Review By: Charles P. Ries
Charles has recently been appointed to the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. Holy smokes!! Don't you think you should check out his own work at: http://www.literarti.net/Ries/ ?
Thunder Sandwich Publishing
191 Pages/ Poetry, Short Stories and Photography
Price: $17.50
Order directly from Splake at P.O. Box 508, Calumet, Michigan 49913. Make all checks and money orders payable to t.k. splake.
As you will read below, Charles and t. have embibed a beverage together.
Thomas Hugh Smith was 44 years old when he wrote his first poem in 1979. Now known as t. kilgore splake, he has become one of the small press icons. His work and name appear everywhere. The self-proclaimed “graybeard dancer” told me, “Early one l979 morning while nursing a modest hangover and drinking a cup of coffee brewed from the coals of the previous night’s campfire, I felt compelled to write my thoughts about the past several days living in the pictured rocks wilderness outback. I collected several additional poems over my summer of camping, and upon returning to Battle Creek after Labor Day, they were published in my first chapbook edition titled pictured rocks poetry.”
Until that day Splake had never written poetry, “I taught political science at Kellogg Community College in Battle Creek, Michigan, for twenty-six years. I lectured on the dynamics of a federal system of government and outlined the characteristics and functions of the American political party system. However, outside the world of academia, my job status was at best anonymous. If I was in with a strange group of people and asked what I did for a living, I might as well have replied I was a brain surgeon for the understanding most people have of what is political science. Now, I declare myself a poet, and it still seems I am anonymous to the average individual.”
Backwater Graybeard Twilight is the magnum opus of Splake's work. It is a comprehensive collection of both his word and photo art. The 150 pages devoted to his writing are dense and word filled; word overflowing, words everywhere; for Splake puts to paper what comes to his mind in what he calls stream of consciousness prose. I asked him about this and he told me, “What initially attracted me to poetry, and later writing stream of consciousness prose, was the absence of necessary writing rules. In a doing contest with the ever elusive damn-dame lady muse, I seize a passion and redline it. I still compose my writing works in long hand, scribbling between the lines of quill econo legal padlets. With the rough long hand drafts, I then key a poem or a story into a word document and turn to the fine-tuning the writing into the best shape possible.”
One of the characteristics of the writing in Backwater Graybeard Twilight is its sheer volume. I often felt like I was drowning in a tidal wave of images and metaphors. This machine gunning of words often left me feeling lost and falling; not an altogether unpleasant experience, but even numinous falling needs nuance and direction lest we shut down the sponge in our head that reads and absorbs. Here is an example from, “homeboy escape”: “small town, womb nurturing captive population of fascists / and losers, hometurf where acting like a man is all important, // a few basking in fleeting, momentary athletic glories, awash / in school colors, cheers, the rest settling for spectator status, small // value for sadness of beating nobody, // small numbers move on town the highway, seeking college / education, others off to a career, some branch of the military service, most quickly back at home, armed and relieved, convenient excuse,” and on it goes for two more pages. Image on image, metaphor after metaphor, with only commas to give my mind a breath.
I asked Splake about this volume of words and whether themes get lost in the word pile. He sort of answered my question, “I believe in a pizza theory of poetry. Imagine being on a date and discussing what kind of a pizza to order. If I might suggest a pizza with anchovies, my feminine acquaintance might reply, “Ugh, I can’t stand those slimy little fish.” Where if she would suggest a pineapple pizza, I would not find pineapple agreeable to my culinary palette. Yet neither anchovies nor pineapple are bad, they simple represent a difference in individual tastes. I think the same analogy holds true for poetry. There are no good or bad poems, and what is good in poetry simply appeals to one’s aesthetic sensibilities. I can, and do not believe that the poems and stories I write will be liked by all those who read them. An anchovy lover will not win over a pineapple devotee.” I can’t argue that all art is loved by someone and finds a home, but does poetry lose its power (brevity) when it becomes overloaded? I think it does, but this does not diminish Splake's achievement or skill in accomplishing it, it just means his audience will be filled anchovy lovers who welcome his form of word art.
Backwater Graybeard Twilight is broken into titled, Being, NonBeing and Becoming - I was most drawn to Becoming (can I say the pineapple section) where Splake delivers more then a few poems I could read, digest, inhale such as this excerpt from, “the mountain beyond”: “mournful foghorn elegy / chuck spires vanishing / gray dying light / san fran bay / union street hill / below Washington square / bro brautigan / bench shadows / ben franklin statue / brown sipping sack / bard blood a-hummmmmm/inviting Alcatraz gulls / to carry him home / musical wings / through vivaldi’s season / escaping / life’s surface mirror.” Splake’s gift is his facility with image, his challenge maybe mitigating the blinding speed with which he lets these images fall to his paper.
I asked Jim Chandler, whose Thunder Sandwich Publishing published Backwater Graybeard Twilight what drew him to Splake’s work and he told me “I believe Splake is unique because his style is unlike that of anyone I'm familiar with. I suspect that most people who have read any Splake could pick his work out of poems by 10 (or 20 or 100) poets by reading a line or two. I know I can. The talent obviously speaks for itself, since one doesn't bother to interview untalented people. Splake is the most dedicated writer I know; perhaps driven is a better word. He sets goals and he doesn't rest until he achieves them. “
Indeed, he is a Type-A poet if ever there was one; a volcano of productivity. In an interview conducted by Peter Magliocco of ART:MAG Splake describes himself as a proverbial over-achiever who TRIES HARDER and I would agree. I asked him if, as he nears his 70th birthday, if he has enough time to get it all done and he told me, “ NO! I do not have enough time in the working day to bring my attention to all of the works that I currently have in progress. What I call “rat bastard time” has truly become my primary adversary. I often hear some of the truly geezer gents at the evergreen café sigh over their coffee mornings and whisper “what am I going to do today.” I feel, how sad I cannot allocate a couple of their unused hours, and possess twenty-six for a day’s lit-laborings. It is obvious they would not miss them.”
Splake has published over 70 chap books of poetry and if that weren’t enough, he is also an excellent photographer. Backwater Graybeard Twilight has over forty pages of his photos, and these are exceptional. His subjects are common and clear. They are lit on the page and easy to assimilate. I asked him if he had to choose poetry or photography, what would it be? In characteristic Splake fashion he didn’t exactly answer my question, but rather the associations my question prompted in his mind, “At present I am moving away from writing poetry and short stories and into the field of movie making. However, note, I am not abandoning poetry, but incorporating a poetry on human “being” into the camera footage that I work with. To date I have produced three DVD movie-length productions: “Splake poetry on location i,” “Splake poetry on location ii,” and the most recent film creation “Splake: the cliffs.” In regards to my filming perspectives, I have been greatly influenced by the work of Jim Jarmusch, and particularly his early movie “Permanent Vacation.” I have also learned a great deal of cinematography from the works of Richard Linklater. His experimental movie which is part of the criterion film package for the movie “Slacker,” has had a strong effect on my movie making attitudes.” Can you hear a man sprinting toward his art? I can.
In less then 20 years Splake has created a lifetime body of work. I asked him about his legacy, “If I flatter myself, I think that t. kilgore splake writings and photographs “might” still be remembered l0 days to a possible full two weeks after I pass on to that “quiet darkness of nothing.” However, I still continue to post my work and daily correspondence to Marcus C. Robyns, archivist for Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. I do entertain the remote possibility that I possess an Upper Peninsula artistic consciousness and regional identity. So, maybe some future NMU literature or writing students will study the works of Splake. I would like that.”
Jim Chandler is right. Here is a unique voice, talent and personality. Splake is a small press original. While anchovies are not for everyone, even a pineapple lover like me can see the glory in an anchovy. I strongly encourage you to add Backwater Graybeard Twilight to your library.
To Find Additional Information on Splake Go To:
http://www.thundersandwich.com/tspublishing.html = Order More Splake Books
http://www.tksplake.freehosting.net/ = Sample Splake Poetry
http://poesy.org/tkilgore_splake-kerouac.html = Splake Photos
http://www.geocities.com/bmorrise2/tk_splake.htm = Splake Photos
http://www.mipoesias.com/mipoprint/volume2issue16.pdf = MiPo Print
http://www.mipoesias.com/mipoprint/volume3issue1.pdf = MiPo Print
Friday, December 29, 2006
Angela Consolo Mankiewicz: An Eye
Review By: Charles P. Ries
Charles is the Poetry Editor of Word Riot, and a fine poet in his own write. You can see his own creative writing at http://www.literarti.net/Ries/ .
13 Poems / 37 Pages / $9
Pecan Grove Press
Box AL
1 Camino Santa Maria
San Antonio, Texas 78228-8608
As you will read, Charles has actually spoken with Angela.
AN EYE by Angela Consolo Mankiewicz is the third book of poetry by this very fine writer whose work appears throughout the small press. Her previous two chaps were CANCER POEMS from UB Press, and WIRED from Aquarius West.
Mankiewicz walks the gracious line between pure narrative poetry and image poetry; this lends a transcendent aspect to her work. Here is excerpt from her poem “The Cell” which illustrates this quality, “I found him in his cell / not as in jail, as in catacombs. // He smiled but did not look well, / frail, in a thin, pinstripe suit. // He stepped down, almost fell / but righted himself, winking.” And later in the same poem, “He stopped, climbed / onto the sun and swooned // while flames brushed his lips red / and painted his face // like a middle-aged whore, overfed / and grinning. I carried him // back to his cell, into his bed, / where I watched the dust // fill his nostrils and blot / his spotted cheeks.” I asked her about the tone of the poems in AN EYE, many of which I felt had a personal journal aspect to them, “Yes, I'd characterize these poems as both narrative and image-driven. I don't see or hear the "journal aspect" - which certainly doesn't mean it isn't there! I learned early on that I'm more an explicator than a good story-teller - perhaps that's how that combination developed in my work.”
These poems are reflections on motherhood, love, age, memory, regret, and time. A few poems in this collection that didn’t seem to fit this flow – “The Lady Livia” and “The Cell” in particular seemed to be poems for another collection. I asked Mankiewicz to explain this thematic discontinuity. “Yes, your perceptions are accurate, although I would include political in the mix. “The Lady Livia” and “The Cell” also fall into the same areas you note – “The Lady Livia” began as a piece about the historical figure and dovetailed into a reflections on my mother. “The Cell” began with a dream of my father and blended into a memory of Rome. When I considered groupings, I didn't consciously have a theme in mind. I saw AN EYE and “Young Girls” as bookends, “Sleeping with Nietzsche” through “Armchairs” as introspectives. The other three, with “Caiti”, as externals - assuming that makes any sense.”
I asked her how Pecan Grove Press came to publish this collection. “Pecan Press published a little magazine called "Chili Verde Review" which printed a few of my poems over the years. Its publisher/editor, H. Palmer Hall also ran a chapbook contest, judged by someone else. I would submit, and though Palmer was very encouraging, I never made it. The press and magazine seemed to disappear for a while, and then I saw a review in Small Press Review of one of Palmer's books. I wrote to him, and he invited me to submit a manuscript which became AN EYE.”
Many of these poems gain their power from the personal, and from the skill and willingness of Mankiewicz to disclose. Here are three endings to poems in the collection that illustrate this. From “The Girl Who Loved Armchairs”: “I’m told, love will outlast passion’s appetite - / then may it rage as it slips into that ungentle night.” From “Dinner Party”: “She turned off the sound, let herself drift / on the tremble of purring on her lips, / steady, with an extra beat // here and there, to remind her of / who she is.” And finally from “After All These Years”: “Later, we will meet, face-to-face and embrace like paper dolls. / We’ll bob our heads and flap happy little arms in the wind. / We’ll rush home to draw big black remainders to call on / our calendars / for old times’ sake.” Mankiewicz’s ability to write so personally is her great strength.
I asked Mankiewicz about her writing process, “Basically, it's a matter of shot gunning everything a particular thought or series of thoughts brings into my head and setting that down on paper/screen. Then, I start discarding, inserting, re-inserting, read a little, put on Callas if I want to indulge myself, Beethoven if I need to escape. I may sweep the kitchen floor or play at preparing to wash the car. I do put poems aside into "In-Process" folders if I don't like what's happening or not happening and I will go back to a piece, but not that often. Sometimes I revise a lot over many weeks, sometimes hardly at all - it depends on the piece of course. Sometimes I force a completion because I can't deal with the piece anymore - and because I don't know if I ever feel a poem is "done." Occasionally, a poem comes in a sitting. Rarely is it a really good piece, but it can be satisfactory, and if so, I'll keep it.”
AN EYE is a strong and varied outing for a poet who does not blink in the face of emotional tension and confusion. Mankiewicz stands firm and reports what she sees through an eye that is painter, poet and philosopher.
Charles is the Poetry Editor of Word Riot, and a fine poet in his own write. You can see his own creative writing at http://www.literarti.net/Ries/ .
13 Poems / 37 Pages / $9
Pecan Grove Press
Box AL
1 Camino Santa Maria
San Antonio, Texas 78228-8608
As you will read, Charles has actually spoken with Angela.
AN EYE by Angela Consolo Mankiewicz is the third book of poetry by this very fine writer whose work appears throughout the small press. Her previous two chaps were CANCER POEMS from UB Press, and WIRED from Aquarius West.
Mankiewicz walks the gracious line between pure narrative poetry and image poetry; this lends a transcendent aspect to her work. Here is excerpt from her poem “The Cell” which illustrates this quality, “I found him in his cell / not as in jail, as in catacombs. // He smiled but did not look well, / frail, in a thin, pinstripe suit. // He stepped down, almost fell / but righted himself, winking.” And later in the same poem, “He stopped, climbed / onto the sun and swooned // while flames brushed his lips red / and painted his face // like a middle-aged whore, overfed / and grinning. I carried him // back to his cell, into his bed, / where I watched the dust // fill his nostrils and blot / his spotted cheeks.” I asked her about the tone of the poems in AN EYE, many of which I felt had a personal journal aspect to them, “Yes, I'd characterize these poems as both narrative and image-driven. I don't see or hear the "journal aspect" - which certainly doesn't mean it isn't there! I learned early on that I'm more an explicator than a good story-teller - perhaps that's how that combination developed in my work.”
These poems are reflections on motherhood, love, age, memory, regret, and time. A few poems in this collection that didn’t seem to fit this flow – “The Lady Livia” and “The Cell” in particular seemed to be poems for another collection. I asked Mankiewicz to explain this thematic discontinuity. “Yes, your perceptions are accurate, although I would include political in the mix. “The Lady Livia” and “The Cell” also fall into the same areas you note – “The Lady Livia” began as a piece about the historical figure and dovetailed into a reflections on my mother. “The Cell” began with a dream of my father and blended into a memory of Rome. When I considered groupings, I didn't consciously have a theme in mind. I saw AN EYE and “Young Girls” as bookends, “Sleeping with Nietzsche” through “Armchairs” as introspectives. The other three, with “Caiti”, as externals - assuming that makes any sense.”
I asked her how Pecan Grove Press came to publish this collection. “Pecan Press published a little magazine called "Chili Verde Review" which printed a few of my poems over the years. Its publisher/editor, H. Palmer Hall also ran a chapbook contest, judged by someone else. I would submit, and though Palmer was very encouraging, I never made it. The press and magazine seemed to disappear for a while, and then I saw a review in Small Press Review of one of Palmer's books. I wrote to him, and he invited me to submit a manuscript which became AN EYE.”
Many of these poems gain their power from the personal, and from the skill and willingness of Mankiewicz to disclose. Here are three endings to poems in the collection that illustrate this. From “The Girl Who Loved Armchairs”: “I’m told, love will outlast passion’s appetite - / then may it rage as it slips into that ungentle night.” From “Dinner Party”: “She turned off the sound, let herself drift / on the tremble of purring on her lips, / steady, with an extra beat // here and there, to remind her of / who she is.” And finally from “After All These Years”: “Later, we will meet, face-to-face and embrace like paper dolls. / We’ll bob our heads and flap happy little arms in the wind. / We’ll rush home to draw big black remainders to call on / our calendars / for old times’ sake.” Mankiewicz’s ability to write so personally is her great strength.
I asked Mankiewicz about her writing process, “Basically, it's a matter of shot gunning everything a particular thought or series of thoughts brings into my head and setting that down on paper/screen. Then, I start discarding, inserting, re-inserting, read a little, put on Callas if I want to indulge myself, Beethoven if I need to escape. I may sweep the kitchen floor or play at preparing to wash the car. I do put poems aside into "In-Process" folders if I don't like what's happening or not happening and I will go back to a piece, but not that often. Sometimes I revise a lot over many weeks, sometimes hardly at all - it depends on the piece of course. Sometimes I force a completion because I can't deal with the piece anymore - and because I don't know if I ever feel a poem is "done." Occasionally, a poem comes in a sitting. Rarely is it a really good piece, but it can be satisfactory, and if so, I'll keep it.”
AN EYE is a strong and varied outing for a poet who does not blink in the face of emotional tension and confusion. Mankiewicz stands firm and reports what she sees through an eye that is painter, poet and philosopher.
William Taylor Jr.: So Much Is Burning
Review By: Charles P. Ries
(Charles is a fine poet. He is the Poetry Editor for Word Riot. Check out his work at http://www.literarti.net/Ries).)
16 Poems/5 Photos/$10
Sunnyoutside, P.O. Box 441429
Somerville, MA 02144
www.sunnyoutside.com
www.williamtaylorjr.com
Charles has met William, as this review indicates.
The eyes of a poet often find beauty in rubble, and hope in a sea of sadness. So Much Is Burning by William Taylor Jr. is a study of poetic transcendence, an examination undertaken by a writer well suited to seeing common miracles. Taylor’s work conveys longing as well any poet writing today. I first encountered his work five years ago when I discovered his wonderful poem “Being Lonely” in Zen Baby. It was such a remarkable poem of searching sadness that I have never forgotten it. So Much Is Burning demonstrates why Taylor has attracted such a devoted following in the small press.
This collection is grounded in place and set on the humble stage known as the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. I asked Taylor why he wanted such a sharp thematic focus. “I had the idea of publishing a collection of poems and photographs all about a particular place, or city. I originally had the idea while living in Santa Cruz. Nothing came of it until I moved to San Francisco and the Tenderloin about a year ago. A lot of poems came from just walking around and hanging out in the neighborhood. Most of them were written in maybe a six month period. I would just send batches of them to David as they were written, and then we’d [David McNamara, Editor of sunnyoutside] usually discuss whether or not a particular piece fit the mood, or theme of the book, and go from there.”
