Hello sweeties! This review has been sitting on my wordpress dashboard for over 18 months. I am planning on returning to the big bad world of book blogging in 2013, thought I’d get this out of the way before the new year so I can start with a clean slate. See you in the new year!

Nineteen Seventy-Seven, the second novel in David Peace’s Red Riding quartet, is crime fiction without good guys. Crime fiction with resolution. Crime fiction that depicts not only criminal behaviour as relentlessly bloody and horrific, but raises the question of whether there is something inherent in human nature that is similarly corrupted. Nineteen Seventy-Seven is bleak, despairing and an assault on all fronts.

I really loved the first book in the series, Nineteen Seventy-Four, and when beginning Nineteen Seventy-Seven I found the narrative voices were very similar to that of Eddie Dunford in the first book. That narrative voice – abrupt, short, stream of consciousness pace, is similar to the one used in Seventy-Four, and other than content it is near impossible to distinguish who is narrating. What was a compelling narrative voice in Nineteen Seventy-Four now seemed to be Peace’s default writing style, not as intrinsically linked to character as it originally appeared. Nonetheless, it is a suitably hypnotic and alluring style, a sort of gruesomely poetic vision of paranoia and fear. In Nineteen Seventy-Four, as a quick recap, Dunford was a man in way over his head, a somewhat clueless crime journalist investigating and becoming entangled with gruesome crimes and institutional corruption. Nineteen Seventy-Seven focuses on a different series of crimes, this time the mutilation and murder of prostitutes on the streets of Yorkshire, the work of the Yorkshire Ripper.

Yesterday’s news, tomorrow’s headline:
The Yorkshire Ripper.

The two main characters of Nineteen Seventy-Seven are two men that appeared in the first book, and at first it is difficult to reconcile how they were in Seventy-Four with how they appear here. Jack Whitehead, star crime reporter, was Dunford’s friendly rival, while Bob Fraser, an unusually helpful police officer, was one of Dunford’s key sources. Here, their roles and the sympathy afforded to them are reversed. Bob Fraser, though somewhat decent in Seventy-Four, here is complicit in his acceptance of the brutal tactics of the police force and sadly, desperately, in love with a prostitute while his wife cares for her ailing father. Jack Whitehead is no longer the star journalist puffed up on his superior attitude, but a broken man deeply traumatized by events in the years between.

The footnotes and the margins, the tangents and the detours, the dirty tabula, the broken record.
Jack Whitehead, Yorkshire, 1977.
The bodies and the corpses, the alleys and the wasteland, the dirty men, the broken women.
Jack the Ripper, Yorkshire, 1977.
The lies and the half-truths, the truths and the half-lies, the dirty hands, the broken backs.
Two Jacks, one Yorkshire, 1977.

These two key characters are involved in the official and media investigation into the spate of violent crimes frightening the city, but are also personally involved with prostitutes who they fear will be the next victim. One major qualm I have with this series so far is the lack of female characters who are not victims of violence or prostitutes. With the investigations invading their professional and personal lives, Fraser and Whitehead are unable to escape from the atmosphere of dread and of fear. It’s a mood that envelopes the entire narrative for the reader as well, claustrophobic bleakness, with no evidence of light at all. Mainly due to the similar style and a lack of momentum in the investigations, it wasn’t until the crimes began to slowly be linked to those in Nineteen Seventy-Four that I really became engaged. Engaged being much too light a word for how I feel about these books, it sinks its hooks in and refuses to let go. Especially when the slightest connections are being made, when the characters are on the brink of, yes madness, but also uncovering essential details that reveal more than they could ever possibly want to comprehend.

The ending of Nineteen Seventy-Seven is one of the most disturbing, disheartening and oppressive that I have read in a long time. There is no redemption. There is no resolution. There are no heroes. Paranoia and failure are rife, corruption nearly impossible to overcome. Powerfully grim and genuinely frightening, and not just due to the visceral descriptions of murder, but the horrors possible of human nature.

(This post was a draft that I had saved on my wordpress dashboard since August 2011 and I have since read the final two books in the series, and found them equally as stylistically gripping, inventive and unrelentingly bleak. Brilliant, harrowing stuff.)

Rose has stayed in the area, a successful mathematics professor with an attentive fiancee, and resents her sisters flight from the town. Bean has returned from her high cost lifestyle in New York after being unceremoniously fired from her job and Cordelia may have found a reason to finally give up her gypsy lifestyle and settle for good. Frustratingly, each sister is determined to face their past and secrets alone, ignorant of the similarities she shares with her sisters. Readers will find a lot to love, and relate to, with the family’s bookishness – the books left open around the house, the retreat into the written word when reality seems too much.

She remembered one of her boyfriends asking, offhandedly, how many books she read in a year. “A few hundred,” she said.
“How do you have the time?” he asked, gobsmacked.
She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her. Because I don’t spend hours flipping through cable complaining there’s nothing on? Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pre-game, in-game and post-game talking heads? Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with the other financirati? Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in available reflective surfaces? I am reading.

This is not a hugely taxing novel.  Brown’s style is light and enjoyable, well-versed in the particulars of lovingly antagonistic relationships between sisters. A curious use of the collective narrative voice (“we”) is effective, only sometimes jarring, and allows for us to see how the sisters view each other as a whole. As one of three weird sisters myself, I really liked seeing how the three interacted together, with their parents and as individuals and the frustrations inherent in each of those relationships.

And though I am not usually one for sentimentality or sappy narrative arcs based on the power of forgiveness and love, Bean’s story of repentance and self-forgiveness, even when couched in the alien (to me) language of religion and religious redemption, reduced me to tears. Everything I write seems to be so damned apologetic for being affected by a story on a basic empathetic level. Eleanor Brown makes it easy to relate to these women and their stories, even when they are at their worst. Moments of predictability don’t diminish the strength of Brown’s writing and though it is quite different from what I usually enjoy, The Weird Sisters is a satisfying read.

Written in a diary format, Dangling Man is the story of a moderately intelligent young man, Joseph, who has enlisted in the army but is stuck in some sort of bureaucratic purgatory while the authorities figure out what to do with him. While his colleagues go off to battle, or are stationed around the country, Joseph spends his days in a shoddy boarding house, walking around Chicago, avoiding questions about his current position, having meaningful conversations with himself, looking back over his past, and generally being a layabout little shit.

Joseph considers himself as something of an intellectual, a scholar who had previously found success in rote employment. Joseph’s self-assuredness and confrontational methods of dealing with the world and others brings Salinger’s Holden Caulfield to mind. More appropriate a comparison would be with Frank Wheeler from Revolutionary Road, who also believes that his self proclaimed intellectual ways put him above the less educated. (Although I’m thinking that, as with Caulfield, reading this book at a certain age makes one more likely to relate to Joseph’s outlook.)

As he is in most things, Joseph is conscious of a motive in his choice of clothes. It is his answer to those whose defiant principle it is to dress badly, to whom a crumpled suit is a badge of freedom. He wants to avoid the small conflicts of nonconformity so that he can give all his attention to defending his inner differences, the ones that really matter. Furthermore, he takes a sad or negative satisfaction in wearing what he calls “the uniform of the times.” In short, the less noteworthy the better, for his purposes. All the same, he manages to stand out.

