City on Fire - Garth Risk Hallberg (2015)

I first heard about City on Fire on NPR.  Usually I listen to NPR when I drive out to courthouses in collar counties, so this must have been in August or later of last year.  (Update: I believe that day was October 20, 2015, a.k.a. the Day Before Back to the Future Day, or the Day Before the Cubs Would Not Win the World Series Day, due to this.) It had just come out, with a huge buzz attached.  I had no immediate interest to read it, because in fact I had just re-read Please Kill Me and the idea of reading about a fictional group in the same milieu struck me as dull: what fun is it when it's populated by characters we don't recognize?  Ragtime and Underworld successfully blended recognizable personas into their narratives--and yeah, even though Hallberg doesn't reference DeLillo in his acknowledgements at the end, this is basically an alternate version of that heavy tome about New York in the 70's (mostly).  Some remark that it owes a debt to The Bonfire of Vanities and other works by Tom Wolfe, an author I have never read but have always been mildly curious about (in fact my sister recommended that very volume to me recently).

Then, the Christmas season rolled around and my parents asked me to send a letter to Santa to them.  I had been requested in the comments to the review of Modern Romance to consider City on Fire or Book of Numbers and I gave Santa the choice.  On Christmas morning I felt a hardcover heavy gift and unwrapped it to find this.  

I started reading it January 9, 2016, and took brief breaks to read and review Why We Write about Ourselves and Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl.  This book lurked in the background.  And I was writing the review of Just Kids as I began City on Fire, and will now be reading M Train as I write the review of City on Fire.  For some reason, this feels a little too close for comfort:

"Two days before the shooting, Samantha dreamed of Patti Smith.  She herself was in a pitch-black room somewhere.  She could not see the walls or reach them--she was unable to move--but the room felt small.  And there was a window nearby, she sensed, a vista of mountains and seas and tiny humans paddling around in canoes and just generally going about their business, if only she could see it.  And then Patti appeared above her in a caul of low blue wattage and informed her that a time was coming when she would have to choose." (739)

So it took me about two months, and I really don't read all that often--just mainly at lunch and on the train ride home and sometimes before bed.  If I'm taking more time out to read something than that, it usually means I really like it.  In this case, I liked it, but I also was pressed to finish it because I don't think I'll be able to renew M Train and need to finish and review that in the next three weeks.  So I was trying to make progress.  

Recently a friend of mine posted on Facebook to ask if he should read Infinite Jest and another friend proposed a 100 page test to determine if a book was worth reading.  It made me think of this.  I couldn't finish IJ and tried twice.  City on Fire is significantly easier reading.  It has relatively broad appeal, but it might fail the 100 page test.  This is mainly because it operates with a cast of characters that doesn't fully coalesce for several hundred more pages.  Still, the writing is engaging, and once one finishes it, somewhat awe-inspiring.  Don't misunderstand--this will not be named to the Best Books of Flying Houses--but it's certainly in the "also ran" category with that Brownstein memoir read concurrently.  Then again, this book is much more entertaining than the Raymond Carver biography.  Basically, Hallberg establishes himself right out of the gate as an Ambitious Writer.  I actually think this would be a much better book if it were about 300 pages shorter, but in spite of some annoying qualities, one must respect the sheer gesture.  This is much much more than a rehash of Please Kill Me.

***

What is the plot of this book?  Well, it opens on William and Mercer, a gay couple, white 33-year-old and black 24-year-old, moving a Christmas tree down a block in a shopping cart.  William is a former heroin addict and Mercer is a high school English teacher at an all-girl's school.  It then shifts to Regan, (William's sister) and her husband Keith, and their two kids, Will and Cate.  Regan and Keith are separated as the novel opens, around Christmas--and here I should mention a unique feature of this book: it shifts around in time a lot.  As in, each new section seems to begin at some point further back in the past.  Or rather, the chapters alternate in time.  Effectively, there is a "present" part of the book, a "past" part, and a "future" part (which really could be one of the best parts about the entire book, but feels oddly underdeveloped, or tacked on).  The "present" encompasses December 1976 through July 1977 (New Year's Eve and the night of the NYC Blackout serve as bookends).  The "past" primarily concerns 1959 - 1976, and the "future" concerns 1980 - 2004.

William and Regan are the children of a corporate scion, heirs to a fortune.  William used to be in a punk band called Ex Post Facto, which was "taken over" by an imitator known as Nicky Chaos.  At certain points, there is reference to a t-shirt that reads "Please Kill Me," but this band does not sound at all like Richard Hell and the Voidoids.  A number of young people have gotten into the punk scene, and one of them is Samantha, who lives on Long Island.  She is the daughter of a "fireworker," which supplies one of the novels primary motifs.  She is also friends with Charlie, who is adopted but raised Jewish by his parents, and later reads the Bible and establishes himself as a "prophet."  Charlie is in love with Samantha, but in practice they are "best friends."  They go to a show on New Year's Eve and meet other band members/groupies D.T. (Delirium Tremens), Solomon Grungy and Sewer Girl.  In a way, these other band members feel oddly cliched or underdeveloped--but I really shouldn't complain about underdeveloped characters in a 900+ page book.

But then, Samantha has to go, and Charlie later plans to meet her at 72nd St just before midnight.  Meanwhile, nearby on the upper west side, Regan is at her family's lavish annual ball, feeling awkward, and runs into Mercer, who is also feeling awkward and crashing the ball as a way of finding William, who has walked out and disappeared after a small fight.  It occurs to me that Mercer spends way too much of this novel trying to find William.

