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.

Dashing: Chuck Klosterman's "I Wear the Black Hat"

My interactions with Chuck Klosterman's writings have been pretty up and down, and upon review, I'm amazed to discover that I've never written about any of his books. When I was in my early twenties, I was completely blown away by Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, his breakout collection. On the surface, the essay seemed like standard deconstructions of culture, but were infused with terrific humor, fantastic connections between seemingly random ideas, and the realization that Klosterman wasn't a pseudo-intellectual: his fascinations and knowledge did run in fantastically different directions. Since 2003, I've admired him, even if his occasional forays haven't held much meaning for me. One of my long-standing assessments has been: I love Klosterman, but hate him for spawning dozens, if not hundreds of writers who try to emulate his style. I was disappointed by Killing Yourself To Live, an account of his travels and thoughts on various music deaths; perhaps I was just hungry for a variety of subjects. I've pretty much avoided his interactions with Malcolm Gladwell, a writer I've had problems with for awhile. I've never had any real desire to read his two novels. And I never got around to Eating the Dinosaur, his 2009 collection. So while I'm nowhere near being on top of his collected writings, I'd still consider myself an admirer of his work, and this has increased a lot with my recent reading of I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains (Real and Imagined). The title is apt: Klosterman writes about the idea of villains from historical, cultural, and philosophical angles. I went into the reading with high hopes, since his focus on a sometimes abstract idea (villainy) would conceivably allow him to move among a range of subjects. I was correct, and this newest book came the closest to emulating the feelings of awe and discovery that I felt as young twenty-something reading and re-reading Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.

In the book's introduction, Klosterman sets up the reasoning in his standard fashion: as a teenager, he listened to a Metallica cover of a song by the British band Diamond Head that included the lyrics "Am I evil? Yes I am. Am I evil? I am man." As an adult, he reflects and considers the nature of evil, empathy, and image from the inside and the outside.

"I am typing this sentence on an autumn afternoon. The leaves are all dead, but still tethered to the trees, waiting for a colder future. Outside my living room window and three floors below, people are on the street. I vaguely recognize some of them, but not most of them. I rarely remember the names or faces of nonfictional people. Still, I believe these strangers are nonthreatening. I supposed you never know for certain what unfamiliar humans are like, but I'm confident. They are more like me than they are different: predominantly white, in the vicinity of middle age, and dressed in a manner that suggests a different social class than the one they truly occupy (most appear poorer than they actually are, but a few skew in the opposite direction). Everyone looks superficially friendly, but none are irrefutably trustworthy. And as I watch these people from my window, I find myself wondering something:
Do I care about any of them (Klosterman 2)?"

The opening essay explores three wildly different topics, but Klosterman manages to keep even seemingly divergent ideas grounded into a single narrative. It begins with what could be the most typically villainous act (tying a woman to railroad tracks, a narrative device first introduced in silent cinema), before exploring Machiavelli's philosophy (and the possibility of The Prince being a satire, which I've heard before and find very fascinating) to what truly constituted the late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno's downfall. More so than I remember from his previous writings, Klosterman explores a vast number of gray areas. However, he's uninterested in rehashing old arguments. The media hurricane surrounding Paterno and the Penn State sex abuse scandal was its own entity, and Klosterman isn't going down that path. He uses Paterno as an example for his overall thesis, and manages to create a very apt definition of villainy. It's paired with an assessment of Nike CEO Phil Knight, who eulogized Paterno at his funeral with some poor remarks.

"All those imperfect denouncements are easy. But Paterno's vilification is harder. A handful of media bottom-feeders reveled in his fall, but only to play to the trolls. No normal person wants to hate a dead man he once admired. It feels abnormal and cheap. But what's the alternative? Paterno knew what was happening and chose to intellectually avoid it. He had to choose between humanity and sport, and he picked the one that mattered less. On the day he was finally lowered into the ground, his most adamant defender was the aforementioned Knight, a man who allowed Indonesian children to work in sweatshops so that he could sell $120 basketball shoes to fat American teenagers who didn't play basketball. And then--six months later--even Knight rescinded what he'd said. It was not a good look.

The villain is the person who knows the most but cares the least (Klosterman 18)."

A long chapter is devoted to President Bill Clinton in the aftermath of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In this chapter, Klosterman weighs the various players, all of whom took turns as victims and villains in the dragged-out process. Later in the book, Klosterman declares himself as apolitical, and in assessing this overtly political scandal, he is true to his word. He's opinionated yet impartial, and manages to write intelligent passages about human sexuality, power, and politics without pointing any fingers, at least not in a biased fashion. Returning to my previous comment about gray areas, Klosterman's views on the position of the Presidency is a perfect look at how every President, Democrat or Republican, is in a position to veer into textbook villainy.

"So this is what people said: 'It's not the sex. It's the lying.' Which was totally idiotic and completely untrue.
Presidents lie all the time. Really great presidents lie. Abraham Lincoln managed to end slavery in America partially by deception (In an 1858 debate, he flatly insisted that he had no intention of abolishing slavery in states where it was already legal--he had to say this in order to slow the tide of secession.) Franklin Roosevelt lied about the U.S. position of neutrality until we entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Though the public and Congress believed his public pledge of impartiality, he was already working in secret with Winston Churchill and selling arms to France.) Ronald Reagan lied about Iran-Contra so much that it now seems like he was honestly confused. Politically, the practice of lying is essential. By the time the Lewinsky story broke, Clinton had already lied about many, many things. (He'd openly lied about his level of commitment to gay rights during the '92 campaign.) The presidency is not a job for an honest man. It's way too complex (Klosterman 119-120)."

Of course, I'd be disappointed if Klosterman wrote a book and didn't touch upon professional basketball. In a particularly illuminating chapter, he presents the public and private images of various athletes, and the one I found most affecting was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I never realized that Abdul-Jabbar has been viewed as a villain or as disliked figure: he's now universally beloved for his non-basketball work, and he retired as the NBA's all-time scoring leader; and as Klosterman and Bill Simmons have pointed out, his cameo role in the movie Airplane! worked so well because he lampooned his image at a time when people didn't realize he had a sense of humor or a more complex side beside that of a basketball great. Klosterman explains why and how Abdul-Jabbar was viewed as a villain, and how time has made this designation wrong. It proves that concepts and definitions can be wide-ranging, even for people (in this case, me and my overall view of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) who don't assume a person can be classified in a specific fashion.

