Books of 2012 That I Enjoyed Reading A Lot

I'm back, just in time for New Year's!

I'd like to issue a quick few kind words regarding books I've read in 2012 and enjoyed (above all others, though I've enjoyed nearly everything I've read this past year).

The Map of the System of Human Knowledge, James Tadd Adcox

Mr. Adcox, or "Tadd" as I affectionately refer to him, is not just a good person but a hell of a writer. This book fully lived up to (and maybe surpassed) my expectations. While the stories didn't have titles as such (and so are harder to single out for that reason) the whole assemblage really works. The layout and aesthetic is pulled off nicely, and the little fictions/poems throughout are equal parts hilarious and heartrending. (Also, if I draw any criticism for featuring writers here with whom I'm friends, let me just say I don't care this is my blog I do what I want here, so-called integrity be damned.)

I am a Very Productive Entrepreneur, Mathias Svalina

I haven't had the privilege of meeting Mr. Svalina in real life yet. I hope that changes. This collection is amazing, mesmerizing, enchanting. He really hits on something, and that thing that he hits on I can't rightly name. It's just something he hits. Certainly aspects of that something lie in certain kinds of criticism of our consumptive culture, but I'll be careful not to reduce it too much in that way. Besides, it's beautifully written, and even if you read into what Svalina is saying very deeply, and you find yourself disagreeing and perhaps incensed -- which would be more than a little nutty, but regardless -- I'm sure you'll concede dude knows how to construct a sentence or two, absolutely. I also thank Svalina for finally getting me to pin down the spelling of "entrepreneur." Psyched for his collection forthcoming from Love Symbol Press in 2013-14.

May We Shed These Human Bodies, Amber Sparks

Ok, full disclosure, I haven't technically completed reading this collection yet. I'm more than a third of the way through it, however. With that in mind, I think it's safe to say unless something drastic changes I'm going to continue to adore these stories. Sparks is just the right amount of ribald and surreal. She mixes them nicely. She mixes them earnestly. I know she's a fan of George Saunders, whom I have to believe would think this collection a very worthwhile literary effort indeed, though certainly all Sparks' own. I can't wait for more from Sparks. I hear she's working on a novel these days.

#KanyeWestSavedFromDrowning, Salvatore Pane

Sure, Sal Pane and I might have our differences about who, exactly, was evil, basketball wise -- Michael Jordan or John Starks respectively. (The answer: it was always John Starks, which is why Bulls' fans had to boo him during his brief tenure with the team.) However, this is a hell of a collection. And maybe I'm biased because I was on the team that selected this collection for publication by NAP (and one of its most adamant supporters, full disclosure), but that's because Pane's writing is fantastic, great, the perfect blend of pop culture reference, '90s nostalgia, and just really brilliant writing. I'm excited for Last Call in the City of Bridges, which likewise, will surely be an enjoyable read.

Revelation, Colin Winnette

Winnette has had quite a run of awesomeness over the past two years. Lots of deserved awards and accolades, and two story collections, Revelation and Animal Collection, and a third on the way from Atticus Books in 2013. Revelation is quite a feat in itself, a surreal semi-modern day depiction of the end of days referred to in the biblical book of the same name (or at least that's my understanding of the book of revelation). The three friends of this novel suffer as many breaks and divides as the earth itself seems to be subject to. My personal favorite was the swarm of locust that had all but consumed a retirement home.

My Only Wife, Jac Jemc

Ghostly, otherworldly. A narrator who seems so detached it's hard to tell where reality begins and delusion ends. Beautifully rendered, which I'd never expect anything less from Jac Jemc. She's a poet, I feel, first and foremost, despite her knack for telling stories. You'll know this is no ordinary story from the very first chapter onward. You'll be pleased with what you find throughout.

Hot Pink, Adam Levin

God, I love this book. I don't care about the comparisons to David Foster Wallace. Adam Levin writes like Adam Levin. He's not the next anything. He's the inimitable writer he is. His work is complex and inviting of your own puzzlement. Puzzle over, for example, the nuances of a term like "hot pink." How might that appear through another point of view? What about a house that refuses to be mended? Why?

Us, Michael Kimball

I've raved about this book already, richly deserving of being raved about. It's dark, it's emotionally challenging. It's also insightful and incredibly evocative. Michael Kimball is among that great tradition of writers who don't need to dance around you prosaically (not that there's anything wrong with that or especially right with that, either). He gives you what is there and lets you assemble your own meaning. You might also check his latest, Big Ray, an intense journey through the complicated relationship between an abused son and his abusive father.

Light Boxes, Shane Jones

If you're in the mood for one fantastical, surreal fable-esque jaunt, Light Boxes should do it. Like Us, I raved about this book earlier this year on the blog. Because it's good, so good, I want to remind everyone that I enjoyed it so much. I could list the reasons, most of which are gone over in the earlier year's post. Still, February as a villain? Winter as never ending? Fiction as fun? Read Light Boxes. Do it.

Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me, Mark Leidner

Unlike the more pithy titles above (Svalina and Adcox excluded) this poetry collection is a mouthful. But it's a mouthful in so many ways, so many good words to read and maybe speak aloud. So much fun and funny, too. You'll love how Leidner twists and turns both language and the tender threads of narrative he either does or does not include in his poetry. If you like to have fun you should like Mark Leidner. That's all I'm saying.

Oh, The Places I've Been!

I like to drum up support for the literary magazines I like, which happen to be the ones I submit stories to, likewise. I had an echap from Pangur Ban Party come out this month, featuring stories that will be included in my collection, Why God Why, still very much forthcoming from Love Symbol Press.

Because I love the publications, and because I think great publications are deserving of as much attention as can be got, I've included links to all the places I've been and their most current issues. I'm also gonna include links to a few books I've been reviewing for Untoward that I think you ought to at least look into. Some of them hardly need anymore press but I'm giving it anyway. They all deserve to be recognized. People need to know they exist, if in the event that they don't already. SERIOUSLY!

Lit mag links:

Fix It Broken Issue 4 - HERE!

Prick of the Spindle 6.1 - HERE!

STOKED! Vol. IV - HERE!

Pangur Ban Party, My echap, There! Words! - HERE!

Books to watch out for:

Michael Czyzniejewski's Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions - HERE!

Paul Kavanagh's Iceberg - HERE!

Adam Levin's Hot Pink - HERE!

Diana Salier's Letter From Robots - HERE! 

The Beginning of Something New, The End of Something Old

The beginning has to begin somewhere.

I'm serious, in a way.

I've enjoyed writing straight-up book reviews for the last year and a half or so, but, ever the intellectually whimsical, I'm feeling a bit spent on this type of (although fun) repetitive analysis. I want things that coalesce. I'd like to fuse this idea with that one, and build workable narratives to then consider that with regard to the phenomena of our present day and circumstances. Make my kind of sense of it all. More philosophical rumination.

This could be, as I see it, that outlet. And of course literary fiction will factor into the blog's new course very heavily. Maybe, also, I'll practice at storytelling of my own here. More to the point, this is to be a playground for ideas I'm teasing out. Some of these ideas will no doubt be more fully baked than others. In whatever their condition though, merely by the fact of my posting them here, I'll be looking for your reaction, as I toss ideas against the more or less sticky wall to see what sticks (stickiness depending for the most part on the idea and its solvency).

But let me just end on the homed-in literary topic of . . .

The Instructions

It is possibly fitting that I heretofore ended on Part I of Adam Levin's "The Instructions," because A.) that novel represents to me, among other things, a great example of what fiction is capable of in its sprawling many pages and B.) an impulse toward my own kind of instructions, a desire to think and be more critical about, for lack of a better term, the phenomena I mention.

But I don't want to leave anyone hanging too much. I'm not sure that there's a lot left to say about "The Instructions" on my part, though, not without ruining its very climactic ending. I go back and forth with my final evaluation of whether it was a "good" or "bad" novel. Perhaps my biggest negative criticism, one that I may have mentioned in commenting to a commenter, and the sole point of agreement I might have with Joshua Cohen's generally underwhelming review, is that Levin seems to be afflicted by the same self-consciousness that has beguiled previous long form fiction writers such as David Foster Wallace, who obsess to the point of seemingly desiring total control of their conjured world and, this admittedly a very great leap to make on my part, suggesting a desire for control of a bit of the real world by extension.

I put this upon every very intricately wrought piece of situational analysis and so forth, what happened and wherefore?, belonging to "The Instructions" and "Infinite Jest" and other notable longform works I've happened through. It is the desire for complete understanding, or perceptive "complete understanding" by, in Levin's case, Gurion, the young protagonist. And where Cohen sees DFW avoiding this pitfall by the multitudinous narrators and characters put under microscope, Levin suffers more for the fact that every character has only one thing on his or her mind in "The Instructions": Gurion Maccabee (including for the most part Gurion himself). Though this seems to have been in Cohen's view the novel's fatal flaw, I won't go that far myself. I think it's astounding how well Levin pulls off the necessary and lengthy singular focus of his novel. Gurion is flawed, certainly, but as close to all-knowing as flawed characters get. Gurion, to be sure, speaks volumes about things, about phenomena, and yet Levin somehow manages to have his cake and eat it too by creating in Gurion a believably adolescent temperment at his core.

All in all, it's a stunning achievement. And yet, still I waffle back and forth on whether I would classify it as among my favorite novels. Sometimes time and hindsight are required for the true merits of a piece to reveal themselves, and I suppose that's where I'll leave this mini-review of "The Instructions" -- at pure speculation.

END of reviewing The Instructions

I'll also end the entirety of this piece by simply remarking that you can expect me to have something in line with the poorly defined ideas I describe in the preceding paragraphs sometime very soon. I keep returning to totalitarianism and Nabokov's "Bend Sinister" -- which I must include among my favorite novels, if the criterion of its returning to my mind in a significant positive light bears any weight at all.

Thank you.

Halfway Through Adam Levin's "The Instructions": Of Sub and Serious Men

Adam Levin's "The Instructions" is a novel with a lot to say. At a bit more than the halfway mark (pg. 610 approx.), I thought I'd hit the ground running with somethings it says that have especially struck me. So here we go...

