Errors of Comedy: Richard Russo's "Straight Man"

When my schedule allows, I've been participating in a monthly book club organized by one of my co-workers, and thanks to it, I've been reading a variety of works I would normally overlook. Even on my own, there are still dozens of authors within my radar whom I know surprisingly little about given their reputations. Last month's selection was Straight Man by Richard Russo, and had it not been suggested and voted upon by my book club, there's an excellent chance I would have gone a couple more years without reading it, or any of Russo's works for that matter. This isn't out of any specific avoidance, but because Russo, while being prolific and generally well-regarded, hasn't really come up in my outside literary readings, nor have any of his books been recommended to me. Even with one of his titles under my belt, I'd still be hard pressed to give a truly accurate assessment of his image or his writing style as a whole. I found Straight Man to be very funny, one of the more genuinely comical novels I've read in quite some time. However, the appearance of passages that made me laugh out loud weren't enough to overcome other, more glaring stylistic issues. And while I can't say that I'll avoid the other titles in his bibliography, the reading didn't fuel any immediate desire to add them to my future reading list.

The novel takes place within the confines of a week at a small liberal arts college in rural Pennsylvania. William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is the chair of the English department and has a variety of problems and people within his orbit. He has one successful book, published years earlier. The school is having serious budget problems, and rumors of faculty dismissals are rampant. His fellow professors annoy him in various ways, from their timidity to bombastic natures to their outright loathing of him (in an early, outright metaphorical scene, a poet attacks him with a notebook, cutting and impaling his nose with the metal spiral of her notebook). His relationship with his wife is occasionally strained to the point of him imagining her having affairs, not out of any sexual fetish, but out of mere curiosity. His grown daughter is having her own marital issues. And to top this off, he fears he has a kidney stone (his efforts to urinate are documented very consistently). All of these combine and are elevated by a random declaration--while wearing a fake nose and glasses, William appears on a local TV station and threatens to kill a campus goose every single day until the budget situation is rectified. In addition to dealing with his family, students, and fellow faculty members, he also gains national exposure for his declaration, and nobody knows with any certainty whether he meant his statement or not. The week takes several turns, some expected, some unexpected, as William attempts to navigate the various problems.

As the synopsis implies, Straight Man is comedic, with scenes and dialogue both slapstick and wry. William is mentoring his secretary and her writings, and offer this observation, the likes of which appear steadily. This is one of the better pieces of humor in the novel, whereas at other times it feels a bit too unbelievable.

"Last fall, buoyed and excited by my enthusiastic response to a new story, she made the mistake of sharing my comments with her husband and inviting him to read one of her stories. It took him most of the evening, she said, sitting there in his armchair, laboring over her sentences, his brow darkening, phrase by phrase, pausing every so often to glance at her. When he finished, he got up, scratched himself thoughtfully, and said I must be trying to get her in the sack. Where literary criticism is concerned, he's a minimalist (Russo 64-65)."

William's duck threat--a common refrain is people saying duck when the object of the threat was a goose--is so outlandish, and everyone's opinion of him is so fraught between respect and disdain, that nobody really knows if he's serious or kidding about the declaration. This balance makes for some well-played interactions, since while everyone is sure William isn't the kind of person to kill animals for monetary reasons, it seems just plausible enough to tread with caution.

"'That's good news,' I say. 'At a duck a day that means I only have to kill four or five ducks, and we've got close to thirty.'

Dickie thinks this is pretty funny and laughs immoderately. I remain immoderately sober. If he's at all disconcerted to be the only one laughing, he shows no sign. 'No, seriously,' he says. 'You did us all a favor, Hank. Last night--I admit it--I could have stabbed you through the throat with an ice pick, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought, we can use this.'

'The throat?' I say. 'With an ice pick?' I mean, after all, we're sitting here on Dickie's leather couch in the office of the chief executive officer of an institution of higher learning, as close to the heart of civilization as you can get without going to a better school.

Dickie ignores me. 'I mean I called you ever name in the book at first. I said, 'What's that hmm-hmm-hmm-hmm-hmm' trying to do to me?' He pauses, as if to allow me the opportunity to count the hmm's and substitute expletives in the blanks so I'll know what he called me (Russo 160)."

For the most part, the plot is straightforward, leading to semi-expected conclusions with unexpected courses for getting to those conclusions (a later scene, involving wet pants and crawlspaces in a ceiling, is handled very well). This also makes Straight Man one of the more dialogue-heavy novels I've read in awhile, since most of the developments and revelations come through outright discussions rather than narrative execution. However, while William does genuinely care about the people he loves and respects, his sarcasm can be grating, and some of his observations edge precariously on those of a typical cranky middle aged white guy, occasionally flecked with bits of mild sexism disguised as humorous narrative.

"Gracie enters. She's dressed beautifully, expensively, in a beige dress that looks like it could be cashmere. As her always lush body has gotten bigger, so has her hair, as if it's her intention to keep her general bodily proportions the same. She looks, frankly, heroic and quite wonderful, a brave woman intent on one last sexual conquest before menopause (Russo 104)."

While I went to a large state college and not a small liberal arts school, a member of my book club stated that Russo's fictional imaginings of small town college life are nearly flawless. Everyone knows everyone, indiscretions and dalliances are sometimes common knowledge, and people often stay in positions or houses for years after claiming they'll be leaving. I can say on my own authority that the scenes from William's creative writing class are spot-on. Russo captures the essence of many early writing students, balancing their actual writing skills with their general demeanor of wanting to be writers. William actually seems like a knowledgeable, fair writing instructor, and his students are full of memorable characteristics.

"Although they have been chafing each other all semester, Leo and Solange are not so different. Both are friendless, as far as I can tell. Neither seems to have discovered a way to exist in the world. Solange fancies herself a poet, and to her this has less to do with writing poetry than it does with adopting a superior attitude. She dresses in black, eschews makeup, smokes dope, feigns a kind of exhausted boredom. She'd like to think she's smart (she is) but fears she isn't, at least not smart enough to justify her superiority. She's pale-skinned and bony, and this, I suspect, is partly why she objects so strongly to Leo's lurid adolescent fantasies. In his stories girls like Solange don't rate notice, much less ravishing. To attract the attention of one of Leo's vengeful ghosts, a girl has to have big breasts, not a protruding breastbone (Russo 99)."