William and Regan's father, also named William, is being held over in Chicago because of "bad weather," so he cannot attend the party.  His first wife passed away, and he remarried Felicia.  Her brother, Amory, is soon invited into William's family business.  Amory is sort of a sinister character and feels more cartoonish than the rest.  Note: I have never seen a character named Amory anywhere else except here, and I'd prefer that future authors do not use the name for villains.

Now something happens this evening in Central Park--there is a shooting.  One of the characters (it's really not a spoiler to say who, but I will keep mum) ends up spending the majority of this novel on life support in Beth Israel Hospital, and one of the most unsatisfying elements of the ending is the ambiguity of their fate.  Perhaps another reader could elucidate the intended effect, or probable truth.

This shooting is so compelling that a journalist begins investigating all of the involved characters.  This journalist later meets up with his neighbor, a Vietnamese-American girl named Jenny, and share nightly whiskey nightcaps.  Jenny works for Bruno, an art gallery owner and dealer, who has been something of a mentor and protector of William.

I think I've covered most of the characters.  At this point I must comment, as I often do, that this also reminded me of my first novel, Daylight Savings Time.  There is a cast of characters with interlocking narratives and coincidences.  It concerns a relatively specific time and place.  One of the characters is heir to a mini-fortune and has no anxieties or insecurities about his lack of a professional life.  There are drug sequences.  And both include a fantasy about being interviewed by The Paris Review.  All comparisons aside, City on Fire is more ambitious and much better.

***

I forgot one more character: the polio-stricken NYPD detective that is friends with the journalist.  It's fair to say that some characters come across more strongly than others, and Pulaski initially interviews Mercer after he discovers the shooting victim.  Then he kind of fades out of the narrative for a while and later gets introduced as one of the characters that get "first personish-third person" treatment.  The novel only breaks into first person when Will narrates.  That feels like a bit of a spoiler, so I'm sorry, but part of the fun of this novel is trying to figure out how everything is going to end, or who that person was in the opening pages talking about their cell phone vibrating.

One reviewer commented that most readers will identify with one character most strongly, if not all of them.  For him, it was Charlie.  And I've got to admit, I found Charlie's chapters oddly tedious at first.  To me, they were the most cliche.  However, as it went on, I grew to like them, and maybe that is just because Charlie is one of the few characters that undergoes something of a transformation in the novel.  Many of the characters change, but he is the only one that transforms.  And I did find one passage from one of his chapters notably beautiful, the kind of writing that I've sometimes endeavored to produce.

But I've just re-read that segment (from pages 576-579), which is basically when he kisses Sam for the first time, under kind of gross circumstances, and none of the passages are especially beautiful.  I guess what I meant was, the whole atmosphere of the scene, as it takes place on July 4, 1976, the bi-centennial, and the setting is just sort of perfect.

Also, I've re-read the last chapter discussing the shooting victim, and it appears that there is something of a definitive resolution.  I'm surprised I missed it the first time, but Hallberg does have his way of obfuscating that can sometimes seem like he is just showing off his vocabulary.  Again the book could be a lot shorter with a fair amount of fluffy stuff taken out, but it doesn't feel that bloated due to its large cast of characters.  Many of the same events get repeated over and over again, and retold from different perspectives.  To some this may seem tedious, and it can be, but on balance remains entertaining.

***

Another one of my friends posted a link to the "50 Most Unacceptable Sentences in City on Fire" and I glanced at it when I was still in the first couple hundred pages.  A couple other links showed up on Facebook beneath it, like one from the NY Post that rips this novel to shreds.  The negative reviews have a point, but the NY Post gets it wrong.  They make fun of Hallberg for listening to Billy Joel instead of the Ramones or Television, but there's nothing wrong with Billy Joel!  "Captain Jack" was pretty much my soundtrack to NYC in late 2001.

Clearly there are flaws in the novel, and there are some really pretentious sentences.  But on the whole, the book is pretty down-to-earth.  It's readable.  It's not a challenge like IJ.  A couple critics have made comparisons to Jonathan Franzen and something about the tone did remind me a lot of The Corrections (read almost a year ago, sad!).  I think the film rights have already been sold and an HBO Series may or may not be in the cards, and another review focused on how Hallberg's writing was "televisual" and influenced by The Wire and seemingly made to be adapted.  I would watch the show, and I think the show would be one of those that has the potential to eclipse its written precursor.

Final point: I think this book grows on you.  It can be a little awkward at the beginning, but by the end, you will probably be invested in the characters and know them better than most people you know in real life.  And if you have lived in NYC, it will probably feature a scene close to your past neighborhood(s).  "You can usually find a cab up on Clinton," (116) rang true to me, at least in 2011.

And with several of the characters as artists, Hallberg uses the novel as something of a mirror to the work created by his characters:

"It was as if William Hamilton-Sweeney, despite to her knowledge never having sold so much as a painting, had been trying to re-create the face of the entire city, right here in this attic.  She couldn't tell if it was good, exactly, but no one could say it wasn't ambitious." (667)

Hallberg is only a few years older than me, so he couldn't have firsthand knowledge of the way the city felt in 1977, but it feels pretty real.  