"As he's moved into the winter of his life, Abdul-Jabbar has grown conscious of his image and has tried to evolve into a conventionally nice celebrity--which is disappointing on two levels. He has grown more patient with interviewers, partially because they have migrated to his side: It seems increasingly absurd that this intelligent, well-spoken, socially conscious person who is the all-time leading scorer in the history of basketball cannot get a job as an NBA head coach, simply because he's not super friendly. He had a cancer scare in 2008, so that generated some warranted sympathy; as an author, he's probably done more for the lost history of twentieth-century African-Americans than every other athlete combined. He made a cameo on a sitcom starring Zooey Deschanel, and it's so goofy and superfluous that only a jerk could criticize the decision. Muslims don't drink alcohol, but Kareem still endorsed Coors. If he's a villain, he's the best possible kind. Still, there are parts of his personal history that will never evaporate. He may ultimately be remembered more affectionately than anyone would have guessed in 1980, but that turnaround will always be framed as a surprise. He played the game, but he didn't play The Game. He refused to pretend that his life didn't feel normal to the person inside it, and he refused to pretend that other people's obsession with abnormality required him to act like the man he wasn't (Klosterman 173-174)."

These are just a handful of the essays presented. There are some that I enjoyed, even if I was detached from the subject (I think I can name two, maybe three Eagles songs, but enjoyed his take on the band's evolution). There are some obvious subjects--The Oakland Raiders, O.J. Simpson, and Adolf Hitler, to name a few--but again, Klosterman doesn't go the obvious routes. He digs, he opines, and he ultimately draws new conclusions on the nature of villainy. I'm sure more than one person has dubbed Klosterman a "pop culture critic," but that label really doesn't highlight his writing skills. He can be funny without being forced, and he can take on subjects that have been driven into the ground and write about them uniquely. His goals have stayed the same, but there's a definite growth here. For such a fast read, I Wear the Black Hat remains true to its thesis, and no matter how many different directions the essays go in, it never feels like Klosterman is rambling. As a reader, this book gave me everything I had hoped for and more. I think it's only appropriate that I eventually return to Klosterman's older works, even his novels, to give my opinions a more well-rounded foundation. For the scores of imitators he has given birth to, he remains an original thinker, blurring the lines between intellect, assumptions, and, most importantly, the notion of deep thought and expanded essays in an era of quick blurbs and bite-sized writings that try to pass themselves off as deep and stimulating.

Work Cited:
Klosterman, Chuck. I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains (Real and Imagined). Copyright 2013 by Chuck Klosterman.

Consumed: Jami Attenberg, "The Middlesteins," and the Social Novel

Upon finishing The Middlesteins, Jami Attenberg's 2012 novel, I realized I admired it for a reason similar to Alissa Nutting's Tampa. Much like Nutting used sexual abuse as a device to reflect other problems, Attenberg's novel uses obesity and food addiction to highlight other issues. Its striking cover design, mimicking a crumpled fast food wrapper, would seem to indicate a novel about a woman's addiction and how it reflects societal addictions as a whole. However, that's not the case: the majority of the novel's core is a story about an extended family with unexpected divisions, unities, and tensions. Edie, the obese, food-addicted mother, is the center, with the problems circulating in spite of and because of her unique problems. While a reader may or may not see the same problems in his or her own family, there are more than a handful of issues that we can relate to, even if in a veiled manner. It's fitting that Jonathan Franzen provided the cover blurb for The Middlesteins, since it so aptly reflects his assessment that (and this isn't an exact quote) "the only average American family I know is my own." By using a series of flashbacks, revealing unexpected crises at various intervals throughout the text, and drawing some unexpected closures, Attenberg practically dares the reader to come in with expectations, knowing that she will break them or at least have them veer into a sharp turn when one expects a straight trajectory.

The Middlesteins are an upper middle class Jewish family in the suburbs of Chicago. Edie is preparing for another surgery in relation to her weight, and her husband Richard is at his breaking point. They are the parents of two children, Robin and Benny. Robin, while worried about her mother, is dealing with her own crises, from her lapsed faith to her uneasy romance/friendship with a young man named Daniel. Benny, at first glance, seems to be the more "stable" of the two--he has a wife, twins, and a large house, but things are tense on his end as well. His wife, Rachelle, feels he isn't concerned enough about his mother's well-being, and she even goes as far as to occasionally spy on her mother-in-law. Edie's food addiction isn't presented as a typical American obsession; it has roots in her upbringing as the child of once starving immigrants. Some chapters are titled with Edie's weight at a given time, and the opening chapter, "Edie, 62 Pounds" is written with dizzying implications. Edie's mother doesn't want to deny her daughter, but even without saying so, she knows something is wrong. However, she always gives in to her too-growing child.

"Her mother sat there with her arm around her daughter, until she did the only thing left she could do. She reached behind them on the floor and grabbed the loaf of rye bread, still warm in its wrapping paper, baked not an hour before at Schiller's down on Fifty-third Street, and pulled off a hunk of it and handed it to her daughter, who ignored her, and continued to sob, unforgiving, a tiny mean bone having just been formed.

'Good,' said her mother. 'More for me.'

How long do you think it took before Edie turned her head and stuck her trembling hand out for food? Her mouth hanging open expectantly, yet drowsily, like a newborn bird (Attenberg 6)."

Because of Edie's condition, several events occur, leading to their own unique plot diversions. Richard abruptly leaves his wife and begins a madcap series of encounters with online dating. Benny and Rachelle's children are preparing for their b'nai mitzvah, adding to their already heavy schedules. Robin is still making sense of her life and where she should be going, a stress in itself in addition to worrying about her mother. She accompanies Daniel to his family's Seder after much deliberation and worry, and she finds a bickering family not terribly different from her own. Her lapsed relationship with Judaism and her family blends very explicitly.

"'Me and Judaism, we don't get along,' she said.

'It's a family dinner,' he said. 'With just a touch of Jew.'

'Please,' she said. 'Don't make me.'

'I'm the one saying please,' he said. 'You're the one saying no.'

She crushed herself into a ball on his couch, knees up, arms around her legs, head against her knees.

'Why is this so hard for you, to just say yes? It's a dinner, a really good dinner, with some nice people. It's not a big deal.'

'If it's not a big deal, then why do I have go to?' she said.

Daniel sat next to her on the couch, and, in a shocking display of spine, put his face next to hers and said, 'What is this really about (Attenberg 103)?'"

