly entered the entire text of Moby Dick. The result is not only fascinating for a Melville fan (though it’s no shock that ‘Whale’ is the most frequent word) but also visually attractive. It kind of even looks like a Whale (is that a stretch?).

Clearly, Wordle is very inventive, and addictive, too. But it’s a lot more than a toy. After useless, time-wasting Wordles I made from song lyrics or speech transcriptions (my first impulse was to enter DFW’s famous, outrageously brilliant Kenyon graduation speech; if you’re wondering, his most frequently used word, appropriately, was “think”), I finally got around to entering the text of my senior English thesis. A screen shot is below (I am too inept to figure out how to embed it directly, but here’s a link to the better-quality version from the public gallery).

Anyway, I’m only 22 pages through, so the startling realization that I’ve used the term “meanwhile” as much as some of the authors’ names (like Talese) was extremely helpful. I’m starting to see Wordle as, quite possibly, an indispensable tool for writers in determining the frequency of their diction, and maybe opening their eyes to certain buzz words that they use more often than they intend.

Welp, go see for yourself. Very awesome.

Sweet cover art for the new Bolaño book

As you may know, I love cover art.

And we love keeping tabs on new and forthcoming novels. The next installment of Natasha Wimmer’s “I’ma translate all of Roberto Bolaño’s novels into English” game will be 2666, out this coming November 11. The Savage Detectives was raved about by all, so we can imagine this will be a great book.

And it’s got a great cover, too! Here’s the normal hardcover edition, standing beside the (tré chic!) boxed set, three-paperbacks volume that will also come out (thank you, Vulture).

Awesome, and clearly superior to the rather boring Savage Detectives cover.

Are we living in an era of ‘permanent significance?’

Don’t worry, this post is actually going to get very interesting, but before I recount the fascinating discussion that occurred, I need to provide the background.

One of the courses I took while I was abroad last year at Trinity College in Dublin was a lit class called Periodicity. The English department at Trinity offers it every year, but each time they do it they change the time period covered. That is to say, the class always focuses on literature published in one specific decade or even a single year. For example, one year they did 1939, which was a significant literary year, I guess (Finnegan’s Wake; a new book of Yeats poetry; Raymond Chandler’s first novel The Big Sleep).

This year the focus was 1916. In 1916 Joyce published Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Frost produced a new volume of poetry called Mountain Interval, and then there were, uh, two other random novels (A Munster Twilight and The Tree of Heaven; if you’ve actually heard of either of these books, you deserve a medal for your expertise in obscurity).

A conversation that occurred on the first day of the class has really stayed with me, and now the mood has at last struck me to blog about it. We started the class off by examining the poem “Easter 1916″ by Yeats. It’s arguably the most famous poem of the twentieth century, and a great read as well (I normally find poetry pretty lame). The poem is about the “Easter Rising” of 1916 in Dublin, when people revolted against British rule. They failed. And then they were all executed.

SO ANYWAY (wake up, here comes the beef) the professor mentioned that the poem is a perfect emblem for the concept of Periodicity, because indeed, some decades do seem more “historical” than others. In many periods, he added, people can already sense that they, right now, are living through a very weighty and significant period.

He then asked, “Does any of you feel this way about your own time?”

I must have nodded vigorously without realizing it because he looked at me and said, “Please,” and motioned for me to share.

So everyone turned to look at me and I thought, “Fine, I’ll play the ethnocentric American dickhead,” and I said: “Oh, absolutely. No question.”

“What is it specifically that makes you feel that way?” I figured he was just coaxing out the obvious, so I said, “9/11.” I guess I hadn’t really thought about the fact that I was one of only two Americans in a classroom of 35 Irish kids, and that this was an American event that felt the most intensely tragic for American citizens specifically. I must have taken all that for granted in my presumption that everyone would agree, because to my surprise, many people looked like they disagreed entirely. I was shocked. It took me a moment to realize that it actually may have been a really stupid comment.

But then I decided it wasn’t stupid at all, maybe just a bit self-absorbed (of course someone from America would feel that 9/11 was an event of epic worldwide proportions), and the teacher finally asked, “Does anyone agree?”

One girl said, “Well, it definitely was a major event and none of us will ever forget it… but every generation has something like that. I don’t think it’s going to mark our era as an important one, and I’m also not sure it was as meaningful to Irish people as it was in the States.” Lots of people nodded assent, but I was annoyed. No, I don’t think that every generation has something “like that.” That’s a gross oversimplification. I think no single event in recent history created anything close to the horror of 9/11. It woke people up from their stupor, and reminded them that safety was an illusion.

The teacher told us that it often feels like events are significant when you are caught up in them, and you haven’t yet had the time to zoom out. For example, he said he felt for a long time that 1989-91 was massively important, due to the fall of the Berlin Wall. And then he said, “But I’m sure to you all, that means nothing.” One guy confirmed, “Right. Nothing.” It’s true; sad/ignorant as it may be, the fall of the Berlin Wall means nothing to me. Don’t care.

But now, seven months later (and seven years after the attack), I still believe that we are literally living through history. Today’s current events will be the content of high school textbooks fifty years from now.

It’s not just 9/11. It’s the huge boom in Internet “e-content” (some day soon, it seems, every single written text will be available as a download). It’s the Bush presidency—one of intense public opposition (has there ever been a president besides Nixon who was so obviously hated by the people of his nation?).

And it’s McCain selecting Sarah Palin as his VP. The choice was obviously deeply disturbing, for so many reasons, but it was her appearance on SNL recently that really showed just how unnerving her ascendancy to fame has been. Check it out on Hulu here (better quality than the YouTube version below, which doesn’t get to the skit until 2:30 in): Amy Poehler is standing there rapping insults about Palin as Caribou Barbie herself sits there at the desk boppin’ her head to the beat. Was she merely being a good sport, or was she actually on another planet, mentally—not even truly hearing the words? I’d go with the latter, but either way, it was downright spooky.

In addition, the fact that her appearance on SNL was pretty much mandatory (after Hillary, Obama, and McCain before her) perfectly represents the merging of politics, pop culture, and Internet. It’s a merger that is only just beginning to crystallize now, in the year 2008.

Now that McCain lost the presidency (thank god. Or should we thank Palin?) only time will tell whether Palin’s fifteen minutes of fame will end and she’ll fade away, or if she’ll remain in the limelight as an unofficial leader of the hyper-conservative Republican sector. Regardless, I can’t shake the feeling that just by having been chosen as VP—even with McCain’s loss—her importance is ensured for generations to come. What a shame.

