Watching The Great Masters Spar

That’s true, actually. It’s through a quirk of biology. See, humans have rod cells and cone cells in our eyes. The cone cells are adept at picking up color cues while the rods are not. As it is, the cones are disproportionately more common at the center of the retina while there are more rods at the periphery. At night, there are fewer color cues around due to low light, so cone cells are unable to function as well as rods do under the same circumstances.*

Anyway, that’s a pretty good metaphor for the work of Amelia Gray.

• Threats                                                              
• Amelia Gray                                                         
• FSG Originals                                                       
• 288 Pages                                                           

• AM/PM
• Amelia Gray
• Featherproof Books
• 144 Pages

(Formatting this shit is a nightmare. I apologize for that.)

I’ve written a little about Ameila Gray before here and here, and I’ve seen her speak—even got all of her books signed (the post of which is forthcoming**). Needless to say, I like her. She’s probably one of my favorite, young writers at the moment. It’s hard to believe I found her book by chance in a bookstore about a year ago. And what I like about her, I’ve found, is her approach to narrative.

While the writer has a bevy of tools in their chest that allow them to work at their craft with creativity, the bulk of their work is still fairly direct. Not to say they don’t employ misdirection with symbols, metaphors, and allegories, but they are still dealing with an isssue directly. Sometimes it’s concrete, sometimes abstract, but always something. I mean, that’s what theme is. If I’ve learned one thing as an English Major, it’s that literature is an argument for against something—you just have to figure out the what’s and how’s. 

But Amelia Gray doesn’t do it this way. Whereas something like The Great Gatsby moves directly toward the theme of,say, the death of the American Dream, Threats and, to a lesser extent, AM/PMdon’toperate that way. IF we can think of a theme in literature as like a mountain that the author is attempting to ascend, Fitzgerald’s mountain climbing conditions are clear as day while Gray’s are cloudy, murky. Every move is oblique, every metaphor loose. In the end, you never see the mountain itself; you only get a sense of the mountain’s general presence via Gray’s wandering around.

Threats probably does this the best of the two. The story centers around a man whose wife dies. After her death, he begins to find little messages—threats—placed all over his house. In fact, here’s Gray reading some of them: 

Bizarreness aside (you’ve got to have a taste for the surreal, absurd, and bizarre to appreciate Amelia Gray), this is the quality of the text—indirect. What do these threats mean? Hell if I know, and I read the book. But that’s not really the point. For me, at least. See, all of the narrative elements—the threats, the very, very unreliable narrator, the surreality and symbolism— culminate into a theme: grief. It’s a story about loss, and how to cope with that loss. This I believe. But can I back that up? Nope. I can’t point to any one spot in the text to verify this assertion. It doesn’t work like that; there is no argument. It’s still true, but the whole book operates as its own justification. It circles the mountain, and I know it’s there, but I cannot describe the peaks, valleys, or geography.

AM/PM is the same way.

The best way to describe this book is as a loosely tied collection of prose poems. They aren’t quite poems, not quite stories, and not quite cohesive enough to be called a novel. And, while it isn’t as surreal as Threats, it does the same exact circling motion. Each page has its own prose poem that’s at least one paragraph long, but no longer than a page. The cast of characters repeats periodically throughout, so there’s maybe a dozen familiar names and faces mulling between the covers. Each of these characters has their own mini theme, which contributes to a larger theme that has mostly to do with youth and love.

In this case, a stronger argument could be made for this assertion than could be made for her novel. Some of the sections are blatantly about love and I could use those to claim an overarching theme. But it’s still troubling. Each prose poem is so brief that good evidence isn’t all that common. And, while it isn’t as surreal, it still relies heavily on odd, juxtaposed imagery. To go back to our mountain analogy, this book is a sort of midway point between the clear mountain and one completely lost in clouds and fog. You can see a little bit more, but it isn’t obvious.

