The Third Coast - Thomas Dyja (2013)

The One Book, One Chicago program by the Chicago Public Library has been going since 2001, but this is the first time I've ever read the book at the same time as everyone else.  These are the books that have been part of the program (asterisks if I have read it) (exclamation point if I've been meaning to read it):

To Kill a Mockingbird *
Night *
My Antonia
A Raisin in the Sun *
The Things They Carried *
The Coast of Chicago
In the Time of Butterflies
The Ox-Bow Incident
Pride and Prejudice
Ivan Denisovich
Interpreter of Maladies *
Go Tell it on the Mountain !
The Crucible 
The Long Goodbye
The Right Stuff !
The House on Mango Street
The Plan of Chicago
Brooklyn *
A Mercy
Neverwhere
The Adventures of Augie March !
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl
The Book Thief
The Warmth of Other Suns
Kavalier & Clay !
The Third Coast *

Technically I think there are 2 books per year, and next year's will be Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  Maybe I'll check that out because I have serious concerns about my diet, but let's move on to discuss the book at hand.

First, you should know that The Third Coast is a history book.  One of the blurbs on the back compares it to E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, and I think it's an apt comparison, though it's not fiction: what that book was to New York in the 20's, this book is to Chicago in the 40's-50's.

It's a big book at over 400 pages, but an even bigger research project, with 80 pages of notes, sources and indexing.  I probably wouldn't have read this book if it hadn't been added to the One Book, One Chicago list, or if my co-worker didn't own it, or if I hadn't seen my boss reading it.  He lent it to me when he was finished and it took me a while.  The first few pages were a bit of a slog for me, as I got used to the style of the writing, and the subject matter of the book.  But after about 100 pages the rest went relatively quickly.

To give a brief overview, this book is primarily about architecture, music, theater, literature, painting, photography, politics, television, industry, and education.  It features a truly dizzying cast of characters, and I will attempt to name the major ones: Louis Sullivan, Mies van der Rohe, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, the Chess Brothers, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Mahalia Jackson, Chuck Berry, Reverend C.L. Franklin (and his daughter Aretha), Sun Ra, David Shepherd, Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Ed Asner, Nelson Algren, Simone de Beauvoir, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Katherine Kuh, Henry Darger, Harry Callahan, Elizabeth Wood, Adlai Stevenson, Richard J. Daley, Studs Terkel, Burr Tillstrom, Dave Garroway, Ray Kroc, Hugh Hefner and Robert Maynard Hutchins.  I'm probably forgetting a few, and also elevating the presence of a few.  The major characters are Mies, Algren and Daley.                    

Before we go any further, it is worth comparing this novel to Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago, because there is a certain degree of overlap.  Certainly, this is a much better book, but that is not to Royko's discredit.  Royko worked full-time as a journalist.  The Third Coast is a long term passion project that fortunately appears to have paid off.  What's striking is that the tone is not altogether different between the two.  Royko comes off more volatile, but that is probably just a component of his subject matter.  Whenever Dyja writes about Daley, the tone is practically identical.  For this reason, most of the material about Daley did not affect me as deeply, most likely because Boss was a more thorough treatment.  Of course, anybody who has not read about Daley before will likely be at least a little bit shocked and awed.  It's worth noting that both books contain a paragraph about the air raid sirens used to signal the Chicago White Sox pennant victory.  However, Boss does not mention the disastrous Pan American Games that Chicago hosted in the late 50's, which is easily one of the most hilarious paragraphs in the The Third Coast and the one I most regret not excerpting.  Perhaps that was one of the minor reasons Chicago did not get the Olympics in 2016.  I shouldn't say it's hilarious because there is death in it, but there is also a Lake Forest reference (and I enjoyed all the references to the towns of my childhood, as much as they were always associated with the term "white flight").

For all the subjects that The Third Coast covers, architecture is its focal point.  Near the end Dyja states that, "the city now has the greatest collection of modern architecture in the world." (343) But he also mourns the many buildings that have been lost, including, most poignantly at the very end, the Garrick Theater.  I have never been on the architectural boat tour of Chicago, but have always meant to go on it.  One of the more pleasurable experiences of reading this book was looking up the buildings mentioned on Google or Wikipedia and seeing whether I recognized them.  Most of the time, I did.  I had to look up the Robie House (one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous buildings, along with Fallingwater and, of course, the Guggenheim) before I could remember how it looked.  Mies van der Rohe basically made the Illinois Institute of Technology what it is today, and if I had to define the style of his buildings it would be "rectangular glass."

Frank Lloyd Wright mostly appears as a kindly father figure, except in a few angry moments.  By the end of the book he is into his 90's, and I did not know he lived so long.  At that advanced age, he apparently presented this, which I had never heard about before:

"The building mania continued.  Nineteen fifty-six was on its way to being the busiest year of building ever in Chicago history, bigger than the years after the Fire.  New construction would top a billion dollars.  'It would be an error to say everybody was putting up a building in the Chicago area,' said one builder.  'A few were not.  They were still working on the plans.' That included Frank Lloyd Wright.  With Sullivan's hundredth birthday noted--barely--that September with a small exhibition at the Art Institute, Wright weighed in with plans for a mile-high skyscraper, The Illinois.  Mayor Daley, a lover of big plans, proclaimed October 17 'Frank Lloyd Wright Day' and at a benefit dinner in his honor at the Hotel Sherman, Wright unveiled a twenty-foot-high rendering of the 5,680 foot, 528-story topping out amid passing clouds, angular, inspiring, and gradually more ominous the higher up you went.  The Illinois Wright said, would be 'a finger in the right direction of humanity,' though which finger he was showing humanity no one could tell, since he'd done nothing but slam Mies and every modern skyscraper.  'I detest seeing the boys fooling around and making their buildings look like boxes,' he told reporter.  Calling Daley 'the only Chicago mayor since 1893 who had boldly enlisted himself on the side of culture,' Wright went on to lambast the sorry state of education, architecture, and car making until it sank in that The Illinois was little more than a publicity stunt." (338)

I think that would be a pretty cool thing to have in a museum, the twenty foot rendering.  And generally, this is what makes The Third Coast great--all of these little events that most people probably do not know about, little significant moments in history that happened here.  You could pick out any number of subjects from the book and make a movie out of it.  Or you could make a musical out of it, like Ragtime, again.  Probably the most compelling story is the history of segregation in Chicago.  The book ironically boasts that it is not as badly segregated as Milwaukee or New York City, but I'm frankly surprised it's not #1.  But the history of public housing in Chicago, which could maybe have the background of these more famous architects, would likely make for a compelling film.  Dyja has given a very detailed portrait of the times in the city that is the functional equivalent of having a grandparent or other elder to pass down oral history.

While the book is great, it is not perfect.  A bunch of little gripes about it keep me from recommending it unquestionably to everyone.  Dyja kind of annoys me with his writing.  Most of the time, it's fine.  But he seems to have the habit of making personal remarks about the beauty, or lack thereof, of certain women in the book.  I'm not gonna go through it and count how many times he does this, but referring to a woman as "almost attractive" or some variant, seems to occur with ironic frequency.  And he has this habit of becoming extremely casual with his language out of nowhere, as if to personify the person that he is writing about--usually when writing about black musicians, dropping "motherfucker" kind of out of nowhere.  And then he's just kind of clueless about how needlessly-linguistically-convoluted some of his stories become.  This description, of the 1956 Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, confused me so badly that I had to re-read it several times, and still don't totally get what he means:

"Stevenson gave over the selection of his running mate to the floor, leading Mayor Daley to nominate the junior senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, much to the horror of his father, Joseph Kennedy, who through business, politics, and crime was drawing his clan closer to Daley's Machine.  In the end, JFK and Peter Lawford would console themselves at Chez Paree while Kefauver, the man in the coonskin hat, won the chance to stand beside Adlai for a second, if possible even more eggheaded, campaign than the first.  More interested in being right than winning, it seemed, Stevenson delivered deeply considered speeches that paralyzed listeners.  Centrist to a fault last time around, he now split himself in two: on one hand advocating the establishment of the draft, limiting nuclear testing, and attaching Nixon's character (history would vindicate him there), but then going limp on civil rights.  Not only would he refuse to use federal troops to enforce Brown v. Board of Education, at one point he even suggested to a black audience that January 1, 1963, the one-hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, should be the goal for school desegregation in America.  The Soviet Invasion of Hungary and the Suez Crisis, just weeks before the election, destroyed what little chance he might have had.  Daley led the traditional torchlight parade to the Stadium, but this time there'd be no Truman-esque magic; Ike finished with forty-three states.  Adlai once again lost Illinois." (337)

Now eventually, that paragraph begins to redeem itself, but the first few sentences are extremely confusing.  Maybe I'm just dumb, but why would Joseph Kennedy be horrified by Daley nominating his son for VP?  And it seems to be left to the floor, but what say does Daley get?  I'm probably just naive about the nomination process, but it stills seems like a ridiculously confusing to way to explain what happened in the name of literary style, if you can call it that.  Sometimes Dyja assumes the reader is with him, referring to names that he assumes a reader will remember have from a page or two before, but I often lost track of who he was talking about.  So yes, I would say the writing is clunky at times, but Dyja redeems himself with the sheer force of his research.