S/M: Experience #4

Today is 9/11/15.  It's not every day you write a book or a movie that anticipates a very particular day in the future (recently, I made a joke in court about a continuance to October 21, 2015 that did not go over very well), and on those days, you must celebrate.  You must celebrate (though on this day certainly, we must mourn) and reflect on your accomplishments and assess how accurate your vision has proven to be.  I never wanted to release S/M on its own blog, like my other two "completed" books, but now we have posted 2 out of the 34 chapters or so.  The previous one posted was not one of the highlights of the book, but was just extremely timely in the same way.  This is a definite highlight in the book.  This is the high point, the low point, the climax, the everything.  It's a definite spoiler, but given the amount of interest that S/M has generated, who really gives a fuck anymore?  Enjoy.

Experience #4

            Happiness, love, sex, and death.  The four essential experiences to a human life.  Birth might also be included, but I have a hard time believing anybody remembers being born.  I also mentioned, earlier, that work could be included there.  True, I could still go home, I could still get back on my feet, I could still work on a screenplay, I could still achieve success yet. 

            Enough!  My hope is all used up.  That is not accurate to say.  I do not want to have any hope.  I do not wish to join the simpering masses on their crowded commuter trains at 7 AM, on an inadequate sleeping schedule, returning at 5, facing the world as an equal when even the most basic bodily functions send terror shooting along my insides.  I have never been able to express myself in language aloud.  What few words I manage to issue forth from my mouth are filled with the most banal observations.  Only here, on the page, is the full magnitude of my personality presented.  It has been a long ride, but the roller coaster has just passed its final curve, and is now stopping, prepared for us to disembark and to load in another train of passengers. 

            Everyone wishes for sustained happiness.  Take Samantha for example.  Ben will provide her with sustained happiness.  By now he must have passed the Bar.  By now he must be working at a prestigious law firm in downtown Los Angeles.  The money will soon come rolling right in.  Samantha must be submitting shorts to the Hollywood Film Festival.  They must be living together and thinking about marriage.  Ben must be getting ready to pop the question, or has probably already done so.  Samantha will clearly accept.  Ben has very few faults.  There are none that I have witnessed, and none that I have heard Samantha mention.  Sustained happiness is theirs.

            Take me, for example.  Would Samantha and I even have experienced sustained happiness, were she to have dumped Ben after that fateful “day of reckoning” a month before the end of college?  There’s no way of knowing for sure, but my long term prospects could never equal those of Ben.  A rift in the relationship could have occurred.  The only reason our friendship is so strong is because Samantha never allowed herself to get close enough to me to be disappointed. 

            Happiness: Robby and I at a 4^th of July celebration, carefree, successful for our age, doing totally typical teenage things, no cooler or less cool than anyone else.

            Love: Meeting Rhiannon for the first time, feeling like there was nothing I could do except impress her, going on an adventure downtown, feeling more advanced, comfortably normal, the way living should feel.

            Sex: Tamara swiftly taking my innocence, doing it gently, carefully, feeling more normal, now on the same level as everyone else.

            Death: At an early age, with profound works of art attached, a thrilling obituary, not famous, but oh so close. 

If only they knew!  If only those publishing houses had let me in their doors!  If only 20^th Century Fox, ABC Disney, CBS Paramount, Warner Brothers, or NBC Universal had let me squeeze into their crowded, crowded worlds.  If only I had found a place I could feel comfortable, with everything taken care of for me, without feeling like an invalid. 

            I won’t go home.  What’s the day?  Why, it’s a national holiday in September.  No work today.  We must never forget.  I remember: I was ten years old.  I was getting ready to leave for school.  My parents told me I didn’t have to go.  We were witnessing something unprecedented.  One day of studies could not contain the lessons presented in that experience.  My parents called their relatives and friends, but none of them lived in New York.  We were safe.  None of us were hurt.  Now I live in New York.  And today nobody goes to work.  There are few symbolic dates in a calendar year.  January 1.  February 14.  Easter.  Thanksgiving.  December 25.  Your birthday.  October 31.  December 31.  And today. 

            Am I drinking?  I’m out of money.  I could still call my parents and ask for money to get home.  I have a few cigarettes left.  Smoke one. 

            I’m watching documentaries on TV about today.  My history lesson, my déjà vu from a more innocent time.  Getting drunk might prove advantageous at a time like this, but there is literally no more money.  Seriously.  It’s call my parents and go home with my tail between my legs or leave this life and hope that some published history will suffice as a point of success, my education not a total waste after all. 

            Oh but what a waste anyways!  What a waste of a perfectly healthy body, an attractive frame, a reconstituted weight, and an artful mind.  Social anxiety makes such a waste of life.  I could still go home and see a therapist and receive a prescription and feel like normal people are supposed to feel.  You must know how I feel about that, though: they’re all wimps.  Did they have prescriptions for depression in Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome?  People got along perfectly well on their wits.  All these chains we have to wear, more and more as we advance into the future—more invisible laws, more anxieties, more population, more technology, and more division.

