The Rise, The Fall and the Rise - Brix Smith-Start (2016)

I started listening to Turned Out a Punk, Damien Abraham's podcast, sometime this fall.  An entire post should be written about the podcast but suffice to say, Brix Smith was one of the first guests that I wanted to hear.  Her episode probably made me want to read this book.  I'm very glad that I did.  While it is not a perfect book and will not make the Best Books list, parts of it are so incredible that make it worthwhile.  I could not agree with Abraham that it was the best book I had read that year.  It was however, extremely entertaining and highly readable, at times.  As a huge fan of the Fall going back about 14 years, it was a totally amazing experience. On both the podcast, and in this book, Brix references being classmates with Donna Tartt and Bret Easton Ellis at Bennington College in the early 80's.  She does not aim for the heights of The Goldfinch, but sometimes lapses into Ellis-styled prose.  That is, her life could be one of his novels, particularly with the ending in the fashion industry.  What she ends up doing is completely her own.  It may not generally be as artful, but I personally found that I could identify with Brix very closely.  We are all Brix Smith, or Brix Smith is all of us.

I re-listened to the episode today, and forgot the two other Bennington classmates she mentioned--Jonathan Lethem and Jill Eisenstadt.  Apart from that there is not much else to mention--you can listen to the podcast yourself.  I will note that Brix has one of most unique accents I have heard--British valley girl.  She was born in L.A. and spent her childhood there, and splitting time between there and Chicago in her teen years.  She now lives in England.

The stuff about Chicago is fantastic.  On the podcast, Brix mentions that her first concert was at this outdoor venue outside of Chicago, where people have picnics, Rav-en-ia, where she saw the Carpenters and Neil Sedaka on a double bill.  Having recently seen Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons with my family at Ravinia, I found it touching.

Most notably, there is the story of where and when she met Mark E. Smith:

"On Saturday 23 April 1983, Lisa and I paid the $6 ticket price and entered through the front doors of Cabaret Metro, 3730 North Clark Street." (144)

This was within a week of my birth, not very far away, so I have one more reason to feel connected to the band and this book.

Brix writes compelling stories through the first 75% of the book.  In truth I lost some interest after she left the Fall, and it was briefly exciting when she rejoined for a couple years in the mid-90's.  The opening of the book confused me--it's an account of her grandmother seemingly losing it behind the wheel and driving from the Disneyland parking lot through the main gates and into the park before plunging into the lagoon at the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride.  I thought it was real, but Brix later reveals it to be a dream.  I wonder how many other people have that reaction.  It seems like it could have happened, because so much of the rest of her life has been crazy that anything seems possible.  Her stories about her father are both hilarious and horrifying.  There are so many things I would excerpt from this book it's not even funny.  On that note, I should perhaps vault it into Best Books territory, but I think it is instructive to compare it to the other recent female rock musician memoirs that I've read.

If pressed, I have to say that it is better than both Kim Gordon's Girl in a Band and Carrie Brownstein's Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl.  Both are excellent books.  All three of these books are fantastic and totally worth reading, but Brix's is the heaviest.  To be sure, Kim Gordon's account of the dissolution of her relationship with her husband and bandmate, Thurston Moore, is the most powerful piece of writing in the bunch.  This is not to say that Carrie Brownstein's account of the dissolution of her romantic relationship with bandmate Corin Tucker is weak.  In fact, Brix's account of the dissolution of her relationship with husband and bandmate, Mark E. Smith, is the least evocative, in part due to the inscrutability of the man it involves.  Now I love Mark E. Smith but this book definitely sheds some light on him in an unflattering fashion.  It feels fair, though, because there are also moments of extreme vulnerability, humanity, and cuteness.

There are some parts of this book that are tough to read.  Yet even during the most atrocious moment, Brix offers some levity and resists victimization.  As I said, there are many quotable excerpts in this book, so I have to include one about Mark E. Smith that almost made me want to start crying:

"One night, a few months later, there was a knock at the front door of my apartment.  I opened the door to find Mark E. Smith standing there.  He was drunk and held a half-empty bottle of whiskey.  He begged me to let him in, and was in a state.  He told me he had made a mistake leaving me.  I let him in and tried to calm him down.  He asked if he could sleep over.  He was emotional.  I was torn.  Part of me was happy he'd come to his senses and realised what he'd lost in leaving me.  The other part of me was cold and shut down.  After having experienced the attentions and kindness of other men, I was no longer attracted to him.
But still, I felt connected to him.  That would never go away.  He had been my soulmate.  The songs we wrote together would forever be a testament to that.  I allowed him to sleep over, in my bed.  I made it patently clear he was not to touch me.  As he lay next to me, I felt sad.  The next morning, it would be years before I ever saw him again." (267-268)

The stories of the songs were surprising.  It always seems like the Fall are singing about conspiracies or manifestos but in truth are just slices of life.  For example, Brix writes about her sleeping problems and reliance on pills in "US 80s-90s":

"My mother's pills came in the prescription bottle with her name on it.  When we landed in Boston, immigration singled us out to be searched --this happened often, being in a rock group; when we came through carrying guitars and music gear we set off internal klaxons inside officials' heads; we practically had stickers on our foreheads saying 'Search me' -- and the customs officials were aggressively questioning us about the prescription pills not in our name.  This experience led us to write our version of a hip-hop track, 'US 80s-90s': 'Had a run-in with Boston immigration/to my name they had an aversion/Nervous droplets due to sleeping tablets....'  In the airport the signs would read, 'Welcome to the United States of America', but we would always get tormented by security and feel like we were entering a police state.  In the song Mark proclaims, 'I am the original white (big shot) rapper', and it's not hyperbole." (222)

She writes often about "Hotel Bloedel" and "LA."  She seems to consider these her best songs.  She wrote a lot of great songs with the band and I think most people consider the "Brix era" to be the second-greatest period in the Fall's catalog (behind the Hex Enduction Hour era).  Certainly she brought the band in a more accessible direction.  Other noteworthy song inspirations include "Carry Bag Man" (about how Mark E. Smith likes to carry around his stuff in plastic bags).  Actually, her causal dismissal of The Frenz Experiment (the last album she would record before re-joining the band as his ex-wife) is worth capture:

"'Carry Bag Man' is fine, and chugs along, but is a phoned-in effort from Mark, a song about how he likes to carry plastic bags.  'Get a Hotel' is just annoying.  'The Steak Place' is boring and conjures images of gross food, the kind of restaurant that might have photos of the food on their menu.  The most annoying song I ever had to play on was 'Oswald Defence Lawyer.'  I think it was the worst song we'd done since I'd joined the band.  It was interminable, and when we played it live I watched the audience switch off.  It makes me cringe today, just thinking about it.  I was expected to really belt it out, but it just sounds irritating and grating: 'Oswald Defense Lawyer embraces the scruffed corpse of Mark Twain.'  It was cool to name-check Twain, though." (238-239)

Brix writes a fair amount about her post-Fall band, Adult Net, and I was dismayed not to be able to find anything on Spotify or Amazon Music.  I would definitely have listened to The Honey Tangle if I could.  Maybe Brix realizes that streaming services will net her approximately zero and that her fans will seek out old copies of the album.  Or likely it's the record label's fault.

I don't want to give away too many details about the book but can say briefly that Brix's parents divorced when she was young and her mother moved to Chicago and she moved around in fairly fancy places with her father in L.A.  There is more than a fair share of celebrity name-dropping in this book.  It's not always totally necessary, but if I was writing my memoir, I would totally do the same thing.  It's the tangents that usually end up being memorable, such as the story of her professional soccer player friend who soils himself on the field and fakes an injury, or the friend at her bachelorette party with a crazy party trick. 

She goes back from her father in L.A. to her mother in Chicago multiple times through her teen years.  She does not have kind things to say about Chicago, but her account of working at Marshall Field's in the Loop was especially charming (sometimes I like to reflect on the significance of being in the same place as another person in recorded history).  She meets Mark E. Smith at Smart Bar after seeing the Fall in concert at the Metro.  What happens is the definition of a whirlwind romance and is completely insane and showcases the true spontaneity of Brix.  She quickly decides to move to England, move in with Mark, and get married.  She becomes a member of the Fall and stays with them for another four years.  This will be the highlight for the majority of readers.  However, Brix's life outside the Fall is arguably more interesting.  For example, her section about being an aspiring-actress-waitress in L.A after being left by Mark and effectively kicked out of the band is especially compelling.  She meets Nigel, a classical violinist, who is apparently quite a sensation, and is led into a different world, seemingly a little more refined but no less debaucherous.  In fact, I'm sorry, but I have to give a snippet of her encounter with Courtney Love, who invites her to audition for Hole:

"....But as I went to sleep, I had a sixth sense that something was wrong.  A bad feeling.  Something was burning.  I got up, out of bed and rushed to Courtney's room and pushed open the door to the master bedroom.  In her room, she had a selection of candles and incense burning.  Two sticks of incense had fallen over and caught fire.  The carpet was aflame and I caught it just in time.  Had I been five minutes later I dread to think what would have happened.  I put out the fire by smothering it with a blanket and stamping on it.  Courtney was in bed, slumped over her computer.  I fleetingly clocked that she had been mid-conversation with Billy Corgan, of The Smashing Pumpkins.
She said, 'Get into bed, sleep on Kurt's side.'  So I did.  It was really weird, but I felt honoured to be asked to sleep there, in her bed, on his side.  Courtney was warm and kind.  I feel she's often misunderstood.  She is a complex person, as we all are.  At times she has been her own worst enemy, but when you get down to it there is kindness and warmth to her, that is not often talked about." (362)

She then proceeds to talk about how Courtney turned her onto Rohypnol, in one of the more outrageous habits detailed in the book.  Later on, she rejoins the Fall briefly, and then meets her current husband, who then opens a fashion store with her in London.  She also co-stars briefly in a reality series, Gok's Fashion Fix, which sounds like it would be amazing to see.  She has an amazing kitchen and is in love with her pugs.