Taylor’s ability to find beauty and hope in this sad town is demonstrated in his poem titled, “At the Corner”: “It is mid afternoon / and I am already tired of the day / Just another thing wasted / another sad mistake / and at the corner of Geary / and Leavenworth / the sky is perfect blue / high above the bus stop / where the strung out / red-haired prostitute waits / her crazed eyes almost / but not quite / beautiful.” And again, in his poem titled, “Like the Dripping of Rain”: “The 4:00 a.m. sound of the / tranny prostitute’s heels / click clacking up and down Post St. / beneath my window / is strangely comforting, // like the dripping of rain / it lulls me to a gentle sleep.”
Only a few lines in this collection step perilously close to becoming melodramatic such as in, “The City”: “Some days the city is a beautiful / as anything that’s ever been // and some days the city is a living thing / whose only purpose / is to devour you slowly / and completely, body / and soul // with jagged / poisoned teeth. // Some days the only victory / is to be alive enough to feel it.” Taylor’s gift is restraint, and in this poem I feel he may have chosen other words than devour, jagged and poisoned teeth to describe this city.
I asked him about what he does to walk this line between pathos and the melodramatic with such agility? He told me, “In much of my work there is a certain mood or feeling I want to convey and I simply try and use the best words possible to do so. I don’t know how else to explain it. I do believe there is sadness in beauty and sometimes beauty in sadness. When I am affected in some way by something I try and write about it in a way that will make the reader feel whatever I felt at the time of the experience.” I also wanted to know if Taylor was filled with as much pathos as his poems often depict. “I don’t think so. I’m generally relatively happy in my everyday life. I tend to release my dark side, if you will, in my writing. Most happy stuff tends not to make interesting reading. To quote old Thomas Hardy, If a way to the best there be, it exacts a full look at the worst. Meaning, the dark aspects of life must be confronted and accepted before any real peace of mind or happiness can be achieved. A kind of peace must be made with the darkness.”
Here is another poem from So Much is Burning titled, “Sucker’s Bet”: “I imagine most of the / people in my neighborhood / don’t believe much in poetry / and I’m not sure if they should / it’s a sucker’s bet / to look for beauty in these / sad broken streets”
I believe the roots of the writer’s voice can be found by looking at his or her life. Since Taylor used “Jr.” in his pen name, I asked him to tell me a little about his father. “My father was a WWII veteran. I think there was a lot he experienced in the war that he never really talked about. His father, from what I gather, was an abusive alcoholic and a preacher. My dad had nothing good to say about him. All of my life my father was a devout atheist, bitterly critical of organized religion of any kind. My mom was, and still is a practicing catholic. It made for an interesting relationship. My dad generally was a quiet, decent man, prone to fits of violence when provoked in a certain way. Now that he’s gone, of course, I wish I’d known him better.”
I also wanted to know about Taylor’s training as a writer, “Right after high school I attended a junior college in my hometown of Bakersfield for a few years. I mainly took art and literature classes. I did well in those, and not so well in the classes that I wasn’t as interested in. I’ve never had much discipline for the classroom setting. I’ve never liked doing things in groups. At the time, I didn’t have a job in mind that a degree in literature would help me get. I didn’t have an interest in being a teacher. I was rather directionless, as far as school went, so after a few years I dropped out.” I asked him when he began writing, “I’ve been actively publishing probably about 15 years now, since my early twenties or so. I told myself that when I had written what I thought to be 100 good poems, I would start submitting. I got a fair amount of encouragement early on; a lot of my work was being accepted by the little zines and such, so I just kept at it.”
When he told me his two favorite dead poets were T.S. Eliot and Robinson Jeffers I began to see Taylor’s writer’s soul come into sharper focus for me. “Eliot was probably the greatest poet writing in English in the 20th century. A true poet’s poet. You can read his best work over and over and never tire of it. There is always something new to discover. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is probably my favorite poem by anyone, ever. Jeffers was the last great poet of the epic tradition. He captured the natural beauty of the earth like few poets could. He found comfort in the fact that the universe and the great beauty of things will continue long after humankind is gone, when there is no heart left to break for it, as do I.”
It’s such pleasure to read Taylor’s work and meet his city. He is a writer with a long future, and an audience that will grow. I was pleased to learn that Chuck Nevismal’s Centennial Press will be publishing an expansive collection of new and selected poems by Taylor called, Words For Songs Never Written. No date has been set for that release, but it is about time this fine poet got a book large enough to showcase his considerable talent.
(Charles is a fine poet. He is the Poetry Editor for Word Riot. Check out his work at http://www.literarti.net/Ries).)
16 Poems/5 Photos/$10
Sunnyoutside, P.O. Box 441429
Somerville, MA 02144
www.sunnyoutside.com
www.williamtaylorjr.com
Charles has met William, as this review indicates.
The eyes of a poet often find beauty in rubble, and hope in a sea of sadness. So Much Is Burning by William Taylor Jr. is a study of poetic transcendence, an examination undertaken by a writer well suited to seeing common miracles. Taylor’s work conveys longing as well any poet writing today. I first encountered his work five years ago when I discovered his wonderful poem “Being Lonely” in Zen Baby. It was such a remarkable poem of searching sadness that I have never forgotten it. So Much Is Burning demonstrates why Taylor has attracted such a devoted following in the small press.
This collection is grounded in place and set on the humble stage known as the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. I asked Taylor why he wanted such a sharp thematic focus. “I had the idea of publishing a collection of poems and photographs all about a particular place, or city. I originally had the idea while living in Santa Cruz. Nothing came of it until I moved to San Francisco and the Tenderloin about a year ago. A lot of poems came from just walking around and hanging out in the neighborhood. Most of them were written in maybe a six month period. I would just send batches of them to David as they were written, and then we’d [David McNamara, Editor of sunnyoutside] usually discuss whether or not a particular piece fit the mood, or theme of the book, and go from there.”
Taylor’s ability to find beauty and hope in this sad town is demonstrated in his poem titled, “At the Corner”: “It is mid afternoon / and I am already tired of the day / Just another thing wasted / another sad mistake / and at the corner of Geary / and Leavenworth / the sky is perfect blue / high above the bus stop / where the strung out / red-haired prostitute waits / her crazed eyes almost / but not quite / beautiful.” And again, in his poem titled, “Like the Dripping of Rain”: “The 4:00 a.m. sound of the / tranny prostitute’s heels / click clacking up and down Post St. / beneath my window / is strangely comforting, // like the dripping of rain / it lulls me to a gentle sleep.”
Only a few lines in this collection step perilously close to becoming melodramatic such as in, “The City”: “Some days the city is a beautiful / as anything that’s ever been // and some days the city is a living thing / whose only purpose / is to devour you slowly / and completely, body / and soul // with jagged / poisoned teeth. // Some days the only victory / is to be alive enough to feel it.” Taylor’s gift is restraint, and in this poem I feel he may have chosen other words than devour, jagged and poisoned teeth to describe this city.
I asked him about what he does to walk this line between pathos and the melodramatic with such agility? He told me, “In much of my work there is a certain mood or feeling I want to convey and I simply try and use the best words possible to do so. I don’t know how else to explain it. I do believe there is sadness in beauty and sometimes beauty in sadness. When I am affected in some way by something I try and write about it in a way that will make the reader feel whatever I felt at the time of the experience.” I also wanted to know if Taylor was filled with as much pathos as his poems often depict. “I don’t think so. I’m generally relatively happy in my everyday life. I tend to release my dark side, if you will, in my writing. Most happy stuff tends not to make interesting reading. To quote old Thomas Hardy, If a way to the best there be, it exacts a full look at the worst. Meaning, the dark aspects of life must be confronted and accepted before any real peace of mind or happiness can be achieved. A kind of peace must be made with the darkness.”
Here is another poem from So Much is Burning titled, “Sucker’s Bet”: “I imagine most of the / people in my neighborhood / don’t believe much in poetry / and I’m not sure if they should / it’s a sucker’s bet / to look for beauty in these / sad broken streets”
I believe the roots of the writer’s voice can be found by looking at his or her life. Since Taylor used “Jr.” in his pen name, I asked him to tell me a little about his father. “My father was a WWII veteran. I think there was a lot he experienced in the war that he never really talked about. His father, from what I gather, was an abusive alcoholic and a preacher. My dad had nothing good to say about him. All of my life my father was a devout atheist, bitterly critical of organized religion of any kind. My mom was, and still is a practicing catholic. It made for an interesting relationship. My dad generally was a quiet, decent man, prone to fits of violence when provoked in a certain way. Now that he’s gone, of course, I wish I’d known him better.”
I also wanted to know about Taylor’s training as a writer, “Right after high school I attended a junior college in my hometown of Bakersfield for a few years. I mainly took art and literature classes. I did well in those, and not so well in the classes that I wasn’t as interested in. I’ve never had much discipline for the classroom setting. I’ve never liked doing things in groups. At the time, I didn’t have a job in mind that a degree in literature would help me get. I didn’t have an interest in being a teacher. I was rather directionless, as far as school went, so after a few years I dropped out.” I asked him when he began writing, “I’ve been actively publishing probably about 15 years now, since my early twenties or so. I told myself that when I had written what I thought to be 100 good poems, I would start submitting. I got a fair amount of encouragement early on; a lot of my work was being accepted by the little zines and such, so I just kept at it.”
When he told me his two favorite dead poets were T.S. Eliot and Robinson Jeffers I began to see Taylor’s writer’s soul come into sharper focus for me. “Eliot was probably the greatest poet writing in English in the 20th century. A true poet’s poet. You can read his best work over and over and never tire of it. There is always something new to discover. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is probably my favorite poem by anyone, ever. Jeffers was the last great poet of the epic tradition. He captured the natural beauty of the earth like few poets could. He found comfort in the fact that the universe and the great beauty of things will continue long after humankind is gone, when there is no heart left to break for it, as do I.”
It’s such pleasure to read Taylor’s work and meet his city. He is a writer with a long future, and an audience that will grow. I was pleased to learn that Chuck Nevismal’s Centennial Press will be publishing an expansive collection of new and selected poems by Taylor called, Words For Songs Never Written. No date has been set for that release, but it is about time this fine poet got a book large enough to showcase his considerable talent.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Fawzy Zablah: Ciao! Miami
Reviewed by: Christopher Robin
Available on Lulu (www.lulu.com), $9.18 paperback/$2.53 download. It is also available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other sources.
Christopher Robin is a member of the ULA. He does not know, to the best of my limited knowledge, Fawzy Zablah (who has a fabulous name). It goes without saying that Fawzy, therefore, does not know Christopher--but should we make such assumptions? And, if it goes without saying, why am I saying it? And, have you noticed, I have not said anything, I am writing? Is this any way to end 2006?
Ciao Miami is a book of short stories set in the late 90’s about Miami’s marginalized population. The characters include immigrants, prostitutes, and transsexuals. The writing is strong, well developed and full of surprises, while the dialogue is realistic and believable.
There is so much intrigue in this book, in even the most simple of premises, I found myself lingering so as not to finish them too fast.
My favorite was a long piece called “The Women’s Army” about a mentally ill man who think he’s an angel and is obsessed with a Cuban boy who was “saved by a dolphin” (Elian Gonzales). Some other stories include: an Egyptian busboy mistaken for an Afghan after September 2001, (“The Existence of Nabil”), a man who falls for a crack whore who he is determined to save; but instead nearly destroys his own life in the process, (“Darling, It Was An Uphill Battle Loving You),” and a young man dying of Aids who tries to fulfill the wish of a former high school ugly duckling, (“Post Bug Billy Flint.”)
I found myself drawn to the characters who were sometimes not the least bit likeable but who had a certain sad appeal. There is also humor in the dreadful lives they inhabit, whether the author intends it to be so or not. These are portraits of many different types of people who are all at their wit’s end, against a backdrop of the headlines and popular concerns of the 1990’s.
These are examples of what happens when people break, either trying to do good, or deluded into thinking they are doing so. Folks who are holding on to what’s left of their humanity, and those that have given it up. These stories are every bit as good as what you would find in Charles Bukowski’s very early short stories. I highly recommend it.
Available on Lulu (www.lulu.com), $9.18 paperback/$2.53 download. It is also available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other sources.
Christopher Robin is a member of the ULA. He does not know, to the best of my limited knowledge, Fawzy Zablah (who has a fabulous name). It goes without saying that Fawzy, therefore, does not know Christopher--but should we make such assumptions? And, if it goes without saying, why am I saying it? And, have you noticed, I have not said anything, I am writing? Is this any way to end 2006?
Ciao Miami is a book of short stories set in the late 90’s about Miami’s marginalized population. The characters include immigrants, prostitutes, and transsexuals. The writing is strong, well developed and full of surprises, while the dialogue is realistic and believable.
There is so much intrigue in this book, in even the most simple of premises, I found myself lingering so as not to finish them too fast.
My favorite was a long piece called “The Women’s Army” about a mentally ill man who think he’s an angel and is obsessed with a Cuban boy who was “saved by a dolphin” (Elian Gonzales). Some other stories include: an Egyptian busboy mistaken for an Afghan after September 2001, (“The Existence of Nabil”), a man who falls for a crack whore who he is determined to save; but instead nearly destroys his own life in the process, (“Darling, It Was An Uphill Battle Loving You),” and a young man dying of Aids who tries to fulfill the wish of a former high school ugly duckling, (“Post Bug Billy Flint.”)
I found myself drawn to the characters who were sometimes not the least bit likeable but who had a certain sad appeal. There is also humor in the dreadful lives they inhabit, whether the author intends it to be so or not. These are portraits of many different types of people who are all at their wit’s end, against a backdrop of the headlines and popular concerns of the 1990’s.
These are examples of what happens when people break, either trying to do good, or deluded into thinking they are doing so. Folks who are holding on to what’s left of their humanity, and those that have given it up. These stories are every bit as good as what you would find in Charles Bukowski’s very early short stories. I highly recommend it.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Joe Ollman: this will all end in tears
"Tony, it's taken me 37 years to get this fucked up. I'm betting it will take more than a week to make me okay."
Reviewed by: Brady Dale Russell
Brady was sent this book in the mail by its publisher, Insomniac Press, in Ontario, Canada. Brady has never met Joe. And, in terms of hunting trips and shooting either deer or lawyers or even good friends, it is unlikely that either Joe or Brady have met Dick Cheyney. With luck, they never will.
Insomnia Press published this book. You can find more of their books at www.insomniacpress.com). The book is also available on Amazon. You can find Brady Russell's site link in our links section. Joe's personal site is located at www.wagpress.net.
Lately I've been talking about things in terms of whether or not they are good for America or bad for America. Usually, I prefer identifying the things I see as "good for America." For example, if I see a movie in which an anti-hero type takes an amusingly sadistic pleasure out of beating the crap out of some government functionary, I say: "that's good for America." Or, if I eat a donut that somehow hits me just the right way, I say it was "good for America." Or if someone gets really, really drunk and makes an impressive ass out of himself by hitting on a woman who's totally out of his league only to take a sweeping bow that everyone can see after she (amazingly) grants him the digits, I say, with great reverence, that that it's "good for America."
The point being that I never really like to say anything is good or bad for America if it actually does have any clear or meaningful link to nation, nationhood or our political moment. In fact, you could even argue that I don't usually tend to say anything is good for America if it might be possible to make any argument under any circumstances that the thing actually did benefit America.
Because if you could it wouldn't be funny to say whatever-random-ass-thing was good for America.
It's only slightly more ironic, then, that I found myself trying to decide un-ironically whether or not Joe Ollman's collection of graphic short stories, this will all end in tears, was good for America, since Ollman is Canadian and probably finds America pretty annoying. I mean, we could get all technical about it and say that Canada is also part of America, depending on how you define the thing, but we all know that no one thinks about Canada when they think about America. When they think about America they think about Jazz. Okay, they think about NASCAR and guns, but the point is that whatever you think about when you think about America, it probably doesn't have anything to do with Canada because we are two pretty different states of mind.
In fact, no one thinks about Canada when they think about America because, let's face it, no one really thinks about Canada.
Unless you're talking about comedy. Then we're pretty much on the same
page. Canucks can be pretty funny.
Not that this will all end in tears is exactly funny. John Candy was funny. this will all end in tears is mostly depressing and disturbing. But it's depressing and disturbing with a comic sensibility, sort of like the movie Happiness, only the book strays a little too far in the grotesque and ugly to really maintain an ironic comedic tone - plus it doesn't have a dorky little kid who can't jerk off. If nothing else in this world is funny anymore one day, little kids who can't jerk off will still make me laugh.
What's not funny are chubby near-middle-aged women who have crushes on guys with bad skin only because maybe Mr. Bad-skin-spare-tire-belly
might sleep with her once he realizes that he's not exactly Tom Cruise. Well, I guess that is sort of funny, especially when Ollman shows his porcine main character all bug-eyed as she kills herself on an exercise bike in her basement so she can drop a few ounces that she never manages to drop. That's funny. Only you feel guilty laughing because this character is one sad girl who hasn't done anyone any harm. So you don't exactly laugh but you do sort of secretly giggle and it's not like anyone will blame you because they see you're reading a comic, and comics are supposed to be funny, right? They don't know you're laughing at a lonely girl.
What I'm saying is that it is nice to see that Canadians also share the darker side of American humor. The more sophisticated brand of our macabre tastes that we inherited from the Brits but improved with guns like we do everything. The sort of humor that makes you laugh when little kids go to talk to their dads about the fact that they can't jerk off because you know that the kid's dad is a pedophile and the kid doesn't. That's funny. Only that's Happiness I'm talking about again, because, like I said, no impotent pre-teens in this will all end in tears.
There are guns, though, and God bless America for that. This one character has the lamest little rifle, a .22, but somehow in the story he's managed to kill this deer with it. It's his first hunting trip ever and he kills this great big buck with one shot from a .22, hitting it somewhere in the back no less. Now, setting aside that a kill with this sort of shot is pretty much impossible with a .22, this is one of the darkest pieces of humor in the whole book. You have to love a story where a guy goes to move a deer that's been dead in his garage for almost a week and its front legs come off.
Now, I know a little something about dead deer in garages. I've lived in a house with a dead deer in a garage, after all. Through this whole story, the main character keeps having more and more trouble with the deer he never meant to kill in the first place, and, knowing a little about dead deer, I know that all the problems could have been prevented if he'd just done this, or he'd just done that.
Then I realized that the point of the story was two-fold: first, that no one in the story really knew what to do if any of them actually did manage to kill a deer and, second, that Ollman wanted to do a scene where this guy accidentally pulls a deer's front legs off.
And who can blame him*?
