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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Sorry for what?'

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

'Wait, which guys?'

'Book...stores?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Work Cited:

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

2012 Readings, 2013 Goals

My first post of 2012 was a documentation of the books I read in 2011, along with my goals for 2012. I'm doing the same thing to start this new year, and I'm curious to see if I met the goals I set for myself. Back then, I wrote:

"I read 21 books this year, which is down from my total of 31 in 2010. If I can bump my total up to 25 or so this year, I'll be pleased."

I read 56 books last year, more than double my perplexing, modest prediction. How/why did I do this? Well, there are quite a few reasons. The goal is always the quality of the readings, not just amassing a number. But, as I get more serious about where I take myself in a literary sense, I simply need to read more than I usually do. As one of the Fiction Editors of Longform.org, it's my job and expectation to be well-read, to make sure I'm familiar with trends, contemporary voices, and older classics. I'm also in the process of completing applications for potential MFA candidacies. If I'm serious about my own art and writing, I need to devote time to reading as much as I can. Also, I'll never forget a seemingly off-hand remark by my high school English teacher, the man who inspired me to major in English and unwittingly set me on the path I'm currently traveling. In a discussion on reading, he said, without any posturing or snobbery: "Smart people read." And obviously, writing is a community. How can I better myself if I'm not keeping up on the works and creations of others?

As I recap the books I read last year, I'm going to classify the works under the same headings: "Masterpiece," "Great," "Very Good, and "Good With Reservations." I'm also adding the category "Disappointment," since I read a handful of books I didn't like. But as I said last year, feelings change. Sometimes I'm too eager about titles, and after time, that eagerness fades. And since writings are so diverse, from fiction to non-fiction to styles, I know it's sometimes silly or pointless to lump books into rigid categories. I'm very active on Goodreads, and I give books star ratings, but I never take them seriously. Star ratings are gut reactions and should never, ever replace discussions, full reviews, or genuine insights. So while I'm categorizing my 2012 readings, I hope you'll take them with a grain of salt.

MASTERPIECE:

NW by Zadie Smith

You Were Never In Chicago by Neil Steinberg

Mao II by Don DeLillo

Chicago: City On the Make by Nelson Algren

Arguably by Christopher Hitchens

GREAT:

The Age Of Wire and String by Ben Marcus

Daddy's by Lindsay Hunter

Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman

Cataclysm Baby and How They Were Found by Matt Bell

Ayiti by Roxane Gay

Space Chronicles by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith

The Art Of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Mortality by Christopher Hitchens

May Day by F. Scott Fitzgerald

In Praise Of Messy Lives by Katie Roiphe

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Flower Cart by Lisa Fishman

Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max

Oblivion by David Foster Wallace

Winter Journal by Paul Auster

VERY GOOD:

Pity the Billionaire by Thomas Frank

The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolano

Autoportrait by Edouard Leve

Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham Dixon

Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen

Conversations With Nelson Algren by H.E.F. Donohue

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Fire the Bastards! by Jack Green

Horoscopes For the Dead by Billy Collins

From the Back Of the Bus by Dick Gregory

My Father's House by Ben Tanzer

Dream Team by Jack McCallum

Tree Of Smoke by Denis Johnson

Ghostwritten by David Mitchell

Free Will by Sam Harris

It Chooses You by Miranda July

No Doors, No Windows and Bugfuck by Harlan Ellison

Eminent Outlaws by Christopher Bram

The Lazarus Project by Alexsandar Hemon

The End Of the Story: Collected Fantasies, Volume One by Clark Ashton Smith

Sky Saw by Blake Butler

42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos

GOOD WITH RESERVATIONS:

Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls

Two Novels by Robbe-Grillet: Jealousy and In the Labyrinth by Alain Robbe-Grillet

Open City by Teju Cole

Shoplifting From American Apparel by Tao Lin

The Selected Works Of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

Ascent Of the A-Word by Geoffrey Nunberg

DISAPPOINTMENT:

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

The Whore Of Akron by Scott Raab

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Straight Man by Richard Russo



