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.

Fire on 8/9/08 in Silverlake

Yesterday I held an open house from 12 - 6 PM in an attempt to find a new tenant to sign a lease with the management company for my unit. It's the only way I can leave. After 6, greatly relieved, I closed my door and turned on Cinemax and watched Live Free or Die Hard. Wondering whether I could "go out" on a Saturday night or not with my little funding available, I saw a film called Light Sleeper was going to be on IFC at 10 and I decided to watch it. I resolved to get Taco Bell for dinner around 9:30 to be back in time for the beginning of the movie.

I went to the bathroom before I stepped outside and I heard my neighbors talking more audibly than I usually heard them talk. That is, the neighbors who live in the next yard over, in a different apartment complex. It sounded a bit like they were having an argument. I always enjoy overhearing drama but I couldn't make out much of what they were saying.

I walked outside with my keys and saw all of these strange ashes flying in the air. It was almost as if it were 4th of July, or as if there had been a sudden explosion of fireflies in the area. They were literally right above my head, but they would evaporate as they fell to the earth. I stepped off my staircase and saw a huge ball of smoke and fire apparently attacking a tree in a spot that was apparently just behind my apartment complex's parking lot. It was so close. I got scared, and was happy I was on my way to my car, but I briefly considered whether or not I should pick up my computer in case my building were to catch on fire.

A slew of fire engines and emergency vehicles and police cars flooded the area directly in front of my apartment window. As I walked to my car, firefighters jumped off their truck, unloaded and uncoiled their hose, and ran through the back of our apartment complex's driveway towards the cloud of fire. An asian girl was running around frantically. She asked me if I lived here and I said yes and she asked if everybody else in the building knew what was going on and I said I didn't know and she said, "It's huge!" And that really scared me.

So then I got in my car, went to Taco Bell, and tried to return home. Well, the police car had parked so it was blocking both lanes of traffic onto Benton Way. Feeling like it was my right to do it because I lived there, I actually turned and manuevered myself around the parked police car. I thought it was empty. But the policeman was on the sidewalk and said, "Excuse me! Did you see my car parked there?! Turn around!" I thought he was going to bust me and give me a ticket or something, but I did turn around to turn back onto Sunset and I apologized to him and he was less offended, thank God.

I turned up Marathon Dr. and circled around to the back end of LaFayette Park Place. Cones had been placed in front of and in back of the fire zone, so I parked further away than I normally did. When I did a three-point-turn to turn around when I got to the cones, there was this gay (I presume) man talking to two friends or neighbors and I guess it was his white car I was doing the middle of my three-point-turn during and he was like, "Hey! Watch out!" and I put up my hand as if to say, I have it under control, relax. I parked a couple car lengths down and walked back towards my apartment and as I passed this aforementioned gay (I presume) man I heard him say something like, "...And then I was walking up the hill and I just heard someone say 'arson.'"

I went inside and turned on IFC and watched a featurette about their new documentary "Larry Flynt: the Right to be Left Alone" and ate my Taco Bell and kept my windows open while the flashing lights of the fire engines went on for another hour.

The movie Light Sleeper was okay, but by the end I was so ready to pass out I couldn't even brush my teeth or do my dermatological regimen. I just passed out.

Yeah, that was my Saturday, basically, that and reading some more of What is the What which I hadn't picked up in over a year, and watching some of Hollywoodland.

I would like to personally thank the LAFD for protecting all of us from certain annihilation last night. I do not know how I would have responded towards losing all of my stuff at this juncture, but I do not think it would have necessarily simplified matters, though perhaps it would have made my moving easier.

