Forever Overhead

This is embarrassing

2013-05-28T17:04:00.000-05:00

Well this is embarrassing...

Some choice quotes from Ron Currie Jr.'s Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles

2013-05-22T11:00:00.000-05:00

I'm usually not very good at capturing passages that I really love while reading. I either don't have a pencil or pen on me or I'm not feeling patient enough to jot the quote on a scrap of paper or onto my phone. But as I've been reading Ron Currie Jr.'s new novel, Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles, I've been making an effort to make note of the quotes I really loved.

Reading through them, I've noticed how the quotes that I picked really apply to my current life situation and I wonder that if things were different if I would have been as in love with these quotes. Which sort of begs the question, how much of our appreciation of a book (or any art, really) shaped by our life's events?

Anyway, on with the quotes.

Why is grief, when inspired by certain types of loss, considered something to surmount, to get over, while when inspired by other types of loss it’s given a pass, allowed and even encouraged to go on forever?

And when you try to live there, to live in a place where you’re betraying yourself over and over, not only do you grow to resent the hell out of it, and resent the hell out of whomever you’re betraying and censoring yourself for, but the very idea of your self begins slowly and inexorably to erode. Until you realize one day out of the clear blue that you have no idea who yourself is, anymore.

Aging was no longer the abstraction it had been a decade before. It was now a fact made concrete by every gray hair discovered in the mirror, every randomly sore knee and forgotten factoid and irregular, spotty period, every unbidden thought of where our parents were at our age and, moreover, how old they had seemed to us then.

...and I realized suddenly that at thirty-six my body couldn't hope to keep up with either my heart or my brain when it came to this woman, always this woman, only this woman, because with this woman I was forever going to need the ravenous coupling that only teenagers are capable of, and I had not been a teenager for a very long time.

When I looked at Emma and my heart leapt into my throat, as it always did when I looked at her, I sometimes realized that if I could figure out a way to see her as other people no doubt must—as human, in other words, pretty, certainly, but flawed, real, actual, doomed to expire like the rest of us—then I would be free, finally. But there seemed to be only one way that I could see her.

You can buy Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles at Powell's.

Currently: May 19th 2013

2013-05-19T10:23:00.000-05:00

Trying to find a way to get myself to post more often. I'm going to borrow (steal?) this format from Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness. Let's see how it goes.

Time // 9:42 a.m.

Place // My apartment

Eating and Drinking // Nothing yet this morning. Had a lot of pizza from the place down the street yesterday and I think I'm still full?

Reading // I'm reading a book on my iPad (Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles by Ron Currie, Jr), reading another on my iPhone (The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson) and alternating between the library book I have checked out (God Is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr.) and a book given to me by a close friend (A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness).

After finishing Everything Matters!, I've gone on a Ron Currie, Jr. binge. Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles is really interesting stylistically, but it hasn't grabbed me as much as Everything Matters! I also got Currie's first collection of linked short stories from the library, God Is Dead, which examines what would happen if God actually died. I'm not very far into it yet, but it looks promising.

I've had The Family Fang in Kindle format for months and I didn't start it until this week and I LOVE IT.

I'm reading A Discovery of Witches because a really wonderful person told me that I should read it. It's a big bulky book, so I often choose to read something else, but when I chose to pick it up, I enjoy the story and the history. It's not my usual thing, but I'm glad I'm reading it.

Watching //Watched my first episode of Adventure Time this week and it's just as weird and wonderful as promised.

Last night we struck out on two Netflix movies before we found one we liked. DNF'd both Bachelorette and The Pill, but watched and enjoyed The Giant Mechanical Man.

On the TV front, finished and really enjoyed The New Girl (need to go back and watch season one)

Listening // I've really been into the new Waaves album:

Working // Work is crazy. That's all I have to say. At some point I'll catch up. I hope.

Doing // Caught dinner with some old friends on Friday night and I met a lot of new people. Yesterday went to Bark in the Park over at Forest Park. Lots of dogs!

Today is going to be clean and catch up on work day. I'm considering a walk in nearby Lafayette Park and maybe some reading before I come back here to work.

Book Acquired: Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, Jr.

2013-04-11T08:10:00.000-05:00

Another book that's been on my TBR list for a long time is Ron Currie, Jr.'s Everything Matters!, published by Penguin in 2009. In a fit of book-buying that also included Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, I bought myself a brand new copy of this baby.

In this novel rich in character, Junior Thibodeau grows up in rural Maine in a time of Atari, baseball cards, pop Catholicism, and cocaine. He also knows something no one else knows-neither his exalted parents, nor his baseball-savant brother, nor the love of his life (she doesn't believe him anyway): The world will end when he is thirty-six. While Junior searches for meaning in a doomed world, his loved ones tell an all-American family saga of fathers and sons, blinding romance, lost love, and reconciliation-culminating in one final triumph that reconfigures the universe. A tour de force of storytelling, Everything Matters! is a genre-bending potpourri of alternative history, sci-fi, and the great American tale in the tradition of John Irving and Margaret Atwood.

Margaret Atwood and John Irving, y'all! Sounds AWESOME, eh?

Ron Currie, Jr.'s most recent novel is Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles, published by Viking last February. The reviews were good, so maybe I'll read it after Everything Matters!

As you were...

Book Acquired: Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson

2013-04-09T11:10:00.001-05:00

And lo, a package arrived with mine name upon its face. And I opened the package and out of it sprang forth a slim collection of short fiction. The author is Denis Johnson. The slim book is Jesus' Son. It is published by Picador.