Unfortunately, all of my reasons for thinking this era is a major historical time are based on American events. Acknowledging this bias is helpful, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still there. The compulsion to care only about issues on our own soil is very powerful, and it’s difficult to overcome.

So are we actually living through history right now, or on that day in class was I just being another American tourist asshole?

Underdog Spirit Gone for Boston Sports Fans

This ran in the October 9, 2008 edition of The Middlebury Campus newspaper.

Let’s talk Red Sox.

From the newest issue of GQ comes a brief blurb entitled, “Hey Boston, Shut the Fuck Up!”

Boston… Enough. We get it. You rule the universe. Yes, it’s quite an impressive run you’re on here. (For a small city.) But remember, fifteen years ago, your teams sucked large donkey balls… And because sports go in cycles, they will soon suck again. So relax. Try some humility. —bob finch

Okay Bob, we do remember that our teams once sucked ‘donkey balls,’ but only vaguely. It’s difficult to be humble when your hometown has won five major championships in the last four years. Since 2004, the Red Sox have won twice, the Patriots have won twice, and then—gasp!—the Celtics took the NBA finals last June, the team’s first banner since 1986 (before my time on this Earth). And I’m not even mentioning the Bruins because the NHL is no longer relevant in any real way.

So yeah, we’re damn good. But it’s not just about winning. Let’s remember that the Patriots haven’t won the super bowl since 2005. It’s about the potential of winning. What’s changed in Boston is that every season now, in the three major American sports that people actually care about (football, baseball, and basketball, in that order), we now expect to be contenders for a title. We at least know that our team will (or should) be up there with the best of them.

Obviously as Mr. Finch so eloquently pointed out, it wasn’t always like that. When I was in middle school, for example, my family had season tickets to the Boston Garden, and my dad and I would faithfully drive into town and suffer through that claustrophobic, sluggish parking garage in order to watch the Celtics play.

During the era of our season tickets, we saw players come and go who were no good—Walter McCarty, Eric Williams, Tony Delk, Shammond Williams, Joe Johnson, Vin Baker, Milt Palacio, led by the hapless Antoine Walker—and the team was no good as a result. In fact, after witnessing humiliating, double-digit losses every Friday night, and after the new management inexplicably jacked up ticket prices in 2003, my dad gave up and we canceled our season tickets. Call us fair-weather fans, but this team was painful to watch.

Little did we know that a year later, in 2004, our city was about to blossom into a town of winners. That year the Red Sox reversed the curse, and the Pats won a second consecutive super bowl.

Today, in the wake of the Boston Three-Party and their magical championship season, Celts fans, Pats fans, and Sox fans are all one and the same: people who expect big things from their team. We anticipate results, and we get them. The Sox have already rather easily polished off the Angels and will soon begin an ALCS battle with the Tampa Bay Rays. Non-Massholes (New Yorkers most of all) may shudder to think of it, but it’s very possible the Sox will nab their third world series title in five seasons.

So what’s the problem? Besides being hated by everyone else in sports fandom (which we don’t mind anyway), we have an identity crisis on our hands. The underdog ethos is gone completely, and gone with it is that particular breed of pride that came with wearing that Red Sox hat, with the emblematic ‘B’ that used to represent devoted suffering through season after season of early playoff elimination. That ‘B’ now represents victory, and people hate Sox fans almost as much as they hate the Pats.

And boy, do they hate the Pats. Spygate didn’t help, but it makes sense that people would hate Tom Brady. He’s like a manifestation, in the adult world, of that high school quarterback every guy emulates and hates—the handsome one with the hot girlfriend and the gang of worshipers. Brady’s not only ridiculously good at what he does (being a star quarterback), but he finds time to grab the “hot girl,” then knocks her up and leaves her for an even hotter girl. And as if all the winning isn’t enough to keep him in the spotlight, he reminds everyone of his greatness by modeling for magazines and advertisements.

But Brady’s injured now, to the delight of NFL die-hards everywhere outside of Boston. So they find other players to hate, like Yoooooouuuk (that chant is damn obnoxious if you’re not from Boston), Papelbon (with his over-the-top, Bacchanalian champagne showers on the mound), and Paul Pierce (Lakers fans will forever bitch about that ‘injury’).

But it’s not just our players who step up to the plate (or the foul line) with that cocky swagger. It’s us—New England sports fans—and the way we’ve begun to act, without even realizing it. Recently while riding the T, I made a joke to a Lakers fan about L.A., calling it “El Gay,” and he answered, “No, no, it’s Boston that sucks.” Without missing a beat another guy nearby, some Sully or O’Malley, stepped in and said to him, “You’re kiddin’ right? Blow me. It’s the sports capital of the world right now.” The L.A. guy rolled his eyes, and I hated my fellow Bostonian for a moment, and myself as well. What kind of stuff is coming out of our pompous, victory-spoiled mouths?

For the first time ever, people wearing a Sox hat could actually be called front-runners. It used to be cool to wear one, even if you weren’t from Boston. They never won anyway, so who’s going to give you a hard time? Now, if you’re not from MA/VT/NH/ME, sporting that cap just makes it look like you’re cheering for the best team—the safe option. And with all our money, we are dangerously close to becoming the Yankees, who for a long time perfected the art of the joyless win. Their fans sucked because they didn’t even seem to care that their team was the best; it was a given.

So now what? I’m not about to root against the Sox—ever—but in all honesty, a Dodgers World Series title might be nice. First one since 1955, and even though we all hate Manny Ramirez, it sure would stick it to the Yankees, who booted Joe Torre (not his fault the Yanks sucked that year) in what had to be one of the dumbest sports moves since the Charlotte Hornets gave away Kobe Bryant for Vlade Divac. Torre only needed one season with the Dodgers to get them to the NLCS, and having Manny certainly didn’t hurt. A-Rod and Jeter must feel like idiots for balking on their threats to leave the team when Torre was fired. They should have marched straight to the L.A. blue.

Who knows what’s next for Boston sports—More wins, or a fall from grace? Just like ole Bob Finch said, sports success comes and goes in cycles, so let’s talk in, say, five years.

