It's the End of the World or, Whatever....

I read a book about the collapse of the United States and how chaos and disorder ruled the day.  While the book sounds like what is actually happening today, I feel deeply that--while this was not within my range of interest--it might not be so off the mark after all.  The book is "Patriots: A Novel of Surviving in the Coming Collapse" by James Wesley, Rawles.  The book disclaims that it is not intended to be used as a manual for "bushcrafting," "prepping" or military tactics, it does offer an amazing amount of information if that is your interest.  From how to make your own solar panel power source to changing frequency channel crystals on a radio so that you can't be traced or intercepted.

The story is about a group of friends who become concerned after the debacle of Hurricane Katrina.  They all were allowed into the original group by means of their expertise and what they could contribute to their cause.  While most of them are from urban areas, their "compound" is purchased and prepared before the actual collapse... weapons, ammunition, food, gasoline, and an array of upgrades to the home (some of which were so absolutely over the top in how they were explained it is nearly impossible not to image using the book as a do-it-yourself instructional), the group prepares for absolutely everything that could come up.  Other characters show up throughout, alliances are made with other groups.  Ultimately, the military confrontation with Federal and United Nations troops hits a fever pitch and the Constitutional Republic is restored.

This is definitely a book that I enjoyed reading despite the topic.  It is well written and I even enjoyed the "instructional" aspect of it.

ON WHY WE MUST KILL WIKIPEDIA

Wikipedia, that most pretentious form of misguided and erroneous collectivism, is at it again.  Philip Roth, an author I have covered in this blog extensively, cannot correct an entry for his novel "The Human Stain."  But the ultimate insult came when editors at the notorious cesspool of collective ignorance told Roth that "he wasn't authoritative enough," and that he needed "secondary sources" in order to make the change.

Here we are... a society where the collective is more authoritative than the individual. We are massively $%* if we think we can turn around and revert to logic and reason.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/an-open-letter-to-wikipedia.html?printable=true&currentPage=all

Paul Auster -- Winter Journal & THE NYT Review

It's hard to cover up my fanaticism when it comes to Paul Auster's work, so I am not even going to try.  There are, however, moments when my defense of Mr Auster's work has put me at odds with many people online.  I suspect this post is not at all different from all those other times when I've responded to The New York Times Book Review criticism of Auster's latest work, "Winter Journal."  In that spirit, I endeavor here to "problematize" some of the points Ms Meghan O'Rourke's review of "Winter Journal." 

The opening of the review refers to a time, she recalls, when living in Brooklyn meant running into writers like Auster all of the time (at the grocery story with her father, for instance).  Ms O'Rourke accurately points out that "[s]ince those days much has changed; you can't go out to the Fort Greene Greenmarket on Saturday without running into a spangle of fiction writers."  I suspect that by this she means Martin Amis (a grand article in the New York Times about Brooklyn writers featured him prominently, but made no mention of Auster), and the other grand group she neglects to mention. If I sound bitter, well, it is because I lack all objectivity when it comes to the almost complete blackout of Paul Auster from The New York Times.  Having said that, I have read Ms O'Rourke's work (poetry) and respect her output tremendously.  What I disagree with her on is the fact that "Winter Journal" is published 30 years after the publication of "The Invention of Solitude" and that it ["Winter Journal"] "can be read as a bookend to that text ["The Invention of Solitude"].  Strangely enough, Ms O'Rourke states later on in the review that "'Winter Journal' doesn't live up to its precedent--it lacks its kick."  I find this exquisitely paradoxical--30 years is a long time, and the stretch of time does wonderful (and terrible) things to a writer, in both terms of style and substance.  While I will always defend Paul Auster for the excellence of his genius, I take issue with the fact that the review sounds as if someone was writing a "Requiem to Lost Talent."

Compared to "The Invention of Solitude," states Ms O'Rourke, (or to any other biographical text by a fiction writer) "'Winter Journal' is not all that philosophical, and its meditative sections have a turgid quality, like a sauce that's overthickened."  I fail to see how "Winter Journal" is that disparate from "The Invention of Solitude," especially in the philosophical analysis of biographical material.  It is precisely its fullness of philosophy that what gives "Winter Journal" its most palpable greatness... it is a biography that spells an individual life spent looking for answers and not missing the details of one's own role among others.

I'll probably catch some hell for writing so off the objective center, but my life has been changed tremendously by each and every single sentence of Paul Auster's work.  There hasn't been one word missing, or one word too many for my taste.  Too bad all "perfect" things come to an end... whether it is love, friendship and writers, it all dies in the end.  I accept the criticism because it is only by the grace of Paul Auster's work that literature still has meaning for me.

Christopher Isherwood -- Lost Years, A Memoir 1945-1951

Before I get to the source of why Isherwood's diaries are so addictive to read, I must point out that the art of  writing daily entries on a journal is making a comeback.  Whether or not this has anything to do with Isherwood is irrelevant.  I've read Christopher Isherwood's diaries (Volume 1, 1939-1960 & Volume 2, 1960-1969) which together add up to 1,900 pages, and my fascination with his life and the lives of those around him became almost obsessive.  Actually, I should point out clearly that the diaries ARE addictive and there's no way to stop reading them once you begin.  Of course I know what drives this addiction, but I am quite ashamed to admit it here*.

Lost Years - A Memoir, 1945-1951 is written in narrative form because Isherwood did not keep a lengthy entry journal but rather just a "day-to-day-one-entry-at-a-time," and these entries only covered people, places visited and travels.  As a result, the narrative reads like a story and Isherwood treats himself as a separate--a strange third person point of view that comes and goes and takes a bit of time to get used to.  The other fascinating part of it is the lengthy footnotes that Isherwood includes as side notes (they are so long that they turn into their own little stories within story).  The explicitness of the sexual escapades Isherwood engaged in are clearly forewarned by Katherine Bucknell in her excellent introduction.  I wasn't so much turned off by these as I was curious as to why he had to include them.  Nevertheless, the intricate liaisons and relationships are simply amazing to follow.  Capote, Garbo, Agee, Angermayer, the Huxleys, Thomas & Klaus Mann, Tennessee Williams, and so many others that appear on both the first and second volumes are some of the characters that come in and out of Isherwood's life.  The travels alike are both numerous and laid down in amazing detail (for someone reconstructing from memory).

It's a great memoir, really, and even if you are not an Isherwood fan, you should really pick it up because it's also an instruction manual on how to keep (or reconstruct from memory) a great personal journal.  As Martin Rubin from the Washington Times observed: "[Isherwood] is quite simply a marvelous diarist, one of the very best in the long tradition of English diarist starting with Samuel Pepys."  I couldn't agree more.

* Every turn of the page is a delicious piece of gossip (Hollywood and other).

Philip Roth - Nemesis

Often in life we are encountered with life-altering choices.  That's simple enough to state, as it is to say that those choices make us who we are.  Philip Roth's "Nemesis" is a novel that deals directly with the life choices of one Bucky Cantor, physical education teacher, and the community that he serves.  The problem--stated clearly from page one--is the mid-1940s polio epidemic that ravished the Newark ethnic communities.  Cantor is a complex character, with expectations for himself that are beyond impossible to achieve, and this settles the crux of the entire novel.  Orphaned at birth, he is brought up by a pair of "Old World" Jewish grandparents.  His grandfather influences Bucky in good ways, but that influence carries to such extreme that it damages Bucky's future before it can actually take off.

The summer playground Bucky Cantor runs in the intense heat of the season becomes a breeding ground for polio infections.  Before one quarter of the novel there are over 10 infections and various deaths.  As a role model of the community, Bucky Cantor begins to take on too many roles for a single man--he worries over whether or not he should keep the playground open, as two of his students died of polio.  It's the start of Bucky taking on responsibility for not only the spread of polio in the community, but also the beginning of his clash with the God of his lineage, a God he deems cruel and sadistic.