Russo wisely doesn't opt for some obvious directions--William's thoughts about his wife's potential affairs are merely thoughts, and the supposed flirtations of his colleague's daughter turns out differently than some writers would opt for (given the whole middle aged white guy angle, there are plenty of writers whom I can see inserting a fantastical affair, but for all of his faults, William is more or less noble). However, Russo's execution falters fairly often. There's a big build-up to William meeting his father for the first time in years. When this finally happens, it commands all of two or three pages of strange, unsatisfying dialogue. A goose does end up being killed, but the revelation of the killer, while obvious right away, isn't explored with any true discussion of why it was done. And the biggest problem of all is the novel's epilogue: Russo jumps forward several months, and everyone is happy. Problems are solved, characters are content, and closure is given where, in some cases, it would have been more intriguing for their to be none. In my previous reading of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, I complained about the ending as well, how it seemed to be tied up and closed off far too abruptly. In Reif Larsen's case, I chalked it up to a beginning novelist's lack of experience. But in this case, coming from a writer as established and supposedly versatile as Russo, it's perplexing.

I'm just confused as to what he was trying to do with Straight Man and how it received as much praise as it did upon its publication. I have too many issues with its development to be able to recommend it to anyone--in fact, one of my fellow book club participants made an amazing assessment, saying it is the kind of book one would recommend to someone who claims to like everything. There's enough variety in these pages for appeal along a variety of genres. Personally, I think its reception is due to its time. With very few exceptions, the late 1990s seemed to be a kind of stagnant era for literature. In that time, the country was stable, both economically and socially, without the serious divisions we've faced in the new century. This might seem like I'm going overboard, but in 1997, William's problems could have seemed bigger than they actually were. I don't know if this is Russo's only foray into comedic writing, but again, I genuinely enjoyed his timing, and there were several instances where I actually laughed out loud. Humorous writing is hard on its own, and even harder to consistently infuse into what is otherwise a serious novel. But if Russo is more of a straight literary writer, I'd be more interested in his serious works in order to see how he does arcs and climaxes without being able to insert a slapstick breakdown or a well-timed zinger. Overall, I'm apathetic about Straight Man, which to me is worse than outright disdain. There are just enough literary elements to make this the book equivalent of fast food--good in small doses depending on one's mood, but not meant for any lasting value.

Work Cited:
Russo, Richard. Straight Man. Copyright 1997 by Richard Russo.

Mental Landscapes: Teju Cole's "Open City"

Outside of the occasional blurb upon its 2011 publication, I haven't read any reviews of Teju Cole's Open City, and I know little about the author himself, except for a brief overview of his credentials (he's a writer, photographer, and historian, and based on that alone, he's probably an awesome person with whom to have a couple of beers and a conversation). Therefore, crafting an introduction is proving to be a challenge, since I normally open with an aside, an explanation of how I came to read a specific work, or an overview of my previous readings of a given author. With so little in mind, and therefore with so little knowledge or assumption of what I was getting into, I'm pleasantly amazed at how quickly Open City placed itself into conversations and awareness of contemporary literature. It has been embraced by the literary establishment (in whatever guise you assume that to be), and as a bookseller, I've seen the work picked up by a variety of readers and demographics. It has been on my list for a lot longer than I wanted (I had hoped to read it earlier this year), and upon reflection, it carries a wealth of positive contradictions: it's a debut novel that distances itself from standard notions of what composes a novel; it's original, yet evocative of past writers such as Italo Calvino; and it blends storytelling with a variety of fields, from philosophy to history to sociology.

Open City follows the travels, thoughts, and interactions of Julius, a Nigerian-German psychiatrist in New York City. We see his observations as he takes long, meandering walks around the city, interacts with friends and strangers, recalls his childhood in Africa, and travels to Europe. It doesn't take long to realize this isn't a novel in a conventional sense; it's an unfolding and layered exploration in a fictional setting. Within the first chapter, Julius has his plans disrupted by the New York City Marathon, pays an impromptu visit to an elderly Japanese professor, and shares a brief conversation with a neighbor in his apartment building. These scenarios and meetings jump from person to person, and within these jumps, there are moves between various thoughts and observations. Even when Julius isn't walking or interacting, his mind is constantly obsessing, analyzing, and dreaming. For example, he visits a grocery store, and the surrounding area leads to these diversions:

"At the grocery store, I bought bread, eggs, and beer, and next door, at the Jamaican place, I bought goat curry, yellow plantains, and rice and peas to take home. On the other side of the grocery store was a Blockbuster; though I had never rented anything from there, I was startled to see a sign announcing it, too, was going out of business. If Blockbuster couldn't make it in an area full of students and families, it meant that the business model had been fatally damaged, that the desperate efforts they had made recently, and which I now recalled, of lowering rental prices, launching an advertising blitz, and abolishing late fines, had all come too late. I thought of Tower Records--a connection I couldn't help making, given that both companies had for a long time dominated their respective industries. It wasn't that I felt sorry for these faceless national corporations; far from it. They had made their profits and their names by destroying smaller, earlier local businesses. But I was touched not only at the passage of these fixtures in my mental landscape, but also at the swiftness and dispassion with which the market swallowed even the most resilient enterprises (Cole 19)."

In addition to his narrative, Cole's major talent lies in making these seemingly abrupt transitions seamless. In Julius's solitude, like anyone else's, his thought process moves quickly through what he sees. However, there were times throughout the novel when I had trouble accepting the depth of the conversations he strikes up with random strangers. These discussions are not unlike his personal thoughts--they encompass the same variety of topics and hypotheses, all of which are educational, fascinating, and well-written. On a plane ride to Brussels, Julius sits next to an elderly woman who turns out to be a doctor. Their conversation starts off innocently and politely, but within the span of a few pages, they're discussing history, architecture, and travels. Perhaps Cole is deliberately elaborating casual small talk, which usually includes random topics like weather and jobs, instead of:

"If you ever get a chance to go [to Heliopolis], you should. It's a fantastical place, and Edouard Empain, or Baron Empain as they call him, was the engineer who designed and built it. That was in 1907. It was a real luxury capital, broad avenues, big gardens. There's a building there called Qasr Al-Baron, the Baron's Palace, that was modeled on Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and also on a Hindu temple, a specific one, but I don't recall the name. And you know, this is now the most important suburb of Cairo; in fact it's within the city boundaries now. The president of Egypt lives there today. But the Empains are in a tussle with the Egyptian government, because part of Heliopolis belongs to them, and they are trying to claim it, or at least get compensated for it (Cole 91)."

Julius also encounters a young Muslim clerk in an internet cafe, and ends up getting drinks with him and one of his friends. The conversation turns political and sometimes alienating, depending on one's position or religion. But Cole, framing these as conversation pieces, offers no judgement or leanings. Julius is shocked and naturally incredulous at the statements, but through these delicate, sensitive opinions, the reader is merely a spectator to discussions that happen all over, whether we want to admit this or not.