            One thing that will I will miss: you, reader!  Reader, you have been with me from the start.  I applaud your efforts of patience.  You’ve been such a good friend to me, to listen to this entire confession, to push forward after many instances where others might have thrown it down in disgust—you believed in me, and you don’t know how much that means to me.  Unfortunately, no one else believes in me, and this is why I have to do this.  We had a good time though, didn’t we?  I got to tell you about all the different times I cut myself and how my life has inexorably led me to this decision, how my life isn’t worth living because it’s filled with so much disappointment.  Why get older!  I’m always concerned about significant accomplishments for one’s age.  I have two significant pieces of writing to my name.  Perhaps I may be awarded a posthumous literary prize!  Other people count success by whether they can get a good job and find a good partner and have their own happy family—but we all know that’s never been within my grasp.  Therefore, my version of success: live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse.  That’s such a cliché I can’t believe I just used it during such an important part!  But it is true—I have followed that cliché to a T.  But what other versions of success have I grasped?  There was the applause for 28 ½ Cuts, an experience many people never have.  There was the love shown to me by my first English class freshman year after that first essay I submitted.  There are the two literary documents—the first, a heartbreaking novel about a doomed romance, the second, a memoir filled to the brink with pathos, a companion for any fellow sufferers of abject humiliation and self-inflicted hate.  I give you all a giant hug from my soon-to-be sterilized lower east side apartment in NYC.    

            Notes on imperfection: if my first novel were good enough, it would have been published and I could have led a slightly different life than the one I’m in.  But no.  All the gods told me I was a failure as a scribe.  I couldn’t put together a compelling enough query letter.  I couldn’t get people interested in me.  It’s all a matter of selling, right?  Selling yourself in interviews with prospective employers.  Selling yourself at bars with prospective lovers.  Selling yourself in anonymous letters with prospective agents.  I wonder why I even started writing in the first place.  Oh wait, now I remember—I couldn’t deal with so many “teammates” on an original cinematic production.  I didn’t like selling my vision to a group.  I had to keep my vision inside my own head and waste two years, a year on it, only to see it come to nothing.  Nobody wanted it when I presented it.  There weren’t the right characters.  There weren’t the right problems.  There weren’t the right solutions.  There weren’t the right concepts to stand behind.  Excuses, excuses, excuses.  There really wasn’t any talent in the first place.  It was always people who I knew in person, telling me I had great potential, people that would be proud to know me if I ever hit it big—you can never have too many friends in this business.  Entertainment.  All 7 billion people on this Earth just want to be entertained.  And all 7 billion just want to be entertainers, too.  But who among us is actually educated in entertainment?  What about educated in enlightenment?  Despite the overcrowded marketplace, there is a glut of entertainment which does nothing to educate the dim swathe of America which will believe anything a talk show host tells them.  I’ve worked my entire life to gain the respect of anyone in a position to judge my talent and here we are at the end, disillusioned, disappointed, crestfallen, dismissed. 

            There are successes and then there are greater successes and there are failures and then there are greater failures.  Right here today, we mix the greatest success and the greatest failure a life contains.  The greatest success—the completion.  The greatest failure—the abortion.  Do not misunderstand my use of the word abortion—I am pro-choice—I do not believe abortion is a sign of failure.  In a way, it’s a sign of too much success.  I suppose it only seems like a failure for all of those couples unable to get pregnant.  A wasted gift. 

            We are at the end.  Two cigarettes left.  Smoke another. 

            What else do I have left to say?  I’ve already sent my final messages to Samantha and Robby, my two closest friends in this life.  What about Jake?  Jake deserves a place in the end of this confession, because I admit with Jake, I was respected as an equal.  He was an actor and I was a filmmaker.  We were cut out of the same cloth.  We were equally talented.  He stayed in L.A. and I went home on the premise of guaranteed income.  He stayed on his own and fended for himself.  Jake, I admire you. That is my message to him.  I admire him, I wish I had never stopped being his roommate.  We made a pretty good team, didn’t we?  We had some pretty good parties.  We collaborated on some pretty good work.  We had pretty good taste as far as people in L.A. are concerned.  Jake, may this work become famous and may you rise to fame yourself for your role as a character in this story. 

            Who else is there to mention?  Tim, my Canadian compatriot from French club?  We never spent enough time together, Tim.  I should have asked you if I could have moved in.  More intelligent to live in Chicago than New York.  New York may be where all the action is, but there’s just as much going on in Chicago.  The attitude is the only thing that’s different.  People in New York live life to the fullest because they’re aware of how thin a thread they’re hanging by, whereas people in Chicago live life to the emptiest because they’re completely confident they’ll be able to live forever and accomplish all of their family dreams.  People in L.A., the majority of them, have their heads up their asses and don’t know hell from high water.  The division of classes is more prevalent there than anywhere else.  But Tim, I belonged in Chicago and if I hadn’t been so stupid, I might have been able to salvage something out of this heap I call my life.

            Adam?  Dare I mention Adam again?  Or Tamara?  To both of them I want to say: I regret my fear of boldness. 

            Or anybody else there was that I will never forget: Bill, Zack, wanting me for something that I’ll never be again.  Nancy, Susie, Rachel, Jenn, treating me like a human being worthy of respect, despite less healthy qualities.  Sean, Corey, teaching me how not to behave.  Jessica, for introducing me to the concept of girlfriend.  Rhiannon, for introducing me to the concept of discretion.  Nick, showing me there was more than one way to be cool.  Professor Diminico, Jackie, Professor Sheetz, making me feel like I wasn’t born on this earth to be a failure. 

            My parents, who don’t deserve to be treated like this.  They never had anything but my best interests in mind.  What a reward for them to receive for a job well done, giving their son the best education money could buy (within their means), giving him the freedom of an automobile, and giving him the autonomy to decide where he should make his home without discouragement. 

