Beth Gilstrap Interview at Split Lip Magazine

The new issue of Split Lip Magazine is up, and I'm thrilled to have a contribution: I interviewed one of my favorite writers, Beth Gilstrap.

We discussed writing, social media, and pets. You can read the interview here, and the rest of Split Lip here.

Thank you to Beth for being an inspiration (her collection I Am Barbarella is one of my favorites of 2015), and thank you to Amanda Miska (Editor in Chief of Split Lip Magazine, another favorite person).

Chicago Ex-Patriate: Now on Instagram!

Before 2011, I used to scoff at the idea of Twitter. Now, as you can see from the widget to your right, I'm pretty damn active there, and I've found it to be enjoyable and beneficial.

I haven't scoffed at Instagram, but I never saw the point of it. My thoughts were: "I can already post photos on my blog, Facebook, Twitter, what-have-you. Why in god's name would I need another site, another screen name, another password to remember, just to share photos? Well, here we are. I have an Instagram account. If you're so inclined to follow me, here's my link. I assume you can just search by my handle: @chicagoexpatjy; alas, I'm still getting used to the ins and outs of sharing, posting, etc. I only have two images up, with more to follow.

With how busy I've been with school, I didn't think I'd have time to update it, let alone consider the kind of images and photographs I want to post. But as I spend a good part of my day commuting from home to work to campus and back again, I've seen little moments that I wouldn't mind snapping. Some of these images are obvious: glorious sunrises from the train. Some of these are lesser known: next to the beautiful facade of Roosevelt University, there's a covered alley next to it. There are loading docks, boxes, and a general atmosphere of the industrial side of progressive education. Or something like that. Granted, I haven't photographed it, but I'm sure it'll be next on my list. I've toyed with the idea of doing a photo per day. But, as I've said too many times, no promises. The more I promise, the less my immediate vision translates to what I actually do. And a note to actual, real photographers: I'm using the word "photograph" lightly. I know that whipping out my phone and hitting "click" isn't the same as actual, artistic work. I salute real, dedicated photographers. I'm not cutting into your world, I'm just interested in documenting little things.

Overall, this could be a good writing exercise. By accumulating images that I see in passing, or seeing infrastructures that strike me as odd, I hope to think critically and see how I can use my writing to uncover some of these smaller, tender moments. Perhaps I'm being too grandiose: so far, I have photo of Chicago's Rainbo Club and one from the interior of a CTA train. But hopefully this will make sense as I go along.

I'm only human, and this is the internet. So while I want to shy away from the obvious, I can't promise there won't be the occasional photo of (pick one or all of the above): a.) cats, b.) beer steins, c.) full whiskey glasses, or d.) plates full of food.

So follow me if you wish. And if you're aware of any accounts that specialize in urban visions, by all means let me know.

Pro and Contexts: Robin Sloan's "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore"

As I made my way through Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, the debut novel by Robin Sloan, I felt slightly confused by my own reading tastes. On the surface, I enjoyed its layout and ever-increasing plot devices, even though it shares a thematic, atmospheric similarity to Ready Player One, a book I disliked. I'm not sure if two books constitute a trend, but given the sheer enthusiasm for both titles, I get the feeling that "geek lit" is becoming a thing. Of course, no matter what the subject or overall theme, if the writing isn't good, an entire concept can collapse. In Ernest Cline's case, the writing was poor, and on top of that, I'm someone who doesn't have any affinity for 1980s or video game fanaticism. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, however, is full of subjects and ruminations that I find endlessly fascinating: the uneasy relationship between physical and digital books; the vanishing landscapes of independent bookstores; digital archiving and the still-growing potential of the web; and so forth. While I had issues with Sloan's writing style, this book was a rare example of an enjoyable text that carried me along by the audacity and complexity of its plot, even if the writing suffered at times.

The book follows a young man named Clay, whose job as a web designer is on hold thanks to the recession. In a state of panic, he takes a job as a night clerk in Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. Penumbra is an older, kindly, eccentric man, and very quickly, Clay realizes that there's more going on besides bookselling. Sales are minimal, and he's required to keep a detailed log of the elderly customers who come in at night, requesting titles from a mysterious collection housed at the top of the store. There's a method in their book requests, and Clay eventually sets out to crack the code. By chance, he meets Kat, a hacker/Google employee who, with assists from Google's vast networks and algorithms, helps him discover the system behind the customers' book selections. The mysteries keep piling up. The bookstore turns out to be one of many fronts for a secret underground literary society dating back hundreds of years, with various texts supposedly containing secrets to wealth of potential revelations. Without spoiling the work, there's also a mystery behind the original templates for the Gerritszoon font, the role of a classic science fiction author, and a villainous member of the secret society. While these wildly diverse plot threads might seem like too much, Sloan actually handles them quite carefully.

I'm going to assume that Sloan has worked as a bookseller at some point in his life, since he slightly romanticizes and nails the observations that come with the territory. The ladders reaching up to the top of Penumbra's bookstore are exaggerated quite well. I've worked in a few bookstores that have these ladders, and the temptation to use them is never lost on the customers. They look a lot bigger than the actually are, especially if you've never used them. Sloan takes this concept and expands it for the sake of the story--the ladders stretch up higher than normal.

"Now I'm the night clerk at Penumbra's, and I go up and down that ladder like a monkey. There's a real technique to it. You roll the ladder into place, lock its wheels, then bend your knees and leap directly to the third or fourth rung. You pull with your arms to keep your momentum going, and in a moment you're already five feet in the air. As you're climbing, you look straight ahead, not up or down; you keep your eyes focused about a foot in front of your face and you let the books zoom by in a blur of colorful spines. You count the rungs in your head, and finally, when you're at the right level, reaching for the book you've come up to retrieve...why, of course, you lean (Sloan 11)."

As I mentioned, the novel also contains studies of the divergence between print and digital. When Kat brings Clay to the Google campus, there are some somber realizations in the conversations.

"A tall Googler named Jad runs the book scanner. He has a perfectly triangular nose over a fuzzy brown beard. He looks like a Greek philosopher. Maybe it's just because he's wearing sandals.

'Hey, welcome,' he says, smiling, shaking Kat's hand, then mine. 'Nice to have somebody from data viz in here. And you...?' He looks at me, eyebrows raised.

'Not a Googler,' I confess. 'I work at an old bookstore.'

'Oh, cool,' Jad says. Then he darkens 'Except, I mean. Sorry.'

'Sorry for what?'

'Well. For putting you guys out of business.' He says it very matter-of-factly.

'Wait, which guys?'

'Book...stores?'

Right. I don't actually think of myself as part of the book business; Penumbra's store feels like something else entirely. But...I do sell books. I am the manager of a Google ad campaign designed to reach potential book buyers. Somehow it snuck up on me: I am a bookseller.

Jad continues, 'I mean, once we've got everything scanned, and cheap reading devices are ubiquitous...nobody's going to need bookstores, right (Sloan 89)?'"

Worlds consistently collide within the story. If they don't collide, there's a definite sense of "out with the old, in with the new." This doesn't refer solely to books and written content. Neel, one of Clay's childhood friends, is the CEO of a web and graphic design firm (specializing in digitally accurate representations of women's breasts--this is played for cute geek jokes far too much). Clay observes the office, which used to be an old firehouse. He imagines the old world and the new one with its differences and similarities. On a very positive note, a lot of Sloan's observations aren't played for any kind of nostalgia, nor do they pander to people who are immersed in today's digital age. While some of the themes are obvious, there are moments of quite observation.

"His home serves double duty as his company's headquarters. Back when San Francisco was young, Neel's place was a wide brick firehouse; today, it's a wide brick techno-loft with fancy speakers and superfast internet. Neel's company spreads out on the firehouse floor, where nineteenth-century firemen used to eat nineteenth-century chili and tell nineteenth-century jokes. They've been replaced by a squad of skinny young men who are their opposite: men who wear delicate neon sneakers, not heavy black boots, and when they shake your hand, it's not a meaty squash but a limp slither. Most of them have accents--maybe that hasn't changed (Sloan 115)?"

