life is unfair

Y'know, if I thought that the Times would publish personal essays about embarrassing public puking incidents, I would have submitted about ten pieces a long time ago.

Once again, Sloane Crosley beats me to the (spiked) punch. Letting the Chips Fall

shortcuts

As I get older, and my years of hardcore television-watching start to catch up to me, I admit that my attention span is shot. If entertainment isn't broken down into manageable chunks, I whine and drag my feet like a third-grader faced with long division homework. So I've determined that short stories/essays are pretty much the ideal literary format. When magazines like The New Yorker make an extra effort to drop short fiction in my lap, I'm always thankful.

Their holiday fiction issue is especially strong this year, with stories from Alice Munro and Colson Whitehead. But my favorite was Another Manhattan by Donald Antrim. It starts out as a modern update on the kind of bantery, upper-class neuroticism that Woody Allen has practically trademarked in film (a little bit of covert spouse-swapping, and everyone seems to be a doctor or therapist of some kind). But then it turns darker, more serious, into a reflection on intense unhappiness among people who appear to have everything under control. The pacing is good, the nuances are there, and...it's short.

Of course, this fondness for brevity might not mean that I'm losing my attention span. It might just mean I'm turning into a Japanese teenager. The New Yorker also has an intriguing article about the latest literary fad to hit Japan: the cell phone novel. My first reaction was to scoff at the idea of full books written in text-message-speak, but the further I read in the article, the less absurd it seemed. Maybe teenage girls shouldn't be dismissed so easily--after all, they turned a lousy vampire book into a major phenomenon in about ten seconds flat. And after watching my own company scramble to figure out what kids want, what iPhone/Kindle users want, I don't think it will be long before you see oddly formatted books popping up here in the U.S. as well. Maybe this means I should start working on my Twitter-formatted memoir.

poetry

So you're the President-elect. Your advisors say you need to pander to the people in the heartland who are half-convinced you're going to take your oath on the Koran, so you need a megachurch-foundin', Prop 8-supportin' pastor to show everyone how much you love Jesus. Check! Who's left to charm? Oh, yeah, those Hillary chicks. I know! Why don't you pick someone who writes about vaginas to deliver the poem? It worked for Clinton!

Monsieur Cuvier investigates
between my legs, poking, prodding,
sure of his hypothesis.
I half expect him to pull silk
scarves from inside me, paper poppies,
then a rabbit! He complains
at my scent and does not think
I comprehend, but I speak

There haven't been enough gynecological poems at presidential inaugurations. In all seriousness, though, while I'm ticked about the Rick Warren thing, I like what I've read of Elizabeth Alexander.

Giving birth is like jazz, something from silence,
then all of it. Long, elegant boats,
blood-boiling sunshine, human cargo,
a hand-made kite –

Post-partum.
No longer a celebrity, pregnant lady, expectant.
It has happened; you are here,
each dram you drain a step away
from flushed and floating, lush and curled.
Now you are the pink one, the movie star.
It has happened. You are here,

and you sing, mewl, holler, peep,
swallow the light and bubble it back,
shine, contain multitudes, gleam. You

are the new one, the movie star,
and birth is like jazz,
from silence and blood, silence

then everything,

jazz.

Plus, yay for a president who knows enough about modern poetry (hell, any poetry) to go with someone a little off the beaten path, but who also has a kickass resume. Also, I had no idea--or had forgotten the probable reference from The West Wing--that only Kennedy and Clinton had included poets in their ceremonies. Definitely a wasted opportunity for the others--who would Nixon have chosen?

the rest is noise

I think I have a crush on Alex Ross from the New Yorker. I always enjoyed his pieces in the magazine, but never really thought much about him beyond "pleasant subway reading." But then today, I was reading last week's piece on Leonard Bernstein, and just really loved his lush, descriptive language and style:

"To attend the Bernstein festival night after night was to watch this man’s sometimes desperate struggle to find the proper vessel for his talent. In a better world, these conflicts—between classical and popular traditions, between composing and conducting, between high-art institutions and radical politics, between gay and straight sexualities—would have mattered little. The spirit of the man, which had something primordial, almost animalistic, about it, overwhelmed all categories."

and

"The moment exemplifies Bernstein’s ability to render almost any abstract sequence of notes or chords as a physical act, a sweatily human gesture."

