Pete Lit

"...slowly, steadily, approaching the inexorable end..."

Another great passage from Aleksandar Hemon's Love and Obstacles, this time from "Good Living", whose narrator holds a job selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door:

My best turf was Blue Island, way down Western Avenue, where addresses had five-digit numbers, as though the town was far back of the long line of people waiting to enter downtown paradise. I got along pretty well with the Blue Islanders. They could quickly recognize the indelible lousiness of my job; they offered me food and water; once I nearly got laid. They did not waste their time contemplating the purpose of human life; their years were spent as a tale is told: slowly, steadily, approaching the inexorable end. In the meantime, all they wanted was to live, wisely use what little love they had accrued, and endure life with the anesthetic help of television and magazines. I happened to be in their neighborhood to offer the magazines.

I occasionally take Metra's Rock Island line train (which runs right through Blue Island) into work. Blue Island is a gritty factory town which has certainly seen better days, yet somehow seems to still be clinging onto some degree of decent living. Though I've never set foot there, I can definitely see its citizens being exactly as Hemon describes - and I love that "five-digit numbers" metaphor.

Racine Avenue, No Respect?

Racine Avenue doesn't seem to get much formal respect from the City of Chicago, despite being one of its longest streets. Its path runs for roughly 21 miles (albeit not continuously), from near the intersection of Lawrence and Broadway in Uptown, all the way down to Blue Island where it finally dead-ends at Vermont St. True, it's only a minor arterial street, situated halfway between the major arteries of Ashland Avenue and Halsted Street. But still, despite its considerable length, the street is chopped apart in numerous places, most notably at waterways and expressways where its pass-through would have come at considerable expense. Specifically, Racine does not have even a single bridge over any of the waterways it would potentially cross - not the North Branch of the Chicago River:

Nor the South Branch:

Nor even the Sanitary and Ship Canal in Blue Island - though, admittedly, the lack of a bridge there is a moot point, as the street ends just north of the canal:

And with highways it's not much better. Racine doesn't get an overpass on the Kennedy Expressway:

Nor the Stevenson Expressway; in fact, Racine doesn't even exist between the South Branch and 31st Street - had its path been continued, in this photo it would have intersected the expressway roughly at the 55 symol:

 

Nor I-57:

The only expressway where Racine gets an overpass is at the Eisenhower, and even there it only gets one ramp - an on-ramp into the westbound lanes:

A little Racine love, Chicago...please!

Crossing my fingers on Afghanistan

My support for Barack Obama is well-documented here, but after seeing last night's speech at West Point I'm still not sure where he's going with the war in Afghanistan. Obviously he faces a highly unenviable situation: he can't withdraw troops quickly and just walk away, as Afghanistan's weak, corrupt and questionably-legitimate central government would soon collapse, returning the Taliban to power and giving al Qaeda a comfortable place of refuge; and he can't order a large-scale invasion which would rightly be seen as heavy-handed colonialism by the Afghan people and the rest of the world, and might not eliminate the scourge of Islamist extremism anyway. For all the talk of this being a fight against al Qaeda, the U.S. troops mostly find themselves in the middle of a civil war in a historically unstable region, and if two warring sides are bent on killing each other there's really nothing a peacekeeping force like the U.S. and its NATO allies can do about it.

The thing that most concerns me is the reliance of Obama's plan on the self-sufficiency of Afghanistan's internal security forces. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan doesn't have a tradition of a large standing army which can be recruited to fight the insurgency. From what I've heard, the Afghan forces are often just as corrupt as the Karzai government itself, meaning that we face to prospect of handing off security responsibility to a bunch of thugs and thieves. I'm also concerned how viable a strong centralized government there could possibly be. At least Iraq has the great advantage of vast oil resources which have the potential to finance security forces and social programs. Afghanistan doesn't have that. Instead its most lucrative product is opium, whose trafficking is controlled by regional warlords who thus hold great power in the country and can dictate their demands to the central government, and not vice versa.

On the other hand, I'm encouraged by claims that U.S. aid (both humanitarian and development) will increasingly not be funnelled through the central government (where it would likely be pilfered) but instead to regional and local authorities who have proven themselves willing and able to responsibly deliver that aid to everyday Afghan people. Raising the standard of living of Afghans is a critical factor in negating the allure of the extremists, and that aspect of Obama's plan is far more important than increasing our military presence.

Obama might have no choice but to insitute the troop surge that he's outlined. But if drawing down troops starting in 2011 is dependent on the Afghans (including Karzai or whomever might succeed him) taking primary responsibility for their own destiny, then I'm less than optimistic. I don't see anything in Afghanistan right now that encourages me to believe such stability and self-sufficiency is possible. Karzai has to be sternly told to get his house in order, weed out and punish official corruption, and quickly develop the military capability to suppress extremism, or else the U.S. will pull out in 2011 whether Afghanistan is ready to stand on its own or not. Our military presence cannot be an open-ended commitment, nor one that is contingent on Afghan self-sufficiency.

Obama has few if any good options. So while I'm trusting his judgment, I'm also crossing my fingers.

"...into the infinity of lifedom..."

In Aleksandar Hemon's short story "Everything" (collected in the excellent Love and Obstacles), the teenaged narrator has been given the responsibility of buying a freezer for his family, which requires a long journey from Sarajevo to the remote town of Murska Sobota, in Slovenia. The narrator - sensitive, over-romantic and almost laughably naive - believes his parents have given him this mission to introduce him to the mundane and quotidian world of adulthood, but he resists, fantasizing about escaping that fate.