Jesus' Son is a visionary chronicle of dreamers, addicts, and lost souls. These stories tell of a spiraling grief and transcendence, of rock bottom and redemption, of getting lost and found and lost again. The raw beauty and careening energy of Denis Johnson's prose has earned this book a place among the classics of twentieth-century American literature.

As I've mentioned before, "Emergency" was featured in The New Yorker's Fiction Podcast in 2009 (and read by Tobias Wolff). I've been trolling used bookstores for years in search of a copy of this book. I finally broke down and bought it.

So! Excited! I think I need to go lie down.

Some FREE e-Books for Thursday

2013-04-04T10:42:00.002-05:00

Fiction Advocate, a micropress and literary website, is marking its fourth birthday and they're celebrating by giving away all four of their e-books.

For free.

The books include The Real Holden Caulfield by Michael Moats, Brothel by J. Boyett, A Post About a Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room by Andrew Mitchell, and Robert Repino Has a New Catchphrase by Brian Hurley

Do it. Get some free quality books from some great people. Go off and download. They're all available until the end of April.

A Few Things Marking A Return Of Sorts

2013-04-03T11:22:00.001-05:00

"To be alive at all is to have scars."
-John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Lots of life changes since last we chatted. My marriage is, for the most part, over. I moved from a nice house in the country to an apartment in the city. On balance, I'm happier than I've ever been.

Let's be clear: as far as my marriage goes, I am a total asshole. I walked out on nine years of marriage. I abandoned my family. I haven't seen my children in a month. I have incredible guilt and sadness and I truly miss my old life. She is angry and hurt.

But I also feel free. Bad habits in a relationship form quietly and have the shield of justification to keep them alive. They thrive in the warm waters of conflict and suppressed emotions. These habits can become so huge and unwieldy that they obscure even larger problem. Tearing down the habits means exposing a bigger issue and it's frankly terrifying.

Because the truth is that sometimes a marriage just doesn't work. And as much as you care about someone and love them, they're not your partner. They have different dreams, different goals, different tastes. This isn't anyone's fault, but once it becomes clear then all of the other problems come into focus as well. How can you live your life and feel like yourself when your chosen partner wants a different life? How can you feel content when your spouse is doing/thinking things that are foreign to you? That's not a partnership; it's a roommate.

Care for an example? My wife is completely unaware of this blog. Even now, I cannot bring myself to tell her that this is here because it's mine. Old habits die hard.

"We all have to die a bit every now and then and usually it's so gradual that we end up more alive than ever. Infinitely old and infinitely alive."
-Roberto Bolaño, The Skating Rink

So what's new? I have been reading, but slowly. I managed to finally read Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, which hit a little too close to home. I finished Matt Johnson's Pym, which was fun. I also finished George Saunders much-lauded short story collection, Tenth of December.

I watched the Tournament of Books roll past.I couldn't get my shit together enough to put on another contest. I barely kept up with some of the commentary. But I was thrilled to see that The Orphan Master's Son took the Rooster. I loved that book when I read it almost a year ago. If you haven't read it then shame on you! Head out to your local bookstore or library right now and read it.

I'm going to start doing this blogging thing again. I'm currently reading The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, so look for a review of that soon. Someday I will collect my thoughts on Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold. The Steinbeck Reading Challenge lives on... no kidding.

Thanks for reading. I'll see you soon.

-Brooks

Some links for your Monday

2012-11-12T09:00:00.000-06:00

* Rick Moody reviewed Eric Nuzum's Giving Up The Ghost on the New York Times. His review is better than mine, but I think we generally agree. I only have one issue with Moody's review - he completely ignores the musical aspects of the book. Music is a big deal in Giving Up The Ghost and to leave it without any consideration is a mistake.

* One of my favorite people who writes about books is Lydia Kiesling. She has a new piece in Bullett about James Wood's new essay collection, The Fun Stuff. The reason I love Kiesling so much is that she manages to imbibe her thoughtful writing with a lot of fun and humanity. Her regular-ish column at The Millions, the "Modern Library Revue," is really excellent and recommended reading. Do it.

* Among others, Andrew Krivak's The Sojourn was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Another Forever Overhead favorite, The Sisters Brothers was also nominated .

So this happened...

2012-11-11T11:55:00.000-06:00

apologies for the
weird reflection of the ceiling

My two month old Nexus 7 took a fall and now it is fully busted.

I break everything. *sigh*

And apparently the PBA won't pay for a replacement, which is bologna.

I'm bummed because this thing has become my primary reading device, edging out my old Kindle 3. It was great for reading in bed at night without needing to keep a light on.

That quote I posted yesterday from Pym - it's great, right? I had been reading Pym on my Nexus 7. Now I need to read the rest of it on either the Kindle or the iPhone. Not cool.

And do my overlords at the PBA offer any assistance? No. They just tell me to mellow out and do their bidding. So I guess that's what I'm going to do.

I guess.

A quote for Saturday

2012-11-10T11:14:00.000-06:00

"In this age when reality is based on big lies, what better place for truth than fiction?"
- Pym by Matt Johnson

Yesterday morning was cold and foggy

2012-11-09T09:14:00.000-06:00

It was really cold outside when I left the house to go to my new desk at the PBA.

The grass had gone and had it's tips frosted overnight.

Now everyone's going to think I've got gay grass

(I live in the midwest, folks).

Despite the cold, a few trees still have some nice color, so I decided to snap a quick photo.

And then I was driving and as I neared the mighty Mississippi River, my car was surrounded by a mysterious fog.

What does any of this have to do with books or literature or reading or anything?

Nothing, really. I mean, if I have to provide some kind of connection then maybe I can point you in the direction of Stephen King's short story "The Mist," which coincidentally takes place very close to where I went to summer camp.