For someone who declares himself intelligent beyond compare, Joseph is not only lacking an element of self-awareness that would make him more tolerable, but unforgivably misogynistic. He is unable to accept his wife Iva’s agency, constantly belittling her with his moods, unable to influence her and shape her into the well-read intellectual he wants her to be. He is given to sudden outbursts of anger and, in one scenario, a strange scene of faux-parental discipline, which are not given the same amount of consideration as the minute actions of others. His diatribes about how the world and his friends, colleagues, family are all deemed lacking and his uniqueness are tiresome and become very tedious to read. When he simply recounts his days or his past, the prose flows better, but for the most part it is difficult to empathize with Joseph and his precarious predicament. Maybe if he didn’t resort to massive generalizations about mankind (while excluding himself from those crude beasts) and unfair criticisms.

Sometimes he manages to appreciate simple serene scenes from his domestic life – such as napping with his wife after eating strawberries rolled in powdered sugar – yet, even this becomes another opportunity for a long pronouncement about … whatever, who cares by this stage. His arrogance and verbosity quickly becomes boring. And yet, though Joseph is an arrogant asshole, and irrationally horrible to those around him, it’s impossible not to feel just a small amount of sympathy with him when he gives up his dangling days and demands to be called up for duty. One is left wondering whether the discipline of army life will be beneficial to him.

So, as it turns out, my trepidations was largely unfounded. Though this is Bellow’s first novel so perhaps his later works will, whenever I get around to reading them, be somewhat more challenging. Dangling Man, while having some moments of insight, didn’t make much of an impression.

The above would have been my review of Gwendoline Riley’s Sick Notes had I reviewed it immediately after reading. However, the more time I have to think over the book, the more unforgiving I become with the cobweb thin excuses for characters, plot, motivation. Once upon a time I probably would have loved this novel, would have become intoxicated with the rhythms of Riley’s language, with the lifestyle of drifting between bars and parks and dusty bedrooms and bars, with her heady take on the thrill and awe of intensely felt attraction.

Esther has returned home to Manchester to live with her friend, Donna. She spends her days drinking a lot and wandering the streets, writing, watching and thinking until she meets and spends a few days with an American musician, Newton. There are hints Esther left in the first place to “sort herself out” though her current behaviour dismisses any recuperation ever having taken place. Her behaviour is abrupt, her conversations stunted – though this seems to be a stylistic choice on Riley’s part, the characters communicate almost entirely in non sequiturs. Esther is prone to vicious outbursts of irrational behaviour that do not seem to be prompted psychologically or emotionally, and without any self-awareness on her part. She is infantilized in speech, thought and behaviour.

Donna has a crush on the boy at the biography desk so we have to go upstairs and walk past him a couple of times.
‘Don’t look,’ she says. ‘We’ll stand by that display table and I’ll just ache in his direction.’

As Newton begins to dissect their dalliance and talking about his other lovers, Esther switches off, unable to look at him or be present in the situation or the conversation, she is unable, or unwilling, to verbalize to him how she feels – and yet she finds herself feeling so strongly attached, even as she recognizes what he is trying to communicate. And, so, after he leaves, she mopes and yearns and drinks a lot and I think it is  supposed to come across as all being so terribly romantic and melancholic but … it’s just annoying. Are we supposed to empathize with or pity her?

Esther seems hopelessly desperate, and surrounded by friendly idiots who only encourage her unhealthy actions, rather than giving her a firm slap in the face and telling her that her one night stand was probably not the beginning of a great healing romance. Her problems are never fully realized, it is uncertain whether she has really come back from New York or is covering up something else – this is not used as a narrative technique, it’s just presented as halfway interesting background for the real story of Esther and Newton’s whirlwind romance and the disastrous aftermath.

The most painful aspect of Sick Notes is that Riley seems content to glorify Esther’s alcoholism, while never naming it as such. It is, albeit, a seedy glamour, but the high gloss of Riley’s prose lends a particular grace to Esther’s problem. Riley’s prose is synaesthetic; you can feel the cold, dreary rain and long for a cup of the ever present tea to warm your fingers, you can smell the dust and the mould of the house, the stench of gin emanating from Esther’s room. Riley’s style is, in places, undeniably lovely and is only saved from becoming irritatingly twee by a few moments of raw honesty.

Though the dialogue feels staged and unnatural, the characters annoying portraits of studied eccentricities, there are some graceful moments in Sick Notes, but as a result of Riley’s writing style rather than content. It appears that a lot of other people really enjoy it, so perhaps I am the lone voice of dissent on this one. Meh.

Isserley is a slightly odd woman who drives along highways in Scotland looking for physically fit male hitchhikers. Through what appear to be casual conversations she determines their drifter status and further assesses their physical suitability, and those that are found satisfactory she takes back to a secluded farm. And that, unfortunately, is as much as I am willing to reveal in this review and I apologize for the vagueness that is to follow. Under the Skin is a novel where the less you know about its premise, the greater the impact on the reader. I was, as mentioned, rather clueless and as a result was very much bewildered, frightened and intrigued by this story, carrying it with me beyond the pages.

Isserley switches the television off. More awake now, she’d remembered something she should have known from the beginning, which was that there was no point trying to orient yourself to reality with television. It only made things worse.

Isserley herself is compellingly strange, marked by an inability to understand simple concepts, unexplained debilitating aches and pains, odd turns of phrase and unfamiliar words, and a ambiguous moral attitude toward picking up the drifters that she begins to question and explore as the novel progresses. Her use of unfamiliar slang (that wordnerds may attempt to look up in a dictionary and become frustrated that it doesn’t appear there) purposely alienates the reader from immediately determining Isserley’s role. At the same time, the peculiarity of the words and images invokes the desire to uncover the truth.

Yet, as you think you’re beginning to understand something, however briefly, Faber turns those assumptions to dust. My original expectations of this book as “psychosexual thriller” in part shaped my reaction to it – everything that happened was much stranger and more disturbing than I could have anticipated. Under the Skin is an artful experience of suspense, as Faber provides just enough without seeming unclear or without direction.

That’s what lying had done to the world. All the lying that people had been doing since the dawn of time, all the lying they were doing still. The price everyone paid for it was the death of trust. It meant that no two humans, however innocent they might be, could ever approach one another like two animals. Civilization!

As well as exploring Isserley’s growing contempt for her employer and her own existence, Faber reveals Isserley’s drifters through brief glimpses of their interior monologues, and by contrasting the cruelty, callousness and sometimes kindness of these drifters with the grisly severity of their fate Faber points us towards our own humanity. The story itself suggests a larger moral implication which is readily applied to our own everyday choices without seeming didactic. However, it would be too simplistic to read Under the Skin as straight allegory, as it manages to be much more complicated than a simple folk tale.

Like a half-remembered nightmare, Under the Skin lingers long after it has ended, the gaps leaving open any number of horrific possibilities. Words like chilling, horrifying or harrowing, and vague reviews like this one, do not do this book justice.

• The Library of America’s Reader’s Almanac blog looks at the famous inhabitants of Patchin Place in Manhattan, including a tale about Carson McCullers bursting into tears when told to “go the hell away!” by Djuna Barnes.
• McCullers’ short story “Sucker” (which I wrote about here) is now available to read online thanks to the Saturday Evening Post.
• Remember the abnd Victoire with their song “A Song for Mick Kelly” that I briefly mentioned last month? The track is now available to download, thanks to the Village Voice.
• A short piece on the friendship between Carson McCullers and Tennessee Williams.
• Blake Hazard and Mary-Louise Parker discuss Carson McCullers and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
  
• A beautifully written review of Clock Without Hands on Emyroo investigates.
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, book and film, listed as a favourite on Books, books, books.