There's a need to represent the voice of the modern, let's say especially male, illiterate in contemporary fiction. Does it stretch a writer's capacity, to write as a guy who doesn't have much to express in any coherent, articulate way? (Especially when you're an Adam Levin, who clearly does.)

No more so than a skilled actor affecting bad acting.

"The Instructions" is full of these contemporary Cro-Magnons or troglodytes or whatever historically lower-on-the-evolutionary-ladder group you wish to assign them to, i.e. men who haven't got much to offer the grand discourse but no less wish to add their two cents. They might also like to feel marginalized, on the fringe, like their way of life is under attack. True, sometimes -- often -- their way of life may well be under attack, but it's not without reason. The reason? Bluntly, the things they're willing to uphold are often terrible, like denying themselves and / or others of what should be basic freedom, of the right to decide for oneself what's moral and just.

This phenomenon brought to mind Simone De Beauvoir and her description of the "sub-man" and the "serious man" -- lowest in the order of her archetypal freedom seekers. The sub-man is led along like a calf to slaughter, and the serious man upholds certain idols for the simultaneous and fairly paradoxical ends of control and personal fulfillment. In other words, the serious man usually begins to believe his own fictions, perpetuating them and foisting them on the always less-discriminating sub-man. Thus are dogmas born and sustained, or so I say, in a nutshell. (Hannah Arendt would then have referred to sub-men as the disenfranchised necessary for demagogues to enact totalitarianism, which is something.)

[Various spoilers no doubt ensue. So proceed with caution!]

In Levin's fiction, sub-men come in the form of, primarily, the security personnel of Aptakisic Middle School, a major setting of the story and one in which we find the 10-year-old protagonist and primary narrative voice, Gurion Maccabee, constantly and deliberately willing himself into conflict. The hypertrophied, hyperactive argumentative abilities of Gurion and his cohorts on "The Side of Damage" (more on that group in a bit) who inhabit the Cage (a little more on this in the next paragraph) are put into direct linguistic opposition with these "mediocre men" -- to refer to them in Nietzschean parlance, because of all the damnable philosophical language already in use. Ron Desormie, lecherous gym teacher, is the ostensible leader to these sub-men, and poster child of "The Arrangement" (primary antagonist of The Side of Damage, which I'll get to when I get to both (they go hand-in-hand)), a serious man if ever there was one, his idol being the so-called self-evident value of winning, and doing so at any cost.

But my favorite of the sub-men, and probably the best rendered in terms of speech and appearance, is a handless (lost in a crop-grinder) Australian transplant, Monitor Victor Botha, disciplinarian to the Cage's inhabitants (The Cage being a place for students who have exhibited violent or otherwise dangerous tendencies that make them unfit for inclusion in classes with the general student body). Botha is the only major authority figure in the Cage, the teachers who flow in and out of its confines (literally a cage-like chain link enclosure) are rarely even subordinate to him in any authoritarian chain-of-command sense. Botha's law is, at the story's outset, absolute. Unlike, say, Nurse Ratched of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," who felt a panacea lay in the prospect of shaming those in her charge out of their difference, Botha desires not to be bothered. Only rarely does he shame anyone, and when he does, he does it with far less cunning and pre-meditation than Nurse Ratched. One such instance of Botha's sadism especially comes to mind, happening around the 100 page mark, which leads to a good turn by Benji Nakamook (Gurion's closest companion) and others in the Cage, as effect.

The incident in question occurred when Gurion first arrived at the Cage, practically his initial interaction with Botha and all others attending Cage classes. There was, meanwhile and hitherto Gurion's arrival, a student -- Egon Marsh -- who was constantly the butt of jokes in the Cage, apparently partially a result of his living in squalid, abusive conditions at home.

The incident began with Botha noting a smell, and said, in a little of his idiosyncratic accent (a bizarre fusion of Australian and, interestingly, really heavy Chicagoan), "Something smells downright bleddy Marshy." Gurion is unaware that the comment is aimed derisively at Marsh. The subsequent events are bulleted:

• Gurion purposely breaks and asks to sharpen a pencil in an over-compensating attempt to demonstrate that the smell is not his own, as said unaware that Egon Marsh is the one who Botha's accused of being smelly.


• Botha warns Gurion that normally he'd be given a "step" (the punishment progression at Aptakisic for misbehavior) as consequence for Gurion's speaking out of turn, but he'd benevolently let it slide this time. (Gurion probably correctly surmises, in narrative reflection, "That Botha might be actively trying to humiliate me ..." though admits it didn't occur to him at the time.)


• Finally, as Gurion begins sharpening his pencil, Botha takes the opportunity to begin his assault on his easy target, Egon Marsh, saying: "Wait! Wait, Mr. Makebee! No need to waste your affort. I think I've found a writing implement here--yes. Look. Right here in this nest!" And he affected pulling a hidden pencil from Egon's hair.