Or maybe this post is some kind of subliminal message from my overlords at the PBA?

Maybe so. Maybe not.

Anticipating: Tenth of December by George Saunders

2012-11-08T09:30:00.000-06:00

Word has come down from the PBA that I am to inform you of the upcoming George Saunders collection, Tenth of December, due in January 2013 from Random House.

When people ask me about George Saunders (which they never do) I always (not really) tell them that he's the new Kurt Vonnegut.

New and improved. I taste a hint of David Foster Wallace in there too.

George Saunders stories operate in their own world. Each time I crack open a new story, there's always a a page or two where I'm finding my feet and getting my balance. It's almost like science fiction, but not at all.

Kind of like Etgar Keret, actually. But longer.

Many of the stories that appear in Tenth of December appeared in The New Yorker. I don't know if they've been modified since their initial publication (the PBA doesn't supply that kind of information), but I can assure you that I have read most of them and they are excellent.

The title story, "Tenth of December" can be read for free on The New Yorker's site here. It's awesome. Check out this first sentence: "The pale boy with unfortunate Prince Valiant bangs and cublike mannerisms hulked to the mudroom closet and requisitioned Dad’s white coat."

How's that for contrasting images? Pale, Prince valiant bangs, cublike, hulked.

Another story, "Victory Lap" also appeared in The New Yorker. I'm going to go out on a limb here and tell you that "Victory Lap" is totally worth the cost of the book alone. Maybe even the cost of a New Yorker subscription (probably not - it's crazy expensive!). It's such a great story.

Folks at the PBA probably won't be happy if I don't mention that George Saunders is also the author of some other great books, including CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia and In Persuasion Nation.

Everything I've read by Mr. Sauders has been, by my own estimation, excellent.

Meanwhile, the PBA wasn't able to tell me why Random House wasn't publishing The Tenth of December in December. I mean, I have the book on my nightstand right now. It's not like they couldn't push it out right after Thanksgiving.

I digress.

Read the book. It's good for you.

Everything on the internet is true

2012-11-06T17:08:00.000-06:00

Friends, I have news for you.

Today, in the United States of America, millions of people are voting for the next President. I'm sure you're aware of this.

You may not be aware of a secret wing of the CIA known as the PBA. I have been contacted by the PBA to act as their representative and this "blog" will be my primary communication interface.

I cannot share the PBA's agenda, nor can I fully disclose my role in their organization, but I can tell you this:

-Things will be a little different around here but also the same

-The John Steinbeck Project will continue

-The Tournament of Books Contest will return in 2013

The Book Riot 50

2012-11-06T06:29:00.000-06:00

Friends! I am back but also not back. The project from hell turned into the projects from hell and they're both almost over. I imagine that by the end of the month, things will go back to normal around here, just in time for the craziness of the holidays.

In the meantime, here's the Book Riot 50. Books I've read are in bold. Books I own but haven't read are in italics. And for fun, I've added an asterisk where I the book was required reading for me in High School.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee*
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald*
The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte*
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger*
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Stand by Stephen King (3x!)
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (2x!)
Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas*
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury* (3x!)
1984 by George Orwell
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Ulysses by James Joyce
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Dune by Frank Herbert
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo*
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

23 out of 50 isn't bad! There are a few in here that I'll never read. For example, I broke up with the Bronte's and their ilk many years ago, so the chances of me reading Persuasion are just about nil. I feel like I've read Little Women, but I don't remember enough to be sure. I've tried to read Tolkien a few times, but I can't get into it. The songs and poems make me crazy. I'd like to read the Russians (Dostoevsky, Nabokov) but I haven't gotten to them.

I commented at Book Riot about how I find this list kind of strange. Mostly because Joyce shows up at all. But I'm surprised that The Night Circus made the list and also the stuff by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. And while I think To Kill A Mockingbird is a good book, I don't think it's #1.

But whatever, it's a fun list and it's always fun to see how many I've read. To the few of you that are left, how many have you read?

Apologies

2012-09-02T19:08:00.001-05:00

Dear Readers,

Obviously I've been away for a while. I took on a freelance project that has turned out to be much, much bigger than I'd anticipated and it has quite literally consumed my life. Since this project began I have read zero books. I have read zero pages. Nothing.

There are a few backlogged reviews that need to be written. These are going to have to wait a bit longer.

I love this blog because it gives me an outlet in which I can talk about all the books I love to people that appreciate that kind of literary rambling. These past few weeks without writing or reading have really made me sad. Oh, and it'd be nice to see my kids again too.

I will return. This blog is not abandoned.

-B

Review & Giveaway: Giving Up The Ghost by Eric Nuzum

2012-08-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

Giving Up the Ghost: A Story About Friendship, 80s Rock, a Lost Scrap of Paper, and What It Means to Be Haunted
Eric Nuzum
320 pages
Dial Press
Published August 7th 2012

I feel like some things need to be said before we start talking about Giving Up The Ghost. I don't believe in ghosts. Period. End of story. I'm generally a live-and-let-live kind of guy, but not when it comes to ghosts. Family members will attest to the fact that I'm kind of a jerk about it. I hate ghost hunting shows and I find people's stories about how their cousin's best friend's uncle saw a ghost fer reals tedious at best. I want to hear your ghost story even less than I want to hear about what you dreamed about last night. Now that I've established my anti-ghost story credentials, let me tell you how much I enjoyed Giving Up The Ghost.

