Sellers : The Rainbow Comes and Goes

The Rainbow Comes and Goes
Author: Anderson Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt
Publisher: HarperCollins (4/5/16)
304p

Thoughts on Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt?

This is the type of saccharine book that you give to people when they are seriously ill or they are retiring.

But that's not what I want to talk about.

The basic premise of this book, where a mother and son talk frankly about their lives, is one that can be fraught culturally. Throw in that that son is also gay and there's probably some negative stereotypes already on the tip of your tongue.

Sigmund Freud coined the 'clinical' term for the negative trope - Oedipus Complex. In Freud's hyper-sexualized (and frankly broken) world-view a man who loves his mother beyond childhood is viewed as removed from a healthy mental state. Here is a man who can never actualize himself. He will never find, most importantly, heterosexual love. He will be stunted. A eunuch. Stripped of his 'he-ness'. You might as well chop off his dick, it would be less embarrassing.

Oedipus & The Sphinx (1864) - Gustave Moreau

Think about Norman Bates and his cross-dressing. The trope of the gay man who wanted to wear his mother's clothes instead of date a woman. These things lead to a stigma placed upon any man who dares to love his mother. These are the dark things lurking behind Freud'd legacy.

This view has wormed its way into society as a whole to the point of being nearly universal. Think of all the boys told not to hug or kiss their mothers. The fathers who tell their sons to not cry. To not show emotion.

And it has deformed society.

From men who view women as objects of desire/ownership to cultural limits placed on 'acceptable' forms of masculine affection, the damage is very real and ongoing. I would argue that it is the root of many real-world issues that surround sex, sexuality, and gender.

The shame placed on the very idea of the 'mama's boy' is one that needs to be broken. Healthy, loving relationships between parents of all genders and their children are not only ok, they are desirable. And while this book isn't a revelation on the subject (it isn't even about this topic) it is making a dent in the idea that a grown son cannot have a close relationship to his mother.

And the work subtly acknowledges this. From the description:

Though Anderson Cooper has always considered himself close to his mother, his intensely busy career as a journalist for CNN and CBS affords him little time to spend with her. After she suffers a brief but serious illness at the age of ninety-one, they resolve to change their relationship by beginning a year-long conversation unlike any they had ever had before. The result is a correspondence of surprising honesty and depth in which they discuss their lives, the things that matter to them, and what they still want to learn about each other.

Hidden in there is the small detail of them making the decision to change their relationship. To become closer and to reveal themselves to each other. A sort of grown-ass conversation that everyone should have with anyone who cares.

Now, some don't have this access to their parents. And it is certainly worth noting that this kind of clarity is not necessarily important to parent/child relationships. But the idea that this closeness is undesired is one that needs to be broken down and rethought.


Sellers is my attempt to examine what books are topping the best-seller list and why. To talk about and understand the trends in popular writing.

Poem-A-Day #67 : On Being Ashamed of Not Finishing Books

On Being Ashamed of Not Finishing Books

The books I have not finished line a shelf in my bedroom - they stare down at me as I sleep

          mocking my own production - How the fuck dare I
demand eyes when I can't even...

                                        I could burn them -
                              hide the evidence - keep my cat warm on winter nights when the heater is broken and I don't have enough blankets - there are never enough blankets

I could knit them - make a quilt - could learn form them the shape of comfort

While I sleep the spines unfurl and reach out from their dusty corners - their bookmarks are tongues speaking in words I have not heard

The pages are snow - are the crust in your eyes - are the lidless idylls of ancient gods

Dust Jacket : The Second World War

The Second World War
Jacket Design: Steve Marking

Steve Marking is the current art director at Orion Books. He previously worked for Penguin UK as a senior designer. His credentials are on point.

This cover is pretty spectacular. If you've been reading Dust Jacket for any length of time you know that I clearly love me some text-based design. In fact, this cover is so very similar to the cover of Orphan Master's Son that I almost didn't pick it.


But it gives me the chance to discuss maps, which are a huge love of mine.

So maps.

The earliest map we have is the Babylonian Imago Mundi from 600 BCE. The clay tablet shows Babylon at the heart of a seven-pointed star of islands. The accompanying text describes three of the islands:

1-"place of the rising sun"

2-"the sun is hidden and nothing can be seen"

3-"beyond the flight of birds"

Babylonian Imago Mundi

This map is beautiful for its simplicity. An attempt to place the self in the broader world. To contextualize. This is the first reason I love maps. They take the wilds and make them feel like home. If you can know something you can be master of it.

Maps are colonialism.

This may not be beautiful when you start to project from the statement, it is a beautiful sentiment. That you can know something by laying it down.