That is pretty much the whole story, but Brix's mysticism is also worth noting.  She seems to have some sort of otherworldly presence.  One could easily write off her ramblings as hippie-ish, vaguely drugged out, but the realities she has known are so insane that I am inclined to believe her if she says she believes in ghosts.  The precognitive powers of Mark E. Smith are also referenced poignantly, in a story I had read before, about the origins of the song, "Disney's Dream Debased."  The story is that she had taken Mark E. Smith with her to Disneyland and they got in line for the Matterhorn and while waiting he said he didn't like the ride, that it was evil, and that he didn't want to go on it.  They rode it anyways and left.  A few minutes later, there was a commotion in the area, and Disneyland employees came out from hidden elevators and Disney characters tried to distract parkgoers' attention from the Matterhorn.  It came out that a woman was killed when she fell out of her car at the unloading zone onto the track, and the next car could not be stopped from dismembering her.  It's a horrifying story and it would be interesting to know what became of the incident legally, whether Disney has publicly acknowledged that it occurred.

There is another truly insane story about Disneyworld (Brix always goes to Disneyland, but goes to Disneyworld for the first time in her late 20's or early 30's) and how Mickey Mouse may or may not be trying to ask her on a date or hook up with her.  This story appears to be in there solely to detail the breakdown of Brix's mind at the time (it is a weirdly hallucinogenic chapter), but she later brings it full circle when she becomes one of the very few to get Mickey Mouse to appear at an event for her fashion store.  Her comment on the usual gender of the person wearing the Mickey Mouse costume is poignant. 

I could go on a lot longer and pick out more passages, but I think I've said pretty much everything I wanted to say about this.  It's a great book, but it occasionally feels like Brix is going through the motions, telling the story because she has to and not necessarily because she wants to.  The grammar is correct and proper, but the writing is not especially complex and definitely devolves into purple prose at times.  However, I would want any friend of mine to read it, regardless of whether they liked the Fall or not.  I think it would make a great movie--"Scenes from Brix" or something, like Moonlight and three different periods in her life.  Not everyone wants to sell the movie rights to their life, but really, you would do it if you could, wouldn't you?

The Pale King - David Foster Wallace (2011)

Wow.  At first I was guessing this was published in 2014, before I looked into the copyright page.  I thought this was going to be one of the more "up to date" reviews, but I guess I'm four years late.  Law school can do that to you.  Then again, would I have ever even read this book if it weren't for my friend that sent it and suggested we form a "book club" and read it together?

I mean, I own Infinite Jest, but only got through about 400 pages on my first attempt, and maybe 150 on my second.  I will finish that book the next time I try.  I considered picking it up this morning, needing a new book start on, before What I Talk about When I Talk about Running comes in from the CPL.  But I wanted a lighter messenger bag for a change.  This is the 3rd book out of the last 4 topping out over 500 pages.  I picked up Disgrace instead.

Imponderables aside, the thoughtfulness of the gift both impressed and imposed an urgency upon me.   The Pale King will not make the Best Books list of this blog, but it is up near that territory.  I'm not sure it would be there, for me, in its finished form either, just because of the lukewarm feeling I get about Infinite Jest.  It's something I feel I should respect and admire, but just can't really bring myself to enjoy reading.  This is getting to be a loaded topic, because it brings up criticisms of DFW like those of BEE, who said he was a "fraud" or "full of shit" or something, because he read a biography of DFW that discussed how he did not have much love for BEE, but still recognized him as an influence on his own writing.

This would probably be a much better book if DFW were able to complete it, mainly to see what he might do next.  As much as this seems unfinished, at almost 550 pages it seems pretty representative of what the overall quality might have been.  Parts of it seem lop-sided, but on the whole it seems about 80-85% finished to me.  I suppose it all depends on how long DFW intended it to be.

For sure, it is an audacious concept for a book, and a perfect one for him: a paean to boredom.  Make the boredom of the everyday lives of IRS examiners in Peoria, IL in the late 70's and early 80's into fine literature.  I was about to write 1985, but I don't believe this story necessarily takes place in 1985.  It's so impressionistic that the "plot" seems secondary to the background sketches of the other characters.

It's not even clear what the "plot" really consists of, but it may consist of Claude Sylvanshine and David Foster Wallace's orientation to their IRS posts in Peoria.  It's hot and they ride in a bus that is a repossessed and re-purposed ice cream truck.  One person sweats an egregious amount.  There is some idle chatter with two other employees.  They go, and DFW gets mixed up with another David F. Wallace (who is older and much more valuable in terms of skill set) and gets introduced by the "Iranian crisis," who gives him a blow job in a janitor's closet.  He also glimpses the face of Glendenning, who is basically in the highest post there, who looks at him sympathetically or some related way because DFW has a horrible skin condition that causes most people to look away.  And that's pretty much it, though there may be other characters on that bus ride near the beginning of the novel.

DFW is a character in this novel.  Ostensibly, it is a memoir:

"Plus there's the autobiographical fact that, like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist,' i.e., somebody whose adult job was original and creative instead of tedious and dronelike.  My specific dream was of becoming an immortally great fiction writer a la Gaddis or Anderson, Balzac or Perec, &;c.; and many of the notebook entries on which parts of this memoir are based were themselves literarily jazzed up and fractured; it's just the way I saw myself at the time.  In some ways, you could say that my literary ambitions were the chief reason I was on hiatus from college and working at the Midwest REC at all, though most of that whole backstory is tangential and will be addressed only here in the Foreword, and very briefly, to wit:" (73-74)

Here, Wallace describes how he paid off his student loans by writing papers for his classmates, and how his school became aware of it.  This is the first part of the novel that feels truly "great."  It is classic DFW, by which I mean it includes footnotes and his trademark erudition.  So yes, certain sections of The Pale King, I would say, are as good as anything DFW has ever done.

This is a great chapter because Wallace could pretty easily convince a person (that didn't know what year he was really born and couldn't do math) that the story is, in fact, true.  One thing I like about his writing is that it captures the essence of reality.  A reader can identify with it on a different level than anything before.  The details--the minute details and almost paranoid insecurities that we all must worry about from time to time--are so readily evoked that DFW appears God-like.  This one of those books that takes you out of your head a bit, and oddly shapes your life around it.

One part, for me, was extremely touching.  One quick background detail, for exposition: from April 2008 through August 2008, I lived in a small bungalow-like studio in Silver Lake, on a hill just off of Sunset Boulevard.  Across Sunset Blvd. was a foot sign.  My friend (the same one who sent me this book) remarked upon it and I agreed it was strange, funny, cute and iconic in its own way.  It was certainly a landmark.  After I left L.A., he sent me an article once about how this sign had actually influenced several fiction writers, such as Jonathan Lethem and DFW.  I immediately thought, "I am chosen.  I was meant to live there, to know that."

Then came page 163, which will from hereon in be christened the "LSAT test," not unlike the "420 test," except that instead of requiring mention because of some relatively direct reference to pot (and while there is a fair amount of "drug material" in this book, it does not pass that test--though page 420 does detail one of the more sensorily-powerful scenes in the novel), it will need to evoke feelings of my life that might be different if I hadn't taken the LSAT and scored a 163:

"I remember rooming in a high-rise UIC dorm with a very mod, with-it sophomore from Naperville who also wore sideburns and a leather thong and played the guitar.  He saw himself as a nonconformist, and also very unfocused and nihilistic, and deeply into the school's wastoid drug scene, and drove what I have to admit was a very cool-looking 1972 Firebird that it eventually turned out his parents paid the insurance on.  I cannot remember his name, try as I might.  UIC stood for the University of Illinois, Chicago campus, a gigantic urban university.  The dorm we roomed in was right on Roosevelt, and our main windows faced a large downtown podiatric clinic--I can't remember its name, either--which had a huge raised electrified neon sign that rotated on its pole every weekday from 8:00 to 8:00 with the name and mnemonic phone number ending in 3668 on one side and on the other a huge colored outline of a human foot--our best guess was a female foot, from the proportions--and I remember that this roommate and I formulated a kind of ritual in which we'd make sure to try to be at the right spot at our windows at 8:00 each night to watch the foot sign go dark and stop rotating when the clinic closed.  It always went dark at the same time the clinic's windows did and we theorized that everything was on one main breaker.  The sign's rotation didn't stop all at once.  It was more like slowly wound down, with almost a wheel-of-fortune quality about it where it would finally stop.  The ritual was that if the sign stopped with the foot facing away, we would go to the UIC library and study, but if it stopped with the foot or any significant part of it facing our windows, we would take it as a 'sign' (with the incredibly obvious double entendre) and immediately blow off any homework or supposed responsibility we had and go instead to the Hat, which at the time was the currently hip UIC pub and place to hear bands, and would drink beers and play quarters and tell all the other kids whose parents were paying their tuition about the ritual of the rotating foot in a way that we all appeared nihilistically wastoid and hip.  I'm seriously embarrassed to remember things like this...." (163)

This turns out to be a videotaped interview with "Irrelevant" Chris Fogle, and it is one of the standout portions of the text.  His father is employed by the City of Chicago as a "cost Systems supervisor," and dies in a horrific CTA accident.  The description of the ensuing litigation with CTA is very accurately rendered.  He grows up in Libertyville, IL and references a number of other towns on the north shore, including Winnetka (a clothing store--Jack Fagman--which his family had patronized since 1964, and which may or may not have existed).  It is basically about the moment that he discovered his calling in life--to serve the IRS.  It details a chance encounter with an Accounting professor at DePaul, and how it took him off the path of serial college enrollments, drugs, and the "wastoid" lifestyle.  In short, this is classic DFW.