State of the Union Address

My fellow citizens of the world,
We have had a very difficult year in 2008. Our GNP has dropped precipitously. Debt is not yet an issue, but it may become one in the coming months, and this is the reason for this speech. As the proprietor of Flying Houses, I am seeking your advice in order to provide you with the best possible blog-reading experience. You may read that and say, "Well, what do you want my advice for? You're in control of your own life. You know what's best for you. I don't need to comment." Yes, and in a way, the outward motive of this speech is to clarify my position on these issues, and I will not be offended if you fail to leave a comment.
The first issue to be discussed is the Kaplan LSAT prep course. This is the element upon which all other elements depend. That is, the course goes from 8/09 - 9/27. One week after it ends is my registered test date. A little bit of background information is necessary:
The LSAT is hard. True, when one looks at each question individually, and considers the similar guiding principles to each answer, it does not appear quite so hard. However, when one is expected to read and answer 100 questions in a roughly three hour time span, anxiety and pressure enters into the equation. I bought an LSAT Test Prep book in March, back when I was seemingly "on the ball." My unemployment began, (and to update the previous posting on the topic, my appeal for my declared-to-be-ineligible benefits did not go well--another serious factor in this speech) I was not concerned, I was focused on performing well, and I scored a 148 on my first practice test. I scored a 150 on my second practice test, not too long after. Last night, I tried to take the third practice test, because I was going to be starting the course on Saturday, and had a whole new slew of practice tests to attend to, and I didn't want to waste one.
Now, for those of you familiar with the LSAT, the first section on this particular practice test taken last night was Analytical Reasoning. This threw me off terribly and I had an awful time with the clarity of the conditions for the different logic games. Logical reasoning was section two, generally my favorite section, but I found it this time to be unbearably difficult--forgetting to read the question stem first, and then the passage itself. The pressure and anxiety filled me to the brim and I had to stop--I could not complete the practice test. I decided just to use the questions for practice without trying to do them all at once.
I woke up this morning and felt an unbelievable amount of anxiety over the fact that I needed to buy more ziplock bags and Q-tips. Also, I was nearly out of food in the house, and I was going to need to replenish the supply. I reflected upon the fact that I made $1700 a month, had roughly $1000 in monthly expenses, had to pay for gas which was at least $100 a month, which left $600 a month for all other expenses. With a budget of roughly $20 a day to include food and whatever other necessities presented themselves (note: when I first realized $1700 was all I could make in a month, I decided I could no longer afford to buy that illicit flower which is probably responsible for my precipitous financial ruination), this morning I decided that it was no way to live.
It is simply too difficult to live with those kinds of restrictions on one's head 100% of the time. Too difficult to be constantly worried about how much one is able to spend. Since I had a friend visit a couple weeks ago, I have been as big a penny-pincher as ever. No social events are allowed. I could not have brunch twice (despite actually being invited somewhere) because I couldn't afford it. The $1300 for the course is on my credit card, and if I pay it off, I have to take the course, go through with it, and take the LSAT in October, despite little hope that I will be able to score somewhere in the range of 165-170 and have a chance at the schools I most want to attend. They are: NYU, University of Chicago, UCLA, UC-Berkeley (Boalt Hall), Harvard, University of Texas at Austin, Loyola Marymount University, and DePaul University.
To make matters more complicated, I have been told to ask for a raise. I am going to do that tomorrow, and while a raise of several dollars an hour might put me in a more affordable situation, I am extremely doubtful it will happen. Furthermore, a job may be opening up for me at a law firm in the coming months, that would pay slightly more than I make now, probably making it affordable as well. However, I do not know what the timetable is on that position, and it would be downtown, whereas my LSAT course is in Westwood--though there was an option to take one downtown, I preferred to have a class on a Saturday. I was thinking this was all going to be okay, I could work at my current job in Beverly Hills and go to courses on Tuesday and Saturday in Westwood, improve my score drastically, submit applications by Thanksgiving, go home for the holiday feeling somewhat accomplished and proud that I pulled it off.
