Finally Having a Thought Longer Than a Tweet

Can't promise it will be any good, though.

I finished A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan the other night. I'm becoming such an old lady that I promptly began referring to it as The Geek Squad, until Mr. Scobie reminded me that that is actually a commercial service provided by a major electronics chain and not a Pulitzer-prize winning novel. And why is it P-p winning? If it is truly the best fiction book written this year, then I definitely don't feel bad for not having read the others.

Goon Squad isn't bad, per se. It just isn't memorable, or novel. It's structured like a set of short stories which are entangled by shared characters and referenced situations (i.e. something that happens in one chapter/story will be referred to in another). The styles of the stories differ, as does the voice - one of the better ones is actually a Power Point presentation by a 12-year-old. Which is adorable and brilliant, right? But let me ask you something: would any of the following writers ever have written a Power Point presentation to get at the loveliest denouement of their novel: Steinbeck, Hemingway, Bellow, Roth? How about Jane Austen pr Joyce Carol Oates? How about Judy Fracking Blume? No, they would not have done that. Why? Because they are masters of voice and narrative and don't have to resort to trickery and stylishness and something that seems vaguely like magical realism but is really just spacy, lazy omniscience.

This is all the rage now. The "good" books are all jump-cut and we are expected to be kept off-base by switching stories and narratives. This is why I didn't like (and didn't finish) Cloud Atlas. It was too precious that it was a set of nesting stories. Ditto The Imperfectionists: although better written than Goon Squad, it took way too long to begin weaving its stories together. Hell, since I didn't finish that either, it maybe never did.

I want to be told long, involved character-driven stories. I don't even mind if they are, in fact, magical realist. Or scifi. Take Infinite Jest. I've decided IJ is probably science fiction. That's okay with me. It has a consistent style, strong characters, limited enough in number to be really engrossing, a distant but familiar world where politics and technology are ours, magnified. And the subplots are woven together, not mashed up or folded in on eachother without actually touching.

Why am I going on like this? I'm annoyed that I have nothing to read, and that maybe the books that I should be reading are the ones I had already written off. It's also possible that I am jealous of these writers. I have this sense that I could tell a better story but fear that I can't. Or won't.

Catching Up on Those New Year's Resolutions

A funny conversation that I had recently caused me to go check my 2010 New Year's resolutions, and with a month left in the year, I can tell you, there's no way I can get back on track. I'm not sure which one if most off-track, but the only one I am going to comment on is the book one. I committed to read one new book each month, and the only books I can be sure I've read are: Freedom, I'm Down, Squirrel Meets Chipmunk and The Angel's Game. I didn't finish the last two, but I only have one chapter left in Squirrel so there's a chance I will pull through. I've already reviewed Freedom.

I want to speak briefly about I'm Down. It's a memoir by Mishna Wolff, who was mainly raised by her father, a white man who believed, or at least acted as though he believed, that he was Black. To his core. Her evidence of that her father held this belief is entirely demonstrated in recounting how he *acted* Black, since his voice in the book is absent except for when he's yelling at her or being proud of her athletic prowess. I don't know if those are things that Black Men are "known" to do or not, and she doesn't claim that they are. But she also doesn't claim that they AREN'T. She mostly shows her dad out of work, playing dominoes, cadging beers and rooting for her at athletic events, until he is emasculated by his very sexy younger (employed) wife. And then Wolff claims that her dad thinks he's Black, and I was left with the feeling that she was just applying racial stereotypes to her dad, instead of pointing out that White Men can be irresponsible, poor, loving, cowardly, etc etc. just like everyone else. Or maybe she was pointing it out, very subtlely. Very very subtlely.