So there I am on page 66 and the main character of the book's third story (of six), "Oh, Deer," accidentally pulls off the legs of this deer and I think to myself, "Yeah, okay, this book definitely is good for America."
* Note: I didn't read the endnotes of this book before writing the review, but then I did afterwards and it turns out that Ollman pretty much did write this story for the purpose of showing this guy unintentionally ripping a deer's front legs off. Wow.
[Victor notes: okay, now I gotta read this book! However, I must note that one of my dear movies is Bambi. And I have to wonder about what Brady keeps in his garage...besides Joe Pesci...]
Reviewed by: Brady Dale Russell
Brady was sent this book in the mail by its publisher, Insomniac Press, in Ontario, Canada. Brady has never met Joe. And, in terms of hunting trips and shooting either deer or lawyers or even good friends, it is unlikely that either Joe or Brady have met Dick Cheyney. With luck, they never will.
Insomnia Press published this book. You can find more of their books at www.insomniacpress.com). The book is also available on Amazon. You can find Brady Russell's site link in our links section. Joe's personal site is located at www.wagpress.net.
Lately I've been talking about things in terms of whether or not they are good for America or bad for America. Usually, I prefer identifying the things I see as "good for America." For example, if I see a movie in which an anti-hero type takes an amusingly sadistic pleasure out of beating the crap out of some government functionary, I say: "that's good for America." Or, if I eat a donut that somehow hits me just the right way, I say it was "good for America." Or if someone gets really, really drunk and makes an impressive ass out of himself by hitting on a woman who's totally out of his league only to take a sweeping bow that everyone can see after she (amazingly) grants him the digits, I say, with great reverence, that that it's "good for America."
The point being that I never really like to say anything is good or bad for America if it actually does have any clear or meaningful link to nation, nationhood or our political moment. In fact, you could even argue that I don't usually tend to say anything is good for America if it might be possible to make any argument under any circumstances that the thing actually did benefit America.
Because if you could it wouldn't be funny to say whatever-random-ass-thing was good for America.
It's only slightly more ironic, then, that I found myself trying to decide un-ironically whether or not Joe Ollman's collection of graphic short stories, this will all end in tears, was good for America, since Ollman is Canadian and probably finds America pretty annoying. I mean, we could get all technical about it and say that Canada is also part of America, depending on how you define the thing, but we all know that no one thinks about Canada when they think about America. When they think about America they think about Jazz. Okay, they think about NASCAR and guns, but the point is that whatever you think about when you think about America, it probably doesn't have anything to do with Canada because we are two pretty different states of mind.
In fact, no one thinks about Canada when they think about America because, let's face it, no one really thinks about Canada.
Unless you're talking about comedy. Then we're pretty much on the same
page. Canucks can be pretty funny.
Not that this will all end in tears is exactly funny. John Candy was funny. this will all end in tears is mostly depressing and disturbing. But it's depressing and disturbing with a comic sensibility, sort of like the movie Happiness, only the book strays a little too far in the grotesque and ugly to really maintain an ironic comedic tone - plus it doesn't have a dorky little kid who can't jerk off. If nothing else in this world is funny anymore one day, little kids who can't jerk off will still make me laugh.
What's not funny are chubby near-middle-aged women who have crushes on guys with bad skin only because maybe Mr. Bad-skin-spare-tire-belly
might sleep with her once he realizes that he's not exactly Tom Cruise. Well, I guess that is sort of funny, especially when Ollman shows his porcine main character all bug-eyed as she kills herself on an exercise bike in her basement so she can drop a few ounces that she never manages to drop. That's funny. Only you feel guilty laughing because this character is one sad girl who hasn't done anyone any harm. So you don't exactly laugh but you do sort of secretly giggle and it's not like anyone will blame you because they see you're reading a comic, and comics are supposed to be funny, right? They don't know you're laughing at a lonely girl.
What I'm saying is that it is nice to see that Canadians also share the darker side of American humor. The more sophisticated brand of our macabre tastes that we inherited from the Brits but improved with guns like we do everything. The sort of humor that makes you laugh when little kids go to talk to their dads about the fact that they can't jerk off because you know that the kid's dad is a pedophile and the kid doesn't. That's funny. Only that's Happiness I'm talking about again, because, like I said, no impotent pre-teens in this will all end in tears.
There are guns, though, and God bless America for that. This one character has the lamest little rifle, a .22, but somehow in the story he's managed to kill this deer with it. It's his first hunting trip ever and he kills this great big buck with one shot from a .22, hitting it somewhere in the back no less. Now, setting aside that a kill with this sort of shot is pretty much impossible with a .22, this is one of the darkest pieces of humor in the whole book. You have to love a story where a guy goes to move a deer that's been dead in his garage for almost a week and its front legs come off.
Now, I know a little something about dead deer in garages. I've lived in a house with a dead deer in a garage, after all. Through this whole story, the main character keeps having more and more trouble with the deer he never meant to kill in the first place, and, knowing a little about dead deer, I know that all the problems could have been prevented if he'd just done this, or he'd just done that.
Then I realized that the point of the story was two-fold: first, that no one in the story really knew what to do if any of them actually did manage to kill a deer and, second, that Ollman wanted to do a scene where this guy accidentally pulls a deer's front legs off.
And who can blame him*?
So there I am on page 66 and the main character of the book's third story (of six), "Oh, Deer," accidentally pulls off the legs of this deer and I think to myself, "Yeah, okay, this book definitely is good for America."
* Note: I didn't read the endnotes of this book before writing the review, but then I did afterwards and it turns out that Ollman pretty much did write this story for the purpose of showing this guy unintentionally ripping a deer's front legs off. Wow.
[Victor notes: okay, now I gotta read this book! However, I must note that one of my dear movies is Bambi. And I have to wonder about what Brady keeps in his garage...besides Joe Pesci...]
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Cristy C. Road: Indestructible
Reviewed by: Victor Schwartzman
This book was published by Microcosm Publishing (http://www.microcosmpublishing.com/). Cristy C. Road’s website is http://www.croadcore.org/.
Victor has never met Cristy. He found out about her when he received a compliment about this site from Brooklyn Frank. Brooklyn Frank is a person and not a New York hot dog. Victor thanked him for his comment and asked Brooklyn Frank which books should be reviewed on this site. He mentioned Cristy. Victor contacted Cristy. She had never heard of Brooklyn Frank. But Cristy lives in Brooklyn, and Victor grew up in Brooklyn, so it all seems somehow connected, kind of like the circle of life from The Lion King, but without Walt Disney (who probably would not have liked this book).
It ain’t easy growing up in Miami as an Cuban overweight adolescent girl who starts out bisexual and eventually grows into being gay, at the same time an outcast in but a member of her high school, community and immediate family. It isn’t easy growing up, but Cristy had more than her share of crap to deal with.
This novel (that is not a novel) comes out of the zine world and looks it. The font is typewriter style, the layout cut and paste. The spelling and grammar would occasionally make White and Strunk fidget. The look of the book matches the troubled early life of the narrator, who appears suspiciously similar to the writer/artist, and whose name is, uh, Cristy Road.
The writing style can be awkward. At times the vocabulary does not match an adolescent’s—but then again, the story is told in retrospect and the awkwardness provides a realistic edge. Reading it feels like you are in the same room with Cristy as she tells you her early life story. The edge in the writing is matched by her bold black and white drawings—in your face art, using a blunt and somewhat cartoony style that effectively matches the writing style. The combination of words and art works nicely, playing off each other.
If you want a plot you should read another book. The book covers Cristy’s high school years, her ‘coming of age’, with that being an operative phrase in so many ways—she is obsessed with sex, along with punk rock, being oppressed, stupid boys and interesting girls. More a collection of memories tied together chronologically than a novel, the book has a genuine narrative power stemming from Cristy’s growth.
It is easier to show than explain:
One day, Cristy asks her high school biology teacher, Mr. Rodriguez, to discuss birth control. He is not pleased.
“’The basis of sex is procreation.’
‘No, it’s not. The sex you’re teaching us about only talks about the pleasure of dudes. Ya’ll know dudes gotta cum to make a baby, and girls don’t. Teaching this way only feeds to the idea that a girl’s pleasure isn’t as important as a dude’s. And hell knows everyone in this classroom wants to know how not to make babies as opposed to how to make them.’
‘Christy, if you don’t stop, I’m gonna ask you to leave the class.’
‘Awesome. The drugs are kicking in right now, anyway.’”
Or,
“’You’re a sell out. Last week you weren’t wearing fucking khakis and loafers. What’s your fucking deal?’ I asked Roberto one day.
‘Whatever Cristy. In the future, when you’re moshing in a pit somewhere, drunk off your ass—I’m gonna have a family. I’m gonna have money. I’m gonna be successful.’
‘Who are you to measure success? You’re just gonna end up fucking poor people over. You’re just gonna start shitting competition from the hole in your brain your CEO job is gonna drill. You and your imaginary family can suck it.’”
Or,
“On some nights, I found that girl-solidarity when this one girl, Marietta, sat on my bed until 3am talking about how useless facial masks and pussy deodorant were. I shared my room then with relatives, but sectioned off my side with yellow caution tape and a wall-collage of posters, flyers, and strategically placed crap. I was into dim lighting and denying others’ intrusion so I could achieve a private space for writing zines and jacking off. We talked about fucking, punk, metal, crank, and weed. I didn’t smoke weed at the time; I only wanted to be sociable and stay awake, mostly. On some nights, I also wanted to be skinny; but only Marietta knew this.”
Or,
“In my home our tone swerved by way of narrow traditions and belief systems. We went from talking about politicizing our choices to talking about how to raise baby parrots and make flan. At home there wasn’t a space for anything remotely sexual. While my culture welcomed that political progress that entailed fighting for fair pay and abiding by self-sufficiency—the revolution wasn’t very gay. Queerness seemed ten times more repressed in my cultural boundaries than that of white commercialized America.
’Why can’t queers just be a hot commodity?’ I asked Marietta. ‘You know, the way homos are in white people culture.’
‘Because you want to be respected for who you are, not your novelty.’
“Fake respect is better than none at all.’
“No really, it’s not, trust me.”
Cristy’s sexual growth mirrors her community situation as an outlaw. She hides who she is from her family, but can not abandon it: “It became okay that I couldn’t share my innermost feelings on oral sex, fisting, and Selene [a woman whom Cristy admires] with my family. Because we could talk about other things. We could talk about our formative heroes selling out, and about cast aside neighborhoods. We could talk about dismay and how it’s sometimes followed by deliverance.”
“We learn a lesson from every mistake, very apology, every assumption at love, every new friend, every lost friend, every reconciliation, every death, very bout of belligerence, every bad decision, every kiss, every fuck, and every failed attempt at starting that stupid punk rock band…. And it wasn’t invincibility, but we were surviving outside of those conditions we had fought off for years. In the end, we remained poised while doing what we were never meant to do. And people often told me that teenagers were never meant to love themselves.”
The book concludes with autographs and comments from her fellow students, as in a high school year book.
Cristy has graduated.
This book was published by Microcosm Publishing (http://www.microcosmpublishing.com/). Cristy C. Road’s website is http://www.croadcore.org/.
Victor has never met Cristy. He found out about her when he received a compliment about this site from Brooklyn Frank. Brooklyn Frank is a person and not a New York hot dog. Victor thanked him for his comment and asked Brooklyn Frank which books should be reviewed on this site. He mentioned Cristy. Victor contacted Cristy. She had never heard of Brooklyn Frank. But Cristy lives in Brooklyn, and Victor grew up in Brooklyn, so it all seems somehow connected, kind of like the circle of life from The Lion King, but without Walt Disney (who probably would not have liked this book).
It ain’t easy growing up in Miami as an Cuban overweight adolescent girl who starts out bisexual and eventually grows into being gay, at the same time an outcast in but a member of her high school, community and immediate family. It isn’t easy growing up, but Cristy had more than her share of crap to deal with.
This novel (that is not a novel) comes out of the zine world and looks it. The font is typewriter style, the layout cut and paste. The spelling and grammar would occasionally make White and Strunk fidget. The look of the book matches the troubled early life of the narrator, who appears suspiciously similar to the writer/artist, and whose name is, uh, Cristy Road.
The writing style can be awkward. At times the vocabulary does not match an adolescent’s—but then again, the story is told in retrospect and the awkwardness provides a realistic edge. Reading it feels like you are in the same room with Cristy as she tells you her early life story. The edge in the writing is matched by her bold black and white drawings—in your face art, using a blunt and somewhat cartoony style that effectively matches the writing style. The combination of words and art works nicely, playing off each other.
If you want a plot you should read another book. The book covers Cristy’s high school years, her ‘coming of age’, with that being an operative phrase in so many ways—she is obsessed with sex, along with punk rock, being oppressed, stupid boys and interesting girls. More a collection of memories tied together chronologically than a novel, the book has a genuine narrative power stemming from Cristy’s growth.
It is easier to show than explain:
One day, Cristy asks her high school biology teacher, Mr. Rodriguez, to discuss birth control. He is not pleased.
“’The basis of sex is procreation.’
‘No, it’s not. The sex you’re teaching us about only talks about the pleasure of dudes. Ya’ll know dudes gotta cum to make a baby, and girls don’t. Teaching this way only feeds to the idea that a girl’s pleasure isn’t as important as a dude’s. And hell knows everyone in this classroom wants to know how not to make babies as opposed to how to make them.’
‘Christy, if you don’t stop, I’m gonna ask you to leave the class.’
‘Awesome. The drugs are kicking in right now, anyway.’”
Or,
“’You’re a sell out. Last week you weren’t wearing fucking khakis and loafers. What’s your fucking deal?’ I asked Roberto one day.
‘Whatever Cristy. In the future, when you’re moshing in a pit somewhere, drunk off your ass—I’m gonna have a family. I’m gonna have money. I’m gonna be successful.’
‘Who are you to measure success? You’re just gonna end up fucking poor people over. You’re just gonna start shitting competition from the hole in your brain your CEO job is gonna drill. You and your imaginary family can suck it.’”
Or,
“On some nights, I found that girl-solidarity when this one girl, Marietta, sat on my bed until 3am talking about how useless facial masks and pussy deodorant were. I shared my room then with relatives, but sectioned off my side with yellow caution tape and a wall-collage of posters, flyers, and strategically placed crap. I was into dim lighting and denying others’ intrusion so I could achieve a private space for writing zines and jacking off. We talked about fucking, punk, metal, crank, and weed. I didn’t smoke weed at the time; I only wanted to be sociable and stay awake, mostly. On some nights, I also wanted to be skinny; but only Marietta knew this.”
Or,
“In my home our tone swerved by way of narrow traditions and belief systems. We went from talking about politicizing our choices to talking about how to raise baby parrots and make flan. At home there wasn’t a space for anything remotely sexual. While my culture welcomed that political progress that entailed fighting for fair pay and abiding by self-sufficiency—the revolution wasn’t very gay. Queerness seemed ten times more repressed in my cultural boundaries than that of white commercialized America.
’Why can’t queers just be a hot commodity?’ I asked Marietta. ‘You know, the way homos are in white people culture.’
‘Because you want to be respected for who you are, not your novelty.’
“Fake respect is better than none at all.’
“No really, it’s not, trust me.”
Cristy’s sexual growth mirrors her community situation as an outlaw. She hides who she is from her family, but can not abandon it: “It became okay that I couldn’t share my innermost feelings on oral sex, fisting, and Selene [a woman whom Cristy admires] with my family. Because we could talk about other things. We could talk about our formative heroes selling out, and about cast aside neighborhoods. We could talk about dismay and how it’s sometimes followed by deliverance.”
“We learn a lesson from every mistake, very apology, every assumption at love, every new friend, every lost friend, every reconciliation, every death, very bout of belligerence, every bad decision, every kiss, every fuck, and every failed attempt at starting that stupid punk rock band…. And it wasn’t invincibility, but we were surviving outside of those conditions we had fought off for years. In the end, we remained poised while doing what we were never meant to do. And people often told me that teenagers were never meant to love themselves.”
The book concludes with autographs and comments from her fellow students, as in a high school year book.
Cristy has graduated.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Gail Sidonie Sobat: The Book of Mary
Reviewed by: Victor Schwartzman
Published by Sumach Press, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (www.sumachpress.com). Available on Amazon.
Victor does not know Gail. Gail is not a ULA member, and maybe has never even visited Philadelphia.
See, there is this fourteen year old girl. She wants to taste life. Although independent, she still defines herself in terms of how men see her--she is a product of her times. To spread her wings, she starts hanging out at the local “bad girls” place. Soon enough this guy comes along, a sweet-talker, who has trouble remembering her name. They fall into the sack...frequently...he starts to remember her name...and she becomes pregnant.
Then he tells her the truth about himself, at least some of it—he is married. He agrees to run away with her…only, he never shows up. The girl is in crisis. Where she lives pregnant single women are stoned to death. To save her life, she makes up a story and agrees to marry a jerk. Her story? That she became pregnant not by her boyfriend, who turns out to be a drug dealer, but by God. And that she carries the son of God.
By now in the girl's story, it is around six months B.C. The girl lives in a hick town called Nazareth. Her name is Mary.
And so begins “The Story of Mary”, a wonderful, controversial, thought-provoking novel that takes Christianity and shakes the hell out of it. Literally.
At first, true to the spirit of a rebellious teenager, the writing is snarky and often hilarious. Mary’s description of riding across the desert with her new husband, Joseph, who is not terribly bright: “I have a pain in the ass from riding one and being married to another.” In Bethlehem the three wise men she meets are characterized as the three “wise guys”, straight out of a Martin Scorsese film, complete with Brooklyn accents.
However, as the book progresses and Mary ages, the tone matures with her. One of the lovely aspects of this novel is how it not only grows on you, but that it grows, period. As Mary would say, just like a person already. The hilarity of the opening third of the novel evolves into a more deeply felt narrative as Jesus is born and grows up believing the crazy story mommy spread about him being the Son of God. Meanwhile, it is Mary herself who is the healer. In fact, she opens up a hospital, becomes a midwife and….
This book has too many enchanting discoveries to give you spoilers.
Gail Sidonie Sobat has written a remarkable novel. It is like its human narrator, growing from adolescence to maturity as it progresses. Yes, you already know how some of the book ends. Her son Jesus’ story is well known, the meshegunner rabble rouser. What you do not know are the funny, insightful, dramatic twists she creates to make the reader think about what religion is all about, what responsibility is all about, what—well, pretty much, by the time she is done, what pretty much everything is all about.
