Pete Lit

"There's people in hell would like ice water..."

Great passage here from "Dark Came Early in That Country", the leadoff piece in Nelson Algren's The Last Carousel. The narrator, a journeyman boxer, is talking to his corner man, a hustler named Dominoes.

I asked him did he know anything about some clown calls himself Indian Mickey Walker.

"Strictly an opponent," Dominoes told me, "I seen him fight a prelim at the Garden when he come up from the bushes; but he come up too fast. Went down even faster."

"All the same he done better than I done," I had to admit. "Closest I've got to the Garden was McArthur Stadium in Brooklyn."

"Never been there."

"McArthur Stadium or Brooklyn?"

"Neither," he told me, "but I'll tell you what I think. I think you need a manager."

"What for?" I asked the man, "I never needed somebody to tell me the best hand to hit an opponent with is the one closest to his jaw. I never needed somebody to teach me that when you clobber someone it's a shrewd idea to duck. What can a manager do for me beside robbing me blind?"

"He might get you in at the Garden," Dominoes decided--"or wouldn't you like that?"

"There's people in hell would like ice water," I told him, "but that don't mean anyone's bringing the pitcher."

Books Given, Gifts Received

Frankly, if it somehow ever gets to the point that my family has absolutely no interest in books whatsoever, I might just have to swear off Christmas forever since I'd have no idea what to buy for anyone.

GIVEN:

• For my Anglophile mom: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
• For my freelance writer niece (whom I hope will help me comprehend the latter): Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust/Miss Lonelyhearts
• For my countercultural nephew: Don De Grazia, American Skin; Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, editors: Steampunk
• For my Harry Potter fanatic niece (who has worn out her entire series in paperback and is now collecting the hardcovers): J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• For my Hoosier sister of uncertain literary tastes: Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
• For my brother-in-law (whom I hope likes the crime fiction I've bought him the past two years): Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

RECEIVED:

• Michael T. Fournier, The Minutemen: Double Nickels on the Dime
• Nelson Algren, The Last Carousel
• Knut Hamsun, Tales of Love and Loss
• Kent Haruf, Eventide

I've already started reading the first two, both of which are quite good. I loved Algren's forty-years-later post mortem on the 1919 Black Sox (sort of wizened-grownup, journalistic companion piece to "The Silver-Colored Yesterday", his magnificent chapter in Chicago: City on the Make which describes his boyhood reaction to the scandal), which I read while sitting on the couch at my mother-in-law's house on Christmas afternoon, completely absorbed and to the considerable amusement of my in-laws. And after I've read the Minutemen book, I plan to read it again while listening to the album, as their song titles have such a tenuous connection with their songs that I'm not always sure which song the writer is discussing at any given time.

Merry Christmas from Etgar Keret

On this most inconsistent of holidays (peace on earth and goodwill to men, versus stomping on a stranger's ribcage to grab the last marked-down waffle iron on the shelf at Wal-Mart, etc.), what could be more contrary than a Christmas message from a Jewish writer from Israel? Behold, Etgar Keret's "Christmas Card", brought to you by Electric Literature, which has authorized me, you or anyone else to re-post the piece in its entirety.

(I've enjoyed Keret's writing over the years, albeit in limited doses, primarily from his old columns at Nextbook. I'm thinking I really should finally read one of his renowned story collections - probably The Nimrod Flipout - in the coming year. It might be one of the few New Year's resolutions I'm capable of accomplishing.)


Christmas Card
by Etgar Keret

There was this guy who could walk on water. Not that that’s such a big deal. Lots of people can walk on water. They usually don’t know that because they don’t try. They don’t try because they don’t believe they can do it. In any case, that guy believed, and tried and did it. And that’s when the whole mess began.

That guy had an apostle who was very close to him and sold him out. Not that that’s such a special thing either. Lots of people are sold out by someone very close to them. If they weren’t very close, then it wouldn’t really be considered being sold out, would it. Then the Romans came and crucified the guy. Which, also, isn’t very unique. The Romans crucified a lot of people. And not just the Romans. Lots of other nations crucified and killed lots of people. All kinds of people. Ones who performed miracles and even ones who didn’t. But that guy, three days after they crucified him, was resurrected. And by the way, even that resurrection thing didn’t happen here for the first time, or even the last, for that matter. But that guy, people say, that guy died for our sins. A lot of people die for our sins: greed, jealousy, pride, or other, less well-known sins that haven’t been around for such a long time. People die like flies because of our sins and no one bothers to even write a Wikipedia entry about them. But they wrote one about that guy. And not just any old entry, but a really big one with lots of pictures and blue-colored links. Not that a Wikipedia entry is such a big thing. There are dogs that have Wikipedia entries about them. Like Lassie. And there are diseases that have entries there, like scarlet fever and multiple sclerosis. But that guy, they say, unlike multiple sclerosis and Lassie, achieved what he achieved through the power of love. Which is something we’ve also heard before. After all, there were those four English guys with the hair and the beards too, just like him, except that they were a little less famous, and they sang many songs about love. Two of them are already dead, just like him. And they, by the way, have a Wikipedia entry too. But that guy, there was something special about him. He was the son of God. Except that, actually, all of us are God’s children, right? We were born in his image. So what the hell was it about that guy that turned him into such a big deal? Such a big deal that so many people throughout history were saved or killed in his name?

Anyhow, every year, around the end of December, half the world celebrates his birthday. In many places, it snows on his birthday and everyone’s happy. But even in places where it doesn’t snow, people are happy on that day. And all because of what? Because a skinny guy who was born more than two thousand years ago asked us all to live lives of love and morality and was killed because of it. And if that’s the happiest thing this weird race has to celebrate, then it deserves a Wikipedia entry too. And actually it’s got one. Go to the nearest computer now. Type in “humanity” and you’ll get the entry. Short. Very short. Not a lot of pictures. But even so. One whole entry on a fascinating and slightly baffling race. A race that could have walked on water and never tried. A race that could have killed all those who believe the world can be a better place and in most cases, made sure to do just that. So merry Christmas to you too.

Good Reading 2009

In what is becoming dangerously close to a revered tradition around here, below is my 2009 best-of list. As always, few titles that were published this year, and quite a few chestnuts.

Top Ten:
1. Budd Schulberg: What Makes Sammy Run? (Review)
2. George Orwell: 1984 (Review)
3. Mark Costello: The Murphy Stories (Review)
4. Aleksandar Hemon: Love and Obstacles (Review)
5. Barbara Kingsolver: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (Review)
6. Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Review)
7. Henry David Thoreau: Walden, or Life in the Woods (Review)
8. Nathanael West: Miss Lonelyhearts (Review)
9. Isaac Bashevis Singer: Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories
10. Flannery O'Connor: A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (Review)

Honorable Mention:
William Trevor: Death in Summer; Edmund Wilson: The American Jitters: A Year of the Slump (Review); John Cook: Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small (Review); Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (Review); Jack Conroy: The Disinherited (Review).