Bucky is in love with Marcia Steinberg, the daughter of a physician Bucky loves and respect.  Even the good doctor cannot convince Bucky that it is not his responsibility about the spread, but the effort goes to waste, "We may not know much about polio," Doctor Steinberg states, "but we know that [it doesn't spread as Bucky thinks]. Kids everywhere play hard out of doors all summer long, and even in an epidemic it's a very small percentage who become infected with the disease. And a very small percentage of those who get seriously ill from it. And a very small percentage of those who die--death results from respiratory paralysis, which is relatively rare. Every child who gets a headache doesn't come down with paralytic polio. That's why it's important not to exaggerate the danger and to carry on normally. You have nothing to feel guilty about. That's a natural reaction sometimes, but in your case it's not justified."  Bucky heeds the judgment of the good doctor but only for a few days.  His girlfriend is away at a camp in the woods, and she is begging for Bucky to resign his job at the inner-city playground and come to work at the camp.  And Bucky does (out of utterly impulse of the moment) quit his job and heads out to the camp in the woods.  The problem is that Bucky takes with him not only the responsibility he feels for the polio epidemic, but also the "fact" that he betrays the boys who were depending on him to open the playground.  Here one can see what is the key to Bucky's personality... this unrealistic, beyond human sense of duty and responsibility inculcated on him by his late grandfather.

Once the polio cases at the camp surge, Bucky gets tested and is certified by a doctor that he had been carrying the polio, and even though it could not be proven that it was Bucky who brought it to the camp (let alone the playground) Bucky takes on it like a cross to carry--it is all his fault, he convinces himself and takes on even more responsibility by sparring with a God he again deems evil and sadistic.  Polio does destroy everything Bucky Cantor wanted for his life--a relationship, a career, a healthy life. He becomes paralyzed and shuns his girlfriend when she comes to visit him, telling her it was better for her to not be engaged, let alone married, to a gimp.  This is a self-imposed martyrdom that Bucky (while not showing it publicly) seems to regret, a regret he turns into anger at the unfairness of a so-called fair God.

This is a story about choice, of course, but it is also a story about how our on unrealistic expectations of ourselves can deteriorate us until every single aspect of our lives become alien and distorted.  It is a very good novel for various reasons.  First, the narrative is well-paced and clear.  Secondly, the characters are all characters the reader can relate to and embrace, even when the decisions are as painful as Bucky's.

Philip Roth -- Exit Ghost

I enjoyed reading the tale of Nathan Zuckerman, as I have enjoyed the other Roth books about this colorful and complex protagonist.  The story is less a Rip Van Winkle tale (as otherwise introduced in the book's dust cover) but rather a tale of a man who returns to an environment he had left 11 years ago and he returns much changed (unlike Rip Van Winkle who after all the years remains the same lazy bum).  Zuckerman's escape from New York City took him to a reclusive bungalow in Berkshire is interrupted as he is in need of a medical procedure, but as he returns (and perhaps a bit too rushed) people from his past begin to magically appear before him.  The most prominent of these is Amy Bellette, the former lover of one E.I. Lonoff, a writer Zuckerman had much admired when he was just starting out as a writer.  The scene when Zuckerman sees Amy again for the first time in almost 50 years is a bit rushed--I don't say this as criticism but rather to just point out the event that precipitates quite a few others.  At any rate, Zuckerman remembers her voice and that is what unsettles his return to the city.

Exit Ghost is a novel of various themes.  To be sure, Zuckerman returns to the city in fear of what this return might mean for his future, but the Nathan Zuckerman of the past, the adventurous, daring man of younger years still breaks through the veil of fear.  He's not, however, exactly holding on stubbornly to his youth.  A prostate problem is only significant to him in as much as it disrupts his daily routines in his solitude--a swim in the local swimming pool is out of the question because he has become incontinent and wearing a diaper of sorts.  A procedure to alleviate this is what drives him out of his solitude and into the city.  He can't wait to return to Berkshire but in a moment of impulse he wonders if he can, in fact, survive the city and its demands.  Out of the same impulse he finds a classified ad by a couple who is looking to swap their Manhattan apartment for a place just like Zuckerman's.  When he visits the apartment to meet the young couple, he immediately becomes taken by the young woman and thus the novel turns to a Zuckerman less in control of his desires and wishing for a youth never to be had again.  Instead, there's a series of "He/She" dialogue that he writes on hotel stationary that fulfills the outcome he desires from the connection to this young, beautiful woman.  In reality, Jamie is cold and terse, even rude to Zuckerman's advances but he persists on the hunt regardless of the outcome.  It is here that the novel becomes even faster paced.  I am not sure if all the pieces fit in as well as Roth intended--perhaps I lack the understanding of technique in fiction to see why these connections are made.  Zuckerman becomes the target of a young man (an ex-boyfriend of Jamie's) who is trying to write a biography of E.I. Lonoff, a writer Zuckerman is willing to protect from this ill-timed (Lonoff's work has been forgotten and Zuckerman doesn't really want it resurrected by a controversial bio).  The biographer, Kliman, is in "possession" of a terrible secret from Lonoff's youth that he is looking to corroborate and publish as the centerpiece of the biography.  From here on, the novel is a zig-zagging of connections and characters clashing.  Zuckerman wants to call off the deal to swap living places with Jamie and her husband, but is unable to gather the courage to do so.  The resolution is quite unclear and scattered, and Zuckerman closes the account with a final "He/She" dialogue that reveals little about his relationship to Jamie Logan (other than what he imagines) and about his own fading self.

Where Exit Ghost fails (and I say this with all due respect) is in the overly-political themes, all about the post 9/11 and the events that followed, primarily the invasion of Iraq and the election of 2004.  The novel was published in 2007, and along with "The Plot Against America" stand out for their anti-Republican leanings.  While I don't object to this in any specific way, it strikes me as an indirect way of taking advantage of the political climate of the 2000s which was neither as one-sided as it was clearly defined.

Philip Roth - The Plot Against America

It takes an immeasurable amount of talent to pull off a historical novel, and even more so when that history is turned upside down.  This is precisely what Philip Roth masterfully does with "The Plot Against America."  The story of the 1940 election has FDR losing to a Republican... none other than Charles A. Lindbergh.  The  novel was published in 2004, midst the G.W. Bush bashing after the Iraq invasion in 2003.  I don't say that in order to takes side, but as the novel progresses, the close-reader can detect that the hero-worship, the unquestioning devotion to Charles Lindbergh is very near the admiration Obama supporters display today.  Again, it's not a matter of taking sides, but it is remarkable how politics in America can go upside down (just like in the novel).

Roth combines what is perhaps his most accurate description of his childhood (or perhaps it was all made up) with the cyclone of historical events which he manipulates easily.  Charles Lindbergh is a Nazi sympathizer who comes to power not because of his experience but because of a rock star status even a decade or more after his amazing Atlantic crossing.  Immediately, President Lindbergh begins to implement what to the narrator and his family (particularly his father) are the collapsing domino effect which could only culminate with a pogrom.  In fact, many of their friends and neighbors immigrate to Canada.  Roth father clashes with Alvin, an orphan cousin of the protagonist who comes to live with them.  They are both rabid anti-Lindbergh and their following of Walter Winchell's radio program every evening leads Alvin to join the Canadian commandos to get into the fight against Hitler.  In the meanwhile, Philip's older brother Sandy becomes part of a government program "Just Folks" designed to integrate Jewish people and culture into the American mainstream.  He is sent to a farm in Kentucky where he learns the way of the farm, and comes back home even more indoctrinated than before--a true lover and supporter of President Lindbergh and his agenda.  All of this cause a perfect storm within a family that up until the election of Lindbergh was as normal as normal families can be.

Of course everything escalates.  The Antisemitism reaches a boiling point and, as Lindbergh becomes used to flying his own plane to different cities to be with the people, his plane disappears and he is nowhere to be found.  Now, like I said, Roth is a magician when it comes to making you believe these made-up events.  Even the ultra-amazing resolution to President Lindbergh's disappearance is a work of art and very much worth reading and losing one's self in it.  I cannot recommend this book more--it was full speed from the first page to the last, with both moments of rage and tenderness throughout.

