LOVIN' INFANT MONKEYS, a mini review

Lydia Millet's "Love and Infant Monkeys" to put it plainly rocks socks. I know I can be a little effusive when it comes to praise round here, but the truth is I was a less than enthusiastic fan of her novel, "Everyone's Pretty." But I enjoyed her short story "Sir Henry" that appeared in issue 1 of Electric Literature, so I thought I'd give her another go with the aforementioned "Love and Infant Monkeys" -- which includes "Sir Henry" in its pages.

I don't know if Millet is better in short form or what, but "Love and Infant Monkeys" was far more to my taste. A little bit daring in terms of using real-life subjects, i.e. celebrities and other famous persons, as primary or main characters. The strange tempo of the third-person stream of consciousness in the first story, the one in which Madonna has successfully if inadvertently killed a pheasant during a hunting outing with her then husband, Guy Ritchie and his cronies. His cronies, I think, are depicted fairly by Millet, at least what my imagination brings to mind.

The eponymous piece "Love and Infant Monkeys" is easily the most tragic of them, in terms of subject matter. It concerns the real-life experiments of an American psychologist, Harry Harlow, and the infant monkeys on whom he tested his various hypotheses. It's easy to see after a few descriptive passages of the animals' treatment, most disturbingly Harlow's "pit of despair" or in the story, Harlow recollects he's been entreated to call them "chambers" rather than "dungeons" by his assistant, a graduate student named Stephen Suomi, who noted the latter would be "bad for public opinion." Harry Harlow's dysfunctional, self-destructive nature is put on full display in "Love and Infant Monkeys" -- not used to rationalize as much as emote the purpose behind Harlow's eccentric behavior. He seems to float through the story in something akin to a alcohol-induced stupor, described early on in its pages as a "functional alcoholic." It ends with a particular strong narrative revelation about Harlow, which I won't reproduce here because you should read the story in its entirety and get the full effect.

The final story in the collection "Walking Bird" hit all the right notes for me too. Conveyed certain feelings seamlessly, touchingly. A good ending punctuation to the entire collection, and all told, the collection is one of the best I've ever read in terms of its "even" quality. These stories were made to be read side by side.

Lydia Millet's "Everyone's Pretty" & Are They Ever!

There are flaws in Lydia Millet's 2005 novel, "Everyone's Pretty." But that said, I thought it was worth my time / effort -- in the end. No but seriously, it has weaknesses but it has strengths. And if you'll just allow me to explain, perhaps I can shed light on what I'm talking about. Rife with despicable and / or unlikable characters, it had for me much the same charm of the Coen brothers' less-than-enthusiastically-received 2008 film, "Burn After Reading."

Similar problems inherent to the Coen brothers' effort mucked up the works in Millet's novel, although it's clear "Burn After Reading" might have benefited from a clearer understanding of who its main character was supposed to be. Conversely, there is no doubt in "Everyone's Pretty" that Dean Decetes, human refuse and megalomaniac, is the man around whom all of the story's other actors and action turn.

My main point of criticism with respect to "Everyone's Pretty" is its sometimes palpable falseness. In other words, there were many sections I found to be fun and interesting but conveyed an unmistakable feeling that the author was forcing the issue. Naturally with the absurdist-style narrative Millet employs it isn't essential to produce "believable" characteristics and circumstances, but that's not exactly the problem I'm referring to, either.

Millet seems at times to mishandle her character's separate motivations, or what at bottom is each's ethos. For example, Ginny, a middle-school-aged math prodigy. She is at times the picture of self-assurance and possessing insight and prescience beyond her years, while at other times behaves more than naive and illogical -- paradoxically so, in fact -- I mean, beyond the obvious paradox I've already described.

To a certain extent, I can get behind Millet's use of Ginny. She seems to have wanted a character who, for better or worse, would have the sardonic humor of a child advanced for her years, something akin to a "Juno" or Professor Gladney's unusual clan of children in "White Noise." Simply put, she apparently wanted a youthful character who could show up the adults she encountered, many of whom behave with about as much decorum as the reactionary adults of "South Park."

But then comes the wanting the cake, too. [Spoiler Alert] This young prodigy, this child barely old enough to drive, is basically so naive or illogical or both that she somehow convinces herself that dressing a dead man up like a mummy might then bring him back to life? She believes that? The narrator says, ostensibly to the tune of Ginny's inner-monologue, "If Mr. Alan was a mummy he could live forever." This thought described after it's said the movie that gave her the idea "wasn't scary just dumb. The special effects looked homemade." I mean, come on.

But before I continue let me offer more context. This is what happens: to escape her overbearing mother, Riva, who ambushes Ginny in front of her fellow students and teacher in class (Riva falls dangerously on the side of overplayed caricature, likewise), she drives off with her mother's car and falls into the company of Decete's erstwhile boss, Alan H, a smut magazine editor. Alan, who is either suicidal or over-enthusiastically desirous of auto-erotic asphyxiation, manages to strangle himself to death with only modest assistance from Ginny (who is unnerved by the proceedings from the outset), thus leading to her plight of what to do with his inert body, which she seems unwilling to believe is really dead (not quite so farfetched). You might opine that things like innocence and panic played their part in her unusual reaction, but I'm hard pressed to buy it. In the end, it feels forced. And it's this falseness that severely hampered my fondness for what was, over all, an amusing story chock full of worthwhile ruminative ideas and points of consideration.