At their base level maps are simply lines. The flowing lines of nature and the grid of man. At times they can be completely hypnotic and surreal:

Harold Fisk - Historical trace of the Mississippi  (1944)

I mean. Look at that. You want to drown in it. Cover your walls, become obsessive. I understand people who never leave their apartments and fill notebooks. They are drawing that.

And it is real!

On the other end of the spectrum are the maps where things are just crazy.

To the right is a 15th century engraving of Ptolemy's description of the world. It was printed only a few years before Columbus' first voyage. Nothing is real. It is manic, full of strange locations, and the world is a smooshed mess. But it is magical and it was the standard for 1000 years. Imagine believing that the world looked like that. What it would feel like.

The drawings around them are amazing and fun to look at. Modern maps have given way to too much realism. I want a little of that magic back. Which ties back to our cover. By simply adding the text that map becomes more than a detail of the Atlantic Ocean. Something ominous begins to hover over it. Something dark.

Carta Marina (1539)

Click the caption to see that in full size. It is amazing. You will spend hours with it. Modern satellite imaging has shown that many of the locations of the sea creatures and monsters are actually locations of weather patterns and known storm areas. So the threat was real. Imagine weather patterns represented by monsters.

Today's forecast is for dragons over the plains and serpents along the eastern seaboard.

Dust Jacket is a sometime article about the design and art of book covers. The idea is to shine a spotlight on the work of the designer separate from the author. Literally judging a book by its cover.

Review : Telegraph Avenue

Telegraph Avenue
Author: Michael Chabon
Publisher: Harper (9/11/12)
480 pages

It says a lot that Michael Chabon's publisher, Harper, has pumped more than $250,000 into marketing his new book. Some of those marketing dollars are going to open a pop-up record store in Oakland themed after the one he writes about. A lot of the rest seems to have gone to the special e-book edition:

"an interactive map of Oakland, eight videos of Mr. Chabon, a playlist created by Mr. Chabon, an animated cover, audiobook clips performed by actor Clarke Peters from "The Wire," and a "Telegraph Avenue" theme song composed by Peter Lerman."

If that sounds like a lot of gimmick for a novel, I'm with you. Also, eight videos of Chabon!? Doing what?

The basics are thus: Archy and Nat own a long-suffering record store in Oakland. Things are made worse when a superstar football player decides to open a huge record store nearby. At the same time Archy's junky ex-Blaxploitation film star father shows up because he is trying to blackmail a city councilman. Archy's until now unknown 14-year-old son also pops up and starts a friendship/sexual relationship with Nat's son. Archy's wife, Gwen is pregnant, a mid-wife, and has a run-in with a doctor that quickly gets heated.

The plot is a seems more convoluted then it is. Chabon is clearly attempting to write a Quentin Tarantino movie. He even references the director a lot and goes to pains to describe a few scenes from Kill Bill. He's aiming for that feeling of overlapping narrative, of threads weaving a whole, it comes across more like blatant ass-kissing.

The reviews of this book have all spent a lot of time discussing how great an author Chabon is. They wax on and on about his writing ability and the beauty of his prose. They all say they have problems with the book, that it is not 'perfect' but they all also say that they give him a pass because he's just so good!

It just isn't. The writing is sloppy. His attempts at writing in a musical style are irritating. His endless music and film referenced tossed into dialogue are distracting. The 12-page sentence that makes up one chapter is not creative, it's tedious. Car doors have 'lamentable lamentations' that sound like the 'gate on a crypt filled with vengeful dead folks'.

And 'From the lowest limb of a Meyer lemon, a wind chime searched without urgency for a melody to play.' It is overwrought and trying way too hard to sound interesting. It comes across like a dad at a high school party trying to be into the Lady Gaga's and Rihanna's that the kids love so much.

This isn't even discussing the questionable racial politics he plays.

The book is centered on a black family. The husband is cheating on his pregnant wife. He does it twice. The pregnant wife is portrayed in the book in mostly angry ways, she is either shouting or grumpy the whole time. The 14-year-old is having a homosexual relationship that he refuses to acknowledge because he 'isn't gay' he just likes to fuck the white boy.

The minor black characters are; an NFL star, a deadbeat junky, a fading Blaxploitation star, and a hand full of older jazz-heads who talk a lot about Mingus and Davis.

I have no issue with a white man writing black characters, but this is a grab bag of stereotypes. I think, he was trying to play with that. I think he failed.

On page 48 of the book Gwen catches her husband talking to a woman in a restaurant. Flirting. He follows her outside and they argue. She accuses him of cheating. He lies and says he isn't. In broad daylight she shoves her hands into his pants where 'Her fingers found the heavy coil of hose'. This is what follows:

"Her fingertips were briefly snagged by a film of bodily adhesive as weak as the glue on a Post-it. She tugged her sticky fingers loose, brought them to her nose...Market stalls, smoking braziers, panniers of lentils. All the spice and stink of Ethiopia: turmeric, scorched butter, the salt of the Red Sea."

