The Role of Artists/Writers in the New Administration

I can't think of a better title for this, one that doesn't make me uneasy.

First of all, I know dozens, maybe hundreds of others have already written comments, essays, blog posts, and messages of this nature. Second, who am I to take on this topic, to outline ideas that are essential to any involvement within a creative community, whether said community is made up of writers, visual artists, musicians, or spoken word artists? As I've mentioned in other venues, I've long struggled with calling myself an artist; I still do. One of my favorite feminist slogans is "carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man." I take this to heart, because I don't want to come across like I'm telling people what they should do; these are simply ideas that make sense to me. Also, we're in a moment of history when I wish the president was simply mediocre, rather than a danger to all.

The reason I'm writing this: over the last several weeks, I've seen many variations on this sentiment: "Everything will be terrible, but the art will be fantastic." I find this to be a very troubling idea, because, while true in an abstract way, it's a sign of privilege. At its core, this belief states: "Women are still going to be treated a second-class citizens, this administration will do nothing for transgender rights, people of color will be given less respect thanks to a re-emphasis on a police state, and the physical country will be likely to be ripped apart for resources and bottom lines- but the novels will be great!"

Yes, great writing and art will be byproducts of this administration. But great, necessary work would come even if everything was as close to perfect as we want it to be. There will always be problems that require us to dig deep and create out of a sense of empathy and as a way to verbalize troubles, fears, and longing. So even if politicians were focused on funding Planned Parenthood, if the new presidential team insisted on giving full protections and rights to transgender citizens, and if the GOP reached out to listen to the concerns of Black Lives Matter advocates, we as creators would still be beset by daily struggles, lust, dead-end day jobs, and a constant search for meaning, whatever that meaning can be: so there would still be room for creative growth, experimentation, and a desire to put new ways of looking at our lives into the world.

So the art that's to come? I'm not concerned the forthcoming novels with Trump-like dictators and post-apocalyptic themes that examine how our country and world will look next year, or at the end of the current term (assuming he makes it that long without an irrevocable scandal, but shit: if his current scandals weren't enough, I can't imagine anything else impeachment-worthy).

I am concerned with marginalized writers. I don't want a woman or a transgender artist to have to create out of fear or feeling lost in today's climate, but if their creations come out of that, I want to support them. If cops continue to murder unarmed black citizens, I'll buy and read a novel by a black writer about the subject, but I won't sit there thinking "hooray for today's world! It produced this terrific book!"

In a recent Facebook post, comedian Patton Oswalt offered ideas for thriving and living in this administration. One of his suggestions: "Go to an independent bookstore and buy something from a small press." This is essential, and I'm making this a call to everyone, especially myself, to put more money into independent presses, especially those who publish diverse voices. It's one thing to share an online story, but we as a community need to do more. Look yourself in the mirror. Look at what you normally spend money on. Of course, 99.9999 percent of us are poor or just scraping by. We'd love to be in a financial position to drop $100 on a small press spending spree. But look at your packs of cigarettes, your occasional $25 bar tabs, the sandwiches you buy because you didn't feel like slapping together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. Of course, I'm not suggesting a high and mighty "don't spend money on these things," but make sacrifices when you can. Scrape together cash and support a small press. Contact a favorite literary magazine and ask if they take donations to pay their writers. Most importantly, especially if you're a straight white writer like myself: don't think about how your own work will benefit from this terrible climate. Make sure you're actively supporting the voices that need to be heard.

I made the following suggestion to the newly formed Obama Foundation. Their website is seeking calls for ideas, so I wrote this message to them:

To the Obama Foundation: my name is James Yates, and I'm a writer based in Lafayette, Louisiana. I'm very much troubled by the proposed cuts to the NEA, and other programs aimed at financial support of the artistic communities. Depending on the finances of the Obama Foundation, I'd like to see money and time spent to creating grants and scholarships for diverse voices, especially writers who are women, transgender, and non-white. Many writers struggle financially, and in these times, their stories and voices need to be heard more than ever. I'd love to see attention devoted to the creative community, through workshops, financial support, and visibility. I hope this makes sense, and I'm happy to share more ideas if necessary. Thank you so much for your time. Sincerely, James Yates

These are trying times, and it's only going to get worse. Writers have a responsibility. Let's keep moving.

The Game Of the Name: Colson Whitehead's "Apex Hides the Hurt"

With occasional exceptions, it's a given that any author with a great track record and multiple novels will have at least one dud or misstep along the way. If this isn't the case, then the author will have a work or two that yields bitter hatred, even among his or her most devoted readers (for example, this seems to happen a lot with Philip Roth). With Colson Whitehead, I assumed Apex Hides the Hurt fell into the latter category. With the exception of Zone One, I've now read his entire fiction bibliography, and if possible, I hope to have all of his works read by the end of the year. Apex Hides the Hurt, published in 2006, never seems to get any attention, even among Whitehead's biggest fans and patrons. I never assumed it was bad, but rather I assumed it wasn't as good as the previous and subsequent novels. Last week, I went to check out my local library, something I had not done since moving to a new neighborhood at the end of April. The selection is small, but I found a copy of Apex and decided to see what it was all about. I'm now perplexed as to why this book isn't as lauded as The Intuitionist or Sag Harbor. Whitehead's works deal with racial and sociological issues blended with specific ideas: elevator repair, the folk tales of John Henry, and the autobiographical imagining of black residents of Sag Harbor in the 1980s. Apex uses marketing, small-town politics, and distinct personalities to explore the ideas of integrity, motives, and varying levels of identity. I loved the book, and I'm hoping that this essay will be a small addition in giving an unappreciated work some overdue attention.

The narrator is an unnamed nomenclature consultant with a legendary track record for giving new products imaginative, attention-grabbing names. This isn't just a knack, but rather an almost sixth sense, combined with hard work and an innate understanding of how a name can make or break a product. As it's described in the opening paragraph:

"He came up with the names. They were good times. He came up with the names and like any good parent he knocked them around to teach them life lessons. He bent the to see if they'd break, he dragged them behind cars by heavy metal chains, he exposed them to high temperatures for extended periods of time. Sometimes consonants broke off and left angry vowels on the laboratory tables. How else was he to know if they were ready for what the world had in store for them (Whitehead 3)?"

He walks with a pronounced limp and has recently left his company (these points are mentioned right away, but the full details are revealed as the novel progresses). He's asked to visit a small town called Winthrop to mediate their proposal to rename the area, and interacts with three people with three different ideas. Lucky Aberdeen, a wealthy software CEO who has returned to the area (along with the hope of reviving it as a tech community), wants the town branded as New Prospera, a revitalized, almost Utopian designation. Regina Goode, the black mayor, has her heart set on Freedom, which the consultant finds unimaginative until he learns more about the black founds of the town. And Albie Winthrop, the namesake of the barbed wire producers who came before him, thinks his family name should remain. With this set-up, one would expect a tale of intense battles and double-crosses. While Whitehead does pepper the text with the occasional revelation, the consultant engages in relatively tame conversations with these three key citizens. While staying at the Winthrop Hotel, he quickly acquires a couple of nemeses--a very insistent housekeeper and a gruff bartender. These interactions are played very humorously, rendering the actual conversations about the town name more meaningful and thoughtful. There are no small town stereotypes at play, but rather some careful observations about how coming from a long line of family members in such a place can have an effect on one's identity. The bartender is one of the best examples of this:

"The bartender ran his cloth across nonexistent stains on glasses, lipstick that had not remained and specks that had not lingered. A streak of gray started at his forehead and fanned out into his Afro in a curly wedge, an ancient and hardwired pattern, in his genes. He watched the man wipe glass, hold up glass to the light to consider his handiwork. The day the bartender discovered that white spray in the mirror, as he was about to perform the daily trimming of his muttonchops, he knew he had become his grandfather, that he was truly his father's son beyond what the surname said. It was hard not to notice that the bartender had some old-school muttonchops, real daguerreotype shit, something to aspire to (Whitehead 21)."

The titular Apex is a fictional bandage that comes in many different color tones to serve a diverse population, and remains the best name created by the consultant. His history of working with the brand manages to tie together all of the plot themes while remaining its own, original story. As he does in his other works, Whitehead includes some factual history (namely Johnson & Johnson's Band-Aid) that goes along with the fictional story. By creating a perfect name for a revolutionary medical aid, complex sociology and personal history come into play. The actual bandage serves as a key plot point, and the Apex brand makes an unassumed link to Winthrop's history, being founded by black settlers and quickly being overtaken by whites.