The reaction this elicits is at first mirth, but then, Benji Nakamook decides it better to humiliate the perpetuator of humiliation, and says, simply, "Combover" to Botha. Because, as it happens, Botha class-act that he is, has a combover. This might seem trite in any other situation, an easy exercise of an old cliche, i.e. villainous lowlife = has a combover. But Levin goes to great lengths both to explain the combover as a thing in itself and then Botha's personal reasons for sporting that really unpleasant look. Partly explained by Gurion as follows, "Like those kids who when you tell them their foot-taps annoy you and then in response they tap faster and harder, these men kept their combovers intact to save face."

This then segues into a really involved effort by Nakamook to insult Botha by modifying his hairstyle to affect a combover of his own (a "Harpo Progression" as Gurion calls it), which like quite a few of the Side of Damage's efforts to mock the sub-men of authority, fairly quickly gets away from him and brings about wholly new problems that I won't delve into. (Gurion does a nice job, however, of incisively picking apart the psychological nuances of Nakamook's mockery gone awry, part of which can be blamed on Gurion's own misunderstanding at the time of the combover plot's unfurling.)

Botha's presence as law of the Cage remains ubiquitous in the narrative, even as lengthy passages lead Gurion elsewhere in and around Chicagoland (which is, if I haven't already said it, the greater setting in which practically all of the story takes place). I'll be very interested to see how he and his role change (however significantly).

The Side of Damage exists to undermine the Arrangement (authority for authority's sake, rote and pointless). One of the neatest things about "The Instructions" is how big ideas are rendered with very real-sounding churlish and / or childish vernacular. The Side of Damage sounds like the secret society of rebellious pre-teens and teenagers. And that's just one highly notable example. As the story progresses we see a psychological profile done of Gurion by his therapist, "Call-Me-Sandy" (a woman of some student-standing at the University of Chicago, brought clearly to bear in her profile of Gurion, which also has within it coded and not-quite-coded advances directed toward her female professor). In "Call-Me-Sandy"'s profile we learn in clinical terms (many of which "Call-Me-Sandy" later admits were used for the express purpose of impressing her professor) that Gurion has several very distinct ways of communicating with his peers, but which boil down to three different kinds of "codeswitching" (pg. 306-7): 1) erudite, 2) prophetical and 3) colloquial.

Largely ignored by me to this point is the nature of Gurion and his religion (which as the story would have it are inextricable terms). He demonstrates his great faith by making frequent reference to God "Adonai," the Jews "Israelites" (there are no longer Jews, and the term holds no meaning to Gurion), and other esoteric references to traditional semitic, chiefly Hebraic, texts and so forth. I mention that here because many of Gurion's friends and a great deal of the reason for why he has not been allowed to stay enrolled at any of his previous schools, believe him to be a kind of prophet, or very plain and straightforwardly, The Messiah. Accordingly he is referred to as "Rabbi" by many of his fellow Israelites, who see him as a scholar and authority on such matters. He sees himself in the same terms, more or less, and in his free time (in passages which fill the novel) he writes his scripture.

All of this then seems to fall under the auspices of The Side of Damage, although certainly Gurion has had some difficulty to this point in reconciling the somewhat dogmatic belief that Israelites are the chosen people, possibly needing to be led by Gurion, if he is the Messiah, and the more pluralistic membership, the generally neglected and oppressed, of the greater Side of Damage. The division is also sort of coming to a head at the point I'm at in "The Instructions" -- Nakamook is feeling betrayed to a certain extent by the fact that, as Benji is a goy, Gurion clearly cannot put him on the same standing as his followers, other Israelites.

Last, I'll mention Ron Desormie and one of his closest lackeys, Floyd The Chewer, and a situation involving them both while Gurion is trapped in an In-School Suspension (ISS). Gurion has constructed a weapon "a penny gun" that fires coins with enough force to cause bodily harm and property damage. He has used it on the scoreboard at Aptakisic, which is about as symbolic an attack on Ron Desormie as Desormie can endure. He doesn't endure the attack well and comes screaming at Gurion (Gurion is in his suspension for other reasons unrelated to the scoreboard, and it later is revealed the scoreboard was completely destroyed by an ally of the Side of Damage, not Gurion himself). Desormie then goes into a long soliloquy regarding his thoughts on Gurion and his "so-called" friends:

Not only don't I think your jokes are funny, ever . . . but I don't even get your jokes. And I don't think anyone does. And even if they do, I don't think they think your jokes are funny either, because you're not mature. Maturity, Maccabee, is control of yourself, and I don't think you've got control of yourself.

The soliloquy goes on to make reference to characters from "The Godfather" and "Good Fellas" and is mostly a rambling, ham-fisted diatribe. I like that Levin chose to have Desormie speak idiosyncratically with his expressing "Not only don't I think" and so forth. I think that, too, captures the voice of the individual he was going for, a man not totally in touch with how to express himself. I think it also sometimes goes a bit overboard, and I'm not as totally thrilled by malapropisms like Desormie's saying "non-sectarians" when he (probably) means to say non-sequitur.