I wrote this last year: "I also want to squeeze in more nonfiction, especially world history, contemporary politics, and writings by black and female artists." I feel like I did that fairly well. I may not have read as much history or political writings as I wanted, but I devoted a good portion of my reading time to black and female artists, and I'll continue to do so in 2013. What are my remaining goals? I'm going to shoot for 60-65 books. Again, it's a conservative increase, but maybe, just maybe, I'll look back and see myself near 70. As far as topics, I'm still deciding. I want to read more science fiction, classics, and graphic novels. And while I like to mix up what I read, I might spend a month or two devoted to a specific writer, to see how his/her books change through the years. But whatever I end up doing, the focus will be on quality.

And as I said last year: if you're a writer/reader, I'd love to know your goals and intentions for 2013. Best of luck going forward in whatever you do.

Long Goodbyes: Ben Tanzer's "My Father's House"

In my work for Instafiction/Longform Fiction, it's gratifying to note the writers I admire whom I had no introduction to prior to my research. Some of these favorites are due to selections by my partner--Jeremy is responsible for my knowledge and subsequent love of Lindsay Hunter, Blake Butler, and Roxane Gay, to name a few, but I was happy to stumble upon the likes of David Yost, Amber Sparks, and, the focus of this post, Ben Tanzer. Tanzer is based in Chicago, and when I read his 2005 story "The Gift," I made a mental note to return to his stories and other writings. He's been very prolific over the years, appearing in tiny, independent journals and serving as a Writer-in-Residence for bigger publications (he recently did that stint for Necessary Fiction). I picked up a copy of his 2011 novella My Father's House with no knowledge of the plot or how it could potentially reflect the handful of stories of his I've read. As I made my way through the book, I was reminded of an idea I haven't mentioned in quite some time. I usually do my best to make connections (tangible or intangible) between different texts and authors, or between different books by the same writer. In a loose, roundabout way, I kept thinking back to Meghan O'Rourke's The Long Goodbye, and, at least in my mind, I feel My Father's House is a sort of fictional mirror to O'Rourke's non-fiction work. In different ways, both works explore grief, the loss of a parent, and the subsequent activities of the narrator in fresh, unexpected, and intentionally unsentimental fashions.

The narrator of My Father's House is referred to by his first name once or twice, but is best referred to by the title rather than a name. After his father is diagnosed with cancer, his life becomes a revolving series of moments: internal thoughts while running along Chicago's lakefront; cross-country travels while his father seeks out new doctors and treatments; "unofficial" therapy sessions at a local bar, with some unexpected/unsavory reflections on his personality; complex, detailed conversations with his wife; and his work at a drop-in center for homeless addicts. As I mentioned before, the narrator is emotional without veering into needlessly sentimental ruminations. As the novella unfolds, the actions and happenings themselves are strong enough to stand on their own without any added emotions. This is evident from the very beginning. The work is established with clinical details, and Tanzer is smart enough to let the reader determine his or her own emotional involvement in the proceedings.

"I don't remember how this started exactly.
I know it was 1999 and I know that my father had a seizure. I know his blood didn't look right. And that there was something going on with his bone marrow that looked to be pre-cancerous, but needed to be confirmed with a genetic test.
I also know it turned out that he has myelodisplasia, a rare form of bone cancer that causes immature bone marrow cells to explode before reaching maturity; that these explosions are known as blasts and without treatment these blasts are going to escalate until he has full-blown Leukemia.....

My mom says people can walk in to see a doctor, hear they have this disease and die three months later. Of course, she also says that people who get bone marrow transplants can live five more healthy years (Tanzer 1)."

I know nothing about Tanzer's personal life, so I'm not going to assume this novel is autobiographical, but the sheer force of the clinical details feels like the proceedings are being explained by someone in the shock of realization. There's no denial, no acceptance, no rage, but a matter-of-fact, almost terse setting of where the work begins, but with no hint as to where it will end up going. As the story progresses, sadness and memories do come into play, but with no embellishments or ploys. The narrator does end up working through stages of grief, but not in any grand sense. He's cognizant of his mental state, and as he works through toward the end of his father's life, there's so much more he has to tackle beyond the imminent loss.