I don't normally use the publisher's plot summary, but this one is kind of perfect:

Eric Nuzum is afraid of the supernatural, and for good reason: As a high school oddball in Canton, Ohio, during the early 1980s, he became convinced that he was being haunted by the ghost of a little girl in a blue dress who lived in his parents’ attic. It began as a weird premonition during his dreams, something that his quickly diminishing circle of friends chalked up as a way to get attention. It ended with Eric in a mental ward, having apparently destroyed his life before it truly began. The only thing that kept him from the brink: his friendship with a girl named Laura, a classmate who was equal parts devoted friend and enigmatic crush. With the kind of strange connection you can only forge when you’re young, Laura walked Eric back to “normal”—only to become a ghost herself in a tragic twist of fate.

Years later, a fully functioning member of society with a great job and family, Eric still can’t stand to have any shut doors in his house for fear of what’s on the other side. In order to finally confront his phobia, he enlists some friends on a journey to America’s most haunted places. But deep down he knows it’s only when he digs up the ghosts of his past, especially Laura, that he’ll find the peace he’s looking for.

The book alternates between present-day Eric and early-20's Eric. In the present, Eric is trying to understand a reoccurring dream in which a Little Girl in a Blue Dress with wide and dark eyes yells at him in gibberish. When he was younger, the dream coincided with a feeling of terror that the Little Girl was behind him or across the hall or up in the attic. He never sees Her when he's awake, but he feels Her presence. And so present-day Eric goes to a few hotbeds of paranormal activity and to a community of Spiritualists to try to understand what was going on with the Little Girl. I won't ruin the outcomes of these trips, but they give Eric the opportunity to work through his fear while also exploring the paranormal.

Like many young people, young Eric finds much of his identity through his music. There are lots of really great 80's indie rock references that had me firing up Spotify so I could listen to bands like Killing Joke, Flipper, and Suicidal Tendencies. I love music, so listening to the albums and songs that were mentioned added a new depth to the story. But the musical reference that had the biggest impact of me was Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports.

Give it a listen

It's the perfect soundtrack for this book. Melancholy, peaceful, mysterious, beautiful. It's become my go-to headphones music for when I'm reading anything at all. I just put the first track, "1/1", on repeat and go. It's prefect. I love it so much. Thank you, Eric Nuzum, for turning me on to this.

There's an incident in which Eric is DJing at his college's "radio station" (it's more of a glorified campus PA system) and a woman complains that she doesn't like the music and that it's too loud. Eric totally loses his cool, running out of the DJ booth and doing a rage-fueled, table-top sing-along to David Bowie's "DJ". When he returns to the booth, he puts on Music for Airports. "I played the tape because I wanted the situation to melt away. Music for Airports always made me feel calm. It reminded me of feeling peaceful. I wanted to let Music for Airports pour over everyone there and have the same effect on them. Just let this situation I created wash away." Unfortunately, music can't undo bad behavior.

And the bad behavior continues. Abusing drugs and alcohol, Eric slowly starts to lose grip with reality. His paralyzing fear of the Little Girl is behind much of it. He just wants to get away from it. He really only has one friend, a mysterious girl named Laura. Eric and Laura go out a few times a week and just hang out. They trade music, have silly arguments and talk about Eric's problems. As much as he tries, Laura never really gives up any personal information about herself. It's an almost-romantic relationship. Sometimes they kiss, often they don't. When Eric ends up in the psych ward, it's Laura that visits him and, in a way, inspires him to stop being such an ass and try to get better.

Laura dies and Eric becomes haunted by her memory and an inscrutable poem that she gave him. It's never really mentioned in the book, but I also felt like Eric was haunted by himself. The process of writing this book was a way to deal with who he was and who he has become. Sometimes looking at our past self and the gauzy good-time memories can be painful and embarrassing, but also illuminating. Sometimes who were were casts a shadow on who we are, even if the two are very different.

Giving Up The Ghost is a well-written memoir with a unique twist. Eric Nuzum makes a serious effort to unpack himself and investigate his ghost and comes up with just a small nugget of truth. I won't spoil that for you, but it's a nice ending to a book that has a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. That might sound unsatisfying, but I think that sometimes there's more value in asking the questions than getting absolute answers.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours and Dial Press/Random House for providing a copy of Giving Up The Ghost for review. You can read reviews from other bloggers on the tour here! You can also follow Eric Nuzum on Twitter and go to his website where you can find unpublished excerpts from the book and other good stuff.

Interested in Giving Up The Ghost? Win a free (!!) copy using the Rafflecopter widget below! US and Canadian mailing addresses only. Entries close on August 9th.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giving Up the Ghost: A Story about Friendship, 80s Rock, a Lost Scrap of Paper, and What It Means to Be Haunted
by Eric Nuzum

Telegraph Avenue Read-Along: Week 4

2012-08-06T09:33:00.000-05:00

I feel like there's a significance to Nat delivering Gwen's baby, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I can come up with stuff about Nat finally needing to do something decisive in a stressful situation, but I'm not sure if that's really it.
When Archy sleeps with Kai after the funeral I felt like it was his bottom. As in, he's sunk as far as he can go and it's time to start looking up again. He has a sense of shame that he didn't seem to have before.
I like that Titus continues to be an enigma even at the end. We never really know him because I think he doesn't really know himself.
My favorite part of this section was when Archy goes to bail Luther out of the situation with Chan Flowers. There's a moment where he acknowledges that he loves his Dad, despite all of the bullshit. And at that moment Archy opened up for me and I understood.
Fathers and sons have a slippery relationship. It's something between worship and resentment and fear and respect and confusion and it just ping-pongs between all of those things. I see that with Archy and Titus and Archy and Luther. I see it with Nat and Julie.
For what it's worth, I was kind of disappointed with Archy's new career choice.
But I did like and understand what Nat decided to do with himself.
Which makes me think about how the white people in Telegraph Avenue have a passion for something that they can't live without. A singular vision that defines who they are. The black people don't seem to have that. Well, except for Luther Stallings. That dude was comitted.
I don't think Telegraph Avenue is about race or sexuality. Those are some interesting ways to frame the story, but I don't think that's the central issue. It seemed to be more about people living in a modern society, figuring out how to move beyond their past (their history, their identity, their assumptions) and embrace their present.