Floyd the Chewer, a policing automaton of the school, enters the scene after Desormie has been led into the principal Mr. Brodsky's office, to explain the scoreboard and its destruction. Floyd wants to talk to "Ronny D" his nickname for Desormie, and asks Miss Pinge, the secretary, "So what about any updates on Ronny D and the chief, there? . . . You got a potentially predictional ballpark figure regarding the time for their pow-wow's overage, maybe?" All the malapropisms here are exceedingly forced, although I waver back and forth with this, because my main reason for feeling this way is that nobody in the world that I've experienced speaks like Floyd. But, then a.) who cares if anyone speaks like Floyd and b.) I have a feeling I'll one day meet someone who does, thus throwing that argument entirely out the window.

I'll have to reflect on this and still more things in what I have left to read of "The Instructions."

More to come!

"The Instructions" by Adam Levin is COOOOMMMMIIIINNNGGG Soon to me!

Adam Levin is an author floating dangerously under the radar these days. My feeling is that will change with McSweeney's recent publication of his massive first novel, "The Instructions." It's getting called all sorts of things, as press releases and et cetera are wont to put forth, to build positive word of mouth and so forth, one imagines. (I think if you write a novel that exceeds 600 pages and you're under 40 years old you should just expect to be compared to David Foster Wallace, even if in no other way does your work resemble the late great DFW's.) I don't know. All I know is, I expect Levin will bring something decidedly different to the table, all his own. I don't get the impression he's the sort of author who writes a book of this staggering size without having something to say. He's too on the level from what I've heard from and of him to be that kind of self-indulgent. And he has written some wicked short fiction. Don't believe me? Fine. I don't care. I have bought "The Instructions," in any event. I am excited by what its reading may yield.

In related news, I've bought a slough of books lately, of which "The Instructions" is merely one I'm especially excited for. Others I'm similarly excited for (or I would not have bought them) are Patrick Somerville's upcoming "The Universe in Miniature in Miniature," Joseph McElroy's "A Smuggler's Bible," Curtis White's "Memories of My Father Watching TV," and Percival Everett's "I Am Not Sidney Poitier." Oh and Philip K. Dick, always Philip K. Dick. My thoughts on all of these authors and more will be forthcoming, I assure you. Thanks for your patience, small and loyal readership I've imagined for myself.

Know that I love you all very much, what is more!

You've Done Something Again, Adam Levin & McSweeney's Quarterly Concern

I won't say I plan to subscribe to McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. I won't go that far, but after reading back issues from 2005, 16 and 18 to be precise, I will say I'm now largely a fan. The big names (The New Yorker, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, Granta, Ploughshares, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, etc.) naturally are subject to increased scrutiny and so also naturally you'll probably hear from one person or another how overrated they are. It comes with the territory of being on top, to be consistently hated, too.

Because of the New Yorker and McSweeney's (Granta, too, which I'll get to in a forthcoming post) -- and the various collections in The Best American series of short stories I've yet come across -- I'm pleased to say I think they're on top for a reason / I'm not a big time hater, although I don't think the bigs are beyond reproach by any stretch, either. McSweeney's has especially impressed me with the two issues I've read. I can't speak for their entire catalog (some issues I read up about online seem a little too experimental in terms of layout for my tastes), but I'd wager they consistently churn out one of the best products in the lit mag biz. And I'll look into further, you can be sure. Point is, I like what I'm seeing so far. OK.

I cite as the latest (in my own reading experience) evidence of this quality of content McSweeney's 16. Adam Levin once again outdoes himself with a short story called, "Considering the Bittersweet End of Susan Falls." Reality is hard to pin down. Is Susan Falls a brilliant lunatic with a spectacularly strange imagination? And what the hell is the "true" story of how she came to be legless at such a tender age as fifteen, she who is a precocious student already enrolled in college? Susan Falls comes in contact with a young female student, presumably at least several years older, named Carla, whom the narrative introduces to the reader as someone Susan has pined for and lusted after in daydreams. Eventually, in a flukey set of circumstances occurring in class one day, they become acquaintances and friends -- all of this if the narrative is to be believed, and it simultaneously asks you to question its validity in a number of ways, which I base on Susan's comments and the general erraticism of the narration itself, unusual but very effective.

One example of what I'm talking about occurs when Carla and Susan are captured in the throes of a faux opium high (which they are unaware the opium is not opium at all but an opium substitute called "Nopium," the narration reveals). Susan has explained to Carla the origin of the loss of her legs in several possible scenarios, and not settling absolutely on one being the cause. This inspires Carla to ask, "Do you have any memories of walking?" To which Susan replies, "I have millions of memories of walking, but I also have memories of dreams, of flying." "Those are dreams, though." "But they feel similar enough, dreams and memories, that it wouldn't be rigorous to trust the distinction." Trust the distinction enough to see that it's an arbitrary one, to a certain extent. That's what Susan is saying. The legs like her gift of flight will still be gone upon returning to the present.

The other stories included in this issue are worth a look, also. Some in particular, although I won't labor over their meaning with as much detail as I provide for Levin's. Some of Denis Johnson's early writings from his National Book Award winner "Tree of Smoke" appear here as "Lucky," which I admit after reading this chapter or so excerpt it did make me want to read the entire novel a great deal more than I had previously (sorry, geez, but it just seems awfully long for Denis Johnson, "Tree of Smoke" does, I mean). Miranda Mellis' "The Doctor of Mental Health" is really neat, and I liked Kevin Moffett's "Medicine Man" a lot also. Roddy Doyle has shown up repeatedly lately in my readings. I have to admit I could not get into his novel "The Commitments" -- although I enjoyed the theatrical version. But I find his short stories more agreeable. "Home to Harlem" in this particular case was a definite highlight. Questions of belonging and the insider / outsider status get explored with new depth in it. All good things.