Unfortunately, this makes the likelihood of widespread appeal for Gray rather small. “Closure” isn’t something you necessarily find in her work. Everything seems to be open ended, on some level, feeling incomplete. I don’t personally find this unlikeable (look at this student of post-modernism), but that’s because I’m awestruck by her ability maneuver in this way. I think it’s impressive, frankly, the way she shows me the mountain without showing me the mountain and, I’m sure, I would be able to find some sort of closure among all of the imagery if I put more work into it. But that’s me, and I’m hardly everybody.

What can I say? She’s wildly experimental. You may find that good or bad. It’s your call.

Have a sample of AM/PM to try her out:

Hazel constantly felt the need to express something inside of her. With age, she would learn that everyone has that same feeling, and that the need to express comes from a sensible desire for community, but that reasonable people either forget the feeling or get tired of talking about it, as when all the gossip about an embarrassing acquaintance finally winds its way down and the friends stare at each other across the table, each thinking, now what.

84:PM **

*I science in my free time with the help of Wikipedia. If this isn’t quite factual, give me the benefit of the doubt and figure I’m not an optometrist. Let me know nicely, if it really bothers you, and I’ll fix it.

**Here’s my post about getting her signature.

*** Reminds me a lot of the Don Hertzfeldt trilogy, if you’ve ever seen it. At least, AM/PM does. Threats, not as much.

Eating Animals - Jonathan Safran Foer

I remain unconvinced. Or, rather, I don’t buy Foer’s conclusions about what our roles are as omnivores in the post-industrial age. 

***I’ll put a spoiler warning here, though I really don’t think this book requires it. It’s nonfiction and, frankly, if you pick it up you know very well what to expect from it. To use a cliché, this book preaches to the choir. I don’t really see many people (for the most part) picking this up because they are on the fence about whether or not to go veggie or not. But, you never know. So be warned; here there be spoilers.***

What his argument boils down to is this: factory farming, the most prevalent kind of farming used in the US today, is an environmental and ecological disaster and offers only inhumane treatment to the animals we harvest. His solution to this is to be a vegetarian. Passively vegetarian, for the most part. True, the presence of the book itself calls into question the bounds of his passivity, but, he claims, the book isn’t meant to convert anyone to the veggie lifestyle (I don’t really think this is completely honest of him, but it’s what he claims so we’ll assume he means what he says). That statement highlights his passivity for me. He chooses to not eat meat on moral and logical grounds, but does not try to convince anyone else to his perspective (besides for the book whose purpose does seem to be that end, but, again, we’ll assume his honesty) nor does he try to truly do anything about the industry itself. This is what I disagree with.

I buy his argument entirely. I see the inhumanity in the procedures of factory farming. I see the genetic modifications that result in chickens growing at double speed, making them incapable of walking because their bone frame can’t support the flesh they’ve developed. I see the minuscule cages they live in. I see declawing and debeaking. I see the way that pigs and cows aren’t allowed to live as pigs and cows. I see the way fishing obliterates sea life without any rhyme or reason. I see the way we feed all of these animals food their stomaches can’t digest. I see the hormones. I see the death.

I see the way factory farms are ecological disasters. In our drive to make more with less, we have thousands of animals residing in the same small barns. The waste they produce is in the tons. We don’t have any legal method to get rid of that toxic sludge. Which gives rise to cesspools that makes people downwind sick. I see the poor slaughterhouse practices with the feces and poor killing methods. All automated, prone to errors.

I do not doubt any of that and I believe that the only solution is to fix it all. Provide humane treatment for the animals, provide safe, clean ways to farm. This is the way to solve this problem: change.

What is Foer’s solution? He tries to back out of it all. He himself doesn’t want to be a part of the broken system and he thinks that merely abstaining from meat is an out for that. It just isn’t.

It’s like voting. And before you start talking to me about it being a business and that boycotting the business’s product is the best way to make the companies aware of your displeasure, hear me out. When it comes to voting, you can vote, your you cannot, but the end result is the same: someone gets elected. Why? Because as long as one person votes, someone wins. So, when you vote, you are putting your opinion forth, making know your thought on who should be elected. You are responsible for the outcome by virtue of taking part in the voting process. If you don’t vote, you don’t air your thoughts, and someone still gets elected. You are equally as responsible for the outcome as the voter because you didn’t vote and someone got elected. Inaction is equal to action as far as responsibility goes.