Now, I don't actually think Wolff is racist at all (or rather, I don't think she is any MORE affected by racial stereotypes than the rest of us). In fact, being racist is a charge leveled against her by her Black stepmother, and it is devastating to her. And she examines that charge, and decides that it is code for other things that aren't racism, like she's ambitious and opportunistic and resentful and disconnected from the family as her father imagines it should be. But it could also be a little bit of racism. Later, she does seem to acknowledge that a lot about her life was poverty, and not race. I wish that the story of her reconciliationas an adult - with her father, with her (racial or class) identity - was in the book, rather than ending in the voice of her young teen years.

I don't want to sound overly harsh. One reason is, this book was recommended by friends, who felt that it was written in a similar style to mine. And I agree with them. The fault with her writing, and mine, is that it often elides certain points which seem so obvious to make that we actually fail to do so. With a little bit of thought, I "get" Wolff. I just wonder what I'm missing.

Freedom

Okay, I have successfully finished a popular novel roughly contemporaneous to its publication date and I feel the need to celebrate a little with a meandering and unhelpful review.

Jonathon Franzen's Freedom will definitely find its place on college syllabi as soon as its published in paperback. The theme is right there in the title and any time you stop to remember that, you chuckle, because there it is, in the novel, being fiendishly costly and soul-crushing. Only those who lack freedom seem really free and yet seem maddenly flat, as characters. I'm thinking of Connie and Lalitha here, fellow readers. Freedom's political extremism and wacky family politics recall White Teeth, without having the freshman over-achieving silliness that novel had. Franzen deserves the comparison to Gatsby, if only because a body of water at its center is the locus of the main characters' dreams and aspirations, and so much goes awry for people for whom the reader feels so ambivalent.

Anyway, I'm being vague because the novel is too complex to summarize, and because I only finished it 10 minutes ago and haven't digested it completely. Two thoughts: Clarence Darrow said, "Freedom is a hard thing to preserve. In order to have enough, you must have too much." Freedom, the novel, holds a mirror to that, and makes me wish that it weren't so. I wish we could be freer with less.

Internet "Hiatus"

Unlike my sister, I can't maintain a blog and read an actual book at the same time. In fact, I can barely read books at all anymore, blog or no. The last book I remember reading was Netherland. I am sure there has been one since but if so, I can't remember what it is. So I am dialing down all non-work internet time to read Freedom by Jonathon Franzen. Good so far. More news as events warrant. This means I will only be able to update my Twitter feed like once every other night.

My Book Proposal

You know how it's all the rage to do something for a year and then write about it? Well, it is the rage, and it has been for like 20 years. The projects have just gotten more outlandish. For example, in high school, I read a book about a man who spent a year at Harvard's Divinity School, and then wrote a book about it. More recently, a guy lived only by the rules in the Bible for a year, and wrote a book. Another read the Oxford English Dictionary. One woman read a different book every single day for a year. Another guy didn't throw out anything, including his own bodily waste. I may be free-styling with that one, but you get the picture.

A minor hobby of mine is to come up with something I could do for a year, that would be wierd, but not uncomfortable, and then write a book about it. Actually, my hobby is to think about thinking about that, but never actually coming up with anything. I had my first idea tonight though, while reading the L.L. Bean catalog. What if I only wore stuff from L.L. Bean for a year? Including those heinous mom khakis that bag at the area between your waist and your hips? And Bluchers. Every day, 365 days.

Could I do it? Would my husband still find me attractive? Or would no one notice (my bigger fear)? Is this book deal worthy? Would L.L. Bean vanity-publish this? I realize that this proposal needs some refining, but I want you to know that I've finally jumpstarted my new hobby, "imagining one year projects that could be pitched as book proposals".

Literary Detective Work

Today, someone commented on one of my first posts Who is Scobie?

What is one to make of "Scobie" being the name of the saintly main character of THE HEAR OF THE MATTER?