Again. I THINK he is trying to play with the tropes of racism and the language of Blaxploitation and Tarantino. I dare anyone to read that quote, realize that it is a white author talking about black people, and tell me that it works for them. This is just one example, the worst in my opinion. He goes on to describe several black characters in various spice and earthen terms. A white woman is described as smelling like 'rose perfume'. My eyes fall from my face and roll on the floor.

This is before Barak Obama shows up to offer marriage advice and call a jazz trio 'funky'. The novel is set in 2004. In Oakland. The section is from Obama's perspective. It's odd and makes zero sense. You are pulled from the story and slammed into election year 2012.

This passed a cadre of editors, PR men, lawyers, etc...and they decided to throw $250,000 behind it and tart up the ebook. I'm not saying that it was to distract us, but all the reviews mention it. And so far they all say the book is flawed but Chabon is just so damn good it doesn't matter.

Sorry. It may be an attempt at something, but it ain't good. If this works for you, I'm interested in knowing why. And I want to know in terms other than Michael Chabon once wrote a good book so this one also must be good.

THIS! 8/24/12

THIS! on August 24, 2012

1) Christopher Lee's Charlemagne

2) Dinosaurs

NASA discovered small dino tracks in their literal backyard. The Christian Science Monitor discusses it here. The feet in question belonged to a nodosaur.

Which was a giant spiked armadillo apparently.

Also, someone buy this blanket for me right this second. It's not my birthday or anything important, but really, I need it.


3) Racism

I really really hate Michael Chabon's new book. Like so much so that I may decide it isn't worth finishing. I really want to write a review but it's like totes not good y'all.

There is a LONG post about this that I am working on in my head about racism, white privilege, and the place of artistic licence in all of it but...it's questionable career-wise considering I have sent a query to his agent to rep my novel...

Yes, I just wrote that and meant it. Oh the pitfalls of the industry! Life is so hard! Le sigh.


4) Kaseem Reed

Dear Democrats, more of this please. Love Michael

Advanced

Publishers send out advanced copies of most books. They go to reviewers, famous people who may give a good cover blurb, booksellers, etc. An advance copy is usually privately published and distributed by the publishing house and is more than likely an uncorrected proof. Errors and all. The typesetting is odd, the print is large, the cover is not finished, but there is it. A book.

This is Michael Chabon's new book. It comes out September 11th. I bring this up because I have found myself in possession of an advance reader edition of it and have waded 50 or so pages in. It's alright so far, I'll review it sometime right before it comes out.

This isn't the first advanced copy I have fallen into.

Back in 2008 I stumbled on a copy of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book on the street about a month before it came out. The average advance copy is sent out up to 3 months prior to publication. This gives reviewers a huge window to get their reading/shredding of said reading done. So it isn't unusual to find these books at used-bookstores or on the street here in Brooklyn.

There are lots of editors/pretend editors in Brooklyn.

The final edition of Gaiman's book had lovely illustrations in it by Dave McKean.

My street-found edition does not. The page numbers don't match up to the final and the cover is missing the pretty silver foil effect on the words. But, the book is a magical read even in that rough form. Once I saw the illustrations there was a part of me that felt cheated, like I wanted to go out and buy the 'real' version but how can you trade in that great dog-eared free copy for a slick new one?

I also like the idea that the copy of the book I'm reading was read by someone 'important'. Someone, one of the luck 5,000 who receive advance copies, touched, read, and maybe reviewed this book I'm reading. And unlike great found books with marginalia and names scrawled in them, these advance reader books are nameless, blind. You have to imagine who read it.

That makes it so odd and fun.

Check out the shelves in the basement at The Strand or on eBay. You can find a trove of these things. Some become collectibles, so that's a plus to this hidden side of publishing.

Re-Read : Lord of the Flies

First Edition 1954

Lord of the Flies
Author: William Golding
Publisher: Faber and Faber (1954)
248 pages

A pig's head impaled on a stick delivers a sermon, flies tumbling from its mouth, to a young boy.

A pair of cracked glasses held to the light of the sun.

A bleached white conch shell trumpeting through the remote island forests.

The images in Golding's book are burned into my memory. The island, the insanity that follows. The sudden interruption of rescue at the end that tacitly implies that the world as a whole is just like those boys. Loose, falling apart, afraid.

Penguin cover 1980

What I forgot, or more accurately, what I didn't see the first time I read was the clear homo-eroticism of the boys. Simon clearly loves Ralph. There are numerous scenes of arm caressing and longing looks. Ralph and Jack clearly have a love/hate relationship. They even argue like an old married couple. Piggy looks to all of them for affection and only receives abuse. They are all nearly naked or actually naked at various points and each boy is described in longing, Whitman-esque terms.