Photo: “Member of the Wedding”, Opening Night, Ethel Waters, Carson McCullers and Julie Harris, New York City 1950 by Ruth Orkin. I love this photograph so much.

There are names both familiar and previously unheard of in this collection, unpublished stories are placed equally among those that have been retrieved from hallowed literary journals. These stories cover a wide range of emotional territory and styles, from the funny, the breathless, the painfully sad, the joyous moments, and the horrific. Given the restraints of the short story form however, these explorations of emotions never feel too exhausting or depleting.

Against the darkness, other faces from that shared past occur to my mind with stunning vividness. Even closer, thicker, than the dark is the heat. Another scorcher on the way. Somewhere out there a forest is burning, and a family crouching under wet towels in a bathtub, waiting as their green lungs fill with steam and soot muck. I test the coffee’s temperature. As often happens at this time of morning I find myself in a strange sleep-bleared funk that’s not quite sadness. It’s not quite anything. Through the trees below, the river sucks in the lambency of city, creeps it back up the bank, and slowly, in this way, as I have seen and cherished it for years, the darkness reacquaints itself with new morning.
- from “The Yarra” by Nam Le

My personal highlights, in bullet point form:

• Paddy O’Reilly’s “The Salesman” which, though working on accepted stereotypes of working class suburbanites as brute, racist and insensitive, plays with these expectations as much as it reinforces them.
• Karen Hitchcock’s “Little White Slip”, a nicely unromanticized look at motherhood and the expectations it places upon a woman’s identity, this story ruthlessly cuts through to the pain, the bodily changes, the heightened and sometimes irrational emotional battles and the hormonal impulses without the need to glorify the role of motherhood. Although I enjoyed it, the ending did feel a bit too “and they lived happily ever after”, which detracted somewhat from the powerful depiction.
• Nam Le’s “The Yarra”, probably the longest story in the anthology, is an involved tale about the experience of second-generation Vietnamese men involved in brutal acts of violence along Melbourne’s river. Le wonderfully captures the relentless heat of Melbourne summers which works towards heightening the internal struggle of the protagonist, Lan, whose brother has just returned home after a long jail stint. Both of them are forced to confront their violent past, its consequences and the strength and contradictions of their filial bond.
• Chris Womersley’s “The Age of Terror” is quietly horrifying. What at first seems to be a meditation on aging turns into something else entirely, and it wasn’t until after I finished reading this story that I began to put the pieces together, to see the comparison being made and realize how truly terrifying it is. A difficult, multivalent story that lingers for hours, days after reading.
• John Kinsella’s “Bats” is a lovely and strange story of vanity, youth and attraction. A girl and a boy watch a purple sunset over a mountain and he educates her on the fauna of the inland, culminating in a bat getting caught in her long blonde hair. This may be my favourite story of the collection, simple but rich.
• Antonia Baldo’s “Get Well Soon” is another strong contender for the favourite story though, a beautiful story on living with a family member suffering with depression, how it effects the entire family and exploring the limits of responsibility and the tenacity of faith.

Rebecca’s disappointed that I don’t live for these moments of rapture anymore. It’s true. I’m ordinary. I’ve accepted the inadequacies of living. But I can’t sit beside her forever and whisper that discovering the world is a matter of choice. I can’t remind her of the smile on her face when she wore that strapless sea-green dress to her formal. I can’t tell her she’s so alive she just might have to die while I, half-dead, can afford to go on living. And so I leave her, a white frame twisted on a bed, those sharp-angled thoughts cutting into her brain.
- from “Get Well Soon” by Antonia Baldo

It becomes increasingly obvious that guilt features heavily in this selection: the guilt over past mistakes, past sins, guilt over irreversible accidents and damage, guilt over failed relationships, guilt of not living up to social expectations. Is this guilt something that is deeply embedded in the national literary consciousness – from the vicious blights on our national history, to our past as a colony of convicts, a quick overview reveals much to feel guilt over- or is it merely a quirk of editorial selection? Whatever the cause, toward the end of the anthology this recurring theme does begin to feel needlessly repetitious. The guilt is felt, but rarely are actions taken to appease this guilt, these stories prefer to wallow in the personal regrets, as though acknowledging it is repentance enough.

My knowledge of the Australian literary scene is not sufficient enough to comment on any glaring omissions, but The Best Australian Stories 2010 is overall a strong collection, showcasing a wide variety of contemporary Australian storytelling talent, offering readers a number of names to look forward to reading more from in the future.

Surprisingly restrained considering my afternoon(s) spent in Kinokuniya in Sydney.

• Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
• The Adventures of Tintin: The Black Island by Hergé
• The Adventures of Tintin: The Crab with the Golden Claws by Hergé
• The Adventures of Tintin: King Ottokar’s Sceptre by Hergé
• The Adventures of Tintin: The Shooting Star by Hergé
• QI: The Second Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• Fresh Apples by Rachel Trezise
• Girl With Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace

Marginalia

I’ve had an amazing week. Words cannot even begin to express just how great it has been. I saw my favourite band the Manic Street Preachers for the first and second time, met them after both shows, and got a photo with Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield. This is a band that has shaped, influenced, changed, and inspired me for over twelve years, so this week was pretty damn important to me and they didn’t let me down. I was on the barrier for both shows, right up the front, screaming and singing my little lungs out. Amazing. And, to have the band be so gracious and attentive to their fans was just a bonus. Meeting fellow fans has also been an encouraging experience.

So, as it was, I didn’t exactly spend much time worrying about blogging. The only conclusion that I’ve managed to reach is that I want to continue writing about books and reading with enthusiasm and sincerity. Posting is going to continue being slightly irregular while I try and “figure things out.” Trust me, I am cringing as I write that. It sounds like the “it’s not you, it’s me” of book blogging.

At first Gordon and Cynthia’s relationship is almost tender, and McGahan nicely expresses the awkwardness and awe of discovering another’s body and how it works with yours, especially with the added interest of disease and skin irritations on display in Praise. But Cynthia’s relentless passion for Gordon’s sex is exhausting, and through constant depictions of their sex life – and there seems to be little else to their relationship, bar heading toward the bottle shop or dealer to stock up on supplies – this quickly becomes boring. As characters, Gordon is too passive and Cynthia too excessive, for them to really work together.

I felt as much love for Cynthia in that moment as I ever had, even in the good times. It was strange and confusing. But when a woman loved you enough to want you to die, it was hard not to love her back.

Like Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip, the main characters are, despite their faults, constantly drawn to each other, their bad habits and behaviour disguised as love, their dangerous or destructive tendencies as alluring, as though theirs is an impossible attraction that cannot be thwarted by logic and will-power alone. I just don’t buy into this idea of l’amour fou any more, the anhiliation of self is too complete.