It's a good question, right? The first book of the Alexandria Quartet, from which I took the name Scobie, was published in 1957. The Heart of the Matter was published in 1948. It's possible that Lawrence Durrell was inspired by Graham Greene. I was wondering if both characters were both inspired by the same person. Both Joshua Scobie and Henry Scobie are police officers, posted in Alexandria, Egypt and Freetown, Sierra Leona, respectively. Beyond that, I have no idea what the similarities are, since I haven't read Heart of the Matter yet.*

Based solely on a Wikipedia search, I've got these candidates:

Ronald Scobie, a British army officer

Scobie Breasley, an Australian jockey

Jonathan Scobie, alleged rickshaw inventor

James Scobie. He's a dead gold miner. Definitely read the story on the link.

It would not surprise me if both Greene and Durrell were familiar with all four. Just guessing, but I bet Greene was inspired by Ronald, and Durrell was inspired by the other three all rolled together.

* I may read it this weekend. Or I may not. I love Graham Greene so much that I find it hard to read him. I mean, he's easy to read, but his books are very intense. To me, qua lapsed Catholic.

My 801st Blog Post

Last night, I swear I was gonna blog but I fell asleep at 9:30. I should have done it when I got up at 4:40 am. I can't believe I am still awake right now.

A few months ago, I reported that I was starting a "boot camp" exercise class and that I would update you about that. I haven't - not because I haven't gone, but because I've taken it seriously enough that I don't have anything wry or facetious to say about it. In fact, I had boot camp tonight and it kicked my ass.

Probably not as much as real boot camp would kick my ass though. Reflecting on Veterans' Day today, I struggled to name even a handful of my friends and peers who have served in the military. Mine must be the first generation in history to claim that. We might be the last generation to claim it, too, given the number of people younger than I am who have enlisted and served during two wars in the past 8 years.

Part of me wants to go on a ramble here about Ehrenreich's Blood Rites (a really good book). But in honor of Veterans' Day, I'll just leave it at this. I am grateful to the men and women who serve in the military so that the rest of us don't have to, and for their sacrifices, which I doubt I can match off the battle field in any way.

What I Blog About When I Blog About Blogging

Apparently, November is National Blog Posting Month. In order to counter my extreme inertia w/r/t the Internets, I thought I would informally participate. Not sure why. But it means I will try posting at least once a day through the month of November.

The title of this post doesn't mean anything, by the way. It's a riff on What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, which I just finished reading. That title is itself a riff on What We Talk about When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Chandler, which I haven't read, and probably won't, since they are short stories and I don't read short stories. But anyway, the Murakami book was pretty good. I don't really like him as a novelist but he's very approachable and likable as a memoirist, and I am trying to turn myself into a runner so I liked the sustenance it provided in that regard.

And so why am I doing that?, you are probably wondering. Or actually, you are probably thinking, Why are YOU doing that? And I don't think I have any particularly novel reasons. I wanted an efficient exercise option, and I got myself strong enough to do it, so in August, I just started. And I like it, and it feels good, and I want to keep doing it. And in order to take it from just an exercise to something that I keep doing, I feel the need to give myself the new identity of runner. Because if you call yourself that, you have to do it. If you call yourself a runner and don't run, then you are really just an a-hole, and lying.

It also feels good to get to age 35 and find that you have new things inside of you that you can be. I want to keep finding new things inside of me. It makes me feel young, which strangely I have been feeling a lot of lately. I thought that I went through "so much" as a kid, and thought I was "so mature", but now that I have rounded the bend of this decade and see 40 on the distant horizon, I feel like I've had a pretty great life and not experienced much at all. At least not many bad things. And in order to keep having new experiences, you have to keep yourself open to being a new person, or at least having new parts of yourself. All of this dawned on me this weekend because I finished Murakami's book, and its sort of about that, and also because a friend tricked me into running 4.5 miles on Saturday, and it wasn't that hard, and it felt great, and it almost felt like I had run through a wall (3 miles) that I didn't know I had put up for myself. Which means there are other walls that I can run through, if I just let myself.