Another notable section near the end focuses on a conversation between Shane Drinion and Meredith Rand, two other IRS employees, at a bar's happy hour on a Friday.  Drinion is cyborg-like in his communications, but Rand is relentlessly confessional.  The subject matter of this scene is also touching and personal to me, as I wrote my second novel in between 2007 and 2008, finishing most of its rough draft shortly before DFW committed suicide.  It is heartening to think that we might have been compelled to write about the same topic for similar reasons:

"'I didn't know why I did it.  I'm still not sure, except he taught me that trying to analyze it or understand all the whys was bullshit--the only important thing was knocking it off, because if I didn't it would land me right back in the psych ward, that the idea I could hide it with bandages or sleeves and keep it a totally private thing that didn't affect anybody else was arrogant bullshit.  And he's right.  No matter where you do it or how carefully you do it, there's always a time when somebody sees something and says something, or when somebody is funking around in the hall and pretending to beg you to cut algebra and go to the park and get stoned and climb on the statue of Lincoln and grabs your arm too hard and some of the cuts open up and you bleed through your long sleeves, even if you've got two shirts on, and somebody sends for the nurse even if you tell them to fuck off and it was an accident and you'll just go home and get it seen to at home.  There always comes a day when somebody sees something in your face that tells them you're lying and then the next thing you know there you are, in a lit room with your arms and legs uncovered, trying to explain yourself to somebody with zero sense of humor, actually a little bit like talking to you right now.' With a quick tight smile." (468-469)

While these chapters--DFW's delayed "foreword," the story of "Irrelevant" Chris Fogle's revelation, and the conversation between Meredith Rand and Shane Drinion--are my personal favorites from this book, I hasten to add the caveat that they also go on too long.  Another similarly great chapter is about a young man (who later rides next to DFW on the way to the Midwest REC) who sweats profusely during periods of anxiety.  It is tremendously entertaining and profound in its sensitivity to human nature, but the situations are truly mined to the depths for details.  This may or may not have been a casualty of the incompleteness of this novel.

This sort of seems to be characteristic of his work in general, though, with another one of his chapters ending in the middle of a sentence.  I am not sure how you could provide appropriate closure for Infinite Jest, though I believe Joyce achieved it with Ulysses, which one really must mention in the same breath.  Because if you subscribe to the belief that Ulysses is the greatest English language novel, then I think you will also enjoy DFW to the max.  I don't always, but I think I can appreciate the generic expectations of a reader that sort of begs for a little bit of "guidance" from the author.  DFW definitely provides that "guidance" at certain points, and it is refreshing.  But other parts of this book are about as difficult as Infinite Jest.

My opinions on this book have been adequately dispatched, I believe, but please feel free to comment below, as this truly is the first post on Flying Houses spurred by participation in a book club.

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

Oeuvre rule: I tried to read V. when I was 19.  I got about 150 pages into it, and I put it down.  Vineland was recommended to me when I was 18 by an English teacher at our high school.  I bought Gravity's Rainbow when I was 18 or 19 too, but never read it.  I heard Against the Day and Inherent Vice were great, but haven't read them--ditto for Mason & Dixon.

This was the only one I could handle.  Because I couldn't get into V., and because all of his other books were so thick and intimidating, promising a huge time commitment, with what I considered might be a highly questionable payoff.  So my friend lent me this book back--a while ago.  I think it was in December.  Though it is barely over 180 pages, I didn't finish it until last night.  (Soon, soon, all this crap will be over with, and I can get back to more prolific review-writing.)

The problem with spending over 5 months with this book is that you really retain very little and it is almost impossible to understand what is going on---until  you reach a distinct point--around page 115, 120, or 130.  This happened to me in a notable way:

For some reason, a few days ago, I decided to pick up Descartes's Discourse on Method.  This may have been because something in The Crying of Lot 49 set off an alarm in my brain, or it may be because both are spare, unintimidating volumes that could potentially be read alongside each other.  And I would argue that they should be read alongside each other.  But, getting to the point--while working at the library yesterday, I crossed page 100, and read somewhere up to 140 or so.  I later went home and read two or three parts from Discourse on Method, while getting increasingly intoxicated.  Then, I returned to Lot 49, and my bookmark, in a moment of serendipity, fell from the book, and I could not tell where I had stopped.  I read, and read, for maybe an hour or two, continually thinking, "This seems familiar...." but re-reading happily, since it made no sense to me the first time around.  These scenes--for those who read the novel (it would be easy to spoil this novel and I prefer to present it at face-value and let those enter who may) included her meeting with John Nefastis and their attempt to use "Maxwell's Demon," a scene in a "fag joint" called The Greek Way, a quick description of a society called Inamorati Anonymous and its founder (which should be excerpted below), observation of a strange hopscotch game's design in San Francisco's Chinatown, a meeting with a Mexican anarchist named Jesus Arrabal, more paranoid visions of a certain symbol, previously noted in the hopscotch squares, observations of freaks or outcasts or deviants, more symbols, an alternative to the U.S. Postal System mailboxes, called W.A.S.T.E. instead, an old sailor asking her to mail a letter to his wife, a return to John Nefastis's house 24 hours later, and finally her talk-down of her psychiatrist Dr. Hilarius, who has been prescribing LSD but supposedly not taking it, who has become extremely paranoid, shooting at people, and who eventually gives himself up, at which point she is rescued by her current boyfriend, who is on the news-beat, who then goes out with her to a bar, at which point she learns that his brain has been fried by LSD.  Then you're at Chapter 6--the last in the book.

"She" is Oedipa Maas, who was involved with Pierce Inverarity, who died, and was a real estate tycoon that has a complex will to execute.  She leaves San Francisco and goes to San Narciso, which is apparently around L.A.  She meets Metzger, an attorney that is supposed to help her co-execute the will, and he meets her in her hotel room, and they watch an old movie on TV where he was apparently a child actor, and later they go to see a play called The Courier's Tragedy.  At this point, I remember, I just thought this book was a joke, and that the only point was to get as messed up as possible before reading it and to laugh at how every line appeared to be a game in and of itself.  She also meets a band called The Paranoids that are constantly hanging out at her hotel.  The book was published in 1964 and the band is supposedly a reference to Beatle-mania.  Also, it seems as if Radiohead was referencing this book when they named their mailing list W.A.S.T.E.

The book turns into something of a mystery or "potboiler" - but only around that span from page 100-140.  Before that, you can tell that something is a bit off, or that the book is about to go somewhere deeper, but it is practically impossible to comprehend (at least this was the case for me).  I have not met many other people that profess a similar difficulty with Pynchon but something about his prose can be just, oh, annoying at times.

But when he turns it on he turns it on.  I didn't put the book down again last night--I went through to the end, and the ending is fantastic.  A little bit frustrating, but upon reflection, really the only way the novel could be ended appropriately.  It's a really beautiful ending and I'm kind of surprised that this hasn't been made into a movie, because it would make a great one--but that is probably symptomatic of Pynchon, whose idiosyncrasies go beyond the scope of this review.

The novel is ridiculous, and totally unrealistic, at least in the names of its characters.  But surprisingly, I think the story can strike a chord in everyone--and this is the reason I picked up Descartes, perhaps--like Breakfast of Champions would do later on to a much more attenuated degree, the book is about how deeply one can trust one's own senses.  But onto the excerpts.  The first, about the founder of IA, a former executive of the Yoyodyne Corporation, who finds himself "automated out of a job" at age 39, in the early 60s:

"Having been since age 7 rigidly instructed in an eschatology that pointed nowhere but to a presidency and death, trained to do absolutely nothing but sign his name to specialized memoranda he could not begin to understand and to take blame for the running-amok of specialized programs that failed for specialized reasons he had to have explained to him, the executive's first thoughts were naturally of suicide.  But previous training got the better of him: he could not make a decision without first hearing the ideas of a committee.  He placed an ad in the personal column of the L.A. Times, asking whether anyone who'd been in the same fix had ever found any good reasons for not committing suicide.  His shrewd assumption being that no suicides would reply, leaving him automatically with only valid inputs.  The assumption was false...He opened his door and found an aged bum with a knitted watch cap on his head and a hook for a hand, who presented him with a bundle of letters and loped away without a word.  Most of the letters were from suicides who had failed, either through clumsiness or last-minute cowardice.  None of them, however, could offer any compelling reasons for staying alive....He went to the garage, siphoned all the gasoline from his Buick's tank, put on his green Zachary All suit with the vest, stuffed all his letters from unsuccessful suicides into a coat pocket, went into the kitchen, sat on the flood, proceeded to douse himself good with gasoline.  He was about to make a farewell flick of the wheel on his faithful Zippo, which had seen him through the Normandy hedgerows, the Ardennes, Germany, and postwar America, when he heard a key in the front door, and voices.  It was his wife and some man, whom he soon recognized as the very efficiency expert at Yoyodyne who had caused him to be replaced by an IBM 7094.  Intrigued by the irony of it, he sat in the kitchen and listened, leaving his necktie dipped in the gasoline as a sort of wick.  From what he could gather, the efficiency expert wished to have sexual intercourse with the wife on the Moroccan rug in the living room. The wife was not unwilling.  The executive heard lewd laughter, zippers, the thump of shoes, heavy breathing, moans.  He took his tie out of the gasoline and started to snigger.  He closed the top on his Zippo.  'I hear laughing,' his wife said presently.  'I smell gasoline,' said the efficiency expert.  Hand in hand, naked, the two proceeded to the kitchen.  'I was about to do the Buddhist monk thing,' explained the executive.  'Nearly three weeks it takes him,' marvelled the efficiency expert, 'to decide.  You know how long it would have taken the IBM 7094?  Twelve microseconds.  No wonder you were replaced.'" (113-115)