Robin Sloan has a staggering knowledge of how the internet has shaped our contemporary lives, yet the emphasis is on real human interactions. The mysteries are solved through conversations, an audio cassette tape, and human ingenuity. The digital aspects help, but actual though processes save the day. Again, the novel is compelling in its balance. However, the writing style suffers, not to the point of bringing down the story, but enough to be tiresome. Clay's narration is full of asides that attempt to infuse a casual humor throughout. This comes on the heels of a conversation I had with a customer last night at my bookstore--balancing humor and substance is very tricky. It's rare to read a genuinely funny book that has substance. Sloan's writing style dangles on the edge--at times, he comes too close to being outright distracting, filling Clay's thoughts with needless asides. When he first meets Kat:

"Kat's phone makes a bright ping and she glances down. 'Oh,' she says, 'that's my bus.' I curse the city's public transit system for its occasional punctuality. 'I can show you what I mean about the time-series stuff,' she ventures. 'Want to meet up sometime?'

Why, yes, as a matter of fact I do. Maybe I'll just go ahead and buy her the Tufte book. I'll bring it wrapped in brown paper. Wait--is that weird? It's an expensive book. Maybe there's a low-key paperback edition. I could buy it on Amazon. That's stupid, I work at a bookstore (Could Amazon ship it fast enough?) (Sloan 54)."

But on the flip side, the more fantastical elements of the plot are rendered quite well. When Sloan writes about the meeting of the secret society, it's mysterious, outlandish, yet fully fits into the plot. The reader is caught up in the unfolding revelations, therefore elevating the fantasy side of the novel. We completely accept the idea of a library hiding in plain site, inhabited by a group of readers and decoders.

"There are people around the tables, sitting and standing, men and women in black robes just like Deckle's, talking, jabbering, arguing. There must be a dozen of them down here, and they make it feel like the floor of a very small stock exchange. The sounds all merge and overlap: the hiss of whispers, the scuffle of feet. The scratch of pen on paper, the squeak of chalk on slate. Coughs and sniffles. It feels more than anything else like a classroom, except the students are all adults, and I have no idea what they're studying.
Shelves line the chamber's long perimeter. They are made from the same wood as the beams and the tables, and they are packed with books. Those books, unlike the tomes on the tables, are colorful: red and blue and gold, cloth and leather, some ragged, some neat. They are a ward against claustrophobia; without them, it would feel like a catacomb down here, but because they line the shelves and lend the chamber color and texture, it actually feels cosseted and comfortable (Sloan 144)."

Perhaps my critiques of Sloan's style border on nitpicking, but there's so much good in Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore that the weak writing and asides mar what could have been a tremendous novel. Sloan has written a complex mystery that bridges the gap between the book culture and the digital age, as well as creating a great mystery world with some genuine suspense. However, it seems like writers exploring the geek culture do too much pandering to their audience. This isn't a complaint about the content, but rather the execution. Sloan writes several passages and moments with great humor, but he falters when he's trying too hard to highlight the obvious. He knows his stuff, he knows how to explore the balance between vastly different communities and subcultures, and if he had injected a bit more subtlety into the work, it could have been so much better. Therefore, I recommend this novel, but with some slight reservations. It's thought-provoking and entertaining (another rare combination), but falters at times. Once Sloan tightens his narrative and lets some aspects speak for themselves, I'm sure his future books will be that much better.

Work Cited:
Sloan, Robin. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. Copyright 2012 by Robin Sloan.

Some Fine Messes: Katie Roiphe's "In Praise Of Messy Lives"

My previous readings of Katie Roiphe's essays and criticisms are fairly limited in number, but the pieces affected me enough to clearly remember her over two years after I first cited her. In analyzing (and daring to critique) the literary styles of certain male novelists, Roiphe and Meghan O'Rourke came under intense critiques themselves in 2009 and 2010, stemming from O'Rourke's questioning the popularity of Jonathan Franzen, in which she cited Roiphe's "The Naked and the Conflicted." Having recently completed In Praise Of Messy Lives, a recently published collection of Roiphe's essays, I learned that she is no stranger to a lot of other jabs, arguments, and controversies. Agree or disagree with her stands, it's admirable to find that she counters her critics not with name-calling, but confidence and further writings. Also, as much as I devour essay compilations, I've found that category to be rife with male writers, and reading Roiphe's essays was a great way to shake this up, at least in regard to my own reading habits. She doesn't view herself as a divisive figure in the literary world, but acknowledges that her opinions tend to have extremely intense backlashes. In her introduction, she cites a response letter written after the publication of "The Naked and the Conflicted:"

'To the Editor:
Not only are you contributing to the total annihilation of the literary culture, but also to the destruction of our civilization. Think about it.'

Roiphe writes beautifully in her personal essays, with the opening selection detailing how people treated her in the wake of her divorce. Her friends and associates seemed to be carefully dancing around the issue, or treating her much too delicately. However, her occasional asides into personal reflection and assumptions can give the reader pause (I say this in reference to myself, since I try to elevate discourse above the "angry commenter" she explores later in the book):

"I once wrote an entire book about how one shouldn't reach for easy feminist interpretations of the world. And yet, even I can sense the residual sexism at work: while a woman outside of marriage is still considered a vulnerable and troubling figure, a man is granted a higher measure of autonomy. My husband, for instance, hasn't been receiving quite this level of solicitude. I don't think we are nearly as quick to assume that divorced men are falling into a life of despondency. I don't think that we are as concerned about what will happen to them, that we are filled with the same exquisite worry over their situation. We assume they will marry again, and until they do, we assume they're fine (Roiphe 6-7)."

Based on my own experience of men in the process of divorce, I can say, without giving away too many personal details, that divorce can be just as strenuous, the reactions can be just as similar, and many people are filled with the same exquisite worry. Roiphe is much too keen a writer to make flippant generalizations about the outside world, so I know this is based on her experiences, whereas my own experiences are opposite what she describes. Again, her writing is beautiful, but this specific passage jumped out at me as something I disagreed with; but one can admire the style without fully agreeing with the substance.

Her "voice" has a way of changing depending on the subject, but not in a distracting way. Later in the collection, she shares a college memory of sleeping with the romantic interest of one of her close friends. The essay feels like a short story, but one never gets the feeling that she's embellishing or softening any of the tense details. She's honest about her emotions at the time, and her exploration of the set-up and the aftermath is philosophical in its own way. She doesn't present any explicit, physical details of the encounters with the boy, but her full honesty in other passages creates an intensity beyond a lurid sexual adventure. The essay is not about sex, but about friendship and the workings of the teenage mind, minds intellectually but not emotionally advanced (or, to use a better word, experienced).

"As it turned out, my efforts to explain myself bothered Stella to no end. I think, in retrospect, that all she wanted me to do was accept responsibility. I think the whole conversation about what happened exhausted her. Who cared why or how from her point of view? Who cared what particular frailties of character led me to be vulnerable to this sort of thing? What matters in the end is the irrevocable act. Even if I was able, through sheer force of will, to create a little ambiguity in a wholly unambiguous situation, there was something insulting, finally, about doing it. My impulse, it seemed, was to take the whole thing apart like a car motor, to take out the pieces and look at them together; of course, if I could engage her in this process, if I could get her to look at each one of these oily mechanisms with me, then I would be part of the way to regaining our friendship. It is the two of us doing something together, however awful. Stella, in her own way, sensed this and refused (Roiphe 57)."

More than a couple of the essays in In Praise Of Messy Lives are witty dressing downs of modern urban parenting. As the mother of two children in New York, Roiphe constantly encounters worrisome parents, an onslaught of conflicting parenting books and advice, and an emphasis on safety and structure that goes beyond logic. Roiphe never criticizes parents for wanting the best for their children, but she addresses the sometimes insane extremes. Today, it sometimes feels like kids aren't allowed to be kids, and while I don't have any of my own, my work in bookselling has exposed me to the sheer number of books, as well as the parenting styles of upper-class Lincoln Park people. Roiphe's explorations are comical and sometimes incredible, but even through her opinions, she lets the examples speak for themselves.