I didn't even mention what happened on Sunday. But to get a more intriguing picture, I must say what happened on Friday. My neighbor knocked on my door. She told me that her car had been broken into. It was parked in the apartment parking lot, which I never used. There is no security gate, and street parking is always available just as close by. Well, she told me as a "heads up" and I felt so horrible for her. Imagine my surprise when, on Sunday, I glanced out my window and saw an abnormality on the front end of my car. I went outside to inspect closer and found a giant dent in my left front bumper. This was understandably traumatic and I put in the claim with State Farm Insurance (another issue of approaching debt in this speech) today and they told me it would have to be part of the $500 deductible plan to repair it. Now, I am going to stand up for myself in this situation, but it is truly the final straw. Not only was my car keyed by some horrible person in Culver City, but now it has been dented by an extremely rude, either uninsured or irresponsible driver in Silverlake. The price, the idea of being without my car and having to rely on the bus, all the while being near-broke, is just about enough to induce a nervous breakdown.
But I have been able to keep my head about things. This morning at work I told my closest co-worker (who trained me) at the Flavia coffee machine and I told him I might be leaving L.A. He was rather taken aback, but he said he had been in a similar situation before and knew how hard it could get.
The hardest part about leaving will be finding a sublettor. I believe at this point it is prudent to cancel my LSAT course, to cancel my LSAT registration, and hopefully begin anew a year from now with the process, either for law school or potentially a graduate english program, again. While I hate the idea of putting things off another year (as I begin to wonder about how much longer I can live with the shocks to which this body is subject) I feel I am too financially and personally unstable to make my best application effort. It is not impossible to think about still taking the LSATs in December in Chicago, and potentially even taking a Kaplan course there, but I cannot continue to pay rent at this rate. As much as it pains me to say so, my time in Los Angeles must soon come to an end. I regarded the hills of the San Fernando Valley today as I drove home from work and I instantly became sad that my scenery was soon to become so much more mundane and lacking in natural beauty.
There will be a few positives to returning to Chicago, but in general I am not going back because I am unhappy here, but because I have made a series of truly terrible decisions that have landed me in a position of encroaching debt. It is my own fault that I must go. I wish I knew a way I could make it work. I could get a second job, but with LSAT preparation, it would prove unbearably exhausting.
I am ashamed of myself for allowing my life to come to this. The last several nights I have done my usual business of praying to God to let me die in my sleep. I have not been granted my wish, however the first night I did have a roughly two-hour dream that seemed to last an entire weekend in dream-time, and that was a welcome respite from the harsh restrictions and requirements of the waking world. It bears mentioning that it was a beautiful dream, and I would gladly never wake up if I could be assured of living in a world utterly without stress, pain, anxiety, paranoia, and fear of others judgmental attitudes.
I am also scared of focusing so intensely on the LSAT and Law School applications that it would cripple my fiction writing. I would like to finish S/M in October and do the NaNoWriMo or whatever the fuck it's called where you compete with thousands of others (who knows how many) to write a novel in the month of November. Though writing has given me zero monetary gain whatsoever, I am still convinced that it is my duty to fulfill on this Earth. Whether I make my living off of it is another thing entirely. Perhaps I will post the two personal statements I wrote for Law School applications on Flying Houses just for fun. I didn't intend them seriously, but I wrote them as a way to get ideas about what to write about.
My message has been conveyed, and I hope you are satisfied with the wealth of information provided. Citizens, if you believe I should leave, please vote 1. If you believe I should stay please vote 2. If have any commentary to provide on the LSAT/Law School side, please provide as well. The decisions must be made in very short time. I thank you for your patience, and wish you a pleasant day.