The executive then declares, "My big mistake was love.  From this day I swear to stay off of love: hetero, homo, bi, dog or cat, car, every kind there is.  I will found a society of isolates, dedicated to this purpose, and this sign, revealed by the same gasoline that almost destroyed me, will be its emblem." (116)

Pynchon has a way of being incredibly good with language but at the same time being obtuse, which I think is the best description I can give of why I have found his work frustrating up to now.  Here is an excerpt from the same page that illustrates that:

"Despair came over her, as it will when nobody around has any sexual relevance to you.  She gauged the spectrum of feeling out there as running from really violent hate (an Indian-looking kid hardly out of his teens with frosted shoulder-length hair tucked behind his ears and pointed cowboy boots) to dry speculation (a hornrimmed SS type who stared at her legs, trying to figure out if she was in drag), none of which could do her any good." (116)

I had to reread this sentence a few times to get what it meant, and still am not 100% certain.

Once you get to the point between 100-140, though, The Crying of Lot 49 becomes a page-turner.  And tied in seamlessly with the "story," is a provocative philosophical inquiry.  Along the way, Jesus Arrabal describes "miracles" as "intrusions into this world from another." (124) And there are departures that I could only describe in the margin as "Burroughs-esque," another example of Pynchon losing me for a moment:

"Cammed each night out of that safe furrow the bulk of this city's waking each sunrise again set virtuously to plowing, what rich soils had he turned, what concentric planets uncovered?  What voices overheard, flinders of luminescent gods glimpsed among the wallpaper's stained foliage, candlestubs lit to rotate in the air over him, prefiguring the cigarette he or a friend must fall asleep someday smoking, thus to end among the flaming, secret salts held all those years by the insatiable stuffing of a mattress that could keep vestiges of every nightmare sweat, helpless overflowing bladder, viciously, tearfully consummated wet dream, like the memory bank to a computer of the lost?" (126)

This has been a long review that is short on substance.  But I have tried not to spoil this novel.  And while I doubt that I have made it seem very "exciting," I think I have provided a fair reflection of its virtues.  It is a very long short story, or a "novella plus," that is intricately constructed, funnier more often than not, and ultimately a bit maddening - and totally worth it.  The point is that my fear of Pynchon has been allayed, at least for now:

"For there either was some Tristero beyond the appearance of the legacy America, or there was just America and if there was just America then it seemed the only way she could continue, and manage to be at all relevant to it, was as an alien, unfurrowed, assumed full circle into paranoia."  (182)

And it also had a weird effect on my reading of Descartes, as my mind became more fragmented, and I could not differentiate between texts, thinking of a line, and wondering whether Pynchon or Descartes had written it.  This sounds incredible and a huge compliment to Pynchon, but this is why I recommend reading this book in tandem with Discourse on Method.  Whether you are getting incredibly intoxicated while reading both or not, I think the similarities will jump out at you and cause the same confusion in your mind, which ultimately, leads to a clarity most pure:

"Write down what you can't deny.  Your hard intelligence.  But then write down what you've only speculated, assumed.  See what you've got."  (168)

Case No. 2433504, Knorps, 7/18/08, Los Angeles Board of Appeals

ALJ = Michael Abzug (Administrative Law Judge)

J = Christopher J. Knorps (Ex-Temp)

A = Alexandria Watson (Accountemps)

A: This is Alexandria Watson!

ALJ: Yeah Ms. Watson this is Judge Abzug, are you ready to proceed?

A: Yes I am.

ALJ:  Alright, the record is open, the case number 2433504, the claimant, Mr. Christopher Knorps, is present.  Also present on behalf of the former employer, Accountemps, is Alexandria Watson.  Ms. Watson what is your job title please?

A: I am a Metro Market Manager.

ALJ: The Administrative Law Judge is Michael Abzug, today’s date is July 18, 2008, the time is now 10:00 AM and the hearing is being conducted at the Los Angeles Board of Appeals.  The claimant has filed a timely appeal from a department (indistinct) determination, mailed to him on May 23, 2008, that held that he was disqualified for benefits under code section 1256.  The issue that we are going to be addressing today is how and why Mr. Knorps became separated from his most recent work.  If I find that he voluntarily abandoned work that was available to him, then the issue will be whether he did so with good cause.  “Good cause” is a legal term that is defined as a real and compelling reason to leave available work, the kind of reason that would have caused somebody in Mr. Knorps’s situation, who genuinely wanted to retain employment, to take similar action.  If he voluntarily left with good cause, he will not be disqualified for benefits, and the employer’s reserve account will be subject to charges.  Mr. Knorps, do you understand the issue that we are going to be addressing?

J: Yes, I do.

ALJ: Do you as well, Ms. Watson.

A: Yes.

ALJ: Ms. Watson, was a copy of the appeal file mailed out to you?

A: Yes.

ALJ: Did you review it?

A: Yes I have.

ALJ: Mr. Knorps, did you review….

J: Is this it? 

ALJ: The documents in the file?  The reason I ask that is because in a few moments I am going to mark certain of those documents as exhibits so that I can consider what they say as part of the basis on which I am going to make my decision eventually.  My decision is also going to be based on what other evidence is introduced at this morning’s proceedings, which, at a minimum I expect will include the sworn testimony of Mr. Knorps as well as Ms. Watson.  After I mark these documents as exhibits, I will ask each party if they have any objection to their admission into evidence.  You’re not required to make objections of course, but if you do I will consider them.  After I have considered those documents (indistinct) I will then take testimony.  It at least preliminarily appears that Mr. Knorps is the moving party of the separation, and we will begin by taking testimony from him.  I will ask him to swear to tell the truth which I am required to do by law, I will ask him a few questions about the issues that I have outlined a few minutes ago, and when finished, he can add to his proof either by supplementing his own testimony, introducing documents, calling witnesses, in case he thinks there is something I have inadvertently overlooked that I need to know in order to make a good decision.  I will also give Ms. Watson the opportunity to question Mr. Knorps if she likes.  Ms. Watson you are not required to ask the claimant any questions – I am going to give the employer a separate opportunity to tell me its side of the story – but if you want to ask any questions, I’ll give you that reasonable opportunity to do so.

A: Okay great, thank you.

ALJ: When we’re finished taking testimony from the claimant, we’ll take the testimony from Ms. Watson that will follow the same order of proof, that is I’ll swear her, I’ll ask her some questions, I’ll give Ms. Watson the opportunity to add to her proof the same way I gave Mr. Knorps the opportunity to add to his proof, and then we’ll conclude by giving Mr. Knorps the same right that I gave to Ms. Watson, that is if he wants to ask her questions he can do so, but he is not required to.  When we’re finished I’ll thank everybody for their appearances, I’m not going to make my decision today, I’ve got to make it later in writing and a copy will be mailed to each party, clearly (?) EDD, probably in about 20 business days.  Mr. Knorps do you think you understand the procedures?

J: Yes I do.

ALJ: Do you have any questions about them?

J:  No.

ALJ: Ms. Watson, do you understand the procedures?

A: Yes I do.

ALJ: Do you have any questions about the procedure?

A: No I do not.

(ALJ reads the various exhibits he is marking into evidence, exhibits 1-7, asks if there are any objections, to which Mr. Knorps replies no.)

ALJ: Ms. Watson, have you reviewed 1-7?

A: I have – I do have to say that the record of claim status interview is not legible to me – I can’t read the writing on the document….(A short discussion about this follows)

ALJ: Claimant states that he voluntarily quit because the company did not offer him permanent full-time work at the company.

J: That’s not, really….

ALJ:  Well just a second, I’m just reading it.  I’ll give you a chance to comment in a moment.  Claimant states he is looking for full-time work, not willing to do temporary assignment work.  Claimant states he did not want to be working there anymore.  He wanted to do something different.  He wants to write a book or novel.  Or technical writing, screenwriting.  If he does not have the experience

J: (scoffs)

ALJ: He wants to work in the writing industry.  Um.

A: Now just….

ALJ: One second, please.  I’m just reading it, and then everyone will be given a chance to comment, I’m not going to cut anybody off.  The employer said that the claimant is no longer working with the company and cannot provide any additional information.  The EDD basically concludes that claimant’s decision to voluntarily quit to look for work was personal, a personal decision, therefore, in their opinion, he is disqualified.  So that is the substance of the interview that occurred on May 22, 2008.  Now that I have read that to you, Ms. Watson, any objection to the admission of exhibits 1-7.

A: No, just so I completely understand, so this is the information that was gathered from my company, by the EDD is that correct?

ALJ: No, that’s not correct.  What happens when somebody separates from work for any reason and applies for benefits, there is what’s called a “claim status interview” which is a telephone interview conducted by the EDD to figure out whether the circumstances of the separation merit benefits under the law.  What I just read you were the notes of the department representative who spoke to the claimant and who spoke to the employer representative. 