I'll admit to not knowing much about how contemporary Judaism is experienced within modern Jewish families--perhaps there's a struggle or a bigger metaphor that links the Jewish history to the modern situation of the Middlestein family. However, the looming b'nai mitzvah grows closer, and the reader wonders how everyone will come together to celebrate the ceremony of the youngest members of the family. The Seder mentioned above is possibly a way for Robin to interact with another semi-dysfunctional family before another interaction with her own. Richard, despite being estranged from his family after leaving Edie, is allowed to accompany his grandchildren to the temple for a practice ceremony. He's appalled by their behavior and sees many similarities between his granddaughter Emily and the antics of Robin when she was that age. It's a culture and age clash, and is rendered very clearly and painfully. The reader is uncomfortable, as if witnessing the situation in public, and feels sorry for Richard's dilemma.

"Middlestein looked at Emily, smashed up against the window, dark, fearful eyes. She knew she had screwed up.

'If I were your father, I'd smack you so hard your head would spin,' he said.

Emily's eyes widened, but she did not cry.

'But I'm not. I am your grandfather. So all I can tell you is that was just terrible, terrible behavior tonight. You, too, Josh. Just because you're the lesser of two evils, that doesn't mean you weren't being bad (Attenberg 215).'"

Attenberg has fun with family names. A later portion of the novel is told from the point of view of a conglomerate of families attending the b'nai mitzvah. And upon reflection, the Middlestein name is carefully chosen. This might seem like an obvious assessment, but everyone in the family is caught in the middle of something, from Edie's weight to their own everyday problems. However, the name also implies, at least for me, the idea of being average, and not in a negative way. The Middlesteins is about a unique family, but anyone can see similar problems within his or her own family. Therefore, "the middle" is both a larger context and a very apt portrayal of the issues as they are presented and resolved (or unresolved in some cases).

That brings me to another positive reflection with Attenberg's prose. There are many revelations and secrets within the family, but as they are revealed, she does so in a straightforward manner, without any big "ah ha" reveals. The various personal scandals are real and, well, personal and don't need to be accentuated with any needless twists. Richard and Edie end up falling in love with different people. This is hinted at until it becomes reality, and while some could see these relationships unfolding a mile away, they're both handled honestly. At the novel's end, Richard makes peace with his granddaughter in a very moving scene. Attenberg writes very masterful, dramatic dialogue, alternating between dark comedy and unsentimental emotions. There are so many scenes and passages that are begging to be overwrought and sappy, but Attenberg is careful to keep things centered, even in the face of heightened emotions and senses.

"'We're going to talk about your grandmother's health for a little bit,' said Robin.

'Maybe we shouldn't do that in front of her,' said her grandmother.

'Is it going to bum you out?' said Robin.

'The whole thing is already a bummer,' said Emily. Her grandmother started to cry. 'Don't cry,' said Emily, and then she started to cry, and so did Robin. Anna walked up with three dishes of ice cream, made a small, horrified expression with her mouth, and then walked away, silver dishes in hand.

'Everyone cut it out,' Robin said finally, dabbing her eyes with a napkin.

'It's going to be fine, honey,' said her grandmother, who did not stop the tears dripping from her face. 'Come here, bubbeleh.' She extended her arms toward Emily, who slung her one good arm around her grandmother's torso and clung tightly (Attenberg 188)."

It's also curious to note how little of the novel is devoted to explicit depictions of Edie's food addiction. That's not to say that there aren't notable passages of such a large idea in the novel, but again, Attenberg shows wise restraint. As I'm fond of saying, in other hands, there would be many more pages laden with almost pornographic detail. By keeping the focus on the family as a whole, the reader never forgets why everything is happening: Edie is very unhealthy and at risk for even more damage. When Attenberg does show Edie engaged in her downfall, the writing is crisp and unforgiving. A little bit goes quite a long way.

"She cracked open the McRib box and eyed the dark red, sticky sandwich. Suddenly she felt like an animal; she wanted to drag the sandwich somewhere, not anywhere in this McDonald's, not a booth, not Playland, but to a park, a shrouded corner of woods underneath shimmering tree branches, green, dark, and serene, and then, when she was certain she was completely alone, she wanted to tear that sandwich apart with her teeth. But she couldn't just leave her children there, could she? You didn't need to be a graduate of Northwestern Law to know that that was illegal (Attenberg 97)."

The Middlesteins is one of the better family sagas I've read in awhile, and perhaps this is because I've been so focused on short stories as of late (generally, the stories I read, even if they mention families, are focused solely on individuals). As I mentioned before, the packaging of this novel hints to something else--a contemporary novel about grotesque food addiction. But someone picking this up sight unseen and expecting a voyeuristic modern downfall will be steered elsewhere. The food is just one of many problems Edie suffers. Therefore, this novel will remain timely for quite some time, whereas fiction that attempts to capture the modern world solely with too many specifics will grow dated and unnecessary very quickly. However, this is a story of a family with timeless problems, hopes, and fears. There are no gimmicks or attempts to cling to passing modern ideas. The reader becomes swept up in the family's sometimes comical journey, and the the biggest issue sometimes becomes a side note. I'm very impressed with Jami Attenberg's prose and dialogue, and The Middlesteins is a very quick read that still gives the reader a variety of issues to think about and analyze. I may say this often, but it never loses its necessity: contemporary novels can be both entertaining and mentally stimulating. The Middlesteins achieves this quite well and opens up many avenues I didn't expect to encounter.

Work Cited:
Attenberg, Jamie. The Middlesteins. Copyright 2012 by Jami Attenberg.

The Nature Of the Beast: "Tampa" by Alissa Nutting

(The novel Tampa, and some of the related subject matter discussed in this review, is pretty NSFW.)

"A very guilty pleasure indeed. The heroine is an obsessed, masturbating, child-molesting, somewhat homicidal sexual sociopath. Think of a female Dexter but without the redeeming social value. And you'll be cheering for her every step of the way and eagerly awaiting a sequel."