I've been thinking a lot about why I enjoy reading, short stories in particular. Part of it has to do with a sensation, and I wonder if others know something about what I'm experiencing. I find myself involuntarily reverting to this sensation, like a rush of memory bound to the emotion that triggered its standing out in the first place. Of course this gets abstract and is hard to convey in words, but I will try. Here's trying: my sensations inspired by stories are similar to those I experience when recalling dreams.

Some dreams you have while sleeping likewise feel to me as though they are meant to be shared. Even when, as is often the case, they can't properly be articulated to the receiver, because that person can't appreciate the gamut of feelings tied to it. No doubt all of which contributed greatly to its substance in your own mind to begin with. Usually this accompanies eye-rolling in the receiver, and who could blame them? The idea's expunged and probably won't come back to you in the same way it could have, had it been more difficult to immediately relate.

Alternatively, there are other dreams that aren't meant to be shared, at least at first. These dreams are impossibly hard to relate to another person, usually because they are devoid of any logical narrative whatever, but you bottle them in -- maybe subconsciously -- stow them down somewhere inside and restricted by the mediating powers of the super-ego (Not to get Freudian, or anything), think of it as a fragment of thought detritus. And so it becomes a kind of metaphorical pearl collecting layers and reemerging in your mind's eye as something more interesting, beautiful and so forth than it was when you first stowed it away, unconsciously.

Maybe you're a writer of some talent and you share this "pearl" with others. Maybe they don't realize it's a "pearl" at all, at first, and bottle it away themselves without thought. Maybe like a dream it comes out the same way, as a new "pearl" -- meaning something significant then to that person as well. Then again, probably everything I've just said is whimsical nonsense. But I'm OK with that likelihood.

Short Stories from Around the Web:

I wanted to include a short story I read recently from The Seahorse Folk Revival called "Flickers" by Josh Goller. Maybe it's my fondness for Chicago and that I've been to several of the locales mentioned, possibly it's my appreciation for John Turturro and Coen Brothers films, or perhaps it's that I wish I'd read "The Tin Drum" by now, but this story spoke to me -- and it doesn't get much more subjective than saying that, I believe. Take a look, if your subjective leanings impel you to do so.

On A Somewhat Related Note (in the most tangential sense):

So I'm currently enrolled in education courses at National-Louis University. And one of the classes I've been taking is: "Introduction to Exceptional Children and Adolescents" -- a polite way of describing students with learning disabilities and behavioral disorders, etc. As a result we've been given various written scenarios with which to test our acumen in dealing with students diagnosed with the aforesaid issues. Here is one example:

Sam is in the sixth grade and was diagnosed with autism as a young child. Along with autism he also has obsessive compulsive disorder.

He is currently in all sixth grade classes and is able to achieve at that level fairly well. In addition, he also goes to a resource room for about an hour a day.

And it just sort of goes on in that utilitarian, banal way -- which is totally fine. It's clinical and clean. I'm not exactly complaining. I've just been biding my time, hoping and waiting for something of a little more substance. And that shouldn't be too much of a surprise, given my enthusiasm for weighty narrative and all that good stuff abounding in literature. Friends here in the literary-scape I don't doubt know what I'm talking about. Nothing came, as you might imagine, BUT we were given the opportunity to create our own sketches of troublesome classroom scenarios, and I ran with it -- much to my group mates' perplexity and, perhaps, chagrin.

Here's the fruit (slightly revised) of my running with the opportunity, entitled "Jeremy" -- a play in one act:

Narrator: It begins with Jeremy seated at his desk, very early for class. It was winter. Jeremy hated winter. And worse, he didn't have anymore cigarettes, confiscated by the hated dean, Dean Mann. Also, he'd recently changed medications. He is troubled but not trouble.

(Mr Veronica Enters)

Narrator: Mr. Veronica is coming to grips with a recent breakup, his wife has run off with an ex-student whom he already despised. He's never been a fan of Jeremy, what's more.

Mr. Veronica: Didn't think you'd show up.

Jeremy: I've got my own problems, man. Quit riding me. We're four days from graduation -- grin and bear me.

Mr. Veronica: You!? Graduate?

Jeremy: All right, you're so tough? Prove it!

Mr. Veronica: I wouldn't waste the time to wipe you off my boot.

(Jeremy knocks over his desk and springs upward, raising his fist and taking a swing at Mr. Veronica's face just as the first bell rings, to the stunned expressions of the earliest arriving students bearing witness.)

Narrator: Mr. Veronica died of bone cancer later that year, after a long struggle.

FIN

Bits and Pieces of This-That Literary Topic

First, damn you, Jonathan Franzen, for f*%#ing wrecking any hope I might have had for a sprightlier than usual morning thanks to your most recent New Yorker short story, "Agreeable." Stories about the subtly unloved offspring of various politically-motivated and self-serving adults tend to have that effect on me. I'll say little else about it, just that it's draped with the veil of this is going to depress you, outcome-wise.