            Down to the last cigarette now.  Smoke it!  Sometimes questions like these are fun to answer: if you had to pick, what would be the last album you ever listened to before you die?  The last song?  I remember reading that Kurt Cobain listened to Automatic for the People and that Joey Ramone listened to All That You Can’t Leave Behind.  There is the legendary listening of Iggy’s The Idiot by Ian Curtis.  I’ve read vague things about a novel where a depressed girl plans to slit her wrists while listening to “Strawberry Fields Forever.”  And I remember a friend of a friend once saying he would listen to Kid A if he were in a plane that was going to crash—maybe he was thinking of the song, “How to Disappear Completely.”

            For my pick I choose Young Team.  I plan to take the offending action at the start of the final track, and have everything ended by the close of its seventeen minute running time.  I wonder if I should run a bath.  We still have some time, maybe a little over forty-five minutes until the writing will be stopped.  Oh, I’ll run a bath.  I’ll bring this laptop with me in there and place it on top of the toilet. 

            This is intense!  Every minute holds greater and greater significance.  The decision is finally mine to be made.  Nobody is going to stop me except myself.  I can still call it off and call my parents and tell them that I can’t make it in New York and need to move home—could they send some money?  I could even take that money and have more good times and do this again a week from now, lying to my parents, but that wouldn’t be polite.  I at least want to go out as a thoughtful person, never asking for more than was appropriate at the time. 

            Let me offer one final shout at God: This is it!  This is the brain you gave me, this is what it led to.  Utter despair.  Do you think I blame you for letting this world get too crowded, for letting opportunities come to the few that separate themselves by god-knows-what mechanism?  No, I would rather blame my parents for having me.  They didn’t deserve a child with my face, with my body, with my personality.  They deserved the starting quarterback of the high school varsity football team.  But it was you that made that decision, you that chose consciousness for me.  I would rather be a non-entity, unaware that anything lively ever occurred.  Knowledge and observation is a curse.  To see all those people, complaining about not getting laid in a month.  I went years until I had the boldness to bring back Trudie.  And I even owe all of that to heroin.  Why am I talking to God about my sex life?  That’s so inappropriate it’s not even funny.  Why are people so obsessed with their sexual activity?  Why did you have to make me so abnormal in this category?  Like that author whose name I won’t reveal said: sex is one of the four basic elements to the human life.  And I am deprived of a normal one.  Why?  I’m intelligent, I’m attractive—what the hell is wrong with me?  Oh, right, I’m just confused, that’s all.  Just put it out of your mind.  Life is not one big Greek drama, complete with a protagonist’s tragic flaw.  It’s just babies being born, growing up, doing the things adults do, growing old, and dying.  It’s just making a living, that’s all it comes down to.  Work.  Why can’t we all live in harmony, God?  Why can’t there be enough for everyone to go around?  Why do we always have to worry about how we’re ever going to be able to survive?  Is it just this country I’m living in, that has perverted the basic elements of human existence, or is it the entire world, and is this place actually better than others?  I don’t know who to believe about anything anymore.  The greatest writers in history.  Plato and Aristotle, Sophocles and Homer, Aeschylus and Aristophanes, Dante and Cervantes, Shakespeare and Milton, Lao Tzu, Flaubert and Balzac, Tolstoy and Kafka, Joyce and Proust, Nabokov and Mann, Hemingway and Fitzgerald.  They’re the only ones I can believe.  And who knows how many of them were motivated by commercial popularity.  Who knows how many of them were fixated on immortality.  I suppose I should believe in doctors who only have the health of their patients in mind.  Or lawyers, who only have the freedom of their clients in mind.  Or journalists, who only have the ideal of objective truth in mind.  None of them can help me.  I can’t join their ranks.  There’s enough of them as it is.  All that’s in store for me is low-wage slavery. What a fantastic way to go out.  Barely squeaking past the rent every month.  Only being able to afford the cheapest food, and then having to cook it myself, without anyone to share it with.  Or else, with someone to share it with, but with constant anxiety in regards to conversation, tedium, fear of double-crossing.  Better to be alone, to go out with a real bang, to show everyone I was here, I saw what it was like, and there wasn’t any place for me.  Except being a loser that returned home to his parents without any money.  And I will not give in to that failure.  I will not be condemned to that life.  Better to be an independent being, a victim of impossible circumstances, a fool perhaps, but a very talented one that went unappreciated.  A person whose legacy is defined by this very document, a work of filth, a work of half-lived life, a piece that will live in infamy as the definitive treatise on inadequacy, depression, anxiety, self-injury, deviance, abuse, popularity, failure, bitterness, hostility, paranoia, competitiveness, dilettantism, and love—real , imagined, denied. 

            Enough with the grandiose vocabulary—are you still into it?  I’m not.  It’s time to go.  I’m in the bathtub.  Here’s my utility blade.  You’ve been a wonderful audience.  Let’s see how long I can last.  Just like when you’re scared to do something, like jumping into a cold pool.  One, two, three, go!  Right one cut!  Right one cut!  Oh, the blood is spewing, it is spewing!  So much!  So fast!  It’s crazy.  Okay, left one now, left one now.  And, left one cut!  Left one cut!  Oh, that is crazy.  I should put my arms in the water for the soothing feeling but this is incredible, no one has ever written this way before, I swear to God no one has ever spent their last minutes writing as their life gives out.  Oh, it would be soothing to put them in the water.  There is pain, and blood is getting all over the keyboard, I hope the circuitry doesn’t become damaged and this document unrecoverable.  A buzz!  A buzz at the door.  I must buzz them in.  A visitor! 