In a very basic nutshell, this assessment, quoted from a Barnesandnoble.com customer review, manages to sum up the fascinating double standards that abound in Tampa, Alissa Nutting's debut novel, in addition to getting a few details drastically wrong. Nobody can read this novel and not feel guilty. It's narrated by a physically attractive young teacher with a sexual and psychological attraction to fourteen year-old boys. There are many extremely detailed sex scenes, rife with slang and clinical terminologies, and when the novel is on the cusp of one of these luridly detailed interactions, the reader is at least subconsciously eager to read what the teacher has in store for her student. But just as quickly, the reader has to blink and remind him/herself: the unfolding act is pedophilia and molestation, not an enjoyably raunchy interlude in a very good book. Tampa isn't a twisted Fifty Shades knockoff, it's an accomplished, scary novel by a very talented writer. While I had my own issues with the novel's ending, I came away with the belief that this really is one of the better novels of the summer. It reads very quickly, but is crafted with a terrific emphasis on the main character's mental problems. While it's based on research of actual crimes, it's not some tawdry, "ripped from the headlines" cash-in. And most importantly, it positively thrives on making the reader confront its many double standards and notions of the differences between male and female sexuality.

Celeste Price is blonde, taut, and married to a wealthy cop. She's beginning her first school year teaching English in a junior high school, but she's there for one reason: to pick the perfect male student to seduce and have sex with throughout the school year. Her criteria is meticulous for a variety of reasons, and she settles on a boy named Jack Patrick:

"But despite the pleasant view, I saw few real options. Goody-goodies like Frank would deny me, and the overly confident type would find it impossible not to brag. There was only Jack--my second choice, Trevor Bodin, had a vast assortment of imperfections; deciding between the two of them was like being asked to pick a dance partner and given the option of a trained choreographer or an epileptic with a wooden leg. Trevor was an artsy sort whose hair was a wiggish crop of curls. A pensive journaler, he'd already asked if I'd look at some of his poetry. Since he walked home from school and didn't have to rush to catch a bus, he often came up to talk books and writing with me after class. But he had a girlfriend; most of his poetry was devoted to professing his love for her--Abby Fischer in my second period, memorable for her chunk of dyed purple hair. Being the romantic type, if Trevor ever did stray, he'd undoubtedly confess to her minutes after the act, likely through a series of frantic text messages that peppered statements of regret with frown-faced emoticons. He also came off as clingy, which could prove to be downright toxic. Trevor seemed like the type who would be ever more demanding, who would accept nothing less than symbiosis (Nutting 53-54)."

Jack Patrick is attractive, not too socially awkward and not too gregarious, and Celeste learns that he lives with his father, who often comes home late from work. These realizations, like everything else in Celeste's life, are analyzed and mentioned solely in relation to how she can feed her addiction and desires. As she states, her marriage is a sham, and her husband's wealth fulfills every need except her sexual ones. She has no hobbies, no outside interests, and no goal except maintaining her appearances (physical and perceived) to indulge her desire for underage males. This puts a strain on her sex life at home, giving her husband only occasional moments of sexual release, with the unspoken realization that it's best (in her mind) to project to others that they have a fantastically happy marriage and sex life, even though this isn't the case. At first, I thought the easy comparison novel would be Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, with the roles reversed. However, Humbert Humbert's seduction of Dolores Haze, for all of its horrifying realizations and implications, is actually an absurd comedy and commentary on youth and desire. Celeste Price is no Humbert Humbert. She's a cold, manipulative criminal, with terrifying sociopath tendencies.

That's not to say that Tampa doesn't dive into sociological and cultural ideas. In a wonderful interview with the website Jezebel, Nutting states that her goal was to explore female sexuality. She says "I think female predators tend to be sexually objectified and obtain a sort of celebrity status. I can’t remember the specific names of a single male-teacher/female-student case that got national attention off the top of my head. It’s not sensationalized or sexualized in the same way." There's a fantastic double standard at play. The awful consensus that many people have is that sexual abuse of a boy isn't as bad as sexual abuse of a girl; in addition to being wrong, it's also a shameful, sexist mentality of our times. Nutting carefully shows that Jack is a child. His actions, from the initial seduction to the aftermath, are those of someone not in control of his sexuality or maturity.

"'That was the best sex of my life, Jack.' He smiled; his eyes bashfully dodged my own but his face held a definite glow of pride.
'Mine too,' he said, then realizing his own joke, began to giggle. Now that it was over, the lust no longer there to suppress his modesty, Jack seemed embarrassed of his body--he'd lifted his knees up to his chest.
I reached up into the front seat and turned the key, blasting a cool stream of air-conditioning back onto us, and looked at the clock. It felt like we'd been there for hours, but it had only been twenty minutes.
'Are you hungry? Do you want to go through a drive-through?' Jack nodded (Nutting 113)."

While looking online for reaction to Tampa, I stumbled upon an excerpt in, of all places, Cosmopolitan Magazine. The introduction to the excerpt (which details Celeste and Jack's first round of sex) is "This summer's baddest, buzziest novel—about a hot young teacher who seduces her student—has enough biting humor and sexually graphic detail to make our Cosmo editors blush. It's also a brilliant commentary on sex and society. Here's your sneak peek." There's no mention of Jack's age, and the snippet makes Tampa sound like a dirty, acceptable beach read. I can only imagine the outrage and backlash had this appeared in GQ or Esquire, with the book being about a grown man who seduces a fourteen year old girl. I highly doubt the editors of Cosmo had this in mind, but perhaps that's another layer to the double standard. In society, it's more or less accepted that a young man would want to have sex with his attractive teacher, therefore making the act "less scandalous" than the male teacher/female student dynamic. Elsewhere in her Jezebel interview, Nutting says:

"I do feel like there are rigid boundaries for sexually explicit female characters (and for females in society in general), and when you cross them or go beyond those prescribed confines people are quick to devalue the book. I think one of the reasons that Fifty Shades was able to be such a commercial hit with its female-driven sexual content is because it’s ultimately an extremely traditional love story. As a culture I’d say we’re most comfortable talking about female sex when it’s in the confines of romantic love.

There are very, very few sexually explicit books about female sexual predators, which is part of the reason I felt the need to write Tampa. There’s a way to write a novel about a female sexual predator that would be quite accepted—to do so the same way the issue is largely discussed in the national media: talk about the ways or reasons the woman herself is a victim (which we care about far less, if at all, when the offender is male), show her being contrite and ashamed, take the focus off the sex or belittle its harm and violence. But that all goes back to precisely the reason that it’s hard for us to see females as sexual predators with male victims in the first place in our society."

I've barely scratched the surface of Tampa's other elements. Celeste's marriage reaches a breaking point long before the cracks in her "relationship" with Jack surface; a tired, demoralized teacher at her school becomes an unexpected ally; and unexpected people, from Jack's father to another lover, appear to dangerously send Celeste's private world into chaos. For as much as she plans, she cannot account for these detours. Jack becomes more mature and demanding, and the reader can see how the sexual relationship is wearing on him. Again, Nutting pays very careful attention to even the smallest details. Nothing is gratuitous, and Nutting manages to illuminate even the smallest ideas and consequences.