In Conclusion: The writing was excellent. Even if the story was garbage (it wasn't), the writing would have saved the book for me. The story was pretty good, but as I said up top, I wasn't a huge fan of the neat and clean ending.

I want to thank Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads!) for the opportunity to participate in this pre-publication read-along. I had a lot of fun and met some really interesting bloggers. You were all wonderful and I loved reading your thoughts each week (even if you DNF'd the book!). Apologies for posting this so late!

Telegraph Avenue Read-Along: Week Three

2012-07-24T14:22:00.001-05:00

I'm participating in a pre-publication read-along of Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue, hosted by Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads!). You can pre-order Telegraph Avenue from this independent bookstore or at a local independent bookstore near you. If you want to read more about this section of Telegraph Avenue, check out the other blogs that are participating!

Part Three is called A Bird of Wide Experience and is essentially a 12-page sentence. What is extraordinary about it is that I didn't notice that it was a single sentence until about three quarters of the way through it. I had quickly noticed that it was a single paragraph, but I caught myself thinking, "this is a long sentence, I wonder where it started?" As I flipped back through the pages I realized that the sentence had started at the beginning of the section and had barreled on through to the end. Using a device like this is tricky and is easily botched, but Chabon does it in such a smooth way with the semicolons and commas and the beautiful and compelling language... it just works.

Part Four, A Return to Forever, gives us two places where people go when they need to find a sort of home base.

On one side we have Brokeland Records, which seems to operate as a sort of spiritual center for Telegraph Avenue. When you need to have a funeral for a man that, in some ways, represents a part of the soul of the area, the innovative, swinging, surprisingly deep soul, you gotta have it at The Church of Vinyl. The funeral brings everybody together, from the Marxist to the mortician, to pay their respects for a part of their community that has passed away. Not just a person, but a representation of what used to be.

The other place is the Bruce Lee Institute of Martial Arts, run by the ancient Irene Jew (here’s another name that doesn’t fit the character – I feel like Chabon is just messing with me now). In A Bird of Wide Experience we see Luther Stallings and Valetta Moore sneaking out of the Institute, where it seems like they've been holed up for a while. The Bruce Lee Institute is where Luther Stallings found his martial arts center, it's where he grew into the part of himself that he's the most proud of, it's where he became THE Luther Stallings. The Bruce Lee Institute, "whose secret room, at the back of the stairs leading up to the roof, where exiles and religious fugitives and, for nine nights, a Living Buddha from the mountains of Sichuan, had all known bitterness and safety." It’s a mythic and mystical place of safety and peace.

When Gwen leaves Archy, she comes to rest at the Institute as well. Gwen goes there to simplify, find her center (and a place to sleep). When Irene Jew comes to her one morning with a teacup, it's filled with the most simple of all drinks - hot tap water. The drink soothes and warms Gwen.

And let's not forget that Archy "[s]lept in some kind of kung fu getup, satiny red with bruce lee institute stitched in white silk across the back." All religions borrow and have things in common with each other. Of course Archy, who worships at the Church of Vinyl, dips a pinkie into the ancient religion of martial arts in his own way.

There's something about Luther Stallings that feels evil. I don't know what else to say about it, but the scene where Julie and Titus meet Luther and Valetta in the auto body shop felt like the boys had walked into a seductive lion's den. Titus is enthralled by Luther, while Julie is much more cautious. Kind of a reversal, having Titus fall hard for someone... Luther got Titus all turned around.

One more thing that I want to discuss. Titus and Julie. Look, I'm the only male on this read-along and I am here to tell you that young teenage boys very rarely dabble in homosexual activities if they're not homosexuals. I went to boarding school and I lived in a dorm with over 200 other boys and that stuff just didn't happen. Teenage boys joke around A LOT with gay stereotypes, but to actually partake in gay activities is a whole other thing. I might even allow that the bus scene is possible, but the scene in the bathroom at the end of this week's reading, stretches the plausibility of the situation. This is all, of course, assuming that the description of Titus as straight is true. I'm more prone to believe that Titus is bisexual or just plain homosexual. Chabon may be playing with the reader's confusion to mirror Titus' own sexual confusion, but it all just rings false to me.

All in all, I'm absolutely loving Telegraph Avenue. A few quick hits I want to mention before I wrap this up:
- The scene in which Gwen brings Moby into the meeting with the hospital board was really great. It was funny and exciting and a bit thrilling.
- I read Archy's speech at the funeral twice because I liked the rhythm of so much. It's totally different than the rest of the book.
- Chan Flowers is coming across as a dark kingpin wannabe.
- I'm with Archy when it comes to Luther. Nothing good can come from that situation.
- The Aztec suit. Mr. Jones knew how to stay fly.

One more week, one more Telegraph Avenue update. Check back next Tuesday for part five, Brokeland!

Telegraph Avenue Read-Along: Week Two

2012-07-14T00:17:00.001-05:00

I am writing to you all from Broken Bow Reservoir in southwestern Oklahoma, where I am camping with my family. Because of my remote location, I am typing this on my iPhone, so this will be short. I promise a more regular update next week.