And just for kicks, here’s a hilarious reader comment posted on the GQ blog in response to Finch’s article. It perfectly exhibits the Boston sports fan attitude and behavior:

Hey Bob, Shut the Fuck Up!

Bob, We NEVER liked you. Please don’t visit again. If you are sick of our success, stay the fuck away and shut off ESPN. Better yet move to Kansas City, Oakland, Washington or another “small city” and wallow in misery with them. You are right, sports go in cycles, and we will suck again at some point, which makes it even more important to revel in our success while it lasts. So, Bob, either get on the party bus or don’t bitch about getting run over by it when you visit. Oh, and again…. Fuck you.

On the Kindle

As a voracious reader, and someone who spent the summer riding the T to work (which is a fabulous way to get 50 pages of free reading done, and even better, it doubles as a way to avoid those awkward stares that come on public transportation when people have nowhere else to look), I was recently asked by someone at my office why I don’t just purchase an Amazon Kindle. After all, it would save the hassle of always carrying a paperback with me, right?

Wrong. But let’s rewind and remind ourselves of what the Kindle is, for anyone who doesn’t know (and I’m not saying this is one of those “have you been living under a rock” situations; If you’ve never heard of the Kindle, you’re totally normal, and good for you).

What is the Kindle? That one is easy. It is a wireless book-reading device. You will never again need to purchase a hard copy of a text. No more books (or teachers, or dirty looks). You wirelessly connect to the Kindle store and buy any book you wish (Well, maybe not the Goosebumps books, kiddies, but nearly everything, from ‘high lit’ down to Tucker Max), for a set price of less than ten dollars. The book then magically (c’mon, let’s just agree to call it magic) downloads to your Kindle and you hurry off to India, Montreal, your neighbor’s wife’s bedroom, or wherever it is you plan to read the damn thing.

What does the Kindle represent for society? This is the far more difficult question. What the Kindle symbolizes is America’s growing dependence on what I will haplessly deem “e-content.” This dependence is indisputable—it exists, and it’s growing. But it’s a bit more hazy what the Kindle could represent for the future: bye-bye to printed media?

Already, seventy percent of Americans (I made that up, but it’s a lot, I’m sure) rely on the Internet for their news rather than a crinkly, inviting newspaper. On the Internet, you can watch a rap battle between Kanye West and Dwight Schrute. You can find out the precise numbers from the Iowa caucuses. You can purchase a fucking constellation. Now, you can also carry fifteen full novels in something thinner and slightly wider than a palm pilot.

For some people, this might be great. If that’s you, go ahead and add it to your ’08 Christmas list right now. For other people, this may represent the end of that satisfying feeling we get after our eyes arrive at the last sentence of a hefty novel, when we shut the book emphatically and breathe a sigh of achievement.

Yes, the Kindle can flip the page forward or back, and it features a non-abrasive display that (supposedly) mimics the properties of a printed page, and it can even dog-ear a passage for you. But it won’t lovingly wrinkle the cover from multiple readings, and it won’t pop out a full-sized tome that you can proudly slide onto your bookshelf for all to see.

The Kindles will not sprout legs and take over the country. No one will die, and our books will not cry to us from their shelves and whimper, “You betrayed me…”

I don’t care, though. I still feel concerned. To fear change, of course, is unreasonable. The rise of personal computers, vacuum-bots, and iPods has only done good things for humanity. Still, it’s easy to feel like we have reached the pinnacle of advancement: what new technology could possibly come around? On the iPhone you can make calls, watch TV, surf the web, and blast tunes. What else could there be, right? But there will be more. The Kindle itself is an example.

Consider this: When today’s senior citizens were teenagers, the Internet was inconceivable. If a modern-era Marty McFly were to cruise back to the 1950s and inform people that they will soon be able to type a message and have it instantly appear on a screen halfway across the world, they would laugh (probably a quaint, friendly, brownies-in-the-oven, 1950s kind of laugh).

I’m not some crazy reactionary who hates new technology. I just feel that if we stop to look around (I won’t dare type out that overused Ferris Bueller quote), we notice ways in which the current cultural scene is frighteningly isolated and individualized (just read Bowling Alone). As for me, I’ll clutch my paperbacks until the robots come to burn them up.

And in terms of “exciting new technology” coming up with new ways to fit all kinds of different media into one hand-held object, well, I think it’s fucking terrifying. Just see Wall-e if you doubt me, because those floating chairs from which you could live your entire life are a very real possibility. I mean, we’ve already created a society in which someone could conceivably never leave the house. Ever. You could cook all your meals or order them from takeout, work out/exercise on your personal gym, watch new(ish) movies via Netflix or OnDemand, and get a personal shopper to deliver any groceries or products you need. It’s disturbing.

I guess I just like the feel of a book in my hands, you know? I like the heft of something real, and I take pleasure in watching the thickness of the pages on the right diminish, as the pages on the left pile up and I get closer to the end. Oh, and I like when I’m on the T, or the bus, or an airplane, and numerous people sitting in my vicinity have a book out, and I can slyly gaze at the cover and raise an eyebrow if they’re reading Kafka or Marquez, or smirk pompously if the book is by Dean Koontz. This little social game is finished if every asshole on the train is holding a silver little box that conceals the title of their selection. Lame.

[UPDATE, 10/30/08]

And now, Oprah Winfrey has publicly endorsed the Kindle, thereby increasing its villainy tenfold. Thanks, Ope! I’m sure the Book Club ladies will appreciate the corporate plug.

Movie Review: ‘Pineapple Express’

Okay, it’s good. It really is an entertaining flick. But I don’t think it’s an instant classic in the way that The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up both were. These movies had the comedy and the heart, and this one’s got a lot of heart too, but also a surplus of slapstick.

Let’s praise “the good” before we start to bitch and moan. First up, James Franco (Saul). Really, very good. This is one of those guys who a straight man can watch and completely acknowledge his very clear handsomeness and heartthrob appeal. With his performance here, he snatches the movie up from veteran Rogen. When you watch this, the girls want to hook up with Saul, and the guys want to become his best friend. Along with Rogen—and I would bet this began back during the Freaks and Geeks era when they played Daniel Desario and Ken Miller—Franco creates a real sense of male camaraderie that the audience can’t help but warm up to and enjoy.