"I tried having him wear his old Halloween costumes and sports equipment while I pleasured him--a favorite of mine was the now-too-small cup that had been part of his junior soccer uniform. It barely held him; his genitals spilled out from its edges, like a snake-in-the-can practical joke that had been halfheartedly pushed back inside after popping open.
But nothing seemed to nudge Jack back into the mode of abandon I was searching for. The problem, I soon realized, wasn't simply between us. The way Jack would flinch at the slightest noise when we were alone, the moments during sex when I'd open my eyes to find that Jack's gaze wasn't trained on me at all but on his closed bedroom door, make it clear he couldn't let the catastrophe of Buck finding us together go: it had left Jack with a post-traumatic stress disorder that was heartily interfering with my getting off (Nutting 176)."

I had some issues with some of Nutting's craft choices: Celeste is an English teacher, leading to some stretched metaphors between her situation and the novels being discussed in the classroom. Some of the events (I'm being vague to avoid spoilers) seem too dramatic, especially given how detailed Celeste is in her manipulations. The novel, for the most part, is chilling in its depiction of Celeste as a sociopath. Toward the end, the revelations and domino-effect actions veer the novel into summertime melodrama. As for the commentator I cited at the beginning of this piece, the reader should not be rooting for Celeste. She's not committing these acts for any greater good; she's a pedophile. And as she starts a new chapter of her life at the novel's end, there's no hope for a sequel. She's still very damaged and in need of psychiatric help. How anyone could view her as a cheer-worthy hero is beyond me.

But again, these are the questions raised by the novel, and it forces everyone to have, at the minimum, an internal conversation about how male and female sexuality and perversions are viewed. While these potential conversations can be hazy or downright uncomfortable, Nutting should be commended for putting them out there in the first place. She's a wonderful writer and, most importantly within the context of Tampa, fiercely honest about what goes on in certain places. Some will laugh, some experience dirty thrills, but overall, these discussions are needed. We still live in a heavily patriarchal society that is able to turn an eye to male sexual abuse. In a way, fiction can sometimes be the only way to trigger these discussions. Nutting isn't out to shock, but to say "This happens. How do we feel about this? And how can we change these expectations and gut reactions?"

Work Cited:
Nutting, Alissa. Tampa. Copyright 2013 by Alissa Nutting.

A Zone of Insensibility: Jonathan Crary's "24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends Of Sleep"

In addition to being very interested in its subject matter, I recently read Jonathan Crary's 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep with increased determination after stumbling upon a book that is the exact opposite. As a bookseller, one of the joys of early morning shelving is skimming the books being put away, and as I do this, I tend to spend half the time making mental notes and the other half scoffing. Rarely has a book made me pause out of fear, but a few weeks ago, I saw a copy of Unconscious Branding by Douglas Van Praet. Of course, I'm committing the sin of judging a book by the cover, but I don't think I can be blamed for doing this. The cover image shows a woman with her eyes closed, possibly sleeping, with bar codes under both of her eyes. The subtitle is "How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing." Yes, technological advances are always developing and expanding; I'm not trying to come across like a cranky Luddite. But the idea of scientific advances for marketing/financial gain is terrifying to me. Without going into any discussion of the recent NSA revelations, everyone has at least a vague idea of how algorithms and unseen data mining are being used for the sake of marketing and commerce. The central theme of Crary's book shows that sleep is being considered a nuisance in the wake of nonstop capitalism. A human function and necessity that shouldn't even be questioned is being circumvented and chipped away in the name of filling every available moment with a chance to sell or add to the infinite collection of branding. This book, classified as philosophy in my bookstore, isn't an everyday screed against big capitalism and corporate dominance. It takes its title seriously, offering sobering examples of how sleep isn't taken into account in the dizzying world of global markets.

This book isn't presented from an angle of scaremongering, but with sober, detailed examples of the hypothesis. Military research studies of a species of bird are done to determine how to make humans (workers/soldiers) eliminate the bodily need for sleep. There are no timetables for when these developments could come to pass, nor does Crary claim it's right around the corner. His style is more focused on the fact that these kinds of researches are being done with the hope of them coming true. There's no scaremongering because it simply isn't needed; the examples alone do all the work.

"The sleeplessness research should be understood as one part of a quest for soldiers whose physical capabilities will more closely approximate the functionalities of non-human apparatuses and networks. There are massive ongoing efforts by the scientific-military complex to develop forms of 'augmented cognition' that will enhance many kinds of human-machine interaction. Simultaneously, the military is also funding many other areas of brain research, including the development of an anti-fear drug. There will be occasions when, for example, missile-armed drones cannot be used and death squads of sleep-resistant, fear-proofed commandos will be needed for missions of indefinite duration. As part of these endeavors, white-crowned sparrows have been removed from the seasonal rhythms of the Pacific coast environment to aid in the imposition of a machinic model of duration and efficiency onto the human body (Crary 3)."

Of course, times change. Humans engage in different activities, there are more opportunities to engage in various media outlets, and the digital revolution means that access to information and connection is always within one's reach. But before this century, sleep was an afterthought, except for people with sleeping problems. Now, there's the ever-nerve wracking idea that those precious hours are precious not for respite, regeneration, and cognitive means, but as a series of hours that could be engaged in some form of capitalist outlet. Crary mentions people waking up to check e-mail or the internet--I think everyone has done this out of habit, with a cell phone on the nightstand. But the idea of sleep as another social aspect, a part of our lives that can be broken down, into, or otherwise manipulated, is clarified.

"The huge portion of our lives that we spend asleep, freed from a morass of simulated needs, subsists as one of the great human affronts to the voraciousness of contemporary capitalism. Sleep is an uncompromising interruption of the theft of time from us by capitalism. Most of the seemingly irreducible necessities of human life--hunger, thirst, sexual desire, and recently the need for friendship--have been remade into commodified or financialized forms. Sleep poses the idea of a human need and interval of time that cannot be colonized and harnessed to a massive engine of profitability, and thus remains an incongruous anomaly and site of crisis in the global present (Crary 10-11)."