"As their children get a little bit older, and slightly beyond the range of constant obsessive monitoring, homework offers parents another fertile opportunity to be involved, i.e., immersed. I can recall my own mother vaguely calling upstairs 'Have you done your homework?' but I cannot recall her rolling up her sleeves to work side by side with me cutting out pictures of rice paddies for a project about Vietnam, or monitoring how many pages of Wuthering Heights I had read. One mother told me about how her seven-year-old, at one of New York's top private schools, received an essay assignment asking how his 'life experience' reflected Robert Frost's line in 'The Road Not Taken': 'I took the one less traveled by.' And of course, that would be a question calling out for the parent writing it herself, since the seven-year-old's 'life experience has not as of yet thrown up all that many roads (Roiphe 194-195)."

The sections of the book that I enjoyed the most were Roiphe's literary criticisms and textual analyses. Her explorations of Joan Didion and Susan Sontag are both textual and personal, with references to specific passages as well as their meaning in the bigger pictures. I'm more familiar with Didion's writing than I am with Sontag, but, as I mentioned via Twitter the other day, Roiphe succeeds admirably with what I feel is a basic requirement of contemporary literary criticism: she manages to illuminate and educate with the texts I haven't read, instead of assuming that the reader is familiar with them. I've encountered essays on Susan Sontag many times, but I still haven't read her works. Thanks to Roiphe's pieces, I know much more about her life and writing style than I did before. Roiphe digs deeply into her literary explorations and manages to expose some very intriguing arguments. What started as a review of a biography of Lucia Joyce, James Joyce's daughter, becomes a look at the biography market in general, especially biographies of women associated with famous male artists.

"Of course, the biographies of great men's women lend themselves to all kinds of romanticizing. It is, in these hefty, attractive books, with their dramatic, sepia covers, enormously glamorous to be mad. Had Lucia Joyce simply married, and stayed in Paris and taught dance to eager young protegees, and pursued her art in a modest way, and grown fat and happy and had a couple of children in a little apartment with a view of the river, there would be no Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake (Roiphe 83-84)."

In Praise Of Messy Lives follows a sort of formula that seems to be prevalent in all essay collections by established authors: there are a seemingly equal number of pages devoted to personal essays, literary criticisms, and intelligent investigations of pop culture. I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy Roiphe's takes on Mad Men, Facebook, and Twitter, but these sometimes feel like they're supposed to be pleasant diversions from more complex material. From Roiphe to Jonathan Lethem to Zadie Smith, one can almost feel the paths turning throughout the course of a book, an almost subliminal "okay, enough with that heavy stuff, let's have some fun." But, these authors can find areas not often discussed online or on blogs. I'm not critiquing the authors, but rather the way essay collections are constrained in presenting diverse material. Nonetheless, Roiphe's take on Facebook, for example, is spot on and hilarious:

"Many, especially slightly older, teenagers seem to like to parody the Facebook norms even as they embrace them. The idea is that you are pretending to speak in the common language of Facebook, and are in fact speaking in that common language, but are aware of how unoriginal you are being; so when you write 'omg' you are ironically commenting on the use of 'omg,' but when other people write 'omg' they are seriously saying 'oh my God.' This very delicate balancing act is artful, in its way. Your character is now employing the cliches of the genre, but with satire, or maybe that would be satirrrrrrrrrre (Roiphe 230)."

To disregard (or ignore) my previous assessment, the "essay collection formula" does work well with Katie Roiphe, especially given her public image. Her essays acknowledge controversy without inviting it. She's honest and seems welcoming of constructive criticism that almost never comes, replaced by assumptions and nasty assessments made by online commenters. So seeing her balance between pieces that have received intense reactions and seeing her use biting comedy to illuminate her points is a formula unto itself. She never apologizes for her opinions, but also knows that some topics are universal. In Praise of Messy Lives is a invitation to educational writings with the understanding that you'll either agree or disagree with the author's assessments. Who knows? Maybe I'll go to some of her back list works and find writings that I completely disagree with. But, just going by this latest collection, I find that I agree with her more than I disagree, and this is a rare example of knowing a bit more about the author's personal life helping to put the essays in context. I've read some of the sneering, embarrassing insults directed her way, and I admire her way of defending herself with a quick wit, rather than giving into the easy temptation of stooping down to the level of personal attacks. There are many topics and passages I've left untouched, but I've explored enough to give potential readers a taste of what to expect. These pieces won't change the mind of anyone who dislikes her writing, but there's just the right amount of challenging material to foster discussions and further studies. And really, no matter what your opinions of her opinions, isn't that the ultimate goal?

Work Cited:
Roiphe, Katie. In Praise Of Messy Lives. Copyright 2012 by Katie Roiphe.

Scientific Revolutions: Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Space Chronicles"

While I don't do this on a level that would result in a Jonah Lehrer-esque scandal (even if this platform was bigger), I do have a tendency to repeat myself occasionally with some of my posts. I've made more than a few mentions of a passion for small presses, my general disdain of the phrase "write what you know," and my lack of a voice for poetry critiques, to name a few. I bring this up because this review of Space Chronicles, Neil deGrasse Tyson's latest collection, follows a trend of coincidental readings, in the sense of my inadvertent readings that manage to connect to another piece of writing or a story in the news. I even went so far as to do a search on this blog for the word "coincidence," and thankfully, I haven't used it as often as I thought I did. My first reading of a full collection of Tyson's work came just days before the Curiosity rover landed on Mars and dispatched new images of the planet's surface. Dr. Tyson's essays continually reaffirm the reasons why space travel and exploration is necessary--he documents reasons from the practical (inventions meant for space travel tend to have everyday applications), to the philosophical (a limited world view shows a serious lack of human ingenuity). I've occasionally caught his interviews on television, but sitting down with one of his books has highlighted a lot of things I never knew, and I found myself especially taken with his balance of academic science and thoughts on the contemporary world.

I've long deplored the tendency for some writers to "dumb down" material, either to make a subject more palatable or to condense what should be longer thoughts into a sort of soundbite. Dr. Tyson doesn't do this, at least throughout the essays featured in Space Chronicles: anything that's scaled back is done so out of necessity, since astrophysics in its complete form is a challenge to even the most studious people. However, even when equations and ideas are put into lay forms, Tyson doesn't hold back on the bigger pictures, nor is anything changed to make it "more exciting." In his view, space and science are exciting enough in their own right, and anyone who needs the subjects to be made more compelling is seriously lacking in imagination and scope. We need more emphasis on education and study, not less. The beauty of Tyson's writing is ability to take any area of science and tie it into both cosmic and human-based areas. While I'm sure he and other scientists get tired of being asked about the possibility of life on other planets, the subject does have real world applications. Even the potential for our earth-based communications being intercepted by other life forms is explored logically, even if we still don't have any proof of this happening:

"Time for a reality check: We live within ten light-years of the nearest known exoplanet--that is, a planet orbiting a star other than the Sun. Most catalogued exoplanets lie more than a hundred light-years away. Earth's brightness is less than one-billionth that of the Sun, and our planet's proximity to the Sun would make it extremely hard for anybody to see Earth directly with an optical telescope. So if aliens have found us, they are likely searching in wavelengths other than visible light--or else their engineers are adapting some other strategy altogether (Tyson 28)."

Within these essays, there's a lot of discussion about space exploration as a political act. Tyson makes a few references to John F. Kennedy's speech about putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. It would be nice to think that this was done out of a need to educate and explore outside Earth's orbit, but really, it was politically motivated as a move to win the Cold War (note: the book is a collection of previously published articles and transcripts of Dr. Tyson's speeches, so while some ideas are repeated multiple times, it's due to the format, not out of faulty writing or editing). This is a grim reality check, but the atmosphere at the time made this so. The idea of colonizing and exploring space for military or political purposes is saddening, but there's hope that the future will bring said exploration out of common, humanity-based mission. In a podcast transcript with Julia Galef and Massimo Pigliucci, Tyson explains the reasoning behind Kennedy's speech.

"NDT: A few paragraphs earlier in that same speech, Kennedy says 'If we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take.' This was a battle cry against communism.

MP: It was a political statement.

NDT: Period. He could have said, 'Let go to the Moon: What a marvelous place to explore!' But that's not enough to get Congress to write the check. At some point, somebody's got to write a check (Tyson 79)."