That is pretty much everything I wanted to say about the book, but a word should be said about Nelson Algren.  Now, I have never read him, but after reading this, I will seek him out.  It seems like The Man with the Golden Arm is his masterpiece, so perhaps I will start there.  Dyja seems to write about Algren with increased gusto, as if he himself is trying to occupy the space that Algren once held as the "literary heavyweight champion" of Chicago.  This is generally a good thing, and Algren's love affair with Simone de Beauvoir is one of the highlights of the book.  The close research of their relationship is apparent:

"In May of 1949 he flew to New York to check in with Doubleday, continued on by boat to Le Havre, and then took a train to Paris, where he arrived weighed down with gifts of food, clothes, and liquor.  Simone installed him in her fifth-floor apartment on the Left Bank at 11 rue de la Bucherie, down the street and through Viviani Square from Shakespeare and Company, a view of Notre-Dame out the window.  No other man would ever sleep here, she promised.  Algren loved Paris.  Much to his surprise, he actually got along with Sartre, thought he thought the philosopher looked like a shoe salesman, and even Simone poked fun now--Sartre, she said, would fall in love with any woman who'd stick her tongue up his ass.  Evenings in Cafe de Flore, Algren drank with Albert Camus, Raymond Queneau, and Boris Vian, author of the potboiler I Spit on Your Graves, inspiration for the 1959 crime film (though Vian allegedly had a fatal heart attack at its screening; his last words--'My ass!').  Juliette Greco in a black leotard wriggled in his lap while he regaled the Family with hyped-up tales of back-alley Chicago.  A reunion with Richard Wright did not go well, though.  Algren saw his old friend now as less of an expatriate than a deserter, while Wright expected Algren to stay." (191)

The Third Coast should prove interesting to most readers, and useful for students and scholars as a gateway to deeper research on topics that have played a significant role in the city's history.  While it ends on a rather poetic note (incidentally, on Simone and Algren's enduring bond), it is also somewhat somber and ominous.  The city had its moment, Dyja seems to say, and then began its steady decline.  Today it certainly has its fair share of problems, particularly as the murder capital of the country (or the world), likely an effect of the continued segregation of the north and south sides, but many of us love it and embrace it as our home, even as we complain constantly of how miserable it can be much of the time.  It always seems to be corrupt, one way or another, but it remains one of the most intriguing areas in the country, and will continue to produce great artists and thinkers, even as many of them abandon it to settle down in one of the other two coasts...

Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)

This is Book #2 after White Teeth on my reading list to counteract the overwhelming base of white male authors that comprise the Flying Houses review archive.  Actually, if you look back at the past 3 years, it's not so bad, but no further excuses.  A lot of people consider me "well-read," but I think that term is misleading.  I've read a fair number of books, but really not that many (I'm sure many critics that review books as their job have tackled 5-6 times my number), and really not that many from different cultural backgrounds.  Americanah was time well spent.

Have I read anything close to Americanah?  A long time ago, before I started Flying Houses, I picked up What is the What by Dave Eggers and got maybe halfway through it before finding it too tedious and painful.  It's a bit of a different book, because it's specifically about one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, his struggles in Africa, and his struggles as an immigrant in the U.S.  Eggers interviewed him extensively and transmuted the experience into literature.  Still technically a white male author though!

Americanah is quite different, and does not concern itself as greatly with human rights atrocities.  Rather, this is a book about being an African in America, and then being an American in Africa.  There are so many people that would be able to identify with this book, it's not even funny.  Because Adichie does not restrict herself to the female perspective.  True, it is a female perspective in America (and only a male perspective in England), but the alternating "Parts" are both a strength and a weakness of the novel.  Let me be clear: I am trying to be more picky about what I call the Best Books reviewed on Flying Houses, and many times, I felt this belonged there.  Maybe after I finish this review, I'll put it there.  But on my "scale," I would say it's better than White Teeth, definitely, and on par with The Goldfinch (which did not quite make the list).

The plot concerns Ifemulu.  Every single time I read her name, I wondered if the voice in my head was mispronouncing it.  Here is the way I heard it in my head: Eef-ay-moo-loo.  Ifemulu is a young girl growing up in Nigeria, who meets a young man, Obinze, at school, high school I guess.  They go to college together for a while, but then separate, as she decides to move to the U.S., as her aunt has done to become a doctor.  Ifemulu and Obinze are definitely an "item," and all of their friends pretty much presume that they will get married and be together forever, but this emigration effectively destroys their romance.

Though it is certainly about a different era, this book does have more than its share of similarities to Brooklyn.  I just realized that now.  I prefer Americanah because it's about our present age.  Actually, on the morning of the election last week, I was reading the section about the 2008 Presidential Election, and how Ifemulu liked Hillary Clinton a lot, but just had to support Obama.  Obama is a major figure in this book.  This book contains a recommendation for Dreams from my Father, which I'm sorry to say I haven't read.  Let me briefly give a shout-out to President Obama as one of the finest we have had.  My only complaint is the Affordable Care Act.  His heart was definitely in the right place with it, but these 2017 premiums off the Exchange are off-the-charts high.  Also the interest rates on my student loans are way too high.  Back to the book...

After Ifemulu arrives in America and enrolls at a college in Philadelphia, she has serious struggles with money.  She finds her footing after being hired as a nanny to an affluent family.  Through them she meets Curt, a cousin of the family, who falls in love with her and asks her to move to Baltimore with him, where he pulls some strings and helps her get a job in public relations.  Then one night she randomly hooks up with another dude in their apartment building, and Curt dumps her.  Shortly after this, she starts her own blog, Raceteenth or Curious Observations by a Non-American Black on the Subject of Blackness in America.

I think it is fair to say that we are in the midst of a civil rights renaissance, an acknowledgement that a guarantee of equal rights (i.e. equal treatment and equal opportunity) is little more than a rhetorical facade.  And so Americanah is a book that came at the perfect time.  Many of the chapters in this book end with a post from the blog.  (I am also having a sort of wonderful feeling of irony by reviewing a book about a blogger.) Almost all of the posts are highly-quotable, and written in a very different tone from that of the novel.  The most epic one is not at the end of a chapter, but read aloud by a friend at a dinner party, over pages 403 to 406.  I'll excerpt the end of it:

"Finally, don't put on a Let's Be Fair tone and say 'But black people are racist too.' Because of course we're all prejudiced (I can't even stand some of my blood relatives, grasping, selfish folks), but racism is about the power of a group and in America it's white folks who have that power.  How?  Well, white folks don't get treated like shit in upper-class African-American communities and white folks don't get denied bank loans or mortgages precisely because they are white and black juries don't give white criminals worse sentences than black criminals for the same crime and black police officers don't stop white folk for driving while white and black companies don't choose not to hire somebody because their name sounds white and black teachers don't tell white kids they're not smart enough to be doctors and black politicians don't try some tricks to reduce the voting power of white folks through gerrymandering and advertising agencies don't say they can't use white models to advertise glamorous products because they are not considered 'aspirational' by the 'mainstream.'
So after this listing of don'ts, what's the do?  I'm not sure.  Try listening, maybe.  Hear what is being said.  And remember that it's not about you.  American Blacks are not telling you that you are to blame.  They are just telling you what is.  If you don't understand, ask questions.  If you're uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway.  It's easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place.  Then listen some more.  Sometimes people just want to feel heard.  Here's to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding." (405-406)

While this is definitely Ifemulu's book, Obinze is the other main character.  I would say 66% of this is Ifemulu and 33% is Obinze.  At first I thought the alternating book-by-book perspective was a weakness, but I grew to appreciate Adichie's ability to develop a male counterpart.  His experience in London, detailed in Part 3 of the novel, is one of its highlights.

And generally, the romance between Ifemulu and Obinze is the true highlight.  It exemplifies the cliche phrase "achingly beautiful."  There have been few other novels where I have rooted more for its characters to end up together.

I don't mean to get all gushy here, but I hope you've experienced the phenomenon of reading a book that seems eerily connected to your present situation, which then provides an extra layer of appreciation and meaning.  It happened for me with Americanah, dealing with a frayed, broken and resuscitated relationship, and an election that inspired more dialogue (or monologues) on racism than any other I've seen in my lifetime.

Did this book change the way I thought?  Not really.  Did it open up my mind to the experiences of others in a different position than me?  Sure.  Most importantly, was it entertaining?  Yes.

And that is why I think it is better than White Teeth.  White Teeth almost seemed to be going out of its way to be clever or comic in sometimes absurd situations.  Americanah simply rolls through a story with incredibly well-developed characters whose adventures are amusing, more often than not.  Of course when the "adventures" are more like "travails," the book remains gripping.