"And Hezbollah, I said, you support them, too? Yes, he said. Hezbollah, Hamas, same thing. It is resistance, simple. Every Israeli home has weapons. I looked at Faroq. He looked at me levelly and said, It's the same for me. It is resistance. And what about Al-Qaeda? I said. Khalil said, True, it was a terrible day, the twin towers. Terrible. What they did was very bad. But I understand why they did it. This man is an extremist, I said, you hear me, Farouq? Your friend is an extremist. But I was pretending to an outrage greater than I actually felt. In the game, if it was a game, I was meant to be the outraged American, though what I felt was more sorrow and less anger. Anger, and the semiserious use of a word like extremist, was easier to handle than sorrow. This is how Americans think Arabs think, I said to them both. It really saddens me. And you, what about you, Farouq? Do you support Al-Qaeda, too (Cole 120)."

Throughout these conversations, Cole is essentially mapping the world and emphasizing the connections between people. I hesitate to say this is done in an exaggerated manner, since that sounds like a petty criticism. It's just that the bulk of Open City is stunning realistic, and chance conversations that turn into compelling historical and political assessments occasionally gave me pause. These work much better when Julius describes his complex childhood in Nigeria. He recounts his time in a tough Nigerian military school, from the interactions with his classmates to the abuse he received from the teachers and officers. The reader is given his personal history along with historical details of Nigerian life, and between the lines, Julius explores his views of that time in two ways--from his point of view then and his adult hindsight. Cole's writing never stops digging, both historically and psychologically. I cannot think of a debut novel that contains this much complexity.

"After my father's burial, I was keen to return to school. I did not play the helpless orphan, had no time for it. A surprising number of my classmates had been through the same thing, losing parents to illness or accidents. One good friend has lost his dad in the executions that followed the failed military coup of 1976. He never spoke about it, but he wore it as a badge of honor. What I wanted for myself that year was some sense of belonging, and loss paradoxically helped enrich that sense. I threw myself into the military training, the classes, the physical workouts, the rhythms of prep and manual labor (cutting grass with cutlasses, doing duties on the school's maize farms). Not that I liked labor for its own sake--far from it--but I found something true in the work, found something of myself in it (Cole 81)."

My main critique of Open City comes from its ending. Without giving anything concrete away, the novel suddenly introduces revelations and climaxes that would be at home in a standard narrative, but become perplexing after pages of carefully crafted studies and interactions. The novel is told in the first person, and the outside revelations show that Julius is not a perfect, that he's made plenty of mistakes in his life. However, nowhere in the narrative does Julius suggest he's without faults or problems. He shares details of how his relationship ended and hints at how an abrupt vacation put strain on his co-workers. However, the emphasis throughout is not on him specifically; the entire novel uses him as a sort of camera, taking in elements of the world both big and small. The added-on revelations are a distraction. They aren't enough to completely bring down what is otherwise an amazing piece of writing, but they come awfully close. However, as the novel comes to its close, there are still many compelling passages that stand alone as their own studies. As a writer (both fictional and otherwise), Cole is almost bursting at the seams with knowledge, and as a reader, it's impossible not to get caught up in these elements.

"The practice of psychiatry is partly about seeing the world as a collection of tribes. Take a set of individuals who have brains that, with regard to how they map reality, are more or less equal: differences among brains in this set, this ostensibly normal group, this control group, which constitutes the majority of humanity, are small. Mental well-being is mysterious, but this group is fairly predictable, and what little science has discovered about brain function and chemical signaling applies broadly. The right hemisphere processes in parallel, the left processes serially, and messages are passed more or less efficiently between the two by the corpus callosum. The whole organ nestles inside the skull, steadily improving at a range of astonishingly complex tasks, while getting worse at a few others. This is our picture of normality (Cole 204-205)."

There is no way, nor is there any need, to summarize what Open City is "about," since this includes so many potential views. Aside from the cited political conversation, this is truly a work that succeeds as a piece of post-9/11 art. Our worlds and beliefs can be so divided, and this is an attempt to show closeness and universal moments among wildly different people and places. However, it doesn't simplify anything. In another sort of paradox, Open City highlights the vastness of humanity by attempting to bridge the aforementioned gaps. From its diverse narrator to the diverse experiences and citizens he encounters, the novel manages to show how much is out there, both philosophically and physically. This is why I had trouble with the concrete revelations at the end of the book. Had Cole merely ended with Julius's observations and not a twist that shows his faults, it would have strongly maintained its atmosphere. But again, my critique is personal, and doesn't take away from the world that Cole has created. Open City is thought-provoking in the best of ways, doesn't offer any solutions, but forces the reader to realize how complex the world is. It's a creation that becomes even more amazing when the reader realizes that Cole still has more works to come. Because the world is so complex, there are more ideas and philosophies to explore, and I cannot wait to see what he imagines next.

Work Cited:
Cole, Teju. Open City. Copyright 2011 by Teju Cole.

Continental Divides: "The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet" by Reif Larsen

On the world of Facebook, I'm always seeing friends (or friends of friends) asking for book recommendations, and this generally leads to a dizzying, varied amount of titles thrown about, sometimes with little regard for the tastes of the person making said request. For example, just because I loved Infinite Jest doesn't mean that everyone I know will love it. I take book recommendations very seriously. If someone suggests a title to me, or if I'm loaned a book, I always take them to heart, even if my schedule forces me to put a given work on hiatus for awhile. More often than not, the people who suggest books to me know what I like, or have at least a basic notion of what would appeal to me. A couple of years ago, my friend Jamie enthusiastically recommended The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, a debut novel by writer Reif Larsen. Jamie and I had a long history of working together with books, and she's actually one of the better sources for potential material, since she and I either completely agree on books or completely disagree. This makes for great discussions, since we can either agree on something or have a tasteful debates. I finally got around to Larsen's work, and found myself with conflicting opinions about the novel's setup and execution.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet tells the story of the title protagonist, a precocious, genius mapmaker living in Montana. He's twelve years old, the son of a reticent farmer father and a scientist mother, living with them and his sister, Gracie. His older brother Layton was killed in a shotgun mishap, leading to added stress and distance between the already conflicting personalities in the household. His own personality leads him to map and chart virtually every aspect of his life, from his father's physical whiskey-drinking tics to the amount of time it takes to shuck ears of corn. These maps, charts, and diagrams are presented on almost every page of the book (more on these later). His incredibly intellect leads to opportunities publishing maps and charts in a variety of academic publications, without any of them knowing how old he really is. His mentor, an entomologist named Dr. Yorn, has encouraged T.S. to submit his drawings to the publications, which leads to the young man being selected for a science award, presented by the Smithsonian. After weighing his options. T.S. decides to keep the news from his family, and hitches a ride on a freight train heading east, in order to get to Washington D.C. in time for the presentation.

