Review: The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer

Over on Goodreads, I welcomed another member to my coveted Five-Star club: Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings! Now, why did it enter such rare territory, you ask? Well, it's hard to say. Is it a solid five-star like Delillo's White Noise, a modern classic destined for doctoral theseses and scorn from the unwashed masses? Well, how many books are?

But The Interestings is five-star good in ways that count: It's readable and believable. It's a good solid read, by turns enchanting and engrossing, that rarest of literary feats: a page-turner about mundane things done by ordinary people. The six core Interestings all met at a summer camp in 1974, and they were all Talented in various ways: The actor, the dancer, the animator, the musician, playwright, and the enigmatic prodigal. Mostly they went on to do non-artistic work, although one, Ethan, went on to be a Success complete with money and fame.

In fact Ethan Figman went beyond ordinary in many ways: he's a multi-millionaire cartoon king, morally scrupulous, ethically above board - a liberal superman, even. Which is no doubt what turns a lot of people off about this book (see white privilege, etc.) and I get your point. But it also drives the narrative in a believable way; he's surrounded by the ordinary, and he elevates them. Maybe this sounds like a strange point, and maybe I'm talking The Interestings out of five-star status just by mentioning it, but Ethan is even a bit... Christ-like, isn't he? (yeah, my eyes are rolling too. I'm backing off...)

Overall I loved being in this book, finding out what happened next, following along. Jules, the primary narrator, may have been a bit harsh and needy and jealous, but she was real. And I found Jonah to be entirely sympathetic and engrossing; his sections could have been a novel by themselves. And despite a bit of tidy wrap-up involving astounding coincidences and Just The Right Words from Ethan to Jonah, followed by a noble tearful death, The Interestings was an amazing, astounding read. Welcome to the five-star lounge, The Interestings!

Andy Kaufman, the Rooster, and more

First, a Story: Rubies

Something lovely and strange from Maria Mutch on Necessary Fiction. I love the constant allusions to cuts with little pain, the lightly addressed second person, how multitudes of the narrator's life are hidden but present, a larger world seen only through the distorting and selective glass of these assorted vignettes.

The Rooster is here, the Rooster is here!

And now the real awards season begins with the announcement of the 2014 Tournament of Books, from The Morning News. And despite a year of training, of reading more new releases than in any previous year, I have read only two of the nominated books. Two! They were: Life after Life, by Kate Atkinson, and A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki. Both were wonderful, by the way. I will have more to say on this later.

Looking ahead

If December's for looking back, January is for looking ahead. In that vein, The Millions has posted their most anticipated literary books of the year. BookRiot has posted their 60 most anticipated YA books. 

non-fiction: Andy Kaufman

I used to watch Andy Kaurman when I was a kid. Watched may be the wrong word: I observed him, looking for clues to his human-ness, what lay underneath the strangeness of his persona. So I read with interest Margaret McCullen's very Andy Kaufman story on The Morning News, about the time she wrestled Andy Kaufman and how they became strange friends. Also appearing is Blondie, and a young cub reporter's favorite dress.

Sometimes in real life you get to know someone, a strange someone, and you keep waiting for the nervous persona to drop so you can meet the real person. And it's sad to realize that sometimes there is no person under the persona, that they're touched in some strange other-worldly way. It's just as sad when this happens to one of your childhood icons. But also it's beautiful in its own way.

Here's Andy spending time building a persona, on David Letterman's short-lived morning show.

Books of the Year: The Grebbies

Well here it is, Christmas time again. The ol' year end. Yup, there it went, and that means it's time to look back and give out some awards.

The Nobel Prize committee has had their say, the National Book Award is done. The Goodreads Books of the Year have been voted on and added to thousands of "To Read" lists, never to be thought of again. The Rooster and the Pulitzer Prize are but blips on the horizon. If you're jonesing for more book awards, you've come to the right place.