The meat industry is the same way. You can eat meat, which makes you complacent in the act, or you can not eat meat without a fuss which makes you responsible because you aren’t actively doing anything that will right the wrongs of the meat production process. And why is abstaining from eating meat not active act? Why is this boycot not enough? Because:

1. It’s still too small. More people in America eat meat than don’t. A few people going vegetarian here or there doesn’t effect the bottom line that much.
2. The FDA. This is the government organization that makes all of the rules about what farming practices are acceptable and what aren’t. They have the power to change to rules for the better, but your personal boycot may only marginally be effecting them through lobbyist dollars.

As long as the boycot is small, the industry doesn’t feel the hurt. And as long as the government has a say in the practices, it is our civic duty to make the government know what we think is alright with respect to our food.

This means that the only way to absolve yourself from the terrible reality that is the meat industry, you have to be lobbying the government and spreading the word. You have to be teaching America about what is really going on with their food and you have to try to get the FDA to change its regulations for the better. Expand the boycot and let your government know your opinions (note: you don’t have to be a veggie to do this, either. Educating people and pledging for better food husbandry and processing conditions while being a meat-eater, provided you acquire your meat from humane and clean places, is perfectly acceptable). Not doing these things makes you worse than a meat-eater because you know all of the problems but aren’t doing anything about it; at least the average meat eater can claim ignorance.

But that raises up some questions about Foer. If the book exists with a vegetarian agenda, than his stance is laudable, but if not, as he claims, it leaves him worse off than before. His true motives are suspect, but I don’t really have any answers. It seems to me that the book has an agenda, whether or not he admits it. If that’s the case, I agree with him. But it might not be. I don’t know; you’d have to ask Foer. And maybe even he doesn’t know himself. That’ll be your call to make should you read this book.

Epilogue:

I am not actively vegetarian. I am not passively vegetarian. I am a carnivore who has meat at almost every meal. I also have little-to-no intention of voting. I suppose all of this makes me a hypocrite. I accept that. I enjoy meat and I don’t like politics. I would like to see farming conditions changed, but I am pessimistic as to the possibility of that happening given that it would be me up against some of the biggest corporations on the planet. Who gets a louder voice? Who wins? This is also the reason I don’t like politics. My pessimism makes me avoid the subject altogether though I (obviously, from above) have very strong thoughts and feelings on the matter. I apologize if I mislead you over the course of this post. 

I had to read this for a class and many people in the class became vegetarians as a result. This is probably good for Foer. But I doubt my classmates will do anything beyond abstaining themselves. I couldn’t help but take as much umbrage with their choice as they likely took with my continued taste for hamburgers. But I guess that matters little, because I never brought up my views in class. Oh well.

Lastly, I would like to say one thing: read this book. Even if you’re pessimistic like me, you should be educated about what you consume. Do your own research, parse the facts, and come to your own conclusions. You owe that much to yourself and to the world. What you do from there, well, I that’s up to you; I don’t really give a damn.

I have a mess of back blogs to do.

I’m not sure why I leave these things to pile up the way they do. I’m sure it’s a mixture of schoolwork getting the best of me and my interest in writing being quanta small when I’m not actually writing (hate to start, hate to stop kind of thing).

I’ll get to them in due time now that I’m on summer break.

Asa compromise, I’ve overhauled my blog. Please check it out, give me feedback, or do whatever.

Thanks for reading.

Hey, Wait… - Jason

The Left Bank Gang - Jason

I like comic books. I like graphic novels. I like reading the convergence of art and words. I always have.

That’s just something about me.

When I was assigned to read a Graphic Novel for class, I wanted to find something the likes of which I hadn’t experienced before. I looked for an indie book, something with a unique art style and a story to tell. I found Jason.

Jason is a Scandinavian cartoonist living in France who follows Hergé’s style of la ligne claire. He uses anthropomorphic, simplistic animals to tell a story with very little writing. He also does not play around with panels or gutters. He basically sticks to a 9 box grid on every page.

The first book, Hey, Wait…, is particularly simplistic. There are virtually no words. But that doesn;t stop it from being emotionally powerful. Even though it is so short.