Philip Roth -- The Humbling

The most difficult part of reading "The Humbling" is the excruciatingly painful personal associations to one's own heartbreak experiences.   Philip Roth mixes several levels of reality, no doubt, when depicting his protagonist's sense of being cornered without an exit, and, despite the fact that the reader can anticipate clearly where things are going, the genius of resolving the plot depends on carrying through the "acting/non-acting" dichotomy Roth introduces from the start.  Yet, we find that at the end of the novel, Simon Axler's conviction to his art has never really left the aging actor but rather has been dormant, pulsating throughout the short novel without the reader noticing until the very end.

Suicidal to some small extent, Simon Axler's stay at a psychiatric hospital begins his alteration of reality, a reality he needs to bring back his unconscious ability to act.  He is surrounded everywhere by people whom he thinks are in the process of acting themselves into some sort of life.  Waiting for the doctor, he notes that "Everybody else would be sitting there gloomingly silent, inwardly intense and rehearsing to themselves--in the lexicon of pop psychology or gutter obscenity or Christian suffering or paranoid pathology--the ancient themes of dramatic literature: incest, betrayal, injustice, cruelty, vengeance, jealousy, rivalry, desire, loss, dishonor and grief."  This is an internal observation by Axler that thunders of paradox--he's a man trying to find his way back to his art (acting) painfully aware of others' ability to act a part according to their circumstances.  What Axler fails to see in this passage is that these are not actors, nor is it amateurs trying to act a role of sorts--these are people living real life, the very problem Axler ignores about his own situation.  His is not a problem of art/acting but of life.  At the hospital he meets a woman, Sybil Van Buren, whose new husband sexually abused her daughter and she turned a blind eye of sorts out of cowardice, or so she explains her dilemma.  Her own shame demands she right the wrong by committing murder, even asking Simon Axler if he would undertake the task of killing her husband.  The pattern of "sub-plot-appearance-tell-me-your-story-pause-come-back-a-little-later" is obvious enough, but as Axler leaves the hospital, the reader encounters "the meat" of the novel and quickly forgets about Sybil's issues.

Axler becomes involved with a woman 25 years younger than him; 40 years old Pegeen Mike Stapleford is the daughter of old friends of his whom Axler has seen grown up over the years.  She is also a lesbian, and, despite the underpinnings of what occurs to them as they become intimate, Pegeen never strays away from her past to commit to Axler's life.  The sexual adventuring they engage in occupies a small part of the narrative, albeit explicitly detailed.  Yet, as Axler puts all his proverbial eggs in one basket, the writing is fluid enough and its currents share the secret of what is about to happen.  Pegeen's parents object to the relationship, of course, but it is Pegeen who shows her real self at the end when she (as she done quite a few times before) picks up and leaves with little or no explanation.  This, of course, pushes Axler over the top and he concludes to commit suicide once and for all.  Before he works up the courage to do so, he calls Pegeen's parents and goes into shameful rants.  This is the part where the reader considers how, at one point or another, he/she has behaved in such a deplorable fashion.  We've all had moments we are not very proud of, and the extent of Axler's behavior can take a reader back--way back--to those experiences, especially when the writing is this good and clear.  

Simon Axler reads of Sybil Van Buren's case on a local newspaper--she had shot her husband and was now awaiting trial for murder.  She (and not Axler's own pain) is the catalyst of the protagonist's suicide.  "Sybil Van Buren became the benchmark of courage. He repeated the inspiring formula to action [if she can do that, I can do this!], as though a simple word or two could get him to accomplish the most unreal of all things: if she could do that, I can do this, if she could do that... until finally it occurred to him to pretend that he was committing suicide in a play. In a play by Chekhov. What would be more fitting? It would constitute his return to acting, and, preposterous, disgraced, feeble little being that he was, a lesbian's thirteen-month mistake, it would take everything in him to get the job done. To succeed one last time to make the imagined real he would have to pretend that the attic was a theater and that he was Kostantin Gavrilovich Treplev in the concluding scene of 'The Seagull.'"  And he does commit suicide.  What is not clear at the end of the novel is how much of reality vs acting the protagonist exercises.  Philip Roth is among the best writers of his generation mainly because of techniques such as the one in "The Humbling."  While the text is literal enough to conclude the magnitude of Axler's actions, the underlying philosophical/existential/real vs imagined doubts Roth plants inside the reader's mind is enough to wrench us with both pain and exhilaration, love and hate, anger and peace with one's self. 

The Month of Reading Philip Roth

Philip Roth has always been known as a maverick of sorts.  He has been both praised and criticized by the Jewish establishment for his uncompromising and "tact-be-damned" approach to topics which other writers circumnavigate or avoid altogether.  I have an old book (well, not old but rather I've had it for a long time) of photographs by Jill Krementz entitled "The Writer's Desk" and the photograph of Roth shows him in 1971, young and sporting a "devil-may-care" mustache with a broad smile.  The accompanying text: "I don't ask writers about their work habits. I really don't care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they're actually trying to find out, 'Is he as crazy as I am?' I don't need that question answered."  The copy of "The Humbling" I am presently reading (fresh off finishing "Indignation") depicts a Philip Roth which could easily be taken for the elder literary statesman he is.  I've fallen into a Philip Roth reading adventure and I wish I could say it was accidental... but it wasn't.  Last year, when Borders Book & Music was going out of business, I was lucky enough to have the time to "invade" the fiction shelves early every day of the sale.  The last three days were fruitful in terms of bargains (despite the fact that it pained me terribly to see Borders close) and I came away with a whopping $189.75 in savings on the last day.  The stack of fiction, believe it or not, was composed primarily of Roth's newer books.  Recently, as I rearranged some of the stacks in my office, I decided to put all of my new Roth acquisitions to see if I could "knock them out" one by one when the time came.  I believe the time has come.  You may call it a Philip Roth orgy of sorts--the titles include "Indignation," "The Humbling," "Exit Ghost," "Nemesis," and "The Plot Against America."  My goal is to finish them in the month of July.

What I am learning the most from Philip Roth is the advantages of letting the narrative form take its own course.  He describes enough but allows the reader to form her own ideas about the protagonists' actions and is kind with vistas into plot's twists and turns that other authors overlook (or simply demand of the reader to swim or sink).  For example, "The Humbling" opens with a clear presentation of the dilemma at hand (an actor who loses--for the lack of a better term--his mojo) and while exposing the issue at hand, Roth weaves in the interesting duality of acting/living/acting and/or trying to live according to the individual impulses of one's wishes.  The narrator explains the dilemma of Simon Axler's life as "He was an artificial madman too. The only role available to him was the role of someone playing a role. A sane man playing an insane man. A stable man playing a broken man. A self-controlled man playing a man out of control."  These are more than just simple contradictory/poetic juxtaposition of antinomianism existence--what Roth does here is introduce a wedge in the protagonist's psyche, one that is so clear and so palpable that one begins to want to get ahead of one's self in the reading.  This happened to me in "Indignation" as well.  When Marcus Messner moves into a new dorm that is described as a "firetrap" soon after learning that Marcus is telling his story in retrospect, I began to imagine that that was how Marcus died, but then Roth took me in a different direction and the resolution of the novel was so surprising I couldn't help but marvel at it. Simon Axler wakes to find his acting talent gone: "He screamed aloud when he awakened in the night and found himself still locked inside the role of the man deprived of himself, his talent, and his place in the world, a loathsome man who was nothing more than the inventory of his defects. In the mornings he hid in bed for hours, but instead of hiding from the role he was merely playing the role. And when finally he got up, all he could think about was suicide, and not its simulation either. A man who wanted to live playing a man who wanted to die."  