Allow me to present the First Annual Grebbie Awards, given to notable books by the staff at grebmaR.net. A more complete list of my notable reads is available on my Goodreads page, but these are my personal highlights.

Books of the Year that I didn't read

Let's face it, I didn't read that many books this year, and I had to skim a Lemony Snickett to hit my Goodreads target of 35 books. Which leaves a lot of books I meant to get to but didn't, including the second book on the Lemony Snickett series. But that doesn't mean I couldn't follow the buzz. And of all the buzz-worthy books, these are the ones I most regret not getting to.

MaddAddam, by Margaret Atwood 
This one looked great, but as the third book of a trilogy I never started, it's down on my list.

Tenth of December, by George Saunders 
Okay, here's reason #1037 why publishers don't like short story collections: I read some of these stories in Best American collections and/or The New Yorker, so it didn't make a lot of sense to lay out money for the rest of them. On the other hand, Saunders is an amazing talent, well worth your time. But if you're not already reading The New Yorker or the Best American series, you're probably not his target market. See what I mean?

The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride 
I always regret not reading the NBA winner, and this book, about a kid joining up with the John Brown raids, made this year no exception.

Literary Novel/Book of the Year:

The shortlist of Grebbie-nominated books I did read includes:

Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson 
Infinite rebirths, the Blitz of London, and murdering Hitler. What else do you need in a book?

We Live in Water, by Jess Walter 
A compassionate collection of stories about hard luck losers in the Pacific Northwest by one of the great writers of our time (and my Tin House workshop mentor - Hi, Jess!)

A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki
Japanese schoolgirls, ancient Buddhist nuns, diaries that float up on distant shores, and quantum-zen weirdness. Put on your thinking caps, folks, and read this one now.

But the Grebbie goes to...

The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner 
Looking over my list, there wasn't one head-and-shoulders standout. But this book, the story of a young artist known as Reno who in the late 1970's hangs on the outskirts of art collectives and anarchists, was probably my favorite book this year.

I love this book as a perfect blend of everything I'm into, novelistically: Historical labor movements, art, motorcycles, anarchic shadow organizations, sexuality and sexual politics, and yes, myth-making on a shamelessly grand scale.

Pulpy Good Fun retro-read of the year

The Dain Curse, by Dashiell Hammett
When eight diamonds go missing from an eccentric millionaire, it seems like a routine insurance investigation for the Continental Op, until the bodies start piling up and the man's niece - a drug addict, possibly insane - is at the center of the whole thing.

Dashiell Hammett wrote the hell out of mysteries, and his Continental Op is one of the great creations of noir mysteries. The Op is nameless, middle-aged, overweight, and without much in the way of history or emotion. What he does have is a bulldog's perseverence and about as much morality- he's always willing to play people against each other to solve the case. Which is different from pursuing justice, and he'd say the same thing if he were much of a philosopher.

Award for Comics that do what Comics should do:

All-Star Superman, Volume 1

Sure, this title has its problems: A cardboard sex-doll Lois Lane, an overly stuffed smorgasboard of villains, and loose choppy plotting. But it also has some great moments: bio-engineered suicide bombers, multi-dimensional time travel, and Jimmy Olson as Doomsday.

Superman was always his most fun when he let loose of reality and just went with acid trip weirdness: Cities in bottles, flying superdogs, evil clones, Mr. Mxptlyk - everything I think isn't in the last movie (I haven't seen it, the trailer looked like a pretentious gloomy mess) is in here. Repeat after me, everyone: Superman should be fun!

Country of the year: Turkey

Well, I know what you're saying: Turkey is not a book. And you'd be right, Turkey is a country. But you'll notice on my Goodreads list a couple of books by Turkish authors, including Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk, the historical novelist Ayse Kulin, and a collection of Turkish Fairy tales.