Another good moment is a scene in which Dale (Rogen) calls his high-school-aged girlfriend from a payphone. He and Saul have just found out they might be the targets of hitmen, so he calls her to warn her. After she reacts negatively and they sling insults at each other, a blubbering Dale breaks down and says he loves her, and she, on the other end, starts to cry too and says she loves him, and the moment is perfectly funny and tender at the same time. Then, a moment later, the girlfriend says she wants to marry him one day, and Dale smartens up and says, “Wait a minute, you want to marry me? But I’m an idiot!” And they start fighting again, and he hangs up on her, and it’s so cute, and so well-done, and finally a classic example of Apatow’s style—genuine moments of real emotional tenderness, broken up abruptly with comic relief of a one-liner that destroys the moment. It works smoothly.

Finally there’s Gary Cole, who can apparently do no wrong. He’s one of those guys who was able to play a character as memorable as Bill Lumbergh in Office Space, and yet escaped the stigma of always being known as that one dude. I like him best as the dad in Talladega Nights– a movie lots of people hated, but I insist gets funnier, and more charming, on second and third viewings. Here, as the “bad guy,” he’s terrific. Even just his facial expressions are gold.

On to “the bad,” though. First, some of the side characters, many of whom are very talented actors, are used poorly and fall flat in general. The evil female cop is a dud. Her lines fail to illicit laughs– she’s your typical angry villian, like a caricature out of Home Alone 7– she doesn’t belong in an adult movie.

Then there’s Darryl from The Office (real name Craig Robinson) who is always funny. He’s spectacular as the nightclub bouncer in Knocked Up, but here he kind of reprises the character, using the same whiny-funny tone of voice and pouty face, portraying the archetypal “tough-guy-who’s-really-a-softie” part. It’s kind of lame. It especially gets stupid when Rogen is forced to shoot him (maybe it’s Franco who shoots him, I forget) and Robinson sits there half-crying, saying “I can’t believe you shot me!” Not very funny.

Finally there’s the character of “Red.” Okay, I get it– he’s cool because he’s not one of the main guys, but he kinda comes from surprise and ends up joining ‘the team’ and has some real funny lines and scenes. But I’ve heard so many people/reviews say that ‘Red steals the movie,’ and no, he doesn’t. I can’t tell if it’s the character or the actor I didn’t much like, but he is no Rogen or Franco. Most of the time, his ghetto-slang is more grating than funny (oh, white guy talking like a gangsta, that’s a concept no other comedies have tapped) and by the end of the movie when he’s coughing blood over breakfast and the other characters are joking that he should probably go to the hospital (I admit that diner scene was hilarious) I was kinda hoping he’d keel over right there and die. Now that would have been brave comedy.

You see, that’s the main problem with this movie, if you compare it to other Apatow outings. The cast of supporting characters just doesn’t measure up. Franco and Rogen are on point, but they’re not enough to take this from a good to a great movie. In The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, every character is developed and fleshed out. All the workers from the electronics store are funny and uniquely acted, with their own clear personalities (Rogen, Rudd, Romany Malco [Conrad on Weeds], the old Indian guy who makes fun of Steve Carrell). Catherine Keener’s daughter (who’ll play Nora in the forthcoming Nick and Nora’s Playlist) gets well-developed and really progresses nicely from hating Carrell to supporting him and liking him as a suitor for her mom.

Or take Knocked Up, in which Rogen himself, as the protagonist, but also Katherine Heigl, her character’s sister, and her brother-in-law Paul Rudd, all become their own real, likeable people, and they aren’t flat like the side characters in Pineapple Express. Even Rogen’s dad, and his gang of friends, too (including Jonah Hill, Bill from Freaks and Geeks, and Jason Segel), are all well-done and emerge as important to the plot of the movie, each in their own way. Here in Pineapple, there literally is only Saul and Dale.

Finally, in addition to the cast, I didn’t like when the movie dissolved into a silly action spoof. It felt like the clever comedy had turned into Rush Hour 4, but with villains that were even more absurd and childish than the ones Jackie Chan always gets to fight. I understand that the point was for it to be over the top, and boy was it, but it was closer to Airplane slapstick than Shaun of the Dead-style comedic violence.

My last gripe is about the girlfriend plot line. I mentioned above that I really like the chemistry between Rogen and whoever it is that plays his girlfriend. I think the scenes between them are funny, but also tender (older guy dating high school girl is a great chance for both comic gold and warm honesty) and I couldn’t believe she never shows up again in the film after she and Rogen fight on the phone and scream at each other. Are we supposed to think that’s it, or no? Are we not supposed to care? I did, and even though I know the emphasis here is on the ‘bromance,’ I was unimpressed at their failure to bring her back and let us see a resolution to their slightly-taboo relationship.

All that said, it’s a solid comedy, because it’s Judd fucking Apatow. Rogen and Franco are an excellent duo, just as Michael Cera and Jonah Hill were before them, and Rogen and Paul Rudd before that. This will never be in my hallowed comedy hall of fame with movies like Dude, Where’s My Car, Wedding Crashers, 40-Year-Old-Virgin, or Half Baked. And I won’t buy it on DVD (I’m sure it’ll be on movie channels every god damn night). But it’s worthwhile, and it’ll entertain you.

Sarah Palin and David Foster Wallace

This ran in the September 25, 2008 edition of The Middlebury Campus newspaper.

So David Foster Wallace has killed himself at the young age of 46. And as terrible as this news is, I get the feeling his death (and life) will fly under the radar for so many Americans. I don’t intend to sound pretentious here, but I’ll bet the majority of people—even many who call themselves big readers—have not heard of Wallace.

He was an intellectual, renowned only within the literary world. Since he was never arrested for a DUI, never dated Paris Hilton, never acted in one of the Ocean’s movies, and never “accidentally” flashed his snatch for the paparazzi, most Americans did not know or care to know who he was.

But there’s a reason why we should care, and why today’s college students, as the next generation of America’s leaders, should care deeply.

Wallace was a hilarious, brilliant, brutally honest novelist and essayist, as well as one of the most astute social commentators alive. I’m not just deeply saddened by his suicide; I’m shaken to my core by the very real possibility that an appalling farce playing out in the American media may have led him to the height of depression and, ultimately to his death.

I was reading various obituaries and tribute articles in the New York Times, and I decided to check out the readers comments’ section. After a long list of sad notes about his great work (one reader noted glumly, “Infinite Jest was my Catcher in the Rye“), an early entry of the 139 comments said, “Perhaps it was the image of Sarah Palin, the embodiment of entertainment in politics, that drove Wallace to this sad end.”