            Well I just got out of the bathtub to grant them admittance to my building and I opened up my front door a crack so they can push it in.  Maybe they will rescue me and bring me to the hospital and I will survive yet, but oh well!  It’s up to them.  For now, I’m going to stop typing.  Put my arms back in the tub and relax.  This song is so soothing. 

THE END 

Happy 7th Birthday

Another gloriously unproductive year on Flying Houses, but for some reason, it felt better than the last one.  There were only 21 posts, compared to last year's 25.  We currently sit at 77,318 page views, when we had 59,169 last year, and just over 30,000 the year before.  Thus, our growth has slowed, and that makes me sad.  It makes me feel like I am dying.

Of course, everyone who reads this blog knows two things: (1) blogs about books are not all that popular; (2) I don't market the hell out of it, and apparently update it less than twice per month.

But still, this year feels better than last year, and I have to attribute that to my professional situation.  Those of you who have been with us all the way from beginning (brave souls!) know that it was started at 11100 Santa Monica Blvd.  I forget which floor.  Though that job sucked, and though I have posted highly-sensitive details about my exit and distaste for the temporary help industry, I have very fond memories of those days.  However, it was an unsustainable and ultimately sad life that I lived in L.A.  Certain days (this morning included) I wish I had tried harder there, not given up, not gone home, not bought an LSAT book.  I suppose most of us have to learn the hard way; sometimes things do not have a way of working themselves out.

I digress!  I would not have started this blog if I had not been at Jefferies & Co. at that specific time in history and I thank them for that inspiration.  (I'd also like to thank Rahm Emanuel for causing the recession.)

We did not hit 300 posts this year.  We are 4 short.  I am not going to quit, however.  I may quit one day, but that may be when I know the end is near, or the day the printed word becomes obsolete.  There is still work to be done.

The most notable achievement from the last year was certainly the posting of Think and Grow Poor, which now sits above Daylight Savings Time on this blog's homepage.  I am seriously depressed that I'm not making money off of this writing, but I have avoided posting S/M for a long time now.  I may release that as an e-book.

Speaking of money, this blog has earned $29.21 in seven years.  It must be the most unprofitable venture of all time.

That said, I am reasonably sure that AdSense has systematically raised the minimum payment amount several times to avoid any remuneration to me.  I'm pretty sure it used to be $10, then it was $25, and now it is $100.  So it will take me a long time to get paid.  I read about a class action lawsuit that was going to be filed against them.  I hope to be included, but I'm afraid my claim is not substantially similar.

I realize it was about 15 years ago that people used to tell their friends, "Click on an ad!" but I will just ask once.  About a year ago I was working at CTA, and we had a plaintiff come in for a deposition.  She said she fell down on a bus that slammed on its brakes.  Somehow it got brought out that she ran a blog--a fashion blog--where she took pictures of herself in various plus-size outfits.  She said she made about $300 a month on the advertising.  I was like, holy shit.  This girl could teach me something.

So don't be surprised if I start putting myself out there.

Speaking of putting myself out there, I am afraid to Google myself.  I know what used to show up, at least, and it makes me want to either kill myself or fly into a murderous rage.  Neither would be conducive towards a happy future.  At this time, I am concerned that it has turned me into a joke of a person that no one would ever want to hire.  Now I may be a joke of a person, but I want to be my joke of a person--not anybody else's.  Fuck people who presume to know the details.

Having said that, there is a request for a new NIED piece.  It would appear that all of my columns have been archived at BLS Advocate, However, #25 was chopped in two, and I think it seriously lost its power by being cut down into manageable bite-size portions, one with convenient advice for passing the bar exam.  The original text of #25 is lost, so it must remain in its expurgated form on BLS Advocate.  #26, however, will be coming soon...

Generally, this was a good year in terms of maintaining a readership and eliciting fascinating and helpful comments.  I received an offer for a review copy of a book by a Turkish feminist about the 16th century Ottoman Empire.  I said I would be delighted to receive a copy and review it, though none has arrived.  It is unfortunate that neither the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Reader, nor any other publication has reached out to me regarding a part-time position for once weekly or monthly book reviews, but perhaps, if forced to work within the confines of an editorial staff, the substance of my criticism would be sapped.  For there is little substance.  It is all reader-response here.  I do not deign to posit a formula for a great book other than being moved by my past tangible experience.

Stay tuned for NIED #26, which could be a doozy, and a double (possibly triple) review of The Pale King.  Be patient for the latter.

Think and Grow Poor: Cultivating a Negative Mental Attitude Promotional Post

More than five and a half years ago, I mentioned that I was considering posting this book.  I declined to do so for "personal reasons":

 Later, this morning I decided against another, my most recent, still in its rough draft form and one I am not sure will ever be seriously revised, my NaNoWriMo project from last year, titled Think and Grow Poor: Cultivating a Negative Mental Attitude, a memoir of my life from July of 2007 through Election Day 2008--I decided against this for personal reasons, and though it is no small achievement, it is probably my weakest overall work, with only a few chapters in particular (maybe 5) that eclipse most of my other work."(http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/05/dst-promotional-post.html)

So having said that, five of these chapters are probably worth checking out more than the others:
"Pre-Existing Condition"
"Literary Criticism"
"The Launch" 
"I Want to Shroom at Disneyland" 
"Ashleigh"

This book is not great.  But the structure is what separates it from your "typical road novel."  Obviously, Kerouac is a major influence on this work.  I took a road trip and settled down for 9 months in L.A., then wrote about the experience in a very short period of time.  There are also several "themes" that run through the book and I would like to think that I present a near-expert perspective on each of them.