That's because, dear reader, I live in Turkey. I haven't written much about it - I pretty much live on the Internet these days - but I hope to bring some of that to this blog in the future. Meanwhile: If you like sweeping historical romances, check out Ayse Kulin. If you like dense brooding exposes on melancholy and the nature of art, Orhan Pamuk is your guy. And, well, who doesn't like a fairy tale once in a while?

So step up to the podium, Turkey, and receive your Grebbie.

And what will 2014 bring? I can't wait to find out.

A grebmaR Christmas special: the Miser Brothers

When I was a kid, the holidays meant Christmas programming. There were the obvious solid, heartwarming classics like The Grinch, Charlie Brown, and Frosty the Snowman. But no one could match the Rankin/Bass studios for sheer madcap discombobulatory dissonance. Their specials were often pretty good, like the charmingly awkward "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or the maudlin but effective "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." But they were equally capable of churning out bottom feeding dreck such as "The First Easter Rabbit" or "Frosty and Rudolph Save the 4th of July."*

Somewhere in between, there was "The Year Without a Santa Claus," a syrupy tale of Jingle and Jangle, two elves who set out to save Christmas when Santa gets the sniffles. (Why Santa gets sick on Christmas so often is an unexplored mystery.) You actually forget that part, though, once the Miser Brothers show up. These two narcissistic avatars of nature steal the show like Samuel L. Jackson dreams he could.

In the mythopoetics of Christmas Special Land, Heat Miser and Snow Miser lord over the realms of Snow and Heat. Twin children of Mother Nature, they couldn't have been more different, except for their theme song, which was eerily similar, and spectacularly AWESOME! Listen:



It's a beautiful tune, isn't it? A rollicking good-time number, with straw hats and chorus lines clearly influenced by Bob Fosse. And I don't think it's a stretch to consider Michael Jackson watching Snow Miser's spin-move showmanship and filing it away for future use.** In the years following their introduction, the Miser Brothers have inspired literally thousands of stoners, slackers, and blog posts. It was only natural that they would appear in sequels.

In the 00's, someone did a live action special remake starring Michael McKean (from Spinal Tap) and Harvey Fierstein, which turns the two part song into a duet complete with bikini-clad minions, slingshots and crossbows. It starts off as a total train wreck, then kind of grows on you, and then goes back to train wreck... here, see what I mean:



I understand their intention here, uniting both versions into one complete number - it always seemed sort of a time-filler and union-cost-cutting move to use the same song twice - but the execution seems spotty. Why are the two heat misers' domains separated by such a thin chasm? In what realm of physics can this exist? By taking the metaphorical division of heat and cold and placing them in such proximity, the dialectic of hot and cold turns into an in-house squabble between pouty brothers, rather than an epic, meta-conflict between points of view that the original suggested.

On the other hand, I do love Harvey Fierstein's Louisiana gutter accent, and the gusto with which he's determined to sell this turd as fertilizer. The icicle up the butt at the end also seems the work of a good sport. But McKean seems to be phoning it in here, like his agent had come to him with either this or a Lenny and the Squigtones reunion tour, and he chose poorly.

But, you know, it makes me wonder where Mr. Temperate is in all this? Mr. Heat, Mr. Snow, and no one in that sweet spot in between, where we live most of our lives. That boring zone of mud and flowers and sweet spring rain. The Temperate Miser. It's always the middle child that gets forgotten. Maybe it's the lost Miser Sister, Lady Temperate. She should have her own song:

I'm Lady Brown Christmas
I'm sorta 'meh'
I'm 'Bring a light jacket,'
I'm 'Watch out for that mud!'

Friends call me Temperate Miser
Whatever I touch
gets soon enough to room temp-utch-(ure)
I'm not that much!

I never want to know a day that's outside a particular range
From fifty to seventy, say! Hey, let's wear sensible shoes!

I'm not that much!

(spoken): Yeah, thanks a lot mom, my brothers got all the attention and why? Because they're all Hot and Cold and people think I'm just a law of thermodynamics or entropy well fuck you mom it's more than that, not that you care... (fades away, mumbling)

Well, you know, it's an idea.