I am only on page 40 of this short little novel, and I suspect that I'll finish it quite quickly (just like I did with "Indignation").  What a treasure and a marvel is Philip Roth!  I am so glad to have taken up this challenge this month.

Philip Roth's "Indignation" and Mozart's Silly Music

Aside from "Patrimony," "The Human Stain" and "Portnoy's Complaint" I haven't at all covered Philip Roth's body of work.  Reading "Indignation" simply because I saw it as an "easy read" from the start has proven a bit more challenging and gratifying than just grabbing a book, reading it and finishing it.  It reminds me of years ago, while engaged as the cellist for the orchestra's quartet (an ensemble primarily occupied with playing for the orchestra sponsors, i.e., banks, airline headquarter's lobby gigs, promotional music, etc.) we were on the habit of playing W.A. Mozart's Three Divertimenti simply because they were "easy" to play--literally, music you could play without having to rehearse; that was, to some extent, the opinion of some of us that rotated in and out of "quartet duty" in the course of several seasons.  One time, J.G., the principal cellist came over to me and said in his quiet Armenian accent, "It's not Silly Mozart, as you call it... you may be able to play the notes, but try playing what's behind the notes... it won't be so silly then."  Perhaps this is a bit of a forced comparison, but as readable as "Indignation" is proving to be, I couldn't help but to remember the anecdote and conveying it here as an opening salvo.

I love "Indignation," as I have loved the little I have read by Roth.  The story of one Marcus Messner, a young college student intent in escaping his father's obsessive protectiveness, the narrative is more conventional than the other two novels by Roth I have read.  Marcus is very intelligent and has a promising future, albeit the menacing social forces around him (it's 1951 and the Korean War is in full motion... the fear of failing out of college, getting drafted and being killed overseas never far from Marcus imagination).  He's also difficult to understand simply because he is the process of understanding himself.  His intensity about life and the seriousness with which he sees his studies as a catapult to the future sets him apart from others his age.  To get as far away as possible from his father's torturing protectiveness, Marcus transfers to Winesburg College in Ohio (he is a Jewish boy from New Jersey), and this is where the narrative really begins to take on non-traditional structures.  One interesting aspect of the novel that struck me personally (actually several) is the fact that I, too, went to a mid-western Ohio, extremely conservative liberal arts college.  Also, as Marcus meets Olivia Hutton, his love interest after his transfer to Winesburg, we find that she is a sophomore who just transferred to Winesburg from none other than Mount Holyoke in Amherst, MA. because of her parents divorce.  I laughed out loud simply because my first love interest when I came to college (from where I graduated) was a sophomore transfer from Mount Holyoke whose parents had just gotten divorced that very summer.  But that's where the similarities end.

Marcus and Olivia shared a moment of intimacy that leads readers to the threshold of what the narrative evolves into.  There are numerous time abstractions as half-way through the first part (titled "Under Morphine") he find that Marcus has died and is telling us all of this in retrospect.  Roth makes this as clear as possible, albeit suddenly, so it is not as if one had to go back and re-read in order to try and process what takes place so shockingly.  What gave me pause (did not work, in my opinion) in this section of the book was the long examination of existence (or lack thereof) that Philip Roth takes Marcus on for several pages.  "What happened next I had to puzzle over for weeks afterward.  And even dead, as I am and have been for I don't know how long, I try to reconstruct the mores that reigned over that campus and to recapitulate the troubled efforts to elude those more that fostered the series of mishaps ending in my death at the age of nineteen.  Even now (if 'now' can be said to mean anything any longer), beyond corporeal existence, alive as I am here (if 'here' or 'I' means anything) as memory alone (if 'memory,' strictly speaking, is the all-embracing medium in which I am being sustained as 'myself'), I continue to puzzle over Olivia's actions.  Is that what eternity is for, to muck over a lifetime's minutiae?  Who could have imagined that one would have forever to remember each moment of life down to its tiniest component?  Or can it be that this is merely that afterlife that is mine, and as each life is unique, so too is each afterlife, each an imperishable fingerprint of an afterlife unlike anyone else's?  I have no means of telling.  As in life, I know only what is, and in death what is turns out to be what it was.  You are not just shackled to your life while living it, you continue to be stuck with it after you're gone.  Or, again, maybe I do, I alone.  Who could have told me?  And on and on and on it goes for a few pages.  Now, I can read this long passage that goes back and forth regarding the definition (or Marcus' definition) of life and death as part of Marcus' existential meanderings (alive he was an extremely dedicated intellectual, always looking for answers and very diligent in his inquiries), or I could be more critical and sense that perhaps the whole passage went on for far too long.  Either way it is very readable, even if at the end of it we are left with the feeling the whole rant was a bit tedious.

Yet "Indignation" is clearly far more than young ranting; it is a first-look at a landscape of a momentous shift in American history.  Through Marcus' voice, 1951 appears poised for the changes that turned American society upside down in the mid 1960s.  It was the post-World War era, but it was also an era of undoing the conservative chains that ruled society during the first half of the 20th Century.  At this point in the novel, Marcus is being challenged by the college's administration over their "concern" regarding Marcus' welfare (isn't it always with administrators? "Our main concern it the safety of our students!" What bullshit, really!) because he has had three dormitory room changes in the course of one semester.  But Marcus' meeting with the Dean of Students becomes a tug of war between religious/atheist positions, with Marcus' citing extensively from Bertrand Russell's "Why I am Not a Christian" much the dismay of the Dean.

I am already halfway through "Indignation" and I've only been reading for a day.  It is the book's readability that's making it enjoyable, all the while its content (what's behind the notes) making it fulfilling and engaging.  I recommend it without reserve.

Blake Bailey's "Cheever: A Life"

"The Stories of John Cheever" was one of the few books I was able to read and really enjoy for non-work/research fun last year.  Of course I knew of the Blake Bailey biography of Cheever and the bombastic literary acclaim it got the moment it hit the critics' circles, and that is the reason I decided to read it during this short holiday.  The acclaim is much deserved, as it is perhaps one of the most excellently written and most informative biography of any author in the last decade or so.  This is no hyperbole, to be sure, and I hope that my constant disagreements with the same critics who praised "Cheever: A Life" serve as testament that I approached the volume with an open mind and the clear idea that I wanted to learn as much as possible from Bailey's treatment of John Cheever, who is quickly becoming one of my top five favorite authors of all time.

Blake Bailey's style is described as "addictively readable" by Anthony Johnson of "The New York Times" and I agree wholeheartedly.  This addictive readability is the result of a casual style of writing, almost "spoken-like" which no doubt was adopted to appeal to a wider audience.  To someone like me (used to reading dry and terse footnotes) something like Bailey's almost child-like giddiness at finding facts (the detective part of doing research) is refreshing but in a way starling: "An intriguing aspect of one's research is learning something of the fates of forgotten writers--a sobering lesson in the evanescence of literary fame.  Take the strange case of Flannery Lewis..." Bailey goes on to describe quite colloquially how he came across a listing in New Orleans and spoke with a woman who claimed to be a relation of Lewis who had recently died at the time of the call. I am not used to reading footnotes that appear as if a friend was relating a juicy detail of gossip from across a table.  This is the type of approachable style that makes this biography reading a candy-like treat instead of the stale and potentially cotton-mouthed conventional type of footnoting that passes for information/research in academia nowadays.

Beyond matters of style are both content and subject.  John Cheever was a troubled man from beginning to end.  Parts of his life read as a condensed version of the DSM IV text.  It is almost beyond painful to think about self-destructiveness in someone like Cheever, who had an almost godly power of observation of the world around him and the ability to transform it all into powerful narratives.  He was aware of so much, and perhaps that is why he suffered so much.  Complexity is not a word lost on him, although juxtaposed against Cheever's persona the word seems tiny and trivial.  John Cheever's alcoholism is perhaps the most difficult segment of the biography to read through.  Bailey writes a compelling narrative of a person bent on committing suicide by drinking his life away.  Cheever's painful loneliness, the way he fought and often lost against his demons, might appear as juicy gossip to any person not familiar with his work.  To the insightful reader (with the help of Bailey's expert analysis) one can easily see how these demons created the catalyst to some of Cheever's best short stories.  He was a broken man, a "finished" man, a man of no consequence by the time he turned his life around, got sober and focused on his comeback.  Blake Bailey devotes little time to the critical failure of "Bullet Park" (which may have precipitated Cheever's rapid decline) but what he does cover is enough to satisfy Cheever fans (the same who go through the difficulty of finding Cheever's most obscure/out of print work despite the challenges).