This is what “underground” literature should be and what mainstream literature all too often avoids. Sidonie Sobat takes on patriarchy, Christianity, medicine, life responsibilities, family relationships, commercialism, social politics, political politics--you name it--—and turns them all on their ears stunningly, leaving the reader with a lifetime’s experience to think about. But this is no polemic (although, it gets close at times, and, frankly, guys don't turn out to be that wise). It is very entertaining, funny, dramatic, profoundly involving, and certainly worth the scheckels.
Published by Sumach Press, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (www.sumachpress.com). Available on Amazon.
Victor does not know Gail. Gail is not a ULA member, and maybe has never even visited Philadelphia.
See, there is this fourteen year old girl. She wants to taste life. Although independent, she still defines herself in terms of how men see her--she is a product of her times. To spread her wings, she starts hanging out at the local “bad girls” place. Soon enough this guy comes along, a sweet-talker, who has trouble remembering her name. They fall into the sack...frequently...he starts to remember her name...and she becomes pregnant.
Then he tells her the truth about himself, at least some of it—he is married. He agrees to run away with her…only, he never shows up. The girl is in crisis. Where she lives pregnant single women are stoned to death. To save her life, she makes up a story and agrees to marry a jerk. Her story? That she became pregnant not by her boyfriend, who turns out to be a drug dealer, but by God. And that she carries the son of God.
By now in the girl's story, it is around six months B.C. The girl lives in a hick town called Nazareth. Her name is Mary.
And so begins “The Story of Mary”, a wonderful, controversial, thought-provoking novel that takes Christianity and shakes the hell out of it. Literally.
At first, true to the spirit of a rebellious teenager, the writing is snarky and often hilarious. Mary’s description of riding across the desert with her new husband, Joseph, who is not terribly bright: “I have a pain in the ass from riding one and being married to another.” In Bethlehem the three wise men she meets are characterized as the three “wise guys”, straight out of a Martin Scorsese film, complete with Brooklyn accents.
However, as the book progresses and Mary ages, the tone matures with her. One of the lovely aspects of this novel is how it not only grows on you, but that it grows, period. As Mary would say, just like a person already. The hilarity of the opening third of the novel evolves into a more deeply felt narrative as Jesus is born and grows up believing the crazy story mommy spread about him being the Son of God. Meanwhile, it is Mary herself who is the healer. In fact, she opens up a hospital, becomes a midwife and….
This book has too many enchanting discoveries to give you spoilers.
Gail Sidonie Sobat has written a remarkable novel. It is like its human narrator, growing from adolescence to maturity as it progresses. Yes, you already know how some of the book ends. Her son Jesus’ story is well known, the meshegunner rabble rouser. What you do not know are the funny, insightful, dramatic twists she creates to make the reader think about what religion is all about, what responsibility is all about, what—well, pretty much, by the time she is done, what pretty much everything is all about.
This is what “underground” literature should be and what mainstream literature all too often avoids. Sidonie Sobat takes on patriarchy, Christianity, medicine, life responsibilities, family relationships, commercialism, social politics, political politics--you name it--—and turns them all on their ears stunningly, leaving the reader with a lifetime’s experience to think about. But this is no polemic (although, it gets close at times, and, frankly, guys don't turn out to be that wise). It is very entertaining, funny, dramatic, profoundly involving, and certainly worth the scheckels.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
The Urban Hermitt's Fanzine #18
Reviewed by: Steve Kostecke
Steve is a leading ULA member. He probably has never met the Hermitt.
The zine can be had for $3 cash at: The Urban Hermitt POB 460412, San Fran CA 94146
In case you are not enlightened, the Hermitt regularly puts out a zine which describes his unbelievably adventurous and happening life, usually set in way-liberal settings like Hawaii or the Pacific Northwest. This time around, he astounds us with an issue that describes his road tour (as spoken word artiste) with a punk Scottish Oi! band (not Cowboy band) and a group of anti-monkey-lab-testing activists. And as if that isn't unique enough, everything about this journey through America outdoes itself.
The shows they perform from Texas through the South, the East, and the Midwest are full of black-hearted skinheads who either boo our beloved Hermitt, give him the dreaded slow death-clap, or throw various harmful projectiles towards his person. How he manages to climb the stage for each performance is beyond human comprehension.Even though his art is trashed time and time again, the Urban Hermitt keeps at it, as a true word-artist should.
This zine reveals a slice of life of a real American poet. Even with so much working against him, the Hermitt keeps the humor up. Every page is filled with laughs and smirks. Like when he gets sick:
Where are you going? Peter asked me as I tried to sneak across the street to the hospital. Um! Yeah Hermitt, where are you going? Braxton asked in his cocky-British accent. I'm going across the street to get antibiotics at the hospital becuz I have strep throat, I said, on the defense. It was the West Coast liberals versus the West Coast liberals. I can't fawking believe you, Hermitt! Braxton yelled. Cuz I'm like dying? Why are you getting evil corporate animal torturing drugs and you're on this fawking tour? It's all relative. No it's not Hermitt! And what about the monkeys? What about the fawkin monkeys? You disgust me Hermitt! I regret letting you on this tour! I had nothing to say back, just some eye rolls. Guilt tripped by the liberals, I didn't get antibiotics and continued to go on dying."
The Hermitt also digs deep, as usual, in his perceptions of the world around him (his writing is one natural flow of organic expression nterpreting the social phenomena constantly bombarding him). Here's what he says while at an arrival gate at an airport:
"At the airport, a flight from London landed. There were loads of Arabic families walking through the gate, mothers completely covered in black veils taking care of the children. Fathers in suits, acting as if they ruled over their wives. Man, that's so sexist and messed up, I thought to myself. Those women being covered up! But then a bunch of Euro-white ladies came through the gate. They too took care of the children while their husbands in business suits or polo shirts acted like they were ruler of the wife. The thing that I began to notice was that the Euro-white ladies were no more different than the Arabic ladies. Instead of a black veil, they had shaved legs, make-up, feminine hair doos, and pink clothing. Sure, maybe some of them chose and liked to be that way, but not all of them. Just another prison in exchange for another."
So if you want to know what's up on the 24/7 in the 99, yo! in American Lit, you better get your hands on a copy of this zine and all previous issues, for that matter. The Hermitt's writing is one of the clearest cases why underground writing makes corporate lit look long dead and gone.
Steve is a leading ULA member. He probably has never met the Hermitt.
The zine can be had for $3 cash at: The Urban Hermitt POB 460412, San Fran CA 94146
In case you are not enlightened, the Hermitt regularly puts out a zine which describes his unbelievably adventurous and happening life, usually set in way-liberal settings like Hawaii or the Pacific Northwest. This time around, he astounds us with an issue that describes his road tour (as spoken word artiste) with a punk Scottish Oi! band (not Cowboy band) and a group of anti-monkey-lab-testing activists. And as if that isn't unique enough, everything about this journey through America outdoes itself.
The shows they perform from Texas through the South, the East, and the Midwest are full of black-hearted skinheads who either boo our beloved Hermitt, give him the dreaded slow death-clap, or throw various harmful projectiles towards his person. How he manages to climb the stage for each performance is beyond human comprehension.Even though his art is trashed time and time again, the Urban Hermitt keeps at it, as a true word-artist should.
This zine reveals a slice of life of a real American poet. Even with so much working against him, the Hermitt keeps the humor up. Every page is filled with laughs and smirks. Like when he gets sick:
Where are you going? Peter asked me as I tried to sneak across the street to the hospital. Um! Yeah Hermitt, where are you going? Braxton asked in his cocky-British accent. I'm going across the street to get antibiotics at the hospital becuz I have strep throat, I said, on the defense. It was the West Coast liberals versus the West Coast liberals. I can't fawking believe you, Hermitt! Braxton yelled. Cuz I'm like dying? Why are you getting evil corporate animal torturing drugs and you're on this fawking tour? It's all relative. No it's not Hermitt! And what about the monkeys? What about the fawkin monkeys? You disgust me Hermitt! I regret letting you on this tour! I had nothing to say back, just some eye rolls. Guilt tripped by the liberals, I didn't get antibiotics and continued to go on dying."
The Hermitt also digs deep, as usual, in his perceptions of the world around him (his writing is one natural flow of organic expression nterpreting the social phenomena constantly bombarding him). Here's what he says while at an arrival gate at an airport:
"At the airport, a flight from London landed. There were loads of Arabic families walking through the gate, mothers completely covered in black veils taking care of the children. Fathers in suits, acting as if they ruled over their wives. Man, that's so sexist and messed up, I thought to myself. Those women being covered up! But then a bunch of Euro-white ladies came through the gate. They too took care of the children while their husbands in business suits or polo shirts acted like they were ruler of the wife. The thing that I began to notice was that the Euro-white ladies were no more different than the Arabic ladies. Instead of a black veil, they had shaved legs, make-up, feminine hair doos, and pink clothing. Sure, maybe some of them chose and liked to be that way, but not all of them. Just another prison in exchange for another."
So if you want to know what's up on the 24/7 in the 99, yo! in American Lit, you better get your hands on a copy of this zine and all previous issues, for that matter. The Hermitt's writing is one of the clearest cases why underground writing makes corporate lit look long dead and gone.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Joel Priddy: Pulpatoon Pilgrimage
Reviewed by: Brady Russell.
Brady is a ULA member. He probably does not know Joel Priddy.
Ad House Books, $12.95, 160 pages. Available on Amazon.com.
The problem with writing about comics is that you can't pretend like you aren't writing about comics. Comics have their own baggage that come around with them. Polite people say things like "I'm just not into comics," but that's just a way to prevent talking about their prejudices. Lots of art orms come with prejudices. Symphony music is thought of as boring. Theater is thought of as pretentious. Modern Dance is incomprehensible.
Come to think of it, I don't really disagree with many of those prejudicial statements. Maybe that's why I wrote them. Comics, though, I give comics free reign. Comics are in the middle of an historical moment right now. Once upon a time, the novel was simply a vehicle for bosom heaving love stories, but then writers came along who broadened its scope and depth and now very boring people in very expensive buildings sit around unpacking the layers and layers locked within novels and bringing different theoretical formulas to bear on ripping them apart, which is thought of as serious, and important work.
Which is part of how you can tell an art form is dying: when boring people in expensive buildings become deeply, deeply interested in it.
Well comics aren't anything like that. Boring people in expensive buildings want no more to do with comics than they want anything to do with rock-and-roll, and both art forms are very much alive, changing and well. The difference is that the public has a pretty good handle on what rock-and-roll is, even when it gets pretty strange (such as when groups like The Cure and The Decemberists come along). Comics, though, people think comics are a vehicle for superhero stories, that's it, that's flat, baby - done.
If you get out there and have a look, though, the comic underground is really moving the form in new places. Take Pulpatoon Pilgrimage. I'm in part so excited about this book I can't quit thinking about it and also afraid to invite anyone I know to look at it for fear that they just aren't prepared for it, that their prejudices will get in the way and they won't like it and they'll insult it and then that will force me up onto a high-horse where I'll say something condescending that I'll regret such as, "Well clearly you just don't get it or even understand how to enjoy it."
See, when you've got comics you have this crazy marriage of the visual and the narrative. Painting, you know, is pretty much all visual. We forgive painting for all kinds of quirks. Its a one shot deal. It's one image. I almost never have any clue what a given painting is trying to tell me, but it's cool. It's cool because I like the colors or the line or I think the thing has an interesting impact on my subconscious.
Then stories are even cooler when you get into them. They really grab you. They work just like our brains work.
Well, with comics you can do a lot of both (where as you can just do a little of both with stories and painting, but let's not quibble too much here - all art is pretty fungible and the boundaries are hazy. That discussion is done.). It's the sheer amount of both the visual and the narrative that you can do with comics that make them so exciting.
The point I'm getting to is this, I love Pulpatoon Pilgrimage. I really, really love it. It's so simple and short and enriching and mystifying that I'm going to read it again and again (this writing follows the third reading in two days). That said, if someone handed me the prose version of Pulpatoon Pilgrimage I'd read three pages and throw it across the room. It just wouldn't work. I wouldn't care. I would be like, "what the hell is the point?"
I'd want to know where the heck Bull even comes from. Where are they?
Where the hell are they going? Who are these freaks?
So what is it? Okay, I guess I had to get to that question eventually, but I don't want to go into too much detail here. Pulpatoon Pilgrimage is the story of a sort of Minotaur, Bull; a walking plant, Delaware Thistle and a robot with a goldfish in his head, Rowbot. We meet the three of them walking across a barren landscape. The first few pages suggest that they have previously walked through forests, rolling hills, woods and jungles before we even hear a voice for the first time. They are on some sort of quest. We don't know where to or why. For some reason, they need to go in a group of three.
They all seem to like each other.
Along the way, we get small character vignettes. We learn a little about each character's sadness and we learn a lot about each character's charm. There is an enormous amount, perhaps an epic amount that we don't learn. Joel Priddy has shown a remarkable restraint here. You get the sense that he could talk about each of these three characters and the world they are walking through (or away from?) for hours and hours.
You'll finish reading the book in twenty minutes if you go slow. He doesn't tell us where we are. He gives us just enough so that we know the three have some sort of reason to walk and enough that we want to go with them.
Or I wanted to go with them. I can't speak for you. Like I said, this isn't your normal story. It's more visual than narrative. It's more mystical than logical.
I'll say this about the characters: you get the sense that Delaware Thistle is the most worldly and the most forlorn of them. He's the smartest of the group. Rowbot is the most mysterious. He suggests the most about the world. His very existence hints that this is not some ancient story, but maybe something in the far off future. Not that I can imagine a future in which they'd put goldfish in the heads of their androids, but I'm not as wise as Joel Priddy, either.
Bull, though, is my favorite character. Perhaps because he reminds me of my best friend back home. He was a big guy I have known all my life who didn't say a lot and didn't take on any airs. When he did act like he knew what he was talking about, though, you usually realized that he did and if you listened you realized he had a pretty good handle on more than you'd think. Bull's like that. Priddy makes it a point to show us that Bull gets the workings of the world on both an analytical and a gut level. Bull doesn't go into a lot of detail and what he says takes a while.
Which is not a bad description of how the story in Pulpatoon Pilgrimage gets told.
If you want to believe that comics can be art, then check it out. If you just want to meditate for twenty minutes, try it for that, too. If you want to understand what it means when people say "still waters run deep," then that's another good reason to try it out.
Just don't complain to me because it's slow or meandering or doesn't make a very clear point or doesn't really seem to end neatly (especially when you still don't know why it began). I warned you, didn't I? I told you that's why I love it. So don't cry to me when you're more mystified at the ending than you were at the beginning? Because, I'll wager, that you have a pretty good idea of what it is that's mystified you. You probably weren't the least bit mystified when you started reading Pulpatoon Pilgrimage, but now you are. You wonder what the hell was going on? What happened? What's going to happen? Most of all how? Better yet: why?
And if you're thinking right, you realize that mystification isn't a problem. It's Priddy's gift to you to leave you mystified, wondering, flummoxed. It's better to have a nice set of questions in hand than it is to have answers, especially if the questions are good ones.
Pulpatoon Pilgrimage will leave you with good questions, and you'll need to read it twice or even three times to find them all (and answer a few). I hope you won't mind. Priddy's haunting muse and lovely, graceful, gentle lines will be glad to take you through the questions again and again.
Brady is a ULA member. He probably does not know Joel Priddy.
Ad House Books, $12.95, 160 pages. Available on Amazon.com.
The problem with writing about comics is that you can't pretend like you aren't writing about comics. Comics have their own baggage that come around with them. Polite people say things like "I'm just not into comics," but that's just a way to prevent talking about their prejudices. Lots of art orms come with prejudices. Symphony music is thought of as boring. Theater is thought of as pretentious. Modern Dance is incomprehensible.
Come to think of it, I don't really disagree with many of those prejudicial statements. Maybe that's why I wrote them. Comics, though, I give comics free reign. Comics are in the middle of an historical moment right now. Once upon a time, the novel was simply a vehicle for bosom heaving love stories, but then writers came along who broadened its scope and depth and now very boring people in very expensive buildings sit around unpacking the layers and layers locked within novels and bringing different theoretical formulas to bear on ripping them apart, which is thought of as serious, and important work.
Which is part of how you can tell an art form is dying: when boring people in expensive buildings become deeply, deeply interested in it.
Well comics aren't anything like that. Boring people in expensive buildings want no more to do with comics than they want anything to do with rock-and-roll, and both art forms are very much alive, changing and well. The difference is that the public has a pretty good handle on what rock-and-roll is, even when it gets pretty strange (such as when groups like The Cure and The Decemberists come along). Comics, though, people think comics are a vehicle for superhero stories, that's it, that's flat, baby - done.
If you get out there and have a look, though, the comic underground is really moving the form in new places. Take Pulpatoon Pilgrimage. I'm in part so excited about this book I can't quit thinking about it and also afraid to invite anyone I know to look at it for fear that they just aren't prepared for it, that their prejudices will get in the way and they won't like it and they'll insult it and then that will force me up onto a high-horse where I'll say something condescending that I'll regret such as, "Well clearly you just don't get it or even understand how to enjoy it."
See, when you've got comics you have this crazy marriage of the visual and the narrative. Painting, you know, is pretty much all visual. We forgive painting for all kinds of quirks. Its a one shot deal. It's one image. I almost never have any clue what a given painting is trying to tell me, but it's cool. It's cool because I like the colors or the line or I think the thing has an interesting impact on my subconscious.
Then stories are even cooler when you get into them. They really grab you. They work just like our brains work.
Well, with comics you can do a lot of both (where as you can just do a little of both with stories and painting, but let's not quibble too much here - all art is pretty fungible and the boundaries are hazy. That discussion is done.). It's the sheer amount of both the visual and the narrative that you can do with comics that make them so exciting.
The point I'm getting to is this, I love Pulpatoon Pilgrimage. I really, really love it. It's so simple and short and enriching and mystifying that I'm going to read it again and again (this writing follows the third reading in two days). That said, if someone handed me the prose version of Pulpatoon Pilgrimage I'd read three pages and throw it across the room. It just wouldn't work. I wouldn't care. I would be like, "what the hell is the point?"
I'd want to know where the heck Bull even comes from. Where are they?
Where the hell are they going? Who are these freaks?
So what is it? Okay, I guess I had to get to that question eventually, but I don't want to go into too much detail here. Pulpatoon Pilgrimage is the story of a sort of Minotaur, Bull; a walking plant, Delaware Thistle and a robot with a goldfish in his head, Rowbot. We meet the three of them walking across a barren landscape. The first few pages suggest that they have previously walked through forests, rolling hills, woods and jungles before we even hear a voice for the first time. They are on some sort of quest. We don't know where to or why. For some reason, they need to go in a group of three.