Merry Christmas! And hey, Santa - take some vitamins this year. No more colds!

Addendum: For completeness sake, there's also a 2008 version of the song, from The Miser Brother's Christmas, which despite its techincal advances adds absolutely nothing to the conversation.


* This special is actually called Frosty and Rudolph's Christmas in July

** The question of whether the Miser Brothers influenced the Jackson 5 or vice versa I will leave for the comments section to determine.

Salinger, Zombies and flying canoes: a round-up

Here's a themeless round-up of some of my favorite web-things of the past week or two.

JD Salinger's work is leaking
Three previously unpublished Salinger stories are showing up on file-sharing sites, according to Vulture and tons of other sources. This isn't quite an Edward Snowden scale leak, but it does feel like a watershed for Salinger fans lined up and waiting for the five books promised by the somewhat shady documentary released this summer. For a much longer more digressive read on fan reaction, from "Omigod amazing!" to "I can't belive what the Philistines are up to!" scan the Reddit posts.

I think my biggest problem with this is: what's with all the secrecy over when and if these stories - and the promised five other books - will ever emerge through traditional publishing? As far as I know, no publisher has announced any release dates or plans, or plans to make dates. It's okay, you say, because Salinger was secretive. And sure, it's important what Salinger wanted. But he's gone now, and it's not clear why his cult of privacy has extended so far past his death. Unless there are no books. But no one will say officially one way or another.

So what's really depressing about Salinger's legacy is that no one seems to be in charge of it. Instead of an agent or spokesperson, we get leaks and rumors and salacious biographies.

Please, someone, step forward and tell us what's going on. This is ridiculous.

And for a fun read on what it was like to answer Salinger's fan mail, Check out Salon.com.

On-line Story of the Week:
The Rose Trellis, by Jim Meirose. I can say I've never read a story quite like this one. Nothing much happens - it's about an old woman and her tenant, who builds a rose trellis and then goes out to buy roses for it - and the prose is strangely distant, and it's kind of too long. There's a hazy dreaminess to the entire piece, and several weird God stand-ins, and an inspired flashback section narrated by the woman's dead husband who is looking forward in time.

I'm not exactly sure what I think of this story, to tell the truth. It's good, I think, but it's not mainstream good, which I mean as a compliment. It's almost outsider art in its denial of contemporary sensibilities regarding form and style. It's too idiosyncratic, holding to a vision that comes off as unsophisticated, though it's actually anything but. It's about dreams, memories, and death. My hats off to you, Jim Meirose.

Folk Story of the week:
A quick fun read. French Canadians and a flying canoe tempt the Devil and anger God in this new-to-me tale.

Trailer of the week: Zombie Hamlet
It's so obvious that Shakespeare and zombies should get together in a satire about the hackiest aspects of Hollywood. They are three of our most enduring cultural institutions, after all. Why did it take so long?

My only concern with this trailer is that even after several viewings it's not clear whether an actual zombie outbreak occurs. There would have to be a real outbreak, wouldn't there? Don't toy with my emotions, Zombie Hamlet - give me zombies or don't waste my time.

Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone, a ranting rave

Bob Dylan: a ranting rave
It seems a shame to reduce anything about Bob Dylan to a single post on a mediocre blog, but such is the force of Dylan that he forces mediocre minds to expound deeply on things they really know nothing about. It's his themes, resonating in the empty thoughtless chamber of my head: epic old-testament landscapes, calamitous heartbreak, and the beauty of perfectly smouldered eternal resentment.

Why am I waxing foolishly upon Dylan? Because now, nearly 50 years later: Bob Dylan's official video for Like a Rolling Stone has been released. Go watch it. If you don't come back for hours, I understand. To sum up, it's sixteen different videos broadcast like a cable tv service. You, as the viewer, get to pick what channel is played behind the song. And what's on each channel? People in various cable shows - The Price is Right, Pawn Stars, various infomercials, kid's shows, even Bob Himself. And they're all singing Like a Rolling Stone!