We open the section with Mr. Jones, who, as it turns out, was raised in Oklahoma City. He and Archy are hanging out while Archy fixes Mr. Jones' Leslie before a gig that night. I really liked that scene since it gave us some background on Coachie Jones and helped to put his relationship with Archy in some perspective. I also feel a closeness to ol' Mr. Jones because we had a similar experience in the kid department. I very much understand the frustration of watching people have kids that they don't even want while other people are unable to have the children that they so desperately want.

But the scene that's really blowing me away at the moment is the scene in which the perspective switches to Senator Barak Obama. Michael Chabon has some balls, big
giant balls. It was really out of left field and rather well done. It was a weird way of giving us a glimpse of what it is about Archy that Gwen loves so much. Up until that point I couldn't figure out why she would stay with him, and even though I still don't really get it, I guess I can live with the explanation.

I found the scene with Nat cooking kind of confusing at first, but after a while I found my place in it and was able to get some new backstory on Nat. His stepmother was black, he grew up in a black neighborhood, had all black friends, loved black music, but absolutely refused to act black.

Another surprise in this section - Gwen is preggers with TWINS. Aaaaaand ahe's leaving Archy. I liked that scene too. Very Gwen.

EDIT - I've read ahead and I'm pretty sure I misread the line that led me to believe that Gwen was going to have twins. The quote is: "Then Gwen would be responsible for three babies instead of the two she had ordered." HemingwayHeroine mentioned in the comments that the "two she had ordered" referred to ARCHY and the baby and now I'm inclined to follow that logic.

Finally there's the contrasting of the meeting that Nat throws at the store to get the neighborhood to move against the Thang, playing mostly off white guilt, to the meeting between Archy and Gibson Goode, mostly trying to pull at the strings of Archy's blackness.

Finally, the language is excellent and the sentences are as wonderful a they were in the first section. As soon as I'm done typing this up I'm going to read on and see what happens next. I probably won't be able to hop around and read everybody's thoughts until the weekend, but I'm really looking forward to everybody's comments.

Better post next week, I promise.

Telegraph Avenue Read-Along: Week One

2012-07-10T13:01:00.000-05:00

Last night while waiting for my tiny dog to do his tiny dog thing, I finished the first section of Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue. It was the first cool evening after over 10 days of scorched-earth heat and I started thinking about the book's cover and how if Telegraph Avenue was an album of recorded music it'd have to be some kind of progressive rock or maybe some jazz fusion - think Miles Davis' Bitches Brew. There's a lot of stuff to track - characters, settings, relationships. Pay attention! These characters weave in and out, revealing connections and complications. Truth is uncovered and if you've let your attention stray then you'll miss something.

Sound confusing? It is. But you give yourself over to it and the melody begins to peek out from behind the texture and before long you'll be humming along.

Let's get some plot-type stuff out of the way. Archy and Nat own Brokeland Records, a used vinyl shop in Oakland, California. Their business is being threatened by the impending arrival of the absurdly named Dogpile Thang, a multimedia mega-store. Archy's wife is Gwen and Nat's wife is Aviva and together they work as a team of midwives. Archy and Gwen have a baby on the way. Nat and Aviva have a son named Julius (nicknamed "Julie"), aged 15 and with one foot out of the closet. There's an interesting cast of characters that come into the shop: Councilman Chandler Flowers, Mike "Moby" Oberstein, Garnet Singletary aka the "King of Bling", Cochise Jones and his parrot Fifty-Eight. And then there's Mr. Nostalgia and Luther Stallings and Popcorn Hughes and the 1973 version of Chandler Flowers. So many moving pieces, and I haven't mentioned the whole birthing scene and the hospital and... I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

Last, and certainly not least, we've got Titus Joyner, Julie's love interest and quite possibly, Archy's long-lost son.

That's a confusing bit of plot summary, further complicated by the fact there's SO MUCH MORE that I'm not even telling you about.

So far the book seems to be about fathers and sons, breaking out of the constraints of family, breaking out of the constraints of society and race. I don't think I want to comment on the race stuff just yet, but the father-son stuff was especially powerful for me given that I have two sons of my own and the whole father-son thing is becoming somewhat of a THING for me.

You never would get through to the end of being a father, no matter where you stored your mind or how many steps in the series you followed. Not even if you died. Alive or dead or a thousand miles distant, you were always going to be on the hook for work that was neither a procedure nor a series of steps but, rather, something that demanded your full, constant attention without necessarily calling on you to do, perform, or say anything at all.
...
Fathering imposed an obligation that was more than your money, your body, or your time, a presence neither physical nor measurable by clocks: open-ended, eternal, and invisible, like the commitment of gravity to the stars

I love that line at the end... "like the commitment of gravity to the stars."

It just occured to me that there isn't much about mothering (although there is LOTS about birthing).

One more quote and then we'll wrap this up:

Like the Party he had joined too late, too young, Chan was a lost claim check, a series of time-lapse photos of a promise as it broke.

In Summation! I'm in love with the writing, seduced by the language, but I've still got a wait and see outlook on the story. I feel like I've got a good sense of who Archy, Nat and Julie are, but I'm hazy on Gwen and Aviva hasn't come into focus yet. But we've just started and there's a lot of story left...

Acquired: Donald Antrim Bundle

2012-07-06T12:56:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the good folks at Five Chapters, I won a set of the new Picador re-issues of Donald Antrim's three novels: The Verificationist, Elect Mr. Robinson For a Better World, The Hundred Brothers. These new editions sport new covers and new introduction by some real literary powerhouses. What kind of literary power am I talking about? Check these names: Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Forever Overhead favorite George Saunders. So these are pretty much 110% awesome.