Golding's writing holds up fairly well. It is a book set in the 40s and there are certainly a lot of references that date the story, but that only made the re-read more interesting for me. The thought that these were events in the past only made it harder to detach. I had to contend with these kids going home and shaping the world we now live in.

Which is scary, but explains EVERYTHING.

If you haven't seen it, take a moment to watch the great 1963 Peter Brook film. The whole thing is on YouTube. Below is the trailer.





Re-Read is a sometime article where I go back and read a book from my childhood over and examine the threads that I find in my current adult life.

Dust Jacket : Phenomenology of Perception

Phenomenology of Perception (1945)
Designed by: Keenan

I've highlighted the work of Jaime Keenan before. That time I was discussing an example of his work that I felt fell flat. He is a great designer and this, I hope, highlights that.

If the cover looks familiar it is because it should. Over the years of public education you were perhaps taken into various rooms and given tests. One where you put headphones on and were asked to raise your hand when you heard a tone, one for scolio, and the one depicted on this cover.

The Ishihara Color Test. The image on the cover is plate number 9. It shows a 74. If you are partially color blind you may see a 21. If you are full color blind you will see nothing.

The Ishihara test was invented by Japanese ophthalmologist Shinobu Ishihara in 1917. The test was initially used by the Japanese military to test recruits. The first charts were hand-painted by Ishihara with water colors.

As I said this is an example of a great cover designed by Keenan. The book is Merleau-Ponty's work on perception and how the body is a prime focus for how man deals with the world. What better way then to showcase the ultimate test of perception. There are also cases where physical damage to the eye can result in color blindness, damage to the body and how it changes perception features in the book as well.

All these dots have me thinking about two artists, both deal with perception and use spots to interpret the world. The first is Chuck Close, whose images closely resemble the Ishihara Test in the way they use the different-sized circles to crate an overall image.

Lucas (1986-1987)

While it doesn't matter really in the discussion it is worth noting that Close is a man who started his career fully able-bodied then suffered a severe spinal injury that left him paralyzed. This was 20 years into his career.

Close also suffers from Prosopagnosia, which is face blindness. He does not recognize faces. He is a master painter of faces but does not recognize them. I am sure Merleau-Ponty would have things to say about that.

The other artist is Yayoi Kasuma.

She is most known for her oddly phallic polka dot covered soft objects and the fact that she lives in a mental institute by choice. What I find most interesting about her is her installation work. Above is an image of her inside her Yellow Tree furniture room. A quick Google search turns up amazing images. Below is a photo of her current exhibit at The Whitney. The room is called Fireflies on the Water.

The effect is achieved through mirrors, water, and hanging lights. One viewer is allowed into the room at a time. For one minute you can stand there, on what seems to be a small pier and float in the space. Only a minute. New Yorkers are waiting up to 4 hours to have the chance to experience it. I can't blame them.


Dust Jacket is a sometime article about the design and art of book covers. The idea is to shine a spotlight on the work of the designer separate from the author. Literally judging a book by its cover.

Guest Post : Uncovering Lolita

- By Hayley Heaton

Lolita, since I read it in my very early twenties, has been one of my absolute favorite books. The language is so masterfully and exquisitely manipulative! I read it at least once a year, sometimes more than once. I've found that the more I experience this story, my courtship with it changes. I don't think that this is an uncommon phenomenon. It's one of those books that makes you heartbroken no matter which character you're siding with--Lo, Charlotte, or Humself.

The first copy I purchased, now incredibly worn and wrinkled, features an ankle in a folded sock slid inside a saddle shoe. It’s an evocative image to be sure, but certainly not the most successful cover. In my opinion, the ankle-sock-shoe-skirt image is a little too easy and it simplifies the book’s contents. This book broods and swings moods. It breaks hearts and commits murder. It’s not just a story about a little girl and a pedophile; it’s a tragic and broken love story and the image of an ankle sock somehow just doesn’t do it justice. This is something I find common when it comes to covering it. As readers we should remember that Lolita is a dangerous book and the cover should reflect love, danger, heartbreak, sex and innocence. It’s a tall order.

Perhaps it’s easy to talk about my first cover selection, because I believe it’s the most iconic. But icons are icons for a reason. This image of Lolita with her heart-shaped sunglasses first appeared as a movie poster for the Stanley Kubrick version of the film that was made in 1962. It has since been the cover of the book for multiple editions in several languages.

Here we see Lo peering over a pair of red, heart-shaped sunglasses. The look in her eyes suggests that she is just about to cross the cusp of innocence into something entirely more dangerous. She is definitely giving off a curious vibe. And let us not forget that lovely lollipop. Lo’s lips are absorbing both its color and flavor. She’s not chewing on it like a greedy child; she’s tasting and teasing. Collectively, this image works because it is showing rather than telling readers what to think. And what does it show us? Lolita, suspended in her world, yet peering curiously into Hum’s.