A:  Okay, so the claimant let the EDD know that he was interested in writing screenplays, because that’s what I’m trying to confirm.

ALJ: That’s the allegation, yes.

A: Okay, then I understand.  Thank you.

ALJ: Any objections to the admission of 1-7?

A: No.

ALJ: Mr. Knorps, now that I’ve read that exhibit, would you like to raise any objections to the admission of 1-7?

J:  Well when I did that interview, I really don’t think the proper scrutiny was paid attention to.  I just feel as if the separation from the company was not as clear cut as being a “quit” or a “fire” or a “laid off,” okay?

ALJ:  Alright, well excuse me for interrupting you, I’ll try not to do it again, I’ll construe your remarks as an objection to the exhibits and respectfully overrule them, as I mentioned to you before the fact that I admit them into evidence doesn’t necessarily mean that I believe every word they say, or that they’re accurate, and it certainly doesn’t mean I am going to rule against you, it just means that I think the documents may be relevant – how relevant I won’t make up my mind until I’ve heard everything that you and Ms. Watson have to say so, 1-7 are received.  Mr. Knorps, please raise your right hand.  Do you solemnly swear, or affirm, that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

J: I do.

ALJ: State your name please.

J: Christopher John Knorps.

ALJ: Alright Mr. Knorps I’m going to ask you a few questions.  How long were you registered to work with Accountemps?

J: Roughly six months – between October 28 to May 2, October 28, 2007 to May 2, 2008.   

ALJ: Alright, on May 2, 2008, where were you assigned, who was the employer at the time?

J:  Jefferies & Co.

ALJ:  What was your job title with Jefferies & Co.?

J: I was accounts payable clerk.

ALJ:  Full time work?

J:  Yes.

ALJ: And what was the wage at the time of separation?

J: $13 an hour.

ALJ:  And how long had you been working for Jefferies & Co.?

J:  Six months.

ALJ:  Alright well what caused the separation on May 2^nd?

J:  Well previously, about a month previous, my supervisor Maria Magpantay kind of talked to me about leaving.  It was kind of a mutual agreement to leave.  I did not tell her that I wanted to quit.  She didn’t tell me, that you know, she didn’t think my performance was up to standards.  I asked for a full-time position because there was one person who had recently left, and she said she wasn’t able to hire me full-time….

ALJ:  You mean a permanent position?

J:  Yes, with Jefferies & Co.

ALJ: I understand, okay.

J:  She told me that wasn’t going to be possible.  And when I started working there, Accountemps had told me it was going to be a 6 month temp-to-perm position, so my understanding was that at the end of the six months I would be offered a permanent position with the assignment company.  So when they told me, you know, we just kind of have to leave May 2, I didn’t really have any objection to that, because I had already started looking for new work – I had had a friend who tried to get me a job with UCLA and I was looking for something else, and it’s true I was trying to change careers from accounting, so there is some truth to that, but there is also just, the way it ended was ambiguous I guess, and it wasn’t properly communicated in the interview I guess.

ALJ:  Alright let’s back up a little bit, who at Accountemps assigned you the job?

J:  Shezzad Allaudin.  But Jessica has been my representative.

ALJ:  The person you spoke to about the offer was Shezzad?

J:  Yes.

ALJ:  And what did she tell you about how long the job would last?

J:  He said it would be six months.

ALJ:  Six months?

J:  Yes, but it was temp-to-perm.  And I guess maybe that wasn’t properly explained to me what temp-to-perm meant, but I was under the impression that it meant that, after you were there for six months, they would hire you full time.

ALJ:  The person you spoke to about a month before the separation, what was her or his name?

J:  Maria Magpantay, she was my supervisor at Jefferies & Co.

ALJ:  When you spoke to her and she told you that they weren’t going to hire you permanently, did she tell you that May 2 would be your last day?

J:  Well we agreed.  She said do you want to make it for a month, just say a month from now, and I said yes, I think it’s best if I leave in a month, I want to try to find something else.

ALJ:  Alright, I’m going to ask you a hypothetical, what do you think would have happened if you had said, no, I want to stay on past May 2^nd?

J:  She probably would have said that was okay.  If I had wanted to do I could have stayed.

ALJ:  Alright, so why did you decide to leave on May 2^nd rather than stay?

J:  Well, this is going to be…Well, I switched apartments from the West Side to Silverlake, and the offices were about a 5 minute drive from my place on the west side and now it was going to be like a 45 minute drive, so…

ALJ:  One way?

J:  Yes, I had commuted for a few days doing it, and it was just kind of assumed that once I moved to a new apartment I would move to a new job….In hindsight it was a mistake.  (laughs)

ALJ:  Well I’m not trying to confront you or make you uncomfortable.  I’m just trying to get information.  So you were living in Westwood and you were moving where?

J:  Silverlake.

ALJ:  Oh you were moving to Silverlake.

J:  I live there now.  But I was living in Palms before.

ALJ:   Where the new jobsite is.

J:  Yes.  The new job site is in Beverly Hills.  I just started working there this week.

ALJ: No, no.  I meant, they moved you from the west side to Silverlake at Jefferies & Co.  Is that right?

J: Oh no, no, their offices are on the west side.  I am talking about my personal apartment.

ALJ:  So you moved to Silverlake before May 2^nd?

J:  Yes, I moved there, like, April 28, that’s when my lease began.

ALJ:  Okay, anything else, did you have any other job to go to at the time you abandoned work on May 2^nd?

J:  No.

ALJ: Anything else you want to tell me?

J:  I believe that’s all the relevant information.

ALJ:  Okay, thank you.  Ms. Watson are you still with us?

A:  Yeah, I’m still here.  I only heard bits and pieces of Christopher’s testimony, I don’t know if it was my phone or if he’s on a cell phone that’s cutting out.

ALJ:  Well I wish you would have told me that before this time, we could have tried to make the testimony more audible to you, what is it you want me to do now that you haven’t heard it?

A:  Well I think I got the gist of it, I just want to tell you that I don’t think I heard everything, I just didn’t think I was allowed to interrupt.  I apologize. 

ALJ:  That’s fine.  Let me do this, what I will do, is attempt to accurately summarize what Mr. Knorps has said, and Mr. Knorps why don’t you listen carefully and if I’ve left out anything material at the end you can add it so that Ms. Watson is fully informed.  Okay.  Here’s what he said.  He said that he had been registered to work for Accountemps for six months.  He had one job only – apparently – and that was with Jefferies & Co., which was located on the west side.  He was accounts payable clerk, full-time, and his wage was $13 an hour.  He was given the assignment by a man named Shezzad who told him that it was a six month temp-to-perm assignment, so that, for about five months, he went along and worked, and then had a conversation with his supervisor at Jefferies & Co., Maria Maganya, about whether he was going to be given a permanent position.  Ms. Maganya informed him that he would not and asked him basically what he wanted to do, and whether he wanted to make May 2 his last day, and he said – he agreed.  He agreed.  I asked him whether he believed that continuing work was available to him if he had told Ms. Maganya if he had told her that he wanted to continue working as a temp, and he said that he believed continuing work was available to him, if he wanted to work as a temp, but he decided to leave work on May 2, 2008, because he moved from the west side to Silverlake on April 28, 2008, and he found that the switch from a 5-minute commute to a 45-minute commute one way was burdensome, and that he just generally felt that since he had switched apartments, he should probably switch jobs too, which in retrospect he believes may have been a mistake.  At the time he left available work on May 2^nd, he did not have another job, although he was hoping to switch industries.  Mr. Knorps have I summarized your testimony accurately?

J:  Very accurately.

ALJ:  Anything else you want to add to the record?

J:  Just Maria Magpantay, was her name.

ALJ:  Anything else I material I missed?

J:  No.

ALJ:  Ms. Watson, did you hear me?

A:  I did absolutely, thank you so much.

ALJ:  Any questions you want to ask Mr. Knorps?

A: No, I think it’s pretty clear cut to me.

ALJ:   Then raise your right hand.

A: Right hand raised.

ALJ: Do you solemnly swear the testimony you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?

A: Yes I do.

ALJ:  State your name.

A:  Alexandria Watson.

ALJ: And your job title?

A: Metro Market Manager.

ALJ: Alright Ms. Watson is there anything that the employer wants to add to the record that you think I need to know before I close it?

A:  The only thing I would add is that Jefferies & Co. is a consistent client with us, and they pretty much never convert candidates to permanent.  So the documentation in my system for this particular assignment states that it was long term, comma, possible temp-to-hire, and we always let candidates know that there is a possibility that things will go temp-to-hire, but this particular candidate…we’ve had candidates work out there for three years on a temporary engagement and not convert.  So I just wanted to make sure that was stated clearly, that I know that we did not assure that this was going to be a temp-to-hire.

ALJ:  Well, okay, that’s fine you have stated it, and I don’t have the impression from Mr. Knorps’s testimony that he was in any way guaranteed a permanent position.

A: Okay.

ALJ:  Alright, anything else?

A:  No.

ALJ:  Alright Mr. Knorps any questions for Ms. Watson?

J: No.

ALJ:  Anything else you want to add to the record that you think I need to know?

J: No.

ALJ:  Alright, okay, well Mr. Knorps good luck out in Silverlake.  I hope things turn around for you, and that your switch to a new industry is successful.  Take care of yourself.  This record is closed. 