This keeps making me come back to my initial reaction to the Van Praet book--the woman on the cover could very well be sleeping, therefore adding a visual element to Crary's ideas. He doesn't write about physical means of harnessing data or statistics while we sleep, but there's an uneasy feeling that these capabilities are not too far away, along the same lines of the military studies on reducing the need for sleep. But the whole concept of 24/7, while tied with sleep, is a philosophical/cultural notion of itself, of a world and money never stopping, and therefore putting everyday citizens within its control. The notion of communal access to widespread information seems democratic at its core, but as Crary explains, this isn't the case. The powerful will want and get access to the information they need, even if its solely in the name of dollar signs. Because this is through digital means, it gives new meaning to the adage of "large, faceless corporations."

"For the vast majority of people, our perceptual and cognitive relationship to communication and information technology will continue to be estranged and disempowered because of the velocity at which new products emerge and at which arbitrary reconfigurations of entire systems take place. This intensified rhythm precludes the possibility of becoming familiar with any given arrangement. Certain cultural theorists insist that such conditions can easily be the basis for neutralizing power, but actual evidence supporting this view is non-existent (Crary 37)."

The above citation shows the strengths and weakness of Crary's writings. He can present complex ideas and make them logical without stooping or dumbing down the material, but many passages end in a similar thread. As a reader, I want evidence of "the actual evidence supporting this view." There are citations in the back of the book, but at times, there are so many ideas that almost demand concrete evidence. For me, it doesn't take away from his overall thesis, but these are the kinds of dead ends that critics can leap on and offer counterpoints to, potentially with statements like "evidence supporting this view does exist." This might be a weak example, but in today's age of intense, divisive opinions on where the world is going, it doesn't take much for a critic or someone desperate to shake a finger at someone's opinion to jump on this kind of wording. But Crary saves himself quite often by offering details explanations of other theorists and ideas that relate to the concept of 24/7 dominance.

"The everyday was the vague constellation of spaces and times outside what was organized and institutionalized around work, conformity, and consumerism. It was all the daily habits that were beneath notice, where one remained anonymous. Because it evaded capture and could not be made useful, it was seen by some to have a core of revolutionary potential. For Maurice Blanchot, its dangerous essence was that it was without event, and was both unconcealed and unperceived. In French, the adjective 'quotidienne' evokes more strikingly the ancient practice of marking and numbering the passing of the solar day, and it emphasizes the diurnal rhythms that were long a foundation of social existence. But what [other philosophers] also described in the 1950s was the intensifying occupation of everyday life by consumption, organized leisure, and spectacle. In this framework, the rebellions of the late 1960s were, at least in Europe and North America, waged in part around the idea of reclaiming the terrain of everyday life from institutionalization and specialization (Crary 70)."

As I mentioned before, he never lapses into personal opinions. He lets the ideas, whether his own or someone else's, flourish and stand on their own. 24/7 is a slim title that easily could have been doubled in size with meandering. What amazes me is how much information and how many ideas are packed into less than two hundred pages. This also leaves no space for an afterword or a summary of how people can stop or evade the 24/7 complex. Had he done this, it would have pushed the book into the pile of political and sociological books that cast blame or claim to have all the answers. By merely presenting how the world is changing and adapting, it's enough for readers to come to their own conclusions that some capitalist mindsets are scary and dangerous. Overall, we need to cling to the hours spent devoted to sleep--every other waking hour has been commercialized, and for the sake of what it means to be human, solitude and evasion of outside influences is imperative. There are other books that approach these same issues, but Crary outlines the ideas in ways even the most conscious citizens haven't realized. As technology grows, we need more reminders of our intangible natures, free from cash, exploitation, and data.

Work Cited:
Crary, Jonathan. 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. Copyright 2013 by Jonathan Crary.

Book Forms: "How Literature Saved My Life" by David Shields

"What I believe about memoir is that you just happen to be using the nuts and bolts of your own life to illustrate your vision. It isn't really me; it's a character based on myself that I made up in order to illustrate things I want to say. In other words, I think memoir is as far from real life as fiction is. I think you're obligated to use accurate details, but selection is as important a process as imagination."

I stumbled upon this quote as I reviewed my essay on David Shield's 2010 manifesto Reality Hunger. I don't remember if Shields wrote this himself, or if it was one of the hundreds of quotes culled and reused from other sources. However, it's an apt introduction to a look at his latest book, How Literature Saved My Life, a work that is almost jarringly straightforward when paired with his often-criticized, often-praised previous work. I'm not sure if this newest book is a personal endeavor for Shields or a sort of backlash against the people who heavily dismissed his manifesto. To recap: in 2010, Shields made the claim that current literature was dead, and would eventually be replaced by memoirs, essays, and collages/remixes/sampling. Three years later, the novel is still alive and well, balanced between experimental artists and contemporary writers who are able to explore reality and create complex sociological conversations within the "confines" of a standard narrative. Today, the question is whether or not the short story has a future, but I imagine that in 2016, that form will be fine, and we'll be wringing our hands over another form (I often wonder if poetry have this problem). If all of this seems like I'm picking on Shields' argument, I'm not. As my link above shows, I loved Reality Hunger, even if I disagreed with some of his assertions. That's what made it such a satisfying experience--he formed his arguments and opinions very carefully and confidently, creating a work that truly meant to foster discussions rather than bitter arguments. In How Literature Saved My Life, Shields creates a sort of autobiographical manifesto. This isn't the writing of a person who hates or dismisses literature, but of someone with a major debt to how the form has changed and shaped him. Sure, there may be some embellishments, but the statements are refreshingly honest.

How Literature Saved My Life is written with progressions, but also goes back and forth between passages of memory and critical analysis of various texts, not so much to provide written examples of how literature reflects the reality of life (Shields is too smart to take such an obvious path), but to provide ideas he can shape into his account of his development. He mentions the reaction to Reality Hunger, but also writes many passages that reflect how art and memory are not concrete:

"Yeats said that we can't articulate the truth, but we can embody it. I think that's wrong or at least beside the point. What's of interest to me is precisely how we try to articulate the truth, and what that says about us, and about 'truth (Shields 133).'"

Shields' memories are painstakingly precise, and when he pairs them up with passages from literature, he's not going for the obvious links. Yes, there are dozens, probably hundreds, of literary memoirs out there, books on literature as life, on writing as therapy, on the world explained through select texts, etc. But Shields aims for an atmosphere of reality. This isn't a love letter to literature so much as it's an intense account of literature illuminating the truth about various life events, not just for Shields, but for everyone. For anyone who considers him/herself a writer or a serious reader, it's inescapable.