Now, my initial reaction—as I expect many of yours will be—was one of skepticism, and even disgust. What an absurd suggestion! And moreover, how disrespectful to his friends and family. This was a man who was suffering from very real depression (his father has said as much in the past few weeks), and to put his death on something as unrelated as John McCain’s choice of VP is downright foolish. Right?

But then I kept reading, and found fourteen more comments that mentioned Sarah Palin. The comment that really opened up my eyes said: “I immediately thought of Palin… She seems a pretty blatant extension of the ‘three-alarm emergency’ that he wrote about last year.” Indeed, in his introduction to the America’s Best Essays 2007 anthology, Wallace wrote, “There is just no way that 2004’s reelection [of Bush] could have taken place… if we had been paying attention and handling information in a competent and grown-up way.”

Wallace—like his contemporary George Saunders, who presents a similar fear of where this country’s headed in his book of essays The Braindead Megaphone—often wrote about the dangers of allowing the media to dominate our hearts and minds. Like so many socially conscious writers before him, he warned of the increasing entertainment factor of the news: sensationalized headlines, fawning portrayals of celebrities and politicians, or advertisements for Fox that declare things like, “THIS is compelling news!”

Obviously as someone writing a blog post about the possibility that Sarah Palin caused a famous writer to kill himself, I’m going to look rather liberal. But let’s forget her politics for a moment and agree on a few “self-evident truths.”

First, let’s agree that this woman was chosen as an obvious ploy by McCain. Her selection rushed her to the forefront of the media, and she has stayed there ever since (yet another inane article about her was actually placed on the Times Web site above the Wallace obit). She appeals to the GOP sector concerned with “god, guns, and gays” (she likes only the first two), and her Brady Bunch family circus attracted a sick, obsessed scrutiny at the RNC, at every event since, and, presumably, will do so in the White House, if they reach it.

After watching the crazed, breathless news coverage of two different pregnancy scandals, Trooper-gate, the “Screw Polar Bears, Let’s Drill For Oil” fiasco, the library-censorship debacle, and finally the “Bridge to Nowhere” story, it has become clear that this woman is a constant fountain of absurdity. With every bizarre new secret that unfolds, it becomes more terrifying that she could very well be running the country in two years.

James Carville said a few weeks ago, “Look at this like a levee, and there’s a lot of water building up behind the levee for Governor Palin as we keep finding things out … Right now, the levee is leaking.”

It would seem possible (among many other deep problems, obviously) that the levee burst for Wallace, whose literary heart, full of so much hope for our country, simply could not accept America’s current illogical fascination with this person, who is by all accounts a complete symbol of anti-intellectualism and propaganda.

Another embarrassing error from a prominent news outlet

I love proper grammar. You might recall earlier this summer when I posted about the Associated Press article that called a Jewish kippah a “skullcap” when Obama wore one at the Western Wall—a problem of word choice, so not really a grammatical error per se, but certainly a foolish mistake that reflected both ignorance and, in a way, apathy toward careful reporting.

This time it was The Guardian, a somewhat well-respected British newspaper. What’s wrong with this headline?

Foster Wallace is a Huge Loss

Let’s all point and laugh: apart from the obvious poor judgment in phrasing (the headline makes it sound as though the author himself is a loss, whereas they meant his death was a loss), there’s a more blatant goof that exactly zero of the article’s 40 commenters pointed out: the man’s name was David Wallace. ‘Foster’ was his middle name (his mother’s maiden name, to be precise). They’ve treated it as though his last name were Foster-Wallace (though they didn’t include a hyphen, so one wonders what they actually were thinking). Either that’s the case, or they knew it was a middle name and they’re just idiots. It would be like if Robert B. Parker died and the headline ran: “B Parker Dies at 74.” Oof.

In case it wasn’t clear, here’s what Wallace’s friend Martin Riker says in Slate:

David Foster Wallace was a pen name. It was also the author’s actual name, but he never went by it. Using Foster was his agent’s idea, he said, because Da-vid Wal-lace was syllabically unmemorable. This has proven to be sound marketing advice, although I don’t think David or Dave Wallace was ever very comfortable with it.

And here it is from Associated Content:

David Wallace (Foster, which was his middle name, was added at the suggestion of a literary agent) was born in 1962 and raised in Illinois.

Oh, England. You can do better. And how ironic, to see this error in an article about his literary legacy. Call Alanis Morissette.

Never Forget

Let’s keep in our thoughts today all those people who were lost, or said goodbye to loved ones, on this day seven years ago. Can’t believe so much time has passed already.

The case against Sarah Palin

James Carville, wise man that he is, said on CNN, “Look at this like a levee, and there’s a lot of water building up behind the levee for Governor Palin as we keep finding things out… She wasn’t thoroughly vetted and I think Republicans are appropriately quite nervous about what else is coming out… I’m a little mystified by the pick of Governor Palin, it just doesn’t add up for me.”

When asked about the Trig scandal (the rumors that baby Trig was actually the child of Bristol Palin, not Sarah Palin herself), Carville responded, “Sarah Palin has now become a more compelling and interesting person than maybe even Senator Obama for the moment, and they’re going to have to introduce her… These first two days have not gone well, with all these different stories coming out… Right now, the levee is leaking, and they’ve gotta hurry up and get some sand bags in there because this thing is not going all that great for them.

Steve Schmidt, senior adviser for McCain had this bit of drivel to contribute at the RNC: “Smear after smear after smear. And the American people will overwhelmingly reject it when they see her.” No, they won’t.

How about Fred Thompson’s pompous, unsubtle pro-Palin dig at Hillary? “Some Washington pundits and media big shots are at a frenzy over the selection of a woman who was actually Governor, rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit!” I guess that’s meant to be Hillary. And that’s what Thompson thinks Hillary Clinton did, ‘hit the cocktail circuit?’ Unfuckingbelievable.

Pretty much everything we need to know comes from what one former Hillary supporter said on television—one of the few, idiotic, inexplicably illogical Hillary supporters who will now vote for McCain simply because he chose a woman as his VP, even though that woman does not uphold their ideals in any way: “She’s like a real frontier woman, ya know, with a baby in one hand and a gun in the other!” Yup. That’s what she’s like, all right. And it’s terrifying.