Re-Readings:
Pär Lagerkvist: The Dwarf (Review)

2008 List
2007 List
2006 List
2005 List
2004 List
2003 List
2002 List

A Study in Scarlet - Suh-weeet!

If I was an oil tycoon, trust fund baby or Mega Millions winner with unlimited financial resources to spend on utterly superfluous curiousities, this would be high up on my list: an 1887 issue of Beeton's Christmas Annual, which contains Arthur Conan Doyle's novella A Study In Scarlet, the first published appearance of Sherlock Homes (my first literary hero). Current market value is a cool $160,000. In case you've never read the story, it's a bit of a Holmes oddity, as vast portions of it consist of backstory (set in Utah amongst the early Mormon settlers) for the London murder which Holmes later investigates. In other words, much of the story doesn't involve Holmes at all. It's a seminal work for Doyle, who tinkers with his new character creation and sets the stage for the more familiar "casebook" Holmes stories which followed.

Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories

The stories collected in Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories are powerful, vividly narrated and masterfully crafted works of art. Yet despite those superlatives I now have absolutely no urge to read these stories again, nor any of O'Connor's other works.

For me, the problem is characterization and tone. At best, her characters are naive, selfish or indifferent, but at worst - which is most of the time - they are bitter, vindictive, ignorant, greedy and relentlessly cruel even to the point of being homicidal. As for tone, based on these stories it would seem that O'Connor thought very little of humanity and its potential for decency and redemption.

Don't get me wrong - I'm no Norman Vincent Peale or Forrest Gump, obsessed with positive thinking and staying on the sunny side of life. I happen to like dark fiction, which usually accurately reflects the oh-so-human shortcomings of our world. But even the darkest fiction has to have a least a glimmer of light to make it worthwhile, and I just don't see even the slightest glimmer in these overwhelmingly grim stories. O'Connor's title doesn't go far enough - not only is a good man, or woman, hard to find here, but it's damn near impossible.

Bury My Heart... turns 40

One of the finest books I have ever read (and an early impetus towards my finally challenging conventional wisdom and recognizing the plight of the powerless), Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, celebrated its fortieth anniversary this year. At The Huffington Post, Tim Giago writes a nice appreciation on the book, including this vivid and moving quote:

Perhaps prematurely, Black Elk said, "I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream...the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer and the sacred tree is dead."

(Via MobyLives.)

Quote

"I have lived in other cities but been inside only one."
- Ben Hecht

(In case you're wondering, that city was Chicago. 1001 Afternoons in Chicago is one of my very favorite books about our fair city, and is due for a re-reading in the coming year.)

Short Stories 2009

Kendra Grant Malone, "Rape Children"
The story's narrator has a relationship, but it's clearly not the one she wants. She has fun with her significant other; they go out drinking, watch TV for hours, shout provocative but extremely inappropriate things (such as the title phrase of the story) in public just to get a reaction. But she wants it to be more than that - deeper, more emotional, maybe even to the point of saying "I love you", and more intimate than their long-distance relationship allows. Yet she can't get them beyond that level by the end of their weekend together, and faces a long - and longing - bus ride home. Sad and strangely affecting. (Source: ML Press) (Posted: 12/14/09)

Karl Koweski, "Holly Go Darkly"
Vic's online affair has escalated into a physical one and, desperate to escape the emptiness of his loveless marriage, he impulsively professes to Holly his love which she emphatically does not share. When she resists he strikes back, with just enough tact to avoid the sour-grapes litany of her physical shortcomings that suddenly runs through his mind, yet still utters his frustration that their relationship is to her nothing more than a casual fling. She exits the hotel room, likely ending whatever happiness - though temporary and conditional - he might have had with her. Koweski's spare prose is full of longing and sadness, concisely imparting the hopes and sober reality of Vic's life. (Source: Fried Chicken and Coffee, 10/5/09) (Posted: 10/29/09)

J.F. Powers, "Bill"
Father Joe has a small yet comfortable parish, but no curate to help with the work; an established career, but no professional collegiality; a well-stocked liquor cabinet, but no drinking buddy. A curate is finally appointed, raising the priest's hopes and setting him into action. Curiously, though, over the course of a week we see him performing few of his official duties - saying Mass, taking confession or even interacting with his parishioners. Instead we mostly see him fretting over who the new curate will be and furnishing the curate's quarters - haggling with furniture salesmen, conferring with an interior designer, arranging the rooms. But when the curate finally arrives, Father Joe finds him to be neither the deferential nor convivial colleague he hoped for, and in expressing his frustration provides a glimpse of how he feels about himself and his own life. This light and quietly comic story has really whetted my appetite to read Morte d'Urban, Powers' acclaimed novel of the similarly situated Father Urban. (Source: Modern Irish-American Fiction: A Reader) (Posted 10/16/09)

William Walsh, "Muse"
Spare and lean, and consisting primarily of terse dialogue, this story involves every male poet's fantasy: an attractive woman who not only recognizes the narrator as being a poet and offers inspiration for his verse, but is also willing to sleep with him with very little effort from him. But reality concerns aside, her presence isn't strictly literal, but a metaphor for what inspires all writers - that single spark which creates "fifty, sixty" works or more. The story might also be a commentary on the old conceit that creative writers shouldn't marry, that whatever passion and focus they devote to relationships would be better directed to their writing. That's not an opinion I agree with, but the narrator seems to meet it halfway - he gives up "possibly an endless number" of inspirations from her, instead accepting with their new relationship just a single inspiration, one which he'll use again and again. And will likely be happier for it. (Source: Night Train, October 2009) (Posted: 10/15/09)

Mark Costello, "Callahan's Black Cadillacs""
Devastating from the very first line ("Out of World War II he swings, fat, flatulent, hemorrhoidal, hyberbolic, sleepy, lazy, squat, penniless, hypertense."), this great story alternates between the adolescent narrator's interactions with his ravaged and ruined Uncle Mort (just 26 years old but already well on his way to death) and pious, grieving Great Aunt Hatt during and in the aftermath of World War II. Gradually the two story lines draw together, first via Mort's incessant pleas for money from Hatt and then to Hatt's deep secret which only Mort seems to be the only other person to know, and finally to the demise of each, the details of which blur together in the memory of the narrator as he looks back as an adult. Simply stunning. (Source: The Murphy Stories) (Posted 10/14/09)

Paul Lamb, "The Manuscript"
The premise of this story is terrific - a hardluck guy named Quincy who proves to be the angel of death for every organization he's ever been associated with, the portentous job he's about to assume, and the rash act committed by the narrator which presumably averts global disaster - and the telling is straightforward and logical. Just two problems: first, the narrative device used - a secondary narrator discovers the primary narrator's written confession - adds little to the story; and second, the narrator's over-explaining of the implications of Quincy's employment history, when just a recital of the company names (Braniff, Enron, WorldCom) would have been more than enough to get the point across. Still, an entertaining story overall. (Source: Mirror Dance, June 2009) (Posted 9/21/09)