I feel like this is a hard book to know where to start and stop to avoid spoilers.  I will note that its structure is quite unique, and vaguely similar to what I did in my third book in that it uses a hair cut (really a hair-braiding) as a framing mechanism.  Ifemulu is getting her hair braided in New Jersey, having recently decided to quit blogging, to leave Princeton and to return to Lagos in Nigeria.  I don't really remember why she does this, but I guess underneath it all, she still subconsciously wants to be with Obinze.  In any case, the novel primarily occurs in a series of flashbacks and returns to the present in the hair salon, before a traumatic event involving Ifemulu's younger cousin, Dike, temporarily disrupts her plans (the NY Times review remarks that, "Early on, a horrific event leaves Ifemulu reeling, and years later, when she returns to Nigeria, she's still haunted by it."  I don't think this is the same traumatic event and I can only assume this is a reference to the soccer coach episode, but maybe my memory is hazy.  Was it something else?  Is that really as horrific as what happens with Dike?).

That is something I will not spoil, but I would like to say it was validating to find that Dike is an actual name, when I was given much grief over using "Dike96" as a screen-name for AOL back in 1996, probably because my youngest sister called me something like that as a baby (before she could pronounce my first name).  Moving on...

I wish Flying Houses were as popular as Raceteenth.  I find the notion that Ifemulu would become quasi-rich-and-famous from a vociferous blog on race a bit far-fetched, but then again the blog is portrayed as a "safe space" where millions of disenfranchised people of color come to share their grievances and make one another stronger.  As a white male who is responsible for his own lack of opportunities in life, I can't really fathom "starting a blog" about anything except books, and the entertainment industry in general, and I've written before about how unpopular Flying Houses is and I don't have any illusions that one day people are going to wake up and realize that it carries some of the best reviews on the internet.  Absolutely not; this is not the New York Times and I am the only editor.  I'm still only at $33 earned after 8.5 years of this, payment threshold at $100.  Hopefully one day somebody will give me a MacArthur Genius Grant because they feel bad for me and realize that I've made a valuable contribution to the field of literary criticism.  More likely is that I will just die and be forgotten and my legacy will be a bunch of crappy status postings on Facebook that people will only notice for a few days or weeks after my death.  It's depressing as hell but I guess that is why I am starting to believe in reincarnation, as the only "fair" result of existence.

Wow that paragraph went dark places!  But the blog is an important element of this book because it speaks to the issue of "how to make a living." Ifemulu is invited to give "diversity talks" after her blog gains traction; she doesn't make all of her money off AdSense.  She also receives large donations from an anonymous supporter, so maybe I should set up some kind of funding portal...

It's quite difficult for me to think of anything else to say about Americanah.  It's pretty much everything you could ask for in a novel, but it's quite sad to read about the 2008 election:

"On television, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama and their two young daughters were walking onto a stage.  They were carried by the wind, bathed in incandescent light, victorious an smiling.
'Young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled, Americans have sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of red states and blue states.  We have been and always will be the United States of America.'
Barack Obama's voice rose and fell, his face solemn, and around him the large and resplendent crowd of the hopeful.  Ifemulu watched, mesmerized.  And there was, at that moment, nothing that was more beautiful to her than America," (447-448)

Contrast that with the way many of us have felt over the past 12 days.  I suppose the lesson that we should keep in mind is that, though it feels like we have taken a step backwards, we haven't undone all of the progress we've made. Books like Americanah should remind us that our country, and the literature we produce, is enriched by an inclusive ideology.  They can teach us how to be better to one another, and to open up our minds beyond ourselves.

Brooklyn - Colm Toibin (2009)

I've never read anything by Colm Toibin before.  I'd imagine for many people that Brooklyn will be their first introduction.  This is also something of a first for Flying Houses: the first time a book has been reviewed where the critic has seen the film adaptation first.

Is the book better than the movie?  Yes.  Is the movie vastly inferior?  No.  In fact, the adaptation is remarkably well done.  There are still a few tiny details that bother me, things that got left out of the movie to keep the story smaller, but generally I wanted to cry throughout almost the entire running time (though it may have been partially due to my mood that day).  The book is not really that much better until the end.

I might have mentioned something about the movie getting a good review from a very tough critic for the Redeye to my friend Juan, and he suddenly recalled that he had read it after he left Brooklyn in 2013, shortly before writing his review of Anna Karenina.  We went to see the film.  Then, shortly after the experience previously reported, of picking out the latest Murakami from the Humboldt Park CPL, he returned the next day with War and Peace, Brooklyn and Howl's Moving Castle.  He said I should read Brooklyn so I did that.

The plot is fairly simple, and depends on how much one intends to spoil.  I believe the trailer for the film gave away a significant portion of the plot, and all I will say is that it is an account of an Irish girl's immigration to the U.S.  It is is not giving away too much to say she enters into a romantic relationship with a young man named Tony, but anything beyond that, I will refrain from mentioning--which is a shame because much of the most beautiful writing comes at the end (including the near-perfect, final, bittersweet sentence).  Maybe after some asterisks, I'll discuss the ending.

Basically, this is a very good book, but I felt sort of disinterested by it up until the end.  That's not totally accurate, but I just mean sometimes I will have it with me at my office desk and I'll eat lunch and have it open in front of me and I'll glance off and read something on the internet instead.  Maybe in a way the opening is kind of boring and slow, but by the third act a plot has certainly developed.

It is perhaps worth noting that my former roommate Gavin was also Irish and went to see the film and remarked that the practices of changing into one's swimwear at the beach, rather than wearing it under their clothes, was a quirky and accurate Irish thing.

The girl's name is Eilis and she lives with her mother and older sister Rose, who is about 30 and a great golfer and popular person about town.  As the novel opens Eilis gets a job with Ms. Kelly, who runs an expensive and popular grocery store in town.  Soon after, a priest from their neighborhood returns to visit from the U.S. and tells their family about all of the Irish transplants in Brooklyn and what opportunities might be available for Eilis there.  It becomes a given that she'll go, and she does, and she works at a women's department store.

The book is broken up into four parts.  Part One depicts her life in Ireland and her voyage across the Atlantic.  Part Two depicts her life in Brooklyn before meeting Tony.  Part Three depicts her life in Brooklyn after meeting Tony.  Part Four depicts her return visit to Ireland.

I will say that the depictions of Eilis's homesickness are the first really sad scenes in the book, with several more to come.  One element left out of the movie was Eilis's three older brothers, who had moved to England, and Jack in particular, who is the closest to her in age, and visits with her in Liverpool before her ship leaves for New York.  He tells her that homesickness is to be expected:

"He had said that he found being away hard at first, but he did not elaborate and she did not think of asking him what it really had been like.  His manner was so mild and good-humored, just as her father's had been, that he would not in any case want to complain.  She considered writing to him asking him if he too had felt like this, as though he had been shut away somewhere and was trapped in a place where there was nothing.  It was like hell, she thought, because she could see no end to it, and to the feeling that came with it, but the torment was strange, it was all in her mind, it was like the arrival of night if you knew that would never see anything in daylight again.  She did not know what she was going to do.  But she knew that Jack was too far away to be able to help her." (73)

There is effusive praise, nearly six pages worth, of blurbs at the beginning of this paperback edition I read.  Make no mistake that this is a very good book, but a couple of those blurbs got me thinking.  One of them mentioned how there were no real antagonists in this novel, and to an extent I agree, though some of the other girls in the boarding house in Brooklyn are not necessarily helpful.  I was surprised by a couple things in this novel--one of which I will put below the asterisks.  The first is the depiction of Dolores, a girl who moves in after another girl exits, when Eilis is given the immensely better basement bedroom with a private entrance.  Dolores is a cleaning lady, and she cleans the boarding house for reduced rent.  She wants to go to the dances with the girls, but they are all mean to her, and so is Eilis.  Or, while not exactly mean, she is certainly curt.  She is not a perfect character.  And this novel truly is more of a character study than a plot driven vehicle, except for Part Four.

So yes, I think if you saw the movie, you should check this out.  I will definitely watch the movie again to compare it to the novel, though I'm not sure I'll review it.

***Spoilersbelow***

I write separately to address the ending.  The second thing that really surprised me was when she went back to Ireland and casually just sort of started making out with Jim Farrell at the dance after their day together with the Nancy and George.  It seemed out of character.  And then I was genuinely shocked when it was made pretty explicitly clear that she regretted what happened in Brooklyn, and she is only going back out of a sense of obligation, and is sort of disappointed.  This is such a beautifully bittersweet thing to convey, and that is why I think the ending is the best part.  Consider this separate part an anti-The Art of Fielding.  The ending makes this book great, instead of the one thing that keeps it from being great:

"The idea that she would leave all of this--the rooms of the house once more familiar and warm and comforting--and go back to Brooklyn and not return for a long time again frightened her now.  She knew as she sat on the edge of the bed and took her shoes off and then lay back with her arms behind her head that she had spent every day putting off all thought of her departure and what she would meet on her arrival.
Sometimes it came as a sharp reminder, but much of the time it did not come at all.  She had to make an effort now to remember that she really was married to Tony, that she would face into the sweltering heat of Brooklyn and the daily boredom of the shop floor at Bartocci's and her room at Mrs, Kehoe's.  She would face into a life that seemed now an ordeal, with strange people, strange accents, strange streets.  She tried to think of Tony now as a loving and comforting presence, but she saw instead someone she was allied with whether she liked it or not, someone who was, she thought, unlikely to allow her to forget the nature of the alliance and his need for her to return."  (241)

All I have to say is that this was not properly brought out in the film.  Or maybe it was, but I didn't sense that Eilis wanted to stay.  I mean, maybe a little bit, but I didn't get the sense of dread of returning.  Saoirse Ronan deserved to be nominated for Best Actress, but she did not deserve to win if she meant to convey the sentiments expressed in the above passage.  It felt like the film clipped out certain things, while still not being "Hollywood" about it.