This plot setup allows for Larsen to explore a multitude of themes--family, identity, and personal/physical journeys. T.S. is supremely gifted, possibly afflicted with a mild form of Asperger's syndrome (hinted at early in the book), but for the most part, a child, coming to terms with his intellect and still-developing social skills. Some of Larsen's passages hint to this, balancing T.S.'s observations with continual actions that show his age. For example:

"A year ago, Dr. Yorn had submitted my first illustration to the Smithsonian under the guise that I was a full colleague of his, and the bad feeling that I got from the lying part of this statement was outweighed by the secret hope that perhaps I was a full colleague of Dr. Yorn's, at least in spirit. And then when this first illustration--a bumblebee cannibalistically devouring another bumblebee--had been accepted, and published no less, Dr. Yorn and I had celebrated, somewhat surreptitiously, because my mother still did not know any of this had transpired. Dr. Yorn had driven down from Bozeman, crossed over the continental divide twice (once west to Butte and then again south to Divide), picked me up at the Coppertop, and taken me out for ice cream at O'Neil's in Historic Downtown Butte (Larsen 23)(latter italics mine)."

There are many enjoyable, even near-brilliant passages throughout the novel. The observations made by T.S. are carefully balanced between intelligent and childlike, revealing some curious philosophies and assessments of thought processes and the way we view the world. While packing for his journey, T.S. inexplicably steals one of his mother's notebooks, which turns out to contain a fictionalized biography of her husband's great-grandmother, who was a budding geologist in the nineteenth century. T.S. occasionally assumes that, because of his mother's position as a scientist, that the woman was from his mother's side, not his father's. His exploration of this mistake is a good example of how his narration juggles the two sides of his mentality.

"Why do we make these illogical associations in our mind? No one ever said, 'Emma Osterville is Dr. Clair's [his mother] great-grandmother,' but I had come to vaguely believe it, simply through frequent association. I suppose children are particularly susceptible to such irrational connections: with so much unknown, they are less concerned with the sticky details than with trying to create a working map of the world (Larsen 143)."

T.S.'s journey on the train is the most memorable part of the work, and its elements of realism and fantasy blend quite well, whereas the actions and events following the train ride are much too forced and unbelievable. The freight car he chooses in Montana happens to contain an open Winnebago, giving him cover for some near-discoveries and highlighting two examples of Great American Travel. From his small town in Montana to the end of the line in Chicago to the final destination of Washington, D.C., T.S. finds himself in three different representations of the American experience. Being able to sleep in the Winnebago allows T.S. to make quite a few hypotheses about perception, physics, and movements in various forms:

"My body had grown so used to traveling in reverse that whenever we stopped, I found that my whole field of vision swam at me. I had first noticed this when I was hiding in the bathroom of the Cowboy Condo during one of our numerous station stops. I had become increasingly convinced that the railroad knew my exact location and it was only a matter of time before they sent one of their bulls to come and kill me. As I sat on the toilet in the confines of the tiny bathroom, I suddenly was overcome with the sensation of running into the wall in front of me. It was nauseating to find that your reflection in the bathroom mirror was moving toward you when you were in fact standing still, as thought it had managed to break free from the normal laws of refraction and optics. Gradually, through the steady influence of backward motion vectors, my confidence was taking a beating.

And so where did I find solace from this herky-jerky quagmire of momentum?

I knew there was a reason I had packed my studies of Sir. Isaac Newton. I searched through my suitcase and grasped the notebook as one grasped an old childhood teddy bear in times of distress (Larsen 172-173)."

T.S. ends up forming a new relationship with himself, so to speak, hence the long, lonely journey. His interactions and relationships with others are both fascinating and illogical. There are touching moments when he tries to bond with his father, a man who no doubt loves him but has trouble expressing his feelings, especially since the death of his older son, with whom he felt closer and shared more common interests. T.S.'s sister, Gracie, is a typical teenager, prone to outbursts, drama, and loud music. He loves her, but views her as a specimen, as if he's doing field studies of the American Teenager. His chance encounters, however, are sometimes ludicrous. He has a run-in with a wild eyed preacher in Chicago, which I took to be a sly commentary on the battle between reason and religion. Upon arriving in D.C. (his getting there involves yet another chance encounter), his contact at the Smithsonian, after being taken aback by his age, sees T.S. as marketing gold, since media outlets would jump on the idea of a young award winning mapmaker, therefore increasing exposure and income for the museum. T.S. is initiated into a secret society, a group mindful of his life in Montana and supposed secrets. These happenings seem to come very, very rapidly, a far cry from the deliberately careful pacing of the previous two-thirds of the novel. Larsen had obviously outlined his work very carefully, but decides to throw far too many wild events at the reader once T.S. arrives in Chicago. The idea of a young child stowing away on a cross-country trip by himself was set up perfectly, allowing the reader to escape into this fantasy world with no questions. But as quickly as Larsen gains trust, he loses it by adding far too many diversions at the end.

The maps, images, and notes that accompany T.S.'s narration work well as interactive footnotes. He's a compulsive note-taker, and Larsen illustrates these with stunning detail, making the novel a marvel to consume, both textually and visually. But much like the novel's ending, T.S.'s compulsion becomes, well, tiresome. I genuinely feel bad for this critique, since I'm not at all complaining about the beauty of the illustrations. A late illustration of the Smithsonian is essential, especially combined with T.S.'s first impression of the building:

But there are constant illustrations of random thoughts, as evidenced below. Humorous, yes, but for as painstaking as the work is, constantly taking in picture after picture of T.S.'s observations and hypotheses becomes tiresome. Yes, the young narrator's mentality is far different than yours or mine, with notebooks full of these works and jottings. I just feel Larsen could have achieved the same visual and atmospheric effect with more carefully selected images. Humorous, yes, but being constantly bombarded detracts from what is otherwise a strong story.