By the time sobriety and the magnificent success of "Falconer" came around, Cheever's painfully closeted bisexuality and the emotional neglect he suffered early in his life all seem to quell under the titanic perseverance of the man and the writer--colossal might be a better word.  From confused youth to helping define the term "American short story," to drunkard and back to the top of his form, Cheever is a man with few equals among his contemporaries (yes, that includes Updike as well).

Cheever's powerful accomplishment as a journal keeper is highlighted by Bailey in a way that is two-fold.  First, it instructs on the importance of journal keeping as a tool of observation.  Secondly, it shows a young writer the importance of keeping observations cataloged for later use as reservoirs of "story fodder."  I think of my own journal keeping and my tendencies to rant rather than observation, something that makes me feel a pang of guilt for such time-wasting endeavors.  Aspiring writers might be better serve to stop reading books about writing fiction and read well-written biographies such as "Cheever: A Life."

Critical Thinking: The Other National Deficit

All it takes is one look at the current state of affairs in the United States to know we are in deep trouble.  Before I get blamed for taking sides, let me just say that I am an equal-opportunity offender; that is to say, I sweep the floor with both Right and Left ideology and criticize lack of logic on both sides equally.

It is sort of a common denominator to blame the media for our national ills and divisiveness.  I remember when being a current events critical observer meant one only had to keep one's eye on Fox News for outrageous claims and incendiary language.  That's not the case anymore!  CBS, NBC, ABC and MSNBC are starting to make Fox News look like "the cornerstone of logic and reason" in current American media.  I know that is an exaggeration but I make it to illustrate the point that, as perverse as it seems, the so-called Liberal media has out-done its most dangerous enemy and has climb to higher levels of "outrageousness" in order to sink to new lows.  One example of this was a few months ago, during the Florida Republican primary, when Rachel Maddow argued ("Let me say something provocative, but I think it is true," she accentuated) that Republican nominee Newt Gingrich used a secret coded racist language when stating that "The President should stop singing and start leading."  Gingrich was referring to Obama's performance of Al Green's classic hit at the Apollo Theater a few weeks before.  Maddow suggested that it was all a secret coded message that really was meant to connect the president with "Minstrel" shows, etc.  And that's is just one of many examples.  The Republicans are waging war on women, minorities, poor people, gays, college students and just about everyone who doesn't share conservative values.  This defies logic and here's the reason I say so... if a political party's main reason for being is to win elections, why would the Republicans do this purposefully?  Doesn't it defeat the purpose of running for office, or could all of this be a creation of the new, blistering extreme media?  Sadly, I think it is and even more sadly, it's coming from the Left.

Early Commencement Address for the Class of 2012 (belated for the class of 2011, 2010)

Class of 2010, 2011 & 2012, Parents, teachers and, well, yes, administrators...  
DO NOT TRUST THE ADMINISTRATIVE CLASS!

Much is said about great achievements on the course of lengthy commencement speeches, so I will try my best to make this as brief as possible, for it has little to do with great achievement and much to do with keeping your eyes, ears and just about everything you can summon in your favor to keep your head above water.  This will not be a long speech regarding the state of affairs in our country, and how the young generation seems poised to fix it all before us--the ones who really handed this mess over to you--become food for daisies.

Perhaps one of the greatest under-achievers of the United States Presidency was a man by the name of Chester A. Arthur.  You never hear a politician on the campaign trail giving ardent speeches about "the vision of Chester A. Arthur," or referring to the President Arthur as the blistering example of leadership and courage.  Yet, in a very small way, President Arthur saved this great nation from the same fate of Tsarist Russia.  You see, the Russian Bolshevik discontent rose up from the fact that between the very, very rich and the very, very poor, the Russian governmental model had created, little by little, a separate class of government officials, or, as we call them today, administrators.  To get into this fascinating group of civil servants, the Russian people needed, above all, not brains or college degrees or even great personalities... they needed a leg up, someone on the inside that would "baptize" them as one of their own and give them entrance into the comfort of life-long employment doing administrative work that, in reality, no one knew whether it was needed or whether it would make a difference in the grand picture of the Russian nation.  In order words, the administrative class back then was very much like the administrative class today.

A bill sponsored by Senator George Pendleton, a Democrat from Ohio, in 1882 did away with systems of favoritism and much of the worthless pencil pushing, paper-clip counting and M&M sorting going on back then.  In some way, Sen. George Pendleton saved this great nation from a great deal of social unrest, pain and even anarchy.  And President Chester A. Arthur, you may ask?  By signing the Pendleton Act into law, he pushed the last nail on the casket of his reelection bid for a second term. Unfortunately, change for Tsarist Russia came in the form of a total overthrow, violent, vindictive and merciless revolution.  Yet, once the Bolsheviks organized, restructured the form of government they deemed best (Union of Socialist Republics), an administrative class developed three times the size of what once existed under Tsar Alexander, and, as time took its toll, the end for the Soviet Union in 1991 came about for the very same reason... an unsustainable class of administrators pushing pencils, shredding papers, stamping signatures on a boat-load of useless document and needless work.

The administrative class today is in some ways different than previous ones, despite its dependence on about the same level of procedural/operational incompetency.  They need to make their underlings engage in a lot of useless paper work to justify their own administrative work and existence.  In order words, they can make the underlings create portfolios, fill-in check lists with evidence to support “competent” work, only so that they may read over it, or sign it blindly or... well, who knows!  But that's not the most damaging thing the administrative class does, really.  The paper pushing and the "supervising" cannot hold a candle to the amount of lying, cheating, self-interest and moral compass ignoring the administrative class does in order to survive.  At least, it has been so in my experience.

Today’s administrative class thrives on making sure all their liabilities are covered; they grow and sustain themselves by making sure the paper trail of some legal indiscretion NEVER leads to them; they pause their moral compass simply to save their own hide and, most disturbingly of all, are always on the look-out for a scapegoat to blame.  They seldom suffer humiliation and are always at the ready to support one another when the great weight of some allegation creeps along toward them.  Some in the administrative class, not being happy with having been born with the proverbial “Silver Spoon” in their mouth, further depend on Daddy’s big pockets to jiggle themselves into an administrative position they are neither qualified nor capable of doing with any level of competence.  One can’t trust people with this level of self-interest and/or occupational unawareness.

Back in 1998, I read a review in “The Economist” of a book by one Manuel Arroyo, a Spaniard whose book “Contra los Franceses” (Against the French) bears mention here if simply to illustrate the thin resemblance to the arrogance and ineptitude of the administrative class. Arroyo’s satirical bashing relates how “[t]he French are pretentious; the French are superficial; the French are priggish. They are bad-mannered, they waffle and in a squeeze they always behave like pigs, even to each other. Their philosophy is a fad, their wine over-rated, their novels unreadable and in painting they haven’t done anything since Matisse or Picasso, and he wasn’t even French.”  Interestingly, aside from the references to art, philosophy, literature and wine-making techniques, Arroyo could have been writing about the administrative class.  If you have to wonder and think hard as to why I had to make the space for Arroyo’s reference, I assure you the “click” (or a-ha! moment) will come to you when you least expect it.

One hyperbolic scenario I wanted to illustrate to you is this… if you are about to cross the Grand Canyon on a high wire from one end to the other, and as you are about to step on the high wire, you realize that there’s an administrator holding on to the high wire—he or she is the only anchor to the high wire on your side—DO NOT, I repeat, do not attempt to cross.