So bravo, Alex Ross. Way to pull ahead of Sasha Frere-Jones.

it's retrospective season!

Good news, everyone! The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2008 is out, and I've actually read one of them! That's about the same as I was doing at this time last year, so yay for maintenance. (The numbers look, umm, less good if you take into account that I've read only two of the top 100 notable books of the year, but hey, who's counting? Chances are I'll get to Toni Morrison and Fareed Zakaria soon. Ish.)

Notably missing from both lists is The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell's latest book, which was pretty much eviscerated last week by Virginia Heffernan. What a sad Thanksgiving in the Vowell house.... Plus, this illustrates reason #46 not to piss off a TV critic in general, and a Times critic especially.

"And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting"

This time of year, I always make it a special point to read "The Raven." Part of it is that Poe has always been shoved down our throats as a horror writer (though I've always found him more sad than creepy), but really because it's such a good autumnal poem. It's cold and bleak and lonely--yeah, November!

Also, possibly the best thing ever (at least today): Christopher Walken reads "The Raven."

New Yorker Festival 2008

Sheryl and I had the following text message conversation today:

K: I def just brushed up against Salman Rushdie.
S: Whoa. Where?
K: New Yorker Festival HQ.
S: It's like our version of a strip club.

And she's right. I'd pick a pretentious book event over Chippendales any night of the week. Maybe next year I'll stock up on $1 bills, in case there are really cute hipster writers around.

Anyway, that's why the annual New Yorker Festival is one of my favorite NYC events. You can be any schmuck getting your complimentary cappuccino in the advertisers' lounge, turn to your left, and see the world's most endangered author at your elbow.

And it feels like kind of an anniversary, as well. I didn't make it to last year's events, but two years ago, my visit that weekend was when I decided to go through with my move to New York. So I've got a soft spot for the festivities.

"The past eight years with this president have basically been one big YouTube clip."

Yesterday, I attended a panel on Political Humor. It featured a pretty great group of writer-comedians: Samantha Bee (Daily Show); Allison Silverman (Colbert Report); Jim Downey (SNL); Andy Borowitz (The Borowitz Report); and Todd Hanson (The Onion). (Hanson was replacing The Daily Show's John Oliver, whose wacky British antics were missed.) It was like the heads of the Five Families coming together--but as far as I know, no firearms had to be confiscated.

Of course, most of the discussion was about this election--Sarah Palin in particular. The moderator asked the panel if it would be better for comedy if McCain and Palin won, since Obama is difficult to mock. Nobody really committed to the idea, and Andy Borowitz piped up. "...I'd rather have a country that's run well," he said. See? The "satiro-industrial complex" does have a conscience. It may be a smug one, but it's a conscience!


"To edit humor, you have to be funny. And if you're funny, why are you editing?"

Today's Humor Writing "master class" wasn't actually a class (which means no homework, so yay!). It was more of a mini-panel with longtime New Yorker writers Mark Singer and Ian Frazier. They didn't delve too much into the hows or whys of writing funny stuff, but they did talk a lot about the role that the "casuals," or humor pieces, play in the magazine. They both read entertaining pieces of their own, and shared anecdotes about writing for the New Yorker. (FYI: I don't know what Tina Brown is doing these days, but she doesn't appear to be missed much by her former staffers.) Singer also went into a lengthy discussion of his feud with Donald Trump. I'm not even sure how a feud like that works--isn't it kind of like fighting with a wall (a 100-story, gold-painted one, no less)?

One interesting element that came out of both sessions was that there aren't enough women writing comedy. Everyone was quick to point out that this doesn't mean women are any less funny (ah, liberal elite PC-ness), but either the humor sensibility is different, or they're scared off by the perceived sausage fest. Frazier had an interesting point: that teenage girls don't spend their time sitting around trying to outdo one another with one-liners and jokes like teenage boys do, so maybe the socialization is to blame.