Oh, and if you don’t buy any of what I wrote here, just take it from Jason Bourne himself. I usually hate, and I mean really hate, when celebrities endorse politicians, as if their political opinion carries more weight simply because they are famous, but here I don’t mind it because Damon comes across as surprisingly well-spoken and intelligent.

No one likes Novak Djokovic

After Novak Djokovic beat Robredo in the fourth round the other day, he was asked how he felt about being set to face Andy Roddick next. He apparently said something about how it would be a tough match, since he’s suffering from numerous injuries.

But Djokovic has made statements like this in the past, often in an attempt to psyche out his opponent. So after all the sports analysts concurred that Djokovic probably wasn’t so injured, Roddick was asked in an interview for his reaction to the news that Djokovic had an injured shoulder and ankle. Andy said something like, “Isn’t it both shoulders? And SARS, and Bird Flu, and Anthrax?” After all, the man is a hypochondriac, and besides, who knew the Djoker himself couldn’t take the teasing? After all, this is the same Novak Djokovic who is known for his impressions of other tennis stars (he does a mean Sharapova, and a roast of angry Roddick in which he absolutely destroys his racket just like Andy does). Just watch the two friendly men teasing each other here (they’re almost flirting):

So when Djokovic beat Roddick (in a match marred by particularly disappointing inconsistency by Roddick) yesterday, why did he flip out in the post-game Q&A?

This was after a very gracious Roddick hurried over to shake his hand, and the crowd—one which overwhelmingly favored Roddick during the match—actually cheered Djokovic’s impressive win. So then, questioned by the USA network’s current idiot, Djokovic said defiantly, “Andy was saying I have 16 injuries in last match; I guess I don’t.” This prompted big boos, and why not? He’s an asshole.

The interviewer said something like, “Uh-oh, careful, this crowd can turn quick” and Djokovic answered, “I know, they’re already against me because they think I’m faking everything. But that’s not nice, to say I have 16 injuries and I’m faking it.” How foolish. Couldn’t he just take the win, thank the crowd, and exit quietly?

I guess this clown can’t take a dose of his own medicine. But no matter, because I’m sure he’ll get absolutely torn apart by Federer.

Get ‘em next time, Andy!

The brief wondrous Junot Díaz reading in Cambridge

Well, despite the arrogance and excessive joke-cracking of Salman Rushdie, his appearance in Cambridge, sponsored by the Harvard Bookstore, encouraged me to go to another one. This time, the Harvard bookstore booked Junot Diaz, and let’s just say he was a completely different story from the Satanic Verses scribe, who listed Diaz’s new novel among the books he’s currently reading for pleasure.

The same obnoxious book store employee who introduced Rushdie marched onto the stage to deliver a chain of Diaz ass-kissing that was rife with strange phrases and mispronunciations. First she told us that Oscar Wao “met, exceeded, and exploded all expectations.” Ha! I love exploding expectations.

She then went on to note that the book won the Pulitzer, which she pronounced “pew-litzer.” No matter; she got the fuck off and made way for the literary wunderkind himself, who began with some jokes about being from New Jersey and therefore hating Boston.

But he then segued into small talk about politics, which was a decidedly bad idea. When you’re up on a stage, with a microphone, and everyone in the audience came to see you, there’s no such thing as small talk. And politics is never a safe topic, even if you’re in Cambridge, Mass., where the assumption that everyone present is hyper-liberal is probably a safe one. He said, “Being a person of color in the Boston area, it’s sort of like, Obama!” I’m not completely sure what that meant—as in, whether he was making fun of black people who like Obama simply for his skin tone, or if he meant that he himself supports Obama for the very same reason. He cracked another joke about the election, and when met with a silent crowd asked, “I mean, what happened to the Obama of 4 years ago, from the DNC speech? Where’s that guy?” Where, indeed. But get to the reading, buddy!

After only a little more stalling, Diaz revealed that he would be reading from a work-in-progress, a short story entitled “Flaca” (I think, but I may have heard him wrong), which is a Spanish word for “skinny.”

As it turns out, Diaz is a poor speaker, but a great writer. This of course will seem too cruel of me, but it needs to be mentioned that his jilted reading voice was rather distracting. He read the first line of the story: “I’m not going to stay… [awkward pause] …long.” There was also some stuttering and visible nervousness (surprising from an MIT professor who probably addresses giant lecture halls every day), prompting me to wonder, is Diaz the real Oscar Wao? Of course, you’ll only get that if you’veread the book.

In addition to the problem of his reading each sentence with the same cadence (therefore removing important emphasis from the story), there were verbal stumbles on phrases like “You stood besides me,” (incorrect, obviously) which was either a mistake in the text (unlikely), was the correct text and meant to reflect bad grammar by the character in the story, or was simply misread by Diaz; I could not decide. Again, later, he read something from the story as “News Jersey,” and it became clear to me that in all likelihood these were not errors in his story, but accidental verbal trips.

But it didn’t matter; the story was terrific. It involved a guy reciting to a former lover a numbered list that recounts his memories of their relationship. One especially moving line that prompted sighs from the audience came when the characters have a sad, serious chat in which they agree that they could never marry each other, and then “fucked so we could pretend that nothing hurtful had just transpired.” Blunt and beautiful at the same time.

Once Diaz finished reading and the Q&A began, it became apparent that it was only when reading aloud that the author has problems. When fielding questions, he was unquestionably more eloquent, charming, and unfaltering. He even acknowledged his public reading problems when he joked, “I know I suffer from this utter lack of affect that makes me sound like I’m trying to be funny, but usually I’m not!”

The vast majority of the questions (it got pretty old, in fact) asked about the influence and presence of Spanish in the text. After all, every person in the audience was able to trade in their ticket for a copy of Oscar Wao in its new paperback form, and copies were also available en español, and had a lot of takers.

They asked him if he felt his use of Spanish in the text made it a challenging read for any non-Spanish speakers (of course he said that no, he thinks most readers enjoy learning new things and looking up words they don’t know), and asked about his own allegiance to Spanish in his personal life, and even asked about the story about his relationship (if any) with whoever translated his novel into Spanish. These questions, all on the same general topic, grew tiresome—best exemplified when one girl asked this riveting gem: “I notice so many great writers are multi-lingual, are you conscious of how this affects your writing?” Yes, he’s conscious of it, and we just heard him speak about it for twenty minutes. Plus, she mispronounced ‘Isabel Allende’ twice during her useless query.