"The whiz kid said, You manufacture this thing and call it flesh. It belongs to another race. I have different ideas about what color flesh is, he told them. We come in colors. We come in many colors. And we want to see ourselves when we look down at ourselves, our arms and legs. Around the table the men listened, and soon afterward they got to work. Somebody give this guy a raise.
At Ogilvy and Myrtle they knew the neighborhoods, some block by block, and they knew the hues of the people who lived there. They knew the cities and the colors of their mayors. They knew the colors of clientele and zip codes and could ship boxes accordingly.
They devised thirty hues originally, later knocked them down to twenty after research determined a zone of comfort. It didn't have to be perfect, just not too insulting (Whitehead 88-89)."

Whitehead's writing is full of keen observations, and sometimes he doesn't need to carefully weave them into the text; they need to be out in the open. The consultant visits with Albie Winthrop, a divorced, troubled man seeking to maintain the town's original name. He's lost almost everything, and he wants to hold on to a remaining strip of dignity. The two men went to the same college, an elite institution that forms the basis of a perceived bond on Albie's part. The consultant observes as an aside:

"He had found, in his life, that it was always a good policy to flee when white people felt compelled to inform you about their black friend, or black acquaintance, or black person they saw on the street that morning. There were many reasons to flee, but in this case the pertinent one was that the reference was intended to signal growing camaraderie (Whitehead 80-81)."

When he finds out the original name of the town was supposed to be Freedom, he deplores the blandness and ties it into overused names in products. He later learns the true meaning of the name, but offers a quick, witty analysis.

"Freedom. He whistled. If he'd offered up Freedom in a meeting, he'd have been run out of town, his colleagues in full jibber behind him, waving torches. It was like something from the B-GON days, an artifact of the most pained and witless nomenclature. Roach B-GON, Rat B-GON. Hope B-GON. Freedom was so defiantly unimaginative as to approach a kind of moral weakness (Whitehead 83)."

Even using a fictional town as the basis of the story, Whitehead manages to explore issues and normally disregarded facets of the areas around us. As the town history is revealed, the consultant begins to appreciate it. This isn't any sappy, sentimental warming of an otherwise calculating businessman, but a touching look at roots. In its fictional setting, it almost forces the reader to imagine his or her neighborhood and the complex histories behind it.

"[The Mayor] didn't speak for the rest of the ride to the hotel, leaving his eyes to jump from sign to sign. Winthrop's Virginias and Oaks were well within character for someone hungering after the connotations of the eastern establishment, he decided. Want to import the coast to the prairie? You have to learn how to be just as dull, name by name. Whereas the black settlers had different marketing priorities. Hope crossed Liberty, past the intersection of Salvation. Better than naming the streets after what they knew before they came here. Take Kidnap to the end, make a left on Torture, keep on 'til you get to Lynch. Follow the lights 'til you get to Genocide and stop at the dead end (Whitehead 128)."

I did a quick skim of the Apex Hides the Hurt Wikipedia page, and some of the criticisms levied against it could be valid. Whitehead has some obvious metaphors (a narrator renowned for clever names has no name of his own), and the revelation about the actual Apex bandage can be seen coming roughly halfway through the novel. There are a couple potential romances presented to the consultant, but nothing materializes. However, as I'm wont to point out in other cases, nothing Whitehead does is gimmicky. He's not fishing for any "gotcha" or "ah ha" moments, but lets them progress naturally. And the biggest revelation never comes (this might be a bit of a spoiler, but it has to do with the final vote on the naming rights of the town). The book was published right before the explosion of social media, and even then, marketing was dominating every aspect of our lives, so much that the battle over a town's name seems almost quaint, especially today. At my bookstore, I recently saw a book about how neuroscience and brain studies can be used for effective marketing, and it scared me to no end. Whitehead is truly deserving of the title "cultural commentator," and he does this in his fiction in fantastic ways. He's not exploiting any trends, but rather uses contemporary climates that end up having timeless things to say about daily life and interactions. Maybe in due time this book will get more attention, but for now, if this truly is Whitehead's "lesser work," that only speaks volumes of his artistry. This would probably be hailed as a masterpiece by other novelists, even though I'd call it just a very, very good book. His other novels border on masterpieces. This is a work that's entertaining, provoking, and one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I've had lately.

Work Cited:
Whitehead, Colson. Apex Hides the Hurt. Copyright 2006 by Colson Whitehead.

Fabulous Ruins: Mark Binelli's "Detroit City Is the Place To Be"

For the past several months, I've wanted to read a book about Detroit, and I wasn't sure if I wanted a complete history or a more contemporary look at a consistently analyzed, poked, and prodded city. I've read handfuls of (now) forgettable articles about the area, but I have no immediate memory of these pieces, save for the general consensus of: "Detroit has fallen apart, let's see how this mirrors/represents the recession, etc. etc." In the last year, several new book releases have popped up. I kept meaning to check out last year's Detroit: A Biography by Scott Martelle, since at first glance it seemed like a more academic, complete exploration. I never got around to it, and the recent publication Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff has been getting a lot of press lately. Judging the titles alone, the two books are stark polar ends of what I wanted to read. One is an overall history, one is another layer in the vast documentation of Detroit analysis/head-shaking reporting. On a whim, I instead opted for Mark Binelli's Detroit City Is the Place To Be. The jaunty title is juxtaposed by a grim, postcard-like illustration of industrialization. In hindsight, I think I decided to read this book because it struck me, at least visually, as a Detroit version of Neil Steinberg's You Were Never In Chicago. Having grown up outside the city, Binelli returned multiple times to research how Detroit has grown and regressed since bottoming out. In retrospect, I feel I know more about the city than I did going in, but there were times when I wasn't sure what kind of book Binelli wanted this to be.

In his very good introduction, Binelli gets the obvious thoughts out of the way, the ones I've referenced above. Detroit has become a "new obsession," to borrow his words. Internationally, journalists, photographers, and writers have journeyed to the city to explore and highlight its desecration, but in the end, are readers really learning anything about the city? Andm most importantly, are there any real answers on how to bring Detroit back to sustainability, both economically and socially? Months ago, I was putting away photography books at work, and ended up paging through a glossy coffee table collection of abandoned, crumbling infrastructures. Artistically, Detroit is irresistible. Ruins (or, as Binelli references later, "ruin porn") are great fodder for visceral reactions. But there are serious problems that need to be addressed. Detroit and its outside perception is very complicated.

"The new obsession with Detroit did not end with journalists, at least not according to the journalists themselves, who reported on how artists were also colonizing the city. Could this be a first wave of bohemian gentrification? Was Detroit the next Williamsburg? One young couple from Chicago had bought a home in Detroit for a hundred bucks. Brooklyn artists came and froze another house in a block of ice. Thanks to a nearly 50 percent tax incentive being offered by the state, Hollywood film crews also arrived, along with actors like George Clooney and Richard Gere. A glossy French fashion magazine even produced a special 'Detroit issue' featuring shots of models in ruined industrial backdrops. The magazine cost twenty dollars in the United States--or, in local terms, one-fifth of the price of a home in Detroit (Binelli 15)."

Binelli offers some excellent historical research into Detroit's founding and some of the very early issues plaguing the city. He pokes fun at the sometimes strained attempts by writers and historians to bridge the gaps between the past and the present, but his research did teach me about some of the historical events in the very early days of Michigan. He offers some big examples, but I found the smaller, less known depictions to be much more enthralling. Since I was hoping the book would be a balance between the old and the new, there's just enough information to satisfy before moving on the bigger, more current pictures.

"Aside from Pontiac's Rebellion, the most well-trod historical marker of Detroit's frontier century is the Great Fire of 1805. Just as the Michigan Territory of the United States was officially established with Detroit as its capital, the fort was almost entirely destroyed by a freak conflagration. The temptation to ascribe Detroit's misfortunes to conspiracy is apparently an old one, and a theory quickly developed--arson!--supposedly committed by lumber barons up in Black River, now Port Huron, who wanted to sell the city more wood. In fact, the fire was started by an employee of John Harvey, a baker, who knocked some ashes from his clay pipe, igniting a pile of hay. Detroit was made up of old wood buildings built very close together on narrow streets, and by the middle of the afternoon, the entire village was ablaze. There was only one fire truck. Citizens tried to put out the fire with river water and 'swabs at the ends of long poles.' Eventually they evacuated the fort in canoes and watched the settlement burn (Binelli 44-45)."