Manic: A Memoir - Terri Cheney

My first year of law school was an emotional roller coaster ride. One year ago today, I was seriously debating dropping out, taking my $10,000 in debt, and walking away from it all. It clearly was not worth it. Yet something told me I would be too afraid, thinking that all of my friends and family and colleagues would judge me for wasting so many years studying for the LSAT, applying to schools, and getting this "higher degree" of education on track. Here I am halfway through. The second year has been better (so far - and we do not yet know our grades), but the anxiety will never end until we find our job and support ourselves like normal people are supposed to do.

I digress. I often told my older sister about this strange phenomenon which I had been experiencing since 2008 or so. I called it a "rapid rapid cycle of manic depression" - a term I had gleaned from wikipedia. Basically, it involved a cycle from a manic to depressed state every 24 to 48 hours. For me, it was every other day. Sunday I would go to bed hating life inordinately. I would pray that I would have a heart attack in my sleep and never wake up, never have to grow older and get lonelier, never have to go on welfare, never have to live sober and try to attain happiness. A little part of me would say, it's okay, tomorrow, you'll have your rocket fuel. Monday I would wake up and feel this sense of empowerment, like I could do anything. I could sit down to study and be enormously productive. I could talk to everyone without feeling self-conscious. However, I would have trouble falling asleep Monday night. Tuesday would be depression. Wednesday would be mania. Thursday would be depression. Friday would be mania. And so on. The only way to subtly affect this pattern was to self-medicate. My sister told me I should read Manic so I did.

Manic is the story of a woman who clearly suffers from manic-depression. Anybody who reads this book will inevitably think of James Frey and his famous fake memoir A Million Little Pieces. I have not read that book, but this memoir presents scenes that are so over-the-top that a reader cannot help but think that Cheney, a lawyer, is using a little bit of hyperbole for emotional heft. However, Cheney comes off as sincere, and her goal in writing the memoir wholly admirable. Who knows what Frey's intent was - warn against the dangers of drug addiction? I do not know. I do not want to particularly read that book as it seems a waste of time.

Many people may consider this book a waste of time but it is relatively short. It took me a while to read because of other obligations. However, the main audience for this book is manic-depressive attorneys or law students. There is little to no legal jargon in this book so non-attorneys will probably enjoy it more and the myth that a professional career in law is a surefire way to a lavish lifestyle will be propagated just a tad bit more. To be fair, Cheney leaves her job in the legal world behind in the end to write, and explains it in this pithy aside:

"It took me sixteen years to realize this. Sixteen years of reassuring myself on the way to work every morning that there's no such thing as a happy lawyer. It was just this particular case I was working on, this client, this judge, the latest Supreme Court ruling, the airborne viruses in my corner office. Perhaps if I tried another firm. So I tried another firm, several other firms in fact, each one bigger and better and more prestigious than the last. I landed higher-profile clients and took long, exotic vacations, and made a considerable amount of money. And I went to parties, a whole lot of parties, for every cause imaginable, or no cause at all. I billed the time regardless.....
If you nurture it long enough, a lie can become a life. Bad nights don't surprise you much after sixteen years. You come to expect them. You just don't expect them to go on forever. I should have known that the bout of depression that finally ended my career was the worst one yet, when I ran out of business cards and didn't have the energy to order new ones. Nothing mattered to me at that point except the pain, and the pain was everywhere." (234-235)


Cheney was an entertainment lawyer, arguably the dream job of many a law student (myself included, though I don't pursue it relentlessly as I go to school in New York, not L.A. - Cheney went to UCLA Law). To repeat, she does not write so much about her daily practice as much as her "pharmaceutical cornucopia." Perhaps it was reading this book that finally led me to see a psychiatrist and obtain prescriptions for Celexa, Ambien, Klonopin, Ritalin, and Adderall. The combination has worked well for me over the last few months but the concerns about chemical dependence remain. I do not recall many passages parlaying this particular concern, but I do believe Cheney mentions that she will probably be on medication for the rest of her life. She does, at the end, point to the need for sobriety, as many non-diagnosed depressives tend to self-medicate.

There are many memorable episodes in this memoir--chief amongst them a few suicide attempts, and stays in psychiatric wards. There is also a whiff of the bizarre, when Cheney describes her relationship with food, when going through depressive episodes where she would sleep 20-22 hours a day, and eat for the time she was awake:

"My mother went grocery shopping one day a week, usually on Sunday, so by Friday we'd be almost completely out of food. I clearly remember those endless Friday nights when there was nothing left in the cupboard and depression was gnawing a hole in my stomach. I had to eat something, anything. Toward the end of my depression, I ate whatever was there: iced coffee packets, bags of flour, spices ranging from anise to fennel to marjoram to thyme. Of course my body eventually rebelled and I wound up throwing up half of what I frantically shoved down my throat. I didn't stop until I finally fell asleep, exhausted, with my hand still clutching whatever I was eating." (191)

There is not much more I can say about the book that will not spoil any possible readings of it. In short, there is nothing offensive about it to me. I do not complain about people being "whiners" because I am a whiner myself. People that don't understand depression will probably still write it off and erroneously infer that Cheney is exaggerating. While I may not be as depressed as her, I can certainly relate to certain portions, where, for example, she describes in a rather profound way, hypomania as an idyllic state where everything seems (and perhaps is) possible:

"I've looked in the mirror when I'm hypomanic and even I can see it: my eyes are an open invitation, a bottomless well of empathy. 'Trust me, tell me everything,' they say, and people do. Not just men sitting across from me at a candlelight dinner, either; and not just men, for that matter. Men and women everywhere seem compelled to talk to me, touch me, give me their confidence. It happens in the oddest of places: in the aisles of the supermarket, waiting in a movie line, sitting at a coffehouse, and especially in elevators. Hypomania breaks down that invisible wall that exists between well-mannered strangers. There are no strangers anymore, only unknown friends, waiting to tell me their stories." (208)

In summation, I am not jealous of Cheney for writing a memoir that became a New York Times Bestseller. I usually am jealous of such authors. While the book may not be a pleasure to read, it is a book that has something to say, and will probably help a lot of people. It also may create a small and unnoticeable increase in business to the pharmaceutical industry. But that is probably just a sign of the times.

A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar...- Dir. Eric Chaikin

About a month ago, I was up around midnight on a Saturday night, searching randomly around documentaries on Netflix. I came across this movie and found it worth writing about on Flying Houses for several reasons. First of all, there are many films and television shows about the legal profession, but they never address the boredom and mundanity of it all. They make it seem exciting. In a review on Flying Houses from about a year and a half ago (here http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/11/lawyer-myth-rennard-strickland-frank-t.html), there contained a quote from Roger Ebert to the effect that nothing could be more boring than an absolutely accurate movie about the law. I am sure that, were I to read The Lawyer Myth again, I would not review it so easily. Or perhaps it would be more illuminating, a quicker read, and less boring at points. Any books published for the general public will be less tedious than the mechanical methodology of a judicial opinion. There are plenty of books about the legal profession, but few films, and owing to people's inability to find time to read, or general laziness, it seems that more should be made in the near future.

There are plenty of feature films, but as already mentioned, they do not expose the mundanity. This film exposes the mundanity, but in a way that still makes law school seem like fun. Or rather, there is little discussion of the actual 3 years. The focus is upon the two and a half months in between graduation--second half of May, June, and July--and the hell that newly-minted J.D.'s must undergo in California. They face a Bar Exam with a 39% pass rate, the lowest in the country. At least, that is the percentage the film cites. The figures I find are 44% or 46% from 2004 or 2005. In 2009, it was 49% (and in 2008 it was an impressive 54%)--also these are "overall" numbers--the first-time numbers are generally a bit higher.

This film follows six different aspiring Bar-passers. I say that because one of them is a social worker by trade who has taken the Bar exam about forty times. Many organizations utilize both social workers and attorneys, so maybe actually he would just change his position where he was working. He has consistently failed the Bar and it inspired him to write an article called "Fuck the Bar," and at one point in the film he shouts it at the building where they are all taking it in Ontario, CA.

The five others graduate from various schools. There is a girl who is part-Native American and who says she was a 50% actress/50% law student while attending UCLA law school, the most prestigious school represented. She has a scholarship or a grant from the Tribe she is affiliated with. In one scene, she should be studying for the Bar, but instead she is out partying, and I am surprised the footage of that remained in the film, though it does make for its most hilarious moment. It seems almost staged.

I think THREE of the six actually went to Loyola Law School, which is why I found this so worth writing about, as I nearly attended that school in a dead-lock (decided about a year ago) with its arguable "sister-school," where I now reside. One of them is a guy who graduated the year before, and he is taking the Bar his second time. The two others are girls who have just graduated that year. I realize now that it is hard to write this review without getting deeply into their personal stories.

The last person went to People's College of Law in L.A. and some of the scenes with the director of the school are some of the best in the movie too. I've forgotten the quotes she has but practically all are classic. The student in question is a Mexican immigrant mother who is in her late 30s or early 40s. Some of the scenes with her are very moving, and her story of going through community college in East L.A. and making her way through law school to become a potential attorney may inspire those in situations where the odds seem improbably stacked against them.

I do not want to give away the ending but let us just say that it is not very surprising.