"As a nine-year-old, I would awake and spend the entire night sitting cross-legged on the landing of the stairs to my basement bedroom, unable to fathom that one day I'd cease to be. I remember being mesmerized by a neighbor's tattoo of a death's-head, underneath which were the words 'As I am, you shall someday be.' (Now, do I yearn for this state, the peace that passeth all understanding? What if death is my Santa Claus?) Cormac McCarthy: 'Death is the major issue in the world. For you, for me, for all of us. It just is. To not be able to talk about it is very odd.' I'm trying to do a very un-American thing here: talk about it. Why? Pynchon: 'When we speak of 'seriousness,' ultimately we are talking about an attitude toward death, how we act in its presence, for example, or how we handle it when it isn't so immediate (Shields 100).'"

Mixed in within longer passages are some beautiful vignettes, none of which are throwaway memories, but rather essential pieces to Shields' longer goal.

"Entering St. Francis Hospital to receive some not particularly crucial test results, I thought What the hell and crossed myself. A beatific nun passed me and said, with astonishing intensity, 'Good morning'--as close as I'll ever get to religion (Shields 118)."

"The question I've been trying to ask all along

Do I love art anymore, or only artfully arranged life (Shields 183)?"




I can't imagine How Literature Saved My Life will generate the same attention (or, more appropriately, the same controversy) as Reality Hunger, but I can see people familiar with Shields reading this and pausing. However, the reader needs to realize that definitions are flexible. This isn't a book that merely defends the novel, but takes into account the written word in all of its forms--novels, stories, documents, and essays. In one of the more compelling sections, Shields records "Fifty-Five Works I Swear By." Some of these are novels and some are even television shows (Curb Your Enthusiasm). To use a very tired phrase, Shields explores these works in small snippets, but shows how they've been life-affirming for him. He's almost intimidating as far as how well-read he is, and he gets inspiration out of some very different texts. This isn't a "Top Fifty-Five," and he never claims that readers will reap the same benefits out of these works that he does. Also, some of the descriptions are intensely short and say nothing about the text except for a brief explanation. Like anyone, I imagine that Shields came to this list after years of trial and error. In my own case, my "favorite writings" have drastically fluctuated over the last ten years or so. I get the impression that Shields doesn't care what anyone thinks of this list, but at the same time, he's not disregarding the reader's feelings--it's just fiercely personal.

"Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia. The freest form: the essay.
Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings. Both poetry and the essay come from the same impulse--to think about something and at the same time see it closely and carefully and enact it. An odd feature of poetry is that it's all 'true': there's no nonfiction poetry and fiction poetry. Whether it's Larkin or Neruda, it all goes into the poetry section of the bookstore (Shields 149)."

And as with Reality Hunger, I disagreed with some of Shields' opinions. Perhaps this is just a difference in opinion, but even if I understand where Shields is coming from, I can't get behind assertions such as

"The undergraduates I teach are much more open to a new reading experience when it's a blog. I know there have to be a hundred complex reasons as to why that is, but none of them change the fact that un- or even anti-literary types haven't stopped reading. They just don't get as excited about the book form. The blog form: immediacy, relative lack of scrim between writer and reader, promised delivery of unmediated reality, pseudo-artlessness, comedy, naked feeling (Shields 168)."

Nor was I drawn to detailed accounts of his early sex life. The autobiographical details are brutally honest, always tied into the text and his points, but I found myself less concerned with Shields as a person and more interested in Shields as a literary critic. In a way, despite his coming to a relatively satisfactory conclusion, How Literature Saved My Life reads as an artist's struggle with what defines art, especially in literary forms. As his two latest books show, the definition of the novel and the written word can be expanded to include a dizzying array of ideas, but the beauty comes from the constant bending, breaking, and re-imagining. When Shields ventures into old age, I can see him writing a follow-up to this, and his opinions might very well be different then. For as much as he strives for concrete answers about literature's place in today's world, he arrives at no definite assertion. And I think he knew this going in, but as any writer/reader can tell you, it's impossible not to try. I admire Shields' devotion to the subject, even if I disagree with him. Again, it's about discussions and ideas, not any face-off between ideologies.

Work Cited:
Shields, David. How Literature Saved My Life. Copyright 2013 by David Shields.

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.

International Lampoons: Gary Shteyngart's "The Russian Debutante's Handbook"

Ever since the publication of Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story in 2010, I've been eager to read his previous two novels. Super Sad True Love Story had its share of immense praise and intense criticism, and I enjoyed Shteyngart's imagination, dialogue, and careful blend of situation/cultural comedy. It touched upon contemporary crises (immigrant experiences, the fragility of the American economy) in a futuristic setting, with an oddball love story blending with a look at an American landscape just ludicrous enough to be wholly believable. As expansive as its plot was, it was a surprisingly compact novel, composed primarily in letters and e-mail correspondences. I had all of these ideas in mind as I finally picked up a copy of The Russian Debutante's Handbook, his 2002 debut. Having a roughly decent idea of Shteyngart's creative ideas and topics, I expected and received more humorous ruminations on the nature of Americanization and immigration, but this time, it's completed on a much bigger, more complex scale. While I have a tendency to read certain bibliographies in wildly random orders, I can see the progression between Shteyngart's debut and his most recent offering. While The Russian Debutante's Handbook has quite a bit to enjoy, it ultimately feels like he tried to pack too much into a single work. Given the years that have passed, his newer book feels like the work of someone with more experience, someone who knows how to do a lot with less. For a debut novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook is impressive, but occasionally overbearing.

The novel follows the life and exploits of Vladimir Girskhin, a timid, neurotic Russian-Jewish immigration worker in New York. He interacts with his odd parents (specifically his overbearing mother), his girlfriend Challah (an overweight dominatrix), and a parade of occasional friends and visitors to the immigration offices. He meets the acquaintance of Rybakov, a wealthy, extremely eccentric (he has animated conversations with an oscillating fan) Russian who wants to become an American citizen. While attempting to bride Vladimir, he mentions his son, a Russian mafioso known as the Groundhog. A series of escalating events eventually steer Vladimir to Prava (a substitute for Prague), an enclave of American expatriates. These events include Vladimir forming a relationship with a young American woman with high tastes and demands to the point of bringing him to financial ruin; a con involving the friend of a friend who attempts to sexually assault him; and the constant worry and expectations of his parents, who spent a lot of money to put him through a fancy liberal arts college in the Midwest. After traveling to Prava, Vladimir reinvents himself as a suave American swindler, creating a complicated Ponzi scheme to defraud people under the watchful eye of the Groundhog.