After this and more historic details, Binelli gets into the heart of his book. He travels through the city and takes part in a variety of activities--he sits in on a gun class, interviews urban farmers, attends a murder trial, and sits in with a group of firefighters, to name a few. He doesn't attempt to leave himself out of the proceedings, not that this is distracting. He's a consistent first-person narrator, offering his opinions and reactions to conversations and happenings in real time. This is acceptable, since he never stops to offer any "this is what I would do" type analyses. Instead, he focuses on the big picture, and isn't afraid to tackle sensitive racial issues head-on. The city's population is predominantly African-American, and some critiques border precariously on racial lines. While tailgating at a Detroit Lions game, Binelli struck up a conversation with another tailgater, expressing optimism over Detroit's health and outlook. The unnamed person

"...shook his head and said he'd been hearing that for the past thirty years. The main problem, he claimed, was leadership, that the city really screwed up by electing the worst people ever, that nothing would change unless you changed things at the top--a not uncommon assessment from white suburbanites, 'leadership' often signifying 'thieving blacks who demanded the keys to the shop, and now look what the fuck happened.' If there was national schadenfreude about the failure of Detroit, regional schadenfreude was even stronger, and it hinged in large part on race.
In that moment, I thought of certain aspects of United States foreign policy--the practice of isolating enemy states financially and then watching the leader whom we've labeled a tyrant act more and more like one when his regime begins to crumble under the pressure of the embargo. The leader and his state must fail in order to confirm the triumph of our own ideology. And if his people do not rise up against him, their suffering is, at least in part, their own fault. Here, Detroit was a rogue state, defying the bullying hegemony of a superpower that (in the eyes of many Detroiters) wanted to install its own hand-picked leader, making the transfer of any remaining natural resources that much smoother (Binelli 113-114)."



Passages like these represent Binelli at his finest. He's able to make complicated analogies and civic policy understandable, but at times, he'll stop and quickly move into another area of discussion. His ability to get himself into hard-to-reach places with hard-to-reach individuals is admirable, but there were far too many times in my reading when I simply didn't know what his ultimate goal was supposed to be. Binelli might have been better off with a strictly oral history of the city--he manages to get fascinating memories and insight out of anyone he interviews. Late in the book, he mentions research for what was supposed to be a novel about Detroit. He has a definite flair for the dramatic, even in seemingly offhand paragraphs.

"[Firefighter Eric] Hollowell sat nearby, chain-smoking and drinking coffee from a thermos. A trim black man with a cleanly shaved head and a wispy mustache, he wore a blue Highland Park Fire Department polo shirt tucked into dark slacks. Hollowell was thirty-seven. He'd grown up in Highland Park, just a few blocks from the warehouse; so few houses remained on Hollowell's old street, one of his coworkers told me, 'I call that block We Lost It.' Hollowell's mother had been a teacher at Highland Park High. His father died when Hollowell was only ten years old. An electrician, he'd been doing work in a friend's basement as a favor and stepped into a puddle of water, not realizing someone had cut the power back on (Binelli 189)."

Detroit City Is the Place To Be is much better when Binelli profiles Detroit's two most recent mayors, Kwame Kilpatrick and Dave Bing. The two men are contrasts in physical and political styles: Kilpatrick was younger, bigger, and affectionately (and not so affectionately) dubbed the "hip-hop mayor" before political scandals brought him down. Bing is older, more reserved, and in most opinions, sometimes too timid or laid back for a city dealing with such upheaval and needs. Binelli also travels with a group of artists to a warehouse exhibition, and in the process shows how even the most forward-thinking artists can be terribly out of touch with reality. The artists seem bemused with the surroundings, even making offhand jokes about buying up cheap properties for creative purposes. Binelli doesn't judge them outright, but lets their actions and words show how good intentions came come across and cringe-inducing and insulting to struggling citizens. He later expands his thoughts on "ruin porn," the seemingly exploitative nature of people seeking enlightenment and meaning in crumbling infrastructures.

"Ruin porn was generally assessed the same way as the other kind, with you-know-it-when-you-see-it subjectivity. Everyone seemed to agree that Camilo Vergara's work was not ruin pornography, though he'd arguably been the Hefner of the genre. Likewise, the local artist Lowell Boileau, who, around the same time Vergara proposed his American Acropolis, began posting his own photographs on a website called the Fabulous Ruins of Detroit, also received a pass, perhaps because he approached his subject from a native's perspective, and with unabashed nostalgia. Photojournalists, on the other hand, were almost universally considered creeps pandering to a sticky-fingered Internet slide-show demographic. To some extent the critique had been just: as with stories about misbehaving teenage starlets, editorial love of Detroit came with obvious exploitative commercial reward: a link to a titillating shot of Detroit's architectural dishabille could always be counted to rise to the top of your website's 'most emailed' lists, which, of course, was the bottom line (Binelli 272-273)."

In the end, I wanted more of this kind of analysis. There are so many stories to tell, and Binelli tells all of them admirably. Perhaps he's still so attached to the city as a native citizen that he doesn't want to go on his own nostalgia trip. This is a very well-researched book, but after, I still don't know exactly what his intention was as a whole. Entire books could be written about contemporary Detroit politics and the subject of ruin porn, and perhaps I was so drawn to those subjects that I wanted more. I feel I know more about the city than I did going in, so as a sort of introduction, Detroit City Is the Place To Be works well. It would be silly to expect a single volume to encompass everything, but Binelli tries. In this, he succeeds and stumbles. It's an admirable project, but it left me wanting more concrete analysis rather than just some sketches. Devoting equal footing to all of his subjects would have led this to be a multi-book project, but in the end, we're left with some vivid people and the hope that a once bustling city has the pieces to rebuild.

Work Cited:
Binelli, Mark. Detroit City Is the Place To Be. Copyright 2012 by Mark Binelli.

The Deaths and the Rumors: Katherine Boo's "Behind the Beautiful Forevers"

Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers has been on my radar for over a year. I read the jacket description when it was published, and the subject matter was compelling, fascinating, and most importantly, seemed to be focused on true reporting. As my reading log grew more complicated and strained, I kept putting it off, and the more I waited, the more recognition, praise, and awards were heaped upon it. I'm often wary of books with far too much breathless praise, since I'm more likely to be disappointed when I finally wipe away the blurbs and get into the actual writings. However, I'm pleased to note that the book is truly worth the hype. In exploring the workings and personalities contained within a Mumbai slum, Boo has created a microcosm of poverty-stricken areas all over the world. This isn't done with excessive, lavish emotions or pandering. The citizens in Annawadi, a makeshift "city" near the Mumbai airport, have good and bad personality traits, and their lives are presented from various angles. Behind the Beautiful Forevers might very well define the stark divide between wealthy and poor citizens in the world, much in the same fashion that Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickled and Dimed explored American poverty in a time when the subject wasn't on the radar as much as it is now. And amazingly, Boo's book fits a description that I tend to shy away from: it's a work of non-fiction that often reads like a novel, but without sacrificing details or relying on embellishments. There's such an emotional diversity that the events and people are part of a complicated story. However, one has to realize this is true, and is the result of problems that need immediate attention everywhere.

Annawadi was founded in the early 1990s by laborers working on a Mumbai airport, and what was supposed to be a temporary spot morphed into a slum populated by thousands, in the shadow of wealthy travelers and lavish hotels. The founding is told with minor details, but enough to paint a vivid picture. This is one of Boo's strengths as a journalist--as I mentioned before, there's no embellishment. Even in the most casually detailed scenes, there are many small details that allow the reader to realistically visualize the unfolding scenes.

"The slum had been settled in 1991 by a band of laborers trucked in from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to repair a runway at the international airport. The work complete, they decided to stay near the airport and its tantalizing construction possibilities. In an area with little unclaimed space, a sodden, snake-filled bit of brushland across the street from the international terminal seemed the least-bad place to live.

Other poor people considered the spot too wet to be habitable, but the Tamils set to work, hacking down the brush that harbored the snakes, digging up dirt in drier places and packing it into the mud. After a month, their bamboo poles stopped flopping over when they were stuck in the ground. Draping empty cement sacks over the poles for cover, they had a settlement. Residents of neighboring slums provided its name: Annawadi--the land of annas, a respectful Tamil word for older brothers. Less respectful terms for Tamil migrants were in wider currency. But other poor citizens had seen the Tamils sweat to summon solid land from a bog, and that labor had earned a certain deference (Boo 5)."

The reader is introduced to a number of the Annawadi citizens. Some of the primary people are Abdul, a young Muslim trash scavenger; Fatima, known as One Leg, a promiscuous, vengeful figure who suffers a terrible accident that leads to a ludicrous criminal trial; Asha, a hungry political hopeful who attempts to rule Annawadi by coercion and for financial gains; and Manju, Asha's daughter, a beautiful young woman trying to make the best of her circumstances with the hope of gaining entry into college. Boo's writing clears up quite a few misconceptions about non-American slum life. While all the residents are poverty stricken, some are better off than others. There are cellphones and televisions inside some of the huts. The fact that Manju is able to consider a college education despite her surroundings means that a glimmer of hope envelops some of the residents. Some are merely content to dream of better squalor. Throughout, there are sad refrains familiar to Americans: the crippling divide between wealth and poverty means that virtually all the people in Annawadi are doomed to lives of intense work with little benefit. Some medical setbacks and fears are met with dismissive replies to pray, with the hopes that god will provide. And even the slightest problem can set a citizen into unimaginable debt.