I do not have much to say about this film except that I am glad it exists. However, it was released in 2007, and shot in the summer of 2006, so there is very little in the film to suggest that the economy is bad, particularly for lawyers. Now there needs to be a new movie. Nothing about law school translates as well in documentary form as the Bar, because it is the actual end of all the b-s. It would not be feasible to make a movie about all 3 years of law school. I do think a good movie could be made about the first year. There are many crucial moments that would translate well. The orientation, the first month of classes, the legal writing assignments piled up on top of the other work, the different briefing methods, note-taking methods, the midterms, if any, and finally the exams---followed by the grades, which are "all that matter," the next semester classes, the internship search, and finally the last exams, which will determine class rank for OCI, hiring for summer associates, and potential hiring for graduates. Of course the end of the first year is far from the end, and so no real closure could be given. Law school is not properly applicable to a documentary context, but should be portrayed in a feature film, with much drama and much mundanity. This would help that percentage of law students that enter with nebulous ideas of what it is going to be like, and where it is going to lead.

1L (also previously reviewed here) and the The Paper Chase may be instructive, but they portray Harvard Law School in the 1970s. While the actual material students must read in the first year may not have changed appreciably, the general atmosphere pervading the profession has, as has society at large. I want to see a movie that shows 1/3 of the students at an "average" school going on Facebook or playing Scrabble on their computers while in class. I want it to focus on like, maybe 6 students, one who is perfect and gets straight A's, blah, blah, blah, another who is far from perfect and gets bad grades and looks like an idiot when they have to talk in class, who worries about ever getting a job and wants to drop out, and the other four in varying degrees in the middle, maybe one person who commits "sectioncest" and has a romantic comedy storyline, maybe one who is super-depressed and breaks out crying in the middle of class or kills themselves, maybe a totally average student who gets through everything alright and ends up with a job, and is generally happy, and then maybe another totally average student who maybe ends up with a job, but maybe has serious financial difficulties, and always wonders if they made the right decision, if there wasn't something else they'd rather be doing.

A feature film like this would lay out all the issues, and actually be useful to those considering applying. A potential student will probably not find A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar.... and decide they don't want to go. No matter how bad people make the Bar seem, I think students will always think, "Well, I did the LSAT and nothing can be more stressful than that..." However, it seems clear to me now, that the Bar is more stressful than anything, after watching this film. If you fail, what do you do? You take it again. Or else you keep your J.D. on your resume, and maybe some HR people think you may have other skills, but have questions that you can either answer or not, at the risk of looking like a liability. Really, at the end of the day, nothing is more stressful than getting the job, and actually living under the terms of the profession. Once that is achieved, there should be happiness, because all of the hoops and hurdles have been jumped through and over. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, happiness does not generally follow. Rather, lawyers tend to look back fondly on their law school years. It seems as if many are guarded individuals who would rather not open up about their personal feelings on the subject, but will be happy to tell people not to go if they aren't absolutely sure they want to go.

The financial aspect of taking BarBri and the Bar, after the enormous financial burdens of law school is vaguely addressed in this film, but I still think my feature film idea would get this across better. Now, movies extolling Christian ideology by Christian filmmakers always find financing despite not expecting to reach a critical mass, but who will finance my movie? The ABA? The NYC Bar Association? A profession is hardly a religion. But in a profession so deeply concerned with regulation, one would think there would be a way to regulate law schools in a manner that a disproportionate number of students do not graduate with little hope of employment. Unfortunately, such a massive overhaul is unlikely to be seriously considered.

P.S. If anyone actually takes my idea without coming to me for use as a creative consultant, it will make me very sad.

Think Tank for Human Beings in General - Jordan Castro/Richard Wehrenberg Jr

Can someone please tell me the difference between a "chapbook" and a "zine?"

Jordan Castro sent me this chapbook after I commented on his prize-winning entry into Tao Lin's contest. My entry is here http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-essay-on-tao-lin-and-our-histories.html. His is here http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/jcastro/2010/08/a-comprehensive-review-of-richard-yates-tao-lins-second-novel/. In it, he reviewed my essay and gave it high marks and I thanked him. I think it was the first time anyone ever reviewed anything I wrote on the internet. He sent me a chapbook for explaining that Dakota Fanning was not in The Sixth Sense.

That movie came out in 1999, and I think he was about 7 then, and perhaps its "twist" has been ruined by everyone in the intervening 11 years so now it is no longer quite the "best picture" event that it was then. Plus, M. Night Shyamalan's cultural cache drops with each new film he makes (though everyone seems to think he "may turn it around with this one..."), though I assume that NYU is still proud to have him as one of their more successful recent graduates.

This is the grand finale, the electrifying conclusion if you will. Please note that Bob Pollard broke up GBV on 12/31/04, and now, no more than 5 1/2 years later, they are already doing reunion shows. Flying Houses will be silent for a while, but this is not the end.

In my essay on Tao Lin, I began by stating how I embarrassed myself by a certain comment on his blog made perhaps 4 1/2 years ago about all of the zines I published at NYU while we were both there. I first became aware of zines my freshman year and I put out my first zine my sophomore year. It was entitled "Xenophobia," which was probably not as original as I thought. It was about 16 pages long. There was a poem in it about "almost" getting mugged. There was an essay about meeting 3 celebrities in New York City (Thurston Moore, Carson Daly, and Janeane Garafalo, though I did not technically meet her). I think there was a poem about smoking a cigarette on bleachers in an empty schoolyard near my parent's house during one of my holiday breaks. I don't remember what else was in this zine. I sold these zines for $1.00 out of a milk crate in Washington Square Park and gave out a complimentary kiss to anyone that wanted it. I gave a copy to my creative writing teacher from the summer session of 2002, Paul Gacioch, who was an instructor that I think was about 24 then and obtaining his MFA and trying to get his first novel published. I am going to Google him now and see if he accomplished that. Here is what I found: http://www.sidebrow.net/contributors/paul-gacioch. I left him a copy in his faculty mailbox and I ran into him in Bobst Library and I asked him if he got it and what he thought of it. He said it was "short."

My second zine was a collaborative effort between me and several of my friends entitled "Honey I'm a Prize and You're a Catch and We're a Perfect Match," which is a line from a song by Pavement and in honor of the date it was published, February 14, 2003. I don't remember anything in it (except for a poem called "horse shoe crabs" by my friend Emily, which I think she later published online) but more people read it due to the nature of the contribution process.

My third zine could probably be called a "chapbook." It was entitled "Autointoxication" and it was the best thing I had done up to that point. Arguably it is still the best thing I have done because it was published. I went to a printer in Greenwich Village and asked for 100 copies. I tried to sell them for $1.00 and probably sold about 3 or 4, which is about the total of "Xenophobia." Had I a blog at the time, who knows what might have come.

There were several others but none as important as those first three (except for "Uck Ar" but I played too minor a role in that for consideration). I include this autobiography because, this is a highly symbolic gesture. Jordan and Richard are young, and they probably know what they are doing way better than I did (or do, for that matter) but I am here to warn them about the dangers of literature. But a review first.

I have never reviewed poetry on Flying Houses before, which is another reason I wanted to do this as my last post. I wanted to do something audacious. Each writer contributes 9-10 poems of 1-2 pages in length. Jordan's are slightly more experimental and Richard's are slightly more typical of poems popular over the last 20 years. Both are talented, and while their chapbook may be "short," it deserves commendation.

My favorite poems of Jordan's are "a list of things I am going to do," which I didn't like that much until the last few lines; "weak," which is the first poem I have ever read about the dilemma of autofellatio, thus worthwhile; "haiku" which is certainly topical and formal; and "last poem," which is about achieving inner-peace. Four out of ten is not bad. The other ones have moments but overall seem too "cheeky" or "cute" or "silly" to fully praise.

My favorite poems of Richard's are "excuse me," which is a lament for internet culture, "dumpster dive alone," which I don't really understand but references Scottie Pippen, so I like it; "snow-people easily identify the sun as their enemy," which is pretty original and may be the single best poem in the chapbook; and the so-called title track, "think tanks for human beings in general," which, like most title tracks in music, I usually feel are better than the majority of other songs on the album--but is the best way to end the chapbook.

I like the idea of chapbooks and zines because they are not too time-consuming. They are like regular magazines except they are not filled with useless trash about celebrities and reality stars. They are filled with serious writing by mostly unknown people, reaching out and trying to establish themselves. There is something noble about them. For some reason I do not think self-publishing a novel is as noble as self-publishing a zine.

Do I really have anything else I want to add? When I was 17 I wrote a one-act play for my high school and after my classmates told me how much they liked it (though I was unsure of its quality), I made it my life's mission to write, until every MFA program I applied to rejected me in February of 2007. I did not stop writing after that, obviously, but my confidence was shot. Here is my advice to Jordan and Richard: if you are going to get your MFA eventually, apply to a safety school. I applied to U Chicago's MAPH program, UT-Austin's Michener Center for Writers, Iowa's Writer's Workshop, University of Oregon, Columbia University's esteemed program producing writers like Rick Moody and Wells Tower and James Franco and offering zero aid in general and a $50,000 price tag (and you thought law school was expensive, and didn't offer enough career security). Every single one rejected me. Apply to a safety school. Or don't. Maybe I just suck at writing, and at life.

Do I really want to be at law school, and quitting my blog, and quitting my creative endeavors? No. I intend to work on my 3rd novel whenever appropriate over these next three years. I am 28,000 words into it. It is the best thing I have done, no doubt, but still unpublishable. Too many "fatal flaws." Everybody in or associated with law school says you have no free time and if you have free time you should be studying. Well, now I am going to start doing that and stop blogging. And I have serious doubts about my career in general. I waited too long to do this.

More advice to Jordan and Richard: never move to a random city (like say Los Angeles) because it seems fun and you have enough savings in your account-----unless you have a job there waiting for you. Had I not done that, had I applied to law school 3 years ago, or now without that stint, I'd be having a blast, not pinching every penny, not failing to leave tips for take-out orders, not feeling guilty about an endless reliance upon my parents and not feeling that I have a dubious future in general. I would feel much more confident.