Throughout all of these shenanigans and layers, Shteyngart fills the novel with generous layers of hilarity, both explicit and sly. Vladimir toes the line between American values and Russian traditions, often befuddled and perplexed by both.

"'Vladimir, how can I say this? Please don't be cross with me. I know you'll be cross with me, you're such a soft young man. But if I don't tell you the truth, will I be fulfilling my motherly duties? No, I will not. The truth then...' She sighed deeply, an alarming sigh, the sigh of exhaling the last doubt, the sigh of preparing for battle. 'Vladimir,' she said, 'you walk like a Jew.'

'What?'

'What? The anger in his voice. What? he says. What? Walk back to the window now. Just walk back to the window. Look at your feet. Look carefully. Look at how your feet are spread apart. Look at how you walk from side to side. Like an old Jew from the shtetl. Little Rebbe Girshkin. Oh, now he's going to scream at me! Or maybe he's going to cry. Either way, he's going to hurt his mother. That's how he repays his lifelong debt to her, by tearing her to shreds like a wolf (Shteyngart 45)."

The multicultural line is also consistently crossed as Vladimir deals with two of his favorite pastimes: drinking and dealing with women.

"The waitress was arriving with the bourbons, and Vladimir looked to her pleasant figure--pleasant in the Western sense, meaning: impossibly thin, but with breasts. She was clothed entirely in two large swatches of leather, the leather fake and shiny in a self-mocking way, absolutely correct for 1993, the first year when mocking the mainstream had become the mainstream. Also, the waitress had no hair on her head, an arrangement Vladimir had warmed to over the years, despite his fondness for rooting his nose through musty locks and curls. And finally, the waitress had a face, a fact lost on most of the patrons, but not on Vladimir who admired the way one overdone eyelash stuck miserably to the skin below. Pathos! Yes, she was a high-quality person, this waitress, and it saddened Vladimir that she wouldn't look at him in the least as she served the bourbons (Shteyngart 52)."

In a sense, Vladimir's neurosis and self-consciousness is akin to early Woody Allen films. He's frumpy and consumed, yet it never stops him from attaining beautiful women, even if he can't maintain a wholly successful relationship. The Russian Debutante's Handbook goes into a complicated mix of plots and characters once Vladimir arrives in Prava. For a debut novel, Shteyngart is to be commended for balancing such a dizzying array of characters and happenings. It successfully mirrors and lampoons crime and capitalism in post-Cold War Europe. Shteyngart creates vivid, beautiful descriptions of the grim surroundings:

"And then Vladimir looked down. He had picked up the expression 'sea of spires' from some travel brochure back at the airport's tourist office, and while there were certainly golden spires reflecting in the late-summer sun in the architectural stew below, it seemed rather partial of the pamphlet to fail to mention the sloping red roofs landsliding down the hill and into the gray bend of water that Kostya pointed out as the Tavlata River. Or the enormous pale-green domes on both sides of the river capping massive Baroque churches. Or the tremendous Gothic powder towers, strategically spread out along the cityscape, like dark medieval guards protecting the town from the usual nonsense that had managed to consume so many European skylines throughout the years (Shteyngart 203-204)."



One of Vladimir's Ponzi schemes involves creating a literary magazine, which allows Shteyngart to poke fun at pompous artists and American expatriates. The seed of the literary magazine is planted when Vladimir makes the acquaintance of Cohen, an Iowan living in Prava. The two men bond over poetry, and through the comical discourse, jabs at creativity and identity are thrown in.

"So that was his story! That was Cohen's theme! His father was a rich asshole. How shocking. Vladimir was ready to attack Cohen with his own background, from the Jew-baiting of Leningrad to his years as a Stinky Russian Bear in Westchester. Assimilation, my ass. What do you know of assimilation, spoiled American pig? Why, I'll show you...I'll show you all (Shteyngart 219)!"

So where does this novel stumble? My biggest critique comes with Shteyngart's style. I'm a huge fan of comic, literary novels, but generally, it's a very difficult balance to achieve. The Russian Debutante's Handbook is hilarious, but Shteyngart suffers from a similar problem I found in Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: there are far too many winks and asides delivered straight to the reader, not so much in the sense of "breaking the fourth wall," but in the sense of distracting from the novel. Yes, it's an intentionally absurd fantasy of international intrigue, but it's still a novel. There were so many passages that made me think "this should really just be narrated in the first person point of view" that I eventually stopped keeping track. I also kept wondering if Shteyngart was trying to imagine himself as Vladimir instead of creating a unique character. The asides and direct statements also distract in the sense that the reader pretty much assumes that everything is going to work out alright in the end, even in the face of intense developments and plot twists. Toward the end, Vladimir is accosted by a gang of skinheads. The scene is tense, but the narration up to then has been so loose and carefree that the reader mentally jumps ahead and wonders how everything is going to be tidied up. This creates a stumble in an otherwise great work of satire. At times, the novel is too hip for its own good.

And as I've mentioned far too many times, I have nothing against long, complex works, but The Russian Debutante's Handbook goes through some tedious repetitions. There are countless drunken, drug-hazed scenes at American and European bars, most of which move the plot along, but some of which are scenes for the sake of being scenes. The Russian gangsters are witty caricatures with surprising depth: for all of their danger, some are church-going folks, and some reveal some tender self-doubt and hesitations. Generally, the novel is plotted and outlined very carefully, but one has to wonder what Shteyngart's ultimate goal was to accomplish. As a whole, it succeeds as a satire of various nationalities and their identities, but it hits just enough lulls and repeats to weigh the reader down.

Ultimately, this is why I found Super Sad True Love Story to be a much stronger example of Shteyngart's literary themes. It's just as comical and ludicrous, but the characters are much stronger. By eliminating a host of secondary characters, the later work is free to focus on love, culture clashes, and a crazy imagining of a fictional country (the future America). Shteyngart's debut never wavers in its sociological observations, but it concludes as a standard first novel, with so many ideas and a need to add constant expansions. Gary Shteyngart is an intelligent, creative, and hilarious novelist, and the seeds were planted here. It just took a bit of time and growth to find out where the emphasis should go.

Work Cited:
Shteyngart, Gary. The Russian Debutante's Handbook. Copyright 2002 by Gary Shteyngart.