Unemployment

May 2, 2008 was my mother's birthday and my final day at Jefferies & Co. I called her to wish her a happy one, and my co-workers held a potluck lunch for me as a send-off. The circumstances that led up to this event all seemed the logical, reasonable sort. I was being paid $13/hour to do rather menial work. I wanted something more significant. My boss and I agreed it was in both of our best interests if I sought work elsewhere. Let me make one thing clear: I would have worked at Jefferies & Co. on a permanent basis if they had been able to hire me. Unfortunately, they prefer to manage their payroll through temporary staffing agencies, which actually makes them pay twice as much for my time, but which may give them some sort of tax-break, or may be an indication of their corporate climate (I only saw four or five co-workers leave/be fired in the six months I was there--but accounts payable can be dull if you do not have interesting people to talk to). While it was dull, I enjoyed the company of my co-workers, and my life seemed to be going in some direction, even if it was as small as writing poems and songs in my little orange journal during my cigarette breaks, I felt like I was living a life not wholly unhappy.

I stopped sharing a two-bedroom apartment at the end of April and moved into my own place in Silverlake. This was also a decision of the logical, reasonable sort. I wanted to live on my own. I wanted to be able to play music at a volume appropriate for singing along. I wanted to get all my books and my stereo and my LCD TV and get my own place with digital cable and get all the channels and get an XBOX 360 for HD capabilities and I wanted to live where it was slightly cheaper, in Hollywood. So I found an apartment that was the same rent as my share--$750--of course this is before they raised it to $795 a month, and before my extra $150-200/month in cell phone, cable, electric, and gas bills. I figured, it was okay, I could still make ends meet with those numbers. I would be living in Silverlake! Where Morrissey lives! Maybe I could meet him and befriend him and write his authorized biography! Or maybe I could be a bohemian poet, reading prose works at one of the cafes along Sunset Blvd, collecting $10 from a tip jar every night and building connections to get my work published. Or I could work Downtown, or in Hollywood, or even in the Valley, in Pasadena or Glendale--even Burbank is not such an unreasonable commute. Sure, I wasn't two miles from the beach anymore (my bi-weekly runs to Venice Beach were no longer possible) but I was a lot closer to Hollywood, and the industry I moved here to try to gain a foothold in.

Now, one tip for anyone considering moving to L.A. If you are concerned about finding work here (and you should be)--it is probably the best option to live on the west-side. Now, the west-side is expensive--Westwood, Santa Monica, Venice Beach--none are cheap. Palms/Culver City is the best bet for cheap, convenient, safe housing. Now, living in Silverlake, I find many, many jobs are located on the west-side, and not so many downtown. Century City is perhaps the most popular employment center in Los Angeles. Any of the areas between Westwood and Santa Monica are also popular for employers. There are practically no businesses in Silverlake beyond boutiques and restaurants. Hollywood does offer employer locations, but they tend to veer closer to Beverly Hills, which is about midway from where I live to Santa Monica. Santa Monica is like twenty miles from where I live, just so you know. 20 miles is a really hard commute to do in L.A. Most of the time I don't apply to jobs in Santa Monica. Most of the time, I am spending my time with staffing agencies again. They at least offer me some sort of hope. They are someone to talk to. They do not ignore the resumes you send them. Or rather, they do ignore, but once they know you, they will at least make you feel better about yourself by talking to you and giving you realistic impressions of who will hire you.

I've applied to be practically everything here--a legal assistant (on a phone interview last night that was so exciting and nerveracking and ultimately disappointing and bittersweet), a music sales representative (for a company that is basically a glorified myspace for "industry attention"), an accounting clerk and administrative assistant at God-knows how many places, generally only interviewing at staffing agencies for those roles, a traffic data collector (on an hour long interview last Friday that I thought went really well...), an assistant to a talent agent (on a very short interview this Monday that I thought went really well--but the guy said he was meeting "a million" people that day)--which was only going to pay $500 a week--sadly a wage I may have to deal with in other industries as well, an SAT English teacher in Arcadia, CA, another 20-mile commute, but one that would pay $15/hour and would have been good for getting me back into English, but I wasn't experienced enough, an administrative ("sales," but not so much) assistant for Biolock, a company introducing key-free, fingerprint-technology security, where the French lady who would be my boss wondered whether or not I would really like doing it for $13/hour. I wish I had tried to speak French with her, but I am afraid of looking like a fool who can't keep up his end of the conversation.

This post is to demonstrate the nature of despair in times of unemployment. And also, to give others an idea of the specific experience I have had over the last two months. Warning to all college graduates: a B.A. in liberal arts is not necessarily going to make you that much more qualified than an applicant with a HS Diploma, because they generally have four more years of experience on their resume. It's a trade off, and I wish I hadn't studied "Writing and Politics" at NYU because I don't think anybody respects the fact that I designed my own curriculum--they'd rather believe it is a BS major (no pun intended). So I sent out my revised rationale for my colloquium as an attachment to that Legal Assistant position and that was enough for that man to call and say he was impressed with my writing skills.

Nice, but there are no literature-based businesses that pay you to interpret old texts. There is only new, present-day text that must be analyzed. And it is not very difficult to analyze business copy. The aims of business are far more ordinary than the aims of literature. It is easy to predict a successful model for business, but few people realize how difficult it is to find a successful model for a novel. Yes, I would copy the structure of This Side of Paradise or Buddenbrooks (my current reading), but that would be a cop-out. One has to understand how Fitzgerald and Mann came to cultivate their own prose habits, and one must behave appropriately to complete the task. That is, writing every day. Other writers will often sneer at amateurs, asking, "Do you write every day?" in order to classify their seriousness. Yes, writing every day is pretty much a necessity, but unfortunately, it's very hard to make yourself do that when you're working 40 hours a week or more. When you are unemployed, it is much easier to write every day, but it also comes with the guilt and fear that you are not (nor will be) a useful presence in anyone else's business model.