He also debunks a lot of myths about the cost of NASA. The average citizen assumes the organization eats up a lot of tax dollars. This is true in theory, but the money is generally spread out over several years, even decades, and amounts to a fraction of the country's spending. However, as the Curiosity rover attention has shown in recent days, the majority of Americans are very supportive of the technology and goals of NASA, since, even subconsciously, it represents a collective need to explore and a desire to know what's out there. And as far as costs? Samples from Dr. Tyson's Twitter feed (@neiltyson) are placed throughout the book, including this one:

"The entire half-century budget of NASA equals the current two year budget of the US military (Tyson 209)."

And going further, the history of space exploration is fraught with setbacks from political and religious mindsets. When Tyson's writing becomes opinionated, it's not out of a desire to rile anyone up or cause friction, but rather to highlight the realities behind regressive beliefs. While some of his statements will surely tick off some, his words are a plea for education and discovery instead of humanity remaining in the dark on what's possible. He doesn't single out a specific belief, but after explaining how the Arabic world used to be the pinnacle of discovery before fundamentalist religion took over, he states:

"Today among fundamentalist Christians as well as Hassidic Jews, there is a comparable absence. When societies and cultures are permeated by nonsecular philosophies, science and technology and medicine stagnate. Putting warning stickers on biology books is bad practice. But if that's how the game is to be played, why not demand warning stickers on the Bible: 'SOME OF THESE STORIES MAY NOT BE TRUE (Tyson 206).'"

The majority of the pieces in Space Chronicles are very educational, especially for someone who genuinely wants to learn more about the various subjects. It's not all about the political and sociological side of space exploration. For example, Tyson devotes a chapter to the study of ballistics, a word used quite often outside of scientific circles, but given new meaning with a look at the physics and reality behind it.

"Whenever you're going ballistic, you're in free fall. Each of the stones whose trajectory Newton illustrated was in free fall toward Earth. The one that achieved orbit was also in free fall toward Earth, but our planet's surface curved out from under it exactly the same rate as it fell--a consequence of the stone's extraordinary sideways motion. The International Space Station is also in free fall toward Earth. So is the Moon. And, like Newton's stones, they all maintain a prodigious sideways motion that prevents them from crashing to the ground.
A fascinating feature of free fall is the persistent state of weightlessness aboard any craft with such a trajectory. In free fall, you and everything around you fall at exactly the same rate. A scale placed between your feet and the floor would also be in free fall. Because nothing is squeezing the scale, it would read zero. For this reason, and no other, astronauts are weightless in space (Tyson 119)."

Tyson has made a name for himself in the last decade for his rare position of being an astrophysicist with a large public following. However, while reading these essays, I found myself forgetting about him as a commentator and focusing on his exploration of scientific ideas and hypotheses. This goes to show that he's not coasting on his status as a public figure, and, as he notes, when he's recognized in public, people always engage him in discussions about space, which proves that the human need for discovery and knowledge outweighs his "celebrity." Granted, not all of us can comprehend and understand the mathematics and physics behind his field, but Tyson is still doing everything possible to promote education. America is still seriously behind most of the developed world in producing scientists and engineers, and Tyson's mission to keep science and astronomy in the public eye is partly done to inspire younger generations to keep the passion alive. Tyson's words are powerful, and there's always going to be a bigger picture. I'm closing with the final statements of his epilogue, which have been making the rounds on a few internet memes. However, I've read this passage multiple times, and it manages to highlight the diverse implications of knowing more about the galaxies. This review of Space Chronicles provides a mere sample of where Tyson's vision and beliefs go, but physics is not always limited to academic fields--there are so many other implications that can be made, and there's so much more education and progress to be conducted. But we as a species need to act faster and get our priorities straight.

"During our brief stay on planet Earth, we owe ourselves and our descendants the opportunity to explore--in part because it's fun to do. But there's a far nobler reason. The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us. In that bleak world, arms-bearing, resource-hungry people and nations would be prone to act on their 'low contracted prejudices.' And that would be the last gasp of human enlightenment--until the rise of a visionary new culture that could once again embrace the cosmic perspective (Tyson 261)."

Work Cited:
Tyson, Neil deGrasse. Space Chronicles. Copyright 2012 by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Minding the Gaps: "Farther Away" by Jonathan Franzen

Whenever the works or opinions of Jonathan Franzen come up in my conversations, I have a ready reply that I've shared many, many times: I admire the man's writing and devotion to a sometimes old-fashioned view of literature, but I tend to agree with his critics more often than not (and on a side note, the Twitter parody @EmperorFranzen is consistently hilarious). However, with these admissions in mind, I believe it shows my own evolution as a reader, to be able to balance and assess my own enjoyment of a person's writings and my respect of his critics. It's a far cry from the almost crazed fanaticism of my early and late teens in which I'd latch on to a "favorite" author and be so captivated to not realize his or her shortcomings. When Freedom was published in 2009, my own review (and a couple of follow-up essays) made mention of the critiques, ideas that were not against Franzen directly, but necessary wonders of whether or not the novel would have been as highly acclaimed had it been written by a female or minority author and not someone eight years removed from the massive critical and commercial success of The Corrections. In that time, Franzen has published a handful of essays (included in his newest collection, Farther Away) that at best engage American sensibilities of technology and community, and at worst make him come off as more cantankerous than normal. However, this collection has its share of bright spots, notably his attempts to call more attention to environmental issues.

The opening essay is carefully placed, and upon getting into it, the reader finds the unexpected soul of Franzen's arguments. The essay, a reprint of a 2011 commencement speech, starts off as a rant against technological advances and how dangerously close people come to "loving" their devices and social media outlets. However, the meaning of the speech is important, a plea to engage the world for what it contains, rather than engaging it via filtered "likes," gadgetry, and consumerism.

"Let me suggest, finally, that the world of technoconsumerism is therefore troubled by real love, and that it has no choice but to trouble love in turn (Franzen 6)."

"But if you consider this in human terms, and you imagine a person defined by a desperation to be liked, what do you see? You see a person without integrity, without a center. In more pathological cases, you see a narcissist--a person who can't tolerate the tarnishing of his or her self-image that not being liked represents, and who therefore either withdraws from human contact or goes to extreme, integrity-sacrificing lengths to be likable (Franzen 7)."

These ideas are manifested in a more concrete manner in his widely circulated piece "I Just Called To Say I Love You." In this, he acknowledges his critics (a few self-references to himself as 'Grampaw'), and explores our cell-phone transfixed culture through the constant, powerful phrase "I love you," constantly yelled into phones in public spaces when the three words are meant to be private, sometimes little-used declarations. Again, he starts off with a tone that balances on deplorable pessimism, but then works itself into a touching look at his family connections and our post-9/11 world. To borrow a phrase of his from the 1990s, what looks like hate is actually tough love.

"The cell phone came of age on September 11, 2001. Imprinted that day on our collective consciousness was the image of cell phones as conduits of intimacy for the desperate. In every too-loud I-love-you that I hear nowadays, as in the more general national orgy of connectedness--the imperative for parents and children to connect by phone once or twice or five or ten times daily--it's difficult not to hear an echo of those terrible, entirely appropriate I-love-yous uttered on the four doomed planes and in the two doomed towers. And it's precisely this echo, the fact that it's an echo, the sentimentality of it, that so irritates me (Franzen 150)."

My favorite pieces in Farther Away are the essays documenting Franzen's travels abroad, sometimes for adventure and bird-watching, but more often for journalistic reportage of how the world, through its human oversight and carelessness, is creating dangerous conditions for birds and wildlife. His trip to Cyprus, documented in "The Ugly Mediterranean," is a firsthand look at rebellious conservationists who often find themselves the target of poachers and lax government regulations on bird poaching. But it also turns into a fascinating cultural report, showing how poaching is tied to generations of men in the country who view it as a birthright and a token of masculinity. The writing is carefully precise, and with the exception of the emphasis on birds, Franzen himself tends to disappear, and he becomes an impassioned journalist.