I don't really know what else to say about this novel so...yeah.  For some reason, it makes me incredibly nostalgic and sad, in a painful way.  There are a lot of things going on in my life that make me identify with Eilis, even though I am not an Irish immigrant girl in the 1950's.  I guess because I lived on Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights (where Eilis stays with Mrs. Kehoe) and because I was torn between a new life in Brooklyn or my "old life" in Chicago (still, no ocean separates the two, but I like being a 45 minute drive away from my parents) and because I've gotten involved in relationships of which my parents don't approve--though Eilis's mother beautifully handles her confession at the very end of the novel.  That's another ridiculously sad part, where her mother can't even bring herself to say goodbye to her the morning of her departure.  I guess there are just a lot of themes in this novel that touch me and make me feel uneasy about the choices I've made in my life and how I really feel like I'm finally "growing up" as I approach my mid-30's (I am still in my early thirties, comfortably, for 11 more months!).  I tend to wonder if other people feel the same way.

2016 Oscar Preview (JM)

Today I received this out of the blue from my friend and collaborator Jay Maronde.  Let me just say I disagree with him about Best Actor, as well as a few other choices, but I'm not going to put up my own picks.  I am not a member of the Academy either, and I don't receive copies of all of these movies in the mail and watch them as my job.  Jay and I used to write for our school newspaper, and get to go to screenings for free, but that ride ended.  As such, I cannot pick which is the "best" because I usually just pick the one I saw, so I can convince myself that I have very good taste.  However I wouldn't predict that Brooklyn or Bridge of Spies will win Best Picture.  Every year my dad holds an Oscar contest and always ends up winning because he just copies what everyone else is saying, making some kind of scientific deduction based on crowd-sourced predictions.  Frankly I don't think anyone has any business making predictions unless they've seen all of the movies in the category, and I cannot say that is the case for me in a single category.  There are many movies that came out this year that I still want to see, and eventually I'll get around to them.  I saw what I wanted to see in the theater, for the most part.  Still I appreciate Jay's thoughts, so here they are. -JK 

2016 Oscar Preview

This Sunday is Hollywood’s biggest night, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards Night, or as most call it, the Oscars. These beloved awards are the biggest prize of the awards season and as such, I’m hereby making my predictions for the winners. For the record, I’m not a member of the Academy (although as a lifelong lover of movies, I would love to be) so I have no knowledge of what the actual winners will be, you’ll just have to watch this Sunday to find out.

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)::   Star Wars: The Force Awakens   --- Without a doubt John Williams wins again. The man is good, very good, maybe the best ever, and he’s got a wall of Oscars to prove it. I’ll be completely stunned if Star Wars wins anything besides this, or if John Williams doesn’t win.

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG) :: “Writing’s On The Wall,” Spectre  -- The only Oscar that this year’s James Bond film is nominated for is an esay win. TO be honest, I didn’t like the song that much, but the song got a lot of buzz and I don’t think that any of the songs that it's against have any chance.

PRODUCTION DESIGN:: Mad Max: Fury Road  -- While I expect stiff competition from The Martian  and The Revenant, Mad Max still comes out on top. The movie imagined a whole other world unlike anything Hollywood has ever seen and the outrageous cars iced the cake.

VISUAL EFFECTS: The Revenant – very very tough competition in the category. I personally believe that Ex Machina deserves the Oscar, but I’m pretty sure that the academy voters will be so impressed by Leo being mauled by a bear that this film walks away with the prize.

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY) :: Brooklyn --- Again a tough category but this this film received great reviews and wide acclaim despite not being tremendously successful at the box office. The Academy voters will want to recognize it somehow, even though it has no chance at winning the big awards.

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)  :: Straight Outta Compton ---  Let me be clear. I think Ex Machina should win this prize; again the story is engaging and compelling. However, the controversy surrounding these Oscars leads me to believe that this film will win. For what it’s worth, the writers should turn their statue over to Ice Cube and thank him for making the history engaged by this film and for having in advance written/ lived  all the best lines in the film.

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING:  Mad Max : Fury Road  -- again a tough pick, but I think that Mad Max edges out The Revenant in the voting.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:  Son of Saul --- there has been a great deal of buzz about this film.

SOUND EDITING: The Revenant.

SOUND MIXING::  The Revenant – As with the sound editing award I think that MAD MAX or Star Wars might have a chance, but in the end The Revenant  takes them both.

FILM EDITING: The Revenant. --  Again, bear rape is just too much for the voters to ignore.

DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE) :: Cartel Land – Don’t hold me to this pick, as the Nina Simone bio-pic What Happened, Miss Simone?  could easily take the prize, but my money is on Cartel Land

COSTUME DESIGN: Cinderella --- all the way. Mad Max  and The Revenant are both very strong contenders for this prize, but I think that the beautiful classic takes the award in what amounts to a huge upset.

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Mad Max: Fury Road --- While I would give the award to The Hateful 8, and many in the Academy would vote for The Revenant, I suspect that those two films split the vote and leave the groundbreaking  Mad Max the winner again.

+++++++ THE BIG PRIZES++++++++

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE:  Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight.  The grit. The blood. The attitude. The brutal vulgarity. I wouldn’t necessarily call her performance ground breaking, but not since Mike Tyson needed a sparring partner has anyone taken such a beating.

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Christian Bale, The Big Short  -- The Academy Loves Bale, and so do I. I’d give Tom Hardy a 1 out of 10 chance, but don’t think he can muster the support to beat an old favorite.

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE::::  Jennifer Lawrence, Joy   -- I want so badly for Charlize Theron to win for her role in MAD MAX. The vision of a female fantasy movie hero has inspired so many young women. However, she’s not nominated, and everyone loves J.LAW. I will note that I wouldn’t be completely surprised if Saoirse Ronan, from Brooklyn, pulls off the miracle and goes home with the statue.

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE:: Matt Damon, The Martian.  Again, let me be clear: 1^st, I didn’t like The Martian  that much, it was long and dragged, and it was basically Matt Damon’s sci fi version of CASTAWAY.  2^nd I really, really, really, want Leo to win, The bear rape was intense and he’s certainly deserving. BUT all politics aside, the Academy loves to vote for someone who suffered a physical change for their art and Damon’s weight loss is terrifyingly impressive. There was a lot of acclaim for Bryan Cranston’s work on Trumbo, but even riding the Breaking Bad wave I don’t think he has any chance against the emaciated Damon.

DIRECTING:: The Revenant -- Alejandro González Iñárritu – This category, besides being notoriously tough to predict, features a slew of great directors; My vote goes to Iñárritu, he’s extremely popular and the film was very good.

BEST PICTURE: The Revenant – This was probably the hardest choice amongst the whole article. All of this year’s nominees were great in their own way but again I feel Iñárritu comes out with the biggest win, in admittedly a very close race. I also wouldn’t be terribly surprised if Mad Max or The Martian pull off the night's biggest upset.

Tales of Two Cities: The Best & Worst of Times in Today's New York - Ed. John Freeman (2015)

It's not every day a publisher or publicist reaches out to me and asks if I want to review their book.  In the past, I asked Tao Lin myself if I could get free copies of his first novel, novella, and second novel.  Once, someone from a bigger publishing house sent me a random book and I reviewed it.   A couple times, publicists sent me e-mails teasing a new book, asking if I wanted a review copy.  This is the first one where I expressed interest, and they actually followed through.  So, I'd like to say, thank you, Shannon Twomey, for reminding me that I am not yet totally irrelevant.

Tales of Two Cities is an anthology, and these pose particular challenges for the critic.  Of course, Userlands is partly responsible for the existence of Flying Houses in the first place, and no other reviews of anthologies have appeared since then.  Certain books of short stories, or essays, by Thomas Mann, James Franco, Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, Chuck Klosterman, Wells Tower, Jonathan Franzen, and others have spurred lengthy reviews that potentially lacked focus.  Like Userlands, there are many writers in Tales of Two Cities, and most of them will not be familiar to the casual reader.

Certainly, Zadie Smith, Junot Diaz, Jonathan Safran Foer, Dave Eggers and David Byrne are pretty famous, but their work is probably not the strongest in this volume.  I suppose we can start there, keeping in mind that people's attention spans on the internet are less than ideal.