"'Yeah,' she says putting the book down and looking at me, 'I noticed that, but then again, you never have cried much.'

Which is true, I never liked crying, and I always thought I was above feeling anything that strongly, but I've changed, haven't I. You should have seen me at the end of the movie Affliction, I cried so hard I couldn't breathe. And yet, the tears don't come. Not when my heart feels heavy, nor, when I find myself pursing my lips or when my eyes start to brim with tears while looking at some dumb greeting card or just contemplating the what-ifs.

It might be denial of course. I am clearly not allowing myself to deal with this. Or it could be the surreal nature of this whole thing. I mean what exactly is going on? How did it happen? When did it happen? I don't care what the facts are (Tanzer 16)."

The narrator does deal with things, but in odd fashions that provide a crucial theme to the novel. He ends up cheating on his wife multiple times with the same woman, and at first, he tries to use the excuse of his mental state and stress.

"She's leaning in to talk and touching my leg, and she has long brown hair and a big smile, and I know I shouldn't do this, but tonight I deserve to act out and not act like myself, just once, don't I? How could anyone call me on this?
I'm in pain. I've got a dying father and this girl has something to offer, something almost medicinal, and it's okay then, okay, okay, okay, something I keep telling myself as we have sex in the backseat of her car, legs everywhere, and then I walk back to my father's house, stopping long enough to shower once there before climbing into bed with Kerri and drifting off to sleep, drunk and restless (Tanzer 29)."

He knows what he's doing is wrong, and one gets the feeling that his excuses are merely that--it's an easy card to play. What I get from Tanzer's prose is the understanding that human frailty and bad decisions are parts of life that don't stop when faced with loss and dramatic changes. To be blunt, the narrator can be an asshole at times. But this is rendered very realistically. There are no dramatic realizations, no overt confrontations, and most importantly, no apologies on the part of the author. Perhaps the narrator wouldn't give into his impulses if not faced with his father's demise, but his faults march on even when the reader should be giving him sympathy. He's not completely without redeeming qualities. While he notes his attraction to his therapist, there's the implied realization that he's attempting to sort through his problems, even if the therapy sessions intentionally leave us with more questions than closures.

Tanzer also provides some unexpected detours into the sociology of death and the reactions it garners. The narrator makes comparisons between his father's looming death and the news coverage of the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr. Of course the deaths of famous people receive more coverage than everyday citizens, but when these differences are explored in the text, they provide for some curious explorations of how public and private grief are such different animals.

"Of course, it has nothing to do with what he has done, but who he is. JFK, Jr. is a rock star. No, he's more than that, and he's more than a celebrity. Maybe he's even royalty. Well, no matter what he is, he will always be the little boy saluting his dead father. So yeah, I know why he's getting all of this attention, and maybe, maybe even why he's being called a hero, but it doesn't change the fact that my father who is likely to die sometime soon won't receive anything remotely similar.

Is JFK Jr. a bigger hero than my father? I don't know if either of them are heroes, but one of them has the dead father, and the assassinated uncle, and the endless family history of pain, and so somehow his loss is more tragic. The thing is, even as we lie here in our air-conditioned hotel room, trying to protect my dad from whatever horrible things lurk outside I just don't know what's going to happen or if it even matters (Tanzer 21-22)."

The fact that my review is focused more on the surrounding events rather than the main plot line shows how My Father's House provides a complex exploration of such a common life event. Some of the happenings in the work were well written, but didn't speak to me. The narrator deals with a series of confrontations with the jealous boyfriend of a woman in his care, which leads to a mutual understanding between the two men about the nature of honesty and perceptions. These sections of the plot are just another stress dealt with by the narrator, but I didn't find them as compelling as his other ways of acting out and dealing with his upheaval. Again, I don't want to make any assumptions of autobiographical undertones, but some of the scenarios feel just specific enough for me to wonder. I'm not implying that there are "throwaway" sections in such a slim work, but I simply found more value in the other chapters. Tanzer provides meticulous details of hospitals, the physiology of his father's disease, and the variety of treatments, but I was more drawn to the psychological impulses of the narrator. The medical side of the book provides realistic material in a work that is just as realistic in its fictional depictions of how we deal with grief. Returning to The Long Goodbye, the similarities I found between Tanzer and O'Rourke were thematic rather than literal. O'Rourke's biographical examinations of her mother's death also contained references to running, sexuality, and the trials of everyday life continuing in the face of such a monumental occurrence. Tanzer's fiction is a little more emphatic on the narrator's shortcomings, whereas O'Rourke grapples more with her guilt and pain. But both works are two touching, literary additions to writings about death, which will never stop being written and will always highlight such universal and unique reactions.