Decetes, best likened to a cross between W.C. Fields and Larry Flynt, is the life breath of Millet's tale. Without his fortifying power the story falls apart, and nearly all of the characters would lose at least some of their substance without him. This then is very much to Millet's credit. And while I feel the world has seen a Decetes type in various other incarnations in other stories, his relationship with and manipulation of most every major character does much to pace the story (Decetes is also capricious and fairly manic, which adds a jolt of vigor to his excursions). The other major characters, richly variegated but mostly falling at one of two extremes, as either libertine or fundamentalist, include his hyper-religious sister, Bucella (who's particularly mistreated by Decetes); his bemused sleazy dwarf sidekick, Ken; the Christian Scientist, Philip, with whom he only ever comes in contact tangentially; Alice, an attractive blond and the most rational of the bunch; Ernest, the object of Bucella's affection, fantasy and a very gay man; and Barbara, Philip's misunderstood wife with whom Decetes' eventually copulates. He's also a neighbor to Ginny and Riva, and causes them some small duress, as well.

So, in conclusion, what is it? What's "Everyone's Pretty"? A pretty good telling, no pun intended. Lorrie Moore, however, remains my favorite female author. (Take that, Lydia Millet! (although you're definitely not bad by any stretch!))

A Few Other Things: I happened upon a few other things that might be of interest to you, dear reader. I happened upon them because of a kindly commenter at HTML Giant, who posted a link to an article that then links to George Saunders' first published story. The article linked to is at the Faster Times, readable by clicking here-ish. To skip all the Faster Times stuff and so forth, and go directly to the source, George Saunders' original story, well, then click the X. The Faster Time article also mentions David Foster Wallace's first published story was recently unearthed, printed in his undergraduate school's literary journal, The Amherst Review. You can see that story, too, in PDF format! Here it is!

I haven't gotten to either story yet, but I'll probably begin with Wallace's, because I've already printed it and that makes the difference. Maybe, if I'm up for it, I'll click some keys over here about one or the other, or both. And maybe you'll click some keys, too. And in doing so, with a little luck mixed in for good measure, we might further enrich the world. This is my hope.

Electric Literature is Enjoyable to Read, or So I Say

It'll be near impossible for anyone to convince me that there was a short story last year exceeding "Your Fate Hurtles Down at You" by Jim Shepard. I hate to be so unwavering on something like this, a subjective topic which I customarily allow a fair amount of wiggle room for debate. Not this time, I'm afraid. Your welcome to try but I think it'd be hard to find another short story (from last year) that would impress me as much. I hate to sound so fawning but it's just the brimming-with-honesty truth. "Your Fate" was for me one of those stories that keeps you thinking about it days afterward, trying to connect meaning to its enigmatic passages and just being awed by how nicely cohesive the damn thing feels. I don't want to imply cohesion is necessary for a story to achieve this sort of resonance with me, but there is something weirdly cleansing and crisp about it -- like a really seamlessly put together piece of machinery that's also aesthetically pleasing, no superfluous parts and looking polished. As in, maybe a car like this.

And Shepard's short story was only part of what amounted to an excellent lineup featured in the inaugural issue of Electric Literature, which came out this past summer. I suppose I'm a little late hopping on their bandwagon, but I am not ashamed to be. And nothing against Electric Literature but I debate long and hard about buying and subscribing to literary magazines, good as they may appear. Ultimately, I caved and got the first issue, and I now plan to become a subscriber. They deliver a good product, much the same as the nicely hewn short story a la Shepard, and it's appealing to see authors I know I'll at least find interesting, as was the case with well-knowns like Shepard and Michael Cunningham, coupled with others I was less familiar with but whose writing I found topnotch as well: T Cooper, Diana Wagman and Lydia Millet. And isn't that at least part of what a good literary magazine does anyway -- publishes some authors you may not yet know but who are no less good?

I'll summarize the stories in brief: "Your Fate Hurtles Down at You" is about avalanches (to sell it very short), "Three-Legged Dog" by Diana Wagman is about a woman with one breast cause of cancer and the man who claims to love her (but does he???), "The Time Machine" by T. Cooper isn't hardly about a time machine but rather is about a man and his jealousy towards another man because of that man's previous marriage to the-man-who-is-jealous's girlfriend-cum-likely future wife (it's funny, probably the funniest of the bunch), "Olympia" -- apparently part of a novel in progress -- by Michael Cunningham is about family and all that jazz, very gripping and well-conceived and I look forward to it novel form, and lastly but not leastly "Sir Henry" by Lydia Willet, a story which makes professional dog walking about as heart rending as I think is within the boundaries of the human language, although that might be slightly hyperbolic. A really excellent collection of short stories, and I'm not just saying that because I really would talk about how much one or more sucked if I indeed thought they did. But I don't because they aren't.

Take a look at Electric Literature yourself today! And they also have a blog, which I equally enjoy.