They all seem to like each other.
Along the way, we get small character vignettes. We learn a little about each character's sadness and we learn a lot about each character's charm. There is an enormous amount, perhaps an epic amount that we don't learn. Joel Priddy has shown a remarkable restraint here. You get the sense that he could talk about each of these three characters and the world they are walking through (or away from?) for hours and hours.
You'll finish reading the book in twenty minutes if you go slow. He doesn't tell us where we are. He gives us just enough so that we know the three have some sort of reason to walk and enough that we want to go with them.
Or I wanted to go with them. I can't speak for you. Like I said, this isn't your normal story. It's more visual than narrative. It's more mystical than logical.
I'll say this about the characters: you get the sense that Delaware Thistle is the most worldly and the most forlorn of them. He's the smartest of the group. Rowbot is the most mysterious. He suggests the most about the world. His very existence hints that this is not some ancient story, but maybe something in the far off future. Not that I can imagine a future in which they'd put goldfish in the heads of their androids, but I'm not as wise as Joel Priddy, either.
Bull, though, is my favorite character. Perhaps because he reminds me of my best friend back home. He was a big guy I have known all my life who didn't say a lot and didn't take on any airs. When he did act like he knew what he was talking about, though, you usually realized that he did and if you listened you realized he had a pretty good handle on more than you'd think. Bull's like that. Priddy makes it a point to show us that Bull gets the workings of the world on both an analytical and a gut level. Bull doesn't go into a lot of detail and what he says takes a while.
Which is not a bad description of how the story in Pulpatoon Pilgrimage gets told.
If you want to believe that comics can be art, then check it out. If you just want to meditate for twenty minutes, try it for that, too. If you want to understand what it means when people say "still waters run deep," then that's another good reason to try it out.
Just don't complain to me because it's slow or meandering or doesn't make a very clear point or doesn't really seem to end neatly (especially when you still don't know why it began). I warned you, didn't I? I told you that's why I love it. So don't cry to me when you're more mystified at the ending than you were at the beginning? Because, I'll wager, that you have a pretty good idea of what it is that's mystified you. You probably weren't the least bit mystified when you started reading Pulpatoon Pilgrimage, but now you are. You wonder what the hell was going on? What happened? What's going to happen? Most of all how? Better yet: why?
And if you're thinking right, you realize that mystification isn't a problem. It's Priddy's gift to you to leave you mystified, wondering, flummoxed. It's better to have a nice set of questions in hand than it is to have answers, especially if the questions are good ones.
Pulpatoon Pilgrimage will leave you with good questions, and you'll need to read it twice or even three times to find them all (and answer a few). I hope you won't mind. Priddy's haunting muse and lovely, graceful, gentle lines will be glad to take you through the questions again and again.
Steve Kostecke: Seoul In Slices
Reviewed by: Leopold McGinnis
Leopold and Steve are both members of the ULA. So?
Can be purchased in the zeen store at www.literaryervolution.com for $3.
Steve Kostestke lives in Japan. He is also the author of Auslanders Raus and Azian Kix. And he is the editor-and-chief of the ULA website and the ULA's communal zeen Slush Pile.
Seoul in Slices supplies a first person view into what it means to be an American in Seoul. Seoul in Slices doesn't give any grand tales of being
imprisioned in third world jails, feeding the starving, or trying to find his grandmother who died there fifty years ago. It's a zeen about guy who has some good, bad, and weird times in Seoul and thought the world might be interested in what he did and what happened to him there.
There are four sections in the zeen, I'll go through them one by one. In the first section called, Seoul in Slices, Kostecke gives small sketches of Seoul life. He shows the little things about Seoul that if you were just a tourist you would miss like describing what a Ppikki is, a runaway whose job it is to stand around the happening night spots and get you to come to a certain bar or dance club (where he'll get a commission).
Or, Motorbikes on the sidewalk. Revving and threading through the crowds. Getting on People's asses. The way that Koreans get out of the way. The way that they accept it. One time a motorbike gets on my ass. I'm with two friends. I say to them: One of these days I'm gonna hook one of these guys. The motorbike guy miraculously speaks English. Gets up along side me and says: You don't like it, get out of Korea!
Which I think shows to the reader that Kostecke isn't just some lame rich kid backpacker, but a real resident of Seoul. He has learned the city as a person living in it, not as a tourist passing through. Kostecke also gives anecdotes of his times with other foreign teachers living there which are really funny, British guy I know is gay. Speaks Korean. Knows Seoul in and out. Gets sex whenever and wherever he wants it. Gay culture plus a
sexually-curious-about-foreigners culture. When he gets drunk he gets obnoxious.
As we weave through the crowds he blurts out in English to passing boys: Would mind terribly if I sucked your dick? Does this for an entire stretch of road.
The next section is called, A Sketch of my Last Days in Seoul. In the section he tells stories about a woman named Lexa he went out with one night and who got completely drunk and got into fights, hit on twenty guys, and screamed Queen Mother at everybody. Then he told a story about how the places he was teaching at were trying to fuck him out of pay. Then he goes to a club with a friend named Jeff.
Then Kostecke did something really cool, here's the quote, Jeff heading over to a neighboring lounge which he had to two weeks before and now heroically to "save" one of the girls from her life of degradation. Note that he put quotations around save, that showed to me that Kostecke tried to emphasize the absurdity of that without making it a big deal, no rant was needed. Because with Kostecke either you are going to understand what he meant by that, and if you don't a rant won't make you understand it either. Either you been there, know, and understand. Or you're out of touch and aren't going to get it no matter what he says. I thought that was really cool.
The third section Kostecke titled Hyperfiction which he described as, A prose style in competition with tvs, vcrs, cable, the internet, computer games, surround sound cinemas, top-forty radio stations, and a whole lot more.
The Hyperfiction section is a collection of tiny stories written in very terse
short sentences. He achieved this by not adding any fluffy dumb shit to the lines. The story One Tiny Sec was used for The Underground versus Professionals experiment, and was enjoyed by everyone that read it. In the
story, Tits he talks about having an anorexic girlfriend he doesn't actually
like but stays with anyway and says this great line anyone can relate to, The summer ended as did everything else. Barbie kept accusing me of things that were true and I kept denying them.
The final section of Seoul in Slices has a review of Douglas Coupland's
Girlfriend in a Coma where he calls Coupland's book Primetime TV and
deconstructs the book to show that it is unworthy of the praise it has received by the media. Kostecke says about Coupland's prose at one point, It floats up into the air and becomes puffy little clouds that never rain. Kostecke Seoul in Slices is a great read if you enjoy travel literature that is more about a person living in a certain part of the world that grew up in a completely different culture and circumstances. And not just some person visiting a certain place and having wild obviously exaggerated adventures while there.
Leopold and Steve are both members of the ULA. So?
Can be purchased in the zeen store at www.literaryervolution.com for $3.
Steve Kostestke lives in Japan. He is also the author of Auslanders Raus and Azian Kix. And he is the editor-and-chief of the ULA website and the ULA's communal zeen Slush Pile.
Seoul in Slices supplies a first person view into what it means to be an American in Seoul. Seoul in Slices doesn't give any grand tales of being
imprisioned in third world jails, feeding the starving, or trying to find his grandmother who died there fifty years ago. It's a zeen about guy who has some good, bad, and weird times in Seoul and thought the world might be interested in what he did and what happened to him there.
There are four sections in the zeen, I'll go through them one by one. In the first section called, Seoul in Slices, Kostecke gives small sketches of Seoul life. He shows the little things about Seoul that if you were just a tourist you would miss like describing what a Ppikki is, a runaway whose job it is to stand around the happening night spots and get you to come to a certain bar or dance club (where he'll get a commission).
Or, Motorbikes on the sidewalk. Revving and threading through the crowds. Getting on People's asses. The way that Koreans get out of the way. The way that they accept it. One time a motorbike gets on my ass. I'm with two friends. I say to them: One of these days I'm gonna hook one of these guys. The motorbike guy miraculously speaks English. Gets up along side me and says: You don't like it, get out of Korea!
Which I think shows to the reader that Kostecke isn't just some lame rich kid backpacker, but a real resident of Seoul. He has learned the city as a person living in it, not as a tourist passing through. Kostecke also gives anecdotes of his times with other foreign teachers living there which are really funny, British guy I know is gay. Speaks Korean. Knows Seoul in and out. Gets sex whenever and wherever he wants it. Gay culture plus a
sexually-curious-about-foreigners culture. When he gets drunk he gets obnoxious.
As we weave through the crowds he blurts out in English to passing boys: Would mind terribly if I sucked your dick? Does this for an entire stretch of road.
The next section is called, A Sketch of my Last Days in Seoul. In the section he tells stories about a woman named Lexa he went out with one night and who got completely drunk and got into fights, hit on twenty guys, and screamed Queen Mother at everybody. Then he told a story about how the places he was teaching at were trying to fuck him out of pay. Then he goes to a club with a friend named Jeff.
Then Kostecke did something really cool, here's the quote, Jeff heading over to a neighboring lounge which he had to two weeks before and now heroically to "save" one of the girls from her life of degradation. Note that he put quotations around save, that showed to me that Kostecke tried to emphasize the absurdity of that without making it a big deal, no rant was needed. Because with Kostecke either you are going to understand what he meant by that, and if you don't a rant won't make you understand it either. Either you been there, know, and understand. Or you're out of touch and aren't going to get it no matter what he says. I thought that was really cool.
The third section Kostecke titled Hyperfiction which he described as, A prose style in competition with tvs, vcrs, cable, the internet, computer games, surround sound cinemas, top-forty radio stations, and a whole lot more.
The Hyperfiction section is a collection of tiny stories written in very terse
short sentences. He achieved this by not adding any fluffy dumb shit to the lines. The story One Tiny Sec was used for The Underground versus Professionals experiment, and was enjoyed by everyone that read it. In the
story, Tits he talks about having an anorexic girlfriend he doesn't actually
like but stays with anyway and says this great line anyone can relate to, The summer ended as did everything else. Barbie kept accusing me of things that were true and I kept denying them.
The final section of Seoul in Slices has a review of Douglas Coupland's
Girlfriend in a Coma where he calls Coupland's book Primetime TV and
deconstructs the book to show that it is unworthy of the praise it has received by the media. Kostecke says about Coupland's prose at one point, It floats up into the air and becomes puffy little clouds that never rain. Kostecke Seoul in Slices is a great read if you enjoy travel literature that is more about a person living in a certain part of the world that grew up in a completely different culture and circumstances. And not just some person visiting a certain place and having wild obviously exaggerated adventures while there.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Ian Verchere: General Delivery V0N 1B0 Whistler B.C.
Reviewed by: Victor Schwartzman
Victor has never met Ian, has never been skiing, and runs this blog.
Introduction by Douglas Coupland.
Published by Douglas & McIntyre (Vancouver/Toronto/Berkley): www.douglas-mcintyre.com. Available in the U.S. through Publishers Group West.
A review of a guidebook to Whistler, an expensive ski resort near Vancouver, on the Underground Literary Alliance review blog? Huh? Whazzat about?
Because it is an underground guidebook. An anti-guidebook. Because it is more interested in delving into how Whistler was turned by multinational corporations from a great place to ski into a Disneyesque theme park. Because it remembers how things were and analyzes why things changed. Because although it is a pretty book, it ain’t pretty—it is ugly—in the best way possible.
“General Delivery VON 1BO Whistler B.C.” was written by Ian Verchere. He lived near Whistler, skied there religiously, and ‘grew up’ to be, among other things, a video game designer. He does not write like nor appear to be an elitist. He just really liked to ski. That is perhaps too healthy a lifestyle for the ULA, but so be it.
His book superficially resembles a guidebook. It is handsomely produced, yes. The writing in each chapter is short and easy to read, yes. There are many photographs, yes. There is information about Whistler’s history, yes. The book is very attractive, and masquerades nicely as a coffee table book, yes yes yes.
BUT. There are no street maps. No lists of hotels. No recommendations about where to stay. No pandering. Instead, Verchere looks at his personal connection with the Whistler that was, and the Whistler that is...and you get the feeling it makes him want to puke.
To wit: about naming ski slopes: “As for Blackcomb, it supposedly looks like a rooster’s comb, except black. The mountain originally went with a logging theme for their run names: Catskinner, Springboard, skid Road, Undercut. They changed the name of the run Hooker, a legitimate logging term, for reasons of propriety. That doesn’t explain why you can still ski Climax, Cougar Milk, Zig Zag, Angel Dust and Spanky’s Chute. To get to these runs, you’ll run the Wizard, a lift allegedly named after the 1986 porno film The Wizard of Ahh’s.
“Nowadays, no chairlift, run or new development would be named without extensive focus tests, marketing meetings and a legal sign-off somewhere deep in the Whistler-Blackcomb boardrooms. And probably a quick check with the Internet Adult Movie Database wouldn’t hurt either.”
Or, look at how he writes of Whistlerization, which is “the sudden appearance of multi-million-dollar second homes, escalating real estate prices and prohibitive living costs… One sure way to recognize a place trying to come to terms with being Whistlerized is a prevalence of handcrafted, sandblasted signs. The thinking is, if you can’t keep big multinational franchises out, then at least make them blend in. The way to do this is to pass strict bylaws dictating how your average franchise corporation can announce its presence. As a bonus, this invigorates the handcrafted, sandblasted sign segment of the local economy. The fact is, Whistler itself faced up to its own Whistlerization long ago. It let in the Gap, KFC, Micky D’s and 7-Eleven (as long as their signs are sandblasted)…”
Or his listing of “Whistler Locals and Pioneers, Santa’s Reindeer and Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs; In No Particular Order”:
“Donner
Rabbit
Franz
Blitzer
Myrtle
Vogler
Cupid
Dopey”…and so on, down a whole page. Not to mention his including a comic book he wrote and drew about Whistler, including outer space aliens.
The book ends with a sad regret, the closure due to “a real estate developer and the relentless expansion of the Whistler Village footprint” of the Boot Pub, the “last remaining vestige of authentic local life… At the end of the day, no tourist or second homeowner in Whistler is going to miss the Boot. But its closure says something to a big chunk of Whistler locals: it’s a signal that what they want doesn’t matter. For me, it’s the end of a book, and a fitting coda to my younger years living in Whistler.”
Well, pal, have a last drink on us.
Victor has never met Ian, has never been skiing, and runs this blog.
Introduction by Douglas Coupland.
Published by Douglas & McIntyre (Vancouver/Toronto/Berkley): www.douglas-mcintyre.com. Available in the U.S. through Publishers Group West.
A review of a guidebook to Whistler, an expensive ski resort near Vancouver, on the Underground Literary Alliance review blog? Huh? Whazzat about?
Because it is an underground guidebook. An anti-guidebook. Because it is more interested in delving into how Whistler was turned by multinational corporations from a great place to ski into a Disneyesque theme park. Because it remembers how things were and analyzes why things changed. Because although it is a pretty book, it ain’t pretty—it is ugly—in the best way possible.
“General Delivery VON 1BO Whistler B.C.” was written by Ian Verchere. He lived near Whistler, skied there religiously, and ‘grew up’ to be, among other things, a video game designer. He does not write like nor appear to be an elitist. He just really liked to ski. That is perhaps too healthy a lifestyle for the ULA, but so be it.
His book superficially resembles a guidebook. It is handsomely produced, yes. The writing in each chapter is short and easy to read, yes. There are many photographs, yes. There is information about Whistler’s history, yes. The book is very attractive, and masquerades nicely as a coffee table book, yes yes yes.
BUT. There are no street maps. No lists of hotels. No recommendations about where to stay. No pandering. Instead, Verchere looks at his personal connection with the Whistler that was, and the Whistler that is...and you get the feeling it makes him want to puke.
To wit: about naming ski slopes: “As for Blackcomb, it supposedly looks like a rooster’s comb, except black. The mountain originally went with a logging theme for their run names: Catskinner, Springboard, skid Road, Undercut. They changed the name of the run Hooker, a legitimate logging term, for reasons of propriety. That doesn’t explain why you can still ski Climax, Cougar Milk, Zig Zag, Angel Dust and Spanky’s Chute. To get to these runs, you’ll run the Wizard, a lift allegedly named after the 1986 porno film The Wizard of Ahh’s.
“Nowadays, no chairlift, run or new development would be named without extensive focus tests, marketing meetings and a legal sign-off somewhere deep in the Whistler-Blackcomb boardrooms. And probably a quick check with the Internet Adult Movie Database wouldn’t hurt either.”
Or, look at how he writes of Whistlerization, which is “the sudden appearance of multi-million-dollar second homes, escalating real estate prices and prohibitive living costs… One sure way to recognize a place trying to come to terms with being Whistlerized is a prevalence of handcrafted, sandblasted signs. The thinking is, if you can’t keep big multinational franchises out, then at least make them blend in. The way to do this is to pass strict bylaws dictating how your average franchise corporation can announce its presence. As a bonus, this invigorates the handcrafted, sandblasted sign segment of the local economy. The fact is, Whistler itself faced up to its own Whistlerization long ago. It let in the Gap, KFC, Micky D’s and 7-Eleven (as long as their signs are sandblasted)…”
Or his listing of “Whistler Locals and Pioneers, Santa’s Reindeer and Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs; In No Particular Order”:
“Donner
Rabbit
Franz
Blitzer
Myrtle
Vogler
Cupid
Dopey”…and so on, down a whole page. Not to mention his including a comic book he wrote and drew about Whistler, including outer space aliens.
The book ends with a sad regret, the closure due to “a real estate developer and the relentless expansion of the Whistler Village footprint” of the Boot Pub, the “last remaining vestige of authentic local life… At the end of the day, no tourist or second homeowner in Whistler is going to miss the Boot. But its closure says something to a big chunk of Whistler locals: it’s a signal that what they want doesn’t matter. For me, it’s the end of a book, and a fitting coda to my younger years living in Whistler.”
Well, pal, have a last drink on us.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Richard Grayson: Highly Irregular Stories; And To Think that He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street and Other Stories
Reviewed by: Jack Saunders
Highly Irregular Stories (2006) and And to Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street and Other Stories (2006), by Richard Grayson. Dumbo Books of Brooklyn, 72 Conselyea St., Brooklyn, NY 11211-2211. dumbobooks@yahoo.com
And to Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street and Other Stories is Richard Grayson’s 10th volume of fiction. Or metafiction. Or autobiography. Or stand-up comedy. Or short form narrative. He’s published two other books. What are they? Nonfiction? Reportage? I always think of Jonathan Winters saying he is in gar-bahj, when I hear re-por-tahj.