When one guy (okay, it was me) asked Diaz what books he’s currently reading for pleasure, he delivered some cloudy references, mentioning “A Book of Memories,” a novel few had heard of (evident by the completely dead silence when he said the title). He called it “super-duper dynamite.” Diaz is an adult comic book geek—it’s cute. In fact, one funny break in the Q&A was when one bold young dude asked Diaz to tell us his “nerd cred,” even calling him a “Master Nerd” in the process. The author loved it.

Finally, Diaz laughed and said, “You’re so sweet, you guys are pitching me meatballs!” But his sense of receiving easy questions was visibly shattered when someone asked, “I read an article that proposed your book should replace The Catcher in the Rye as the seminal novel taught in high schools everywhere.” He merely said, “Jesus… My comment on that is: No Comment.” Damn right. Pulitzer or not, this thing should NOT replace Catcher. Just my instinct.

As brief as it was, the excerpt he delivered Wednesday was absolutely stunning. In fact, I was tempted to return my new copy of Oscar Wao and pick up his collection of short stories, Drown, instead.

For now, I can say that this guy isn’t great at reading aloud, but he’s damn good at writing. He’s a very different writer, speaker, and personality than Salman Rushdie, that’s for sure. And I’d like to see Diaz again in the future.

Bizarre NYT book review of ‘The Gargoyle’

Let’s all point and laugh.

I’m sorry to only just now be addressing Janet Maslin’s absurd 7/31 book review of Andrew Davidson’s much-hyped novel The Gargoyle. I saw this write-up the very day it was published on the NYTimes Book Review page, and I recall e-mailing the article to fellow voracious readers and asking them what they could make of it.

My co-worker Lynn responded: “The review is bewildering, and I will certainly never read that book.”

A different friend, Rob, told me, “Maslin must have fallen asleep before she could come to an actual conclusion about the book, then she woke up in the morning and sent in the review as is.”

Bewildering indeed. I’ve read countless Maslin reviews that do make sense (she penned a prominent review of Edgar Sawtelle, and I also liked when she ripped apart Carl Hiaasen’s self-serving golf memoir), which is why this aberration surprises me.

She introduces her review by calling the book “transportingly unhinged.” What does that mean? I’m not sure Maslin herself knows. Then, she quotes some admittedly very good passages from a description of the protagonist’s accident, and then concludes, “This was an ugly accident all right.” She sounds a bit like a seventh grader.

But it’s okay so far—strange though her language may be, at least her opinion seems clear: she likes the book. Right?

I’m not so sure. She soon whines that the book “wallows in degradation” for quite a while until things start “looking up.”

Then she begins to explain the plot, which involves the appearance of a woman—a stranger to the protagonist—who insists that she knew the hero in a past life. Now, unrelated to Maslin’s review, I have to say this was a deal-breaking turnoff for me. I hadn’t realized this novel would be fantasy, and as for my thoughts on the sudden appearance of strange, kooky women who claim to already know the protagonist, just see my review of Coetzee’s Slow Man.

Anyway, skeptical biases about fantastical romances aside, Maslin eventually declares, after admitting how zany the plot sounds, that Davidson has “vigorous and impressive narrative skill.”

But wait. In the very next paragraph, Maslin launches into an abrupt, aggravated list in which she fires off numerous aspects of the book that she apparently resents:

What are some of this book’s ingredients doing here? Did it really need two sets of acrostics, one made from the first letter of each chapter, the other made from the last letter? Is Dante’s hell, once Marianne begins leading her centuries-old lover on a hallucinatory guided tour, really so full of different typefaces? Why does the book pause to include long, voluptuous menus with items like “a plump eggplant’s fecund belly pregnant with stuffing?” Is that a reference to a centuries-old pregnancy or simply another nod to Mr. Davidson’s richly varied appetites?

She caps this off by calling this novel “overweening.” Sounds to me like she hates the thing. The next paragraph is yet another one entirely comprised of quotes passages, signaling to me that, at least on the day she wrote this particular review, Maslin lost the skill or interest to actually present opinions of her own, leaving the job of critiquing this new book up to the quotes themselves.

Still, regardless of her own writing style/skill (or rare lack thereof in this case), the goal here is to figure out if the review was even a positive one, something that is more recently becoming challenging to discern from NYTimes book reviews.

The question is nearly unanswerable. After that list of grievances and occasional harsh terms, she concludes with this Dante-related zinger: “for all those who enter here, there is no need to abandon hope.” No need to abandon hope. So she likes it? Oh, no, wait: “Lessons are learned, love is found, spirits are restored, and faith is revealed, all in the overheated cauldron of Mr. Davidson’s imagination.” Ouch.

So thank you, Miz Maslin, for providing absolutely no answer to the question that a normal person might expect would be answered in a book review: whether or not it’s a good novel. Not that I’ll be reading a love story involving a gargoyle-sculptor with memories about past lives anyway, but hey. Thanks for nothing.

Perhaps the ineffectiveness of Maslin’s review was the reason the NYT felt the need to post a second review of the book by Sophie Gee, a completely new, first-time NYT reviewer who completely succeeds where Maslin fails: in actually reviewing the thing. Gee tells us in no uncertain terms:

As straight-up entertainment, “The Gargoyle” is so-so. It’s not exactly unputdownable, but it has enough unexplained details to remain interesting.

…Like most first novels, “The Gargoyle” does some things well and some things badly, and it does lots and lots of them because the author hasn’t yet figured out which ones will work.

…It is simply an entertaining novel straining to feel like something more substantial.

Cheers to the NYT, I suppose, for finding a proper reviewer, albeit after the fact.

I suppose the folks over at Entertainment Weekly, in a rare and surprising departure from their normally disappointing attempts at book reviews, really earned the “honesty award” with this doozy:

Doubleday ponied up a reported $1.25 million for Andrew Davidson’s debut novel, The Gargoyle — and if they were paying for just the unintentionally hilarious sentences, that would work out to about $10,000 per howler. This much-hyped book is eye-bulgingly atrocious, packed with medieval history to disguise prose that’s worse than your average Dungeons & Dragons blog. The unnamed narrator is a repugnant coke-addled porno actor (credits include Doctor Giving Bone, I Presume) who, in the first scene, burns himself alive after driving off a bridge while high. He spends the first never-ending 200 pages of the book in the hospital getting taunted by a chatty ”bitchsnake” who lives in his spine, prompting a Herculean bit of alliteration that sounds like Dante’s Inferno translated by Dr. Seuss: ”The sibilant sermons of the snake as she discoursed upon the disposition of my sinner’s soul seemed ceaseless.” Ssssseriously?