Dan Chaon, "The Hobblers"
A spare and sorrowful work of flash fiction that explores marital loss and grief. The narrator's feelings about the old couple who walk past his house every day, and his subtly-rendered resentment over what they represent, have a quietly powerful impact. (Source: Smokelong Quarterly.) (Posted 9/10/09)

Walter S. Tevis, "The Big Bounce"
Odd story, sort of Sci-Fi Lite, about two amateur scientists and their accidental discovery of a rubber-like substance with amazing - and soon to be ominous - qualities. The piece is awkwardly structured, with the first half a stiff, dialogue-heavy narrative that reminded me of the here's-how-it-all-happened conclusion to a Hardy Boys mystery (with plenty of scientific jargon that to my layman's ear might be realistic but could just as well be nonense) while the second half is a rollicking adventure yarn as the two chase their creation as it careens out of control. Mildly interesting but less than compelling overall, and not at all what I expected from the writer of such realistic dramas as The Hustler and The Color of Money. (Source: Project Gutenberg.) (Posted 9/9/09)

Eudora Welty, "Why I Live at the P.O."
After reading this rollicking, darkly funny story, the question is no longer why the narrator lives in the back room of a small-town post office, but instead why she lived with her family - ignorant, insensitive, mean-spirited and any number of other negative adjectives - for as long as she did. A terrific little slice of Southern life, as I suspect most of Welty's stories are. (Source: Short Story Masterpieces, edited by Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine.) (Posted 8/24/09)

Spencer Dew, "Scrapbook of Fatal Accidence"
Jack has woman problems: there's his ex, Larissa, who he won't be getting over any time soon; and Z, very desirable but married with kids and forever unattainable; and Eileen, who may be his ex-lover but is more than likely an old friend or even sister, a painfully self-aware young woman who endlessly spews her acute self-diagnosis, which Jack only listens to some of the time. But despite his difficult interactions with these three women (or non-interaction, in the case of Larissa), Jack is too passive to do anything decisive about any of them. So on he goes, meandering through life and clearly getting nowhere. The title is a nod to Nelson Algren (in The Man With the Golden Arm, Zosh keeps her own "Scrapbook of Fatal Accidence", a collection of newspaper clippings of grisly car crashes and train wrecks), and it's a good fit with Dew's story, which is sort of Jack's own scrapbook of tragic wrecks. Like a scrapbook, the story is a scattershot collection of events and places from Jack's life, each of which may seem disjointed in isolation but taken collectively present an effective portrait of a very lost soul. (Source: Thieves Jargon, Issue 81, January 5, 2009) (Posted 8/14/09)

Randa Jarrar, "The Life, Loves, and Adventures of Zelwa the Halfie"
Having followed the author online for several years, I wanted to like this story much more than I did. And there's plenty here to like - the concept of half-human/half-beasts living in the everyday world (rendered very matter-of-factly, just enough for suspension of disbelief), the "halfie" narrator's use of the movie Splash as a litmus test to see how her dates really think of her and her kind, the tense relationship with her father. But the delivery just seems a bit off. There is too much explanation of the narrator's life, instead of illustration; I would have preferred to see that life shown in a few more vivid scenes rather than having the narrator tell everything. A little more left unsaid, and a lot less explanation. (Source: Oxford American, February 2009) (Posted 6/9/09)

Ambrose Bierce, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
Kind of an odd story - the first two sections are straight, realistic narrative, the first showing the impending hanging of a Southerner during the Civil War, the second showing some of the protagonist's backstory which lead him to his fate, with both sections being fairly static and heavy on physical description. Then the third section continues in the same realistic vein but ramps up the action as the protagonist suddenly makes his escape from the Northern troops. Or so it seems, as the very last line delivers a devastating twist which abruptly proves the preceding action to be false, and the mere fantasy of a doomed man. Extremely well done, and a story very much ahead of its time. (Source: Project Gutenberg) (Posted 4/29/09)

Nelson Algren, "Entrapment"
I'm not sure "Entrapment" fully works as a short story, but it certainly does so better than its original intended form - a novel, for which Algren wrote 300-something pages but never completed. A full-length novel like this would have been unbearable to read - not because of the writing, which is typically wonderful Algren, often at his very best, but instead the tone. While Algren leavened his grim fiction with black humor and glimmers of slim hope, there is none of that in "Entrapment", just bitterness and regret, as the utterly disconsolate narrator talks in circles as he punishes himself for pushing away the only woman he would ever love. This is a touching and emotionally devastating sketch of a man's life, drawn heavily from Algren's own experience, that gives an intriguing glimpse into the writer's inner self. (Source: Nelson Algren, Entrapment and Other Writings) (Posted 4/5/09)

Isaac Bashevis Singer, "Joy"
"Joy" is the lovely story of Bainish, a revered and beloved rabbi in a small European town who has a crisis of faith after four of his children die of an unnamed disease. The rabbi abandons his leadership of the local synagogue and privately renounces his faith, completely retreating from the world in his stricken grief. But one day he has a vision of his recently-deceased daughter, who admonishes him to return to his religious duties and tells him that she will come back for him (clearly, to lead him to death and the afterlife) after the high holidays. Her appearance (or his hallucination, if you prefer) revives him from his torpor and doubt, and he resumes his duties with an enthusiasm and vigor not seen before, his religious faith restored just before his daughter's return. It's not entirely clear what makes the rabbi suddenly recover his faith - the shock of the vision of his daughter, perhaps, or his realization that a state of doubt at the time of his death will doom him to eternal damnation. Maybe seeing truly is believing - though the rabbi didn't actually see God, he did see a manifestation (or delusion) of deity, and that was enough for him. Faith is a tricky and delicate thing - sometimes, Singer seems to be saying, simply wanting to believe is enough to foster belief - and the rabbi clearly wanted to believe, never abandoning the personal pious rituals even during his time of doubt. Though this is a very religious story (as are all the other stories in this collection), even the non-religious can be heartened by it: for the rabbi's vision of his daughter, as a reminder to him of what was lost, makes him realize what is truly important, and gives him the strength to celebrate life again with the time he still has left. (Source: Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories) (Posted 3/3/09)