I believe you could call the writing avant-garde. It’s out ahead of the pack. The avant-garde is a tradition, like any other. Like commercial fiction, or literary fiction. It’s anti-commercial. Anti-literary. The literary is a set of conventions an iconoclast wants to bust up.
An iconoclast is aware of his place in the scheme of things. He knows the history of what he’s doing. He is aware, or self-aware, and self-awareness leads to irony.
Irony lends itself to short pieces. You don’t want to be long-winded. That’s for novels, a more expansive form, where you can stretch out. In one sense, you could say the avant-garde leads the way. In another, profounder sense, you could say it doesn’t go anywhere, it just is. It is what it is. Take it or leave it. As it is. This makes reviewing a collection of short pieces either very easy or very hard.
What is the author trying to do, and is he succeeding, on his own terms? Larry wrote the other day that he found himself at looking at books in a rummage sale, and found he was reading them to see what bias they had; not to see what the book was about or to read for enjoyment or to get taken up by it.
What happens when we approach books like that? How do we not approach books like that?
Do collections of stories become something in the aggregate they were not, separately, as lone stories, in magazines that pay in copies and go belly up, or self-published chapbooks, issued in editions of hundreds of copies? Are they clever, amusing, cute? Do they hold up? Do we see a design to the works, over time? A pattern? Is a collection of them more impressive, more authentic, does it have a gravitas scattered fragments cannot demonstrate? Are we impressed? Are we surprised? Did we disremember? Do we see things we didn’t see the first time through?
You can buy the books from lulu.com for $12.95 or $16.95. Highly Irregular Stories is a collection of four chapbooks, which are out of print, and rare. A copy of Eating at Arby’s was recently listed online at $350. It’s good to see the stuff back in print. The stories in And to Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street haven’t been collected before. It’s nice to see them in one spot.
What is One Life in the Short Form Narrative Business like? We get a good feel for it, in these two collections, which span three decades.
What is America like? It’s like Richard Grayson says it is, it’s how Richard Grayson sees it. He’s a Jew from Brooklyn, I’m a cracker from Delray Beach. We have different accents, different life-experiences, different expectations, about life. I’m older than he is, and was in the Air Force for eight years. I boxed. I went ten rounds with Bukowski. I fought the Creature from the Black Lagoon underwater, at Wakulla Springs.
Now I just sit around and watch my boot turn blue, from mildew.
But his America rings true, to me, a deep and eclectic literary sensibility in a pop-culture milieu of glitz and flash, the shallow and the hyped, pinball-machine moths, attracted to the light, the noise, the buzz. Love-bugs, smashed on the windscreen. In the throes of their mating ritual. Up around Gainesville on a two-lane blacktop. Harry Crews afraid to leave his writing studio because he might miss something. And Harry Crews ain’t afraid of death or taxes.
A reader said he kept my books on the back of the crapper, and he started every day with a good old country shit and a belly laugh.
That’s a good thing to do with Richard Grayson’s books. Keep them on the back of the crapper and read them every day. They will make you laugh. The stories are short enough you can read one at a sitting.
My theory is that we are attracted to a writer’s voice, and every time we find a writer we like, we buy everything by him or about him we can find, regardless of genre. If he’s any good, he has invented his own genre, conflated one or more genres into a form of his own, which we recognize, because of his distinctive voice.
Bud Powell had small hands. Mary Lou Williams had hands that looked like $10 worth of spareribs in 1937. They’re not going to sound the same. Why should they? If the short pieces have a unity of form, a consistency of vision, a continuity of effort, a tone, an outlook, when do they begin to be less self-contained short pieces and constituent parts of a longer work composed of short pieces, if they do? If they do, was it an accident?
Public taste is fickle. A writing career is a tradeoff and a crapshoot. You can make a fortune writing but not a living. Not even the living you’d make at more mundane tasks. You have to have a sense of humor about it.
A sense of black humor, like the old comics Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Shelley Berman. The writers Woody Allen, Richard Brautigan, and Terry Southern. Would you choose writing for a career? You don’t choose it, it chooses you. What if you choose it and it doesn’t choose you?
Can you be funny about that? For 30 years? It’s not as easy as Richard Grayson makes it look.
The stories in the second book are newer and darker than the stories in the first book. Branch libraries are closed, movie houses shut down, neighborhoods gentrified, people moved away, friends died, what was not there, then was new, and ugly, is now shabby, with people hanging on, because they have no choice. There are constants. The stock market rises and falls, real estate goes up, people have careers, careers have an arc, not all careers have the same arc.
Richard Grayson once observed to me that writers advise you to do what they did. If they teach writing, they advise you to teach writing. If they are some other kind of professional, they advise you to be some other kind of professional. He was a lawyer. Journalists advise people to write for newspapers or magazines. Or television. I was a paraprofessional. A technical writer. Not an engineer or a programmer. On a par with a draftsman or a logistician (supply specialist). A white collar job, but not a full-fledged profession.
What is true is you need a job that pays enough so you can live comfortably, and are not so tired by your work that you are too tired to write, after work. And that can mean too tired emotionally. Then you just do your job and write before and after work. Or during work.
Maybe you’ll have a year off now and then, when you win a grant, inherit some money, or, in my case, once, are able to draw 49 weeks of separation pay, unemployment, and extended unemployment benefits, plus social security, or, another time, cash in the retirement you rolled over into an annuity when your last corporate employer laid you off and live on that for a year. Or mortgage the house you inherited when your grandfather died and run up the balance on a line-of-credit home-equity loan.
I’m always curious about how a writer supported himself when he wrote the books, and think that should go in the books. I think a reader has a right to know that.
Did he kiss a Stalinist’s ass in Macy’s window?
I enjoyed reading these books and I think you will too. I think they’re worth going to some trouble to find out about and buy. And tell your friends about.
And tell the author about them, if you liked them.
Jack Saunders has met Richard Grayson, and Richard has met Jack.
Highly Irregular Stories (2006) and And to Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street and Other Stories (2006), by Richard Grayson. Dumbo Books of Brooklyn, 72 Conselyea St., Brooklyn, NY 11211-2211. dumbobooks@yahoo.com
And to Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street and Other Stories is Richard Grayson’s 10th volume of fiction. Or metafiction. Or autobiography. Or stand-up comedy. Or short form narrative. He’s published two other books. What are they? Nonfiction? Reportage? I always think of Jonathan Winters saying he is in gar-bahj, when I hear re-por-tahj.
I believe you could call the writing avant-garde. It’s out ahead of the pack. The avant-garde is a tradition, like any other. Like commercial fiction, or literary fiction. It’s anti-commercial. Anti-literary. The literary is a set of conventions an iconoclast wants to bust up.
An iconoclast is aware of his place in the scheme of things. He knows the history of what he’s doing. He is aware, or self-aware, and self-awareness leads to irony.
Irony lends itself to short pieces. You don’t want to be long-winded. That’s for novels, a more expansive form, where you can stretch out. In one sense, you could say the avant-garde leads the way. In another, profounder sense, you could say it doesn’t go anywhere, it just is. It is what it is. Take it or leave it. As it is. This makes reviewing a collection of short pieces either very easy or very hard.
What is the author trying to do, and is he succeeding, on his own terms? Larry wrote the other day that he found himself at looking at books in a rummage sale, and found he was reading them to see what bias they had; not to see what the book was about or to read for enjoyment or to get taken up by it.
What happens when we approach books like that? How do we not approach books like that?
Do collections of stories become something in the aggregate they were not, separately, as lone stories, in magazines that pay in copies and go belly up, or self-published chapbooks, issued in editions of hundreds of copies? Are they clever, amusing, cute? Do they hold up? Do we see a design to the works, over time? A pattern? Is a collection of them more impressive, more authentic, does it have a gravitas scattered fragments cannot demonstrate? Are we impressed? Are we surprised? Did we disremember? Do we see things we didn’t see the first time through?
You can buy the books from lulu.com for $12.95 or $16.95. Highly Irregular Stories is a collection of four chapbooks, which are out of print, and rare. A copy of Eating at Arby’s was recently listed online at $350. It’s good to see the stuff back in print. The stories in And to Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street haven’t been collected before. It’s nice to see them in one spot.
What is One Life in the Short Form Narrative Business like? We get a good feel for it, in these two collections, which span three decades.
What is America like? It’s like Richard Grayson says it is, it’s how Richard Grayson sees it. He’s a Jew from Brooklyn, I’m a cracker from Delray Beach. We have different accents, different life-experiences, different expectations, about life. I’m older than he is, and was in the Air Force for eight years. I boxed. I went ten rounds with Bukowski. I fought the Creature from the Black Lagoon underwater, at Wakulla Springs.
Now I just sit around and watch my boot turn blue, from mildew.
But his America rings true, to me, a deep and eclectic literary sensibility in a pop-culture milieu of glitz and flash, the shallow and the hyped, pinball-machine moths, attracted to the light, the noise, the buzz. Love-bugs, smashed on the windscreen. In the throes of their mating ritual. Up around Gainesville on a two-lane blacktop. Harry Crews afraid to leave his writing studio because he might miss something. And Harry Crews ain’t afraid of death or taxes.
A reader said he kept my books on the back of the crapper, and he started every day with a good old country shit and a belly laugh.
That’s a good thing to do with Richard Grayson’s books. Keep them on the back of the crapper and read them every day. They will make you laugh. The stories are short enough you can read one at a sitting.
My theory is that we are attracted to a writer’s voice, and every time we find a writer we like, we buy everything by him or about him we can find, regardless of genre. If he’s any good, he has invented his own genre, conflated one or more genres into a form of his own, which we recognize, because of his distinctive voice.
Bud Powell had small hands. Mary Lou Williams had hands that looked like $10 worth of spareribs in 1937. They’re not going to sound the same. Why should they? If the short pieces have a unity of form, a consistency of vision, a continuity of effort, a tone, an outlook, when do they begin to be less self-contained short pieces and constituent parts of a longer work composed of short pieces, if they do? If they do, was it an accident?
Public taste is fickle. A writing career is a tradeoff and a crapshoot. You can make a fortune writing but not a living. Not even the living you’d make at more mundane tasks. You have to have a sense of humor about it.
A sense of black humor, like the old comics Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Shelley Berman. The writers Woody Allen, Richard Brautigan, and Terry Southern. Would you choose writing for a career? You don’t choose it, it chooses you. What if you choose it and it doesn’t choose you?
Can you be funny about that? For 30 years? It’s not as easy as Richard Grayson makes it look.
The stories in the second book are newer and darker than the stories in the first book. Branch libraries are closed, movie houses shut down, neighborhoods gentrified, people moved away, friends died, what was not there, then was new, and ugly, is now shabby, with people hanging on, because they have no choice. There are constants. The stock market rises and falls, real estate goes up, people have careers, careers have an arc, not all careers have the same arc.
Richard Grayson once observed to me that writers advise you to do what they did. If they teach writing, they advise you to teach writing. If they are some other kind of professional, they advise you to be some other kind of professional. He was a lawyer. Journalists advise people to write for newspapers or magazines. Or television. I was a paraprofessional. A technical writer. Not an engineer or a programmer. On a par with a draftsman or a logistician (supply specialist). A white collar job, but not a full-fledged profession.
What is true is you need a job that pays enough so you can live comfortably, and are not so tired by your work that you are too tired to write, after work. And that can mean too tired emotionally. Then you just do your job and write before and after work. Or during work.
Maybe you’ll have a year off now and then, when you win a grant, inherit some money, or, in my case, once, are able to draw 49 weeks of separation pay, unemployment, and extended unemployment benefits, plus social security, or, another time, cash in the retirement you rolled over into an annuity when your last corporate employer laid you off and live on that for a year. Or mortgage the house you inherited when your grandfather died and run up the balance on a line-of-credit home-equity loan.
I’m always curious about how a writer supported himself when he wrote the books, and think that should go in the books. I think a reader has a right to know that.
Did he kiss a Stalinist’s ass in Macy’s window?
I enjoyed reading these books and I think you will too. I think they’re worth going to some trouble to find out about and buy. And tell your friends about.
And tell the author about them, if you liked them.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Upton Sinclair: The Jungle
Reviewed by: Leopold McGinnis
Penguin Classic Re-issue, U.S. $14, CDN $20, 388 pages
Leopold has never met Upton Sinclair, but that's because Upton died before Leopold was born. Otherwise they certainly would have met, as they share similar world views.
Leopold McGinnis is a great Canadian writer. His novel, "Game Quest", is a very funny, very deeply felt tale of corporate morality v. individual ideals. It is set at the time when computer gaming companies were in transition from games which wanted you to think to games which wanted you to shoot things (the switch from Sierra games involving puzzles to be solved, to first person shooters like Doom). I know of no other novel about that part of modern life's history. Aren't you curious?
To see more of Leopold's work, please consider checking out www.redfez.net. This is an excellent literary site which Leopold runs. It features some wonderful poetry, prose, and even, in its archives, two chapters of my own graphic novel! (Yes, I've met Leopold, and he is a friend--what's it to ya?) On the site you can also order Game Quest, which you should.
It's hard to review a book of such immense scope, ambition and craft. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is arguably one of the best American books of the 20th century (not so difficult a distinction to achieve, it would seem, considering the dearth of quality fiction in the latter half of said century), it's also, sadly, one of the most forgotten.
Written like fiction, Sinclair's book ostensibly follows the story of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian who, with several members of his family, come to Chicago on the tail of the American Dream and find themselves working in the nightmare of the Slaughterhouse district. But in effect The Jungle is an epic look at the obscene cost of unfettered capitalism run rampant in the early 20th century. Sinclair's book is a muckraking expose of the institutionalized inequality, corruption, privilege, sickness and slavery needed to keep the machine running that runs beneath he thin veneer of the American dream of freedom and success. A fascinating and incredibly thorough indictment of the out-of-control capitalist structure at the turn of the century The Jungle, sadly, rings true in a number of areas today.
Jurgis starts off firmly believing in the American dream, even while working in slave-like conditions for the meat packers, brushing off the arguments of broken men and unionists that the machine will eventually crush him as the bitter ramblings of lazy and weak men It's this stubborn arrogance that carries Jurgis through the unceasing volley of injustices that make up the entirety of the book. The Rudkus', due to their innocence and desperation, get swindled into 'buying' a 'new' house where they pay an exorbitant amount every month, but never own the house until it is all paid off. If they miss one payment the house, and all their payments go back to the landowner, who repaints the house and sells it as 'new' to the next batch of immigrants. The threat of losing their house becomes the greatest chain their carry and in service of it every member of their extended family, including the grandparents and children, works to survive.
It's a losing battle, of course, and work in the packinghouses brings poverty, disease, death, injury, injustice, rape, jail and exploitation to the Rudkus family. With no other options and a thousand men clamoring at the gate for their job, the Rudkus family works endless hours in mind-numbing, incredibly dangerous work. Here Jurgis gets first hand experience of the inevitable 'short-cuts' that arise from profit-driven enterprises. In the drive for even a half-penny of profit spoiled meat is bribed past inspectors, men are crushed and killed, waste is driven wholesale into public drinking water and, like the meat the process, every ounce of worth in a human being is taken before being discarded in favor of fresh meat. Early on Jurgis is impressed with the way in which the packers have set up their enterprise to squeeze every possible amount of wealth possible from a pig. Jurgis also is glad that he is not a pig – only to realize at the end that he and all the working men were treated as cruelly and as senselessly as the animals, driven to the point of death to churn out meat faster and faster and then discarded.
Work in the Slaughterhouse district covers most of the book and the novel is currently being sold as an expose of the meat packing industry. This is a simplification and probably stems from, in the current timid literary circles, a fear to mention the dreaded word 'socialism' or believe that the entire system may be corrupt, rather than just where the wound festers most. The second half of the book follows Jurgis after he escapes from the Slaughterhouse, a shell of the man he once was, his family, wife and son dead in service to the Packer's profits. The book is quite uplifting when he finally leaves to hobo it across the country on trains. The first day he spends in the woods, washing in a lake and sleeping in the sun is probably one of the most uplifting scenes in the book and an unforgettable illustration of how it is better to be a homeless vagrant than in service of the Trusts. Jurgis, for a while, is free. But the nature of seasonal farm work, leaving him without a home in the winter, eventually drives him back to the city.
Jurgis scrapes by at first by begging on the streets. Eventually he finds himself working on a massive secret underground railway being built by the Packers Trust to break the Teamsters union! But an accident at work puts him back on the street. Starving to death, Jurgis finds himself in Jail. By this point Jurgis has adopted an attitude much more likely to achieve the American Dream: looking out only for himself. Jurgis becomes involved in crime, eventually moving up into the very corrupt political and Trust circles that run the wage-prisons of the slaughterhouse district. He helps fix an election, crush a strike and generally be on the operating end of all the corruption and sleaze he once suffered under. But like everything else, once his purpose has been served, he's back on the streets again.
Perhaps the biggest weaknesses of this novel are the opening and ending. The first chapter is an overly long description of a wedding ceremony. Although it serves to introduce a lot of the characters and their hopes and desires, it's too much at once with little reason for the reader to care or understand the significance of this event at the time. The book could have easily started at chapter 2. The book ends with Jurgis finally understanding the corrupt system in all its parts (indeed, we do too as through Jurgis Sinclair has hit upon every nail and exposed every interlinking thread of corruption) and becomes involved in the growing socialist movement to overthrow the corrupt two parties of the two-party political system and begin with a system that is actually fair. This end of the book, though I mostly agree with it, is a bit preachy and, with 100 years of foresight, perhaps a bit naively optimistic. The book also ends somewhat abruptly. It's a thematic book, to be sure, and so it's ok to end with the theme rather than the end of Jurgis' story, but Sinclair does such a fantastic job of getting us into the story of Jurgis, it's hard to see him dropped at the end for the point to be made.
But these are slight weaknesses in an otherwise amazing book. The Jungle is the type of novel no longer made. The book has teeth and a point to prove, right from the onset. It seems that it is now taboo for analysis or criticism of society to come from works of fiction. If anything The Jungle is the perfect example of a fictional story illustrating a point much more clearly than non-fiction could hope to. The novel isn't didactic or polemic anymore than a documentary is and the reader is smart enough to understand that this is both a work of fiction and an incredibly insightful and truthful expose of the devastating pitfalls of unfettered capitalism. Sometimes studying was is possible provides more insight than what is.