Toward the end of the novel, as Gordon and Cynthia are separated, Gordon becomes involved with a girl who he has spent ten years nursing an unrequited love for. Yet, when it comes to consummating this love, he just can’t move beyond the idol worship, unable to see her as an independent being. This relationship is much more complex, more cerebral than  Gordon and Cynthia. Perhaps that is the point, Gordon’s attraction to Rachel is purely based on fantasy, so much so that years of imagined intimacy discounts the possibility of it happening; Cynthia, on the other hand, is a woman that demands the physical from Gordon, yet there isn’t a connection based on emotion or understanding. It’s an updated version of the Madonna/whore complex, only this time through a distinctly Australian grunge aesthetic.

I said, ‘Speech is such a definite thing.’
‘So?’
I thought for a long time, staring at my drink.
I started again. ‘Maybe it’s a matter of sincerity. I’m never that certain of anything I feel about a person, and talking about it simplifies it all so brutally. It’s easier to keep quiet. To act what you feel. Actions are softer. They can be interpreted in lots of different ways, and emotions should be interpreted in lots of different ways.’
‘But people are never going to understand you.’
‘People are never going to understand you if you tell them things, either. It’d be even worse.’

I suppose others have used words like “raw” and “gritty” to describe McGahan’s Praise. The style is simple, dialogue coupled with internal monologues, but a high sex-drugs-booze content alone doesn’t make a piece of writing gritty and raw. Gordon’s conflicts and struggles with love and sex conform to expected standards, and there is no enlightenment or possibility of change. Stagnant characters and relationships make Praise a frustrating novel.

Volume One: Bug Brothers (Simon Oliver & Tony Moore, 2006) introduces us to Henry James, a convicted criminal who, thanks to his step-father, has taken up the post-jail career of exterminator with Bug-Bee-Gone. Henry is learning the ropes of the vermin killing business with the very possibly deranged AJ. Exterminating is, and take this as a warning readers of a sensitive disposition, gruesomely portrayed. All the vermin are shown as vicious, drooling, diseased and the kill scenes are often full pages that bask in the glory of a successful kill. Only, these vermin aren’t completely innocent. The Bug-Bee-Gone researcher Saloth has discovered a new strain of cockroach that is not only resistant to the best roach poison, but fuelled by the very chemicals intended to kill it, mutated into something stronger and much more sinister than your average roach. The narrative in this first volume is set up so well, with every page come new possibilities and potentially intriguing side stories; such as the mysterious Saloth’s past connection to the Khmer Rouge, or Henry’s prison connection to the Aryan brotherhood, or Henry’s girlfriend Laura’s new job with Ocran – the makers of roach poison that doubles as a narcotic for humans brave enough to indulge Draxx, or the green scarab. All these little hints build anticipation for further volumes. The artwork is strangely beautiful, as though the world is being viewed through sunshine and a haze of pollution, lending it an almost otherworldly, though recognizable, murky hue.

Volume Two: Insurgency (Simon Oliver, Tony Moore, Ande Parks and Chris Samnee, 2007) continues with this narrative set up and builds on our knowledge of the characters. We’re introduced to a new love interest for Henry, Page – a literary hooker that works within the constraints of fulfilling sexual fantasies taken from literary works, proposed as a preferable option compared to the corporate career-minded Laura. An issue featuring complementary storylines that compare and contrast Page and Laura, after Laura and Henry have broken up, allows us to see the differences and similarities between them, but issues raised here are hugely contradicted by later storylines. Meanwhile, at Bug-Bee-Gone, the mutant cockroaches are infiltrating essential infrastructure and it is up to Kevin, Henry and Stretch to do the dirty work involved in clearing them out. The Exterminators really revels in the detritus of both humans and and plays on the base disgust we tend to have for bugs, rodents and vermin.

Volume Three: Lies of Our Fathers (Simon Oliver, Tony Moore, Mike Hawthorne and John Lucas, 2007) finally delves into Saloth’s back story as he fabricates his refugee past for a date. An encounter with a past comrade forces him to confront that past, and vows to never let it jeopardize his life’s work again. One of the most disturbing scenes in the series occurs in this volume, as a young boy who has just had his eyes operated on has consistent itching beneath his bandages. Just don’t expect there to be fully healed wounds and cheer beneath those bandages. Oh, and there’s another fantastically gross scene involving the resuscitation of a pet hamster. Despite some brilliantly disgusting moments, here is where the series really began to fall apart for me, as contradictions arise and problematic turns of events just aren’t as strong as those that preceeded them. Laura is set on a rape revenge path and viciously murders her boss – an image that contradicts completely with that we have of her crying to her mother and worrying about her career. And why is it that rape is used as a dramatic trope so often for female characters in graphic novels? It’s offensively reductive, and cheaply used as a convenient plot point. Though the plot twists are unpredictable and no character safe from death, it doesn’t feel like as cohesive, it seems directionless and as a reader, I lost trust in the storyline.

Volume Four: Crossfire and Collateral (Simon Oliver, Darick Robertson and Ty Templeton, 2008) features a really cool one issue story about Saloth and Stretch (the spiritual zen cowboy type who is also, if you’ll pardon a brief outburst of fangirlishness, really effing hot.) in a desert casino for a pest control convention, where more is revealed about Stretch’s shady past. This issue almost made me regain my faith in the story, but I’m thinking it was the combination of a story completely separate from the main narrative and artwork by Darick Robertson of Transmetropolitan fame that made me enjoy it so much. The rest of this volume focuses on a neighbourhood gang war over Draxx drug dealing, and the introduction of Draxx into black neighbourhoods by the Aryan brotherhood. This reads like an attempt to give The Exterminators more of a social slant, but I’m not entirely convinced. Too much of the dialogue and slang rely on painfully outdated stereotypes.

The final installment of the series, Volume Five: Bug Brothers Forever (Simon Oliver, Tony Moore, John Lucas and Ty Templeton, 2008), sees the epic showdown between bug and man that the series has been leading up to and … it’s disappointing. Again, some single story issues are entertainingly horrific, but the main narrative loses momentum as it draws to a close. The main issue is that the delineation between good and evil in The Exterminators is too convenient. The good guys – the Bug-Bee-Gones and associates – have their morally murky pasts and stories, but the bad guys are purely one dimensional. How can you create sympathy for a cockroach? It lacks the moral weight to make it truly engaging, and there never seems to be any doubt that the good guys are going to come out on top, albeit with significant losses. The final pages emphasize that this is just one battle won in a larger war of man against nature. More insight and exploration of the fascinating characters and less on the bug versus man battles would have made The Exterminators a triumph. As it is though, it’s a moderately entertaining graphic novel series that has hints of unfulfilled greatness.