I genuinely don't like ending this review on a criticism that might seem trivial, but it's more an act of tough love due to my support of independent publishing. My Father's House was published by Main Street Rag, a publishing company based in North Carolina. The passages cited above are done word for word, and there are occasional, slight typos throughout the work. Independent publishing is quite often a labor of love, since most small houses don't have the recognition and advertising power of the bigger publishing companies--their strength is the art of the writers, and I found it disheartening to note a handful of typographical mistakes. Am I being picky? Perhaps, but these mistakes jumped out at me in an otherwise worthwhile reading experience. Have I made my own typos and mistakes in my own writings? Of course. But when a publisher has a chance to put out a work by a respected writer, there should be more of an emphasis on editing, even when pressed for time and resources. I bring this up because I've read Tanzer's work in other publications without issue. I'm not at all doubting or picking on the people behind Main Street Rag, but these small details are important to me.

And on a final, happier note: Happy New Year. I'm looking forward to reading, reviewing, and promoting more writers and independent publishers in 2013. Thanks for reading this blog, and here's to a productive, enlightening, and creative new year.

Work Cited:
Tanzer, Ben. My Father's House. Copyright 2011 by Ben Tanzer.

The Deleted Era: Blake Butler's "Sky Saw"

After finishing my reading of Sky Saw, Blake Butler's newly published novel, I went back and looked over my review of There Is No Year. I was (and still am) amazed by his writing; his short stories and samples are some of the most profound, emotional, and daring pieces of writing I've read in quite some time. But after finishing one of his complete works, I felt like I had missed something, as if the novel had built up such a careful examination of characters and mystery that ended on an unsatisfying note. In the original review, I wrote: "Butler is a masterful storyteller who is intentionally audacious in his forms and philosophies, but there's an unnerving wonder as to whether he built the work up so much that it collapses under its own weight." To reiterate: I didn't dislike the book at all, and I still consider him one of my favorite writers. I was excited to learn about the release of Sky Saw and bought it immediately when it was released. I'm a firm believer in emotional states or a specific time periods affecting how one responds to a piece of art, be it a book, a film, or a painting. That said, I noted quite a few similarities between the two novels, but my immediate reaction to Sky Saw was pure satisfaction. Perhaps I had a better idea of what I was getting into, but I think the more appropriate explanation is his execution.

Sky Saw takes place in an undefined time period and, in a nod to There Is No Year, follows the actions of a woman, a man, and a child living in a mysterious world of repressed memories, totalitarian forces, and horrific acts of nature. In short, the meticulously detailed world and actions are nightmares in the most definitive sense--there are no explanations, fantastical happenings are presented as everyday occurrences, and the reader moves from one detail to the next with trepidation and dread. Butler's writing emphasizes small details within a vast network of intentional confusion.

"In the pockets between shrieking, Person 1180 read aloud. She read the book she'd found wedged among the folds of the long curtain in the hall just after Person 811 left, a date whose definition she could no longer remember, nor did she know why they'd chose to hang the curtain there--the only thing it hid was flat white wall, marred with no windows. The book was the same size of the book that you hold now. The front page had an inscription handwritten to Person 1180 by someone with an illegible signature, in bright blue ink that stung her eyes:

READ THE CHILD THIS BOOK OR HE WILL SUFFER

The text on all the other pages had been printed in a code, or in a strange language she did not recognize--babbly syllables and glyph fonts, planar symbols and number reams--and yet when 1180 passed her eyes over the lines and let her voice go, she felt the syntax easing out. Her reading voice was low and burnt and came up from her linings, something old and rhythmic as it passed. Doing the speaking in this manner juggled color in her lungs and made her woozy, a kind of crystal glass around her face (Butler 13-14)."