We'll start with Smith because her story appears closest to the beginning.  I've never read White Teeth or On Beauty or NW but she's certainly one of the literary stars of our time.  For better or worse, "Miss Adele Amongst the Corsets," will forever remain my introduction to her.  It definitely took me  a minute to figure out what was happening in this story.  I feel weird not wanting to give away spoilers for short stories, but it feels necessary here.  Basically, this is the story of a drag queen going to buy a corset from a store run by Eastern European immigrants that may or may not be fundamental Christians.  It is about Miss Adele's mentality as she veers toward her late forties and reflects upon her situation.  It is about paranoia, insecurity, and the expectations we all have of common decency.

Parts of this story are engaging, and other parts drag a bit.  It's only 17 pages long, but it's one of the more memorable moments in the anthology.  I like in particular how Smith weaves in memories from Miss Adele's childhood, when her name was Darren and he was the twin of Devin (who is now successful/married) and their parents fought, all while she changes in a dressing room.  It also reminded me of my own work from 2003, "Autointoxication," with the insecurity, paranoia and egotistical impression that everyone is really talking about you.  While this is far from a great short story, it should serve Smith well.  It makes me want to check out White Teeth.

***

Before we move on, the theme of this anthology merits attention.  Of course, this book harps on the same themes over and over again!  Bill de Blasio and his infamous description of New York as two cities, for the haves and have-nots.  The rent is too damn high!  Those darn 1%-ers!

Income inequality is a hot topic (see the Democratic Debate on 10/13/15, see also the rapid rise of the minimum wage) and as a person that enjoys reviewing books by modern day heroes and doctoral journalists that attack the issue head on, as well as spearheading one's own faulty program to assess how much "fun" poor people are allowed to have, to say nothing of the 6+ years I lived in New York on my parent's/the government's dime, reviewing this book is a no-brainer.

Why the fuck do you need to live in New York?  Is it really that nice?  Oh, you've got Central Park---great!  An urban oasis.  You feel like you're not really in the city!  Oh, and the pizza--the pizza is just the best.  The museums, the culture!  Greenwich Village!  Brooklyn!  All the greatest artists come out of the village scene, don't you know?  The best public transportation system in the country, hands down.  Those wonderful 24 hour delis on every corner, or at least many corners.  The people, who are all in this struggle with you!  The energy--the city never sleeps!  It is the #1 biggest city in the country, and so much better than L.A.  God, who can stand to sit in all that traffic!  Oh, the food, such wonderful restaurants.  It is the epicenter of the legal industry!  All your friends live there, too.

Perhaps you can tell that I have conflicted feelings about New York.  Certainly, the years I spent there from 2001 through 2004 were some of the very best of my life and I will forever cherish such memories.  But, the years I spent there from 2010 through 2013 were different.  I was older.  I wasn't in college.  The Great Depression Part 2 happened in between.  I had to take out student loans this time.  I was in Brooklyn Heights rather than Greenwich Village.

When I was 22, I moved back to Chicago because my dad offered me a job there, and I had no job offers in New York (I hadn't really started looking for one, and had always lived in the NYU dorms, never my own apartment).  When I was 30, I moved back to Chicago because I had no legal job offers in New York, and again, lived in the same "apartment-style" dorm at Brooklyn Law School for 3 years, the rent approximately $1,000 per month for a 2 bedroom.  My room was small, but my roommate's (there were 3 different ones of varying quality, one of whom was the best roommate I have ever had, and there have been many) was only about $60 per month more than mine, and I think this place was a steal for the neighborhood.  Sometimes I see friends on Facebook moving out and posting their craigslist ad when they want someone to take over their lease, and it's usually almost $1000 per month to live in one room in a 3BR in a vaguely desirable neighborhood in a wave of gentrification.

Compare that to the $580 (up from $540 as of 9/1/15) for my room in Logan Square (say nothing of sharing that room and cutting the cost to $290), a neighborhood in Chicago that has been in a steady state of gentrification over the past 10 years.

Now granted if I could have lived in New York with a rental at $500 or $600 per month, I would have stayed.  But I would have probably needed to split a room to get that.  And it would most likely be in Crown Heights.

***

There are two stories in this collection that are focused laser-like on housing: "Partially Vacated" by D.W. Gibson, and "A Block Divided Against Itself" by Sarah Jaffe.  The latter features Crown Heights as the epicenter of the current gentrification fight in NYC and the former features South Brooklyn Legal Services and Housing Court on Livingston St.  Guess which one I liked better.

It's not that Jaffe's story is more boring.  Actually, I kept flashing back to Show Me a Hero while reading it.  It's quite compelling, but also one-sided, like many accounts of housing issues.  I am not a Pollyanna for landlords.  I used to prosecute them for bad behavior, and I currently live under one that I'd like to report.  The Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance in Chicago is quite tenant-friendly, and I'd presume a similar situation exists in New York.  Yet all we hear are stories about the bad landlords.  What about the bad tenants?  One day I will write a story about bad tenants.

Apart from the Show Me a Hero comparison, I don't really know what to say about the Crown Heights story.  It was basically average for the collection, and maybe it gets a bonus point for being so perfectly on topic.

However, "Partially Vacated" is one of the finest moments in the anthology.  Of course, I may be biased, because one does not often get to read books about things one knows semi-intimately:

"The civil courthouse in Downtown Brooklyn sits amid a cluster of bureaucratic towers, adjacent to a mix of 99-cent stores and restaurants where bartenders prefer to be called mixologists.  The Quaker-affiliated Brooklyn Friends School, $28,000 a year for pre-school, is just up the block.
Inside the rectangular building of steel and glass leased by the civil courthouse, the elevators break down year-round, the air-conditioner only in summer.  Before he was mayor, Bill de Blasio, acting as Public Advocate, put the building's landlord on his 'Worst Landlord' watch list.  The city's lease for the property expired last week, but, unable to find new housing, housing court--ironically, or perhaps not--will stay in the ailing building.
The line to get in the door--to shuffle through security and wait in a second line for the persnickety elevators--usually runs out the door and all the way down the block well before eight in the morning.
On the tenth floor, the elevator doors open onto a crowded hall, filled with the strident din of heated conversations in every direction.  Clumps of three or four people stand together: always a landlord, always a tenant, usually a landlord's lawyer, occasionally a tenant's lawyer, too.  They're all haggling, trying to reach a settlement; when and if they do, the details are immediately written on a piece of paper and taken into one of the court rooms to receive a judge's approval.  There are dozens of courtrooms--some for hearings, some for trial--and all guarantee long waits."  (63-64)

I didn't do housing in Brooklyn, but I did have a few friends work for South Brooklyn Legal Services, and I'm sure this story would be quite interesting for them.  I did work at that civil courthouse, and I had forgotten about those ridiculous lines!  In short, this story is great because it is true.  And for what it's worth, the landlord in this story has to be one of the all-time worst.

***

More generally, these stories are just about people living in poverty in New York.  The introduction by John Freeman is wonderfully written.  It teases the entry by his brother, Tim Freeman, and provides a little snippet of each story to come in the collection.  I have to say that while reading John's intro, I thought he came off as a total douchebag; after reading Tim's story "Home," much less so:

"I tell this story now because we need to change the way we talk about inequality.  The reasons it exists are as complex as the reasons why my brother wound up in a shelter.  Inequality is not an issue of us and them, the rich and the poor.  You often see these same so-called divisions within one family, like mine.  I have an instinct here to apologize for making this point, to add a caveat that my experience of witnessing my brother's homelessness was not nearly as hard as it was for him to live it, while I'm sure there are people who have suffered far more than both of us.  All this is true, I suppose, but it leads us into a cul-de-sac.  To rank suffering creates a false hierarchy of pain, as if there were a way to compare and weight grief with, say, physical discomfort, or career frustrations, or hopelessness.  It allows us, to some degree, to say that some forms of suffering are OK while others are not." (x)

"I did not want anybody's help when I was homeless.  If a family member had offered to take me in, I most likely would have declined the offer.  When I was trying to stay at Bellevue, my brother John lived less than a mile away on the other side of town.  I only saw him twice during the whole time that I was homeless.  Again, I think this is because of the awkwardness.  I also didn't want to be a burden on anybody.  I know this probably sounds like an old homeless cliche, but it is how I felt." (213)

***

As for the other "famous" writers in the anthology, Junot Diaz has one of the better entries.  It's a very short and sweet essay about an act of larceny.  However, I found it was published in 2001 in The New Yorker, so even though this had to be one of Diaz's breakout pieces, it has little to do with "today's New York."  It's a remembrance from his childhood.  It's only a few pages long, but it's as good as any single part of Oscar Wao.

Jonathan Safran Foer's is also an older piece--from 2004, I believe--and let's just get this out of the way: I don't like him.  People may think it's cruel for me to say that when I've never read him, but I just don't like him.  Once I got my mom Eating Animals from the library, and she seemed to think it was pretty good.  But I have never read anything by him before and I never wanted to, but it would have been irresponsible to skip "The Sixth Borough," which details the secret history of another borough that was once part of New York City.  It is probably the silliest piece in this book and has almost nothing to do with its theme.  I think it was included for "star power."  In any case, this was the one chance for JSF to prove to me that I should give him a chance.  I think putting in previously published work is a bit of a cop-out, but whatever.  I still liked Diaz's piece.  This one, not as much.  Sorry, I guess I am just jealous.