Colum McCann, "Phreak"
McCann's story revolves around the Philippe Petit's 1974 tightrope walk between the towers of the World Trade Center. The first section is absolutely wonderful in its depiction of the bustling street milieu of Lower Manhattan, as some people congregate on street corners, craning the necks upward in wonderment at the tiny blot in the sky between the towers, while just as many hurry past, intent on reaching their destinations. But the second section falls completely flat as the writer attempts to introduce a bored computer hacker in California who dials in to payphones near the WTC, hoping for a firsthand account of the event. The vivid street scenes of the first section are abandoned for a long and unsatisfying series of choppy, back-and-forth phone dialogue. The third section reverts to the style of the first as it tells of the aerialist's arrest, completing the story but mostly failing to connect with the second section - which, quite unintentionally, drives home the point that the second section is mostly irrelevant. The first section would have made a great short story on its own, but the writer simply took it too far. (Source: The Paris Review, Fall 2008) (Posted 1/19/09)

Franz Kafka, "The Judgment"
Starts slowly (too slowly, I think) but ends swiftly and with a bang. Plenty of father-son dynamic tension, from an aging father who feels shoved aside and a son who may not have been aware that he was the one who shoved. Interesting story, though not the true classic I had been lead to believe it is. (Source: Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis and Other Stories) (Posted 1/18/09)

Working: Auditor

Another excerpt from Studs Terkel's Working, this time from Fred Roman, a public accountant:

You're an auditor. The term scares people. They believe you're there to see if they're stealing nickels and dimes out of petty cash. We're not concerned with that. But people have that image of us. They think we're there to spy on them. What we're really doing is making sure things are reported correctly. I don't care if somebody's stealing money as long as he reports it. (Laughs.)

I can relate. My first job out of college was as a bank auditor, examining clients and making sure everything there was actually as they claimed. Though the clients were always friendly, they were always suspicious and wary of my presence, and were undoubtedly relieved when I finished my audit and left their offices.

Aleksandar Hemon, "Szmura's Room"

Perhaps my favorite story in Aleksandar Hemon's Love and Obstacles is "Szmura's Room" which relates the lonely, lost existence of the Bosnian immigrant Bogdan as he rents a room in Chicago from the thuggish loan shark Mike Szmura. Reading the story (first in The New Yorker, then again in the book) I was genuinely touched by Bogdan's quietly desperate striving for human connection, in the midst of a bewildering new world, with the elderly landlady who lives across the hall.

But one thing about "Szmura's Room" bothered me. Although the story focuses almost exclusively on Bogdan, it is told by a first-person narrator who is one of Szmura's poker buddies. The narrator tells of Bogdan's thoughts and private experiences, neither of which the narrator (who barely knows Bogdan) could possibly be privy to. Although the narrator did learn about some of Bogdan's life from the mocking anecdotes related by Szmura at the poker table, the narrator's descriptions of Bogdan are far too expansive to be believable.

Lately I've been very attuned, both in reading and my own writing, of fictional perspective. I'm suspicious of omniscient narrative in general - to me, being able to see inside the heads of an entire cast of characters is about as unrealistic as fiction can get - and even more so when it's in the first person. When I came across the inconsistency of the narrator relating far more about Bogdan than he could possibly know, I was highly put off, as it tainted my otherwise great enjoyment of the story.

But then it hit me. [SPOILER ALERT.] The narrator - a Bosnian immigrant himself, albeit of an earlier vintage than Bogdan - quietly discloses that he previously rented that same room from Szmura. Presumably the narrator did so when he, like Bogdan, found himself in a strange new country with nowhere else to turn, but later moved out once he had established a new independent life for himself. Thinking through the potential implications, I finally realized that most of what the narrator tells of Bogdan is not about Bogdan at all - instead, the narrator projects his own past onto Bogdan to fill in the gaps of the latter's life of which the narrator lacks direct knowledge. When he tells of Bogdan being ridiculed by Szmura, or enduring the overhearing of Szmura and girlfriend going at it in the next room, or perusing the pathetic displays at the musty Bosnian heritage museum which the landlady curates out of a storefront, the narrator is actually relating his own experiences, ones which he might have forgotten but were dredged up upon learning of the new immigrant renting Szmura's room. The narrator clearly sees Bogdan as a younger version of himself - and this transference gives the story a glimmer of hope. Since the narrator implies that he has managed to carve out a new life for himself in America, then maybe Bogdan's currently pitiful plight won't be permanent either.

This subtle projection or transference is a fine crafted literary touch on the part of Hemon, and a great example of why I enjoy his writing as much as I do.

Aleksandar Hemon, Love and Obstacles

In his latest story collection Love and Obstacles, Alexsandar Hemon works through many of his now-familiar themes: immigration, identity and a search for belonging. He also continues his obsession with the Bosnian War - the leadup to the war, the war itself and its aftermath - and its devastating impact on his characters. But he also develops a new theme, that of artistic expression, as his narrator - aspiring poet as a teen, fiction writer as an adult - strives to become the artist he's always dreamed of while confronting the pitfalls of the artistic life. (Admittedly, Hemon may have explored this theme before, but this is the first time I've really been aware of it - and I've read all of his books.) As always, Hemon's storytelling is compelling, gripping and emotionally moving, and his prose (especially those characteristically oddball metaphors) is rich and inventive. This is yet another outstanding work from Hemon, one of our finest living writers and one of my personal favorites.

"...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.

"...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.

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.

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.

Algren and Terkel

Nelson Algren and Studs Terkel in 1975, just before Algren's departure from Chicago. Algren is at his wisecracking best (with his new home of Paterson, NJ bearing the brunt of his acerbic humor) while Studs hangs on for the ride. Algren also offhandedly voices the well-worn refrain of Chicago's lack of appreciation for him, as evidenced by the Public Library not having a single copy of one of his books.

(Via The Second Pass.)

Wow, I've actually read several of these. I'm shocked.

The Times of London has published their "The 100 Best Books of the Decade" list. Here are the ones I've read, and the ones that were already on my to-read list.

Already Read
42. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel (2006)
37. William Trevor: The Collected Stories (2009)
14. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi (2003)
9. Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001)
2. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2003)
1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)

On My List
97. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2007)
68. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (2005)
66. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004)
51. Home by Marilynne Robinson (2008)
46. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
44. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (2005)
40. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight trans Simon Armitage (2007)
24. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
22. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (2000)
3. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (2004)

Comments:
+ Trevor is on the "read" list with an asterisk, because while I haven't read that specific volume, I've read several of his other story collections, which I assume partially overlap with The Collected Stories.
+ I liked Bechdel's book, but as far as "graphic memoirs" go, Joe Sacco's Palestine and Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers were both much better.
+ I wouldn't even put Nafisi's book on a list of the hundred best books I've ever read, let alone of the decade.
+ Absolutely no argument here with numbers 9, 2 and 1. Great books all.

Lord, I've been name-dropped

During the course of answering the question "Does Chicago Need A Literary Hall of Fame?" (quick answer: YES), Donald G. Evans was kind enough to mention this humble blog (albeit with name misspelled) as one of the media sources which is devoted to promoting the cause of local literature. Although there's any number of other outlets that are much more deserving of his mention than this blog, I still greatly appreciate the gesture.

"He stood like a statue, one arm extended toward the west."