If there were ever two things that should be united it’s the work of Balthus and the text of Lolita; they’re a perfect match. Nabokov was a genius and Balthus was some painter!

The image that chosen for the 1995, Penguin edition of the book was a work by Balthus titled Girl and Cat. It was painted in 1937 before the book existed, but seems to fit the text perfectly. It’s as if the two were just waiting to hold hands with each other. Although, many of his paintings show young girls in erotic contexts (please see The Guitar Lesson…whoa), Balthus often claimed that his paintings were not erotic, but rather exhibited the uncomfortable fact of children’s sexuality.

Exhibit A!

Here we see a girl who, in the context of the book cover, we can safely assume is Lolita. This is a different Lolita than the one with candy and glasses, though (remember the mood swings I mentioned earlier?). This Lolita looks disheveled; one of her sleeves is pushed up, as well as her skirt. Her body language does not match the look on her face. Her legs are splayed open and inviting, but her face is not. She looks sad, a little weary, and if she’s preparing herself for what’s to come; enter Humbert. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, look at this tangle…indeed.

Last, but not least…In 2009, John Bertram's Venus Febriculosa held a contest to redesign the cover of Lolita. The idea behind the contest was to see what artists and designers would come up with when they were free of editors’ and publishers’ constraints. Many of the newly designed covers use text as image and many of them play with some of the iconic images we’ve seen previously, like the heart-shaped glasses and the lollipops. A lot of them feature butterflies—Nabokov was a devoted lepidopterist. Some of the covers hit the mark precisely and others, well, they look all curlicued and sappy.

In my opinion, the most successful of these redesigned covers is that of Egor Krasnoperov. It really is quite marvelous. It combines simple lines and curves to create several different images. Dead center we see the shape of a lollipop, which also resembles a target. Veering out from this red, circular image are three strategic lines. The top two form a “V” shape, the last stems down right in the center making this image resemble a young girl’s genitalia placed between thighs. This image is simple, beautiful, and completely dangerous. It makes us look longer. It makes us uncomfortable. It makes us ask questions. All of these things make Kroasnoperov’s cover wildly successful, and dare I say it, my most favorite to date.

- Hayley Heaton is an avid flaneur, as well as a poet and playwright. She lives in the middle of nowhere and loves to eat grilled cheese sandwiches.

Lies!

In April of this year I discussed my general dislike of books like the ones Jonah Lehrer is known for. That sort of pop science self-helpish book that takes a subject like creativity and runs out the clock discussing it at length.

And there is nothing really honestly wrong with these books. As I said then, they are entertainment, they get you interested in random acts of science. Radiolab, my favorite podcast, is essentially this format. It leans more on the science end of things though.

As you may have heard, Lehrer was caught lying. Michael C. Moynihan's report appeared in Tablet on Monday. In that article Moynihan details that Lehrer fabricated Bob Dylan quotes in his most recent book, Imagine. This is the book I talked about back in April.

Lehrer was fired/quit his staff writing job at the The New Yorker the same day. In that run-down from the New York Times it is pointed out the Lehrer was just one month ago called out for recycling some of his own writing in New Yorker blog posts. While this isn't a terrible thing, remixing your own work as if it is new is an odd choice for a bestselling author.

All of this conjures shades of James Frey and Stephen Glass.

That is the trailer for Shattered Glass, the film made about Stephen Glass post-scandal. It's an all right movie about an interesting subject. The film is more interesting historically as Hayden Christensen's attempt to un-Star Wars himself.

I guess all of this is a long introduction to me getting to my real questions about these events in journalism. That is:

Where is the line between journalism and literary non-fiction? What sense of truthfulness must an author adhere to with a non-fiction book? Does the lie alter the argument?

Let's get the first one out of the way. The line between journalism and non-fiction is clear for me. Journalism should present the truth. This is why Glass deserved to lose his job and be driven from the industry wholesale. I am not for dry writing, but I am a 'just the facts ma'am' type of guy.

The second question is harder. In a book, that is meant to convey an argument. Meant to present a side of a story. To that effect, I think it's OK for a little fudging to occur. This is where I fall on Frey. He didn't really hurt anyone. His lies were there to make a good story, and people seemed to react to it. I fall in this area on the whole JT LeRoy thing too. I'm not going to go into it here but a middle-aged woman pretended to be a drug-addicted male teenager. Again, I don't care, I like the creativity involved and approve completely.

The final question is the trickiest. I don't know what the false Dylan quotes were or how they fit into the larger picture of Lehrer's book. But this was a lie about a living person. A very famous, very studied, person. While I think a little fudging is fine. This is not. A small lie to add oomph to an argument can be OK in the right instances. Clearly Lehrer has not learned how to pick these out and has been given a public lesson on it.