The book's title comes from a terribly misplaced piece of advertising on a wall outside Annawadi. Boo mentions it almost as an aside in a piece about Sunil, one of Abdul's fellow scavengers:

"It interested him that from Airport Road, only the smoke plumes of Annawadi's cooking fires could now be seen. The airport people had erected tall, gleaming aluminum fences on the side of the slum that most drivers passed before turning into the international terminal. Drivers approaching the terminal from the other direction would see only a concrete wall covered with sunshine-yellow advertisements. The ads were for Italianate floor tiles, and the corporate slogan ran the wall's length: BEAUTIFUL FOREVER BEAUTIFUL FOREVER BEAUTIFUL FOREVER. Sunil regularly walked atop the Beautiful Forever wall, surveying for trash, but Airport Road was unhelpfully clean (Boo 36-37)."

Women and children dominate the landscape, since the majority of the grown men mentioned are either addicts, drunks, or criminals. Even the women and children who resort to extreme measures to provide do so with a sense of logic and a need for survival. But as I said earlier, the subjects are treated honestly and realistically. During my reading, I often had the same feelings I had when watching, of all things, the documentary Murderball. In that film, disabled athletes are shown as people, not objects of sympathy or patronizing. Some of the featured people were arrogant and unlikable. Boo shows that relationships within slums are sometimes no different than anywhere else. The reader is in tune with the plight of the residents, but sometimes on an individual level, the reader is likely to be repulsed by some of the actions. The main climax of the book involves One Leg's self-immolation following a neighborhood dispute. Despite committing this act herself, she claims she was driven to do so by Abdul and his parents. While this is a ludicrous accusation, remnants of mysticism still permeate Indian life. There are whispers of witchcraft and the potential for One Leg to haunt the family following her death. This brazen act ties together a lot of the issues and complications in Annawadi: neighborhood strife; religious and supernatural beliefs; the danger of the Indian jail and court systems; and how an accusation can quickly lead to a remaining life of shame, destitution, and ostracizing, even in the face of complete innocence.

"Kehkashan shrieked. The brothelkeeper was the first across the maidan, three boys fast behind, throwing their weight against the door until it broke. They found Fatima thrashing on the floor, smoke pouring off her skin. At her side was a yellow plastic jug of kerosene, overturned, along with a vessel of water. She had poured cooking fuel over her head, lit a match, then doused the flames with water.

'Save me!' she shouted.

The brothelkeeper tensed. Something low on Fatima's back was still burning. He grabbed a blanket and smothered the flame, as a vast crowd formed outside the hut.

'All day these Muslim garbage people have been fighting so loudly.'

'Didn't she think of her daughters before she did this?'

'She's okay now,' the brothelkeeper announced, rolling away some cooking pots he'd knocked on top of her in his haste to extinguish the fire. 'Alive, no problem!'

He pulled Fatima up. When he let go, she flopped back down, howling.

People took not of the upturned vessel of water.

'She's a fool then,' said an old man. 'She wanted to burn herself a little, create a drama, and instead she burned herself a lot.'

'It is because of these people that I have done this,' Fatima cried out, her voice astonishingly clear. Everyone knew which people she meant (Boo 95-96)."




While Annawadi can reflect poverty all over, Boo's Author's Note shows why this specific area is such an important necessity for documentation: "I quickly grew impatient with poignant snapshots of Indian squalor, the ribby children with flies in their eyes and other emblems of abjectness that one can't help but see within five minutes of walking into a slum (247)." This sentence alone might seem harsh and cold, but's not: Boo goes on to explain her desire to explore and document outlying factors, such as the political and social beliefs and works of the surrounding country, and how possible it would be for a poor child to grow up with better circumstances. Images of poverty are stark and stomach-churning, but quick, visceral reactions can be misleading. Aside from the jacket photo, there are no photographs included in the book--Boo rightfully makes the writing convey the images, rather than immediate sensory reactions to the wholly different visual. In a shocking (but a likely more prevalent scenario than most Westerners realize) passage, she shows how schools in the area clean up their act when visitors or human rights workers are expected. Things are cleaned, happy faces put on, and dutiful reports are sent back to the rest of the world. Begging is even a complicated act. One of the boys attempts reverse psychology, refusing to look needy for tourists, instead hoping that they'll take his demure appearance as more deserving than outright pleading.

I sometimes don't pay close attention to bylines in The New Yorker, so I'm sure I've read a good handful of Boo's writing without realizing it. I'm still amazed at her writing style. She's a dedicated journalist and anthropologist, and her keen observations lead this to be a novel-like report. Aside from her personal notes in the epilogue, she's an invisible figure, keeping the attention on the slum's people and events rather than her own presence. Simply put, the world needs more reporting and explorations like this. The developed world has been exposed to countless images and reports of poverty, but centralized, personal accounts from areas a reader would likely never know about outside of a book illuminate a variety of needs. This isn't a snapshot, a heart-tug, and a call for a five dollar donation. It's a grim plea for changes in how the world views and deals with poverty. When a destitute slum is a walk away from opulence and thrives on the trash produced by said opulence, something is dreadfully wrong. Since Boo is such a neutral reporter, I was left longing for her opinions, even though her opinions are not the point of Behind the Beautiful Forevers. She doesn't judge, she doesn't "play favorites." I would venture a guess that she has strong opinions on how to tackle this kind of divide, but then again, so does everyone else, so she wisely avoids moralizing. This book is vastly compelling, shocking, and necessary. Sadly, these accounts are still waiting to be told all over the world, and this kind of reporting is a step in the right direction, starting many conversations about how to bridge the haves and the have-nots.

Work Cited:
Boo, Katherine. Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Copyright 2012 by Katherine Boo.

No Single Why: Dave Cullen's "Columbine"

Strangely, I remember the publication date of Dave Cullen's 2009 book Columbine. I was working for Borders, and the book was the best-selling title of the week. Unlike other heralded, anticipated titles, there was no excitement or earnest conversation when customers picked it up. It was a sadly necessary work that contained definitive information and explorations of an often misread and misinformed event in American history, much like the 2004 publication of the 9/11 Commission Report. Borders categorized Columbine in the "True Crime" section, which isn't technically wrong, but it seemed sorely out of place among the usual lurid examples of "murder/torture porn" mass market books that dominate most True Crime bibliographies. A co-worker of mine read it and recommended it highly, but it wasn't until this month that I finally got around to reading it. My book club's February topic was "True Crime," and I don't think I'm wrong in assuming that my group picked this book in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings in December. Personally, the images of that recent shooting kept weighing on my mind as I read Cullen's work, and therefore, I kept thinking about the effects of media, politics, and gut reactions. However, Columbine is generally pure journalism, going for the "hows" and "whys" rather than the author's opinions and judgement. Given the intensity and the ripple effects of the 1999 happenings, it's impossible to read it and not make comparisons. The Columbine shootings are no less horrific now than they were fourteen years ago. And in today's continuing debates over gun control and mental illness, it shows how the events are still all too contemporary and raises many questions.



In most of my reviews, I tend to reserve the second paragraph for a summary and synopsis, but the events of Columbine are so well-known that they need a full recap; also, the book itself is the best documentation available, but with emphasis on the build-up and the aftermath. On April 20th, 1999, Columbine students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attempted to blow up their high school and shoot any remaining victims who attempted to flee the wreckage. Their homemade bombs didn't explode as planned, leading the two to enter the school and open fire. Before they committed suicide, they had killed twelve students, one teacher, and injured dozens of others. Cullen's writing style is reserved and journalistic, opening with an account of the prom ceremonies held the previous weekend, and then getting into the horrific details of the shooting. Some of the victims are explored with personal details of their lives. There is no hyperbole, no unnecessary dramatization, but rather a standard exploration of the events. Cullen is sensitive to every life affected by the massacre, but he engages in no emotional ploys or exploitation. For example, his characterization of teacher Dave Sanders (the only faculty fatality) is full of factual details, but he lets these details paint the picture without any assumptions.

"When someone crossed Dave Sanders, he responded with 'the look:' a cold, insistent stare. He used it one time on a couple of chatty girls in business class. They shut up momentarily, but went back to talking when he looked away. So he pulled up a chair right in front of them and conducted the rest of the class from that spot, staring back and forth at each girl until the bell rang (Cullen 21)."

The shooting is presented chronologically and fully detailed. Reading it is very uncomfortable, because, like any piece of good writing, the reader visualizes the events, and the imagination can add unsavory details to already traumatic happenings. This idea is essential as the aftermath unfolds, since police and media outlets were consistently fed misleading information and eyewitness testimony, since trauma and shock can lead to imagined details and assumed truths. Cullen's writing is based on complete research, yet the act of reading fills in any gaps. One can only imagine what it was like in the school during the actual unfolding.