The epigraph above, about editing vs. writing, comes from Frazier. It's probably true. But still...ouch.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to attend more of the events, but the terrible ticket availability (I'm pretty sure U2 tickets are easier to get) and the high prices ($25-$35 per event) just make me thankful I was able to do two of them this year. I still didn't make it to the New Yorker dance party, though. Next year! (Maybe.)

Curtis Sittenfeld at Lincoln Triangle B&N

Curtis Sittenfeld is pretty smart. After two novels which critics and readers alike proclaimed to be autobiographical, she came up with a way to make sure no one thinks her third one is about her: she made it about Laura Bush. Throw in some steamy President-on-First-Lady action, and no one's going to be talking about Curtis the Protagonist.

On tour for American Wife, Sittenfeld gave a reading at the Lincoln Triangle Barnes & Noble the other night. Sheryl and I (also known as the "We Could Have Written That" book club) made the trip up to see her, fueled by our mutual, post-adolescent love of Prep. Sittenfeld was remarkably...normal. A little nasal due to a cold, she was quirky and sincere at the same time. Very funny in her one-liners about her life as a writer, and very candid in her admiration for Mrs. Bush. (Sittenfeld is not a Republican, and not so thrilled with the Bush presidency.)

The crowd questions were pretty evenly divided between "How could you make a sympathetic character out of someone married to a monster?" and "Why didn't you write about yourself this time?" Ahh, reading crowds. At least no one ventured the usual question about influences. Maybe the best part of the discussion was the question about whether Sittenfeld knew if Laura Bush would read the book. Of course, Sittenfeld denied knowing anything about it, but come on. You're Laura Bush. You like books, and someone has just come out with a barely fictional version of your life. AND there's controversial sexual content, which is graphic and just biographical enough to gross out reviewers. You're pre-ordering that sucker on Amazon.

Anyway, it was an intriguing perspective on the First Spouse. I like Sittenfeld even more than I did before, and am looking forward to reading the book.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

What if Israel had collapsed shortly after inception in 1948, and European Jews had relocated to a reservation of sorts in Alaska? And what if, 60 years later, the U.S. was about to say, "Hey, sorry, we want our land back. You don't have to go home, but you've gotta get the hell out so we can let our own natives play house for a while"? You'd have the right mix of events for Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, an alternate history novel about just those things.

Kind of a Jewish noir, the story pivots around Meyer Landsman, a rumpled, agnostic detective investigating the murder of a junkie in Landsman's skeezy residential hotel in the Sitka District of Alaska. The dead junkie, of course, turns out to be significantly more important than you might expect from his iffy surroundings. And Meyer makes a series of bad decisions that plunge him into a shadowy underworld of Hasidic godfathers, possible messiahs, and red heifers. (Good thing I had that crash course from AJ Jacobs earlier this year.) On top of that, he's got kind of a 21st century Bogart thing going on: problems with his ex-wife becoming his new boss; increasingly unpleasant side effects from his alcoholism; and a sort of loose cannon partner, who's having trouble reconciling his half-Inuit, half-Jewish heritage. I believe that's known as the trifecta in the detective fiction world.

Part of the reason the book is so good is that Chabon really commits to the alternative timeline of the Sitka District, while making everything plausible. Like a throwaway reference to "American first lady Marilyn Monroe Kennedy in her pink pillbox hat, with mesmeric spirals for eyes." Chabon doesn't have to go there, but he does, and it deepens the "here but not here" element.

The rest of the goodness comes from the complex relationships between the characters. Meyer and his ex-wife are wary of one another, but there's still a lingering core of affection (and sex) that bonds them, even though the loss of a baby was just too much for their marriage. The dead guy, a refugee from a pious crime family, worked miracles for various members of the community before losing himself to heroin. The layers are intricate and expressed at a good, tension-maintaining pace.