My Third Run at a Holy Hullabaloos Review

I am actually now reading Holy Hullabaloos, and given how long it can take me to finish a book these days*, I thought I would try my hand at another review before the book gets made into a movie. Here's my last review of the book. I actually wasn't that far off last time, except that it is way funnier than "a chuckle-a-chapter". It's actually funny in an ingenious way, like when Jay reviews the various opinions on the establishment clause through a fake discussion among the Supreme Court justices, wherein they are eating beef jerky and four of them leave to get haircuts. Okay, it's even funnier than my summary. Get it. Read it. If law school had been this interesting, I might still be a lawyer.

* I have this view of myself as "I never have time to read anymore", but in fact, I have finished several great books in the past few months, including Netherland by Joseph O'Neill and My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell. I recommend them both highly; the latter is perfect for vacation and is the sweetest book I can remember reading in a long time, but not in a saccharine, annoying way. I also read At Play in the Fields of Lord by Peter Matthiesen, which went over my head, I think. I kept thinking, "Wow, this is a lot of symbolism," but wasn't sure what anything symbolized. I was reading The Tipping Point until I got Jay's book, so I am now, for the first time in awhile "not reading" two books. I will leave further reviews to my sister.

Some Thoughts on DFW

Last month, Jay Wex asked whether he should re-read Infinite Jest.* After I read that post, I thought about re-reading Infinite Jest too, but then remembered that I no longer have the attention span to finish The Cat in The Hat, much less IJ. 

Instead, I decided to re-read the essay A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, about David Foster Wallace's trip aboard a luxury cruise ship. First off, its a hilarious essay. But it's impossible to read without the gloss of DFW's suicide. The essay opens recounting a suicide that had recently occurred on another ship. A young man throws himself overboard. These cruise ships are as tall as skyscrapers, and the young man is killed. DFW talks a lot about mortality and infantilization in this essay. He thinks people go on these cruises to be completely pampered - babied - because they feel "death-creep". In order to fight death, they seek retreat to an infant state. DFW is clearly freaked out by it. It's as though he understands the only way to fight this death creep is to surrender to it; throwing oneself overboard is a perfectly natural reaction in his mind to the hyper-present mortality being frantically kept at bay on the cruise.  

The story it most reminded me of is A Perfect Day for Bananafish, the Salinger story where Seymour Glass kills himself. DFW is so much like Glass. In A Supposedly Fun Thing, he describes the same sort of reverse paranoia that Glass describes: he suspects people are conspiring to make him happy.  This is exactly what the cruise personnel are charged with doing, anticipating his every need, catering to it before he knows he has it. For Wallace, as for Glass, the only way to get away from this maniacal world in which everyone conspires to make you happy is to throw yourself overboard or walk into the ocean.

Its obviously very easy to diagnose that suicide was the likely path for DFW after he's already killed himself. What is so striking about this essay is how pre-occupied he was with it, and how closely it does mirror JD Salinger's character. Maybe I will build up to reading Infinite Jest by re-reading some Salinger first.

* An aside about Jay Wexler: I am extremely jealous of his excellent blog. He write funny stuff every day and lots of very smart people read it. People who read my blog are also very smart (I can vouch for them, you, personally) but there aren't very many of them. I think he has more readers because he's "famous", and also writes every day, and he guest-blogs, whatever that is. He can do this because he's a law professor. I thought that being unemployed would be like being like a law professor, and that I would write more. But not having a job means I don't have to sit at a computer all day, so now when I have random thoughts, I just think them, and don't type them anywhere. 

My Yes On Prop 2 Post, plus more on Prop 8

Thanks for all the kind words on my No on Prop 8 post. Although I teared up when I wrote it, it wasn't hard to write. Especially not hard when you consider what it's like for loving couples to have their marital status subject to the whims of the Mormon Church, who are outspending everyone to pass Prop 8. For all y'all who didn't already click over to No on Prop 8 to donate, please do so now. Or you can donate at ActBlue Equality for All. Thank you.