Sadly, due to a lot of interlocking commercial and class interests in the literary industry similar to those documented by Mr. Sinclair, books like this are unlikely to be found in the mainstream circles anymore. Though the problems outlined in The Jungle have been lessened in the century since its publication, there is still work to do. Authors of this day have many equally important things to write about and we too can hope to make continued change through our writing and activism. To tweak the phrase that closes Mr. Sinclair's book, “We shall bear down the opposition, we shall sweep it before us – and [literature] will be ours! [Literature] will be ours! [LITERATURE] WILL BE OURS!
The Jungle is a fantastic book for anyone interested in social criticism, or just a good read. Certainly it will be inspiring to writers who hope to achieve something by their writing.
The Jungle does what far too few (if any) books these do these days.
Penguin Classic Re-issue, U.S. $14, CDN $20, 388 pages
Leopold has never met Upton Sinclair, but that's because Upton died before Leopold was born. Otherwise they certainly would have met, as they share similar world views.
Leopold McGinnis is a great Canadian writer. His novel, "Game Quest", is a very funny, very deeply felt tale of corporate morality v. individual ideals. It is set at the time when computer gaming companies were in transition from games which wanted you to think to games which wanted you to shoot things (the switch from Sierra games involving puzzles to be solved, to first person shooters like Doom). I know of no other novel about that part of modern life's history. Aren't you curious?
To see more of Leopold's work, please consider checking out www.redfez.net. This is an excellent literary site which Leopold runs. It features some wonderful poetry, prose, and even, in its archives, two chapters of my own graphic novel! (Yes, I've met Leopold, and he is a friend--what's it to ya?) On the site you can also order Game Quest, which you should.
It's hard to review a book of such immense scope, ambition and craft. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is arguably one of the best American books of the 20th century (not so difficult a distinction to achieve, it would seem, considering the dearth of quality fiction in the latter half of said century), it's also, sadly, one of the most forgotten.
Written like fiction, Sinclair's book ostensibly follows the story of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian who, with several members of his family, come to Chicago on the tail of the American Dream and find themselves working in the nightmare of the Slaughterhouse district. But in effect The Jungle is an epic look at the obscene cost of unfettered capitalism run rampant in the early 20th century. Sinclair's book is a muckraking expose of the institutionalized inequality, corruption, privilege, sickness and slavery needed to keep the machine running that runs beneath he thin veneer of the American dream of freedom and success. A fascinating and incredibly thorough indictment of the out-of-control capitalist structure at the turn of the century The Jungle, sadly, rings true in a number of areas today.
Jurgis starts off firmly believing in the American dream, even while working in slave-like conditions for the meat packers, brushing off the arguments of broken men and unionists that the machine will eventually crush him as the bitter ramblings of lazy and weak men It's this stubborn arrogance that carries Jurgis through the unceasing volley of injustices that make up the entirety of the book. The Rudkus', due to their innocence and desperation, get swindled into 'buying' a 'new' house where they pay an exorbitant amount every month, but never own the house until it is all paid off. If they miss one payment the house, and all their payments go back to the landowner, who repaints the house and sells it as 'new' to the next batch of immigrants. The threat of losing their house becomes the greatest chain their carry and in service of it every member of their extended family, including the grandparents and children, works to survive.
It's a losing battle, of course, and work in the packinghouses brings poverty, disease, death, injury, injustice, rape, jail and exploitation to the Rudkus family. With no other options and a thousand men clamoring at the gate for their job, the Rudkus family works endless hours in mind-numbing, incredibly dangerous work. Here Jurgis gets first hand experience of the inevitable 'short-cuts' that arise from profit-driven enterprises. In the drive for even a half-penny of profit spoiled meat is bribed past inspectors, men are crushed and killed, waste is driven wholesale into public drinking water and, like the meat the process, every ounce of worth in a human being is taken before being discarded in favor of fresh meat. Early on Jurgis is impressed with the way in which the packers have set up their enterprise to squeeze every possible amount of wealth possible from a pig. Jurgis also is glad that he is not a pig – only to realize at the end that he and all the working men were treated as cruelly and as senselessly as the animals, driven to the point of death to churn out meat faster and faster and then discarded.
Work in the Slaughterhouse district covers most of the book and the novel is currently being sold as an expose of the meat packing industry. This is a simplification and probably stems from, in the current timid literary circles, a fear to mention the dreaded word 'socialism' or believe that the entire system may be corrupt, rather than just where the wound festers most. The second half of the book follows Jurgis after he escapes from the Slaughterhouse, a shell of the man he once was, his family, wife and son dead in service to the Packer's profits. The book is quite uplifting when he finally leaves to hobo it across the country on trains. The first day he spends in the woods, washing in a lake and sleeping in the sun is probably one of the most uplifting scenes in the book and an unforgettable illustration of how it is better to be a homeless vagrant than in service of the Trusts. Jurgis, for a while, is free. But the nature of seasonal farm work, leaving him without a home in the winter, eventually drives him back to the city.
Jurgis scrapes by at first by begging on the streets. Eventually he finds himself working on a massive secret underground railway being built by the Packers Trust to break the Teamsters union! But an accident at work puts him back on the street. Starving to death, Jurgis finds himself in Jail. By this point Jurgis has adopted an attitude much more likely to achieve the American Dream: looking out only for himself. Jurgis becomes involved in crime, eventually moving up into the very corrupt political and Trust circles that run the wage-prisons of the slaughterhouse district. He helps fix an election, crush a strike and generally be on the operating end of all the corruption and sleaze he once suffered under. But like everything else, once his purpose has been served, he's back on the streets again.
Perhaps the biggest weaknesses of this novel are the opening and ending. The first chapter is an overly long description of a wedding ceremony. Although it serves to introduce a lot of the characters and their hopes and desires, it's too much at once with little reason for the reader to care or understand the significance of this event at the time. The book could have easily started at chapter 2. The book ends with Jurgis finally understanding the corrupt system in all its parts (indeed, we do too as through Jurgis Sinclair has hit upon every nail and exposed every interlinking thread of corruption) and becomes involved in the growing socialist movement to overthrow the corrupt two parties of the two-party political system and begin with a system that is actually fair. This end of the book, though I mostly agree with it, is a bit preachy and, with 100 years of foresight, perhaps a bit naively optimistic. The book also ends somewhat abruptly. It's a thematic book, to be sure, and so it's ok to end with the theme rather than the end of Jurgis' story, but Sinclair does such a fantastic job of getting us into the story of Jurgis, it's hard to see him dropped at the end for the point to be made.
But these are slight weaknesses in an otherwise amazing book. The Jungle is the type of novel no longer made. The book has teeth and a point to prove, right from the onset. It seems that it is now taboo for analysis or criticism of society to come from works of fiction. If anything The Jungle is the perfect example of a fictional story illustrating a point much more clearly than non-fiction could hope to. The novel isn't didactic or polemic anymore than a documentary is and the reader is smart enough to understand that this is both a work of fiction and an incredibly insightful and truthful expose of the devastating pitfalls of unfettered capitalism. Sometimes studying was is possible provides more insight than what is.
Sadly, due to a lot of interlocking commercial and class interests in the literary industry similar to those documented by Mr. Sinclair, books like this are unlikely to be found in the mainstream circles anymore. Though the problems outlined in The Jungle have been lessened in the century since its publication, there is still work to do. Authors of this day have many equally important things to write about and we too can hope to make continued change through our writing and activism. To tweak the phrase that closes Mr. Sinclair's book, “We shall bear down the opposition, we shall sweep it before us – and [literature] will be ours! [Literature] will be ours! [LITERATURE] WILL BE OURS!
The Jungle is a fantastic book for anyone interested in social criticism, or just a good read. Certainly it will be inspiring to writers who hope to achieve something by their writing.
The Jungle does what far too few (if any) books these do these days.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Christopher Robin: Freaky Mumbler's Manifesto
I Hate Microsoft Word But I Love Christopher Robin
Reviewed by Misti Rainwater-Lites
Misti acknowledges that she knows Christopher! You got a problem with that?
I. Hate. Microsoft Word. I have published several of my books at lulu.com and each time the process has made me tear my hair out strand by strand. Santa Claus, bring this bitch a Mac for xmas!!! Just to illustrate how strongly I believe in Christopher Robin's poetry, I spent two days cleaning up the manuscript he e-mailed me and braving the wilds of Microsoft Word to put Freaky Mumbler's Manifesto together in the best possible way. I own the original edition of Freaky Mumbler's Manifesto which Christopher compares to a coloring book due to the size. The freakishly large size does not detract from the pleasure I experienced reading Christopher's poems. Christopher Robin is a true survivor. His poems were not written in an ivory tower but on the road, in a Section 8 apartment, at the carnival, in the depths of hell. You will not find a poetry book of this caliber at Borders or Barnes & Noble. If we lived in a more progressive society, a society that did not reward mindless mediocrity and overt sexuality with nothing behind it (hello, Britney/Christina/Fergie/Beyonce/et al!!!), Christopher Robin would be a billionaire. Bill Gates should not be a billionaire, by the way, because MICROSOFT WORD SUCKS!!! Buy Freaky Mumbler's Manifesto and become acquainted with a man who is famous but not rich, a man who knows how to heckle the hecklers right back, a man who embodies my favorite word, eBuLLieNCe. Christopher Robin is an ebullient son of a gun and I'm very glad to know him.
Reviewed by Misti Rainwater-Lites
Misti acknowledges that she knows Christopher! You got a problem with that?
I. Hate. Microsoft Word. I have published several of my books at lulu.com and each time the process has made me tear my hair out strand by strand. Santa Claus, bring this bitch a Mac for xmas!!! Just to illustrate how strongly I believe in Christopher Robin's poetry, I spent two days cleaning up the manuscript he e-mailed me and braving the wilds of Microsoft Word to put Freaky Mumbler's Manifesto together in the best possible way. I own the original edition of Freaky Mumbler's Manifesto which Christopher compares to a coloring book due to the size. The freakishly large size does not detract from the pleasure I experienced reading Christopher's poems. Christopher Robin is a true survivor. His poems were not written in an ivory tower but on the road, in a Section 8 apartment, at the carnival, in the depths of hell. You will not find a poetry book of this caliber at Borders or Barnes & Noble. If we lived in a more progressive society, a society that did not reward mindless mediocrity and overt sexuality with nothing behind it (hello, Britney/Christina/Fergie/Beyonce/et al!!!), Christopher Robin would be a billionaire. Bill Gates should not be a billionaire, by the way, because MICROSOFT WORD SUCKS!!! Buy Freaky Mumbler's Manifesto and become acquainted with a man who is famous but not rich, a man who knows how to heckle the hecklers right back, a man who embodies my favorite word, eBuLLieNCe. Christopher Robin is an ebullient son of a gun and I'm very glad to know him.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Joseph Parisi: 100 Essential Poems
Reviewed by: G. Tod Slone
Tod does not, to my knowledge, know Joseph. Nor, is my guess, does he want to.
100 Essential Poems. Selected and Introduced by Joseph Parisi.
Ivan R. Dee, Publisher. 2005. 305 pp. Hard cover. $24.95 US/$31.95 CAN ISBN: 1-56663-612-4. Ivan R. Dee, 1332 North Halsted St., Chicago, IL 60622, www.ivanrdee.com
“the work is secure in the canon.”
—Parisi (about his book)
This review is dedicated to all the college students in English classes nodding out during mandatory readings of anthology poems. This reviewer can relate to you. Indeed, the poems by Yeats, which begin the anthology, put me in an immediate state of nutation (i.e., nodding off—one of Alexander Pope’s words of predilection RE the poets of his time). As a professor, this reviewer always requests English students to define terms when they use them. Parisi's definition of "essential [and ‘greatest’] poems" is not up front but rather scattered in the obit/bios throughout the volume. Mostly it is the poet, not the poem, contrary to the title of this anthology, who lends definition to the term. Prize-winning, knowing the right people, coming from a wealthy background, and attending “prestigious” universities tend to characterize the poets. No doubt, Parisi has fallen for name-brand bards, as opposed to great poems. Not far into this anthology, one will notice, that is, a keen somewhat independent observer will notice, just how utterly pretentious the title is, even though backed by the most famous names in poetry.
The following, written by Dorothy Parker, according to this anthology, is one of the “greatest poems of the 20th century” (words written on the front cover of the book) and, sadly, there are a number of others like it in this volume:
Resume
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Sure, it’s cute, but how can it possibly be “essential”? How can “the most popular comic poet in the United States [in his time],” Ogden Nash, be essential with his “genial nonsense” (the words in quotes are Parisi’s)? And what about Auden’s “fun to read” “Wise about Mores and Witty on Manners; ” Stevie Smith’s “slight, humorous, whimsical “ “Nursery-Rhyme formulas”; and “Manners” by Bishop, “one of the most esteemed of twentieth-century poets”?
Why are the poems in this anthology “essential”? Are they essential for highbrow entertainment? The term witty is used over and over to the extent that one might conclude that highbrow wit is indeed the principle determinant of great canon poems… as if such resulted from mere intellectual games. Certainly the poems in this volume are essential for understanding the canon and for anyone wishing to strive to be accepted by the canon. But who has dictated them to be essential? Well, in this case, one bourgeois, poet, Joseph Parisi, former editor of Poetry magazine, amongst other things. In this volume, the names, almost each and every one of them, are recognizable, but why do we recognize them? Perhaps most poets today lack the ability or inclination to even ask these essential questions. Never are we encouraged to question and challenge the canon, in this case, as dictated by Parisi.
Why are Sandburg’s “Chicago”, Stevens’ “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” Robinson’s “Minerver Cheevy,” or any number of other similar poems in this volume essential? Many of the poems seem to manifest an absence of passion. If indeed they are representative of the greatest, then clearly the past century was not at all a good one for poetry. To establish a great literature, we need more convincing criteria than Pulitzer Prize, Guggenheim, published in Poetry Magazine, and “wide popular acclaim” (the publisher’s jacket blurb). So many honors and accolades are listed in the obit/bios, yet so few courageous, risk-taking, activist poets are amongst the recipients! This does not speak highly for poets of the canon, which might explain why so many poets endeavor to spread the romantic myth of the poet. It is thus interesting to examine the diverse accolades, then to compare that with the naked product, the poems. Sadly, too often in this anthology do the latter fall short of the former. Bishop is perhaps the best example.
What saddens this reviewer is that our university students are fed canon, rather than encouraged to question and challenge it. Yet doing the latter would make it stronger and more credible in the long run. Rare are the students and professors who do question the Pulitzer, for example, and ask who the judges are and how they’re appointed. Rather than literary-prize recipient, what is needed as criteria is passion and fire in the poet… and the poem. Far too many of these poems seem as dead as our “great” living poets on the university lecture circuit and on the dole of grants, Guggenheims, and MacArthurs.
“The selection is properly catholic, a fine representation of Mr. Parisi’s sophisticated poetic taste, and, poets and readers of poetry being highly contentious, also controversial,” notes blurber Joseph Epstein on the back cover. Yet almost all of the poems in this volume are inoffensive, do not make waves, do not go against the grain, and unlikely to shock anybody at all. Parisi describes the pre-Pound/Eliot poesy scene as “sentimentality, lofty but hazy notions, archaic diction and tired formulas.” Yet many of these poems might equally be placed in that very category. If you refuse to concur, then why not observe the state of nutation in an average college classroom as students attempt to read the poems? I’m sure some of those students, not yet fully indoctrinated by their comfortable English professors, might actually be dreaming of pushing Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” right over the cliff where it probably belongs. Williams himself had once declared, “to tell the truth, I myself never quite feel that I know what I am talking about—if I did, and when I do, the thing written seems nothing to me.”
“Above all I am not concerned with Poetry,” wrote Wilfred Owen. “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do to-day is warn. That is why the true poets must be truthful.” Perhaps this is the crux of the problem with poetry this century. Too many poets have been fixated on Poetry per se… not on truth. Interestingly, none of the poems in this anthology criticize the oligarchy and literary establishment.
Can “Recuerdo” actually be the best poem written by Vincent-Millay? How can it possibly be considered one of “the greatest poems in English over the past century, memorable masterpiece” (quote taken from the front cover of this volume)? The same goes for “Helen” (Hilda Doolittle) and “The Fish” (Marianne Moore). As a literary editor, this reviewer would have rejected most of the poems in this anthology. If this book had been titled “Favorite Poems of an Establishment Poet,” I would have had no problem with it at all.
So, what are “superior poems”? You’ll know them when you read them or the mandarins of poesy will tell you which ones? No definition is attempted, except canon-accepted. Do “exceptional technical skill and tonal range” (RE Louis MacNeice) necessarily produce great poems? Does “extremely erudite” (RE Berryman) make great ones? “The Dream Song” is hardly convincing. Many if not most of the poems in this volume do not weather time well and should thus serve more as historical examples, rather than greatest poems. Parisi informs that Roethke, for example, has “secured his reputation among literary historians.”
Stafford is “said to have written a poem a day,” but so what? Does that give “How to Regain Your Soul” greatest poem status? If so, perhaps Parisi should have chosen a poem by Lyn Lifshin, who must write at least 10 per day. Many of the poems in this collection are fancy... and deadly boring. You'd have to pay this reviewer to read through to the end of some of them, though inevitably I did check the endings of almost all of them to see what the "punch lines" might be. Do they use that term in poesy? Many, if not most, of these poems are written by professors, who seemed to have fed passively from the hand feeding them, rather than to have observed that hand with a critical eye. Perhaps more polemics and less "beautifully realized poems" would shake things up and make poesy matter a little more. But often polemics takes guts and nerve, sacrifice of literary prizes, teaching opportunities, grants, and reading invitations. Even Ginsberg, chief of the Beatnik poets, who figures in this collection, came off as a pitiful wannabee of canon. He was not the counter culture at all—that was his masque. No wonder he became a "fixture on college syllabi.” Canon fed him and he chewed and shut his mouth (and eyes) and got a job at Brooklyn College as Distinguished Professor. Carl Soloman convinced him (the words are Parisi’s) "of the poet's political role as outsider, prophet and social critic." But how does an outsider get inside the canon? He does not, unless he sells out. Perhaps Ginsberg would have been more honest if he'd written "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by desire for fame and canonic approval..." On the surface, Ginsberg comes off as a token outsider in this collection, but only on the surface thanks to his extensive image marketing. Parisi oddly fails to mention in the bio that Ginsberg was a proud proponent of sex with male children, not teenagers, but children. Why the omission? The Beatnik myth is perhaps a billion-dollar industry in the USA. Myth of course implies burying truths and contradictions. Canon itself is a myth. What to say about “Howl” today? Some of it is of interest but most of it is tedious and verbose and somewhat unintelligible.