"Nielson expected the shooter to arrive any moment now. But Eric was not following. He had been distracted. Deputy Gardner had pulled into the lot with lights flashing and siren blaring. Gardner had stepped out of his car, still confused about what he was walking into.

Eric opened fire. He got off ten rounds, all misses. Dylan did nothing.

Gardner took cover behind his police car. Eric didn't even hit that. Then his rifle jammed. Eric fought to clear the chamber. Dylan fled into the school.

Gardner saw his opening. He laid his pistol across the roof and squeezed off four shots. Eric spun around like he'd been hit. Neutralized, Gardner thought. What a relief.

Seconds later, Eric was firing again. It was a short burst; then he retreated inside.

It was 11:24. The outside ordeal lasted five minutes. Eric did most of the shooting. He fired his 9mm rifle forty-seven times in that period and did not use his shotgun. Dylan got off just three shots with the TEC-9 handgun and two with his shotgun.

They headed down the hallway to the library (Cullen 51)."

What makes Columbine so necessary is the staggering amount of false and conflicting information that was reported after it happened. The shooting happened when I was a freshman in high school, and I clearly remember the phrases that made their way into national and personal conversations in the weeks following: "goths," "Trench Coat Mafia," etc. Before setting records straight, Cullen explores the immediacy and necessity for the media to get reports of any kind out, especially in the hours following the shooting. This led to some sickening assumptions and acts: television reporters airing live calls with students trapped in the building, and engaging in rampant speculation. Of all the people involved in sorting out the events, I found FBI negotiator Dwayne Fuselier to be the most important and compelling. He became involved with the shootings on a personal and professional level. His son was in the building, but emerged unharmed. After, Fuselier conducted intense investigations and studies of Harris and Klebold over several years, trying to determine what drove them to their actions instead of relying on the gut reactions and categorizations of "good" and "evil." Even in the confusion, Fuselier arrived at the scene with as clear a head as anyone.

"Fuselier arrived at Columbine with one assumption: multiple gunmen demanded multiple tactics. Fuselier couldn't afford to think of his adversaries as a unit. Strategies likely to disarm one shooter could infuriate the other. Mass murderers tended to work alone, but when they did pair up, they rarely chose their mirror image. Fuselier knew he was much more likely to find a pair of opposites holed up in that building. It was entirely possible that there was no single why--and much more likely that he would unravel one motive for Eric, another for Dylan.

Reporters quickly keyed on the darker force behind the attack: this spooky Trench Coat Mafia. It grew more bizarre by the minute. In the first two hours, witnesses on CNN described the TCM as Goths, gays, outcasts, and a street gang. 'A lot of the time they'll, like, wear makeup and paint their nails and stuff,' a Columbine senior said. 'They're kind of--I don't know, like Goth, sort of, like, and they're like, associated with death and violence a lot.'

None of that would prove to be true. That student did not, in fact, know the people he was describing. But the story grew (Cullen 72)."



The above citation is crucial, since a large majority of Columbine is devoted to unraveling myths. The profiles of Harris and Klebold are of two vastly different psychopaths, in the literal definition. Harris was engaging and a masterful con artist, able to fool adults into thinking he'd changed after several run-ins with the law and some classmates. Klebold was intensely suicidal for years leading up to the massacre. Both boys came from generally good families and were bright. But through interviews (and viewings of the Basement Tapes left behind after their suicides), Cullen shows how they came together in one act for different reasons. Harris had delusional desires about making a mark on the world and eliminating people he deemed inferior; Klebold tagged along and grappled with his own psychological torments and feelings of insecurity. With these very human portraits, is Cullen absolving or forgiving the boys for their acts? Not at all. But it's a very real fact that psychological analysis is essential in regard to determining motives and reasons behind atrocious acts. One element of the current gun control debate is mental health. Stigmas about mental health are still persistent. Mass shootings and killings can't be boiled down to religious notions of good and evil. The human brain is complicated, and there are reasons and defects behind everything.

Cullen explores how religion in the very Christian areas of Colorado had good and bad roles in the aftermath. Some churches opened their doors to people seeking comfort and solace, whereas others, whether overtly or subconsciously, viewed the influx of people as a means of recruiting. There was also the complicated, exploited case of victim Cassie Bernall. The media jumped on the anecdote of her being killed because she professed to believing in god before being gunned down. Churches and citizens quickly held her up as a martyr even though eyewitness testimonies disprove the exchange. A girl who was shot and then asked about her belief was shunned by others believing she was just clamoring for the Cassie Bernall spotlight. Cassie's mother, wracked by grief, ended up writing a bestselling book about her daughter, and the line between healing and profiting was blurred.

"In July, the Wall Street Journal ran a prominent story titled 'Marketing a Columbine Martyr.' The publishing house was obscure, but Zimmerman had called in a team of heavy hitters. For public relations, the firm hired the New York team that had handled Monica Lewinsky's book. Publication was two months away, and [Cassie's mother] had already been booked for The Today Show and 20/20. The William Morris Agency was shopping the film rights around. (A movie was never made.) An agent there had sold book club rights to a unit of Random House. He said he was marketing 'virtually everything you can exploit--and I mean that in a positive way (Cullen 233).'"

Cullen's overall writing style is extremely strong. At first, I had issues with his casual vernacular (his preface stresses the differences between actual, documented dialogue and unverified, imagined conversations). He writes some scenes with an attempt to mimic the casual slang of late 1990s teenagers, but after while, I realized he wasn't doing this to distract. His style is giving visual and emotional immediacy to the dozens of outlying subplots, and as I've mentioned above, nothing in his writing is flippant or geared toward emotional pandering. After the chapters on the actual shooting, he alternates chapters between the victims and survivors, the shooters, and the authority figures. This style gives equal attention to every side of the story and aftermath. Obviously, the psychological and chronological profiles of Harris and Klebold are the most crucial, but the ripple effects are no less important. The phrase "healing process" often gets used casually in regard to shootings, but having it documented and tastefully explored is fascinating. I'm not going to use this review to explicitly link this study to my own views on gun control and the culture of violence. Cullen presents this case without personal asides or his own opinions. He devotes a brief section to the NRA's response to Columbine and its refusal to cancel its scheduled Colorado meeting. In his documentation, the NRA comes off as indignant to the pleas to postpone its meeting, and closes with a telling paragraph with a nod to the NRA's equivocal "olive branch."

"The group observed a moment of silence for the Columbine victims. It then proceeded with the welcome ceremony. Traditionally, the oldest and youngest attendees are officially recognized at that time. The youngest is typically a child. 'Given the unusual circumstances,'[then-NRA President Charlton] Heston announced that the tradition would be suspended this year (Cullen 212)."

There are many, many other angles I've left untouched: the histories of Harris and Klebold are complicated, detailed pages, and to conclude this review, I'm taking a note from Cullen's writing and not offering any revelations or closing arguments. The evidence and history are in the pages, and the reader can explore them any way he/she wants. I get a strong feeling that Cullen was aching to provide his own beliefs and sketches, but he wisely and bravely remains a reporter. He admits to his own mistakes and assumptions on the day of the shooting and uses Columbine to mark down the definitive account and to erase the myths and false reports that still seem to pass for public knowledge. Overall, this is a beautiful book in spite of its terrible, grisly origins. Unlike Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, this isn't a document that's half truth, half author creativity. It's a sadly necessary account of a turning point in American history with residual effects still being felt all too vividly.

Work Cited:
Cullen, Dave. Columbine. Copyright 2009 by Dave Cullen.

Race Matters: Quentin Tarantino and "Django Unchained"

Two nights ago, I finally saw Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the various issues surrounding the film. I've seen links for dozens of essays and reviews, and except for a quick skim of Roger Ebert's writings, I haven't read any outside analyses or critiques, although I did read this quote from filmmaker Spike Lee, taken from his Twitter account: “American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them.” Before I get into my own thoughts on Tarantino's intentionally outlandish take on slavery in America, I will offer this statement: I don't believe Tarantino is racist; far from it. He and Lee have a colorful history of verbal sparring, and Tarantino has been defended for his n-word laden scripts and interpretations of racial history by the likes of black actors Jamie Foxx (who stars as Django) and Samuel L. Jackson (a frequent contributor in Tarantino's filmography, who portrays Stephen the house slave). While I believe the occasional claims of racism are unfounded, I do believe that he was slightly misguided in the making of Django Unchained. Slavery in any fictional interpretation has to be tread upon carefully--for all of Tarantino's bombast and Pollockian mixes of fictional history and film homages, he very well may have overstepped some boundaries. While this may seem like I'm trying to balance too evenly between defense and criticism, I'm doing so because, as someone fascinated by both the film and America's racial history, I'm genuinely conflicted by my emotional reaction to the film.

