The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense - Tim Kinsella (2011)

Flashback 14 years to Fall 2000, my senior year in high school, chatting on AOL Instant Messenger with a friend I had gotten to know the previous year in an English class.  He was pretentious.  Definitely not popular but so weird and laconic and humorous that he carried his own cultural cache which others had to respect.  We started by giving feedback on college essays we were writing.  We wrote short stories and sent them back and forth (his were much better, or at least seemed to be written by a much older and more intelligent person) and he contributed a couple iconic lines to a play I was writing.  Five years later we'd stop speaking, and I wrote my first novel as a kind of response to that rejection.  He'd later describe the event as an "epic falling out" to a mutual friend, though it seemed anything but that to me (swift, no words, little explanation).

However, back in those idyllic late high school times, I was very into three bands, in this order: Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, and Rage Against the Machine.  The Beastie Boys and Foo Fighters, among others, took up lesser spots, but these three comprised the majority of my listening.  My friend saw a problem with this, and he did me the favor of lending dozens of CDs to me over the next few months.  Some of these bands would go on to become my favorites: Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Fugazi, and the Velvet Underground, to name a few.  But more interesting was a sub-set of music that shocked: emo.  It shocked because it did not fit in with this refined adult taste.  He was weirdly looking forward to the new Weezer album, which would be their follow-up to Pinkerton (which I never heard until I got to college).  He said Sunny Day Real Estate was emo.  He said Cap'n Jazz was emo.

I was surprised I liked Cap'n Jazz because they were so obscure.  By that point in my life honestly I had never really made the effort to give "underground" music a chance.  My friend had told me, "Just play the first track and wait til the end."  I did that, and to say it changed my life would be an overstatement, but it sort of changed my life.  Cap'n Jazz was not necessarily "underground," but I am pretty sure you could go out on the street and ask a bunch of people in Chicago (their hometown) who they were and 95-99% would profess ignorance.  So while my friend and I may be "separated," and while I was pretty mad at him for a while, I will always be grateful for making me his "project" and turning me on to indie rock, because it's been one of the few enjoyable pursuits afforded me in this miserable life.

Fast-forward to July 2010 when a re-formed Cap'n Jazz played the Wicker Park Festival and I promptly lost my shit for an hour.  Flashback to April 2002 when I went on what I considered a very romantic date to an Owls concert at North Six in Brooklyn and sat on the bleachers and watched the members of Cap'n Jazz play weirder songs, but still catchier ones than Joan of Arc put out.  Fast-forward to December 2005 when I went alone to see Make Believe play with Islands at Beat Kitchen.  Fast-forward to some other time in 2006 or 2007 when I saw Make Believe at the Wicker Park Festival.  Fast-forward to July 2014 when I saw Owls play at the Wicker Park Festival on the heels of their well-received 2nd album, 13 years in gestation.

It's possible you're reading this and wondering what the hell this has to do with a book--but more likely, if you know the name of the author, you know why I started the review off this way.  Tim Kinsella's reputation precedes him, and with his recent literary output as well as the new seemingly more mainstream Owls record, it may appear he is in the process of shaking that off.  However, if the Owls performance three weeks ago is any indication, he will never stop being obtuse, inscrutable, and defiantly anti-establishment.

As previously mentioned here, I saw him read at the Printer's Row Lit Fest (more than 2 months ago already - sad that the summer is wearing out).  He read from his second novel, Let Go and Go on and on, and I approached him afterwards and told him I didn't have the money to buy a book, but would he sign my journal?  He graciously complied and I told him I would be reading "the Karaoke Singer" soon and I review every book I read and would he like to see the review?  "No...I don't really try to pay attention to reviews."  I wouldn't pay attention to reviews either with the way he has been skewered by Pitchfork in the past (The Gap at 1.9, How Can Any Thing So Little Be Any More EP at 2.2, So Much Staying Alive and Lovelessness at a nearly-favorable 4.2, In Rape Fantasy and Terror Sex We Trust improving to a 5.0, Joan of Arc, Dick Cheney, Mark Twain... at an almost-respectable 5.3, Joan of Arc: Presents: Guitar Duets at a near-median 3.5), but it seems like he knows how to get better reviews when he's not trying to be experimental or engaging in the practice of obfuscation (Owls' S/T record came in at 7.0 and Two got a 7.3 and the two Make Believe albums that were reviewed came in between Joan of Arc and Owls, generally).  Pitchfork never reviewed Analphabetapolothology but there is no way they could give it anything less than an 8.7, if not a 10.  It's just ridiculously inspired and influential and if you haven't heard it already and are even the slightest bit aware of "emo" as a genre (even if you hate what it represents), you owe it to yourself to at least listen to "Little League" (and especially the end of it).