I did not want to put this up previously because it was "too soon."  But now, time has healed most wounds, and I can give this is its own blog.  I advertised this book on Facebook by asking the question of how many friends I might lose in the process of posting it, but I only dropped from 551 to 550.  While this is a book of creative nonfiction in its purest sense (only 2 name changes), I hope most people consider it "fiction" and do not decide to prejudge me on the basis of the activities described therein.  The majority of this action took place between August 2007 and September 2008, so I hope you realize that people have the capacity to change.  It was also written mostly in November 2008, and there are many, many changes I would make if I were going to sit down with it and publish it as a book.  I am mostly happy with the way it is (though I know it tends to drag on in self-serious, equivocating explanatory paragraphs), and was busy trying to complete NaNoWriMo in 2014 while posting each chapter in reverse chronological order and making "light edits" and trying to come up with something vaguely clever to tease each post on Facebook and Twitter.  It wasn't a big success, but also wasn't a huge failure.  To date it has 881 page views (which I know, sucks, but in comparison to DST, which is sitting at 2040 after 5.5 years, it can be counted as a slight success.  Then again, I never tried to do a similar promotional thing for DST.

There were about 10 people that seemed to regularly visit the site each day to see each new post.  I appreciate their attention and hope they found it worthwhile.  I hope you will consider checking it out, and letting me know what you think.  Because I've been very lazy lately, but really want to get back into writing the way I did in 2006 through 2009...and maybe even 2013.  I find myself strangely lacking motivation to try, but I know that eventually, I must.

http://thinkandgrowpoor.blogspot.com/

-Christopher J. Knorps
12/14/14 in Chicago, Illinois

Note on Copyright

As you may have noticed, I have copyrighted all material on Flying Houses.

This was done as a result of my friend, who took Copyright Law last semester and wants to practice it, telling me that I had left myself extraordinarily unprotected in perhaps the easiest medium to copy, cut, paste, and steal: text.

Daylight Savings Time, the novel, has also been copyrighted.

While Flying Houses is run as a public service to all of the book lovers of the world, I have become quite interested in the traffic stats of late. Flying Houses is more popular than ever. And it is definitely possible that some of my material is being hijacked.

I won't stand for this as Flying Houses will soon be celebrating its 4th birthday, and I have spent countless hours working to perfect a distinct style and tone to the material. If others profit off the work that I do for no pay, they will be found out and reprimanded appropriately.

That said, please feel free to share any reviews or articles on this blog. After all, I am quite happy about the traffic hitting new peaks each month. But, if you would like to re-publish something, please contact me for permission.

You may do this by commenting on any post and stating your request. I will generally not seek pay - just credit. And if you are trying to write an essay for high school or college about one of these books, please, write your own paper (and know that I will be happy to discuss whatever ideas you may have for it - Flying Houses is not sparknotes - these reviews are not academic in nature - they do, however, provide a springboad for academic commentary, and I am always pleased to discuss such matters).

Garden State - Rick Moody

The first thing I did when I picked up Garden State at the library was to make sure that it was not the source material for the film directed by Zach Braff. That movie has, among other things, given rise to the popularity of the Shins and the new "hipster" indie set as a cultural institution. Some other films (those by Andrew Bujalski come to mind) mine similar territory, but never to the blockbuster degree that this film did. And it is hard to see what makes it so seemingly great. I will say that there were a couple good scenes in the movie (when Peter Sarsgaard smokes pot with his mom the morning after their big party, or the scene in the rock quarry, or whatever) but overall I found it average, and it's biggest saving grace is that it is not as bad as The Last Kiss.

So I was happy that Garden State was its own different thing. I also thought it would be instructional for me, a not-quite-ready-to-quit-yet writer, in what it takes to get a first novel published. Here's the thing about Rick Moody: he got his MFA from Columbia University. It's one of the top programs in the country--and also one of the most notorious for being expensive and generally unwilling to provide funding for its students--and Rick Moody is its most famous alum. This book was published in 1992, when Rick Moody was 31. That's pretty young for your first book (these days), and in a way Garden State is the official beginning of the purported "MFA Movement" in contemporary literature. Except that Garden State is actually really awesome.

Not to say that every writer who has their MFA has no soul, or something, but there is a general concern that they have "figured out the nuts & bolts of literature" and therefore write cookie-cutter stories and novels. I do think that is true for many graduates of these programs, and many of those that aspire to this level, and it may even be true for Rick Moody in some of his other work, but definitely not in this novel. It might be useful to compare this to Purple America, which came out four years after this, and which was one of the first posts on Flying Houses. In between these two books came The Ice Storm, which is an awesome movie and a book I want to read now even more. Surprisingly he only has one other novel, The Diviners, in 2005. As we might have learned from our previous post, it pays to be selective.

So which is better--Purple America or Garden State? For my money--Garden State. And that is not to say that Purple America is bad--only that it is more comic and less realistic. The opening chapter of Purple America shows off more literary tricks than anything in Garden State, but his debut is easily the more moving of the two. I read most of it yesterday, Labor Day, horribly, horribly depressed. And it didn't make me feel much better, but I could definitely relate to most, if not all of the characters, and it already holds a special place in my heart for having been with me on this troubling day. That is what makes books more special than movies. The experience of consuming it colors one's opinion.