Love this passage from Jack Conroy's The Disinherited, especially the way Conroy deftly narrows the focus from the epic sweep of Detroit autoworkers exiting the city as the Great Depression accelerates, to the poignant individual scenes involving the Tennessee-bound family and then the solitary hitchhiker.

As the factories closed or cut their forces and hours, the exodus from the city increased in volume. We lived by the Chicago pike, and had nothing better to do than to watch the procession pass. Some in shiny new sedans, but more in asthmatic antiques, creaking under burdens of furniture, bedding, lares and penates, children, and even Kentucky hound dogs, their long ears flying like banners in the breeze. The children peered out brightly, merry over the prospect of the long trip south.

Not all in cars.

In a driving November rain a man passed the house pulling a heavily loaded coaster wagon and followed by a staggering woman, ineffectually striving to shield a blue-lipped baby from the cold and wet. Ben called them in, fed them, and dried their clothing. The husband had been laid off in Detroit and spent his last penny looking for work, and they were trying to make it home to La Follette, Tenn., still many a weary mile ahead.

I saw a middle-aged man seemingly petrified by the side of the highway. He stood like a statue, one arm extended toward the west. His face was set and hopeless like a stone mask. Begging a ride, he did so proudly; no energetic thumbing and appealing. A battered suitcase rested between his legs. Nobody heeded him. The cars whizzed along the grey concrete and the Winter dusk settled down. Trucks rumbled along disdainfully. A lithe speedster festooned with smart baggage purred by, and the boys inside were singing, sentimentally, "Highways are happy ways when they lead the way home."

A gang of youths in a collegiate Ford, its dilapidation camouflaged by many a chalked wisecrack, spied the immobile figure, and brakes howled to a stop fifty feet away.

"Are you tired of walking?" inquired the lad at the wheel.

"Yes!" cried the man eagerly. He picked up the suitcase and ran briskly toward the car, his frayed overcoat whipping between his legs and hindering him.

"Then run a while!" retorted the comedian, quickly throwing the car into gear for a flying start. Laughter drifted back.

A single oath which seemed to plumb the nadir of despair broke from the man's lips. He walked steadily westward, as though drawn by a magnet.

Incidentally, La Follette is in north-central Tennessee - looking at the map, it appears to be in a fairly remote area, and would have been even more remote back in 1930. In other words, a long and arduous journey from Detroit. Which makes the fate of the wagon-towing family even more desperate.

Goodnight indeed

Outstanding: Goodnight Keith Moon. The Goodnight parody seems to be slowing developing a life of its own, with excellent results so far.

(Via Coudal.)

Open Books

The opening of a new independent bookstore is always cause for celebration, but even more so with Chicago's Open Books, which combines its store with a great social mission: promoting literacy.

What, exactly, is Open Books? “It’s a social venture,” Ratner says. “We’re nonprofit, so we’re dependent on charitable ways of giving. The second thing is that it’s a public space to make illiteracy an issue. It’s a big, colorful, creative, collaborative space for all levels."

A very welcomed development indeed.

"...black timbers etched against a setting sun..."

From The Disinherited, by Jack Conroy:

A mine tipple is like a gallows, especially if you chance to see its black timbers etched against a setting sun; and the cage dangles from the cathead like a hangman's rope. I have thought whimsically when a miner's head has appeared out of the shaft, apparently supported by the cable only, that his tongue should protrude and his legs kick spasmodically.

Grim foreshadowing indeed, but I also admire how Conroy leavened the imagery somewhat with the narrator's adolescent "whimsy" - though that whimsy, like most of the novel so far, is in itself strikingly morbid.

William Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940

William Leuchtenburg's Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 is a very fine and highly informative overview of the New Deal - the domestic economic and social programs developed by Roosevelt and his army of reformers in response to the crisis of the Great Depression. Refreshingly, the author resists considerable temptation in not making this a mere hagiography of FDR, but discusses both his successes and his failures, both his personal strengths and shortcomings. The author acknowledges that, for all of its success, the New Deal never solved the problem of widespread unemployment, which was only quelled with the rapid military armament in support of the war in Europe. Still, the New Deal did stabilize our country and bring it back from the bring of collapse, while also establishing much of the social safety net (Social Security, insured bank deposits, unemployment insurance) that we often take for granted today, as well as regulatory bodies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Labor Relations Board which have been critical in curbing the worst abuses of big business.

My one qualm is that, despite the title, this is not exclusively a study of the New Deal, but more of an overview of FDR's first two terms. Leuchtenburg narrates at length about the rise of fascism in the mid 1930s and the start of World War II at the end of the decade, which of course are essential to any discussion of FDR's presidency (especially since the author details FDR's response to each, most notably charting Roosevelt's evolution from isolationist to internationalist) but don't specifically pertain to the New Deal. The book could well have stayed to its New Deal theme, not by ignoring fascism and WWII, but by explaning how each impacted New Deal policies and programs. Still, that qualm is a minor one, and Leuchtenburg's book is a thorough and well-written study of a fascinating era and one of our greatest political leaders, which I highly recommend.

Quotes

Three more great quotes from Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940 by William Leuchtenburg, which I finished reading yesterday. First, Justice Louis Brandeis, on Scandinavia's "middle way" (emulated by the New Deal) which accomodated both public and private institutions, and also a backhanded refutation of Communism:

"Why should anyone want to go to Russia when one can go to Denmark?"

Next, Harry Hopkins (FDR's WPA director and later Commerce Secretary) on the New Deal's spirit of innovation and non-ideological pragmatism:

"I am for experimenting...in various parts of the country, trying out schemes which are supported by reasonable people and see if they work. If they do not work, the world will not come to an end."

Lastly, Republican Senator Jim Watson of Indiana, expressing, to Wendell Willkie (the GOP presidential nominee) at the 1940 nominating convention, the conservatives' concern over the political ideology of Willkie, who had only recently left the Democratic Party:

"I don't mind the church converting a whore, but I don't want her to lead the choir the first night!"

"In Flanders Fields"

Despite being a pacifist, I still find myself moved by this verse...

In Flanders Fields
by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD, Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Today is Veterans Day, so please give some remembrance to all of the soldiers who have fought for our country. But also recall that this day was originally called Armistice Day ("a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace"), which marked the peaceful end of World War I, and remember that striving for peace means more soldiers come home safely or never go to war in the first place.

Quote

"Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took it all from them."
- Edward Filene, as quoted in Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940, by William Leuchtenberg

I didn't know anything about Filene (other than his department store chain) before reading this quote, but he seems to have been an interesting individual. He was a highly successful merchant, of course, but also was instrumental in the creation of both credit unions and workers compensation insurance.

What happened in Hastings?

Nick Hornby passes along an intriguing anecdote:

I am on a train from the south coast back to London. Across the aisle, three elderly passengers, two women and a man, buy coffee from the trolley.