• A tongue-in-cheek look at the vintage paperback cover of the Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
• Laura Cude’s short essay titled “Carson & Marilyn: Tyranny of Girlhood & Sexual Maturity” on Her Circle Ezine.
• A song on Victoire’s debut album Cathedral City is called “A Song for Mick Kelly” and PopMatters make the connection with the character from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.  This interview with the band confirms this link, and calling the song an imagined version of “the kind of music [Mick Kelly] would write if she had been given the chance.” A live version of the song is available to watch on YouTube.
• A self-proclaimed “yankee” author on Southern literature, including McCullers.
• Suzanne Vega talks a little bit in this interview about her upcoming McCullers play.
• Judd Apatow has included the Carson McCullers short story, “The Jockey”, in the new book he edited called I Found This Funny: My Favorite Pieces of Humor and Some That May Not Be Funny At All.
• A McCullers inspired tattoo.
• A walking tour around Brooklyn Heights discusses the infamous Middagh Street house that McCullers lived in with W.H Auden, Gypsy Rose Lee & others and other literary luminaries who resided in the area.
• The Ballad of the Sad Cafe in the context of gothic literature.
• An introduction to Oak Hill Cemetary in Nyack, where Carson McCullers is buried.
• A review of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter from 100 Books in 100 Weeks.
• Who knew the house in North Carolina where McCullers worked on The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is now an Indian restaurant?
• McCullers is briefly mentioned in this article on writers and uncertainty, “What We Teach When We Teach Writers: On the Quantifiable and the Uncertain” by Sonya Chung.
• Mick Kelly from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is also namedropped in an article on the young female protagonist.
• As reported by the Carson McCullers Centre, Bo Bartlett has painted a portrait of McCullers that is on show at PPOW Gallery, New York. You can see the portrait, titled The Lonely Hunter, here.
• Genevieve pointed me toward this Rumpus article, “Lunch With Carson“, on McCullers, Marilyn Monroe and Isak Dinesen’s famous luncheon and the parallels of their lives. The image above is from that afternoon.
• The Australian television First Tuesday Book Club recently released a book with short essays from panel members and guests talking about their favourite books, A Book to Love. I was having a flick through it at work the other day and noticed that not one, but TWO author’s had chosen McCullers as their favourite. Christos Tsiolkas picked The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Augusten Burroughs chose The Member of the Wedding.

Anything I missed? Let me and other McCullers fans know in the comments.

I’ll Give You a Nickel & Dance You a Jig: Sweet as a Pickle and Clean as a Pig by Carson McCullers (1964)

As I mentioned in a recent Book Loot post, I recently bought a copy of McCullers’ rare book of children’s verse from 1964 Sweet as a Pickle and Clean as a Pig. There doesn’t seem to be much on the web about it, other than the fact that it exists. Most of the copies on AbeBooks go for at least $100 Australian, and while I do obviously love McCullers, I just couldn’t afford to shell out that much for one highly collectable book. Nonetheless, I kept a regular lookout for copies for sale and with some nifty searching skills, thanks to my library services course, came across a copy that was listed as “Clean as a Nut” rather than Pig and much cheaper than other copies so I snapped it up. I didn’t expect the quality to be too great for the price I got it for, I thought maybe it would be an ex-library copy or significantly damaged but when it arrived it was pretty much in perfect condition! A very lucky find.

These are children’s rhymes so there isn’t the same level of depth of human understanding here, but McCullers seemed to, even in her later years, have a firm grasp on the curiousity of childhood. Many of the poems are ponderous, sort of like a child-like daydream about the contradictions of the world, like, wondering who on earth put the “D” in Wednesday or if Santa will miss a friend’s house because he doesn’t have a chimney? Some of these poems even retain the strong connection and sense of the American South and family, such as in “Olden Times” when a child listens to her mother speak about her childhood. Seasonal events are given just as much importance as the everyday. There’s an understanding, even here, of the misfits, such as in the tale of the naughtiest boy in school Sport Williams:

Oh! Sport was a bad boy.
No one loved him but his mother.
And when he was suspended, she said “He was not
A bad boy,
But a sad boy…” because
No one loved him but her, his mother.

This is, and this is a completely biased opinion, a lovely little collection of childlike rhymes. The illustrations by Rolf Gérard are charming, black and white crayon styled drawings with splashes of orange or green. My favourite poem of all from Sweet as a Pickle and Clean as a Pig is “Song for a Sailor” which I think fits in so well with McCullers’ oeuvre, it covers imagination and love, the disparity between reality and imagined perceptions – though maybe not as beautifully expressed as in her fiction, the simplicity shows the same childlike, outsider point of view that we’ve come to associate so strongly with McCullers.

Song for a Sailor
I’ve never seen the ocean,
I’ve never seen the sea,
But once I loved a sailor,
And that’s good enough for me.

While Sweet as a Pickle and Clean as a Pig may not be an essential book for understanding McCullers and her writing, it is a genuinely lovely and simple book of poems, sure to evoke pangs of nostalgia in anyone.

On the night of receiving their final school results, Neil Cronk and his friends indulge in drugs, booze, violence and, almost but not quite, sex. This is not the final adolescent party before emerging into calm, well-behaved adulthood; this is an evening that has irreperable repurcussions for all involved. This section is told with the vital energy of youth, that feeling of invincibility and that actions have no consequences. Thought much of the focus is on Neil’s sexual failure with his girlfriend, Courtney, the real highlight is Cowell’s sensitive, though uncompromisingly honest, take on male friendship. The friendships between Neil, Gordon and Stuart are refreshingly free of pretension, Cowell transfers the  middle-class, outer suburban male voice and attitude seamlessly onto the page. Though the events of their wayward adventures aren’t of the magnitude of those that will follow, significant changes are already taking place within the characters.

The evening deepened and dipped as everyone packed off into cliques and corners, merging with those they had formed an alliance with over the past one to thirteen years. If adolescence was a war zone then fashion and music were both protection and artillery: they kept us safe and offered us a position to fire ourselves from.

As Neil breaks from his planned life of university and city living and instead studies drama in Bathurst, Cowell brings in some of that pretension that comes with university, and in particular, the Arts. Neil turns from the slightly weedy cohort of his friends to a unrelentingly egotistic and self-involved prick, yet it’s an evolution that makes sense considering the difference between his university crowd and those he left behind. Back home, major changes are taking place, but Neil is too absorbed with the rituals and institutionalized weirdness of his life – seeing it almost as more enlightened than, for example, Gordon going into business. Again, on the eve of graduation and his final performance piece, Neil is shattered by the news of a friend’s death.

As an adult in London with a moderate degree of theatrical success, Neil still maintains a strong connection to those he left behind. This adult section is told in a sometimes disconcertingly fractured way, as the narrative moves between the past in London, the past before the wedding, and the present, it is easy to lose track of where exactly Neil is. Nonetheless, the dramatic events of this section – death, break ups, watching a friend marry your ex-girlfriend, drug use, abuse and recovery – carry great emotional weight.

Told over these three major transitional stages in Neil’s life, How It Feels is a brutal look at masculinity in contemporary Australia. Though there is much to cover in terms of youth, love, loss, heartbreak, success, failure – the running theme throughout is the male experience of contemporary life. Cowell’s narrative voice is strong, at times raw and confrontingly masculine. Issues such as home and the past are deftly dealt with, but what resonates is the connection we have to the place we grew up, despite how far we run from it or how much we try to deny it, and how this place and its people define us. To say this is a strong debut is understating the point, How It Feels is ruthless, wrenchingly felt and truthful, yet not without the necessary light to guide us through.

They gave me another chance, and I am eternally grateful. It is easy to jump out of the village, move to the cities, and spend your time poking fun at the little places we hail from and their routine ways, but deep down inside you know that’s where the real people are, the truly decent souls, and you fight and fight to deny it, until you need them so bad it hurts.

[Disclosure: publisher supplied proof copy from work. How It Feels is released by Picador Australia through Pan Macmillan Australia in November 2010, ISBN: 9781405039291. View the How It Feels book trailer on youtube.]