And for all of my critiques, I'm genuinely interested in Larsen's future projects. For a debut novel, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is audacious in very good ways. The themes are varied, giving the reader a wealth of material to consider and imagine while for the most part being rooted in writing that feels classic and original at the same time. It just goes on far too many unbelievable paths and leaves far too many questions unanswered for me to praise it fully. With some careful editing, this could have been a masterpiece and one of the best debut novels of the early part of this century. As Larsen grows as an artist and storyteller, I have a great feeling he'll have marvelous creative advancements. Finding a balance between realism and strains of fantasy is difficult, and I was sad to see the work unfurl so rapidly. I can only imagine the time and energy that Larsen put into this book, and again, it's staggering to realize it's his debut. But in that fascination, we can see early struggles. Had the novel maintained a consistent tone and a consistent grounding in the created reality, I feel it would still be receiving positive attention in these years following its publication. I came out of this with full admiration for Larsen's skills, and I'm hoping his future works can capture or even outdo this first ambition. There were so many directions he could have taken for the better, and I'm left feeling very divided, wondering how much better this journey could have been.

Work Cited:
Larsen, Reif. The Selected Works Of T.S. Spivet. Copyright 2009 by Reif Larsen.

Early Cartography: David Mitchell's "Ghostwritten"

Due to time constraints and an ever-growing, ever-fluctuating reading schedule, I had to set aside my goal of re-reading David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas before seeing the film version at the end of October. However, as much as I want/need to return to that work (and as much as I want to do second takes on multiple titles), I realized I'm getting closer to finishing Mitchell's complete bibliography. I recently used a window of time to read Ghostwritten, his 1999 debut, therefore leaving Number9Dream as my only unread novel by one of my favorite living writers. By doing this inadvertent, non-chronological reading, I've had a unique view of Mitchell's development over the years. Of course, I would likely have the same opinions had I started with Ghostwritten and explored his works in a chronological fashion. But by recalling the diversity of his novels, I'm also recalling the diversity of my growth as a reader, especially in hindsight. Cloud Atlas will always be one of my top five favorite novels; The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet might very well be underrated, despite its acclaim upon release; and while Black Swan Green is an enjoyable, smaller work, I may have over-praised it upon my first reading, since I was still feeling the afterglow of Cloud Atlas. Ghostwritten, however, proves to be an impressive debut, and while it is more reminiscent of his masterpiece than his other works, it's an excellent piece of writing as well as an example of a talented artist getting a feel for how to explore a vast collection of themes, eras, and atmospheres.

My working title for this essay was "Pocket Atlas," but I was worried that would be misleading, since it could potentially insinuate Ghostwritten as a lesser version of Cloud Atlas, when, for all of the craft similarities, it should stand alone (even though Timothy Cavendish and Luisa Rey make cameos of sorts). In his debut, Mitchell explores the lives and problems of different people from different places, connected by happenstance, brief interactions, and mysterious entities. The characters include a member of a dangerous Japanese cult; a Japanese record store employee; a woman running a mountainside tea shack in China; a British adulterer/money-launderer working in Hong Kong; a wayward London drummer; a Russian art thief; an Irish physicist; a late-night New York DJ; and a spirit-like organism that transfers itself among living hosts. Their stories and lives are singular, yet the connections reveal themselves over the course of the book. However, for a first major novel, these revelations are not presented with any gimmicks or "ah ha!" moments; Mitchell lets the reader see how these lives are linked, but places the emphasis on the individual stories. Throughout, there's an equal mix of mystery, humor, and an international scope. Giving fuller synopses of the plot might be beneficial, but my recap above is enough for a general description. Therefore, it's better to explore the various aspects of craft employed by Mitchell. His opening chapter is wise--he sets the reader up to expect a standard (yet well-written) thriller. The story of a dangerous cult member shows how today's influx of mass market mysteries could be elevated with more emphasis on good writing instead of cheap thrills:

"The subway train in Tokyo was as crammed as a cattle wagon. Crammed with organs, wrapped in meat, wrapped in clothes. Silent and sweaty. I was half-afraid some fool would crush the phials prematurely. Our minister of science had explained to me exactly how the package worked. When I ripped open the seal and pressed the three buttons simultaneously, I would have one minute to get clear before the solenoids shattered the phials, and the great cleansing of the world would begin.
I put the package on the baggage rack and waited for the appointed minute. I focused my alpha telepathy, and sent messages of encouragement to my co-cleansers in various metro stations throughout Tokyo.
I studied the people around me. The honored unclean, the first to be cleansed. Dumb. Sorry. Tired. Mind-rotted. Mules, in a never-ending whirlpool of lies, pain, and ignorance. I was a few inches away from a baby, in a woolly cap, strapped to its mother's back. It was asleep and dribbling and smelt of toddlers' marshiness. A girl, I guessed from the pink Minnie Mouse sewn onto the cap. Pensioners who had nothing to look forward to but senility and wheelchairs in lonely magnolia 'homes.' Young salarymen, supposedly in their prime, their minds conditioned for greed and bullying (Mitchell 15-16)."


After this set up, the following segments feel radically different, but there's a consistent emphasis on both positive humanity and our species' more negative, deplorable traits. Again, for a debut novel, these divergent notions are generally well handled, but occasionally, Mitchell feels the need to explicitly inform the reader about what he's doing, especially when the non-human organism narrates its own chapter:

"I have no story of a blinding conversion to humanism. It just didn't happen that way. During the Cultural Revolution, and when I transmigrated into hosts in Tibet, in Vietnam, in Korea, in El Salvador, I experienced humans fighting, usually from the safety of the general's office. In the Falkland Islands I watched them fight over rocks. 'Two bald men fighting over a comb,,' an ex-host commented. In Rio I saw a tourist killed for a watch. Humans live in a pit of cheating, exploiting, hurting, incarcerating. Every time, the species wastes some part of what it could be. This waste is poisonous. That is why I no longer harm my hosts. There's already too much of this poison (Mitchell 163)."

There are several scenes of assault and violence in Ghostwritten, and all are handled with intense but understated detail. There's nothing gratuitous about the more tense scenes, but when Mitchell wants to explore the shameful sides of humanity, he does so with much precision, and therefore renders statements (like the one above) redundant and obvious. This isn't meant to be picky, but for someone as talented as Mitchell, these are examples of someone still finding his way around thematic nuances. At the same time, he still doesn't get credit for his comedic side. In every one of his novels (with the more obvious example being Black Swan Green), there are sometimes hilarious asides and scenarios. For example, Marco (the London drummer) awakes from a one-night stand. His partner is another character from elsewhere in the novel, but the emphasis here is on Mitchell's humor:

"'Hi.' I grimaced as pleasantly as I could, peering through the sheets of pain. Not a face I could imagine smiling easily. I hoped this wasn't going to be one of those GuiltLine wake-ups when she tells you about her boyfriend and her dead brother and her run-over-last-month dog Michael and you end up wondering how many people are in this bed (Mitchell 257)."