Sellers : Shadow of Night

Shadow of Night
Author: Deborah Harkness
Publisher: Viking Adult (7/10/12)
592 pages

Deborah Harkness is a historian. She teaches history at the University of Southern California and has won both a Guggenheim and National Humanities Center Fellowship.

She is for serious.

Her books center around Elizabethan England. She wrote about John Dee (go read about him, seriously) and England as a center of science. In 2011 she dropped a novel called A Discovery of Witches and every review started out by talking about her credentials. Many went on to discuss at length how this serious woman of history was writing a novel about witches. Many felt condescending.

As if a smart person couldn't enjoy reading that type of book, let alone write one. Here is the description from the New York Times for this sequel to last year's surprise hit:

An Oxford scholar/witch and a vampire geneticist pursue history, secrets and each other in Elizabethan London.

I feel like I need to point out that that plot breakdown sounds a little like she tossed every current trend in commercial writing and shook it until it was a book. I haven't read the novel so have zero evaluation ability of the book. Based on the description it sounds a bit silly, but is probably fun.

I'm thinking about these things lately. Commercial appeal and how that is perceived by the public/critics/friends/family. I'm thinking about it because I am neck-deep in my own novel project that could probably be described in similar ways to how I've talked about Harkness' book above.

And I've had to come to terms with my younger self. The one that defiantly takes artistic credibility above all else. Equates 'cred' as 'not selling out'. Whatever that means. Because you want to be published right? Want words in faces, books in hands. Right?

How else does one do that besides bend a bit to whims. Emotional, physical, mental, cultural.

T.S. Eliot bent to Ezra Pound's whims when it came to The Wasteland. That poem, cultural touchstone that it is, is as much Pound's work as Eliot's. In some ways more so. Literature is full of writer's bending to whim. And I suppose that currently plopping a vampire/witch/detective into your novel about Elizabethan England is that bend.

I don't mean to conflate The Wasteland with something akin to Twilight. Don't confuse my meaning. I'm just pointing out that artistic 'cred' is a lie. A lie of a younger self. Credibility is staying true to yourself in a given moment. I firmly believe that you can do so while writing Ulysses or churning out ghost-written young adult books.

And, honestly, The Wasteland coulda used some vampires.


Sellers is my attempt to examine what books are topping the best-seller list and why. To talk about and understand the trends in popular writing.

Authors

A guy I work with recently told me that a group of his girlfriends only liked to read books with female narrators. He related that their conversation ended fairly unresolved because he felt this was silly and said that he had no preference as long as the book was good.

It got me thinking about who I like to listen to when I read. What voices I enjoy most. My previous post mentioned how dull I find the ennui of white middle-class middle-aged men. And it is true. The books I listed at the end of that post are all great novels. They are some of the best even. But I cannot get over how dull it all is.

But to say I like a specific voice would be wrong. Looking at the books I've most loved I find that the common thread is a sense of humor. About the characters, the world, the narrative itself. If a book lacks that, I stop caring.

Basically I want my serious reading with a dose of humility.

Michael Chabon, Haruki Murakami, Anne Carson, Marilynne Robinson, Umberto Eco are a few of the ones I think have managed this at least once. The list is much much larger.

What authors do you think have the magic touch? Which annoy the hell out of you?

White Noise

Middle-aged white men are not the only ones who feel sad.

Let that sink in for a second.

Now think about the books we hold up as 'best' and 'classics'. I don't want to rail against dead white men. I'm not about to attempt a dismantling of an ivory tower. But the majority of books are about middle-aged white men who have ennui.

I've been reading White Noise by Don DeLillo. It is the second book of his that I have tried to read. I picked through 20 pages of Underworld in 2005 and put it down with it leaving no real impression. I came to White Noise with few expectations. It was a book on my shelf that was unread.

DeLillo reminds me of Philip Roth. They both trade in a sort of suburban distopia full of bored men and women that is meant to equate to depth of story. The main difference is that I don't find DeLillo as preachy and in some ways he even seems aware of the absolute obnoxiousness of his characters.

White Noise centers around the fear of death. There is even a pill presented that is meant to defeat this fear. Is this the only remaining fear middle-class America has? That is takes 300 pages to explore the idea and manages to say little on it is telling.

The book is full of beauty. I don't want it to be thought that DeLillo is a bad writer. He and Roth have moments of sheer brilliance. DeLillo manages to come up with insane non sequiturs that hang together like a beaded curtain and make the plot of his novel. That the majority of the actions in the novel are designed to keep the characters in stasis belies the use of plot as a description.