They're all relatively short novels - each less than 200 pages. Check out the pictures below and read the publisher's summaries. I'm looking forward to reading these! Antrim has been associated with David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen, so this is some of that lit shiz.

The Hundred Brothers

There’s Rob, Bob, Tom, Paul, Ralph, and Noah; Nick, Dennis, Bertram, Russell, and Virgil. The doctor, the documentary filmmaker, and the sculptor in burning steal; the eldest, the youngest, and the celebrated “perfect” brother, Benedict. In Donald Antrim’s mordantly funny novel The Hundred Brothers, our narrator and his colossal fraternity of ninety-eight brothers (one couldn’t make it) have assembled in the crumbling library of their family’s estate for a little sinister fun. Executed with the invention and intelligence of Barthelme and Pynchon, Antrim’s taxonomy of male specimens is in equal proportions disturbing and absurdly hilarious.
This edition has a new introduction by Jonathan Franzen.

Elect Mr. Robinson For a Better World

In Pete Robinson’s seaside suburban town, things have, well, fallen into disrepair. The voters have de-funded schools, the mayor has been drawn and quartered by an angry mob of townsmen, and Turtle Pond Park is stocked with claymore mines. Pete Robinson, third grade teacher with a 1:32 scale model of an Inquisition dungeon in his basement, wants to open a new school, and in his effort to do so he stumbles upon another idea: he needs to run for mayor. Uniquely hilarious, this novel is a horrifyingly insightful tale of a world not so very different from the one in which we live.
This edition has a new introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides.

The Verificationist

One April night, a group of psychologists from the Krakower Institute meet at a pancake house, where they order breakfast foods and engage in shop talk and the occasional flirtation. At the center of this maelstrom of pyschobabble and unrequited lust sits Tom, program coordinator for the Young Women of Strength, who has been known to sob uncontrollably at meetings. When Tom tries to initiate a food fight, a rival psychologist bear hugs him into submission, resulting in an out-of-body experience that leaves our Tom hovering over his colleagues. In the hands of Donald Antrim, this unique perspective becomes an exuberantly funny riff on our culture that does nothing less than expose the core of emotions underlying the most basic of human needs.
This edition has a new introduction by George Saunders.

Another big THANK YOU to Five Chapters. If you're not familiar with these guys, they publish a short story in five parts each week. If you like short stories, I want to encourage you to check them out.

If you're interested in any of these books you can click the covers below to get more information at Powells.

Steinbeck Challenge: Cup of Gold Acquired!

2012-07-05T14:00:00.000-05:00

Cover. Ripping bodice and all

I'm very excited right now because a package arrived at my desk about 30 minutes ago containing the first book of my John Steinbeck Reading Challenge! Cup of Gold, first published in 1929, was Steinbeck's first novel and a work of historical fiction. I'll write more about the content of the book after I've read it, but for now we can talk about how much I love this thing sitting on my desk.

This edition of Cup of Gold was published in 1949 by The Popular Library. It was fairly common for a serious novel to have a truly fantastic cover and misleading blurbs. This one features the pirate Henry Morgan leering over a swooning (?) damsel. He appears to be pulling a Timberlake and causing a wardrobe malfunction.

I've included some more pictures - including the signature of a previous owner and what appears to be his system of cataloging his books.

"A lusty take of an adventurer..."

A Lusty Buccaneer Novel!

File under "1600's (1670)"

I'm pretty excited to dig into this. It'll have to be my third priority (the first is the Telegraph Avenue Read-Along and the second is finishing the three short-story collections I've been reading for the past few months), but I can't wait to get into it!

Telegraph Avenue Read-Along: Introductory Post

2012-07-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

I'm participating in a read-along of Michael Chabon's new novel, Telegraph Avenue, hosted by Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads!). This is the first post in the read-along in which we discuss our history with Michael Chabon and why we're interested in reading his new novel.

I've finished only one Chabon novel - the Pulitzer-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I started The Yiddish Policeman's Union a few years later and got about three-quarters of the way through it before life got in the way. When I tried to pick it up again a few months later, I'd forgotten too much of the plot to make sense of what was happening.

I bought Chabon's first collection of nonfiction, Maps and Legends, because it was beautiful. I haven't read it. When Borders was going out of business last summer, I picked up his second collection of nonfiction, Manhood for Amateurs for a dollar. A few months ago when I was in Augusta, Georgia for work, I picked up The Final Solution at a used book store.

The Chabon Collection

I loved Kavalier & Clay and I really liked The Yiddish Policeman's Union. Assuming that Telegraph Avenue is even half as good as those two books, I know I'll love it. I'm really looking forward to this reading party.

Here's the post schedule

Tuesday, 10 July -- Discussion of Part One--Dream of Cream
Tuesday, 17 July -- Discussion of Part Two--The Church of Vinyl
Tuesday, 24 July -- Discussion of Parts Three & Four--A Bird of Wide Experience & Return to Forever
Tuesday, 31 July -- Discussion of Part Five--Brokeland--and a wrap up of the experience reading along for a not-yet-published work.

Telegraph Avenue will be published on September 11, 2012 by HarperCollins. You can preorder a copy here.

See you next Tuesday for the discussion of Part One!

Bonus Reading:

Chabon on reading Joyce's Finnegan's Wake in the New York Review of Books
"Against Dickitude"

The John Steinbeck Reading Challenge

2012-07-02T00:20:00.001-05:00

I have been a fan of John Steinbeck since I read Tortilla Flat in high school. The book is about a paisano named Danny and the adventures he has with his friends It's a book that has so much warmth and heart and love for its characters that I read it twice in a row.