The state of the artist in 2008 is quite frustrating. It appears that music, (punk rock, more specifically) is the only medium which continues to profess the same values, though that may be because money is never really the primary aim--it is building an audience. Film may have always been an "insiders" medium, but it appears now that the studios are interested in more and more copycat projects guaranteed to make profits rather than weird, experimental art films. In order to be taken seriously by literary agents, I have to be published in a prestigious journal. In order to be published in a prestigous journal, I have to pass a screening process that is probably as intense as admission into any MFA program. It would be prudent for me to work on an economical short story in the 3,000-4,000 word range, but I am too anxious to finish my second novel. And I am too anxious to find a job.

It appears that connections are the greatest asset any single person can have when entering any job market. As much as I used to scoff at the idea of networking (and while most networking events find me networking with people just as, or more desperate than myself) having as many friends as you can is usually the most intelligent path towards success in business. That, and completing a major with real business applicability, but that's something I wouldn't know about.

Where I Live

A few weeks ago I walked outside and saw this sign on my street corner. Apparently someone is looking out for me after all. Except they have the arrow pointing in the wrong direction...

Fiery Furnaces, 5/30/08, Spaceland, Los Angeles, CA

Well, I've finally gotten around to posting pictures on my blog, after almost three years of missed opportunities. There could have been so many better concert photos from the past if livejournal had allowed me to post pictures, but now, those are all too far in the past to make any fuss about. Also, none of these photos are particularly worth making a fuss about.

This is the second time I saw Fiery Furnaces in L.A., and the fourth time I saw them period (the first being an opening gig for the Shins at the NYU Mystery concert in 09/04, the second being "rock band" version at Metro in Chicago sometime in 2006 or 2007--I honestly can't remember--and the third being the "normal" version at Troubadour in 10/07). In their "rock band" version they were at their peak--though many found this set up disorienting. Bitter Tea was not as strong a record as Blueberry Boat and to have the Friedberger siblings rip through old nine-minute-sagas in updated two or three minute formats was more of a gamble than most bands nowadays are willing to take. Also, Jason Loewenstein played bass for them at both the show at Metro and the show at Troubadour. However, while this was a standard quality Fiery Furnaces show, it was not the best I had ever seen them, but it was probably better than the show at Troubadour. The only difference being it was the first time I saw Eleanor Friedberger play guitar. She played for about half the songs and she was a very able frontwoman. They opened up their set with the 1-2-3 punch of "Duplexes of the Dead"/"Automatic Husband"/"Ex-Guru," showcasing the strongest movement off of last year's Widow City.

Apparently there is a new Fiery Furnaces album coming out soon, but there is also a contest up on their website to name what I believe is the album after that. There were like fifteen possible album titles you could choose from, and with that came the style of record it was supposed to be. I thought it was the coolest thing a band had done for their fans--to ask them how they want their next record to sound--though it might mean they are out of ideas. I voted for the "Archer Ave" album, which was supposed to be a Chicago Fall album, meaning an album about Chicago, but also like a Fall record, in particular wanting to use a two-drummer set-up as in the Fall's early 1980's lineup. Just the fact that this was an option shows how much better the Fiery Furnaces are than all other bands. Most bands don't know the Fall, but they are willing to make an album sound like the Fall--and Eleanor singing like MES would probably be one of the greatest (and most hilarious) things ever heard.

I even got pictures of the opening bands. The first one was passable, and I forgot who I compared them to to my friend. They were slightly boring but they made their set breezy.

The second opening band was one of the weirdest formats I've ever seen, with a girl who sounded a bit like Karen O drumming on the front of the stage and singing. It was like she was chained behind the drums. It was not as breezy a set as the first one.

Picture Legend

Top: Eleanor playing guitar

Middle: Weird 2nd opening band with drumming frontwoman
Last: Eleanor singing