Dave Eggers is his typically good-natured self, and introduces an essay by a fifteen-year-old girl whose family moved into Park Slope.  She wrote the story as part of his 826 program.  While her story is certainly impressive for a 15-year-old and sits comfortably alongside all of these other writers, I still thought Eggers little anecdote about living around a certain area in Brooklyn in the late 90's was more interesting.  Both of these submissions add up to about 7 pages total, so it's not a huge part of the book.

I should briefly mention Colum McCann here, because he's "semi-famous."  At a wedding over three years ago, a younger guest who was just starting college and wanted to be a writer, asked if I had read him, I said no, and he suggested Let the Great World Spin.  Maybe one day I'll read that.  In any case, McCann writes an essay that could be a viewed as a companion piece to the film Dark Days, which is a documentary that came out around 2000 and was about the "mole people" living in tunnels beneath the city.  This is also really short--only about 4 pages--but it's another highlight from the book.

Last but not least, David Byrne's essay is wonderful.  It's quite in your face and filled with quotable moments.  Byrne does not try to pretend that the Talking Heads haven't made him rich, and openly admits that his relationship with New York may be souring:

"Many of the wealthy don't even live here.  In the neighborhood where I live (near the art galleries in Chelsea), I can see three large condos from my window that are pretty much empty all the time.  What the fuck!?  Apparently, rich folks buy the apartments, but might only stay in them a few weeks out of the year.  So why should they have an incentive to maintain or improve the general health of the city?  They're never here.
This real estate situation--a topic New Yorkers love to complain about over dinner--doesn't help the future health of the city.  If young, emerging talent of all types can't find a foothold in this city, then it will be a city closer to Hong Kong or Abu Dhabi than to the rich fertile place it has historically been.  Those places might have museums, but they don't have culture.  Ugh.  If New York goes there--more than it already has--I'm leaving.
But where will I go?  Join the expat hipsters upstate in Hudson?
Can New York change its trajectory a little bit, become more inclusive and financially egalitarian?  Is that possible?  I think it is.  It's still the most stimulating and exciting place in the world to live and work, but it's in danger of walking away from its greatest strengths.  The physical improvements are happening--though much of the crumbing infrastructure still needs fixing.  If the social and economic situation can be addressed, we're halfway there.  It really could be a model of how to make a large, economically sustainable, and creatively energetic city.  I want to live in that city."  (246)

***

Like any anthology, there are bound to be a few disappointments.  Edmund White (whom I would designate as "quasi-famous") submits a very nicely written biographical essay that seems to have almost nothing to do with the "theme" except for the fact that his subject (Lorenzo Da Ponte--a.k.a. the writer of Mozart's librettos) eventually settled in 18th century NYC.  I found it occasionally entertaining and out of place.

"Small Fates 1912" by Teju Cole (the only other writer listed by name on the cover besides Smith and Diaz, though one I would not designate as any kind of famous) starts off great, and quickly grows tiresome.  Some of these "fates" are uproariously funny, but after about two pages of them, I realized they were really all just "tweets" and I fucking hate twitterature.  I know it can be experimental in the same vein as an Oulippo-stunt, but I don't think it can be revelatory when it's trademarked by a publicly-traded company.

"Due North" by Garnette Cadogan is about walking around Manhattan, and it's pretty good.  I like walking around, too.  But it's also about feeling that people are friendlier in certain areas like the South Bronx, and more standoffish or invisible in areas like the Upper East Side.  Unfortunately it made me wonder what Cadogan did in order to have all this leisure time to loaf.

"Options" is probably one of the stronger stories in this book, and perhaps deserves to be placed in the next section (I am saving the best for the last here).  It's about moving to New York to try to get the best possible care for one's autistic child.  It's about seeing a sign for a lost child that is autistic, and reflecting on your own.  It's pretty powerful stuff, but it seems a little over the top, too.  It strikes me as being 100% factual, but ultimately foolhardy.

"The Children Suicides" by Maria Venegas is interesting, but it's not about the NYU suicides in 2003-2004, so I have trouble relating.  Then again as a former 10-year-old that confided suicidal thoughts to a teacher, it's affecting to see it from the other perspective.  Not that they didn't take it way more seriously than they needed to or anything.

I almost want to put "Four More Years" by Jonathan Dee in the next section, too, because it seems like it's the only story that's really about "the 1%" and it's about driving around the neighborhood during a horrible snowfall and navigating the horrible conditions.  This is actually a really memorable story and I don't know, I guess the characters came off as being sort of one-dimensional, and that's why it doesn't go in the next section.

"So Where Are We?" is a poem by Lawrence Joseph.  I rarely review poetry on Flying Houses.  I think I did once before.  Is it a good poem?  I don't know.  Is it a bad poem?  I don't know.  It seems like it's about 9/11.  9/11 is obviously a big topic for New Yorkers but it almost never gets mentioned in this book.  I skimmed this poem and moved on.

"Round Trip" by Akhil Sharma is certainly no failure at all, but it is slight at four pages and feels almost like Diaz's story.  It's about a guy who has money, but is super frugal anyways because he hates spending.  I can relate.  However, he quits his job that pays pretty well to be a writer.  I wish I had the luxury.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and call "Aliens of Extraordinary Ability" by Taiye Selasi a weak spot.  It's stylish and while not exactly pretentious, seems to take itself a bit too seriously as "art."  It's not bad, but it just seems calculated.  I don't remember very much about it.

"One, Maybe Two Minutes from Fire" by Tea Obreht--I am very tempted to move this into the next section, but ultimately I cannot.  It's got a great ending, on top of everything else.  It's about being a victim of a scam.  There needs to be more literature about victimhood.  Not just woe-is-me victimhood, but God, I'm-so-fucking-dumb victimhood.  Great story, and its placement in this review is faulty.

"Service/Non-Service: How Bartenders See New Yorkers" by Rosie Schaap is more like a special newspaper article or essay than an anthology essay, but most of the truisms about the service industry remain relevant.  I still don't know how anybody makes it in the service industry, unless you spend your whole life (i.e. 60 hours a week, not 60 years) at the business in question, or unless it's a ridiculously expensive place.

"Mixed Media, Dimensions Variable" by Michael Salu, I put in the same category as the Selasi story.  It's a little more ambitious than it has any business being.  I think it's actually a bit better than the Selasi story, but I would not put it in the next section.

"Zapata Blvd" by Valeria Luiselli, "Seeking" by Victor Lavalle, and "Walt Whitman on Further Lane" by Mark Doty, can round out the "yawns" for me.  As you can see, these anthology reviews get difficult because I do not want to give anyone short shrift.  Doty's essay on Whitman and Long Island does have some pretty amazing insights, and some great surprises, but overall I found its tone to be off.  Like, when literature/poetry PhDs try to make criticism interesting for the lay reader.  "Zapata" is about being vaguely revolutionary, and there was a nice image or two in it--certainly I would not call it bad, but I found it disjointed.  "Seeking" is actually quite good--though not as good as "One, Maybe Two Minutes from Fire."  It's actually an incredibly deep essay about whether or not God exists.  Worthwhile for anyone that still contemplates philosophical problems.

I'm conflicted about whether to put both "First Avenue & Second Street" by Hannah Tinti and "Traveling to Brooklyn" by Lydia Davis in this section or next.  I guess they belong in the next.

***
Because they barely make this list, the last two stories should be mentioned first.  Both of them fall squarely in the realm of creative non-fiction.  I'm not sure which one is better, but I'm inclined to pick Davis.

Tinti's is very good, but it is pretty much just about one of her co-tenants.  Kind of a character study.  But it's a building near the Library, a good dive bar at 1st & 1st, and a handful of my friends moved out of the dorms after freshman year and got places in the East Village, and the memories of the Towers being there, and then not being there, made me nostalgic for that brief time that I shared in that wonderful area (even though it was only about 10 blocks north of that corner that I almost got mugged in 2002)

Davis's is great, because it reflects upon the nature of her fantasy, and how it has changed as she has aged, and then hits on a specific incident that happened recently on the subway around South Brooklyn.  Basically, it is a personal essay par excellence, a near-perfect prototype of what one should write for a college essay, perhaps.  Okay, the subject matter would not necessarily be great, but the way it's so beautifully written would get an admit from any admissions officer (this is why I think we studied personal essays as a form in high school).