And so I say to you, Class of 2012, 2011 and 2010, as you leave here today to pursue your life with passion and devotion to what you believe in… Do not trust the Administrative Class.  Do not trust them simply because of their pseudo-bourgeoisie attitude, nor because of their poor irrelevance in today’s world.  I say, do not trust the Administrative Class because to do so is to try to placate their greed, lack of moral direction and self-interest with blind compassion, and the proverbial turning of the other cheek.  It will never work, and all you’ll have to show for is betrayal, pain and humiliation (not to mention the ruining of your good name and reputation). 

Trust me, I am not an administrator.

Mischa, the Wonder-Kitty (1990-2012)

My Mischa, the Wonder-Kitty, friend and family and companion and secret-sharer of a million joys and sorrows, returned to the arms of the Lord today.  My sorrow is beyond description.  Fare thee well, my sweet princess, may you know more peace and joy in your new home.  Sleep well, sweet princess, key-holder of my heart.

Tengo Kawana as Odysseus in Haruki Murakami's "1Q84"

Tengo Kawana, the protagonist of Haruki Murakami's "1Q84," is part Odysseus and part Stephen Dedalus.  There's certainly a journey to his problems but also the perverse palpitations that the journey is an empty one, and that just like Dedalus' epiphany, the rewards are simply not worth the cause.  As a master of characterization, Murakami creates a Tengo Kawana that is the epitome of Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces."  Of course many readers feel it is useless to follow a hero on a journey that yields no reward, but with Tengo it is much different.  I say this not only because the young man is a highly identifiable with the reader, but mainly because sympathy/empathy (especially brought out for an imaginary character) is a human gift close to extinction these days.  Tengo is the person you want to sit down next to, the complete stranger crying in the subway car whom you don't know but you wish you could put your arm around him and console him in some way.
To begin with, Tengo's past is as tragic as they come in fiction.  His earliest memory is that of his mother exposing her breast to a man Tengo know it is not his father (hence the right or wrong conclusion that his mother was an adulterer).  The memory follows him to adult life, after a childhood where his mother, having disappeared from his life, is particularly present in the form of emotional pain.  Tengo's father, an NHK subscription fee collector is distant, resentful and emotionally abusive to him, taking Tengo on long subscription collecting routes.  There's a chapter in the middle of the novel when Tengo goes out and visit his elderly father at a nursing home.  On his way there he reads a paperback of short stories which includes a story entitled "Town of Cats."  The visit yields very few answers for poor Tengo, although he realizes he didn't go there seeking any.  The imagery and emotional beat of this chapter is excruciatingly painful and might make the toughest of readers shed a tear.

Enter Mr Ushikawa, a mysterious character who works for a "foundation" seeking to give Tengo a large amount of money in order for Tengo to work on his own novel uninterrupted.  What is happening in reality is Mr Ushikawa is trying to purchase Tengo's exit from the complicated world of "1Q84" (the parallel world, not the novel) for a purpose that is unclear and not yet revealed at this point in the novel.  It is clear, however, that Tengo's involvement in the re-writing of "Air Chrysalis" is the main factor behind Ushikawa's persistent ways; at least, that much is clear!  And as new revelations continue (such as the double-flip with the "dowager" and her potential connection to "The Little People"), it would be easy to connect Ushikawa as another agent of "The Little People," although at this point it strikes me quite unlikely due to its over-simplistic twist (not a habit by a master-conniver such as Murakami).  I wouldn't be surprise if Ushikawa turns out to be Tengo's real father, etc., but that's just my imagination.
"The Town of Cats" story appears as an allegory to the larger plot issues of "1Q84."  Will there be a revelation regarding this?  Will Ushikawa's character turn out as the archetypal Shakespeare's court jester, coming in in the middle of a serious scene to make some over-the-top remark, a seemingly nonsense statement that ends up being the key to the entire play.  I continue to read this novel with great care and calculated concentration... I don't think I've enjoyed this so much since graduate school.

Technique and Mastery of Plot in Haruki Murakami's "1Q84"

There's much to say about a 900+ page novel, especially if that novel is dependent on highly sophisticated story-telling techniques.  I am about half-way with "1Q84" and all I can say is that the novel not only displays Murakami's genius, but it does something else that might not help it make a commercial success (in a good way).  Literary fiction is not really the silver bullet needed to land on top of the NYT bestsellers list, if you catch my drift.  What is brilliant about "1Q84" is precisely what does not help it become a more widely or popular book.  Again, it is not designed to do that, and the fact that literary fiction is to "readers for the sake of escapism" as water is to oil, is the reason we need to keep at least one aspect of that argument nicely qualified.

The novel's amazing plot lines (main and sub) drive the story forward quite fast, but a moment changes everything when the reader discovers things had been taking place right under the sentences he/she happens to be reading at the time.  This is more than just a nice allegory to the many parallels of the plot line.  For example, I quickly became enamored of the character of the "dowager" and her complicated yet loving relationship with Aomame.  Since the chapters jump between Aomame and Tengo, I also found myself wanting to finish the current Tengo chapter just to see if the "dowager" would appear in the next Aomame chapter.  But the reader ignores the dowager's benevolence at his/her own risk.  It was far too simple, far too clean and clear cut.  It is only much later when the "Leader" is asking Aomame to send him to the other world that one slowly becomes aware not all things were right about the "dowager."  This, I believe, was probably one of the most clever, well-planned and amazingly structured pieces of Murakami's technique in story telling since "A Wild Sheep Chase," or "The Elephant Vanishes."  The levels of parallel plots and character existences in "1Q84" are enough to send an existentialist running off a tall building, or a philosopher in general looking for the law of alchemy again.  Here's Aomame, there's Fuka-Eri.  There's Tengo, and here's Aomame.  There are two-moons, and neither one of them is representative of either the world they are currently inhabiting or the one they left behind.... and behind this incredilbe maze of hopscotch, there is the truth of the story.
Then there's the element of "The Little People."  It was quite obvious to me as a reader that the novel inside the novel ("Air Chrysalis") is a parallel world running along sides of the current narrative presently being read.  This reminds me of the very end of "One Hundred Years of Solitude," when the protagonist realizes he is trying to translate the same story he is currently inhabiting from a Sanskrit manuscript, and everything gets blown away by the strong wind of reality.  So far, this is frankly Haruki Murakami's best and most innovative novel to-date.  I can't wait to see what happens next.

Haruki Murakami's "1Q84" and "The New York Times" misread

Haruki Murakami is known for his vast imagination.  Most of the times, that very same imagination tends to get him in trouble with critics.  Murakami is one of those writers you have to follow (if you were lucky you would have followed him from the very start) and grow with him both in terms of style and content.  By my own admission to other people who inquire about him, I have to say that Murakami is not for everyone.  If you cannot suspend your disbelief (a crucial variable in order to enjoy fiction, especially literary fiction), then Murakami is not for you.  In addition, if you don't like feeling like you just walked right into a Salvador Dali painting, then Murakami is not for you.

Case in point: Kathryn Schulz.  I agree with Ms. Schulz that there are by far too many similes, particularly in the first chapter.  Yet, trying to problematize a Murakami simile can lead one down a disturbing road to nowhere.  One must simply read them and enjoy them for what they are artistically, rather than taking it word by word, defining them and then having to reverse your opinion back to the acceptance of literary techniques and device usage.  For example, Ms. Schulz asserts that “it sounded less like applause and more like an endless Martian sandstorm.” I’ve never heard a Martian sandstorm (and I presume Murakami hasn’t either, although one wonders) while then returning to her important statement that "yet the simile seems, in its strangeness, precisely right." My advice to newcomers to Murakami is as follows: if you cannot simply read Murakami without suspension of disbelief, then Murakami is not for you.  Although I don't doubt Ms. Schulz knows Murakami well enough to know it's just "Murakami being Murakami."  Of course, Ms. Schulz' account of her reading is not without merit--it is as closely a reading of a long, long novel can be, and insightful in content.  I wonder if Ms. Schulz has read the Lieutenant Mamiya account on "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and whether she had the same inclination to dissect similes.  If she did, it must have been a long and painful process, to be sure.