“What you do,” says the elderly man to his friends, “Is, you sip through the hole in the top of the lid.”

The two elderly women give it a go, tentatively at first, and pronounce themselves amazed and delighted at this technological breakthrough.

“I only found that out myself when I went to Hastings,” said the man.

What happened in Hastings? I wish I knew.

"What Happened in Hastings" - sounds like short story gold to me! Writers, hop to it!

Quote

"These are dead men. They are ghosts that walk the streets by day. They are ghosts sleeping with yesterday's newspapers thrown around them for covers at night."
- Tom Kromer, Waiting for Nothing

Quote

"Here is the difference between Dante, Milton and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years."
- Carl Sandburg

Beautiful...and that reminds me that I really need to delve back into Sandburg's Chicago Poems one of these days.

Great Depression reading

My literary tour of the Great Depression continues. Over the weekend (thanks in part to Internet-connection problems that kept me off my laptop, blissfully as I now realize) I finished Edmund Wilson's The American Jitters: A Year of the Slump, a collection of magazine essays from 1930-31, when the "Great Depression" moniker hadn't been coined yet and the turnaround engineered by FDR (who took office in 1933) was still a few years off. Wilson surveys the national landscape, with particularly memorable pieces on labor strife in the West Virginia coal mines and the construction site of the Hoover Dam, making no effort to hide his Communist sympathies (which were admittedly more socially acceptable in those capitalist-backlash days) and his loyalties to the common laborer. As the book concludes, I was struck by how convinced the otherwise astute Wilson was then that the Communist revolution in America was imminent. Which makes me wonder why, despite conditions being so ripe, that revolution never happened - was it the success of FDR's New Deal? the preoccupation with the rise of Hitler and immersion in WWII? the emerging horrors of the totalitarian Soviet state that revealed that maybe Communism wasn't paradise after all? Interesting question, I think.

Next up is William Leuchtenburg's Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940, which I'm seventy pages in to. Fresh from his resounding 1932 defeat of Hoover (electoral college margin: 472-59!) FDR has just completed his whirlwind first 100 days in office, during which time he managed to enact a truly mind-boggling mass of legislation designed to stauch the Depression bleeding and prod the country toward recovery. Good reading so far, though a bit heavy on detail.

Ben Tanzer, I Am Richard Simmons

We recently read I Am Richard Simmons, the new chapbook from Ben Tanzer (our colleague, kindred spirit and bestest lunch companion) and swooned all over again, as the story's eponymous narrator projects the energy and mania and exuberance and positivity and, yes, also the veiled desperation and sadness and heartbreak that seems to underlie all of that celebrity's public appearances. The chapbook is part of Mud Luscious Press' ongoing series, and while reading both the book and series are very much worth your time, they may not necessarily change your life. But maybe, just maybe, it will, and at any rate it will definitely change Ben's.

Mark Costello, The Murphy Stories

I recently read Mark Costello's 1973 story collection The Murphy Stories, and was thoroughly impressed. The stories all center on Murphy, a middling Midwest academic with a troubled personal life. Costello's descriptions of Murphy's unhappy marriage and empty affairs alternate between harrowing and relentlessly sad, so much so that, given the general similarities between Costello and Murphy, I truly hope for the writer's sake that these stories aren't overly autobiographical.

Although the well-anthologized "Murphy's Xmas" is probably the best known story here, I think the strongest is the first, "Callahan's Black Cadillacs", which shows Murphy (unnamed, yet clearly the same protagonist as the later stories) during his difficult midcentury childhood, when his only adult role models are his Republican bureaucrat father (who devotes far more attention to getting political jobs for locals than minding his own family), pious Great Aunt Hatt (who becomes his foster mother after his parents temporarily move to Chicago for his father's wartime job) and boozy vagrant Uncle Mort, all of whom provide less-than-ideal influences on young Murphy and set the stage for the unhappiness of his adult life, as depicted so convincingly in the later stories.

Costello hasn't been widely published, with just two story collections to his name, which is presumably the result of his focus on teaching creative writing, primarily at my alma mater, the University of Illinois (where I happened to hear him give a reading in the mid 1980s). Based on the strength of The Murphy Stories, I'd say his students' gain is clearly the reading public's loss, as I'd really love to see much more of his work than what's out there. Then again, writing stories as emotionally wrenching as these has to be hard on the writer, so maybe he's personally better off for not having written more than he has.

Progressivism Then (As Now)

Edmund Wilson, from "Meditations of a Progressive", circa 1930-31 (collected in The American Jitters: A Year of the Slump):

...Still, one who like to see them come out and say, "Capitalism has got to go. It's just a question of time, so we're trying to make the transition easy." If they're going in for scaring the manufacturers, they might as well scare them good and proper. I suppose they're afraid of scaring their constituents, too. But why do the American progressives have to be tongue-tied with inhibitions? - they're shy of the whole language of real political thought. The surest way to shake an American reformer and make him back down has always been to accuse him of socialism - that's what they did with Bryan, and we ought to be beyond the Bryan stage. I suppose that we still have a lingering feeling that God is going to strike us dead if we admit that our old-fashioned republic isn't the last word in political science. A few high words would do no one any harm.

Clearly things have changed little since Wilson's day. We're still not "beyond the Bryan stage" - any proposal for genuine political reform, for wresting power away from the plutocracy, is met with charges of socialism (as if socialism is really that bad - it's done quite well for the standard of living in many countries in Europe), from which progressive reformers nearly always shrink in fear, weakly retreating from their positions and leaving the status quo intact.

Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records

I just finished reading the terrific Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, The Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small, by John Cook with Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance. It's a history, primarily oral, of Merge, the great indie from Chapel Hill, North Carolina which has brought out so many great albums - not just by Superchunk (McCaughan and Ballance's band) but also Neutral Milk Hotel, Magnetic Fields, Spoon, Arcade Fire and many others - over the past twenty years. Mac and Laura started Merge from nothing, from being merely a vehicle for releasing 7-inch singles by Superchunk (whose first three albums weren't even on Merge) and their obscure Chapel Hill friends to becoming one of the most important record labels around, indie or otherwise. It's truly inspiring to read how Mac and Laura have made Merge into a success completely on their own terms, simply by doing what they love and following their hearts. None of Merge's artists were brought on because of their hitmaking potential, but because they made great music that Mac and Laura wanted to bring to the world, and because of the great music and the label's passion and commitment to doing things the right way, some of Merge's albums became bonafide hits (Arcade Fire and Spoon in particular). As the physical album gives way to the digital delivery of MP3s, the book ends on a somewhat nervous note, as even Mac and Laura seem uncertain that Merge can continue to thrive in the post-CD age, but if anyone in the record industry can pull it off, it's them. I'll certainly be cheering for Merge, the little label that could - and can.

(Special thanks to John Kenyon at Things I'd Rather Be Doing for sending me the book.)