The totalitarian forces in the book could be part of a government, but sometimes appear simply as mysterious entities. This isn't a novel like 1984; the controlling bodies aren't given any backgrounds or motives. The real emphasis is on the exaggerated, sometimes horrific events that the characters endure. Some of these are grotesque births that the mother deals with, a collection of children conceived and birthed in a myriad of ways and circumstances. Butler doesn't present any of these scenarios for the sake of shock value--he's using fiction to open possibilities within these unsettling depictions. Some might be tempted (or even right) to describe his writing as experimental, but he has such a careful eye for detail and imagery, and sometimes the "experimental" tag is too easy a designation. There are no standard plot points, but the paragraphs and chapters are undeniably great works of storytelling.

"The mother now had given birth twenty-two times since the father's exit five days prior. Each time the span between the births decreased. The pregnancies were swift and brutal. She expelled her paste in gush and crumbs. The warblings of her and the babies' bodies both boomed through the empty rooms around them. Sometimes the mother felt she could have named the ancient human names of all the men that made her bigger, despite the blindfolds, the ice and biting--she could taste them in the branding of her flesh--a permanence mostly lost on the ejections.

Person 2030 had been 811's, who like the mother had descended from two bodies rendered during DELETED ERA. This child--the only one of hers that had thus far survived behind its eyes, held in its cruddy back and black saliva--had been the reason the father left, she knew. Though he'd not expressed this so directly--he'd said nothing really, just been gone--she could tell he'd despised the baby for shucking off his image, for already beginning to grow old. The air had seemed to buzz between them.

The other births after 2030's were a different matter, following a similar structure to the system of her aging, if reversed--one for each year, young and coming, if all crammed into such a short amount of time--the same spiral cut procession seen in all things, of all things one after another--new infants bloating in her as if in instants, spooling ropes on ropes of breathing cells. She tried to hold them in but they came out (Butler 29-30)."

Alongside these daunting bodily actions, nature comes into play as well, sometimes combining to create an unsettling bond between humans and nature. In the world of Sky Saw, life goes on despite the unknown and the changes rendered to anatomies and physiology. Humanity and nature sometimes become one, and it's difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends. As with the other passages, the emotional qualities and visualizations take over, and while the work as a whole is intricately patterned, the reader becomes drawn to the singular moments and how they unfold.

"The mother vomited a bird. First there was one bird, then there were many, their tremble rummaged up her middle, from her throat. They scratched her cheeks and pore meat with their clawing, her O-hole stretched wide as it could go. Enormous birds, she saw, as white as nowhere, thrushed with feathers matted in a gel. They kept coming up out of her in a chain, all gushing and aflutter--silent--each one imprinted all through and through their gristle with a word, one word for each all written in their linings and down the contours of their suits, the word and word again all densely textured, though the mother could not read the words as they emerged--she could not make out the letters or what about them, or their presence there at all. Each bird's word was its own word for it alone, though all their screeching came out of them the same, brief and lame and hellish (Butler 59)."

Throughout the work, Butler inserts pages and pages of seemingly free-verse prose, poetic ruminations and statements that manage to guide the proceedings as stripped down versions of the more standard paragraphs. The form is different, yet the emotions and evocations are the same. The sample I'm citing is taken at random, but when matched up to the citations featured above, it's not hard to tell that they all come from the same work. Again, these seem like random stanzas, and while they're beautiful in their own right, the feelings presented are crucial to the mysteries surrounding it. One of the blurbs on the back of the book called Butler "the 21st century answer to William Burroughs," but I'm not sure that's a proper designations. Granted, my last attempt at reading Naked Lunch collapsed halfway through, but these words aren't meant to be some edgy drug haze. Butler is creating a fantastical world unbound by natural laws.