In my notebook I waxed poetic about the alluring possibility of simply going on, into the infinity of lifedom, never buying the freezer chest. I would go past Murska Sobota, to Austria, onward to Paris; I would abscond from college and food storage; I would buy a one-way ticket to the utterly unforeseeable. Sorry, I would tell them, I had to do it, I had to prove than one could have a long, happy life without ever owning a freezer chest. In every trip, a frightening, exhilarating possibility of never returning is inscribed. This is why we say goodbye, I write. You knew it could happen when you sent me to the monstrous city, the endless night, when you sent me to Murska Sobota.

I love the overwrought romanticism of that passage, so full of longing. I want him to find that world beyond the mundane - "the utterly unforeseeable" - even as I want him to come to his senses and do his duty, which in the end is probably best for him.

What Book Are You? (Part II)

A commenter to a 2004 post (What Book Are You?) alerted me to an updated version of that query. So here is the book that I supposedly am:

You're The Scarlet Letter!
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Raised in a culture steeped in religious values, you raise some serious questions about the nature of that culture. While you no longer see yourself as a part of that society, you are a staunch defender of the rights of those who wish to remain there to do so. At the same time, you illustrate the hypocrisies of that society and some of the better intended people therein. Ultimately, it's possible the best improvement you think anyone could make would be the improvement of communication devices on ships. Your least favorite letter is A.
(Take the Book Quiz II at the Blue Pyramid.)

All told, I was much more pleased to be associated with Vonnegut than with Hawthorne. Like millions of Americans, I endured The Scarlet Letter as a high schooler and have no appetite to ever experience it again. And "A" is actually one of my favorite letters, for obvious reasons.

Boy's gotta have it.

Cormac McCarthy's typewriter. The one he's written every one of his books on. I've only read one of his novels, but wow, would this be a cool relic to own.

I periodically post items under the heading "Boy's gotta have it" as not-so-subtle hints of things I'd love to receive as gifts, for my birthday or Christmas or whatever. I'm notoriously difficult to shop for, as my material needs are few (other than a steady supply of books) and I also subscribe to the philosophy that if there's anything I really want that badly, I'll buy it myself long before my birthday or Christmas rolls around. It now occurs to me that listing a typewriter that's expected bring fifteen to twenty grand at auction under "Boy's gotta have it" proves that I'm not only difficult to shop for, but impossible.

Strummer (Hearted) Springsteen

Apparently Clash frontman and punk icon Joe Strummer had somewhat of an appreciation ("...HIS MUSIC IS GREAT ON A DARK & RAINY MORNING IN ENGLAND, JUST WHEN YOU NEED SOME SPIRIT & SOME PROOF THAT THE BIG WIDE WORLD EXISTS, THE D.J. PUTS ON 'RACING IN THE STREETS' & LIFE SEEMS WORTH LIVING AGAIN...") for Bruce Springsteen. But come on, Joe. Tell us what you really think.

Jack Conroy, The Disinherited

Jack Conroy's 1933 proletarian novel The Disinherited is a fine account of working class life in the Midwest during the 1920s and early 30s. The story follows the narrator Larry Donovan from his childhood in a Missouri coal mine camp to nearby jobs in a railroad shop, steel mill and rubber factory, and then on to Detroit and an automobile assembly line, during which time the economy implodes and he makes his way back home to Missouri and whatever life he can piece together there. The trouble is, though, that the book is more of a documentary than a novel. Despite the vividness of the descriptive prose, I feel like I now know far more about the rural Missouri of the 1920s than I do about any of the characters, even including Larry Donovan. In addition to thin characterization, the scenes shift awkwardly from one factory to the next, the text a plot-heavy picaresque which doesn't flow very gracefully. The book's introduction describes how Conroy first wrote the book as a series of autobiographical sketches, later transforming it to a novel only at the request of its original publisher, a revelation which comes as no surprise to the reader. Overall, it was an interesting read, but would have worked much more effectively as a memoir instead of a novel.

Fight for pride and honor, lift old Cary-Grove on high

All hail the mighty Trojans of Cary-Grove High School (my alma mater) which won its first Illinois state football title yesterday, knocking off Providence 35-17 in the 6A championship game. This is the first football title in the school's 48-year history. In fact, the school hadn't won a state title in any sport until just this year, until  the girls' volleyball team won the 4A title last month. Quite a year for the denizens and former denizens of Cary, Fox River Grove, Oakwood Hills, et al. Hurrah!

Working: Hair Stylists

From Studs Terkel's Working, this priceless bit of (dated) insight from Edward Zimmer, proprietor of a hair salon:

Years ago, a wife wouldn't think of going to a grocery store with blond hair. 'Cause what is she? A show girl? Light hair only went with strippers, prostitutes and society women. In order to silver-blond in those days, you would use a lot of ammonias and bleaches and the woman would have to come back two or three times before it got light enough to be a silver blonde. This cost fifty, sixty dollars a treatment. So the average hausfrau and her husband, he's say "What are you workin' as a cigarette girl or something? You're a mother, you got four kids, you're insulting me in church, you look like a hoozy." But today all girls look like hoozies.

That "strippers, prostitutes and society women" comment made me laugh out loud. Ed sounds like he was a pretty interesting and opinionated guy, one who would have been great to talk to. But I suspect he would have gotten pretty infuriating quite quickly.