This book is about many young people in their early to mid 20's living in New Jersey, most in their parents' houses. The fact that I moved back to my parents' house almost exactly one year earlier on Labor Day also plays a certain role in this reading.

It is about Alice Smail, who used to be in a band called Critical Ma$$ with Scarlett, and L.G. Scarlett lives in her own place above an exterminator's office. L.G. still plays music but is coming to grips with the fact that he has to work as a carpet salesman in order to make a living. The other main characters are Dennis, Alice's boyfriend of sorts, and Lane, Dennis's step-brother. Alice's mother and Dennis's mother are also notable, as is Max Crick, who works as a cable installer and sometime drug dealer--but the real heart of the story is Lane. Every time that Lane appears, the novel hits its stride. But it would not be as good if it were only about him, if he were the main character. As it is, Alice is pretty much the main character, but Lane will capture most readers' sympathies. He has recently moved back home with his mother because he could not take living in the city and working his job. At the beginning of the novel he is lying in bed for days, barely able to speak. Later he will be awoken in the middle of the night and brought out to a party, which causes an event which bisects the novel beautifully.

I have to mention that Garden State bears more than a passing resemblance to my first novel, Daylight Savings Time, not the least of which is the occurrence of that day (but in April, not October) as a significant moment in the narrative, but also in its depiction of "young people who don't know what they want to do with their life" and drug use and an "ensemble cast." Where it differs is that, while I really don't know what I'm doing with my life, nor did I know anything about my characters, Moody knows his characters inside out. And their experiences ring true, while the experiences of my characters ring spoiled brat, i.e. the author. So basically, Rick Moody accomplishes what I hoped to accomplish with my first novel, except his takes place in the suburbs while mine takes place in the city. His narrative is also just more finely chiseled.

Like I said, I read the majority of this novel in a day--but it would be hard to say it is an instant classic. It's a very good book, a very, very good book, and it might be on a top 10 list of the best novels of 1992, but I don't know if it would win the NBA. Anybody that is in their 20's and confused about the bitch of life that is a career--this book is for you.

It's also oddly appropriate that I read it after Franny and Zooey. Just one of those things, that one of the main characters in each book is named Lane, and I think this book does not accidentally bear other similarities. It may not be about praying, but it is definitely about nervous breakdowns.

If there was one single aspect I had to mention as a facet of the "MFA Movement," it would be the "listing concept." Many works in contemporary literature by MFA graduates feature weird lists of things, like if they are able to be comprehensive about a certain subject then they are really smart and deserve the title of all-knowing, all-seeing writer, who can describe anything and everything. Occasionally, Moody works this to his advantage:

"Silence, then. Alice didn't say anything. Lane breathed. He was looking back and forth down the corridor. Then he just started talking. All these decisions came about as though they were made somewhere else, not in his own head. It was like taking dictation. He told her about where he was, about how there was this day the second week there when he had suddenly known he would survive, about how everything cleared in that moment. Like some long, involved fugue coming to its resolution. Lane told Alice about women. He told her his crimes--not even knowing if she was listening. He told her about the woman in his philosophy class in college. He told her about how there'd been another girl at the patent law firm. He had never said a word to either of them. He had spent so much time alone. He didn't know how many afternoons had passed this way. There was no way to start all the conversations he owed. He didn't even know where to begin. Books might be better than people. He told her how he was afraid of women and afraid of men too, and how he felt at the roof party, and how it felt when he fell, and how he had wanted to jump, and he told her about civic corruption and philosophical disenfranchisement and the hypocrisies of patent law. He told her about his lust for the outdoors. He told her everything that had gone wrong, everything he had lost, everyone who had hurt him, and then he told her about his father." (180-181)

This book is 210 pages long and moves much more quickly than Purple America. I am guessing that being able to identify with the characters helped move me along, but I also know that this is a very good novel, and one that all young writers should read--a) so that they know the market, and b) so that they know how good a first novel has to be in order to be published today. It's a shame that Zach Braff had to use the same title--a movie of this book would have been so much better. So, so much better.

Online Store

Flying Houses is pleased to present our very own online store, for the purposes of disseminating a very rare, highly-valuable, limited-edition, personally-signed novel and collection of short stories. One can only hope that by the end of the Summer of 2008 there will be a second novel also to offer. In the mean time, an image will be created (advertisement), and any one browser will be able to purchase either "Daylight Savings Time" or a collection of nine short stories, tailored to your personal needs.

In order to purchase one of these two books, you will need $10, plus however much it costs to ship and handle said product (roughly $13 total, I am guessing). At the moment the production cost is free due to my current office stint. All books will be bound with a plastic, curlicue spine, a clear plastic cover sheet, and a blue backing page. All copies will be signed, and with a personal inscription if you so choose.

Regardless of your needs, "Daylight Savings Time" or "Collection of Nine Random Short Stories" will open up horizons previously unknown to you, and cause you to cry, and probably inspire you towards one or two stupid decisions. While they are not hardcover, mass-market products, presided over by agents and editors, they are better than that because they do not pander to anyone's literary tastes except my own, which, if you please, is self-reflexive (write what you would like to read) and is therefore looking out for you as well, anon. browser, aspiring artist. Synopses, criticisms, and praise will follow as images are created.