"The Republic of Malta, which consists of several densely populated chunks of limestone with collectively less than twice the area of the District of Columbia, is the most savagely bird-hostile place in Europe. There are twelve thousand registered hunters (about three percent of the country's population), a large number of whom consider it their birthright to shoot any bird unlucky enough to migrate over Malta, regardless of the season or the bird's protection status. The Maltese shoot bee-eaters, hoopoes, golden orioles, shearwaters, storks, and herons. They stand outside the fences of the international airport and shoot swallows for target practice. They shoot from urban rooftops and from the side of busy roads. They stand in closely spaced cliffside bunkers and mow down flocks of migrating hawks. They shoot endangered raptors, such as lesser spotted eagles and pallid harriers, that governments farther north in Europe are spending millions of euros to conserve. Rarities are stuffed and added to trophy collections; nonrarities are left on the ground or buried under rocks, as not to incriminate their shooters (Franzen 86-87)."

Like any work of non-fiction, some of the essays are enjoyable than others, and Franzen does stumble on occasion. "Interview With New York State" presents a rambling history of the state as told through a series of "interviews" with Franzen and the state's PR handlers. The idea is quite funny, but after awhile, it becomes tedious, even though there are the occasional nuggets of historical facts. I find Franzen to be at his most humorous when he deploys the occasional use of folly and hilarity, instead of attempting to sustain it for an entire piece. I enjoyed the book reviews scattered throughout, but I haven't read any of the books he mentions, so I'm withholding creative opinions, but based on his past reviews of works I'm familiar with, his literary criticism is almost always on the mark. At the very least, his references gave me some new titles to add to my list.

There are two pieces about the late David Foster Wallace, and it's impossible to explore them without making mention of some of Franzen's biggest critics. Some people feel he's getting a lot of mileage out of his friendship with Wallace, or that he has claimed Wallace's suicide was done out for legacy's sake. The writings presented here are beautifully touching, and from what I got from them, it's the case of a writer being completely open and honest about a troubled friend, taking every conceivable angle, but never downplaying the depression that led to Wallace's final act. There's love and anger mixed together, the only natural reactions to such a loss. Franzen never sugarcoats his emotions, and to some, that might be viewed as needlessly harsh.

"He was sick, yes, and in a sense the story of my friendship with him is simply that I loved a person who was mentally ill. The depressed person then killed himself, in a way calculated to inflict maximum pain on those he loved most, and we who loved him were left feeling angry and betrayed. Betrayed not merely by the failure of our investment of love but by the way in which his suicide took him away from us and made the person into a very public legend. People who had never read his fiction, or had never even heard of him, read his Kenyon College commencement address in The Wall Street Journal and mourned the loss of a great and gentle soul. A literary establishment that had never so much as short-listed one of his books for a national prize now united to declare him a lost national treasure. Of course, he was a national treasure, and, being a writer, he didn't 'belong' to his readers any less than to me (Franzen 38)."

Being such a public literary figure, Franzen will always have his share of detractors, especially when he talks or writes in the opinionated ways we all tend to do. However, none of his own pet peeves originate from spite or general crankiness--he attempts to share his view of the world with highlights of the solutions and reasons for his demeanor. My mention of sometimes agreeing with his critics is in no way an attempt to soften or apologize for my admiration of him, which goes back almost ten years, when I devoured his literary essays in How To Be Alone. Like any artist, he's not perfect, both creatively or personally, but the complexities make him that much more accessible to me. Farther Away is full of thought-provoking material and excellent nonfiction narratives, and he never asks the reader to share his passions or agree with him all the time, but rather to allow him his opinions and then judge for themselves. My own championing of his literary criticism and overall writings likely won't sway anyone who disagrees with him, but I'm hoping to keep this in mind the next time I encounter a writer or artist who rubs me the wrong way, and continue to separate the writings from the public opinions. Love Franzen or hate him, but it's almost impossible to not be at least partially drawn by his subjects and goals.

Work Cited:
Franzen, Jonathan. Farther Away: Essays. Copyright 2012 by Jonathan Franzen.

Occupations

For the last several weeks, I've been trying to find time to visit Chicago's Occupy movement, with the hopes of seeing it firsthand and possibly interviewing some of the attendees. Originally, I made a decision to not write about it until attending, but I haven't been able to make the trek downtown, and my desire to share my thoughts cannot wait any longer. Writing this from afar, even separated by just a few miles, seems to go against the spirit of the nationwide Occupy movements. However, one part of that spirit is solidarity, so lending my opinions in essay form is something, I suppose. I've read countless news articles from both mainstream and grassroots media outlets; I've bantered via social media, even taking time to read dissenting opinions to make sure I have a balanced foundation; I've heard varying thoughts, from extreme support to extreme disapproval to hints of being in the middle. After taking all of this in, weighing various themes, and simply sitting deep in thought for stretches of time, there is one thing that everyone has to agree upon: the system is flawed. The one idea a lot of people will disagree with me about: the Occupy protesters are engaging in their patriotic duties. Of this I am unequivocally certain.

With unregulated activity, banks and corporations have dug this country into a hole that we're all desperately trying to get out of together. From stock market manipulations to risky spending to flat-out criminal activities, the financial landscape is frightening. Do I claim to have all the answers and understandings? No. But I do know how this personally affected me. I was laid off from a bankrupt company (with no severance) while its executive officers received lucrative bonuses after running the company into the ground. Our customers, dealing with their own financial problems, couldn't spend money as freely as before. Sometimes financial woes are singular, but in this case, there has to be a connection. All the while, the gap between the wealthy and the poverty-stricken has grown at an alarming rate. Nobody is saying that the wealthy cannot earn money, but there is a problem when the top 1% decries fair tax rates while people like myself spend long stretches clinging to unemployment. During my jobless phase, I opted to pay my taxes outright, even though it meant less immediate money, and never once did I question my requirement to pay my share...yet some wealthy people refuse to accept higher taxes, even though they would still be able to live luxuriously. Yes, some may call me a tree-hugging, whiny liberal. But after months and months of desperate job hunting, I finally landed a temporary bookselling position. While I'm grateful to have income that's slightly higher than my unemployment rates, I realize that there are still millions of people, some much more educated than myself, clamoring for dwindling career opportunities. And still, people do not want to hold the perpetrators of the financial crises accountable, and claim that people like myself are lazy and demanding handouts.


My friend Rachel (the founder of Booksellers Without Borders)has been a consistent presence at Chicago's Occupy rallies, documenting her thoughts and experiences via social media, and also via regular newspapers. On October 30th, The Chicago Tribune published her article "Why I Occupy," a strong, pointed account of her reasons for making multiple visits downtown. She engaged in no name calling, no snide remarks, and made many a valid point. A sample of her letter:

"I occupy because I believe in the First Amendment and the civil liberties it grants us.

I occupy because the system is not broken but relies on this kind of active participation to remain strong.

I occupy because it is exciting to see democracy working.

I occupy because after seven years combined of undergraduate and graduate studies, I have student loan debt but not the gainful employment necessary to pay it down.

I occupy because I have been underemployed since finishing school, often working two or three part-time jobs to try to make ends meet.

I occupy because I have spent half of this year unemployed altogether, through no fault of my own. I occupy because the unemployed cannot afford to be invisible statistics any longer.

I occupy because the alternative is sitting in my parents' basement writing cover letters that won't even be rejected, just ignored.

I occupy because if it weren't for the safety net my parents have provided, I would be sitting on a street corner all day asking for a different kind of change."

I am in the same position. If it weren't for my parents, I would have been on the street a long time ago. Of course, since I know Rachel, it's easy for me to have her back. She and I are two educated, intelligent, hard-working people with our hands tied due to the current economic system. For anyone who has not been unemployed recently, it's hard to convey just how daunting it is. Again, it's easy to assume that everyone is lounging around and milking unemployment benefits. Critics of the Occupy movements love to make jokes about the protesters being a bunch of drumming, stoned hippies who have no idea how the system works. Currently, the system benefits the elite and is leaving everyone else trying to stay above water. Are there people at the Occupy movements who are there "just because?" Of course. Are there people who don't know what they're protesting? I'm sure of it. However, the vast majority are Americans who realize that something is wrong, and if some attention can be called to a broken system, so much the better. Perhaps this is naive, but I like to think that some of the people have followed the Occupy movements and have come out more educated. Critics have fallen back on the notion of "they don't know what they're protesting!" But the movement has been flexible. It's making people aware of the problems.