Royko vs. Sinatra

Oh god, this is fantastic: Frank Sinatra's angry letter to Mike Royko, in which Old Blue Eyes threatened Royko after the latter had written a column that criticized the Chicago Police Department for providing free bodyguards to Sinatra during a 1976 visit to the city, will soon be up for auction. Royko's followup column, "Don't Bet Against Sinatra" (or something like that - I lent my copy of Sez Who? Sez Me, which includes the column, to a friend), is one of my very favorite pieces of his. Though I'll follow the auction with interest, I won't be bidding, as the pdf copy is more than enough for me.

And coincidentally, the current owner of the letter, Vie Carlson (the mother of Cheap Trick drummer Bun Carlos), is a very distant shirttail relative of mine, whom I've never met.

Mad Men and Typewriters

Boing Boing links to a long interview with Scott Buckwald, the original prop master for Mad Men who had the delicious task of obtaining props which were faithful to the show's early 1960s era. Writer geek that I am, I couldn't help but enjoy this bit on typewriters:

I thought Mad Men made a big mistake on the typewriters. They knew what the right history was, but they ignored it. The secretaries at that advertising firm would have still been using vintage-style typewriters, but they used IBM Selectrics simply because the producer liked the way they looked and they made less noise on set. So we got many letters about how they were wrong, but, again, that’s his call. And right or wrong, it’s his show. He can do whatever he wants with it.

There was a typewriter repairman in North Hollywood, California. He couldn’t believe it when all of a sudden someone deposited 24 vintage typewriters on his doorstep and said, “Make them look new.” He probably hadn’t had that much work in the last 25 years. He was probably just about ready to hang up the “Going out of business” sign and cursing the arrival of the laptop computer when all of a sudden here I come with 24 typewriters.

The Decline and Likely Fall of Sir Minnes

Well, apparently Sir Minnes is still alive, that is, as of 8/22/1666. It occurred to me that it might be entertaining to follow the gentleman's progress or, given that he's dying, regression. (I don't know how lethal the ague was 433 years ago, but I'm not optimistic for his chances.) So that's exactly what I'll do here, updating this post whenever Pepys makes a new reference to him.

8/22/1666: I perceive (Sir W. Pen) do look after Sir J. Minnes’s place if he dies, and though I love him not nor do desire to have him in, yet I do think [he] is the first man in England for it.
8/26/1666: Being come home, hear that Sir J. Minnes has had a very bad fit all this day, and a hickup do take him, which is a very bad sign, which troubles me truly.

(Almost two weeks have now passed with no further mention of Sir Minnes. But Pepys could hardly be faulted for neglect, as something came up in the meantime that deserved his full attention, namely the Great Fire of London. Check out Pepys' firsthand account of the fire here, starting with his entry of 9/2/1666. Great reading - though my hopes for the already-infirm Sir Minnes, in the midst of this devastation, have dwindled to almost nothing.)

9/17/1666: Thence by coach over the ruines, down Fleete Streete and Cheapside to Broad Streete to Sir G. Carteret, where Sir W. Batten (and Sir J. Minnes, whom I had not seen a long time before, being his first coming abroad) and Lord Bruncker passing his accounts.
9/25/1666: Thence took my wife home to dinner, and then to the office, where Mr. Hater all the day putting in order and entering in a book all the measures that this account of the Navy hath been made up by, and late at night to Mrs. Turner’s, where she had got my wife and Lady Pen and Pegg, and supped, and after, supper and the rest of the company by design gone, Mrs. Turner and her husband did lay their case to me about their lodgings, Sir J. Minnes being now gone wholly to his owne, and now, they being empty, they doubt Sir T. Harvy or Lord Bruncker may look after the lodgings.

(Not sure what to make of this: is Sir Minnes dead or not? What exactly does "gone to his owne" mean? Had he written "gone to his Maker", the meaning would have been obvious. A little help here?)

9/26/1666: Up, and with Sir J. Minnes to St. James’s, where every body going to the House, I away by coach to White Hall...

(Well, apparently Sir Minnes is still alive and well. Although Pepys' mentions of him are limited, Minnes seems to be getting around. Is it possible he kicked the ague?)

9/27/1666: Thence I by coach home to the office, and there intending a meeting, but nobody being there but myself and Sir J. Minnes, who is worse than nothing, I did not answer any body, but kept to my business in the office till night...

("Worse than nothing" sounds like a slam, so Pepys' apparent transition from pity for Minnes to scorn makes me think even more that the latter has fully recovered. I don't even know who Sir Minnes is - I haven't looked for any biographical information, lest I spoil the suspense over his fate - but he appears to be a work colleague of Pepys, so from now on there might be regular and very ordinary references to him. I'm starting to wonder if I should even continue this project - if Sir Minnes lived to a ripe old age and died an ordinary death there may not be much more of interest on the subject.)

10/3/1666: Sir W. Batten, Lord Bruncker, [Sir] W. Pen, come in, but presently went out; and [Sir] J. Minnes come in, and said two or three words from the purpose, but to do hurt; and so away he went also, and left me all the morning with them alone to stand or fall.

(Another mildly negative mention, but this doesn't seem to be going anywhere any longer. Unless Sir Minnes suddenly takes ill again, or escalates into an all-out blood feud with Pepys, I will probably stop following this thread.)

10/6/1666: So he gone I by water to Westminster Hall and thence to St. James’s, and there found [Sir] W. Coventry waiting for me, and I did give him a good account to his mind of the business he expected about extraordinaries and then fell to other talke, among others, our sad condition contracted by want of a Comptroller (footnote: "As Sir John Minnes performed the duties inefficiently, it was considered necessary to take the office from him."); and it was his words, that he believes, besides all the shame and trouble he hath brought on the office, the King had better have given 100,000l. than ever have had him there.

(Oh, great - not only is Minnes apparently healthy again, but now he's been relieved of his Comptroller duties. Which makes me think Pepys will now have little reason to mention him very much.)

10/7/1666: Little Michell and his wife come to dine with us, which they did, and then presently after dinner I with Sir J. Minnes to White Hall, where met by Sir W. Batten and Lord Bruncker, to attend the King and Duke of York at the Cabinet; but nobody had determined what to speak of, but only in general to ask for money...Sir J. Minnes and I home (it raining) by coach, calling only on Sir G. Carteret at his lodging...

(So Minnes is still in the official picture, and he's getting along well enough with Pepys to travel together to White Hall and back. This entry also has an interesting passage on Pepys giving the King and his advisers a rather frank assessment of the condition of the naval fleet, and offending some of his audience in the process. Pepys seems to regret his frankness, and frets a bit over what it might mean to his career.)

10/13/1666: But he (Sir W. Coventry) thinks it not a fit time to be found making of trouble among ourselves, meaning about Sir J. Minnes, who most certainly must be removed, or made a Commissioner, and somebody else Comptroller.