"It with our old names imprinted on it peeling

The sky wide with bodies hung from it in troves, fat pock-marked purses of slopping people


Colors not of how the skin had been in living, but the current state of their decay


Some of the bodies' globes glistened picked apart by gobs of sight and gnats grow fat off of the black-blistered ankles charred apart and caking pink (Butler)."

While Sky Saw is very, very different, I noted similarities to There Is No Year. Therefore, why did I enjoy the newer work more than the old one? I feel like the 2011 novel had too many sly hints to a concrete plot, as if an explanation was forthcoming at the end of the purposely vague horrors of the people and the house. Sky Saw has the potential to seem like it is heading to a standard climax, but I very quickly found myself enjoying the prose as it unfolded, not expecting the unnamed characters to be marching toward any sort of "reveal." The revelations are the actions and happenings themselves--the reader is often just as (intentionally) confused as the characters. I know some readers who still prefer Butler's writing in smaller doses. His stories and excerpts are some of the best works I've read in the last two years, and arguably the most original. This new work won't appeal to everyone--Butler has been criticized for his occasional repetition--but there's no denying his visions. I've read far too many stories lately attempting to be unique, edgy works. In the midst of his mix of forms and fantastical scenarios, Butler strives to move the reader via sadness, wonder, or genuine shock. For all the seemingly improvisational and quickly-passing pages, the lack of a resolved plot is set aside to engage the reader's senses. In short, Butler's fiction achieves what a lot of writers hope to do, and in extremely memorable fashions. Sky Saw has been making the rounds among independent literary circles, but with blurbs from the likes of Time Magazine and Publisher's Weekly, it's possible that his work will reach bigger audiences. At the very least, it's a great example for people who claim there's nothing left to read.

Work Cited:
Butler, Blake. Sky Saw. Copyright 2012 by Blake Butler.

Beautiful Monstrosities: Matt Bell's "Cataclysm Baby"

I rarely read outside reviews or synopses of the books I review, but a certain phrase led me to look over Will Kaufman's essay on Matt Bell's Cataclysm Baby. Writing for Quarterly West, Kaufman offered a piece of mild criticism in the hopes of countering his “slack-jawed endorsement-gasm.” My own mentions and analysis of Bell's writing would seemingly fall into that category. Bell's diversity and craft were on full display in How They Were Found (2010, Keyhole Press), a story collection that touched upon almost every genre, in experimental and classic styles, and I was enamored with his writing to the point of my own endorsement-gasm, recommending the work to as many people as possible. For years, Bell has published his stories in a variety of journals, amassing a varied bibliography, and now he's moving into longer published works. Cataclysm Baby, a recent offering from Mud Luscious Press's Novella series, has been receiving praise in the same fashion as his short fiction: word-of-mouth recommendations, independent reviews, and most importantly, the strength of its content.

Cataclysm Baby is divided into twenty-six chapters united by a common theme: fathers dealing with evil, mutated, and animal-like children. The time period is left intentionally vague, and there are recurring hints of plagues, biblical doom, and post-apocalyptic calamities. The chapter headings (“Ulmer, Ulric, Ursa,” “Nessa, Neve, Nevina,” etc.) form a strange, alphabetical baby name list, and I spent the first few chapters attempting to connect the names with the events, but after awhile, I realized this was unnecessary: the real focus is on the isolated fathers and their reactions to the sad, twisted offspring. The trials of parenthood have been fictionally documented in many ways, but rare is the book that features a father dealing with problems like “...our dark-eyed beauties so impossible to keep in their wicker cribs, to keep inside our rude-made gravedigger's hut, perched at the rent edge of this barren plot. See them squirm free of their cribs, their new and segmented bodies falling to the packed-dirt floor and out of this home I built for them and their mother.”