Now, on to Prop 2. Prop 2 is one of those "only in California" propositions. Its easy to be dismissive and annoyed by the micro-legislating that happens in this state. Prop 2 requires farmers to provide animals with enough space in their cage to turn around. Not that big a deal. The people who oppose this measure - Corporate Ag, for example - say that it will make it cost-prohibitive to provide so much space to chickens, and that "foreign" farmers (like those in Nevada) will be able to provide lower cost eggs. These are myths. And its the same clap-trap that was floating around 100 years ago when The Jungle was written.

An analogous argument by the No on Prop 2 group goes like this: "We can't take the mercury/lead out of this product because then you'll buy it cheaper from China with lead in it." No one buys this argument, right? At least not any more.

I also think that this humane approach to our food is a healthier and better way for us to live, and leads to healthier lives for humans, as food consumers and as workers. Let me tell a story: For years, the farmworkers union lobbied for a law that would require growers to provide fresh water to farmworkers. Every year, the measure was soundly defeated by legislators who had been lobbied by growers who said that it was cost prohibitive, blah blah blah. Finally, it occurred to someone to amend the Penal Code, adding "and farmworkers" to a law which required that circus elephants have fresh water available to them at all times. Once the legislature realized that it was criminal to keep water from elephants, they were shamed politically into making sure workers got it. The way we treat animals in our society is a marker for the way we treat other human beings. Please vote yes on Prop 2.

I Am A Promise Keeper

But not in a creepy way. I am just returning to blog posts long promised, that's all.

While we were on vacation at the loveliest beach house I've ever been allowed to enter, I actually got to read a couple of books. I read Gang Leader for A Day by Sudhir Venkatesh and I read Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, by Warren St. John. Good books both but I preferred Rammer Jammer. Which is hard to admit, since its about a topic I hate nearly more than any other: college football. It's not quite as good as Moneyball, which actually caused me to become a baseball fan, but it made me a fan of fans. At least Bama fans. But maybe I was already a fan of those folks.

Gang Leader, on the other hand, did not make me a fan of sociologists. I had hoped it would be a Wire-esque expose of leadership of a drug organization, but it was really more about the central conflict of sociology. Should it be more centered on statistics and scientific methods, which are very poor at capturing "true" or "real" stories of people (in this case poor people), or should it rely on ethnography, where the sociologist "lives among" his subjects to fully appreciate their way of life?

The biggest problem, made very clear by this book, is the so-called Heiseberg principle effect on the research. Venkatesh is aware of the problem. He relates several instances where his subject misuse him, sometimes while simultaneously warning him that he might be used, and the uncertainty that introduces into his research. But he relates it all in this faux naif voice, as though it never occurred to him that the problems he encounters or witnesses existed. To paraphrase (and mock) one particular example, he'd say something like, "What did I know? I was just a middle class Indian kid from Southern California. I didn't realize ghettos were considered dangerous." In an effort to avoid sounding like an academic (he teaches at Columbia), he comes across like Gomer Pyle.

Day Waster

It's only 10 a.m. and I can already tell that the day is shot. Concerned as I am about TK's musical dry spell, I followed one of his commenter's recommendations over to Pandora. And like that, the day is gone. Over. Nothing will get done today, while I surf through and rate new music. Proceed at your own risk.

Other things I like: Mr. Scobie and I got the hell out of Dodge this weekend and languished in Bodega Bay, reading, eating and watching Red Sox games. I read Cannery Row. Great. After this, and my little Jane Austen binge a few months back, I realize that what we were supposed to be reading in high school really is the best stuff ever written. What should I read next?

Nino, Dios Mio, and Opus Dei

I cut my teeth on the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts when I was a wee blogger, so it gives me some pleasure to return to my roots. I just finished reading The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin. I highly recommend it, even to non-lawyers. Although there are gaping holes in Toobin's coverage (he seems to have missed Roberts enthusiasm for dancing), he manages to bring up Lil Jack's performance at the nomination press conference. But I didn't mention The Nine just so I can talk about Jack Roberts again.