I must list the overwhelming amount of similes that Murakami employs in order to give Ms. Schulz credit for pointing out that one alone.  Here are some of the most outrageous ones:


"With his mouth clamped shut, he stared straight ahead at the endless line of cars stretching out on the elevated expressway, like a veteran fisherman standing in the bow of his boat, reading the ominous confluence of two currents."


"'Decisiveness was key when I bought it,' the driver said, like a retired staff officer explaining a past military success."


"... all her knowledge of the piece came to her by reflex, like a flock of birds swooping through an open window."


"The wrinkles on the back of his neck moved like some kind of ancient creature."


"As she listened to the long recorded applause, it sounded less like applause and more like an endless Martian sandstorm."


"... she felt the surface of the road shake--or, rather, undulate--through her high heels, as if she were walking on the deck of an aircraft carrier on a stormy sea."


If you can't read any of this (in the short span of 10 pages) without having to look at them literally first, then, as I have said before, Murakami is not for you.  I am only a few chapters in and I suspect because I am a sucker for Murakami (and because my suspension of disbelief is so quick) that I am in for another masterful Murakami epic of distorted imagination and often crude account and descriptions of sexuality.  More to come.

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention or "Marable's Gamble"

Reading "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention" by Manning Marable has been both exciting and disappointing.  The image of Malcolm X most people remember today is that of Spike Lee's reintroduction of the man and his socio-theology based on "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" and Denzel Washington's outstanding portrayal.  Manning Marable died a few weeks before the publication of his book, a book that took him 25 years of research, interviews and other sources of information.  His take on Malcolm X is both amazingly informative and/or downright wrong in many places.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Malcolm X's life is the transformation from drug peddler, pimp, hustler into one of the most intellectually dynamic voices of our times.  His intellect was incredibly sharp; his debate skills downright near perfect.  This is the part of "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" that most influenced me as an undergraduate.  The first time I came into contact with an excerpt of Malcolm's autobiography was in "The Harper Row Reader" where Wayne C. Booth praised Malcolm's transformation as nothing short of a miracle.  I must say I agree with him, and, in the interest of full disclosure, I must accept the fact that my interest in Malcolm X led me to do my graduate dissertation on "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," a book I read and re-read and knew better than I knew any account of my own life.  As a result, I must confess a certain amount of bias when it comes to defending Malcolm from allegations that 1) are not true, and 2) there's no way of proving them true.

What Marable fails to do in the first half of the biography is explain or substantiate some claims that seem obviously put in place to raise controversy.  Case in point: Malcolm's homosexual relationship with one William Paul Lennon.  Marable's account is that Malcolm distorted the role or even the personification of this Lennon character in the autobiography as simply someone Malcolm peddled prostitutes to.  In exchange, Marable argues the relationship was that of a homosexual nature.  He further argues that Lennon visited Malcolm in prison but qualifies it as "possible" that in fact Lennon ever did visit Malcolm.  Another more revealing part of the claim is that while Marable asserts a string of constant correspondence between Lennon and Malcolm, he admits that [t]here's no evidence from [Malcolm's] prison record in Massachusetts or from his personal life after 1952 that he was actively homosexual." I don't doubt Marable's excellent academic career, or his life-long work regarding Malcolm's legacy, but I do know that even academics write in this "juicy" or "gossipy" tidbits in order to create controversy or even sell more books.  If publicity was what Marable was seeking, he definitely got it from Malcolm's children.  All of Malcolm's daughters came out in defense of their father, creating (among Kardashian's and Casey Anthony's circus) a minor media sound-bite.

The other part of the first half of the biography that I personally find lacking is the minor use of "Shorty" Jarvis, Malcolm's best friend and partner in crime to corroborate not only the time lines, but also the facts about their life of crime.  Mr. Jarvis is an open book when it comes to his relationship with Malcolm--so much so, that in 1996, I wrote and was able to interview him personally in supporting my interpretation for my thesis.  He was a kind, gentle and jovial.  To this day, he still finds it hard to talk about the painful memory of Malcolm's fate.  I am not quite sure why Marable limited "Shorty" Jarvis in his research.  On the other hand, Marable used an almost exhaustible research based on Malcolm's time in the Nation of Islam; even when he knew the Nation of Islam would try and divert attention from the fact that they were involved in Malcolm's death.  Nevertheless, Marable more than makes up for it in the second part, problematizing Nation of Islam accounts and pointing out discrepancies.

The second half of the biography shines with details and well-researched facts.  It was really an eye opening experience to read about Malcolm's assassination and what followed.  Revelations of how deeply involved were some of the government agencies who at the time were tracking Malcolm even in his overseas trips were good to read and corroborated by Marable, they made for the most interesting part of the biography.   The outcome of the investigation, and, more tragically, the mismanagement of the crime scene by the NYPD is a true testament of the civil rights inequalities in his country at the start of the 1960s.  The mismanagement was so great, that a dance that was scheduled for the Audubon grand hall that very evening went right on as schedule (only less than five hours or so after the assassination).

Marable closes the autobiography with masterful research into the lives of the people that most influenced or touched Malcolm's life.  For example, I never knew of any information available about Ella Collins, Malcolm's half-sister, with whom Malcolm lived in the first days of his move to the East Coast.  She tried to keep Malcolm's organizations going but with little help, she was bound to fail.  Other information regarding Malcolm's right hand men (James 67X and Charles 37X Kenyatta) and how their own dislocated and misguided  efforts to keep Malcolm's legacy alive did more harm than good.

This was an interesting and timely book.  Manning Marable manages to offer a good account of Malcolm X's life, a life that wasn't without its faults and controversies.  Where Marable fails is the insistence on points regarding Malcolm's life that are neither important nor revelatory.

Pablo Picasso "La Vie" -- When Art is Really Blue

The first time I saw "La Vie" by Pablo Picasso was at an exhibition at the Washington DC Museum of Modern Art in 1996.  It was an expo of Picasso's early works titled "Picasso: The Early Years."  I believe you can still get the book and other merchandise from the exhibit at the museum's website store.  I enjoyed this exhibition very much, and that is the reason why I am returning to it here, after so many years.

The main subject of the painting is Picasso's friend, Carlos Casagemas, a close friend who had accompanied Picasso on their very first trip to Paris and who committed suicide shortly after being rejected by a lover.  The painting is clearly allegorical, as well as unusually complex and obscure for Picasso's early work.  Set in what appears to be an artist's studio the arch and accompanying ceiling behind the male figure, the central drawing of a woman consoling a man (on paper) and a more tragically posed man alone at the bottom (drawn on the wall and appears as a fresco of sorts).  The main figures two women, a baby and a male figure strikingly alike Casagemas form the theme of the painting.  Although interpretations vary, the woman to the right holding the baby might be intended to be Casagemas' mother holding him as a child.  Casagemas points to the cloaked woman holding the baby while the other woman, resting on his neck and nude appears to be the lover that rejected Casagemas and led to his suicide.  The thematic ideation here might be that of Biblical intonations--that is to say, man will leave his mother to join a woman and make his life (paraphrased).  The nudity of the woman Casagemas joins might indicate the intimacy relationship not present, of course, with the mother figure.

There are, however, a number of interpretations based on X-ray photography taken at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1976.  While those discoveries were made by art experts more informed than I am about the history of the painting and Picasso in general, it is my personal opinion that interpretations or explanations of "mysteries" in the painting should not be derived from such methods.  In vernacular non-expert language, I suppose, we could say Picasso "changed his mind" as he composed the outline and subsequent painting.  The figures found behind the present image of the painting (a priest, a woman in a bed, a night stand and some winged creature in the foreground) might elude to a "lost" effort in the composition of another painting he abandoned before Casagemas' suicide.