One has to wonder just how much Parisi likes “We Real Cool” (Gwendolyn Brooks). Most likely he threw it in for political rectitude’s sake… as he did for Ginsberg. In fact, one has to wonder if he is really suited as a judge, bending here, there—but what does he really think? Maybe he doesn’t even know any more. Frank O’Hara’s two poems remind of Charles Bukowski’s style. So, why was the latter omitted… because O’Hara “was the life of the party”? Well, wasn’t Bukowski also “the life of the party” and didn’t he receive a Guggenheim, whereas O’Hara did not?
Why did Poetry Chancellor Philip Levine, also selected for this anthology, who wrote about the spiritual costs of the toil of working class people, never write about the spiritual costs of rampant intellectual corruption in academe and the literary scene, something he must surely have been even more knowledgeable about since that was where he spent most of his life? Finally, Parisi seems to have made safe, as opposed to wise, choices. Establishment poets get so used to making safe ones that they probably confuse them with wise ones. Why is Eliot’s “Wasteland” not included? Parisi notes how it shook everyone up and, more or less, began modernism. Why is it not essential? Copyright problems? Too long? Where are the poems of our great Poet Laureates of the U.S. Library of Congress, Pinsky, Gluck, Hass, Kooser et al? And what about the other “great” Beatnik poets, Waldman, McClure, Ferlinghetti, Corso et al? A blind panel might be a solution to poor choice, unless of course all the blind panelists turn out to be canon indoctrinates.
A few powerful poems are included in this anthology, but only a few, including Anne Sexton’s “Wanting to Die” and, of course, Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est.” Many libraries already possess similar volumes. So, why purchase yet another one? This reviewer does not recommend this book.
G. Tod Slone, Editor
www.theamericandissident.org
Tod does not, to my knowledge, know Joseph. Nor, is my guess, does he want to.
100 Essential Poems. Selected and Introduced by Joseph Parisi.
Ivan R. Dee, Publisher. 2005. 305 pp. Hard cover. $24.95 US/$31.95 CAN ISBN: 1-56663-612-4. Ivan R. Dee, 1332 North Halsted St., Chicago, IL 60622, www.ivanrdee.com
“the work is secure in the canon.”
—Parisi (about his book)
This review is dedicated to all the college students in English classes nodding out during mandatory readings of anthology poems. This reviewer can relate to you. Indeed, the poems by Yeats, which begin the anthology, put me in an immediate state of nutation (i.e., nodding off—one of Alexander Pope’s words of predilection RE the poets of his time). As a professor, this reviewer always requests English students to define terms when they use them. Parisi's definition of "essential [and ‘greatest’] poems" is not up front but rather scattered in the obit/bios throughout the volume. Mostly it is the poet, not the poem, contrary to the title of this anthology, who lends definition to the term. Prize-winning, knowing the right people, coming from a wealthy background, and attending “prestigious” universities tend to characterize the poets. No doubt, Parisi has fallen for name-brand bards, as opposed to great poems. Not far into this anthology, one will notice, that is, a keen somewhat independent observer will notice, just how utterly pretentious the title is, even though backed by the most famous names in poetry.
The following, written by Dorothy Parker, according to this anthology, is one of the “greatest poems of the 20th century” (words written on the front cover of the book) and, sadly, there are a number of others like it in this volume:
Resume
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Sure, it’s cute, but how can it possibly be “essential”? How can “the most popular comic poet in the United States [in his time],” Ogden Nash, be essential with his “genial nonsense” (the words in quotes are Parisi’s)? And what about Auden’s “fun to read” “Wise about Mores and Witty on Manners; ” Stevie Smith’s “slight, humorous, whimsical “ “Nursery-Rhyme formulas”; and “Manners” by Bishop, “one of the most esteemed of twentieth-century poets”?
Why are the poems in this anthology “essential”? Are they essential for highbrow entertainment? The term witty is used over and over to the extent that one might conclude that highbrow wit is indeed the principle determinant of great canon poems… as if such resulted from mere intellectual games. Certainly the poems in this volume are essential for understanding the canon and for anyone wishing to strive to be accepted by the canon. But who has dictated them to be essential? Well, in this case, one bourgeois, poet, Joseph Parisi, former editor of Poetry magazine, amongst other things. In this volume, the names, almost each and every one of them, are recognizable, but why do we recognize them? Perhaps most poets today lack the ability or inclination to even ask these essential questions. Never are we encouraged to question and challenge the canon, in this case, as dictated by Parisi.
Why are Sandburg’s “Chicago”, Stevens’ “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” Robinson’s “Minerver Cheevy,” or any number of other similar poems in this volume essential? Many of the poems seem to manifest an absence of passion. If indeed they are representative of the greatest, then clearly the past century was not at all a good one for poetry. To establish a great literature, we need more convincing criteria than Pulitzer Prize, Guggenheim, published in Poetry Magazine, and “wide popular acclaim” (the publisher’s jacket blurb). So many honors and accolades are listed in the obit/bios, yet so few courageous, risk-taking, activist poets are amongst the recipients! This does not speak highly for poets of the canon, which might explain why so many poets endeavor to spread the romantic myth of the poet. It is thus interesting to examine the diverse accolades, then to compare that with the naked product, the poems. Sadly, too often in this anthology do the latter fall short of the former. Bishop is perhaps the best example.
What saddens this reviewer is that our university students are fed canon, rather than encouraged to question and challenge it. Yet doing the latter would make it stronger and more credible in the long run. Rare are the students and professors who do question the Pulitzer, for example, and ask who the judges are and how they’re appointed. Rather than literary-prize recipient, what is needed as criteria is passion and fire in the poet… and the poem. Far too many of these poems seem as dead as our “great” living poets on the university lecture circuit and on the dole of grants, Guggenheims, and MacArthurs.
“The selection is properly catholic, a fine representation of Mr. Parisi’s sophisticated poetic taste, and, poets and readers of poetry being highly contentious, also controversial,” notes blurber Joseph Epstein on the back cover. Yet almost all of the poems in this volume are inoffensive, do not make waves, do not go against the grain, and unlikely to shock anybody at all. Parisi describes the pre-Pound/Eliot poesy scene as “sentimentality, lofty but hazy notions, archaic diction and tired formulas.” Yet many of these poems might equally be placed in that very category. If you refuse to concur, then why not observe the state of nutation in an average college classroom as students attempt to read the poems? I’m sure some of those students, not yet fully indoctrinated by their comfortable English professors, might actually be dreaming of pushing Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” right over the cliff where it probably belongs. Williams himself had once declared, “to tell the truth, I myself never quite feel that I know what I am talking about—if I did, and when I do, the thing written seems nothing to me.”
“Above all I am not concerned with Poetry,” wrote Wilfred Owen. “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do to-day is warn. That is why the true poets must be truthful.” Perhaps this is the crux of the problem with poetry this century. Too many poets have been fixated on Poetry per se… not on truth. Interestingly, none of the poems in this anthology criticize the oligarchy and literary establishment.
Can “Recuerdo” actually be the best poem written by Vincent-Millay? How can it possibly be considered one of “the greatest poems in English over the past century, memorable masterpiece” (quote taken from the front cover of this volume)? The same goes for “Helen” (Hilda Doolittle) and “The Fish” (Marianne Moore). As a literary editor, this reviewer would have rejected most of the poems in this anthology. If this book had been titled “Favorite Poems of an Establishment Poet,” I would have had no problem with it at all.
So, what are “superior poems”? You’ll know them when you read them or the mandarins of poesy will tell you which ones? No definition is attempted, except canon-accepted. Do “exceptional technical skill and tonal range” (RE Louis MacNeice) necessarily produce great poems? Does “extremely erudite” (RE Berryman) make great ones? “The Dream Song” is hardly convincing. Many if not most of the poems in this volume do not weather time well and should thus serve more as historical examples, rather than greatest poems. Parisi informs that Roethke, for example, has “secured his reputation among literary historians.”
Stafford is “said to have written a poem a day,” but so what? Does that give “How to Regain Your Soul” greatest poem status? If so, perhaps Parisi should have chosen a poem by Lyn Lifshin, who must write at least 10 per day. Many of the poems in this collection are fancy... and deadly boring. You'd have to pay this reviewer to read through to the end of some of them, though inevitably I did check the endings of almost all of them to see what the "punch lines" might be. Do they use that term in poesy? Many, if not most, of these poems are written by professors, who seemed to have fed passively from the hand feeding them, rather than to have observed that hand with a critical eye. Perhaps more polemics and less "beautifully realized poems" would shake things up and make poesy matter a little more. But often polemics takes guts and nerve, sacrifice of literary prizes, teaching opportunities, grants, and reading invitations. Even Ginsberg, chief of the Beatnik poets, who figures in this collection, came off as a pitiful wannabee of canon. He was not the counter culture at all—that was his masque. No wonder he became a "fixture on college syllabi.” Canon fed him and he chewed and shut his mouth (and eyes) and got a job at Brooklyn College as Distinguished Professor. Carl Soloman convinced him (the words are Parisi’s) "of the poet's political role as outsider, prophet and social critic." But how does an outsider get inside the canon? He does not, unless he sells out. Perhaps Ginsberg would have been more honest if he'd written "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by desire for fame and canonic approval..." On the surface, Ginsberg comes off as a token outsider in this collection, but only on the surface thanks to his extensive image marketing. Parisi oddly fails to mention in the bio that Ginsberg was a proud proponent of sex with male children, not teenagers, but children. Why the omission? The Beatnik myth is perhaps a billion-dollar industry in the USA. Myth of course implies burying truths and contradictions. Canon itself is a myth. What to say about “Howl” today? Some of it is of interest but most of it is tedious and verbose and somewhat unintelligible.
One has to wonder just how much Parisi likes “We Real Cool” (Gwendolyn Brooks). Most likely he threw it in for political rectitude’s sake… as he did for Ginsberg. In fact, one has to wonder if he is really suited as a judge, bending here, there—but what does he really think? Maybe he doesn’t even know any more. Frank O’Hara’s two poems remind of Charles Bukowski’s style. So, why was the latter omitted… because O’Hara “was the life of the party”? Well, wasn’t Bukowski also “the life of the party” and didn’t he receive a Guggenheim, whereas O’Hara did not?
Why did Poetry Chancellor Philip Levine, also selected for this anthology, who wrote about the spiritual costs of the toil of working class people, never write about the spiritual costs of rampant intellectual corruption in academe and the literary scene, something he must surely have been even more knowledgeable about since that was where he spent most of his life? Finally, Parisi seems to have made safe, as opposed to wise, choices. Establishment poets get so used to making safe ones that they probably confuse them with wise ones. Why is Eliot’s “Wasteland” not included? Parisi notes how it shook everyone up and, more or less, began modernism. Why is it not essential? Copyright problems? Too long? Where are the poems of our great Poet Laureates of the U.S. Library of Congress, Pinsky, Gluck, Hass, Kooser et al? And what about the other “great” Beatnik poets, Waldman, McClure, Ferlinghetti, Corso et al? A blind panel might be a solution to poor choice, unless of course all the blind panelists turn out to be canon indoctrinates.
A few powerful poems are included in this anthology, but only a few, including Anne Sexton’s “Wanting to Die” and, of course, Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est.” Many libraries already possess similar volumes. So, why purchase yet another one? This reviewer does not recommend this book.
G. Tod Slone, Editor
www.theamericandissident.org
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Robert Crumb/David Mairowitz: R. Crumb's Kafka
Reviewed by: Tom Hendricks, Musea Review Service
Tom Hendricks is a ULA member. He has probably never met Robert Crumb, but might want to. I'd like to meet Robert Crumb.
What is it? : Franz Kafka's biography with text by David Mairowitz, and illustrations by celebrated underground comic artist Robert Crumb.
Technical Quality: High. Book is a well made, 175 page, trade paperback. Note the somewhat chilling cover with an orange Prague cityscape drawing , with a green insert of Kafka writing.
Innovative Quality: High. The book uses the graphic novel approach to tell the life story of the troubled but brilliant Franz Kafka. Crumb illustrates the main biographical events and portions from some of Kafka's most celebrated works.
Review: Three parts come together to make this a memorable and notable read: Franz Kafka's life and works, Robert Crumb's illustrations on every page, and an informative biographical text by David Zane Mairowitz.
Mairowitz writes: "Before ever becoming the ADJECTIVE (Kafkaesque) Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Jew from Prague, born into its inescapable tradition of story-tellers and fantasists, ghetto-dwellers and eternal refugees. His Prague, "a little mother' with 'claws' was a place that suffocated him, but where he nonetheless chose to live all but the last eight months of his life."
That well sums up a lot of the main threads of Kafka's life too. He was a Jew in a country that more and more hated and persecuted the Jews. He had an oppressive and abusive father that, like Prague, he could never escape. He had troubled relationships with all the women he was attracted to, and he never got the respect for his writing in his life time that he deserved.
The book goes into detail on all these issues and lets us see his world - a depressing world where it seems his only escape was his writing. And what writing he did. Throughout the book are illustrated excerpts of major Kafka works including: an early story 'The Judgement', the famous "Metamorphosis' where Gregor Samsa turns into an enormous bug; "The Burrow" an animal fable; "In the Penal Colony" with the new killing machine invention; his best known work, the novel, "The Trial" where 'K' is arrested - but for what?; "The Castle" the 2nd of 3 novels; "A Hunger Artist" who is a sideshow freak for his ability to starve himself, and "Amerika" his last unfinished novel.
At the age of 39 he retired from his insurance job (one that by improving safety standards actually saved many lives) due to tuberculosis. Kafka instructed his friend Max Brod, to destroy almost all his works upon his death. Fortunately for us, Brod did not carry that wish out.
The bio is fascinating, and the excerpts cover some of the best of Kafka's work. Now add to that the superb black and white illustrations of Crumb and we get a very great book indeed.
Crumb, known for his underground comics, has taken that style of art to high art here. His drawing style is the technical equal of any illustrator. Yet beyond that he has a gift for characterization , an eye for detail, and the ability to illustrate any scene. Had the bio and excerpts been any less compelling, the illustrations would have still been notable. Each page was filled with drawings and many of them are minor masterpieces on their own. An example are the illustrations on page 64 and 65. Kafka wrote many letters to Felice Bauer one of 4 women that he had important
relationships with. On the left side we see the couple up to their chests in pages of letters. On the right side of the page, we see Kafka writing at his desk in the bottom right corner with letter after letter stacked through the air, all the way up to the upper left corner.
Wisely Mairowitz, who wrote the text, does not try to embellish his work, instead his comments are sparse and to the point , thus better allowing Kafka the classic writer, and Crumb a world class gifted illustrator, to shine.
High marks all around in this new classic .
Contact Info:
www.ibooks.net
(Blogperson's note: I was not able to locate this book on ibooks, but perhaps you will have more luck, as you are smarter, cuter and have better breath. It may be available through your local bookstore as it was reprinted in 2005 (my local store seems to have found a distributor--maybe), and it also appears available online at Amazon. So you may have trouble locating this book, but that is no reason not to try. Don't be lazy when literature is involved!! And support your local bookstore if possible!)
Tom Hendricks is a ULA member. He has probably never met Robert Crumb, but might want to. I'd like to meet Robert Crumb.
What is it? : Franz Kafka's biography with text by David Mairowitz, and illustrations by celebrated underground comic artist Robert Crumb.
Technical Quality: High. Book is a well made, 175 page, trade paperback. Note the somewhat chilling cover with an orange Prague cityscape drawing , with a green insert of Kafka writing.
Innovative Quality: High. The book uses the graphic novel approach to tell the life story of the troubled but brilliant Franz Kafka. Crumb illustrates the main biographical events and portions from some of Kafka's most celebrated works.
Review: Three parts come together to make this a memorable and notable read: Franz Kafka's life and works, Robert Crumb's illustrations on every page, and an informative biographical text by David Zane Mairowitz.
Mairowitz writes: "Before ever becoming the ADJECTIVE (Kafkaesque) Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Jew from Prague, born into its inescapable tradition of story-tellers and fantasists, ghetto-dwellers and eternal refugees. His Prague, "a little mother' with 'claws' was a place that suffocated him, but where he nonetheless chose to live all but the last eight months of his life."
That well sums up a lot of the main threads of Kafka's life too. He was a Jew in a country that more and more hated and persecuted the Jews. He had an oppressive and abusive father that, like Prague, he could never escape. He had troubled relationships with all the women he was attracted to, and he never got the respect for his writing in his life time that he deserved.
The book goes into detail on all these issues and lets us see his world - a depressing world where it seems his only escape was his writing. And what writing he did. Throughout the book are illustrated excerpts of major Kafka works including: an early story 'The Judgement', the famous "Metamorphosis' where Gregor Samsa turns into an enormous bug; "The Burrow" an animal fable; "In the Penal Colony" with the new killing machine invention; his best known work, the novel, "The Trial" where 'K' is arrested - but for what?; "The Castle" the 2nd of 3 novels; "A Hunger Artist" who is a sideshow freak for his ability to starve himself, and "Amerika" his last unfinished novel.
At the age of 39 he retired from his insurance job (one that by improving safety standards actually saved many lives) due to tuberculosis. Kafka instructed his friend Max Brod, to destroy almost all his works upon his death. Fortunately for us, Brod did not carry that wish out.
The bio is fascinating, and the excerpts cover some of the best of Kafka's work. Now add to that the superb black and white illustrations of Crumb and we get a very great book indeed.
Crumb, known for his underground comics, has taken that style of art to high art here. His drawing style is the technical equal of any illustrator. Yet beyond that he has a gift for characterization , an eye for detail, and the ability to illustrate any scene. Had the bio and excerpts been any less compelling, the illustrations would have still been notable. Each page was filled with drawings and many of them are minor masterpieces on their own. An example are the illustrations on page 64 and 65. Kafka wrote many letters to Felice Bauer one of 4 women that he had important
relationships with. On the left side we see the couple up to their chests in pages of letters. On the right side of the page, we see Kafka writing at his desk in the bottom right corner with letter after letter stacked through the air, all the way up to the upper left corner.
Wisely Mairowitz, who wrote the text, does not try to embellish his work, instead his comments are sparse and to the point , thus better allowing Kafka the classic writer, and Crumb a world class gifted illustrator, to shine.
High marks all around in this new classic .
Contact Info:
www.ibooks.net
(Blogperson's note: I was not able to locate this book on ibooks, but perhaps you will have more luck, as you are smarter, cuter and have better breath. It may be available through your local bookstore as it was reprinted in 2005 (my local store seems to have found a distributor--maybe), and it also appears available online at Amazon. So you may have trouble locating this book, but that is no reason not to try. Don't be lazy when literature is involved!! And support your local bookstore if possible!)
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