Even in the most fantastical, mythological settings, Bell manages to keep the scenarios grounded and perversely plausible. Other writers would make the mistake of attempting to top each passing chapter to the point of making this type of work a distracting collage of transgressive fiction. While different in scope and tone, the events of Cataclysm Baby work in the same vein as the stories in How They Were Found: even when dealing with the extremes, Bell's writing is focused on descriptive excellence and not a need to make the children and atmospheres outlandish. The reader becomes caught up in the suspense and gloom, but also in the bigger picture: all of the chapters hint, either explicitly or metaphorically, to much larger themes. For example, a section describing a wolf-like pack family offers this aside that not only ties into the story, but could stand alone as its own exploration of communication and togetherness:

“When the meeting is over—when the moon enters the waning that awaits it on the other side of our words—only then do we give up one language for another, to come together as one people, one troubled nation of tribes. As one mouth we combine our voices, a cacophony rising as if to crack the earth, as if to shake the heavens, as if to loose the turning moon from her mount and bring it crashing down upon us, the only mass heavy enough to bury our giant grief.”

Are the twenty-six fathers and their various children supposed to be connected, or do they inhabit singular biographies? A case can be made for either, since Cataclysm Baby is composed in such a way as to lend itself to a myriad of definitions and structural possibilities. This could be one world, or it could be a mural of isolated scenes. Stretching this even further, Bell even adds sketches of dark comedy and straight-forwardness, therefore adding strains of normalcy to situations that are anything but normal. In some of these chapters and worlds, what appears to us as freakish are just ordinary happenings in the lives of the characters. What never wanes, however, is an overall atmosphere of desperate hope. Even with fragile sanity or utter perplexity with the physiques and actions of their children, the fathers strive to hold their lives together, even if this sometimes means taking drastic measures. With that, there's a sociological, universal thread that ties the reader to situations that seem to be straight out of a pure horror story.

Matt Bell continues to be an invigorating artist, exploring different forms and storytelling angles. None of his works have ever relied on gimmicks or stories without at least a handful of potential meanings, and Cataclysm Baby is no different. I've read the work twice in the last month, and even going into it that second time, I found multiple passages that seemed fresh or exposed new territories for the course of the book, offering even more ways to analyze such a slim volume. To counter my own “endoresment-gasm:” should Bell ever produce a work that stumbles in its execution, it will be easy to criticize, since his first two publications have shown what he is steadily capable of doing. However, that's a purely hypothetical scenario, and Cataclysm Baby is the latest offering from a writer who really needs more attention than he already receives.

NOTE: Recently, the publishers of Mud Luscious Press have encountered financial difficulties to the point of their next four publications being in jeopardy. Writers, readers, and other presses have started a big push to shed led on the publisher's excellent works in the hopes of helping them raise enough capital to be able to continue their book publishing. Visit the site to learn more about their available materials.

Announcing Longform Fiction

Yesterday saw a very exciting announcement. After a year and a half of working on the website/feed Instafiction, Jeremy P. Bushnell and I agreed to become the first Fiction Editors for the great website Longform.org. The work on Instafiction was very gratifying and introduced me to dozens of amazing literary magazines and writers, but occasionally, Jeremy and I would have the "where is this taking us?" conversation. A few months ago, he introduced me to a conversation with Longform co-founder Max Linsky, and the plan was set in motion. And here we are.

The fiction page for Longform was released yesterday, along with a complete redesign of the entire website. I, of course, had nothing to do with any of these changes, but I'm humbly hitching a ride with some phenomenal editors and designers. Jeremy and I are beyond excited to start sharing and promoting great writers and journals via a new site and audience. And I want to thank the Longform founders (Max and Aaron Lammer) for giving us this chance, and the biggest thank you goes to web designer Will Mitchell. A good 85% of Max's e-mails mentioned how much Will was doing behind the scenes to get the new Longform pages up and running. I actually haven't met these gentlemen face to face, so these digital shout-outs will have to suffice.

I hope you check the site out, if you're not already familiar with it. Longform.org has a large, passionate following and has been praised in articles by such publications as Time magazine (it's one of their Top 50 websites of 2012), Slate, and the Washington Post. If anyone was a devoted follower of Instafiction, the content isn't changing, just the venue. We're still going to be searching for great, unheralded fiction from a variety of sources. Drop us a line if there's anything you've read that stands out.

The new Twitter handle is @longformfiction. Pay us a visit. Thanks.