(So I guess Sir Minnes is still Comptroller after all, so I guess I'll continue on. After reading this, I wonder if the Commissioner role was where the politically well-connected but managerially-incompetent hacks were stashed.)

Structured reading

My reading habits are pretty random. I'll finish one book but won't have any inkling of what to read next until I've thoroughly scanned my shelves at home. But that will change, at least momentarily, over the next month or so.

Reading Caleb Crain's fine essay on the Depression's impact on art, I first became aware of Edmund Wilson's American Jitters: A Year of the Slump, a collection of magazine articles written by Wilson which documented his 1930-31 travels around the country surveying the Depression's impact on everyday people. I located the book in my local interlibrary system and put a hold on it, and was just now notified it has arrived at my library. So I've decided to read Wilson's book first, followed by two other Depression-themed books that I own: William Leuchtenberg's Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (mentioned here) and then Jack Conroy's proletarian novel The Disinherited, which I bought five years ago after years of hunting, only to let it languish unread on my shelf ever since. Conroy was a friend and even a mentor to my hero Nelson Algren, and it's inexcusable for me to have avoided his well-regarded novel this long.

So there you have it - three books that look at the Depression in greatly varying perspectives. I'm hoping each book will inform and illuminate the others while I read.

Vintage Vonnegut

This one's for Julie: Kurt Vonnegut's "The Big Trip Up Yonder". It's up on Project Gutenberg, free of copyright, which apparently was not renewed after its original publication in the January 1954 edition of Galaxy Science Fiction.

Chicago: A Biography

Local historian Dominic Pacyga has a new book out, Chicago: A Biography, from University of Chicago Press. Pacyga is interviewed in the video clip above by Phil Ponce on Chicago Tonight. I greatly enjoyed his Chicago: City of Neighborhoods which I read several years ago, and am looking forward to this one. And check out the gallery of photographs from the book - I especially like this one, of the "Burnt District Coffee House", one of the many fledgling businesses to arise in the ashes - literally - of the Chicago Fire. Nothing represents the city's relentless commercial ambitions quite like some chap who opens a coffee house amidst all of that rubble and devastation.

A pantheon of one's own

This is a very welcomed development: The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. The nominees for the inaugural induction class of 2010 are the usual local luminaries, plus several more that I must admit I've never heard of: Gwendolyn Brooks, Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Richard Wright, Studs Terkel, Harriet Monroe, Mike Royko, Carl Sandburg, Lorraine Hansberry, Ben Hecht, Shel Silverstein, Jane Addams, Leon Forrest, Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, James T. Farrell, Ida B. Wells, John Callaway, Edna Ferber, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Lee Masters, Sherwood Anderson, Franklin Rosemont, Fenton Johnson, Oscar Brown, Jr., Cyrus Colter and Norman Maclean.

I don't have an official vote, but if I did my votes for the Original Six would go to Brooks, Algren, Bellow, Terkel, Royko and Sandburg. And once the old guard is adequately represented, I expect future inductees to include Stuart Dybek (who is one of the current judges), Joe Meno and Aleksandar Hemon, among others.

(Via Robert Duffer.)

"Easier than not doing 'em."

Right now I'm reading Matthew Sharpe's The Sleeping Father but I still haven't really engaged with it. Part of the problem is the characters, none of whom are particularly sympathetic to cheer for, nor sufficiently loathsome to hate. The closest I've come to being drawn to a character is Tim, the boozing, chain-smoking grandfather of Chris and Cathy Schwartz who first appears about halfway through the book. I particularly like this understated, well-crafted passage, as the grandkids and their mother visit Tim, who is anything but a graceful host.

Tim uttered a one-syllable toast that none of them could make out, upended a shot of scotch over his wide-open mouth, popped a beer, sipped it, lit a cigarette, smoked it.

Cathy said, "You're amazing."

"I know, I know," Tim said meditatively.

She stared at him for a minute with his slicked-back white hair and his gaunt, white-stubbled face. "Why do you do all that stuff, Grandpa Tim?"

"All what?"

It seemed to Cathy that right now he was doing about five decadent things, but she could only name two: "Smoke, drink."

"Easier than not doing 'em."

Trouble is, after accidentally glancing several chapters ahead, I already know that Tim won't be around much longer. Which will leave me with just the rest of the characters again.

"Zeitoun"

Boing Boing is hosting a giveway of Dave Eggers' latest acclaimed work of nonfiction, Zeitoun, which follows the life of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian immigrant fighting through the natural devastation and bureaucratic morass wrought in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. The contest seeks only an original haiku on the book's subject. With the entry period remaining open until Saturday and there already being 120 entries, I highly doubt I'll be one of the winners, so to avoid losing my entry to the backblog void that is Boing Boing's comments section, here's what I came up with:

Zeitoun
Water everywhere,
But nary a drop to drink.
Zeitoun navigates.

William Walsh, Questionstruck

William Walsh's Questionstruck is a strange book. The subtitle says it all: A Collection of Question-Based Texts Derived from the Books of Calvin Trillin. Indeed, Walsh has methodically extracted all of the interrogatives from Trillin's first 25 books. Sometimes, when Trillin's questions were grouped closely together, the passages read easily, but when the questions were more spread it was much harder to comprehend. But even in the latter case it was intriguing to read. More than anything else, this reads like an extended advertisement for Trillin's entire career, which as a big fan of the writer I have no problem with. Indeed, Walsh's book has whetted my appetite to read even more Trillin, particularly Runestruck (which awaits on my shelf), Floater (an early novel which I've learned is available in my local library system) and Remembering Denny.

Dover Book Shop, 1945

Photographs of Dover Book Shop, 102nd and Broadway in Manhattan, taken by Sam Gottscho in 1945. Love that stylish Midcentury Modern design.

(Via Shorpy, which has full-sized versions of these images here and here.)

"...gulping down wheat berries and bean sprouts?"

William Walsh's Questionstruck consists entirely of interrogatives extracted from Calvin Trillin's first twenty-five books. Here's a particularly fine group of Trillin's questions (from 1978's Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater) on two of his favorite subjects, cuisine and travel:

But was I really ready for health food? Aside from the fact that it has always seemed bad for my health, what would people say? What would Fats Goldberg, the pizza baron, someone who believes that green vegetables should be consumed only by small furry animals, say if I answered his inevitable questions about eating in England by telling him I hung around health-food shops, gulping down wheat berries and bean sprouts? Could I really discuss whole-grain bread with chili heads and knish freaks? Could we have become a connoisseur of Stuff-Stuff with Heavy? Who would have thought it of a man who travels with Arthur Bryant's barbecue sauce? Could you please pass the sour cream?

The horror! The horror!

I've never read anything by Dan Brown, and after cringing my way through this I now have absolutely no need to ever do so: Dan Brown's 20 worst sentences. My gawd, that's some truly horrible writing.