Mitchell mixes history and carefully detailed explorations of the various lands, which, along with the character descriptions, creates some very compelling asides. Nothing in Ghostwritten is unnecessary, since even the slightest detours become mini-stories in their own right. In the passage below, a character describes the various lines of the London train system:

"The Northern Line is black on the maps. It's the deepest. It has the most suicides, you're more likely to get mugged on it, and its art students are most likely to be future Bond Girls. There's something doom-laden about the Northern Line. Its station names: Morden, Brent Cross, Goodge Street, Archway, Elephant and Castle, the resurrected Mornington Crescent. It was closed for years: I remember imagining I was on a probe peering into the Titanic as the train passed through. Yep, the Northern Line is the psycho of the family. Those bare-walled stations south of the Thames that can't attract advertisers (Mitchell 268-269)."

Again, I haven't even come close to hinting at the various plots, let alone their true connections. This isn't laziness or an oversight--the beauty of Ghostwritten is its minutiae. It's not a novel that can be fully reviewed or explored through its various recaps. Again, my brief overview above tells everything and nothing. By sharing various passages and writings, I'm getting into Mitchell's eye for detail, but the bigger picture has to be felt through an actual reading. Said details remind the reader of where a given scene is taking place, yet the narration turns up small, consistent details. Whether a part of the book is taking place in Europe, Asia, or America, there's a constant battle between old and new, with history and contemporary details sometimes being at odds with each other. Sometimes this is more apparent in specific chapters. The shared humanity is also a shared view of an increasingly small world. "Petersburg," for example, yields this assessment:

"In the winter, I take the metro. Otherwise, I prefer to walk. If the weather's fine I walk up the Troisky Bridge, and then cross the Mars Field, where the women wait. But if it's raining I walk down Nevsky Prospect, a street of ghosts if there ever was one. Jerome says that every city has its street of ghosts. Past the Stroganov Palace and the Kazan Cathedral. Past the Aeroflot offices, and the scrubby Armenian Cafe. Past the flat where I made love to my Politburo member. It's been turned into an American Express office now. All these new shops, Benetton, the Haagen-Dazs shops, Nike, Burger King, a shop that sells nothing but camera film and key-rings, another that sells Swatches and Rolexes. High streets are becoming the same all over the world, I supposed (Mitchell 210-211)."

With this emphasis on cultural experiences becoming increasingly corporate, Mitchell's use of ghosts and other-worldly unification takes on an essential meaning. It doesn't make Ghostwritten a religious or new-age novel--it uses these mystical ideas to link the characters (and, by extension, humanity as a whole) by more noble facets. Despite the stress, violence, and problems faced by the characters, there's a common theme of all of us being in this world together, and basic hopes and dreams being universal. Again, there's a philosophical paradox that makes Ghostwritten successful--world citizens are more alike than we realize, but at the same time, we're becoming most distant and distracted. We're all touched by human experiences, for better and for worse. This may reek of a touchy-feely new age plot, but Ghostwritten, especially as someone's debut novel, uses grandly postmodern settings to evoke classic themes.

And while I hoped to distance it from Cloud Atlas, I stumbled upon an early review that is almost creepy in its prediction of a better effort by Mitchell to connect time and place. Writing for Salon in 2000, writer Laura Miller offered this statement in her closing paragraph:

"'Ghostwritten' injects pop attitude into what were once frustratingly cryptic or dauntingly cerebral postmodern experiments. But, unlike [Mark] Danielewski, who grafted Borgesian ontological puzzles onto a Stephen King plot, Mitchell doesn’t yet seem to have invented a cocktail that really packs a wallop — though perhaps someday he will."

Work Cited:
Mitchell, David. Ghostwritten. Copyright 1999 by David Mitchell.

A Cool, Non-Dry Place: Roxane Gay's "Ayiti"

Sadly, I was like many people in 2010: when the earthquake devastated Haiti, I found myself giving more thoughts than I ever had before to the country and the people. Of course Haiti existed long before it was hit by a natural disaster, which made its plight that much more visible. In the wake of news coverage, calls for donations, and the newly placed attention on its citizens, good things came to my attention. My friend Ben was beyond horrified at the devastation and wanted to do more than most people. Instead of being satisfied by a ten dollar donation, he volunteered with an organization called All Hands, spending several months helping rebuild sections of Leogane, west of Port-au-Prince. The earthquake also led to renewed attention on Haitian art and culture, with the 2011 publication of Haiti Noir being one of the more referenced and reviewed examples. Last year, Artistically Declined Press published Ayiti, a collection of stories and sketches by Roxane Gay. I've been familiar with Gay's work for quite some time, as she's one of the more vibrant, talented short story artists working today. Her pieces (both inside and outside of Ayiti) are unique looks at people from their odd (and oddly sexual) standpoints. This book wasn't what I expected, but as I found out upon completion, my expectations of standard, fictional looks at Haitian culture, people, and philosophies were all wrong. By exploring these themes in quick, sometimes minimalist chapters, Gay manages to do what most the most successful "place" fiction should accomplish--it uses fictional characters to create a better understanding of an area's mindset.

Gay is undoubtedly familiar with stereotypes, and these are debunked right away in hilarious fashion:

"When my college roommate learns I am Haitian, she is convinced I practice voodoo, thanks to the Internet in the hands of the feeble-minded. I do nothing to dissuade her fears even though I was raised Catholic and have gained my inadequate understanding of the religion from the Lisa Bonet movie that made Bill Cosby mad at her.

In the middle of the night, I chant mysteriously, light candles. By day, I wear read and white, paint my face, dance possessed. I leave a doll on my desk. It looks just like my roommate. The doll is covered with placed strategically pins. I like fucking with her. She gives me the bigger room with the better dresser. She offers to take my tray to the dish room in the dining hall (Gay 21)."

"[Things Americans do not know about zombis:]

They are not dead. They are near death. There's a difference.
They are not imaginary.
They do not eat human flesh.
They cannot eat salt.
They do not walk around with their arms and legs locked stiffly.
They can be saved.

[How you pronounce zombi:]

Zaahhhhnnnnnn-Beee. You have to feel it in the roof of your mouth, let it vibrate. Say it fast (Gay 25)."

It's tempting to call Ayiti a short story collection; I've even tagged it as such in this post. However, while the pieces are seemingly unconnected (at least by characters), the book as a whole works as a look at everyday lives of people in (or associated with) the country--their actions, beliefs, hopes, and dreams are common, yet tinted with the way life is lived in that area. Gay's looks at people emigrating to America is a touching look at "the American Dream," and shows how illegal immigrants are not limited to Mexico, and do so with the shared hope of creating a better life in the face of serious obstacles.