Naturally, Rachel's letter received a lot of feedback, both positive and negative. I'm going to cite some of the responses, all of which are available online at the Tribune's website. I'm not going to use the names of the people who replied, but only out of respect. If I knew them, I would ask for permission, or I would attempt to engage them in dialogue. Another reason is that I don't want it to seem like I'm criticizing AND hiding behind a blog. I'm only using their cited rebuttals to offer my counter-arguments in relation to Rachel's letter and my own opinions. Again, like Rachel, I'm not engaging in name-calling or needless criticism. If someone is against the Occupy movements, that is his or her opinion.

"You occupy because you are anti-military, anti-capitalism, anti-government, feel that society owes you something, are well-educated and unemployed but too good to take a temporary job, still living at home, frustrated, bored and, yep, liberal."

Occupiers are NOT anti-military. Our men and women in uniform also suffer from job insecurity and constraints, and the War on Terror has been draining the national budget for nearly ten years. Soldiers are doing their jobs admirably, and we support them unequivocally. What we do not support is them being in danger due to dubious decisions on the part of the government. And I find it curious that a supposedly conservative person would claim that Rachel is anti-government. If anything, if the government had imposed the proper regulations, the recession might not have been as drastic. And if the government held Wall Street accountable, there would be a sense of justice instead of frustration. And the current GOP candidates are trying to promise an end to proper government regulations. To me, that's much more anti-government. I find it to be very hypocritical that the same political ideology that claims we have too much government is turning around and claiming that another ideology hates government.



"I do not occupy because while working menial jobs during my college career, I chose a major that would be attractive to employers instead of majors such as History, Gender Studies or English-Literature; and I then paid off my loans."

This letter troubled me the most, for multiple reasons. If someone desires to study subjects in college with the sole purpose of making him or herself attractive to employers, that is their choice and that cannot be argued. However, the implication is that subjects such as History, Gender Studies, and (my major) English are dead ends. I've been hearing this long before the Occupy movements began. Even at the very naive age of eighteen, when I decided to major in English, I knew there wouldn't be immediate jobs available, that I would have to spend time honing my craft and educating myself. However, why can't one study what they're passionate about and have that lead to gainful employment? I will never be someone whose sole purpose is to make money. I majored in English because I love writing and literature and wanted to devote my life to these subjects. If the above-mentioned majors were not beneficial in some way, why would colleges offer them? Artists and critical thinkers are invaluable to society. I'm not making any assumptions about the writer, but I'm criticizing the opinion. I'm sure he/she has various passions unrelated to the line of work. But the current landscape makes the pursuit of passions for employment next to impossible. People like me and Rachel are trying our best to be self sufficient. We're not relying on our parents out of laziness. We're trying to forge our paths in an economic world ruled by a lack of jobs and opportunity. The unemployed are decried for "looking for handouts," but it's okay for a bank to receive a government bailout while its CEO makes more money than most people can imagine?

I know this has been a pretty rambling essay, and I know there are much more eloquent pieces out there. But this is one of those moments where I'm writing from the heart as well as my brain. There are so many other concerns and questions I could have raised, but I wanted this to be a small part of support to Occupiers and their message. Keep exercising your first Amendment rights, keep questioning our current state, and let's actively work to make a better world. And my final message is for the critics: we respect your opinions, even if we respectfully disagree. However, do not claim that Occupiers are anti-American. The beauty of this country lies in the realization that such movements and rallies are possible. During all the criticism of the Tea Party movements, not once did I hear anyone question their right to protest. Change is needed, and the Occupy movements are proving to be a necessity. Believe it or not, these movements are really the definition of patriotism. We have so much potential for positive changes, and while our current state is not perfect, we're not completely hopeless. And least not yet.

Colophon: A Newspaper For Stories We Found On the Web

For the last two months, I've been co-editing Instafiction.org, a collection of web-based short stories designed for daily weekday feeds, compatible with storage devices such as Instapaper, mobile devices/e-readers, and updated via the site, Twitter, and Facebook. I wrote a brief introductory piece during our official launch, and I've had the details listed to your right in the sidebar. We've developed a small, yet enthusiastic following, and various literary magazines and authors have supported our project. While we are chugging along, we decided to see if we couldn't experiment with a new format as a way to support writers.

Jeremy Bushnell came up with the idea of creating a newspaper version of some of the Instafiction stories. Our site is possible because of the digital transformation, but there is simply no denying that reading on paper is its own aesthetic pleasure. No matter how much they try, the creators of e-reading devices can never truly replicate the feel of a printed page. To make this project more feasible, Jeremy created a video and page with Kickstarter, a website that allows people to pitch creative projects in the interest of gaining financial backing. If we can raise enough money, our limited-run newspaper will be called Colophon. The complete page of details can be found here.

So yes, this is a plea for both donations and for spreading the word. Yes, this is a world of tight finances. However, one can donate a little as $1, yet, as the page explains, the more you donate, the more you'll receive. Most importantly, if we can raise $1,000 by October 2nd, not only will we be able to see this project to completion, but some of the finances will go toward the authors who have been featured in Instafiction thus far. So if this sounds promising, make a donation. The closing paragraph of the Kickstarter page sums this up nicely:

"With a dose of support from even a small group of enthusiastic readers, we can get it done. For as low as just $20, you can get a copy of the completed paper. Whatever proceeds remain once we pay Newspaper Club and our Kickstarter/Amazon fees will be split evenly, with half going to cover the ongoing costs of the Instafiction.org project and half going to support the hardworking authors who agree to let us print their work. The more money we raise, the more money the authors will receive.
We hope you’ll consider helping us to make something really cool happen. Thanks!"

A Plea to Literary Magazines and Journals

Since beginning my work with Instafiction, an obvious realization has been affirmed: the world of literary journals, both domestic and international, is its own version of Jorge Luis Borges' Library Of Babel (it was no accident that Jeremy selected this story as the introductory piece for the website). When we began the project, I quickly found some excellent stories featured online, and my already great enthusiasm multiplied. Just as quickly, I ran into several walls. Publications, both esteemed and obscure, tend to feature 'archive' tabs, yet many of those links take the reader to a list of the previous issues, with no previews or true archives. Jeremy and I have exchanged dozens and dozens of e-mails as we've continued with Instafiction, and some of the most passionate exchanges of ideas centered on the lack of online availability. Jeremy toyed with the idea of writing a "rant/manifesto," and I also felt strongly enough to make my own opinions heard, and that's what this essay is about. In my research of the past few years, most critiques of literary magazines come in the form of dissatisfied writers who are tired of rejection letters. At worst, these are just snippy arguments, but at best, said anger has led people to create their own journals or websites. I love the world of short stories and publications; the last thing I want readers to think is that I'm raving. I also don't want to shoot myself in the foot: the openness of a lot of publications is one of the reasons Instafiction exists in the first place. Therefore, I want this to be a plea, with the critiques coming in the form of tough love.

Economically, if an organization maintains both a website and an actual print publication, the editors and publishers need subscriptions to survive, not to mention the noble goal of trying to provide writers with rewards for their efforts, rewards above "publication and a free year of issues." The question is: outside of immediate friends, families, and supporters, how do these publications get subscriptions? With the demise of bookstores, the viable market of impulse buyers is dwindling. As a bookseller, I was one of those customers: my bookshelves have more than a few literary magazines purchased on a whim. Granted, it's not financially feasible for most people to subscribe to multiple journals. However, having issues available for public browsing has certainly led to a select percentage of purchases. In today's world, publications have done their best to strike a balance between physical and digital copies. If more and more of these reputable outlets are going to be strictly digital, or see the majority of their work consumed online, it is seemingly obvious that making a portion of the work available for free would help expand readership.