Django Unchained takes place in 1858. During a slave transfer, a former dentist and current bounty hunter named King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) kills one of the white men, wounds another, and unchains Django. Before leaving, he throws the shackle keys to the rest of the slaves, who then finish off the wounded driver. Schultz is seeking Django's help in identifying a trio of wanted killers. They end up at the plantation of Big Daddy (Don Johnson, seemingly playing a strange combination of Dennis Hopper and Colonel Sanders), where the brothers work. Right before a slave is about to be whipped, Django shoots one of the brothers and whips the other one to death. Later that night, Big Daddy and a group of men are ambushed and killed in their own attempted killing of Django and Schultz (the men wear white bags with eye holes cut out, a hint to the KKK and the basis of a comical discussion about not being able to see and questioning the worth of having their faces covered). Django turns out to be a skilled marksman, and Schultz takes him on as a fellow bounty hunter. As these plot points unfold, we learn that Django's wife (Broomhilda, played by a very understated Kerry Washington) speaks German, having been raised by a German nanny on a plantation. After being separated from her husband, she's enslaved on Candyland, the Mississippi plantation of the psychopathic Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). A plan is set in motion: Django and Schultz will visit the Candie plantation under the guise of purchasing a fighting slave (more on this later) and make an offer for Broomhilda; after, Schultz will set them off as freed slaves. This is a fairly concise overview. I'm attempting to avoid spoilers, but they might come up unexpectedly. This isn't meant to be a standard review, but rather a look at how Tarantino handles a delicate imagining of revenge and justice.

In 2008, I wrote an analysis of D.W. Griffith's The Birth Of a Nation, a technically beautiful film with a deplorable message and depiction of black people. In an odd twist, Django Unchained is a technically enjoyable (it has impressive wide panning shots, beautiful landscape photography, sharp editing, and various combinations of classic western motifs and Spaghetti Western influences) with what should be a great message: a freed black slave dishing out revenge on white slave owners on behalf of thousands of other slaves. In one of his monologues, Calvin Candie expresses genuine wonder as to why a slave didn't rise up and kill his own father (which then leads to a ridiculous hypothesis based on phrenology and submission). But as a white artist, did Tarantino go too far? This isn't his first foray into violent revisionist history. When Inglourious Basterds premiered, there were quieter voices wondering how the film affected Jewish audiences. But the biggest difference lies in the settings. Basterds didn't have any graphic scenes from the concentration camps--the events unfolded in movie theaters, countrysides, and banquet halls. It would have been subject to the same critiques as Django had it featured prisoners in the camps rising up against the Nazis. In Django, we see slaves being whipped, abused, and mistreated on a consistent level. Had the film shown a free slave searching down a single slave owner in a neutral setting, I believe the controversies wouldn't have been as extreme.

Even in fictional settings, the audience has to adjust to Tarantino's cartoonish, comic book-style violence with the realization that some of the actions actually took place. In one of the most wrenching scenes, one of Candie's fighting slaves is ripped apart by attack dogs. In his parlor, he watches two black men fighting to the death (creative license on Tarantino's part, but no less unsettling), and offers a hammer to the winner to finish off the loser. Dozens are shot and killed, with geysers of blood shooting out like video game pixels, but that's nothing new on Tarantino's part. Again, it's unsettling because even in the most exaggerated forms, these actions happened in some capacities. And having them played for the occasional laugh is jarring. The "mandigo fighters" are meant to illustrate Candie's blood lust and moral shortcomings. But when one blinks and takes into account the very real history of slavery, it gets to the point where one has to ask: is this supposed to represent a universal fantasy of revenge, or are we simply watching Tarantino's vision of what should have happened?

Again, I'm not hinting at racism, and there are various, unexpected moments of perverse philosophy throughout the film. Stephen, the elderly Candyland house slave, is viewed by Django as an Uncle Tom, sacrificing his heritage and turning a blind eye to the mistreatment of slaves in the name of his own relative comfort. Candie berates him in public, but in private, the two men talk on equal footing (Stephen's observations set off a chain reaction of events that lead to the film's climaxes). But apart from these hierarchies, Stephen could also be seen as a minstrel character. He's loud, boisterous, and goofy in front of the white company, but sullen, serious, and no-nonsense when surrounded by the other slaves. This is a carefully rendered character on the part of Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson. Is he truly devoted to Candie, or does he know what games to play to be treated better than the other slaves? I believe it's a clouded combination. Vital questions and observations, yes, but it all comes back to Quentin Tarantino. He has a right to make any film he pleases, but should a take on slavery have been left alone? Since the invention of film narratives, the West and the 19th century have provided a background for hundreds, if not thousands, of morality plays, existential studies, and plain old good vs. evil fights. But one has to acknowledge how sensitive slavery is to anyone with a conscience, let alone the living descendants.

In 2007, I visited the capitol building in Columbia, South Carolina, and I'll never forget how sick to my stomach I felt upon making two observations. Seeing the Confederate flag flying from a state building up close causes much more tension than seeing it on television or in a photograph. And tucked to the side of the building was a small, touching memorial to the slaves who lived there, with a stunningly detailed image of the layout of a slave boat. Again, anyone should be appalled by this, but I simply cannot imagine knowing my ancestors lived through something that atrocious. And that's where Spike Lee makes a valid point (although his refusal to see the movie and condemning it on reputation is less than I would expect from a filmmaker, especially one I admire as much as Lee). In his own way, Tarantino offers unbelievable depictions of the comeuppance that slave owners should have received. DiCaprio's portrayal of Candie is courageous, since he takes on the role of a heightened version of the most deplorable, racist mentalities (and in an odd twist, Candie's death is the most subdued one suffered in the entire film). But Django is a fictional character, and the focus of the film is on him and his payback. However, there's no way to depict that time period without casting a light on history. This film is entertainment and escapism, but it's it's so real in its period details that reality keeps rearing its head. I don't believe Tarantino has done anything wrong or offensive. But these realities have to be acknowledged. I can imagine some people rolling their eyes and assuming I'm writing from a foundation of extreme political correctness. But Django Unchained, for as much as I enjoyed it, toes several lines very precariously. Tarantino has nothing to apologize for, but if I were him, I'd readily acknowledge and accept feedback for such the audacious, blunt period setting. From a character and technical standpoint, Django is very well-made. But there's no way to see it or write about it without a serious acknowledgement of the events that made even the most fictionalized plot possible.

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.

"You Were Never In Chicago:" Neil Steinberg's Soul Of the City

With the exception of my year and a half in Seattle, I've lived in Chicago my entire life. The city still fascinates me, yet there are some aspects of the collective city mentality that I find embarrassing: the fixation on the 1985 Bears, and the still prevalent use of the players on that team for local advertising purposes; local politicians promoting Chicago as a "world class city," as if the area was a small town looking to make good, rather than the third largest city in America; and, an act that nearly caused me to boycott the Chicago Sun-Times, terribly written opinion pieces by Jim Belushi. However, the Sun-Times is the home of Neil Steinberg, who has long been my favorite local columnist. From sports to opinion pieces, the majority of Chicago newspaper writers tend to write the same pieces over and over, looking for the quick riling up of certain emotions. Steinberg, however, at least tries to foster intelligent conversations. Late last year, the University of Chicago Press published his latest book You Were Never In Chicago, and I made it the final book I read in 2012. While vastly different in tone, prose, and era, the work made an excellent bookend to Nelson Algren's Chicago: City On the Make, since both titles are ultimately concerned with highlighting philosophy and sociology, rather than being straightforward "history" books.

But there is a wealth of history here. Steinberg compiles a variety of stories and hypotheses, from his own life, the formation of Chicago as a city and as an identity, his newspaper work, occasional mentions of local politics, and, as he tends to focus his columns on, the often unknown side of Chicago's citizens and (sometimes long gone) businesses and places. Sometimes these aspects are combined. You Were Never In Chicago opens with a chapter on Steinberg's move from the Lakeview neighborhood to the suburbs, along with a wonderful story about a trip to a hardware store during Chicago's Gay Pride Parade. This passage is just a small part of a longer, more complex rumination on political figures and the disconnect between city and suburban life. Steinberg moves seamlessly between the seemingly different elements to create a fascinating, intangible look at a slice of Chicago.

"Music whumps from passing floats. Honorees in convertibles roll slowly by, beaming and waving. The year before, I took our older son Ross, then three, to the parade, by accident. I was heading to the hardware store to buy a plunger and brought him along for company, forgetting that a quarter million people had gathered at the end of our block.