I won't bother you with the "salacious" details (there aren't any, unless you are a SCOTUS nerd). Toobin does make a few interesting observations about conservatives that caused me to reflect on that species. Toobin notes that there are now five Catholics on the Court. He mentions it in the context of the idea that there is no longer a category of individuals who cannot get on the Court (Women, Jews, Blacks, Catholics - no reason to believe that a Hispanic couldn't get on board). But what interested me more was the fact that some of these Catholics are absolutely beloved by conservative, evangelical Christians. Scalia, Alito, Roberts, and Thomas are Catholic. Kennedy is Catholic too, but since he's proven to be such a disappointment to conservatives, with his Lawrence v. Texas and his foreign law "proclivities", he doesn't really help my point.

And that point is, the Catholic Church I grew up in neither loved, nor was beloved by, evangelical Christians. Recall my years at PTL. Although we were Catholic, people (okay, kids) I met there were pretty unabashed in their accusations that Catholics worshipped false idols (the saints), and engaged in Mariolatry, both of which were akin to paganism. Transubstantiation did not go over well either. "You mean, you actually think that you EAT Jesus? And drink his BLOOD?? That's so stupid!" My mother was, at times, involved in Pentacostal Catholic prayer groups, but I don't recall a particular political fervor, even around abortion. My Mom was, in fact, more of a social justice/Catholic Worker-type Catholic, and consequently so was/am I.

I know that the personal is not actually political, and that I cannot generalize from my childhood interactions with evangelical Christian children in 1985 to questions about the Supreme Court's realization as a conservative outpost in the federal government. But I am curious how a nearly rabid right-wing got into bed with Catholics, particularly in light of Toobin's other information, which is that the conservative movement's vetting of Supreme Court nominees is as awful and dark as the self-criticism exercises of Communist cells, or the Stasi. Nearly anything can brand someone as "not conservative enough". For example, Harriet Miers and Dick Cheney were skeptical of John Roberts! They thought he might not be conservative enough. And then conservatives turned on Miers like wolves. The fact that she had made explicit references to opposing Roe v. Wade during her political career in Dallas did nothing to assuage conservative fears that she was "squishy". Alito and Roberts, meanwhile, refused to address Roe v. Wade during their confirmation hearings. These two are the golden boys of the conservative revolution, the fruition of Federalist Society longings for 25 years.

What's Up With Me.

Not much really. I discovered LibraryThing today (via the NY Times) and its a very satisfying hobby, even if it lasts only until I reach the "free" limit.

Also today, I read the best court order ever, at least until the brouhaha over Anna Nicole settles:

“Petitioner shall pay child support in the sum of $75.00 per month per child. In addition, Petitioner shall supply to Respondent all beef, cut and packaged, reasonably required for consumption by the two children.”

Excellent.

Berkeley CA - Taint of the East Bay

Sometimes I go out looking for reasons to hate Berkeley - reading the Parents Network Advice newsletters, actually going to Berkeley - and sometimes the reasons just come to me.

The other day I read Rats, by Robert Sullivan, an enjoyable read by a writer I like. So good, I breezed through it.* Anyway, in the Afterword to the paperback, Sullivan talks about his book tour, and how he repeatedly had to reassure folks that his focus is wild rats, not "fancy" rats, i.e. pet rats, and that he doesn't hate fancy rats, in fact, he just isn't concerned with them. But you know that Berkeley people need to take this to a whole different level. He's too polite to say it, but it's clear that when he came to do a reading in Berkeley, nine people actually showed up to protest his book, believing (without reading even the subtitle of the book) that Sullivan hates fancy rats and wants them all eliminated. It's just so embarrassing what they'll protest over there.

* Full disclosure: Robert's mom was my high school English teacher. She was pretty much my favorite teacher, and I have been a big fan of Robert's books, starting with Meadowlands, which I think is his best, but that's possibly for sentimental, New Jersey reasons.