What can be said for certain about "La Vie" is that it gave birth to an elaborate series of paintings holding the thematic Casagema suicide as a central topic, and, more conventionally, it is seen as Picasso's initiation into the so-called "Blue" period from which he would later move into more non-traditional, anti-establishment techniques.  "La Vie" gave Picasso an opportunity to defy convention without going too far, yet enabling him to explore an initial aspect to the abstract recklessly and with abandon.

Not much is known about Carlos Casagemas, at least not as an artist.  Post-modern interpretations of "La Vie" insist that Picasso's devastation after the suicide is linked to possible homosexual theories (but then again what isn't tied to that nowadays).  At any rate, this is a painting that brings great memories to me and the idea that a single interpretation is better than another one is simply false.  Art, in the end, is really blue.

Update: Our Man in Room 229

Well, I wanted you all to know that I continue to be on sick leave. I am trying hard to read when I can but it is a struggle to concentrate. For example, I read Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair," which is a little over 190 pages, in the amount of time it took me to read two volumes of Will Durant's "The Story of Civilization" a year ago. I get tired easily, I guess, but not as easily as to not pay attention when a passage of fiction moves me. There were so many passages in this novel that really struck a perfect chord with me (not because of subject matter, but simply the language usage). My paperback copy has one of those one-liner critiques by famous writers (in this case William Faulkner) which categorizes "The End of the Affair" as the best novel written in English (or any other language). While I have (for the most part) neglected Mr. Faulkner's work, I do recognize how particular he was about the usage of language and imagination (however realistic). Graham Greene's book is probably in the top ten finest books I have ever read. I've never watch the film (the recent one), but I might pick it up one of these days.

Thank you to those who have contacted me with well-wishes... it means a great deal.

Temporary Sick Leave

I will be out of commission for the next few months... no research, definitely no teaching. Students (including former), you know where to find me. I will only be responding to messages from colleagues in my department, but I will not respond to emails or messages dealing with work. I will return as soon as possible.

I AM A HUMAN BEING, GODDAMN IT... MY LIFE HAS VALUE!!!!

Too sad we are far too gone to turn it around... We've been duped, bamboozled and lied to again and again, and this time is no different.

The Stories of John Cheever: Complexity, Comparison and an Exercise on the Readable

So many years ago, I used to pound into my students little minds the purely rude act of beginning a composition with a quote.  I will make an exception here because John Cheever is, well, John Cheever.  The fact that the man was a genius is another reason.

"For lovers, touch is a metamorphoses.  All the parts of their bodies seem to change, and they seem to become something different and better.  That part of their experience that is distinct and separate, the totality of the years before they met, is changed, is redirected toward this moment.  They feel they have reached an identical point of intensity, an ecstasy of rightness that they command in every part, and any recollection that occurs to them takes on this final clarity, whether it be a sweep hand on an airport clock, a snow owl, a Chicago railroad station on Christmas Eve, or anchoring a yawl in a strange harbor while all the stormy coast strangers are blowing their horns for the yacht-club tender, or running a ski trail at that hour when, although the sun is still in the sky, the north face of every mountain lies in the dark."


A few things before we go over this amazing passage from the story "The Bus to St. James."  I had not read Cheever outside of one story in some anthology probably during my undergrad years.  Reading this collection of stories has been one of those rare literary gifts that remains with the reader forever.  Cheever achieves that particularly difficult medium of style that is, or has been, the death valley to so many other readers.  The readability of Cheever's short stories rests in his ability to make a epiphany passage as the one above, and still get description and action of more concrete passages right.  For example, a fairly common passage can take the form of action and description with the simplicity of holiness: "He turned and walked toward the glass doors at the end of the lobby, feeling that faint guilt and bewilderment we experience when we bypass some old friend or classmate who seems threadbare, or sick, or miserable in some other way."  This is from "The Five-Forty-Eight," and it shows both description and action in such a basic way that anyone reading not knowing it is the work of John Cheever might think it is the work of some novice or amateur.  But it is, as I said, in this very simplicity that Cheever's style shines.  The passage from "The Bus to St. James" has been, I believe, unfairly compared to a couple of F. Scott Fitzgerald's passages from "The Great Gatsby" and "Tender is the Night."  It just so happens that the two passages that some critics have gone as far as claiming them to be plagiarized are some of my two most favorite passages by Fitzgerald.  Here is the one from "The Great Gatsby" and I'll let you be the judge: "One of my most vivid memories is of coming back west from prep school and later from college at Christmas time.  Those who went further than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o'clock of a December evening with a few Chicago friends already caught up in the gayeties to bid them a hasty good-bye.  I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This or That's and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances and the matching invitations.... When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly in the air.  We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour before we melted indistinguishably into it again."


I can see the connection with the Christmas theme and mentioning of trains, etc., but a claim of plagiarism seems to me wildly overboard.  The style and craft of John Cheever came about because of his insightful and keen eye to real human emotions.  The ability to write an epiphany as good as Fitzgerald's only proves Cheever's genius.  He is one of those forgotten writers of the late 20th Century, the one a reader discovers, albeit too late, and one is glad to have found this generous mark in the sea of Post-Modern American literature.

Setting and description (isolated from action) is another one of Cheever's major achievements.  In "O City of Broken Dreams," again Cheever achieves the distinct descriptions that puts a reader inside of the story: "When they had finished their supper, they went out into the street.  Mildred-Rose walked between her parents, holding their callused hands.  It was getting dark, and the lights of Broadway answered all their simple prayers.  High in the air were large, brightly lighted pictures of bloody heroes, criminal lovers, monsters, and armed desperadoes.  The names of movies and soft drinks, restaurants and cigarettes were written in a jumble of light, and in the distance they could see the pitiless winter afterglow of the Hudson River."  The reason I am including this passage when writing about description is clear; this is one of those great passages of description that remains with the attentive reader for a long, long time.  The only way I could recommend John Cheever's writing more is if he ran for president and I endorsed him wholeheartedly.

Back to the epiphany passages.  Here's the other passage from Fitzgerald that was mentioned by critics as having "influenced" Cheever a bit too much.  This is from "Tender is the Night."  "They were still in the happiest stage of love.  They were full of brave illusions about each other, tremendous illusions, so that the communion of self with self seemed to be on a plane where no other human relations mattered.  They both seemed to have arrived there with an extraordinary innocence as though a series of pure accidents, so many accidents that at last they were forced to conclude that they were for each other. They had arrived with clean hands, or so it seemed, after no traffic with the merely curious and clandestine."  After teaching "The Great Gatsby" for over 10 years and memorizing most of the book, I found this little gem in "Tender is the Night" so amazing I also decided to memorize it word by word.  If Cheever was influenced, then he was influenced by the very master of the lyrical and poetic.  It is my opinion that no other writer was able to capture the essence of fiction with such facility as F. Scott Fitzgerald.  I've held this view since I first read "The Great Gatsby" and after going on a Fitzgerald rampage and reading everything in he wrote, I had to declare him the undisputed champion of American letters.  Many people consider this choice a sort of too common place one... you know, the people who smirk at you when you say you love Bach, Mozart or Beethoven because they listen to Mahler and Stockhausen.  Back in graduate school, one of my professors asked us at the end of the semester what our favorite book was, when I said "This Side of Paradise," he looked at me like I had just fallen through the ceiling.  But I digress... I really feel that Fitzgerald has a companion up there at the top... John Cheever is a true writer.  If you cannot drop everything and read the entire collection of John Cheever's stories, here's a list of what I consider the best of the bunch.
1--The Season of Divorce
2--Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor
3--The Five-Forty-Eight
4--The Housebreaker of Shady Hill
5--The Sorrows of Gin
6--The Duchess
7--The Scarlet Moving Van
8--The Lowboy

I am afraid that if I keep including more and more I might as well just list them all.  They are all excellent.