Undeterred--and not realizing that the hardware store would be closed for the parade--I swept him up in my arms and we pushed forward, joining the onlookers. Ross gazed around at the mustachioed leather boys, the bodybuilders in tiny Speedo bathing suits, the harlequins on stilts, the flamboyant drag queens wobbling under giant feathered Mardi Gras headpieces, the bannered vintage convertibles with that year's crop of dignitaries perched atop back seats, where they could be better seen by the crowd. His eyes widened, he pointed a quivering finger and said, 'Daddy, those men...they're not wearing seatbelts! It isn't safe (Steinberg 2)!'"

The book's title comes from a postcard sent to The New Yorker's A.J. Liebling in 1952 after his three-part feature on Chicago (the origin of the phrase 'The Second City'). The postcard said nothing except "You were never in Chicago," a phrase that has multiple philosophical angles. Steinberg spends some time wondering what makes a Chicagoan; he himself grew up in Ohio before attending Northwestern University, and even after years of city living, he sometimes has his doubts. But in his examination of the Chicago identity, he doesn't go for the obvious examples. A curious example is one that I've never thought about--Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, right outside Chicago, yet has never been linked or identified with the city. Steinberg explains why, and in the process adds another layer to the intangible notion of labeling someone as a Chicagoan. The passage below ends on Steinberg's most sentimental note, but it's genuine.

"'I never thought Chicago was a tough place,' Hemingway said in 1953--'tough' of course being the highest compliment Hemingway could conceive. Chicago, he said, wasn't even as tough as Kansas City.

Being a Chicagoan is a claim you have to press, a case you must make, and Hemingway, by not making it, lost the right. He had liked the place well enough as a young man in love, but having been born in Oak Park, Hemingway had no intention of lingering so close to home. 'Gee this is a terribly good town,' he wrote in a 1920 letter while living at 1230 N. State Street. 'Instead of hating it the way I used to, I'm getting terribly fond of it. However there isn't going to be any permanent settlege down in it...because there are so many more most excellent towns in different place that I'd like to be.'

Maybe that's the definition--you're a Chicagoan if, wherever you are at the moment, Chicago is the place you'd like to be. I would argue that Chicago is not simply a matter of where you put your pillow but where you place your heart, wherever you're sleeping now (Steinberg 40)."

Having been a reporter and columnist for years, Steinberg is obviously full of great stories, and some excellent ones are presented here. Pages are devoted to the now-defunct Division Street Russian Baths. His writing is very careful and precise, but in his best passages, there are elements of casual storytelling and seemingly fictional sketches of people and surroundings. These sections remind me of William Zinsser's thoughts on E.B. White in the book On Writing Well: the best, most casual form of narrative storytelling is actually extremely precise. What feels like a conversation is only possible when there's focus on strong writing.

"Take off your clothes, stash them in a locker, wrap yourself in the sheet, then pad downstairs, the key around your wrist. You enter a low-ceilinged basement room, the walls a mismatched hodgepodge of streaked, garish linoleum tiles and glazed yellow brick. There are two tables and two men--squat, hirsute, burly Mexicans in gym shorts and shower clogs--giving massages to the great pink hillsides of older gentlemen, face down. A half-hour massage is twelve dollars, plus tip. Averting your eyes, you step around the tables, unwrap, set aside the towels and the sheet--there are no hooks, nowhere to hang anything up, so place your towels carefully on the tile lip of the placid cold pool, by the door to the sauna--turn on showers that don't spray but pour, then step under the gushing spigot. The showers are not secluded by any kind of wall or partition, but out in the open in one corner of the room. Nobody else cares about that, and soon you don't, either.

Wrap yourself in your sheet, if you like. Leave one towel by the cold pool, saving it for later. Bunch the other one up, delivering a quick blot to your face so you can see, taking it with you as a pillow. Then pull the heavy glass door open and scoot dripping into the sauna itself, the superheated heart of the Russian Baths (Steinberg 102)."

His columns have literally taken him around and below Chicago. He writes about visiting factories, helping his younger brother through difficult times (and potentially incurring the wrath of citizens by helping his brother secure a job in the city), accompanying police on prostitution rounds, and the sweet story of meeting and dating his wife. But even at his most personal, Steinberg isn't being self-serving. This is slightly a memoir, but the experiences tie into the day-to-day living of Chicago, either directly or indirectly. He's traveled underneath the city with the Water Department, seeing a side that very few people have ever experienced. The descriptions are fascinating, and Steinberg projects a genuine enthusiasm for what he's experienced. Based on his career at the Sun-Times, newspaper work and office politics can make someone jaded very quickly. He recaps some of the tougher episodes in his line of work, and while he's experienced and projects the necessary toughness needed, there are moments of pure joy in his encounters. Even in strictly journalistic paragraphs, the reader can't help but be caught up in the wonder.

"Water mains, sewer pipes, telephone cables, service conduits, heavily shielded electrical lines, fiber optics, thermal cooling tubes. And those are just the main operative veins and arteries of the city--there are all kinds of defunct technologies down there too: pneumatic-tube message systems and wood-encased Western Union telegraph wires. To this day, crews from the Department of Water Management still occasionally dig up a water pipe made in the 1800s from a hollowed-out hemlock log. Many iron water mains are so old and decayed--relics from 1900--that only the earth around the pipes holds them together. Dig too close to some mains and pressure from the water within will burst them.

I toured the Jardine Water Purification Plant next to Navy Pier, nearly fifty years old and still the largest water treatment plant in the world, pumping out a billion gallons of water a day into Chicago. I visited each of the four water cribs perched on the horizon in Lake Michigan--intakes for the city's water system. For over a century men lived on the little castle-like round brick structures, caring for them. In winter, to keep the intakes clear of ice, the tender would lower a quarter stick of dynamite on a rod and blast them open (Steinberg 120-121)."

These cited passages might not seem like the obvious choices for examples, but they are such small, carefully written moments that appealed to me just as much as the bigger pictures. Steinberg never comes to any concrete conclusions about the city's makeup, but he culls together enough people, places, and events to paint one of the more accurate, touching looks at the city. Again, it's not the same as Nelson Algren's work (in a hilarious sentence about the gentrification of Division Street, which used to be one of Chicago's most dangerous, seedy areas, Steinberg says "Nelson Algren would vomit"). But taken together, readers can chart the development of the city's psyche. Again, I don't agree with everything about the city--I still feel like 'The Bean' in Millennium Park is too new to be classified as a city landmark, and Steinberg writes about it positively. You Were Never in Chicago was one of my favorite works in 2012, and I admire Steinberg's dedication and writing style. I was fascinated to see his work "Driving With Ed McElroy," a story about spending time with an old school publicist, in the book, since it was featured in Granta Magazine's 2009 issue dedicated to Chicago. While some readers might not expect a Chicago columnist to be a proper fit for a literary journal, Steinberg's themes and stories are, quite literally, written for everyone, combining narrative mastery and fascinating asides that balance between literary non-fiction and quick reads suited for spending a few minutes with a newspaper column. This balance is never pandering or insulting, and proves that excellent writing can and should be accessible to a wide variety of readers.

Work Cited:

Steinberg, Neil. You Were Never In Chicago. Copyright 2013 by Neil Steinberg.

Telling Stories: Aleksandar Hemon's "The Lazarus Project"

I've read very little of Aleksandar Hemon's writing, so I was excited when my book club voted for The Lazarus Project last month. His books have been on my list for quite some time, and aside from a short story (or two?) and a handful of essays, my fascination with him is limited to the scattered readings and his history of living in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood, a five minute walk from where I grew up and live now. His reputation has been equally fascinating, leading to his being the rare writer whom I knew I wanted to read, but whom I knew precious little about, stylistically. I didn't know what to expect from his full-length books, and unless his other pieces are even more varied, The Lazarus Project proved to be a dizzying mix of genres, voices, images and intentionally questionable narratives. But these combinations (and said dizziness) are not meant to be synonyms for "confusing." Upon completion of the novel, I was struck by how the narrative was so straightforward, jumping consistently from past to present, from fictional imaginings of real events to fictional depictions of fictional characters. The complexity lays in Hemon's themes: there's really no way to pinpoint an exact tone or message in The Lazarus Project, but rather, the reader sits back and is overcome by the variety of what the text accomplishes.

The novels tells two intertwined stories, one of them a compelling, ugly piece from Chicago's early twentieth-century history. In 1908, for still unknown reasons, a young Jewish immigrant named Lazarus Averbuch paid a visit to the home of Chicago's chief of police; not long after arriving, he was dead from multiple gunshot wounds, and the police and media were quick to paint a lurid picture of a violent anarchist with ties to Emma Goldman eager to commit a crime against the law:

"Neither does Assistant Chief find it insignificant that the anarchist has been meticulously shaved, probably that very same morning, and that his hair was carefully cut. His clothes are musty and worn, but he doesn't exude any stench; the man has without a doubt taken a bath recently. It is not customary with alien men of that class to take care of their persons, Assistant Chief tells William P. Miller. It looks as though he didn't expect to come back alive. 'He looks like a Jew to me," Chief Shippy says, as Foley is tearing the end of the bandage with his teeth to tie it up. Assistant Chief unbuttons the man's pants, pulls them down, then does the same with his long underwear; in doing so, he slips on the blood and brains, nearly falling on the body, but quickly regains his balance.