Ok here's a smidgen more and then that's it, I mean it! A little context is, the story follows Patty, an athlete in a family that doesn't value athletics or the competitor's draconian gusto, despite that they resemble the kind of thing D.G. Myer's cites from Sam Munson's novel, "The November Criminals" -- "at the small scale nobody behaves in accordance with all the high ideals they talk about; everyone acts like animals, domesticated animals maybe, but still animals." The parents are domesticated animals operating under the veil (many veils to this story) of high-mindedness, which makes them only sub rosa domesticated animals -- whose inhumanity is just as pervasive but much more opaque.

I liked and found this particular excerpt from the story to be the most enjoyable and relatable to my own athletic experiences, occurring in the midst of Patty demonstrating her superior athletic prowess and the response of other players who didn't behave with the same zeal for sport, to wit:

Patty bore down straight at her, and the girl ran squealing into the outfield, leaving the base path for an automatic out, but Patty kept chasing her and applied the tag while the girl crumpled up and screamed at the apparently horrible pain of being lightly touched by a glove.

Jens Lekman's whimsical, melodic drawl is a nice antidote to the Franzen melancholy I got, though. So there's your silver-lining.

I zipped through W.S. Burroughs' surprisingly thoughtful meditation on the house cat in, "The Cat Inside." And here is one excerpt that I believe more than adequately represents the kind plaintiveness with which the book is rife:

The cry I heard through Ruski was not only his signal of distress. It was a sad, plaintive voice of lost spirits, the grief that comes from knowing you are the last of your kind. There can be no witness to this grief. No witnesses remain. It must have happened many times in the past It is happening now. Endangered species. Not just those that actually exist, or existed at one time and died, but all the creatures that might have existed.

I finished McSweeney's 18, which was put out for the viewing public in January of 2005 -- so this was a longtime coming. I've already expressed my fondness for some of the stories, most especially "Hot Pink" and "Bad Habits," and "People Are Becoming Clouds" by Adam Levin, Joyce Carol Oates and Joe Meno respectively. But others included were more than enjoyable, also, if I wasn't quite so enthusiastic about them. Chris Adrian's "The Stepfather" was just the sort of quizzical mystery of modern life that I find so amusing and fun to dissect (the short of it being a family of stepchildren connive to rid themselves via murder of a stepfather whom they cannot abide).

"My Hustlers" by Edmund White caught my eye, too, and not strictly for the fact that it mentions briefly and not praisingly my hometown, Des Plaines. Nelly Reifler's "The Railway Nurse" was a bizarre jaunt, made all the more bizarre by the abounding tangential and potentially untoward references of the aspiring Railway Nurse's affinity and love for her brother, who played so much a role in her pursuing the eponymous profession. Then lastly, "Happiness Reminders" by Rachel Haley Himmelheber was reminiscent of some of David Foster Wallace's experimental fiction formats that I liked in "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men." And it surprises me not so very much that McSweeney's would get behind a style of storytelling like Himmelheber's, which to be clear, is not in my opinion an aping of Wallace as much as it is an inspired take on his format, with a flavor uniquely her own, too.

Lastly, I'm giving some serious thought to starting my own online-based literary magazine. I have no ideas for a name, as yet, but I do have a theme in mind -- one I think has been grossly neglected by the literary scene of the webscape. I've talked about doing this before, but I'm even more earnest about it this time. I swear!

Last of Lastly, whatever happened to the Denver Bibliophile's blog? I noticed recently there were no posts emanating from that domain and was saddened to discover the account's been deleted. A pity!

Patrick Somerville Kills the Short Story (in a Good Way, in a Good Way)

I'm happy to say I've recently gotten around to reading Patrick Somerville's "Trouble," a collection of shorts released way back in 2006. Somerville himself has been on my radar for quite a while, given my enthusiasm and great interest in Chicago-area writers. The whole "reading his work" just made sense, then.

I also realize I've been on something of a short story kick of late, much to my surprise. I love short stories, don't misunderstand me. It's just, I dunno, I've always felt something about them, call it length, hampered their ability to be of real heft. The word "tome" could never, for example, be ascribed to something so un-tome like as the collected short stories of Ernest Hemingway (I've of course excluded Papa's tomes, such as "For Whom The Bell Tolls" -- which c'mon, even sounds like a tome). Tome itself sounds like itself, onomatopoeic and suchlike, right? Right. Tomes are about white whales and wars and peace and wakes for the Irish and the rainbows belonging to gravity.

Well, short stories don't sound weighty and hefty like tomes / aren't about the various things listed -- in the same sprawling detail, but what does that mean? Nothing. They're great. Short stories do it with pith. I mean, not a perfect analogy, but who would you rather watch, a blazing Usain Bolt dashing faster than you thought kinesthetically possible, or some other guy, whoever, distance running for what feels like forever, boringly? I believe I've made my point. Or no I haven't. (I already admitted the analogy was imperfect.) But regardless, a point was made and if that point is anything then it's this: I enjoyed Somerville's collection, was rapt with interest even.