Soon, a woman enters — the tattooed Marianne, a carver of stone gargoyles by day who insists that she and the narrator were lovers in the 14th century, when she was a nun and he carried a crossbow. Gradually, the shriveled porno-actor gargoyle learns — awww — to love. But first, Marianne has an amusing moment while eating vegetarian pizza naked. ”A cheese strand dangled from her mouth to the edge of her left nipple,” the narrator reports, ”and I wanted to rappel it like a mozzarella commando to storm her lovely breasts.” The real expert on cheese here is Davidson.

Hey, might sound a little harsh (after all, Sophie Gee raved that it was “so-so!”), but at least EW made their opinion clear.

When authors cross a line: Chuck Palahniuk & J.K. Rowling

So I just read Chuck Palahniuk’s second novel, Survivor. Although I didn’t think it was as fabulous as friends had promised, I did enjoy it, and I think I’m ready to admit that I would have loved it more if I had read it before I read so many of his other books. As I mentioned on my “Reviews” page, I feel like all the Chuck books are the same story, written in the same exact style, with virtually the same protagonist, just slightly different. But this was his second book, and had I read it when it came out, years ago, I think I would have loved it.

That being said, I didn’t really find it compelling enough to write a full book review. The reason it’s coming up in a post now has to do with something else: the ending of the book.

I would warn you of plot spoilers now, but this book is eight years old, so I think it’s okay for me to “spill the beans.”

So when I reached the end of the book, I thought it was pretty clear that Tender Branson dies. He says he’s up in the airplane, that all four engines have flamed out, that he’s now waiting to plummet toward the earth, and that he knows he will die.

But a buddy of mine who is a major Chuck fan told me that Palahniuk’s official web site claims otherwise. He said, “You didn’t read the real ending?” I visited the web site, which is chuckpalahniuk.net, and found the section on Survivor. According to the man himself:

The end of Survivor isn’t nearly so complicated. It’s noted on page 7(8?) that a pile of valuable offerings has been left in the front of the passenger cabin. This pile includes a cassette recorder. Even before our hero starts to dictate his story — during the few minutes he’s supposed to be taking a piss — he’s actually in the bathroom dictating the last chapter into the cassette recorder. It’s just ranting, nothing important plot-wise, and it can be interrupted at any point by the destruction of the plane. The minute the fourth engine flames out, he starts the cassette talking, then bails out, into Fertility’s waiting arms (she’s omniscient, you know). The rest of the book is just one machine whining and bitching to another machine. The crash will destroy the smaller recorder, but the surviving black box will make it appear that Tender is dead.

What kind of bullshit is this? There’s no evidence in the text for this “two tape recorder” thing, and as for Tender surviving, I just didn’t see it that way. Yes, Tender mentions that there are parachutes (and so naturally you’re thinking, wait, he doesn’t have to die) but he also says on the final page that Fertility told him there was a way for him to live, but that he’s too stupid to figure it out. All signs point to death. But apparently Mr. Palahniuk envisions a different ending.

My point is that even if the ending Chuck proposes is in fact meant to be the clear ending presented in the book, it might not have looked that way to many readers, and it’s not Palahniuk’s place to present to us after the fact, definitively, the ending that he feels happens.

The beauty of literature is that so many different people can read a single novel and react in completely different ways. In fact, in some cases where an ending is unclear, each reader might have their own interpretation of a book’s meaning or resolution.

And in the case of Survivor, the ending is especially ambiguous, which (nicely) leaves it open to interpretation. But when Palahniuk posts his own perception of the ending online, it ruins it. The issue of authorial intention is often a hazy one, but the ‘rub’ here is that if Palahniuk believed so firmly that his protagonist lives at the end of the book, then he should have made that more obvious in the text. He didn’t, and to simply tell people that Tender survives is to cross a line, and force his own ending (one that may or may not have evidence in the text) on the reader.

I felt similarly last October, when JK Rowling decided to announce that her beloved character Albus Dumbledore is gay. In fact, I was rather pissed off. I have absolutely nothing against gay people, and I consider myself a strong supporter of gay rights. But in this case, her declaration was inappropriate, and unfair to readers.

This all happened right after the release of the sixth Harry Potter book, in which Dumbledore dies. The announcement came during a hugely attended public reading at Carnegie Hall, when some innocent child asked during the Q&A, “Does Dumbledore ever find love?” Rowling answered matter-of-factly, “Dumbledore is gay,” to which the crowd erupted in shocked oohs, delighted aahs, and then raucous applause at her bold courage.

I was angry because it wasn’t her place to simply add a detail to her fictional world after the fact—a detail that was never, ever included or (in my opinion) even suggested in any of the books.

I guess Rowling just couldn’t keep her mouth shut. I like the way the Salon article (linked above) puts it, in the headline: “Authors like J.K. Rowling just can’t stop telling their own stories.” Indeed, the books were already written, and if she realized late in the game that she had wanted to make Dumbledore gay in order to be daring, or modern, or impress people, too bad. She should have done so in the books, but she didn’t, and so it was ridiculous of her to cross that line and force a detail on readers which many of us simply don’t agree with or choose to accept. And that’s not about homophobia or anything. It’s about enjoying six long novels and then having the personal identity of a character altered outside of the text by a loud-mouthed author.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I feel that the entire story of a novel begins and ends in the novel itself. It is not, and should never be, an author’s place to add information on their own, via the internet or public appearances. Once a book is published and out there, the story is done. Set in stone. If they have in their own imagination a specific interpretation of the characters or story, they need to keep it to themselves. And it doesn’t matter that he or she wrote the thing; they still shouldn’t get to abuse that authorial power by announcing new endings or details.

What do you think?

[UPDATE, 11/10/09] Just to give another example that I found recently after finishing Pale Fire and then checking out the Wiki page: Vladimir Nabokov said in an interview that Kinbote (the narrator) committed suicide after finishing the book. But that doesn’t happen in the novel, and we have no reason to believe that happens, so the critic Michael Wood has stated, “This is authorial trespassing, and we don’t have to pay attention to it.” See, it’s a real thing!