Bill Cheng's entry, "Engine," is one of the best in the collection, though two others are better because they don't end on a kind-of-awkward last sentence.  Basically, this story is a complete well of misery, with some quite graphic descriptions of medical maladies, silly jobs, and lack of self-worth.  It's not very long, but it will punch you in the gut.  For a person such as myself, that can identify quite strongly with the subject matter (even if I haven't worked in a movie theater), it is the sort of thing I need to read to remind myself that life can be just as frustrating for others:

"I don't know how to talk about money.  It's one of those things we can't seem to get shook of.  As much as we pretend it doesn't matter, it sets the stage for all our relationships.  What I have, what you don't--all of it bound up in our identity, our careers, our ambition, our self-worth.
That was the gall of this first job, the improbability of being seen, how a stranger could just look at you and shrink you down into nothing.  I was in college.  I wanted to be a writer.  I considered myself intelligent, ambitious, sensitive, with a full inner life.  But every day wore me down to the nub until I carried in me a reservoir of abiding hate.
One summer at the theater, I spotted someone I knew from high school lining up at my register.  He had gone to college upstate, and now he was back for the break.  He looked good: lean, tan, handsome.
He recognized me.
Hey, Billy, how are you?
And it wasn't embarrassment but rage prickling at my face.
I pressed the bottoms of my hands to the counter.
I glared at him.
Would you like to try our super combo? (163)

The final two stories I loved for similar reasons.  The first is "Every Night a Little Death," by Patrick Ryan.  It concerns the travails of a team of graveyard shift proofreaders at a large law firm.  The story is just hilarious and it made me laugh more than anything else in the collection.  It seems completely over the top.  I know that many of these entries are essays, or pieces of creative non-fiction, and some of them are works of complete fiction.  I really could not decide where to categorize this piece.  Certainly, it reads like creative non-fiction, but it's so extreme that it has to be fiction.

Cue person chiming in that life is often stranger than fiction.

I just don't believe someone who would come into work every night wearing a clown wig would get so upset about office propriety.  It is slightly more believable that a person would bring a stuffed chimpanzee into work with her--slightly--but not that she would use such a toy as a weapon of assault.  Frankly, I wish I worked in an office where such shenanigans were commonplace.

"I'd never had a job in the corporate world before.  I'd been a house-painter, a waiter, a stockroom clerk, an English teacher, a bartender.  The graveyard shift seemed a fitting place for me to land, given that I'd just moved from the 'sleepy' South to the city that never sleeps--an exciting change for me, though most of my friends back home had told me I was being foolish.  'New York?' one of them had asked.  'Really? I hope you have a lot of money, and a lot of tears.'
Another, pulling up beside me at a traffic light, had rolled down his window to shake his head and holler, 'That place is going to chew you up, spit you out, and piss on you.'
'I'll tell you exactly what's going to happen,' an older, chain-smoking neighbor had said as I was helping him sort his recycling.  'You're going to fuck up your life beyond belief, and you're going to be back here in six months--probably addicted to heroin.'
All of which made me more determined than ever to succeed (success meaning only my not having to move back south in six months).  I took the job.  I even decided graveyard shift had an impressive ring to it.  Responsible people worked the graveyard shift.  Guys who wore matching-cap-and-jacket uniforms and carried lunchboxes worked the graveyard shift.  Copyeditors in newsrooms, security guards who shone flashlights into warehouses, EMTs who stanched gunshot wounds--these were the secret heroes who kept the gears of the world turning while everyone else snoozed.
I was thirty-three and living in New York.  I had an illegal sublet on the upper west side that was mine for another two months, and I had employment.  To celebrate, I went to dinner with friends." (19-20)

This story isn't especially deep or dramatic, but it's just very entertaining from start to finish, and pretty original.  I am reminded of a book I've never read called And Then We Came to the End.  I guess that is the closest reference point.  It feels like non-fiction, but again, it's just a tad unbelievable.  It's right near the beginning of the anthology, which is brilliant sequencing.  Maybe it's not actually the second-best story in the collection, but the sequencing made me feel that was so.

The best story in the collection, then, is "Quid Pro Quo, Just as Easy as That" by Jeanne Thornton.

I'm not just saying that because it has a transgender narrator.  I am definitely not playing that game.

This is straight-up creative non-fiction.  Unlike Ryan's story, none of it strikes me as too absurd to be true.

Can I profess some ignorance?  I still get really confused when transgender people identify themselves.  The narrator in this story is a trans woman.  I need to think for a second to make sure I get it right.  They were born male, but transitioned to female.  Whether they have undergone hormone treatment or not is unclear in this story.  To be honest, it doesn't matter.  The transgender issue is almost secondary to the poverty issue.  Just looking at the first two pages of this story, every sentence begs to be excerpted.  Because of my obsession with monthly expenses, I must excerpt the very end of that second page, and the top 1/3 of the third page:

"It was a flush time for me in New York City.  According to invoices I still have, I was making the sweet sum of $12 per hour and working enough to clear about $1600 every month.  The rent at the time was $1100, which I split evenly with a roommate.  My share of the bills was usually about $125 total, and the Metrocard rate $100 per month.  I knew of a cheap grocery store and cooked when I could.  I smoked back then too, a hideously expensive habit at $13 a pack in NYC.  So I'd switched to smoking three of four 'lucies' a day at $0.75 per cigarette, or $2 for three, from the grocery store just down the street from me that kept lookouts.  Sometimes you could run across illicit cig pushers on the streets--especially, for some reason, on Roosevelt Island--who'd let you have a whole fat pack of Delaware-smuggled Newports for seven bucks.  A devotee of The Richest Man in Babylon, I kept back about $100 or $200 from each paycheck to put into a savings fund, though I inevitably ran out of money every three or four months--food, doctor bills, miscellany--and had to raid it back to zero.  But it all worked."  (113-114)

So it seems, finally, here is another person that makes the same sorts of observations I do, and has similar concerns.  Perhaps this is why I feel this is the best story in the collection.

This story is about the narrator herself, her boss at the publishing company where she works, and her friend that sleeps on her couch (her roommate, who paid the other $550, moved to Chicago to work for Groupon, and paid the next couple of months to be nice).  There is a footnote about "All My Friends" by LCD Soundsystem.  The story is about everything and nothing.  It's a story whose style, tone, structure and plot I'd like to emulate.  The only thing that slightly annoyed me about it was that the narrator would not reveal what her friend wrote on Facebook:

"Friends--without exception, female friends--began to tell me explicitly that they would not come over to see me when my friend was at the apartment.  After the Facebook message incident, my friend was not a big fan of women, and he liked to discuss this with other women whom I was friends with.  He would discuss it with me, too.  In part this was because I hesitated to defend myself as a woman to him, and because I don't think he particularly thought of me as one anyway.  (As evidence of this, the time he laughed at me and said you're a dude.)" (117)

Ultimately I think this is one of the most entertaining stories in the anthology, and while the ending may be one of failure, it feels happier than that, like the narrator will be going on to better things.

So we come to the end of this lengthy review.  I think this book makes an excellent gift for any person moving to New York for the first time.  The only question is whether it will be eternally relevant, or if NYC will completely transform itself in 20 years.  This may be sold for a buck on tables arrayed on various streets in Greenwich Village in five years, but it is a worthwhile project for capturing the city at a crucial time in history.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami (2008)

There are less than 3 books that I have read since April 1, 2008 that have not subsequently appeared as reviews on Flying Houses.  Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the quintessential example.  I cannot think of the other 2 books, but they may exist.  I read HBWATEOTW in early 2008 and found it so-so.  After about 100-150 pages, I started to "get it," and found some parts fantastic, but on the whole found it a bit overrated.  Seven years later, I have absolutely no memory of the story, except that there is some sort of tower or castle in it, or "two worlds" (and this is why I maintain Flying Houses).  Later on I would realize that it is generally not a good place to start with Murakami.  I've heard that Kafka on the Shore and Norwegian Wood are better options.

I signed up for the Chicago Marathon on May 5, 2015, exactly one month ago today.  I have logged just over 100 miles on MapMyRun, but that does not include treadmill workouts, or a few along my usual route (which is almost exactly 4.20 miles, and my goal is 4:20 for the 26.2).  I am not keeping a running journal or a blog of my marathon training, though I have thought about it.  This is because I have never been a good runner and I am afraid that I will fail to finish, or worse, may die on October 11, 2015.  Other people may call BS on that and I say I am a good runner, as I've been doing it pretty consistently for 9 years.  But I've never done anything longer than a 5K.  I did Cross Country in high school, but consistently finished at the back of the pack (dead last, several times).  Right now I feel that I am in the best physical shape of my life, but I rarely break 10 minute miles.  I remember when I used to give tours of my high school as my "work job," and once shepherded a potential X-C recruit through the campus.  He asked my PR and I said it was about 23 or 24 minutes and he laughed at me.  So I am wary of looking like a charlatan.  But the wonderful thing about What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is the feeling that nobody should ever be ashamed of their speed.  Running is a competitive sport, but it is mostly a competition with yourself.  Murakami understands this and writes with such modesty and good humor that almost any reader (whether a novice or non-runner) may develop the confidence to run their first marathon.