'He's a Jew all right,' he announces, leaning over the young man's crotch. 'A Jew is what he is (Hemon 26-27).'"

Lazarus's sister Olga knows he's not an anarchist, and sets out to attempt to clear his name. However, this proves to be a daunting challenge: she's struggling with poverty and is malnourished and has to deal with authority figures who sneer at her for being an immigrant woman, not to mention a sibling of a "dangerous anarchist." She remains undaunted, even as her brother's name is smeared and his body desecrated (the photo below appears in the book and is an actual photo of Lazarus Averbuch's body following his killing):

"Oblivious to the surroundings, she walks slowly. She moves quietly between the detectives, her dress too sweat-damp to rustle. It is only when they open the door of the room that she begins to hold back. Men are gathered around the chair where Lazarus sits, and she is relieved to see he is alive. She sighs and grips Fitzpatrick's forearm. But one of the men is holding Lazarus's head; her brother's eyes are closed, his face ashen; her heart stops, frozen. Fitzgerald urges her on; Fitzpatrick says, as if delivering a punch line: 'Happy to see him? Give him a kiss...' The crowd titters, transfixed by Olga's stepping toward Lazarus, as if she were mounted on cothurni: a short, reluctant step back, then two awkward steps forward to touch his lifeless cheek, whereupon she collapses, unconscious. The crowd gasps (Hemon 57)."

The second story is about Brik, a Bosnian writer living in Chicago. He's married to a surgeon, and their marriage alternates between blissful love and heated, violent confrontations. He becomes fascinated with the story of Lazarus Averbuch, and upon receiving a literary grant, he decides to travel to Eastern Europe to chart and track the Averbuch line and to see how the contemporary homeland reflects the early twentieth-century immigrant experience. He teams up with Rora, a fast-talking photographer who also hails from Sarajevo, with the hopes of having him document their trip. Brik and Rora become an uneasy odd couple, balancing between their natural alliance as men from the same land (and travelers on a sometimes dangerous trip) and their occasional but mounting friction. Rora is an avid storyteller, creating grand, embellished tales of war and travels. He is consistently annoyed with Brik's questions and conversations. Brik, despite his personal faults and boorish behavior toward his wife, is naturally observant, gleaning philosophical and sociological details and hypotheses from the most casual surroundings. Hemon's writing is excellent in these details, and is continual marked by moments of unexpected (and dark) humor, and the passage below ends with one of my favorite lines from the book:

"One morning in Chicago I had tiptoed to the kitchen with the intention of making some coffee. While customarily spilling coffee grounds all over the counter, I spotted a can in the corner whose red label read SADNESS. Was there so much of it they could can it and sell it? A bolt of pain went through my intestines before I realized that it was not SADNESS but SARDINES. It was too late for recovery, for sadness was now the dark matter in the universe of still objects around me: the salt and pepper shakers; the honey jar; the bag of sun-dried tomatoes; the blunt knife; a desiccated loaf of bread; the two coffee cups, waiting. My country's main exports are stolen cars and sadness (Hemon 73)."

As these two story lines alternate, the reader is presented with a myriad of themes--the obvious ones are how the immigrant experience in the United States has changed and remained the same, especially regarding the notion of terrorists and anarchists (substitute Muslims today with Eastern Europeans then); traveling as both a physical journey and an existential one. But what stayed with me the idea of storytelling. This might seem like such a simple, obvious idea, but Hemon crafts various avenues of storytelling, from the historical to the contemporary, but also with a balance between fictional and autobiographical. The little I know about his personal life and history in Chicago is reflected in careful detail via Brik: the mentions of Chicago's Edgewater, Andersonville, and Uptown neighborhoods; the Bosnian angle; and the fact that Brik is a writer who has received a substantial grant. I'm not suggesting that Brik is the complete personification of Hemon, but there's enough there to make the reader wonder how much Hemon has pulled and crafted from his own life, especially when the fictionalized stories of Lazarus and Olga are based on real people as well.

Within the stories lie what I feel is the biggest focus of The Lazarus Project: the art and complications of storytelling. There's never a moment or happening within the text that can't stand alone as its own tale or isn't part of a bigger one. Rora, for example, is meant to be a foil for Brik as well as a source of comic relief. However, his character is constantly telling stories, and after while, these mini-narratives become their own part of the plot:

"These people, these gangsters, Rora said, they are the same wherever you go--the same smirk, the same cell phone, the same goon. There used to be a guy named Pseto, a big gangster in Sarajevo just before the war. His business was racketeering. He ran a crew, including a few cops, who would break up a vendor if he did not pay for protection. He had a jewelry shop for money laundering, and sometimes he wore half of his inventory: diamonds and gold all over. He walked down Ferhadija Street with that Sarajevo-street-thug strut, and people would part reverentially. (I could see him: throwing his shoulders and jerking his neck, pursing his lips, the mouth half open to show that he was halfway to being very pissed) He would walk into a bar and the owner would have to buy drinks for everybody present, as though Pseto were the king. As his headquarters, he used a cafe called Djul-basta (I knew exactly where it stood); the owner was blessed with his protection but had no customers other than the people who came to do business with Pseto. He had trained the owner to bring him a short espresso every half an hour by the clock, and he would sit there, drinking coffee all day. Once he made a disobedient cop suck his cock. And when a stupid journalist wrote about the collusion of the police and Pseto, he had sent goons to bring the fool and had him tied to the tree in front of the cafe. He put a gun at the journalist's temple and told him to bark, so he barked. And he barked all day, was fed pizza leftovers, and had to fetch a stick (Hemon 131-132)."

As Olga processes the story of Lazarus's murder, she does her own painful storytelling. She keeps mentally crafting letters to her mother to break the news of the killing. These drafts are always brief, yet constantly switch in tone and climax as she goes about her investigations.

"Dear Mother,
You will think me cruel and mad, but I cannot keep this inside me anymore. Lazarus has been slain like an animal for no reason at all yet they call him an assassin. He--an assassin. There is no end to evil, it reaches us here too (Hemon 169)."

"Dear Mother,
Lazarus's funeral was beautiful. The rebbe spoke of his kindness, and there were hundreds of his friends, mountains of flowers (Hemon 148)."

The photographs that break up each chapter add their own layers to the narrative. Some of them, like the one of Lazarus above, are real photos from old newspapers. Others are meant to be Rora's photos as he helps document his travels with Brik. Some of these are beautiful landscape shots; others are random snapshots of people related or unrelated to the corresponding text. However, there's a definite subtlety to these images, even if they are jarring and uncomfortable. For as meticulous as Hemon is in his fiction, the idea of imagery and photography are vital to the stories, and therefore the photos become necessary as well as aesthetic. They make The Lazarus Project feel like a sort of time capsule. The early murder is its own historical document, and the travels of Brik and Rora feel like recordings for their own future prosperity. After awhile, the reader is no longer awaiting closure to the events of Lazarus, Olga, Brik, and Rora--the stories unfold into themselves as present-tense happenings, as if we're seeing two events becoming part of one long strain. There's never really a question of reliability--Brik is so open about his own faults and shortcomings that the reader focuses on experiencing the mysteries as they unfold. Also, the blatant lies of the police in covering up Lazarus's murder are the only truly unreliable narrations, but those are expected and obvious.

This is one of the more memorable, expertly crafted novels I've read this year. I found myself inserting Hemon into Brik's stories, and I somehow get the feeling that, personally, Hemon suffers from his own outbursts and unsavory tendencies. But going strictly by the novel, I'm still amazed at how much complexity he wrings from what is otherwise a very simple collection of tales. He writes with emotion without going for obvious sentimentality. During our book club meeting, I expressed the critique that Hemon piled too much misfortune on Olga, getting to the point that it seemed too much to handle. A fellow participant made an excellent point that rendered my criticism false--in history, the Jewish experience has been that way for some people: sometimes there's so much strife and pain without a "happy ending." Hemon's mix of themes, plots, and philosophy were extremely well done, and I'm happy not only that I've finally read one of his long-form works, but that it was this one. It's storytelling both big and small, and a constant stream of information and history that keeps one constantly deep in thought. I very much look forward to reading his other novels and stories, and I plan to tackle these (hopefully) sooner rather than later in 2013.

Work Cited:
Hemon, Aleksandar. The Lazarus Project. Copyright 2008 by Aleksandar Hemon.