When considering the figures involved in the film and associated products, this book included, it’s not hard to see who was the real market: film directed by Spike Jonze, known for his cult films Being John Malkovich and Adaptation and music videos, co-written by Dave Eggers of McSweeney’s and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius fame and soundtracked by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Is it as simple as pulling together a few generational icons to repackage a cultural artefact to an older market?

One might think that a boy who was out in the snow for so long would get cold, but Max was not. He was warm, partly because he had on many layers, and partly because boys who are one part wolf and part wind do not get cold.

The Wild Things introduces us, once again, to Max, a product of divorce and television, trying to adapt to his mother’s new boyfriend and his older sister’s change in attitude. This first section of the novel returns us to the boredom of childhood, of being slightly outside understanding and being of the adult world. Max doesn’t fully comprehend the world outside of what it means for him, considering things only so far as according to how they effect him. In a plain, yet engaging, style, Eggers captures the focus and energy of beiing a kid, the moments of great certainty, as well as frightening uncertainty.

Max misbehaves. He floods his sister’s bedroom as revenge for ruining his igloo. He bites his mother for trying to control him. And then he runs away, and after many days and many nights of sailing, finds himself in a land among the wild things. I do like that Eggers doesn’t give us any explanation, that we’re left to our own devices to draw our own conclusions, if we even want to. As he claims his royal right over the group of wild things, he learns about responsibility for others, the repercussions of personal failure. It is an updated, modern fable, but – and maybe this is a sign of losing touch with my own “wild thing” – ultimately I preferred the real world aspects of the novel, the acknowledgement and exploration of the subtle trauma of being young and negotiating the world.

So he had a choice. Would he stay behind the curtain and think about things, marinate in his own confusion, or would he put on his white fur suit and howl and scratch and make it known who was boss of this house and all of the world known and unknown.

Despite Eggers’ admirably sincere writing style and his ability to capture the nuances of childhood boredom, The Wild Things reads too much like the film – both visually and the characters themselves. It is easy to be cynical about the circumstances of the novel’s production, but The Wild Things, as a novel, does seem extraneous.

Dave is a socially awkward and very reluctant vampire, sired by a Romanian immigrant for the sole purpose of having cheap and easily controlled labour for his convenience store. Dave’s experiences in the store are mundane, repetitive, and largely unexceptional. Except when the local juice bar closes and the vampire posers and goths, including Rosa, descend on the Last Stop for their late night supplies. Dave is drawn into competition for Rosa’s affections with the surfer dude vampire Wes, an alpha male figure who is at peace with his laid back masculinity and his vampire instincts.

Dave, my friend, there’s no way I could make you feel worse than you do yourself.

As always, it’s the subtle commentary on meaningless, repetitive service jobs and the bonds with friends that appealed to me more than the romance side of the story. There are some brilliant scenes of Dave being bombarded by requests from customers, some normal, some completely outrageous, and his bored facial expression never changes. The idea of vampires as wage slaves is unique, yet apt – who didn’t feel manipulated by a boss that could convince you to come to work even on your one day off? That Dave’s boss, Lord Radu Arisztidescu, reminded me of a boss I had in my late teens made this concept feel all the more familiar.

Dave is reluctant to follow his vampire instincts, unlike his friend Jerome. Instead, he drinks blood from a can (and doesn’t want to know where it comes from) or gets it from the blood bank – anything to avoid having to kill. Tales of Jerome’s bloody conquests make him feel ill. The friendship between Dave and Jerome is portrayed warmly, with small moments of cameraderie celebrated by a fist bump, and a wry routine clearly well established between the two. Some of the facial expressions alone in these sequences made me laugh out loud. Forget the romance, I wanted more of Dave and Jerome.

But, this is contemporary vampires so we can’t leave out that all important romance element. Rosa is not the most enduring character – rather more of a blank slate for the vamps to project their desires on – and both Dave and Wes’ attraction to her doesn’t seem to be any deeper than physical. The competitive nature of their duel is off putting, and difficult to engage with. There is a nice contrast between what Rosa imagines vampires are like to what we know is decidedly unromantic for Dave and Jerome. Of course, Rosa remains ignorant of Wes and Dave’s vampire status and just as things seem to be running smoothly for our hero, out comes the big secret. The dénoument to Dave’s growing predicaments seems a little too convenient.

Look at me! I work like a slave for my master! I’m broke! I can’t even go out in the sun! Is that romantic? Does it sound fun? I’m supposed to be out killing people!

While not entirely convinced or interested by the romance plot, I did enjoy the playful approach to vampire mythology. It’s a unique enough idea to maintain interest, but the story lapses into an all too familiar romantic triangle with a predictable outcome. The highlights of Life Sucks are the accurate portrayal of the banality of contemporary service jobs and comfortable friendships and while these concepts are not original in fiction, mixing them with the vampire myth adds a new perspective.

The story behind Facebook’s creation is rife with, not quite the betrayal suggested by the title, but human drama based on greed and perceived injustice. From all night coding sessions in dorm rooms to business deals agreed upon over pizza, The Accidental Billionaires presents its cast as the unlikeliest to succeed. Only, as we know, they do and in a way that could not have been anticipated. The ascent from computer geekery to billions of dollars being thrown at Zuckerberg and company is astounding. Amidst Zuckerberg’s success though, there are those that demand their cut of the profits – Eduardo Saverin, a founding investor, and the Winklevoss twins, who made moves to collaborate with Zuckerberg on a networking project of their own.

They were jocks from a wealthy, tony family. Mark was a nebbishy geek who had hacked his way to stardom. This was a class battle the journalists couldn’t ignore: rich, priviliged kids who believed the establishment existed to protect their rights against a hacker who had been willing to break the rules. Honor code vs. hackers code.

The Accidental Billionaires reads like (poorly written) fiction, and it is difficult to know – with so many voices chiming in, but for the conspicuous absence of key player Mark Zuckerberg – what happened and what was perceived to have happened. Especially as so many of Mezrich’s sources are the very same people who sued Zuckerberg, it’s hard not to read this as their way of getting their own back. The flowery prose stretches far beyond Mezrich’s talents, and I’m not quite sure of the motivation for writing this particular story in such a manner.

Another aspects of The Accidental Billionaires that made me uncomfortable was the portrayal and absence of female figures and I’m not quite sure how to approach this issue. Women don’t play a role in this story beyond that of sex objects, things to be viewed, rated and compared. Sure, they serve as the original inspiration for Facebook, and the original inception of the site  serves the function of this rating and comparison of appearances, and once the boys find success, the girls come a-running. It is worrying that individuals in possession of such intelligence, whether it be business or programming prowess, so easily buy into this idea of voyeurism and objectification. But then, the tentative factual accuracy of The Accidental Billionaires calls all this into question. Intended as piece of non-fiction, the author can claim to merely be presenting the facts, as it happened, and to have no role in the perpetuation of a sexist ideology. However, while our male heroes and villains are described in Mezrich’s bombastic prose, every woman who appears – visually only, never playing a substantial role – is described as, invariably, “hot”. That’s not even getting into the excessive exoticization of Asian women. Like I said, I’m not sure I have an appropriate framework to properly critique this, but I found it distasteful and troubling.

The Accidental Billionaires offers little analysis or critique of the activities of those involved or the effect Facebook, and social networking in general, has had on our culture and presents the story of the foundation of Facebook with an obvious bias. That said, the human drama, the battle between privilege and hard work, the always interesting aspects of sex, fame, money and business, make this version of the story behind Facebook compelling enough. However, this may end up being one of the very few instances where the film adaptation, The Social Network, ends up being an improvement on the book.