Murakami wrote this book between the years of 2005 and 2006, and it centers around his training for the New York City marathon in November 2005,  He opens the book by describing his original motivations for running.  He used to run a jazz club in Tokyo, near Sendagaya Station, which was actually quite successful.  Before he decided to start running, he decided to write a novel, and he pinpoints the exact date and location (April 1, 1978 at a baseball game at Jingu Stadium) of his inspiration to beautiful effect:

"Hilton got a hit down the left field line.  The crack of bat meeting ball right on the sweet spot echoed through the stadium.  Hilton easily rounded first and pulled up to second.  And it was at that exact moment that a thought struck me: You know what? I could try writing a novel.  I still can remember the wide open sky, the feel of the new grass, the satisfying crack of the bat.  Something flew down from the sky at that instant, and whatever it was, I accepted it." (27-28)

So this book is not just about running, but also Murakami's writing career.  He doesn't mention HBWATEOTW but he does say his career took off at Norwegian Wood and that his first "big" novel was A Wild Sheep Chase.  He eschews specific plot details from these works in favor of his general creative process.  His output, as he approaches his late 60's, remains most impressive, and his status as a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize puts him on a similar playing field as Philip Roth.  Now, Murakami's output is not quite as prolific as Roth's (his turnaround time is closer to 2 years rather than 1), but his books seem to carry more weight.  Roth "retired" around the time he turned 80.  One expects Murakami to achieve a similar longevity,  No predictions on the Nobel Prize for either, except to say that our last author (also foreign, and currently at 75, right in the middle of these two) was recognized for a much more streamlined oeuvre.  While Murakami's novels may elevate him into the category of the greatest writers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, WITAWITAR (great acronym) is the sort of gift to humanity that should carry weight in gaining membership to such prestigious pantheons.

I have not personally reviewed a Murakami novel on Flying Houses, but the incomparable Emily Dufton has reviewed his two most recent ones, 1Q84 and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, on this site.  Both reviews reference WITAWITAR, and the former even suggests that it may be his strongest work (or at least the most enjoyable).  On this basis, as well as the enthusiasm I have for it (particularly its willingness to "unlock" the secrets of running), it deserves recognition as one of the Best Books of Flying Houses.  It may be a slight volume, but since Points of Rebellion makes the list (certainly an idiosyncratic choice), this does too.

When he decided to start running, he was 33 and smoked 60 cigarettes a day.  By the time he started writing WITAWITAR, he had completed 20 marathons in 20 years.  After the inspiration to write a first novel (Hear the Wind Sing) has passed and bloomed, with a prize from a literary magazine, he decides to quit his day job, and to begin running:

"A problem arose, though, with my decision to become a professional writer: the question of how to keep physically fit.  I tend to gain weight if I don't do anything.  Running the bar required hard physical labor every day, and I could keep my weight down, but once I started sitting at my desk all day writing, my energy level gradually declined and I started putting on the pounds.  I was smoking too much, too, as I concentrated on my work.  Back then I was smoking sixty cigarettes a day.  All my fingers were yellow, and my whole body reeked of smoke.  This can't be good for me, I decided.  If I wanted to have a long life as a novelist, I needed to find a way to keep fit and maintain a healthy weight." (33)

Before running with all of the other usual competitors in a race, Murakami went to Greece in 1983 and ran the original route from the town of Marathon to the city of Athens.  He does this in part for a men's magazine article, but also to see the original route and convince himself that he can do it.  It is actually about a mile shorter than the standard 26.2, but this trip took place during the hottest part of the summer.  For me at least, anything between 75 and 80 degrees is perfect weather for running.  Anything over 90 tends to exacerbate exhaustion, and I felt as if I were "dying of thirst" once when I went about 10 miles in 95 degree heat.  As one might guess, the description of this fun event is brutal.

But nothing is more brutal than the description of the ultramarathon.  He ran this in 1996.  It took place in Hokkaido.  It is not 52.4 miles, as one might expect, but 62 miles.  Now in my opinion the human body is not meant to go this far in a single day, and it is around this point in the book that Murakami appears totally insane to the reader.  Certainly, there is much personal satisfaction that comes with finishing a marathon, but I just can't see why going an extra 38 miles would do anything for you.  It's like by that point, you've become more alien than human.  Regardless, this is the most compelling portion of the book to describe the physical act of running, and perhaps the value in the ultramarathon is the confidence that it might instill in first-time marathoners.  If Murakami can do 62, then you can probably do 26.

One example from this chapter is necessary, because it probably contains the most hilarious and gut-wrenching prose in the book:

"Even though my legs were working now, the thirteen miles from the thirty-four mile rest stop to the forty-seventh mile were excruciating.  I felt like a piece of beef being run, slowly, through a meat grinder.  I had the will to go ahead, but now my whole body was rebelling.  It felt like a car trying to go up a slope with the parking brake on.  My body felt like it was falling apart and would soon come completely undone.  Out of oil, the bolts coming loose, the wrong cogs in gear, I was rapidly slowing down as one runner after another passed me.  A tiny old lady around seventy passed me and shouted out, 'Hang in there!' Man alive.  What was going to happen the rest of the way?  There were still twenty-five miles to go.
As I ran, different parts of my body, one after another, began to hurt.  First my right thigh hurt like crazy, then that pain migrated over to my right knee, then to my left thigh, and on and on.  All the parts of my body had their chance to take center stage and scream out their complaints.  They screamed, complained, yelled in distress, and warned me that they weren't going to take it anymore.  For them, running sixty miles was an unknown experience, and each body part had its own excuse.  I understood completely, but all I wanted them to do was be quiet and keep on running.  Like Danton or Robespierre eloquently attempting to persuade the dissatisfied and rebellious Revolutionary Tribunal, I tried to talk each body part into showing a little cooperation.  Encouraged them, clung to them, flattered them, scolded them, tried to buck them up.  It's just a little farther, guys. You can't give up on me now.  But if you think about it--and I did think about it--Danton and Robespierre wound up with their heads cut off." (109-110)

Later, Murakami details his efforts at completing triathlons.  He writes about the madness of cycling, but not derisively enough for me:

"It's the same movements, repeated over and over.  You go up slopes, on level ground, and down slopes.  Sometimes the wind's with you, sometimes against you.  You switch gears as needed, change your position, check your speed, pedal harder, let up a bit, check your speed, drink water, change gears, change your position...Sometimes it strikes me as an intricate form of torture.  In his book the triathlete Dave Scott wrote that of all the sports man has invented, cycling has got to be the most unpleasant of all.  I totally agree."  (141-142)

There may be another section in the book where he references the psychological torture that comes from sharing a path with bikers, and this is the best I can find:

"Yesterday I listened to the Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet as I ran.  That funky "Hoo hoo" chorus in "Sympathy for the Devil" is the perfect accompaniment to running.  The day before I listened to Eric Clapton's Reptile.  I love these albums.  There's something about them that gets to me, and I never get tired of listening to them--Reptile, especially.  Nothing beats listening to Reptile on a brisk morning run.  It's not too brash or contrived.  It has this steady rhythm and entirely natural melody.  My mind gets quickly swept into the music, and my feet run in time to the beat.  Sometimes, mixed in with the music coming through my headphones, I hear someone calling out, 'On your left!' And a racing bike whips by, passing me on the left." (95)

But when I write my running memoir, I will be sure to mention one of my old running routes--down the Brooklyn Bridge, through the World Trade Center and back--as pure psychological torture, due to the speed of bikers on the bridge.  And the rudeness.  These experiences gave me a very negative opinion of bikers, but also of families walking three or four abreast, creating additional anxiety vis-a-vis bikers.  Lately, I have been running on the newly-opened 606 Trail in Chicago, and I love it.  There are many bikers, but the anxiety is nothing compared to the Brooklyn Bridge, even though my elbow has already made contact with one biker.

Murakami also does not discuss the psychological torture that comes with running in large groups in races.  For me at least, I think I am a worse runner in a race than on my own during an afternoon workout, because the despair kicks in when a bunch of people pass me.  This happens on the 606 with some regularity, and is unusual for me on almost all of my previous efforts (including the lakefront trail in Chicago, which I must be wrong about), and it tends to destroy my confidence.  Like, I believe I am the best runner out there when I'm alone, but when I'm surrounded by others passing me by, leaving me in the dust, I realize I am nothing special, and am in fact mediocre (or worse than mediocre, as Murakami describes himself as being--which is just wrong, considering his regimen and professional accomplishments).  This feeling needs to be addressed somewhere in this book, and though one of the passages above does reference feeling bad about getting passed, the phenomenon is unexplored.

I loved this book, in any case.  Murakami may be one of the world's greatest living writers, but he gets down to such a human level in this book that you love him even more:

"Sometimes when I run, I listen to jazz, but usually it's rock, since its beat is the best accompaniment to the rhythm of running.  I prefer the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gorillaz, and Beck, and oldies like Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Beach Boys.  Music with as simple a rhythm as possible.  A lot of runners now use iPods, but I prefer the MD player I'm used to.  It's a little bigger than an iPod and can't hold nearly as much data, but it works for me.  At this point I don't want to mix music and computers.  Just like it's not good to mix friends and work, and sex." (14)

I would like to ask him if he runs with his phone now or not.  There are lots of things I want to ask him, but probably more things about running than writing.  Writing is so abstract, and you can say anything you want about the process.  But running is something you can talk about in very concrete terms.  It may seem like most other people are "super runners" and that you can't identify with anything they're going to say because they're just on a different level, but Murakami really subverts this fear.  Whether you are a novice or an expert, I think you will find pretty much the entire thing to be absorbing.