Yes, there's still a problem of media consumers wanting everything for free, which doesn't help in an economic sense. This isn't a new problem. In the 1930s, baseball teams didn't want to air radio broadcasts, fearing that making their product available for free would mean that fans would stop coming to the actual games. It took time for owners to realize that expanded exposure would lead to greater audiences. Some critics feel that all information and creativity should be free, since it has the potential to be re-worked and manipulated for even more examples of creative outputs. My plea is not to have all publications revert to complete, free archives....however, I have come across several that have done so, and most of us wouldn't complain if this was the case across the board. Personally, I'm all about the happy medium, and I feel that most niche publications would benefit from at least some free material. Of course, it all depends on the quality of the stories, poems, and essays. The majority of the websites I've browsed have at least some redeeming quality. More availability would lead to more website hits, and potentially more income than relying on a small circle of subscribers.

I wish I could take credit for the following argument, but this is Jeremy's idea: with a lot of literary magazines offering the sale of back issues without archival samples, some are making logical mistakes. With rare exceptions, who is going to buy an old back issues sight unseen? Good, revered publications have their share of collectors and completists. For the random web browsers who stumble upon a given site, wouldn't the odds of a purchase increase with more comprehensive samples? Again, it's up to a given organization to make that decision. But returning to the baseball example, offering more can do more good than offering nothing. The New Yorker, for example, can get away with limited free material. For a fledgling literary magazine, virtual closed doors can be harmful.



Am I being selfish? Yes, actually. With Instafiction, I've seen too many promising literary magazines with no archives, and therefore no way for us to promote what could be an area worthy of more attention. Jeremy and I have had decent success in reaching out to publishers and writers, accommodating folks who are more than willing to help by creating web pages or navigation tools to make a story available in a web-friendly format. Our "selfishness" is actually a desire to promote. We're behind the scenes, and our goal is to feature terrific fiction, as well as give exposure to writers beyond the usual Facebook pages or Twitter feeds. While asking for requests for available material has been fruitful, sometimes time is limited. If stories were available and worthy, they'd be featured. But with no way to know, sometimes it makes more sense to simply move on to other sources.

At the risk of sounding sappy, I very nearly titled this piece "A (Tough) Love Letter to Literary Magazines and Journals." But really, this is true. From publishers down to readers, the majority of these small writing markets are not created and consumed for money, but for the passionate base of readers and writers who want to see quality work out in the world. Our work with Instafiction aside, it's a joy to be able to stumble upon a particularly creative website or piece of fiction, especially not knowing it existed ten minutes before finding it. Even if audiences remain small but dedicated, the potential to reach out to more people should be one of the guiding forces behind literary magazines. Again, the desire to produce income based on the sales of current and back issues is understandable. However, stories and poems aren't sold like groceries or lawn equipment. So I humbly urge these publications to open their doors, give their writers the exposure they deserve, and in time, hopefully create an open atmosphere of creativity and reading for everyone involved. I've also seen too many story websites that haven't been updated in years, probably due to folding and not being able to continue as a source of writing. I sincerely hope that the smallest of markets continue to succeed, and exposure/availability can only help, not hurt.

(NOTE: The photos I've taken and used in this piece are strictly for illustrative purposes. I'm in no way directing any of my above opinions toward the publications featured in the photographs.)

Announcing the Debut of Instafiction

I'm excited to announce the launch of Instafiction, a website created and designed by Jeremy P. Bushnell. The goal of the site is to provide a quality piece of fiction everyday, available via RSS feeds, online, social media platforms, and mobile reading devices. I was humbled to be invited to join Instafiction as a contributor and associate editor, and so far, it's been a (rewarding) challenge to find pieces of fiction to promote. Our goal is diversity and quality with both classic and contemporary fiction.

From the About Us page:

"Instafiction.org provides one quality short story each weekday morning, formatted in a single page, for ease of use with services like Instapaper.

Our aim is to help short-form literary fiction thrive in the information ecology of the 21st century. To achieve this aim, we use social media and other network technologies to present short fiction in a manner designed to work with the expanding diversity of reading platforms and applications.

We drew inspiration from exemplary sites doing similar work for long-form nonfiction, specifically the great Longform.org and Longreads. But these sites largely stay away from fiction, and so we've decided to step in and fill what struck us as a need.

We encourage authors, literary magazines/websites, publishers, and other parties who are interested in seeing work featured on Instafiction to get in touch. (We're also looking for donors and potential advertisers.) Thanks for reading."

So please pay us a visit for an excellent short story every weekday. You can subscribe for an RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

"As She Climbed Across the Table:" Science Dictions

Jonathan Lethem's forays into literary-cum-genre fiction are admirable not only as hints of his eclectic tastes, but as proof that good writing can elevate any plot setting or supposedly "lesser" style (science fiction, mystery, and the like). Gun, With Occasional Music was his debut, and its combination of a futuristic society overrun with anthropomorphic animals and an old-school detective novel worked amazingly well; the two different genres were meant to assimilate, and they did, without being distracting and without taking away from the novel's serious tone and mystery. The Fortress Of Solitude elevated the beaten-horse style of "coming of age fiction", added a dash of mysticism, and still did not feel contrived or unnecessarily outlandish. A better way of saying this: Lethem takes the obvious and makes it unique. Even without being strictly genre-based, the uniqueness of his 1997 novel As She Climbed Across the Table follows the aforementioned patterns. It's science fiction, but in a strictly literal sense: it's fiction, there's a heavy dose science, and the plot revolves around the potential of other worlds. However, these do not add up to an expected result.

At a California university, professors/lovers Philip Engstrand and Alice Coombs are at an impasse. Their relationship is unstable, and takes a serious blow when Alice and her fellow particle physicists create "Lack," a black hole situated in the physics lab. Philip's attempts to win her back are fraught with problems, none greater than the realization (and admission) that Alice has fallen in love with Lack, both as a potential scientific breakthrough and as an organism that, even without having physical qualities, seems to have a defined taste in what it allows to be absorbed. It "eats" various things such as a cat (which leads to a wonderful spoof of a typical campus protest), but repels things such as aluminum foil and a batter's helmet. As Alice falls deeper in love and deeper in delusion, a cast of secondary characters provide the links between the estranged couple. Evan and Garth, two blind men recruited by Alice for their potential ways of "seeing" various particles, eventually move into the apartment at Alice's request; Professor Soft, Alice's mentor, understands her problems and attempts to recruit Philip's help; a team of Italian physicists, led by Braxia, visit the campus to study Lack; and a woman named Cynthia Jalter serves as a potential new love interest for the spurned Philip.

At its heart, As She Climbed Across the Table is a love story. With the surrounding elements stripped away, the interactions between Philip and Alice are saddening, especially since Lethem does an excellent job of evoking the fact that their relationship used to be healthy. They both know it's going downhill, fast, and the dialogue reflects crumbling unions without resorting to cliche or climatic confrontations. They speak honestly, and at times, it's easy for the reader to lose track of the absurdity of the situation, that Alice is falling for nothingness as opposed to a physical lover.

"Don't address me, I wanted to say. Philip isn't here. This is Omnipotent Voice you're speaking with.
'You're in love with someone else,' I heard myself say.
'Yes.'
A change came over me, a phase transition. A flush rose through my chest and neck.
'You're in love with Lack,' I said.
'Yes.'
Should I have known sooner?
Love is self-deception, remember. And my competition was so improbable.
But now that it was named, Alice's Lack-love seemed obvious, a foregone conclusion. Probably the whole campus buzzed with it, and I was the last to know (Lethem 75)."

Some of the novel's most vibrant passages are the recreations and careful satires of academia and college life. In one chapter opening, Lethem summarizes the passage of time on a university campus, and it manages to be comical and true at the same time.

"Days passed. Classes were taught, seminars held. Papers were handed in, graded, and returned. The team won something, and the trees filled with garlands of toilet paper. It rained, and the toilet paper dripped to the pathways, and into the wiper blades of parked cars. A group of students seized the Frank J. Bellhope Memorial Aquarium to protest the treatment of Roberta, the manatee savant. The protest was a failure. I called a symposium on the history of studen seizure of campus buildings. The symposium was a success. In the larger world, the team invaded something, some hapless island or isthmus. A letter of protest by the faculty was drafted, revised, and scrapped. Bins of swollen pumpkins appeared in the produce sections of Fastway and Look 'n' Like (Lethem 25)."