O’Hanlon covers much of the inner city of Melbourne, as well as the hip inner suburbs. Looking at different aspects – landmarks, retail, the Yarra river, events and the iconic streets – he outlines the significant development of Melbourne since the 1970s. Not simply reminiscing the loss of historical structures, O’Hanlon instead insists that history is evident not just within the heritage listed buildings, but in the evolution enforced by changing social, cultural and economic shifts.

Mainly, it is a pleasure to learn stories about places that have become so routine that it’s easy to forget their long history as they are so gradually removed from their past. Take Melbourne Central, for example. Now a bustling underground train station and modern entertainment and retail complex, it was once a closed off and dominated by department store Daimaru. I remember getting lost within the maze and seeming lack of exits many times, or struggling to even find a way into the building. O’Hanlon also points to how the integration of the new, more open retail space with laneways not only opens up Melbourne Central to the surrounding streets and make it more inviting, but also places it within the larger context of Melbourne itself. The now iconic Melbourne laneways exist as almost polar opposites to the mega-development schemes that dominated the city for many years. Here we see the small scale, quirky and local enliven and define the city space, even as they exist alongside the massive globally financed structures.

Soon after completion the Rialto was dubbed ‘Melbourne’s Ayers Rock’ by journalist Keith Dunston; like a member of other former Collins Street defenders Dunstan found himself something of a reluctant fan of the building’s twin blue glass towers that seem to change colour depending on the time of day and direction of the sun. The beauty of the building is breathtaking, especially from a distance. One of the best ways to see it in all its glory is from the West Gate Bridge at dusk. Even up close it has a majesty that’s difficult to describe.

It would be too easy to simply recite all the interesting changes that have taken place over the past forty years, changes that have been evident within my lifetime, and some that their relative consistency seems to erase their past. There is much to learn in Melbourne Remade about the origins of Melbourne in trade and free enterprise and how these traditions are carried on in to our current consumer culture, how the public transport system affected the growth of inner city retail strips, the creation of a recreation space along the Yarra, and the transformation of the inner suburbs from “working class landscape[s] of production” to upmarket residential zones.

Although one aspect of Melbourne Remade that struck me was the creation of Melbourne as an event, sport and culture destination to offset the deindustrialisation and urban decay after the recessions. It was an economic necessity that has significantly boosted tourism numbers and the structure of the city itself. Even more interesting is the fact that less than 10% of the metropolitan population live in Melbourne’s inner city, so that while Melbourne city can now be seen as a hub of culture, events and recreation, this centralisation effectively distances the benefits, both cultural and economic, from the majority of the population. O’Hanlon makes a heartfelt argument, and one that I strongly agree with, that though it may not bring in the international tourists, extending these cultural renewal strategies out into the suburbs will ultimately benefit more of Melbourne’s population. I also wonder, if this sort of extensive influx of money and resources ever happens, will we see the same gentrification of the outer suburbs and industrial areas that the inner city has seen over the last 40 years, thus pushing the outer suburbs even further “out”?

Melbourne Remade shows us how a number of forces, economic, social, cultural and historical, have seen the inner city reinvent itself from a past of manufacturing and industry to a post-industrial, economically privileged retail, recreation and residential space. O’Hanlon provdies more context for these changes than you would think possible for such a physically little book, and even manages to build some hype for Arcade’s next release MacRobertsonland with the intriguing legacy of Macpherson Robertson making an appearance. Most importantly though, O’Hanlon gives us another outlook through which to view our city, through the changes that occur, and keep occuring, allowing us to build our own “visual archaeology” of Melbourne.

[Disclosure: Publisher supplied e-galley of Melbourne Remade: The Inner City Since the 70s, but then I liked it so much that I went out and bought myself a physical copy! Melbourne Remade is published by Arcade Publications, ISBN 978-0-9804367-8-5]

Gouge Away opens with Spider trapped in his overly protected and controlled apartment watching different media perceptions and portrayals of his public persona – from the kawaii cartoon “Magical Truthsaying Bastard Spider!” who delivers moral guidance in the form of truth bombs, to an alpha-male action hero Spider and, probably the clearest sign of making it in the sex obsessed, sexual deviancy tolerating City, a pornographic film of his life. This issue reminded me a lot of the Spider watching television in Volume One, only this time it’s not to show us how outrageous screen based entertainment is in this imagined version of the future, but how these different media portrayals of Spider could destroy his ability to engage in hardcore muckraking journalism.

It’s not only on a multitude of screens that Spider views himself through, but also in a drug induced revenge fantasy and a paranoid dream about his audience. Each of these scenarios are illustrated by different artists, lending a unique visual slant on characters we already know. These single issue storylines are part of what I love so much about Transmetropolitan, how they stand as stories in their own right and reflect on the larger storyline, as well as introducing us to many of the not so alien concepts that abound in the City.

We’re the people you’ve been talking to all along. We’re the people you shriek at every week in your column– but we don’t read fucking newspapers. God no. We’re the ones who only see you on TV, or catch the diluted version quoted on feedsites. We’ve never listened to a word you’ve said.
We’re your audience.

Spider walks around the City, his favourite way of reconnecting with the weirdness and the corruption he, and his ambivalent audience, live with. During his wandering, he begins to realize the potential of other less monitored ways of publishing his work. It manages to be exciting, it makes Spider feel dangerous again. A brief interlude allows us to spend time with Spider’s assistants, Channon and Yelena, in which we get to see them bond, as well as realizing the great danger their lives are in solely because they work for Spider.

Working alone, Spider takes the opportunity to dig deeper into his theories about the Callahan administration’s part in the assassination of Vita Severn. He persuades his Word editor Royce to publish his latest column, beating deadlines that would allow for more government intrusion. As a result, a government advisor outed as a pedophile commits suicide, and we realize that Spider’s vengeance for the death of Vita, once his sole figure of hope within the ravaged system, is going to be bloody. Some of the artwork here is shocking, street carnage of one of Spider’s informers is swift, unexpected and completely brutal. More so because we don’t know, though we can guess, who is behind this violent retribution.

They assume, like most people, that fear will do the trick. Fear will keep everyone in place. Fear will keep everyone distracted from what’s really going on.
Let him know we can beat him up, let him know we could have killed him, let him know we can destroy him, let the fear shrivel him up. Fuck that. I’m not afraid of them. They’re afraid of me.
They’re afraid of the truth.

Transmetropolitan: Volume Six, Gouge Away ends with Spider and his assistants on the run, fired from the Word and booted out of his luxury apartment. Spider is back on the streets, given the free reign to verbally assault the Callahan administration without fear of censorship. One gets the distinct feeling that the new outlets of distribution, the ferociousness of his attitude and the extreme methods of the Callahan government means that censorship is the least of Spider’s worries. However, Spider as we know and love him is likely to continue fighting his good fight no matter the risks.