Over the years I read more and more Steinbeck novels. Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, The Moon is Down and more. I read East of Eden over Christmas one year and I remember that I kept thinking to myself, "THIS is great story-telling!" At that moment, I resolved to read all the Steinbeck I could get my hands on. That was a few years ago. I've read only one other Steinbeck novel since then.

I was sitting at home the other night, wanting to read something, but unable to pick a book and it occured to me that I should maybe go grab a Steinbeck novel and give it a go. I went into the basement and got out the box that had the Steinbeck books and started to look through them. I wanted to read all of them. I wanted to re-read The Grapes of Wrath and I wanted to read In Dubious Battle for the first time. I wanted to see if Cannery Row was a good as I remembered and I wanted to finally read Travels with Charley.

That's where I got the idea for this challenge.

Beginning today, I will read all of it. From Cup of Gold (1929) to Steinbeck in Vietnam: Dispatches from the War (2012) I'm going to read everything. Thirty-two books in total. This project may take a few years, but that's totally okay. It will include the novels and also the journals and letter collections and they will be read in the order in which they were published (excluding the Working Days, which will be read after Grapes of Wrath). When it's all over, I hope to read a Steinbeck biography or two (if you have any suggestions let me know!)

Finally, I haven't figured out how I'm going to handle the two Sea of Cortez books. They are largely the same, but each also has content that is exclusive.

If you would like to join me, I've come up with a few ways in which you can participate:

The Major Works: Read Steinbeck's major works: The Pearl, Travels with Charley, East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men.
The Long Novels: Read Steinbeck's two long novels: The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden.
The Short Novels: Read all of Steinbeck's short novels - Tortilla Flat, The Moon is Down, The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, The Pearl. These are often collected in a single volume.
The Dustbowl Trilogy: Read the three novels that make up the Dustbowl trilogy - In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath.
Mix and Match: Read any number of Steinbeck novels.
Everything: Read them all.

This is a perpetual challenge, meaning that it will continue for as long as it takes for me to complete it.

If you want to participate, grab the button below and put it on your blog. Indicate the level at which you want to participate and add your name to the linky below. Please link directly to your challenge announcement post. I will regularly link to any new challenge posts here on this blog. You may join this challenge at any time.

Grab the code for the button:

My current Steinbeck pile

Books included in this challenge:

Cup of Gold (1929)
The Pastures of Heaven (1932)
The Red Pony (1933)
To a God Unknown (1933)
Tortilla Flat (1935)*
In Dubious Battle (1936)
Of Mice and Men (1937)*
The Long Valley (1938)
The Grapes of Wrath (1939)*
The Forgotten Village (1941)
Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research (1941)
The Moon Is Down (1942)
Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team (1942)
Cannery Row (1945)*
The Wayward Bus (1947)
The Pearl (1947)*
A Russian Journal (1948)
Burning Bright (1950)
The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)
East of Eden (1952)*
Sweet Thursday (1954)
The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication (1957)
Once There Was A War (1958)
The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)*
Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962)
America and Americans (1966)
Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969)
Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (1975)
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)
Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath (1989)
Zapata (1993)
Steinbeck in Vietnam: Dispatches from the War (2012)

The books in blue indicate the books that I already own and the books with the red asterisk are the books that I'll be re-reading. I bought Cup of Gold off of eBay last night, so I'll begin reading as soon as it arrives.

I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am about this project. I hope you'll join me and read at least one book by John Steinbeck.

Mr. Linky:

Meta-Post: The Age of Miracles

2012-06-28T15:53:00.001-05:00

I don't have too much to say about this one. In keeping with the last review, I took a different approach to writing about The Age of Miracles. This time I set up a few rules for myself:

First draft must be stream-of-conscious
1 hour time limit from beginning to final edit
Focus on plot

Maybe some people write all of their reviews like that, but for me it's very different and it was hard to make myself just write without stopping. Once I finished my first pass, I re-worked a few small sections and moved some paragraphs around. I was pleasantly surprised by the result. By the time my hour was up I was convinced that it was the best thing I'd written for the blog.

This is why I'm hot

The next morning I got up and gave it another quick read before I posted it and I was surprised to find that I didn't think it was that great. I mean, it's FINE and there's NOTHING WRONG with it, but it's not the BEST EVS. Shows what a good night's sleep will do to your sense of awesome.

Since I did a stream-of-consciousness review, there was a lot that got cut that either didn't fit or was stupid or whatever. Here are my favorite bits that got cut:

* I got The Age of Miracles from NetGalley, which is great for a lot of reasons, but ebooks kinda suck when it comes to finding quotes. Have you ever tried to flip through an ebook? Not gonna happen. You can search an ebook, which is kinda great, but unless you know what you're looking for - it's a struggle.

* In one of my favorite scenes in the book, Hannah is invited to another girl's house to act as a... Oh forget it, I don't feel like writing about that. It would involve finding that section of the book and confirming the plot points. I don't have the patience for that tonight.

* Books should be judged by whether they've accomplished what they set out to do and not by some other standard. The Age of Miracles isn't straight science fiction, nor is it quite a YA novel. Yes, I can concede that some parts of the narration don't hold up to scrutiny, but The Age of Miracles works for what it is - a coming of age novel. To bad this paragraph isn't succeeding. Too bad it's going to get deleted. Too bad I suck. Moving on...

In Summation:
Given that The Age of Miracles has been highly publicized by it's publisher and that it has been reviewed SO MANY TIMES by bloggers, I'm not counting on it being an especially popular post, but I'm happy with some of the ideas I put out there.

UK Cover