In addition to providing the major rift between Philip and Alice, Lack's presence also offers a lot of scientific and philosophical hypotheses. It's decried as inhumane for enveloping the cat, but it's also a source of potential as a scientific breakthrough. What is the meaning behind its tastes? Does it lead to another world or dimension? The far-fetched nature of having a black hole situated across a table in a science lab is rendered realistically. The existence of Lack isn't meant to be critiqued or viewed through a lens of literal science fiction. Even the most educated physics professors are baffled by its actions. However, Alice isn't the only person mystically drawn to its power. Its seduction is both scientific and paranormal, a specific metaphor for the wildly unspecific mysteries of life.

" I went back to my seat, heart pounding. Lack would take Alice, he said. The worst possible news. At the same time, I was flattered by Lack's cooperation. I had a scoop. Lack was a Ouija board, and I was the medium. I felt possessive. This was the first time Lack had aimed his seductiveness at me directly. I understood Soft, and Braxia, and De Tooth, and even Alice, a little better.
I couldn't understand this enemy. The temptation I felt was proof of his power (Lethem 154-155)."



I haven't done a complete reading of Lethem's bibliography, but As She Climbed Across the Table is the second novel of his that I've read from the 1990s. Unlike Gun, With Occasional Music, this work is both assured as well as an example of a new author venturing out with some trepidation. The chapters are short, 2-3 page increments, and the work as a whole is a very quick, easy read. This isn't to say that Lethem wrote was if he was unsure of his talents, but in my opinion, his early style is one of great care, since he's introducing and exploring a myriad of topics that have the potential to be unbelievable in a negative way. However, As She Climbed Across The Table is also a sign of his early talents, and his love of science fiction is evident. Being able to master a basic love story with a backdrop of fantastical scientific explorations is no small feat. This isn't his best novel, but in a very positive way, it works as a piece that is both a light read as well as an exploration of scientific and metaphysical questions. At the very least, it proves that fun reading doesn't have to insult a reader's intelligence. If one could create a flowchart of his novels, there would be consistent correlations of themes, but also a definite rise in scope as he grows older. Some novelists tend to avoid discussions of their earlier works. With Lethem, his early writings are vibrant foundations for what he currently creates.

Work Cited:
Lethem, Jonathan. As She Climbed Across the Table. Copyright 1997 by Jonathan Lethem.

Pens and Swords: John McMillian's "Smoking Typewriters"

While I've been maintaining this blog for a couple of years, as well as keeping up as best I can with dozens of other blogs (whether independent or associated with larger newspapers or websites), I still hesitate to say that I'm part of a "blogosphere," nor do I claim to be the best insider source for literary reviews or happenings (far from it, in fact). However, for better or for worse, hundreds of other bloggers, the majority of them political, maintain conduits of information and opinions that make up a stunning change in media consumption that has been growing for the last decade or so. This is "alternative media" in a literal sense, but, like any groupings of publications (physical or digital), there are a few good sources and a lot of mediocre ones. Perhaps this era will be looked back upon with nostalgia or a better sense of its groundbreaking moments/sources, but as John McMillian's newest book shows, the beginning of the alternative media movement was, because of its time, truly revolutionary, since far-left writings and government critiques were viewed as genuinely subversive. As an earlier review of mine has shown, history books are flourishing, with multiple takes on every possible era, from every possible political point of view. The beauty of McMillian's Smoking Typewriters is, instead of recapping the already documented seeds of 1960s unrest, an excellent exploration of the era's reading materials and writings in correlation with its activism.

The roots of underground media, according to McMillian, begin with the communications of the New Left's activist group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The Port Huron Statement was the group's original manifesto, exploring the need for national activism, but as SDS grew, its mission and policies began to reflect the need for unrestrained dialogues between all members, with no censorship or masking, and those reflections can be seen as the start of the growth of the underground press. McMillian's explanations also provide a key understanding to any revolution, either journalistic or political: it's rare to have a movement that begins seemingly overnight. Beginnings can usually be traced back to smaller events or happenings.

"Although SDS began establishing a democratic print culture with the Port Huron Statement, the ethos they built around their printed communications did not become a pronounced force in the organization right away. Instead, it evolved gradually, over the course of several years, in an effort to retain the harmonious social relations that characterized SDS when it was founded (McMillian 17)."

The SDS began publishing the Discussion Bulletin, which became "an 'organ of intellectual exchange,' a 'dialogue,' a 'forum,' [and] a 'medium (24)." In addition to the sociological necessity for the new media, the advent of cheaper printing presses and mimeograph machines aided the development of low-cost, high volume newspaper and pamphlet production. In essence, besides hinting to the future of more open media, the underground press also provided an excellent glimpse of the eventual punk-DYI movement. This foundation and ideology led to the publication of several famous underground papers, from The Village Voice (which happened to come before the 1960s), The Berkeley Barb, and The Chicago Seed. McMillian's research and writings highlight the well-known papers, but also shed light on some of the lesser known writers and papers that thrived, even with the threat of harassment and physical harm for publishing subversive material. This happened both as a result of a writer inserting himself into a dangerous situation such as an antiwar rally, or simply by virtue of being in an office that was targeted by opposition citizens.

The best sections of Smoking Typewriters highlight the people behind the papers, names that even today tend to fly under the radar, even though they helped define the literary democracy of the times. Not only does McMillian provide excellent details of the writers' and editors' philosophies, their personal backgrounds are often just as compelling, and occasionally sobering, since the majority of them suffered from backlash and a wealth of emotional and mental problems. McMillian doesn't make immediate correlations between the stress of potential violence due to the publications and the occasional aftermath of psychological woes, but occasionally, the connection is impossible to ignore. One of the most sympathetic figures in Smoking Typewriters is journalist Allen Young, a writer who began as a beat reporter with the Washington Post, but ended up throwing himself into the Liberation News Service (LNS), opting to follow his own integrity rather than a potential safety net with a secure, mainstream news source. His story is an excellent example of the humanity behind the underground press, a far cry from the conservative belief that the people behind such material were evil and immoral.

"Though thrilled to be launching his career at the Post, where he was assigned the nighttime police beat, Young felt conflicted in several important ways. First, he resented the fact that he was trained 'to pay serious attention to a murder if the victim was white, and not to worry too much about it if the victim is black.' And while Young regarded the Post as a rather conservative paper, he was surprised to learn that the cops he worked with thought it was scandalously left-wing...another complication was that Young was secretly gay at the time, and as a result he regretted have to spend so much time in the newsroom and the police precinct; the first struck him as a 'boys club,' and the latter was a 'highly macho environment.' But probably his biggest frustration lay in the fact that as a working journalist, he was prohibited from taking an active role in the antiwar activity that was happening right before his eyes (McMillian 145)."




I was very impressed by McMillian's writing style. His introduction and tone present an obvious enthusiasm for his subject, and while he undoubtedly agrees with the legacy and importance of the underground press's beginnings, the book is a scholarly, historical account. He manages to provide the fantastic backgrounds of both the papers and the people, showcasing them as individual components as well as interlinked assets to each other. Given that the start of underground media coincides with some of the most famous political movements of the 1960s (the rise of feminism, the Black Power movement), McMillian deftly writes about the events without going overboard, given that the more famous happenings have already been documented before; rather, his focus is on the creators and the writings, some of which may not have had proper text documentation before. As I mentioned above, a good number of history books have an obvious political slant, both left and right. Smoking Typewriters is an unabashed homage to the New Left, but McMillian leaves his own opinions aside, and instead allows the actual history to do the reporting. I'm sure that it would be easy for a conservative author to provide his or her own critique of the tumult that was the 1960s, as well as a condemnation of the anti-establishment materials that were published. However, this is rare book that has no need for the author's own political commentaries, since the sociological and political aspects are the reason that this book exists. Smoking Typewriters was published earlier this year, and hopefully it will gain more attention as a wonderful historical text, even though, as the past few years have shown, commendable titles can sometimes get lost in the sheer number of political/historical books published every month.


Work Cited:
McMillian, John. Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise Of Alternative Media In America. Copyright 2011 by Oxford University Press, Inc.