Previous Transmetropolitan reviews:

• Transmetropolitan: Volume One, Back on the Street
• Transmetropolitan: Volume Two, Lust for Life
• Transmetropolitan: Volume Three, Year of the Bastard
• Transmetropolitan: Volume Four, The New Scum
• Transmetropolitan: Volume Five, Lonely City
  

In Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Klosterman muses on various aspects of pop culture, the inane, the arcane and the absurd, all in his overtly self-aware style. This is a style that is annoyingly ironic, attributing meaning where there really probably isn’t any – and this is coming from an ex-cultural studies student. So many of these essays sound like conversations that have taken place in countless number of inner-city hipster bars. One essay, looking at the uncool music of Billy Joel and how he is actually, in Klosterman’s opinion, greatly underrated because of Joel’s lack of rock and roll persona; his songs somehow invite the listener to assume the narrator’s position. Klosterman is completely the opposite, instead aggressively inserting himself in every essay, making the reader all too aware of his presence, never just letting his arguments just exist.

For another example, an essay on people who have been in contact with serial killers had so much potential as an essay topic, but these experiences are filtered through Klosterman. It’s not the close encounters with sadistic killers that Klosterman wants to explore, it’s more specifically his proximity to these people. Only one essay, comparing The Empire Strikes Back with the malaise and hopes of Generation X, was mildly enjoyable, though at the same time slightly ridiculous. I skimmed over many of the sports related essays.

After an aside – each essay is punctuated by an interlude featuring, you’ll never guess, Klosterman’s opinion on things – on hating punk rock and some snide remarks about punk rock icons, I realized the essential difference between Chuck Klosterman and myself, the reason why I don’t connect with his writing and his thoughts. Now, I know punk has it’s own rules, hierachies and laws, but the most important aspect of punk rock, for me, is its sincerity. It seems that this is also precisely what Klosterman takes issue with, and anything vaguely resembling sincerity is something to be torn apart, made fun of, mercilessly mocked. Where I appreciate sincerity and earnestness, Klosterman champions an aloofly distant approach. His writing is a smug smirk intended to make you feel like you’re just not in on the joke. I hate to use the ubiquitous word “hipster”, but that’s precisely what this entire collection is. Klosterman aims for a postmodern hip style, but just comes across as infuriating and self-involved. Again. This time, I’m really done.

(For the shorthand, visual version of everything I’ve written above, this adapted book cover succinctly summarizes everything that I think about Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Chuck Klosterman’s writing in general.)

Divided in to sections exploring the advertising world, fashion, working women, sex, drinks and drugs, decor, literature, movies and the future, Mad Men Unbuttoned aims to explore the broader context of the 1960s era. This does encourage some understanding, some deeper insight into the show itself, but isn’t at all analytical in the way I anticipated. The wealth of contextual information is presented in short blog post mode, which doesn’t really allow for anything more than a superficial glance at these mostly unspoken aspects of the show. It speaks volumes that the longer essays – in particular on Don and smoking, the ambiguity of Salvatore Romano’s sexuality and the significance of Don reading Frank O’Hara – are the most illuminating, the ones that have the room to set up an argument or position and then explore it. The rest are basic introductions to topics that seem to deserve further exploration.

Don smoked and continued smoking because of two compelling motives: One, he was surely addicted to nicotine. Second are the myriad reasons that, with all the scientific and cultural cues, so many men continue to smoke even today. There are a couple of heady postulations including the idea that despite demonization, smoking has endured. The act of drawing hot smoke into your lungs still retains a touch of manliness, of strength and unspoken prowess. That might as well be a dictionary definition of the words Don Draper.
- Alex Balk in “Always Be Smoking: Why Don Won’t Quit”

For all my frustrated expectations, there are moments where the content elaborates on underlying cultural tensions, and does so in an engaging way. Coming from a program as rich as Mad Men, I ultimately expected Mad Men Unbuttoned to possess the same level of depth. Perhaps it is the intricacies of the characters in the show that lends gravity to the fraught cultural era of the 1960s; we come to understand the changes through the characters rather than through the historical background. What is presented here is a cursory look into the cultural, social and historical context of the early 1960s and Mad Men Unbuttoned works as a handy glossary companion to the series. It must also be said that the book is gorgeously designed with photos from the era. These essays are too short to allow strong analytical connections to be made, but are ideal for a building a basic understanding of the contextual background of the show.

Steinberg, thankfully, recognizes that he is not the main focus of the story, but also knows when it is appropriate to insert himself, his past, his family history into the text, that is, when it illustrates, through the personal stories, a larger issue within the prison walls. These stories stretch from his Orthodox Jewish upbringing, to a mysterious grandmother and teaching a creative writing class to his prisoners. Though Running the Books lacks a strong overarching thesis, it doesn’t suffer from this lack of direction. Instead there are moments of redemption, justice, and yes, even beauty, in the minutiae of the stories Steinberg finds in day to day life in prison. Some of his musings on communication in prison, the power struggles between inmates and staff, and the privilege of names are thought-provoking.

For days I kept imagining the fate of the world’s misplaced letters. I started noticing them everywhere. [...] When I looked around the world, I couldn’t see these letters. But I became aware of their indirect presence. They contained life’s great subtexts, embedded between the lines of cell phone conversations of strangers on the bus, in the hazy motive of a coworker who told me she was taking a “metnal health” day off after receiving a difficult email from her mother. These notes were virtual, folded up, hidden, like letters tucked into books of the prison library. A kite, barely visible in the sky, bound to a person by an almost invisible string. Even the unsent ones are very much present. Especially the unsent ones.

Strangely though, and this could totally just be the effects of watching too many HBO prison shows, Steinberg witnesses very little actual violence within the prison library. His one potentially violent encounter happens on the outside, in the free world, when he is mugged my an ex-con who recognizes him. But the most heinous act of violence that Steinberg reports is an officer letting off fart bombs in the library. I wonder how much of this is self-censorship, respect on behalf of the institution he represented or if he just didn’t witness these things in the prison library. It just struck me as somewhat strange, given how much free reign the prisoners seemed to be given within the library.

Some of the inmate stories are genuinely effecting, though the conclusion of many of them are unrelentingly sad, too often ending in untimely death. The story of a prisoner who connects with Steinberg to create a life plan to host his own cooking show, the female prisoner who wants Avi’s help to reunite her with her long lost son. Steinberg never sees these people as just criminals – though he does have something of a crisis when he discovers the crimes of a prisoner he has been bonding with and ponders the implications of this relationship – but as trapped humans whose only chance at personal redemption can be found within the library.

Diana had said that the library wasn’t complicated, that it was just a place for people to pass time with books. Perhaps that was true back in the old days, when the prison would simply deliver books to inmates in their cells, a practice that had lasted hundreds of years. But the library was different: it was a place, a dynamic social setting where groups gathered, where people were put in relation with others. A space an individual could physically explore on his own.

Like Scott Douglas’ Quiet Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian, Steinberg recognizes the function of a library as something beyond a repository of knowledge. Instead, these libraries always perform a communal, social function in giving equal footing and access to all those who desire it. Even when the community is made up of the so-called undesirables of society, the opportunity for creating their community and finding their place with in it must be important in such isolation. While Running the Books is not without fault, the lack of cohesive direction does diminish the overall power of the book somewhat, many of the stories held within offer insight and a greater understanding of the incarcerated and those that work with them.

[Disclosure: Review copy provided through publisher through the Shelf Awareness newsletter (some of those galley request adverts do ship internationally it turns out!). Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian is published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday through Random House, released on 19th October, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-385-52909-9. The New York Times recently published a brief excerpt - "A Prison-Library Reunion."]