His stories run the evocative gamut of the pathos spectrum: emotionally charged, at times hilarious (see "English Cousin" & "Trouble and the Shadowy Death Blow"), and most of all, earnestly contemplative. It's the keen eye Somerville shows for escalation, which drives his stories (in that way not dissimilar from how Usain Bolt builds momentum) and compelled me to continue reading. Gripped pretty steadily throughout, most of his stories I went through in one sitting. There were only a couple times that I needed to return later to some and not for a lack of interest. It might be akin to the feeling one gets when one is editor of a literary magazine and comes across a piece of fiction with which he or she really connects and thus wants to publish.

The stories of adolescence and young adulthood rang true (for whatever that matters -- I suppose when I use the cliche "rang true" what I'm really saying is they seem to have accomplished the thing the author (Somerville) was going for, which I won't presume to know), and equally successful were his stories depicting the melancholy of old age, a DeLillo-esque spirit to life's winter, particularly well evidenced by "The Cold War." If I were to compare Somerville to two authors with whom I'm familiar, one is Don DeLillo, showcased especially in the aforesaid and "The Future, the Future, the Future," which had a delightfully "Americana" feel about it.

The other would be, yes, sorry, George Saunders -- especially well showcased in "English Cousin" -- which was my favorite of the bunch -- and "Puberty." Concerning "Puberty," I get the feeling Saunders would definitely appreciate the inclination of Brandon, the awkward, early adolescent main character, to imagine himself a member of a group he dubs: "STRONG POTENTIAL" (caps Somerville's).

All in all, the sad stuff is adequately sad and effective; the funny stuff is as funny as the best stories I've read all year. Honest. Check Somerville out. He teaches creative writing at Northwestern University, which makes me want to attend their workshop all the more now.

A FEW OTHER ITEMS: I was kindly lent a copy of the McSweeney's Quarterly Concern Issue 18 featuring stories by another Chicago creative writing prof, Adam Levin, whom I've been chatting about quite a bit of late, also, I know. I read his short "Hot Pink," and, listen, I'm on my short story kick and all, so cut me some slack if you feel I'm a bit prone to hyperbole as a result, but honest, it blew me away. It started a little slowly. I wasn't sure why I should be interested in the seemingly meatheaded narrator, a Chicago Polish kid, Jack Krakow, but by the end I felt I understood. It's a surprising tale, and uses the Chicago approximate west side backdrop nicely.

I mention Levin also because he and other young writers like Somerville will likely, should they stay in these parts, become very relevant within the next couple years. I suspect they could be a part of a new literary guard. I'm keeping my eye on some others. I also enjoyed a short story by the very good Chicago-area writer Lindsay Hunter, which you can read here at Everyday Genius. And in the same issue of McSweeney's (issue 18, January 15, 2005) YET ANOTHER Chicago writer, Joe Meno, (who according to his wiki is currently teaching at Columbia College with Levin) has a nice entry called "People are Becoming Clouds."

Also, FYI, on Sunday I plan to attend this:

Doings and Happenings Around Town: Book Release Parties Edition

So I had the fun and coincidental opportunity to go to a Book Release Party for an author I had only just heard of for the first time earlier that same day. That day was today, also, as fact would have it, and today is April 26, 2010. I know my dates, see? The author was Christian TeBordo, celebrating the release of his latest collection of short stories, "The Awful Possibilities."

I wish I could elaborate more, but the sickening truth is I was agonizingly unfamiliar with the work of the entire lineup, from TeBordo on down. Adam Levin caught my attention, though, in part because he's a Chicago-area writer who teaches in the MFA program at Columbia College. I think I enjoyed his reading best, too, even though I arrived late and halfway through his story, and felt like a jackass as I waded through the ample crowd already in attendance. It was hard to find information about Levin because every time I googled his name, even with the variance of "writer" attached, the result was a litany of stories about or related to Maroon-5 lead singer, Adam Levine, which is a different name, Google, and people who link to Adam Levine articles and so forth who don't seem to know his name has an "e" at the end; it's a different name! Call yourself fans? (UPDATE: I've happily unearthed the title of the story that Levin read, "Important Men," and what's more it's viewable in full here at Guernica. Yay, everybody! Yay, right?)

Jeff Parker and Lindsay Hunter (not the former Chicago Bull, unfortunately, nor is there any relation as far as I'm aware) were also in attendance. Jeff Parker is a apparently a fairly up-and-coming writer of note, so suggests his Wiki (which the other authors listed do not have, that I could find). Parker's story was very amusing, although I continue being unhelpful at providing titles to the works read this evening. TeBordo's was about, to quote whoever described it in publisher press release, "a teen in Brooklyn, Iowa, deals with the fallout of his brother's rise to hip hop fame." Still, I can't recall the title of that one, either. My head was securely lodged far up my ass, though, so maybe that had something to do with it, hmm?

My apologies to Lindsay Hunter, whose reading I missed completely and therefore obviously can't comment on, but I'm always interested in reading new writers, especially females (as if my previous post were not evidence enough of that). And if she's a local, then all the better!

That's all I've got for now, but more to come about this and that and so forth.