The second book, The Left Bank Gang, is about the expat writers in the 20s as if they were cartoonists. I liked that one because I have a thing for the writers of that period, as well as that period in general. I liked it for the same reasons I liked Midnight in Paris. This one has more writing and dialogue, and is more playful than powerful. It’s still a really cool book with a fun idea, but it doesn’t pack the punch of Hey, Wait…

In honor of Jason’s written style (and out of a combination of laziness and lethargy), the text of this review is short and without much adornment. It doesn’t work like his books do, but it’s what you’re going to get.

The Ecstasy of Influence - Jonathan Lethem

Consider the Lobster - David Foster Wallace

The essay, to me, is beginning to look more and more like the most flexible writing form at our disposal as writers. The essay does not require a specific form or topic. You can write about anything—fiction, nonfiction, or any mix thereof—anyway you want—play with the person play with the punctuation and grammar, use dialogue or verse or footnotes or whatever. Fiction has trouble reaching nonfiction, poetry is bound in the convention of it’s boundlessness. The essay just is. 

I suppose it doesn’t hurt that what I’m doing on this blog is, more or less, write essays. Maybe I’m biased. 

Biased or not, the essay is drawing me in with a greater ferocity as of late. I think the first book of essays I ever read was David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing… and I read that maybe two years ago. Then I read the essays of Borges and Bolaño, a collection of Michael Chabon’s essays, and, most recently, Consider the Lobster and The Ecstasy of Influence. After the book I’m reading now, I’ll be check out John Jeremiah Sullivan’s much laudedcollection, Pulphead. 

Basically, I’m all about the essay right now.

So what can I say about the Lethem and Wallace collections I’ve presented at the top of the list?

Well, Wallace is a better essayist than Lethem is. That’s no question. But Lethem has something Wallace doesn’t have—breadth and volume. Wallace had a relatively short writing career. He didn’t write all that many essays—just enough to fill the two volumes presently in publication and the third one being released this fall with a few stragglers left over. Lethem, on the other hand, wrote a lot. His book, much much larger than any of Wallace’s volumes, is estimated at only comprising about a third of his work. He just wrote more than Wallace did.

What’s more, he covered a greater number of subjects. True, Wallace had his fair share of jobs. Report on the Maine Lobster Festival, or follow John McCain around during his 2000 campaign run, or review a Dictionary of American Usage. But Lethem did that and more. He reviewed books, movies, and music. He reported on musicians and literary theory and art and culture. Most of his pieces are shorter than the average Wallace piece, too, which can be used to demonstrate the huge variety of topics Lethem covers.In Lethem’s book there are 79 essays including the preface with a page count of about 440 while Wallace’s book has 10 essays across about 340 pages. If that doesn’t show that Lethem covers more topics than Wallace, albeit with less length or, maybe, depth, than I don’t know what can show that.

As for the volumes in particular, I prefer the Wallace, still. Even at that, the other Wallace collection is better, in my opinion. The writing was good and the essays interesting, but they lack something when compared with the essays written during his prime. Still very good and highly recommended.

The Lethem was a different case. There may be 79 essays in it, but not all are good and some are repetitive. The ones that are good aren’t superlative (given that I can’t help but compare him to Wallace) but are still decent. I’m not sure I’d recommend anyone pick it up if they were interested in reading some essays—there are better books for that—but I do think that it has a place on your shelf if you are a Lethem fan, want to read essays on a wide variety of topics by the same author, or if you want to get a deeper understanding of where literature is right now. Both Wallace and Lethem are a part of the current movement (if that’s the right word) of literature along with Franzen, Chabon, Eugenides, and Eggers. If entering that scene interestets you, this book might be good to add to your collection provided you’ve already acquainted yourself with Wallace and the others.

Of course, any exploration into the essay is a good exploration, I think. It’s a fun style with a lot of flexibility and it can be fun to see how different authors bend it to their will.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Jack Finney

Book review in one line:

Sci-Fi classic—in its revised edition (so who knows what I missed compared to the first edition)—is mediocre yet engaging; it makes a better movie (1956. duh) than a novel.