I don't know whose idea this was, or how it was executed, but it seems a perfect union of a seminal 60's song with the internet age. Dylan's anti-hubris and -privilege diatribe playing against a backdrop of everything he's railing against. A juxtaposition so outrageous you wonder why people went along with it. Doesn't Drew Carey, or the Pawn Star guys - don't they know they're the butt of the joke?

I'd subscribe to this entire set of channels and flip through it for hours. Seriously. It's more proof, if we needed it, that Dylan's ideas are timeless. It even makes the idea of reducing what Dylan is to the world of ideas you can put in words seem trivial. Dylan expands beyond the concepts of ideas - he grows and envelops and conquers.

I bought my first Dylan album my freshman year of college. It was Blonde on Blonde, the double CD set, and it was1987. He squinted up at me from the rack, his face blurry, that knit scarf loose about his neck. I bought it on a whim, and didn't take it out of my stereo for months. It was as mind-shattering to me as Einsteinian equations were to the blinkered minds of the early 20th century Newtonians, as if a rift in the cosmos had opened and this was what was on the other side. I feel this way about all of Dylan now, that he's not really a man writing songs but a conduit to another realm where perfect ideas exist, and he is just the medium by which that ethereal plane reaches this world.

I'm not kidding when I say that. Other songwriters do the same from time to time - Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Leonard Cohen - but Dylan, every five years for the past half century has been teasing masterpieces from otherwhere on a basis so consistent you become numb to it. Even when he fails - and he only fails on Dylan's terms, that is, brilliantly - his failures are interesting, worth listening to over and over. I've learned as much about writing and life from Sylvio, or I and I, as I did from his canonical hits Like a Rolling Stone or Visions of Johanna. As the Bible is to Christian philosophers, Dylan is inexhaustible.



And so why not back Like a Rolling Stone with kid's cartoons, with The Property Brothers, or the Girl Channel? The banal was never Dylan's enemy, it was his source material. And we will never be rid of the banal and shallow, the vain and petty. So I can envision Like a Rolling Stone being sung by Greek balladeers in 2000 BC as easily as by whatever roving space bards will occupy the sci-fi landscape to come. Like a Rolling Stone is a critique of vanity and aspiration, an ode to the corrupting influence of impossible ideals of wealth and aspiration, an anthem that mocks whatever embraces it as its anthem. Like a Rolling Stone, like Dylan, cannot be tamed or contained. If anything, it needs more than 16 channels. It needs all the world behind it.

All images taken from the video.

Post Halloween Blahs?

During breaks between scaring up an agent, here's a few cool stories I found lurking in the weeds of the Internet:

From Beyond the Grave...
Don't let the magic of Halloween end! The folks over at the Morning News get into the Halloween spirit, and go grave digging with a desolate widower. What happens when they open the coffin? Depends who wrote the ending.

Messiah, complex
Hobart Pulp's website offers the story of guy who wishes he hadn't answered the phone. All sorts of things happen if you answer the phone, from giving advice to running the world.

Another Turkish Fairy Tale
A tale of a wise Cadi (Judge), and a camel dispute. Also works as a Turksih precursor to Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Or Encyclopedia Brown. Or, whatever.

Photo-essay of the week, via Wired and Nolan Conway.
I'm American born 'n raised but for now I live in Turkey. And I have a nice place, but I think I share the nomadic impulse with these people and their RVs and campers and station wagons, driving all over America looking for whatever it is they're looking for.

We just went about our wanderlust in different ways. My wife and I like to stick around for a while; these folk head for Wal-mart every night. Who knew the nation's biggest host of American Roma would also be its biggest symbol of corporate evil? Makes you wonder: maybe they're not all bad.