A group of professors talking at lunch about where they were when famous deaths occurred. A speech about how both Elvis and Hitler were mama's boys. A young child riding a tricycle across four lanes of traffic while elderly women watch in horror. The noxious cloud of black that chases out protagonist to the point of driving his family in their station wagon off-road and across a stream at full speed.

That you cannot glean a plot from any of those moments is my point exactly.

These are vignettes masquerading as novel. They are partially related moments that feel like an author coming up with 'cool' things that should go into a book. Then they are hung onto a message of melancholia and death in the mid-west, in a man-made environmental disaster, in popping pills and cheating on spouses.

This is the problem with these books about middle-aged white ennui. They are loose arrangements of things that sort of make up a story. We hold them up and call them great because they reflect us so clearly yet do little more.

Ulysses, Portnoy's Complaint, White Noise, In Search Of Lost Time, Love in the Time of Cholera, A Farewell to Arms, The Great Gatsby. I would argue that all are about wealthy or well-off white ennui. Even Marquez, who manages to fall headlong into this trap. Just read Memories of My Melancholy Whores for proof.

It's all over other film as well. Look at A Single Man or A Serious Man...both men are the same really. A Serious Man, a Coen Brothers film, is at its heart an adaptation of White Noise. They are both about the mid-west. About college professors. About unhappy marriages and nostalgia for the past. Both seep in unfocused sadness while giving their characters undefined terminal health problems. Both have a disaster at their core. One in the middle, and one at the end.

Neither manages to clarify anything. Both have moments of brilliance bracketed by yawning expanses of 'why am I paying attention to these sad terrible people'.

Books On Film

When books are turned into movies there are two possibilities: 1) The movie is a made into a separate artistic endeavor and can be viewed on its own merits; or 2) The film makers are too slavish to the text and the film ends up a needless retread that is only there to milk $ from the party faithful.

Could have been so good.

The 1986 film version of Umberto Eco's 1980 novel The Name of the Rose is an example where the film manages to stray just far enough. The novel is a basic whodunit set in an Italian monastery in 1327.  The novel is at its core a Sherlock Holmes book wearing robes. The plot involves several murders inside the walls of the monastery that are linked to a shocking mystery buried within the walls of the monk's library.

The movie involves Sean Connery as an Italian Monk and Christian Slater as his side-kick. Below is the first 9 minutes of the film. Just look at it. Really.

The book is darkly humorous and the movie manages to stray more into silly territory, but it works. If you're going to make this movie and make it borderline hilarious, put 007 in there. Just look at the poster:

"Who, in the name of God, is getting away with murder?" Indeed. That poster and the clip above do not really seem to go together. If I told you that this was a film where you see an under the legal age Christian Slater naked, where monks kill each other in gruesome and strange ways, where the plot hinges on Plato and a labyrinth...you would tell me I'm full of shit.

If I said that it was the little-known sequel to The Princess Bride, you'd believe me.

It's a shame that the film is no longer on Netflix streaming, but it is available on disc. I highly recommend a night in with it. And you should also read the book. It's quick, smart, and manages to keep you slightly in the dark to the outcome.

There are so many book films these days that it's hard to weed out the crap. What are some other book to film adaptations that you would endorse?

Re-Read : The Witches

The Witches
Author: Roald Dahl
Publisher: Jonathan Cape (1983)
208 pages

I was 9 when The Witches was turned into a movie by Nicolas Roeg and Jim Henson. It was 1990. It was Jim Henson's last film. If you've never seen this film, you should. Angelica Huston is great in it. And, talking mice!

Talking about Jim Henson makes me all misty-eyed and sad. It's like a very real and raw wound. At the age of 9, Jim Henson dying was like a family member dying. It was an odd first real moment of dealing with death.

The Witches is not particularly sad, but it is definitely dark and it for real touches on death more than once.

What I remember loving about Dahl is that he never once takes children for not understanding complicated concepts, like death. He assumes they understand. He expects them to. Reading Dahl is being taken seriously for the first time.

For those who've never read this book here is a quick run down. A boy is orphaned while on vacation in Norway and goes to live with his grandmother there. She tells him about witches. The parents' will requests the boy be raised in England because which is what he is used to. The grandmother and he move. Once there she becomes ill and her doctor recommends a vacation tot he seaside. Once there they uncover a plot to kill all the children in England by turning them into mice. The boy is transformed and must save the day while a rodent.

At the end the boy is a mouse and he and his grandmother decide to spend their remaining years alive fighting the witches of the world.

That ending is what I have always remembered about the book. The boy and his grandmother have a very frank discussion about her being old and probably near death. He asks how long mice live and a really sad talk about a few years follows. Both are upbeat though, because neither wants to go on without the other.

Sad and beautiful.