That’s not really a shame either. It’s a page turner, but not really special beyond that. Check the movie instead.

Travels with Charley - John Steinbeck

I’ve spoken here before about my love affair with America. It’s this nostalgia I can’t shake. The way the air smells, the way the dust feels. Really, it’s the way it’s presented on the page in all its glory and failure, its beauty and its flaws. There is a reason why I love American writers first and foremost. 

I guess that I’m more of a patriot than I would have thought.

Given this, how do you suppose I reacted when I heard about Travels with Charley? A book in which John Steinbeck—perhaps the quintessential American author behind Mark Twain—goes on a road trip across America? I devoured the thing. And then, more recently, I devoured it again for class.

That paragraph is basically all I have to say about it. Anything else I could write here would be merely fluff and repetition. Ultimately, I have a hardon for America, and there is little more american than Steinbeck touring America. Of course I loved it. Was he all positive? Nope. Not at all. But he didn’t have to be. I like the idea of the US in its mistakes and successes. Steinbeck captures all of that. Maybe not perfectly, but not poorly either.

Well, that’s enough. Read it, if you want.

The Third Reich - Roberto Bolaño

Some backstory first:

Bolaño was born in Chile, but moved around as a kid. Ended up in Mexico. Tried to go back to Chile during the Pinochet coup, but was arrested. He got let out and then basically bailed on the Western Hemisphere. Lived the rest of his life in Spain. He was a poet but started tow rite fiction to feed his family. He started to get acclaim for his novels in the 90s. In fact, his first novel was published in 93. 98 was The Savage Detectives, when he became a thing. After his death in 03, his books started to be translated. In 2007 The Savage Detectives was published in english and he became a thing again. In 2008, 2666 was published and Bolaño became an international sensation.

Onto the topic:

He never really got over the Americas. Everything I’ve read up until this book (Detectives, 2666, Nazi Literature in the Americas and even Between Parentheses) were based (or at least dealing with) the Americas. The Savage Detectives took place in Mexico City and Sonora. 2666 centered on a fictional Ciudad Juarez. Nazi Literature in the Americas is Self explanatory. His essays in Between Parentheses deal mostly with South/Central American concerns. The man is very much a part of this culture/scene. I can’t separate him from it.

But this book is different. First, it was written in 89 but hasn’t been published until now in any language, which tells me it’s a trunk novel that he wasn’t much interested in showing anyone. Second, the main character is German and the action takes place in Spain. In fact, there is only one character from South/Central America in the book, and that fact doesn’t play an incredibly important role in the story.

In many ways, it didn’t feel like a Bolaño book. The style was off; you can tell its an early work. It’s lacks the locale and feeling that make a Bolaño feel like a Bolaño. I won’t say I didn’t like it, just that it wasn’t what I expected and did not live up to the other books I’d read from the author. It would work as a comparison to show early B vs late B (ie. 2666), but, outside of that, it’s pretty lackluster. I would recommend any of the other B books I’d read over this one.

Call of the Wild - Jack London

I was not really a fan of this one, to be perfectly honest. I’d always seen this book as being something that young boys would read and I don’t think I was very wrong in that assertion. True, there were some violent and gruesome scenes, but even that could be tolerated by boys of a certain age. It is truly a kids book.

Not to say that it doesn’t have some literary merit. It is a good example of American Naturalism and Realism that was prevalent at the time.

My major complaint is that I disagree with the premise. The whole survival of the fittest thing is good and all, but you don’t have to be a dick about it. And that’s what Buck was. He could have survived without, you know, killing everything. Did he really need to lead the pack? Did he really have to be Alpha to survive? No. Dude is straight ego, and he feels the need to exert his supremacy on everyone around him.

In short; he is a complete and utter douche bag. I can’t deal with him being portrayed heroically as if that attitude is somehow laudable. It isn’t. And he is no hero.

And that’s why I didn’t like it personally. I find the implications of that reading distasteful. But, like I said, Jack London is Naturalist writing and Call of the Wild is Jack London. Read it for that merit alone.

God, Buck is a dick.