"When Lucien arrives in the United States by way of a trip to Canada, an illegal border crossing, and hitching rides down to Miami, his cousin Christophe, who made his own way to Miami years earlier hands him a 50 dollar bill and tells Lucien to eat Hot Pockets until he gets a job because they are cheap, filling and taste good. Lucien sleeps on the floor in an apartment he shares with five other men like him, all of them pretending this is better than what which came before. There is a small kitchen with an electric stove that has two burners and a microwave that is rarely cleaned. Christophe tells Lucien that Hot Pockets are easy to prepare.

Lucien is in the United States because he loves Miami Vice. He loves the shiny suits Tubbs and Crockett wear. He loves their swagger. He loves the idea of Miami as a perfect place where problems are always solved and there are beautiful women as far as a man can see (Gay 51)."

Gay also includes fictional details of Haiti's unsavory history. A character's grandmother survived the Parsley Massacre, a killing ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. The narration combines stunning details and factual details about the massacre, creating a small slice of historical fiction about a genocide that seems to be lesser known than some of history's other mass killings. For all of Gay's variety in styles throughout the book, she uses the narrative to create a detailed, saddening chapter (both in the book sense and the historical sense). Nothing is over-hyped or exaggerated; the account is presented honestly, with the memories of the massacre itself providing its own intense flourishes.

"It was General Rafael Trujillo who ordered all the Haitians out of his country, who had his soldiers interrogate anyone whose skin was too dark, who looked like they belonged on the other side of the border. It was the general who took a page from the Book of Judges to exact his genocide and bring German industry to his island.

Soldiers came to the plantation where my grandmother worked. They had guns. They were cruel, spoke in loud, angry voices, took liberties. One of the women with whom my grandmother shared her shanty betrayed my grandmother's hiding place. We never speak of what happened after that. The ugly details are trapped between the fragments of our family history. We are secrets ourselves.

My grandmother ended up in the river. She tried to hold her breath while she hid from the marauding soldiers on both of the muddy shores straddling the river. There was a moment when she laid on her back, and submerged herself until her entire body was covered by water, until her pores were suffused with it. She didn't come up for air until the ringing in her ears became unbearable. The moon was high and the night was cold. She smelled blood in the water (Gay 59-60)."

In much the same way as it's not entirely correct to call Ayiti a short story collection, it's not correct to attempt to pinpoint an exact meaning or theme from its pages. Of course, the Haitian experience is the linking force, but there's (not sound needlessly saccharine) an overall atmosphere of shared humanity. The lives, loves, and setbacks encountered by the Haitian people in Ayiti can be applied to scores of other people and nationalities. What makes the Haitian experience so unique is the aforementioned, renewed attention and the dominance of stereotypes. What Gay successfully communicates is the fact that Haitian people have a lot of problems, and Western views can cloud that with needless, false assumptions. This is conveyed by a look at the actions of American tourists in the land:

"The Americans, the men, they like us and want us. They think we too are for sale as part of the Hispaniola experience. They offer us their American dollars and expect us to be impressed by the likeness of Andrew Jackson. We prefer the countenance of Benjamin Franklin. The Americans grab our asses and whisper in our ears, leaving their hot, boozy breath on our skin. The less original among them say things like, 'Voulez vous couchez avec moi?' in heavy, awkward French, over enunciating each word. Some of us are indeed for sale or want to know what it would be like to be with a man with such pale skin or we are bored or we just don't care. We tell The Americans to follow us. We walk down the hot sandy beach slowly, shaking our hips and they ogle us and they say vulgar things we pretend not to hear (Gay 82-83)."

Roxane Gay has a wide following in the literary community, and this publication might not have the visibility or promotion to present her works to wider audiences. However, given her stature among other writers, Ayiti has been favorably reviewed and mentioned in the last few months. This isn't a work for anyone expecting a tidy, glossy celebration of Haiti, but rather it's a book that manages to illuminate an intangible sociology. The characters and the land are equally flawed and troubled, and Ayiti shows this without judgement, hypothesizing, or exaggeration. You'll know more about the country than you did going in, but not in the ways you anticipated; personally, I was grateful for this, and these stories are going to stay with me for quite some time.

Work Cited:
Gay, Roxane. Ayiti. Copyright 2011 by Roxane Gay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A Maniac's Masterpiece:" Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita"

In my reading lifetime, I've missed or overlooked a fairly large chunk of classic works, and one of my many goals for this year was to play catch-up. Some of these works are daunting, not in the sense of literary difficulty, but rather in trying to keep an open, unassuming mind. My recent reading of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is a good example, since, like a lot of universally regarded works, it's impossible to go into it without at least a basic notion of what will unfold. It's almost shocking to read some of the classic lines ("Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins") in their original context, as well as seeing its influence on other works (the phrase "Picnic, Lightning" is also the title of one of my favorite poetry collections by Billy Collins). When the aforementioned examples appeared on the first two pages of the work, I found myself wondering why it took me so long to get around to it. Add the fact that the name "Lolita" has entered everyday vernacular in a variety of ways (not to mention that Googling "Lolita" for research purposes brings up some pretty unsavory material), and I was slightly worried that I would be keeping an eye out for the book's cultural references, rather than immersing myself in the plot. Luckily, there were many things about the work I didn't know, and I found Nabokov's writing to take several unexpected, delightful turns.

A plot outline is virtually unnecessary, but I'll keep this brief: Lolita is the story of the aging European professor Humbert Humbert and his consuming, obsessive lust for the twelve year-old Dolores "Lolita" Haze. He meets her after renting a room from her mother, and while he aches to leave the house almost immediately. The assessment of Mrs. Haze is one great example of Lolita's unexpected themes: his own lusts aside, Humbert is a hilarious, astute observer of 1950s American culture:

"She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or a bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul; women who are completely devoid of humor; women utterly indifferent at heart to the dozen or so possible subjects of a parlor conversation, but very particular about the rules of such conversations, through the sunny cellophane of which not very appetizing frustrations can be readily distinguished (Nabokov 37)."