It gets me misty-eyed the same way talking about Jim Henson does. If I had to pick two people, who are not relatives, who shaped my world-view they would be Henson and Dahl. Henson taught me about kindness, education and love. Dahl said that was all well and good but there are dark things out there so be ready to kick their asses.

Re-reading The Witches reminded me of the simplicity of the work. And how good a writer Dahl really was. He manages to take a very basic story of children taking on the world and infuse them with a magical sense of realness. Close to what the world feels and looks like to a child. Scary and amazing.

And that's what we lose as we get older. The amazing is replaced with more scary. I think we all would do good for ourselves to remind us of the amazing. Everyone go pick up a Dahl book. Read it. It will take you only a few hours. Then go watch an episode of Sesame Street or The Muppet Movie. Then watch the video below. It will make your day better. I promise.

Re-Read is a sometime article where I go back and read a book from my childhood over and examine the threads that I find in my current adult life.

The Ten Thousand Things

I've been listening to Azealia Banks' new mixtape Fantasea all day while I vacuum and mop. You can download it for free. There's a link in this MTV article.

All week my headaches have come and gone, so I'm writing very little. I did read The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermoût.

Dermoût was not published until she was 63. The Ten Thousand Things was released in 1955 and then translated into English in 1958. Time named it one of the best books of the year alongside Breakfast At Tiffany's, Doctor Zhivago, and Lolita. She is still considered one of the great Dutch authors.

She was born in Java and her work could be viewed as a precursor to post-colonial writing. The novel follows a woman as she returns to her ancestral home with her young son. The island is a world of magic and danger. The book reminds me of Gabriel García Márquez, Murakami and specifically of Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping.

The worlds of Ten Thousand Things and Housekeeping are of women wrapped in, and dealing with, life. In Robinson's book we have two girls orphaned and descending into a world of water and drifting boundaries of 'home' and 'family'. Dermoût's book gives us a woman coming home after being abandoned by her husband/lover. She comes back to a world of myth, ghosts and superstition.

Both books deal with the world overtaking the main characters. Taking them in then altering them to fit within. And both have similar, swirling voids of an ending. The main character left staring into the abyss, whether the view is negative or not is up to the reader.

What does this have to do with Ms. Banks?

Well. She's part of the supposed resurgence of the female rap star. And she's already come head up against the culture and in response said she wanted to be considered a vocalist, not a rapper. And her new album is themed around water, around the ocean. And she seems interested in creating a world for herself outside the one that people have made for her.

Basically, it's connected by feminism, post-colonialism, and the fact that I have a headache and am mopping. Just go with me, OK? Thanks.

Dust Jacket : Women With Men

Women With Men (1997)
Designed by: Carol Devine
Photo by: Ernst Haas

The cliche of photos telling a thousand words is easy to roll your eyes at. A moment frozen in time is ripe for the projection of the viewer.

This photo by Ernst Haas is no different. And also is an example of the cliche being proven true.

Look at the face of the woman. Really look at her expression. The man is kissing her cheek? Whispering in her ear? She grasps his jacket tightly. Behind them is a train. Which explains everything and nothing. Is she leaving him? Him leaving her?

The simple title and author treatments put center focus on the image. This is a book about relationships. Complicated relationships. Ones that may need more than a thousand words to explain.

Haas' photos are strange. There is always a mystery. His most well-known works are purposefully left out of focus and blurry. He used dye-transfer to create saturated colors and enhance the moods. He was all about the question behind the image. About that story that isn't being told. If a picture says a thousand words, his speak only riddles. Beautiful riddles.

On the set of The Misfits 1960.

Within 12 years of becoming a photographer, Haas had a solo show at MoMA. In 1964 he created the opening sequence for John Huston's epic film The Bible. He also worked on the sets of The Misfits, Hello Dolly!, Little Big Man, and Heaven's Gate.

I love photography on book jackets. There is something visceral about a photo. Great paintings or text or illustrations are fine, beautiful even, but a photo gives you real people to deal with. Emotionally. Those people exist. You must deal with them in relation to the book in your hands. That woman and man in a train station felt things. And now I am looking at them.

Photography implicates us in our viewership. It points a finger back at us and says, You are witness to this. The Haas photo on Ford's book reminds me of the cover of Antony and the Johnsons' album The Crying Light:

The photo is of Kazuo Ohno in mid-dance. Ohno was a seminal modern dance artist in post-WWII Japan. He is most well-known for his butoh choreography. Butoh is a dance form that rose in the 50s to  deal with taboo or grotesque subject matter. You can see it as a reaction to the devastation of war, to cultural upheaval, to life itself.

They are actions that say a thousand words. Actions that the viewer must fill in. With emotion, with themselves.

Dust Jacket is a sometime article about the design and art of book covers. The idea is to shine a spotlight on the work of the designer separate from the author. Literally judging a book by its cover.