Finally, that is very far in the future for them. They will be at college soon and probably have the time of their lives. I would recommend NYU but I feel as if it is changing. It is expanding, somehow, despite already having been the largest private university in the country 9 years ago. John Sexton is really emphasizing how important it is to study abroad so they can get as many students as possible out of the Village and into their other, expensive international branches in Paris, Florence, Buenos Aires and other places of which I am unaware. They are putting up students in hotels, because the new dorms they have opened since I have graduated still don't provide enough space. Faculty members would complain about their salaries. Still, I wouldn't have rather been anywhere else. Except UT-Austin or maybe Oberlin if I had gotten in there. Liz Phair and I have the same birthday and she is exactly seventeen years older than me and she went there.

Thanks to Jordan for sending me this chapbook. I apologize for using this as an opportunity to explain why this blog will be slipping into a coma and writing so many other random things. I wish him and Richard the best of luck, and hope that their method of e-publishing will work out okay for them. They are on the first-wave of this stuff, and they should ride it out and see where it takes them.

Imperial Bedrooms - Bret Easton Ellis

A genuine literary event.

That is what it says at the bottom of the front jacket cover for this book, underneath a general description of the plot, which is this: the sequel to Less Than Zero, twenty-five years later. Clay is a screenwriter, who is interested in a girl, and he tries to get this girl a part in the new movie he's producing. Plus Blair, Julian, and Rip are back from the original.

But calling it "a genuine literary event" seems, I don't know, desperate?

And all of the praise on the back seems nice, until you realize it is for Lunar Park. Then maybe you venture over to Amazon to check the reviews to see if it will be worth the investment in a hardcover edition--and you see the reviews are scathing. And you wonder, oh great, what did I get myself into.

But I am here to tell you that you do not need to be worried--those reviews are wrong. This book is good. It may not deliver on every single level that every reader could possibly desire, but it is not a bad book. It is not poorly written, as much as amateur critics may point towards nonexistent complexity of language, poor, vague description, and meaningless run-on sentencing. It is a different sort of book in the same way that Lunar Park was. Obviously, it's not the classic that Less Than Zero is, or even up to the level of The Rules of Attraction, and of course its scope pales in comparison to American Psycho (which I haven't even read to the end) or Glamorama (which I think is the real masterpiece in his oeuvre, thus far). It's better than The Informers, and I like it better than Lunar Park, I think, though that book had moments.

Why is it so similar to Lunar Park? Because the theme is the same: paranoia. In that novel, it may be imagined, and it is played for horror. In this novel, it is not imagined, and it is played for mystery. If Lunar Park is BEE doing Stephen King, then Imperial Bedrooms is BEE doing Raymond Chandler. Aside from paranoia, and genre-hopping, Ellis pokes more fun at himself in the opening segment of the novel. In Lunar Park, it is one of the most dazzling sequences of any of his books, re-telling the history of his literary career, and the various lies and half-truths that have been told about him over the years. In Imperial Bedrooms, it is a parallel segment relating the history of Less Than Zero--except Clay is claiming that it all really happened, and none of their names were changed, and the author was someone they knew. Ellis takes advantage of the opportunity to critique the adaptation of his debut:

"In the movie I was played by an actor who actually looked more like me than the character the author portrayed in the book: I wasn't blond, I wasn't tan, and neither was the actor. I also suddenly became the movie's moral compass, spouting AA jargon, castigating everyone's drug use and trying to save Julian. ('I'll sell my car,' I warn the actor playing Julian's dealer. 'Whatever it takes.') This was slightly less true of the adaptation of Blair's character, played by a girl who actually seemed like she belonged in our group--jittery, sexually available, easily wounded. Julian became the sentimentalized version of himself, acted by a talented, sad-faced clown, who has an affair with Blair and then realizes he has to let her go because I was his best bud. 'Be good to her,' Julian tells Clay. 'She really deserves it.' The sheer hypocrisy of this scene must have made the author blanch. (7)

And then more obvious differences:

"The reason the movie dropped everything that made the novel real was because there was no way the parents who ran the studio would ever expose their children in the same black light the book did. The movie was begging for our sympathy whereas the book didn't give a shit. And attitudes about drugs and sex had shifted quickly from 1985 to 1987 (and a regime change at the studio didn't help) so the source material--surprisingly conservative despite its surface immorality--had to be reshaped. The best way to look at the movie was as modern eighties noir--the cinematography was breathtaking--and I sighed as it kept streaming forward, interested in only a few things: the new and gentle details of my parents mildly amused me, as did Blair finding her divorced father with his girlfriend on Christmas Eve instead of with a boy named Jared (Blair's father died of AIDS in 1992 while still married to Blair's mother). But the thing I remember most about that screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because in the book Julian Wells lived but in the movie's new scenario he had to die. He had to be punished for all of his sins. That's what the movie demanded." (8)

And here is a good opportunity to talk about spoilers: many of the reviews on Amazon say they are not spoiling anything by revealing two different plot points of this novel--but they are. In the same way they're idiots for calling the book a piece of crap, they're idiots for saying they're not spoiling anything (...because you wouldn't want to waste your time anyways, etc.)

Clay is in his mid-40's, splitting time between New York and L.A., and recently returned to L.A. for the casting of his new film The Listeners. It is perhaps worth noting that this is more L.A.-centric than anything Ellis has done since Less Than Zero. The city is used in almost every paragraph of the story. Angelenos will find Ellis's choice settings appropriate for the tone of the novel, and that they add another layer of enjoyment. By page 100, it seems clear that Ellis is writing a mystery novel in the tradition of Chandler or James Cain, and the L.A. setting circa 2008 or 2009 is a wonderful update on that sixty or seventy-year-old geographically-centered story.

Most of the plot hinges around one of the girls auditioning for a part in this movie--Rain Turner--and the mystery of her former employment, ex-boyfriends, and general lifestyle. It's a bit mundane--perhaps not all that imaginative--and there is a line near the end of the novel that seems to poke fun at how cookie-cutter/predictable the plot becomes--but even with that, it is surprising enough to keep reading.

Most importantly, Ellis delivers magic with this book: in a way that none of his other books have since, he captures the pace and intensity of the prose of Less Than Zero and puts it to use in a new narrative with old characters. Towards the end, again, there seem to be a few scenes that are reminiscent of the first novel, and this has something of a disquieting effect. The big relief though is that Ellis does not mess it up. Like the Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm, there can be a lot of doubt about the point of bringing back once-popular characters. And maybe there's no point to Imperial Bedrooms, but I don't see it as an opportunity to cash in on Robert Downey Jr.'s reinvigoration, or to reflect upon the passing of Michael Jackson and John Hughes and 80's nostalgia. No, it writes a new chapter in the previous book, and while its story is nowhere near as fresh and original as the first, it's still a pretty good story: tell me that a film adaptation of Imperial Bedrooms with the original actors from Less Than Zero would not be one of the coolest things ever done.

But people in Hollywood are idiots, and one of the good things about this book is the way it casually acknowledges that. To sum things up, the best thing about Imperial Bedrooms is the way the pace matches Less Than Zero. This is a short book at around 170 pages, but for nearly half of it, let's say between pages 60 and 130, I didn't want to put it down.

And it should be clear at this point why most people like to trash Ellis--you either get it or you don't. You either love him or hate him. People that trash him don't get him. People that trash him might quote the passage I am about to quote and call it a perfect example of why his writing is terrible. Of course, I am quoting it to show the opposite, how a casual epiphany can come out of a commonplace situation:

"Dr. Woolf leaves a message on my landline canceling tomorrow's session and telling me that he can't see me as a patient anymore but that he'll refer me to someone else and the next morning I drive to the building on Sawtelle and park on the fourth floor of the garage and wait for his noon session to be over because that's when he takes his lunch break and I'm listening to a song with the lyric So leave everything you know and carry only what you fear...over and over again and I'm nodding to myself while smoking cigarettes and making a list of all the things I'm not going to ask Rain about and deciding I'll accept all the false explanations she's going to give me and how that's the only plan, and then I'm remembering the person who warned me about how the world has to be a place where no one is interested in your questions and that if you're alone nothing bad can happen to you." (107)

That is all one sentence but I happen to think it is a very good one. And while I totally acknowledge that this book is not a masterpiece, that Ellis has done better, there are totally memorable moments in this novel that will exist comfortably alongside previous ones. I'd rather read Less Than Zero again (especially since my copy was lost)--because that book, more than any other book, can be viewed as a guide to writing your very own breakout novel--but Imperial Bedrooms is a nice treat. You can read it even if you haven't read Less Than Zero, but it helps.

I'm just sad that I'll probably have to wait until I am 30 to read a new book by Bret Easton Ellis. He has continued with his relative consistency, and has not done anything to make me lose any interest in his work. If I were Ellis, I would want to write a Pulitzer-worthy, six-hundred page piece de resistance for publication around my fiftieth birthday, to silence all doubters and haters, but it seems too easy. Perhaps people want to criticize Ellis for not attempting to write a masterpiece here--but he has accomplished something that many in the "industry" often fail at: he's delivered a sequel that isn't disappointing. Who knows if he is going to go back to writing longer books, or books that get mentioned as the best of the year, and who cares. He's about as commercial as you can get, as far as fiction writers go, but I don't consider him a sell-out in the least, and maybe that is what continues to impress me about him.