He changes his mind and stays after seeing Lolita. Earlier passages explore his attraction to young girls (or, as he refers to them, "nymphets"), partly stemming from a girl he loved when he was a child. This obsession turns into In an unexpected turn, Lolita's mother offers Humbert a strange ultimatum: she claims her love for him, but tells him to leave the house unless he plans to marry her. They do end up married, part of Humbert's desire to be close to Lolita at all costs. In an unexpected turn, Mrs. Haze discovers Humbert's illegal, carnal intentions, and not a moment later, she's struck and killed by a car. In most cases, this would seem like a too-convenient plot device, but Nabokov writes the scene astutely and carefully. When Humbert identifies the body, he does so in a very detailed, gruesome manner consistent with his other observations. He's very evasive and suggestive about his sexual activities with Lolita (saying too much with very little), but manages to be delightfully long-winded about every other topic. His assessment of Mrs. Haze's dead body is awful, yet manages to be darkly, terribly funny:

"Three doctors and the Farlows presently arrived on the scene and took over. The widower, a man of exceptional self-control, neither wept nor raved. He staggered a bit, that he did; but he opened his mouth only to impart such information or issue such directions as were strictly necessary in connection with the identification, examination, and disposal of a dead woman, the top of her head a porridge of bone, brains, bronze hair, and blood (Nabokov 98)."

After his wife's death, Humbert becomes Lolita's caretaker, and this quickly escalates into a world of constant road trips, sex, sexual bribery, and his descent into eventual psychosis. His narration balances between unstable, unreliable, and occasionally nonsensical. His most reliable observations are the creepy, detailed longings for Lolita's body; of course, even in clear prose, the reader knows that dark things are brimming just beneath the surface. Given the censorship of the time, and the book's controversial subject manner, Nabokov couldn't go into explicit, more detailed examinations of their sexual encounters. However, by being sly, the narration (as I mentioned before) forces the reader to use his or her imagination, which renders the acts that much more appalling.

"I had not dared offer her a second helping of the drug, and had not abandoned hope that the first might still consolidate her sleep. I started to move toward her, ready for any disappointment, knowing I had better wait but incapable of waiting. My pillow smelled of her hair. I moved toward my glimmering darling, stopping or retreating every time I thought she stirred or was about to stir. A breeze from wonderland had begun to affect my thoughts, and now they seemed couched in italics, as if the surface reflecting them were wrinkled by the phantasm of that breeze. Time and again my consciousness folded the wrong way, my shuffling body entered the sphere of sleep,
shuffled out again, and once or twice I caught myself drifting into a melancholy snore. Mists of tenderness enfolded mountains of longing. Now and then it seemed to me that the enchanted prey was about to meet halfway the enchanted hunter, that her haunch was working its way toward me under the soft sand of a remote and fabulous beach; and then her dimpled dimness would stir, and I would know she was farther away from me than ever (Nabokov 131)."

Having read very little of Nabokov's other works, and going into Lolita with a hope of discovering something about it I didn't know, I was (delightfully) caught off guard by Nabokov's humor. This work is one of the funniest books I've ever read, and much like the vagueness of the overt sexuality, it's an essential element--with so many illegal and distasteful goings on, the reader needs to laugh to shake off the unpleasantness. As Lolita and Humbert undertake one of their many road trips, he examines the world of motels and lodgings. Humbert's take on the American experience is exaggerated and precise all at once.

"Nous connûmes (this is royal fun) the would-be enticements of their repetitious names--all those Sunset Motels, U-Beam Cottages, Hillcrest Courts, Pine View Courts, Mountain View Courts, Skyline Courts, Park Plaza Courts, Green Acres, Mac's Courts. There was sometimes a special line in the write-up, such as "Children welcome, pets allowed" (You are welcome, you are allowed). The baths were mostly tiled showers, with an endless variety of spouting mechanisms, but with one definitely non-Laodicean characteristic in common, a propensity, while in use, to turn instantly beastly hot or blindingly cold upon you, depending on whether your neighbor turned on his cold or his hot to deprive you of a necessary complement in the shower you had so carefully blended. Some motels had instructions pasted above the toilet (on whose tank the towels were unhygienically heaped) asking guests not to throw into its bowl garbage, beer cans, cartons, stillborn babies; others had special notices under glass, such as Things to Do (Riding: You will often see riders coming down Main Street on their way back from a romantic moonlight ride. 'Often at 3AM,' sneered unromantic Lo)(Nabokov 146)."

The line between Humbert being Lolita's stepfather and lover is increasingly blurred, for his apprehension about her hanging out with other boys can sometimes stand out as fatherly worry, instead of his being worried about sexual rivals. Humbert's remarks can be sexist at times, and it's difficult to tell if this is part of his makeup or merely part of the societal outlooks and conventions of the time. These blurred lines become increasingly frenetic as the novel works its way into its various climaxes. The humor becomes less frequent, the delusions increase, and the revelations and turns become, for lack of a better word, standard. However, as Humbert becomes increasingly delusional, one has to wonder how many of his actions are being faithfully recalled. By creating him this way, Nabokov adds yet another level of daring to this work: he's creating a character who is a manipulative pedophile, but bizarrely sympathetic. When he meets up with Lolita late in the book (after she leaves him under even more disgusting circumstances, at the hands of another pedophile), he's undergoing a massive mental breakdown, and while it should be his comeuppance for his actions throughout the work, he is instead presented as a sad, hopeless mess:

"'Good by-aye!' she chanted, my American sweet immortal dead love; for she is dead and immortal if you are reading this. I mean, such is the formal agreement with the so-called authorities.

Then, as I drove away, I heard her shout in a vibrant voice to her Dick; and the dog started to lope alongside my car like a fat dolphin, but he was too heavy and old, and very soon gave up. And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears (Nabokov 280)."

The easiest way to close an essay on this work is to examine the metaphors for Humbert's obsession with Lolita, of which there are many: the battle between European and American actions and sensibilities; the universal desire for youth and immortality, even in perverse ways; and how their travels throughout America reflect both a literal escape and a way for the two to find themselves (the underlying plot of almost any road trip, literary or cinematic). However, I like to think of Lolita as a pursuit of happiness, which can oftentimes take deluded, ill-fated forms. Humbert Humbert is a child molester, and there's no way to soften that or avoid it: both he and Lolita say this explicitly more than once. But Nabokov's work takes untouchable themes and makes them unavoidable. It's a hilarious, unsettling journey, and while no character reaches a happy ending, Lolita remains a timely exploration of a variety of ideas. This essay adds nothing new to its decades-old discussion, but Nabokov creates a world of talking points that will never be tidily summarized or finished. No matter how offended the reader is by Humbert's actions, there's no question that the complexities presented by his obsession with Lolita create philosophical and moral debates beyond a matter of right and wrong. The reader has a lot of big pictures to assess, and the journey is a marvel of storytelling and high comedy. There were many writers tackling controversial subjects and characters at the time, but few would have been able to manage this type of psychological investigation with the same kind of daring, absurdity, and variety.

Work Cited:
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. Copyright 1955 by Vladimir Nabokov.