And as with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, the language is just so spot-on--lyrical without being too brainy or overwhelming. Chabon incorporates the Yiddish phrases, syntax, and sensibility so well that you'd think there really was a hybridized Yiddish community in Alaska. Unfortunately, Chabon never mentions whether Governor Palin makes the historical cut in this version. Let's assume she doesn't.

Some of my favorite parts:

"Bina reaches into the breast pocket of her suit jacket and takes out a pair of half-glasses that Landsman has never seen before. She is getting old, and he is getting old, right on schedule, and yet as time ruins them, they are not, strangely enough, married to each other."

"When, after careful consideration, she can't fit Berko into her taxonomy of lowlifes, Mrs. Kalushiner spits into her cup. By one kind of reckoning, she owes Landsman seventeen favors; by another, she ought to give him a punch in the belly. She steps aside and lets them pass."

"Each was the other's first lover, first betrayer, first refuge, first roommate, first audience, first person to turn to when something--even the marriage itself--went wrong. For half their lives, they entangled their histories, bodies, phobias, theories, recipes, libraries, record collections. They mounted spectacular arguments, nose-to-nose, hands flying, spittle flying, throwing things, kicking things, breaking things, rolling around on the ground grabbing fistfuls of each other's hair. The next day he would bear the red moons of Bina's nails in his cheeks and on the meat of his chest, and she wore his purple fingerprints like an armlet. For something like seven years of their lives together, they f*cked almost every day. Angry, loving, sick, well, cold, hot, half asleep....Bina and Landsman were twisted together, a braided pair of chromosomes with a mystery flaw. And now? Now each of them pretends not to see the other and looks away."

Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

You know how in real life, serial killers always end up being unattractive loners, or balding middle managers? Thank goodness for the literary world. A suave Manhattanite who knows how to use rats and cheese in the most horrific way possible? A vinophile cannibal with a taste for FBI agents? Yes, please!

Gretchen Lowell, in Chelsea Cain's novel Heartsick, may top them all. Not only is she brutal enough to kill indiscriminately, destroy a person's torso, and carve a heart into his chest as a calling card, but she's hot. Like, not just hot for a felon. Textbook hot. So when Detective Archie Sheridan not only survives her torture, but becomes her final victim (she inexplicably turns herself in after bringing him to the brink of mental and physical death), it's not really surprising that he develops a totally fucked up emotional and sexual obsession with her.

But by the time the action of Heartsick begins, this stuff is all two years in the past. There's a new Buffalo Bill running around Portland, and Archie (the lead detective on the task force that sought "Beauty Killer" Gretchen for years before she kidnapped him and ended the game) is asked to come out of medical retirement to catch the new guy. Local high school girls are disappearing and then turning up naked and bleached in Oregon's waterways. The press still hates the cops for not sharing enough info when Gretchen was the It serial killer. So Archie gets back in it, bringing a shiny new Vicodin addiction and a spunky reporter, Susan Ward, to embed with the task force. Things spiral out of control quickly.

The premise isn't so unusual (I can practically see "female Hannibal Lecter" on some long-forgotten tipsheet), but Chelsea Cain brings a fresh, snarky voice to the genre. (I heartily recommend her parody novel Confessions of a Teen Sleuth for anyone who ever loved Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys.) None of her characters are simple in personality or motivation, and she keeps everything moving well. Archie is certainly not the most sympathetic protagonist around--lingering sympathy for his trauma and resulting celebrity are pretty much canceled out by his continued, bizarre bond with Gretchen (whom he visits in prison every week), and his iffy treatment of his friends and loved ones. The reporter, Susan, the ostensible "good cop" of the book, is an unapologetic lover of married men and exploiter of dead teenage girls for stories. So yeah--they never cracked open anyone's chest or made them drink drain cleaner for kicks, but they're not saints.

I liked the book very much--and that's coming from a book snob who usually avoids mass market thrillers like it's her job. Chelsea Cain will probably never get great odds in the National Book Award predictions, but the book riveted my interest through most of a flight and much of my poolside time. Perfect vacation reading.