So Tim Kinsella is carrying a lot of baggage going into publishing his first novel, and it seems like his fans will stick with him no matter how far out into left-field he wants to stray.  But books and music are two different mediums, and I am happy to report that The Karaoke Singer's Guide to Self-Defense is "more mainstream" Kinsella, and that people who might be completely unaware of his indie icon status over the past 20 years will probably find this book intriguing--if not exactly a masterpiece--provided they can get past page 100.
***
This is because up until page 100 the reader may find themselves lost, and unable to figure out just where the narrative is heading.  However, around that point it all begins to make sense.  Then the book shifts to "Part 2" and some confusion is likely there as well.  But I will try to sum it up for you without spoiling too much.

This book is probably 45% about a family, 35% about a bar, and 20% about two random characters.  The family is comprised of Mel, Will and Kent, three siblings who have come back together for their Nana's funeral.  Ronnie is their mother, Dell is their estranged father, and Joe is Ronnie's new boyfriend.  Kent works at a toothpaste factory and is married with kids.  Will is the youngest of the three and has had problems in the past with fighting.  Basically, he went through rehab because he got into fights as his hobby.  Mel works as a bartender at The Shhh...

The Shhh... is a bar owned by Norman, who inherited it from his father Rich.  Norman is the closest thing this book has to a villain, and a certain proposal made towards the end of the book is the closest it comes to reaching a "climax":

"Mel understood.  She would tell Will everything if Kent weren't around.  How she hid the pregnancy at first so she could keep dancing.  How she could've had the baby if she could have kept dancing but couldn't keep dancing if she had the baby--Goddamn it, maybe she probably should've had the kid.  How Norman had been squeezing her and couldn't Will maybe do something, even just scare him, just this once?
But Kent was talking about his remortgaged subprime tax break insurance kid's sports team past glory with a snappy comeback Florida getaway I prefer a bargain or something.  It was getting late.  Will lit a cigarette." (248-249)

A side note: the book starts at a scene at The Shhh... and is also the closest the book comes to being about emo or punk rock because Cap'n Jazz has a song titled "Planet Shhh..."  So what I'm trying to say is, you're not getting a traditional novel here, nor some kind of thinly-veiled autobiography about life as a relatively obscure indie rock icon (which would be awesome).  However, there is a fair amount of material on the art of karaoke (mostly from Norman, who specializes in it) and there is this passage about another character, Gus.  Gus runs the kitchen at The Shhh... and he is also Mel's roommate and a poet:

"Too old to have really been a punk, Gus turned thirty in 1978, but loved Public Image so much that he began every karaoke session of his life with the same disappointment, looking up 'Public Image' by Public Image Limited.  No karaoke place ever had it.  Though its two note riff with no surprises was perfection itself to Gus, it would, he had to admit, be a very tough song to sing karaoke.  The 'melody' was all in the sneering attitude.  Except for the repetition of the words 'public image,' few lyrics were comprehensible after the opening line, 'You never listen to a word I'm saying.'" (74)

Side note: this is the 2nd review on Flying Houses in recent months to reference PiL.  I liked 85A, but I don't want to compare the two.  While they were both debuts and published not too far apart from one another, they're completely different books.  However I would have liked this book better if it had taken place in Chicago.  I do not know why Kinsella set the story in Stone Claw Grove, MI rather than Chicago, but apparently Stone Claw Grove is a fictional town.

But maybe the setting is why I liked this book in the first place: it is not a sugar-coated version of reality like so many other novels.  The characters are distinctly working class, and the disappointments in their lives are palpable and ring true.  In other words, reading the book as an underemployed attorney with a debt well on its way to six figures, I felt less alone.

Kinsella recently taught a class in experimental fiction at the University of Chicago, and that appointment was probably based on the strength of this novel.  It is "experimental," but it's straightforward enough that I could see it making a cool movie.  It's experimental in the sense that the action is constantly flipping backwards and forwards in time.  Primarily it takes place before and after Nana's funeral, but it jumps back to 9 months before the funeral (i.e. around the time Mel got pregnant) and other earlier points in time as well.

Another "experimental" aspect is the way Kinsella writes in the third person, but manages to imbue the narration with the personality of the character that is the focus of a particular section.  This is also a confusing trope at first, but by page 100, the reader should be able to figure out what is happening.  As mentioned, most of the characters are working class and the narration is appropriately down-to-earth, but Sarah Ann has a more intellectual inner monologue that makes her a very interesting but underused character.

The same can be said for the other two random characters, Wallace and Jesse.  I haven't read any other reviews of this book so I may be alone on this, but to me the chapters about Wallace and Jesse are the strongest in the book.  I'm just not sure they fit in all that well with the rest of the story.  Regardless, they are compelling.  They are not totally horrifying, but they are disturbing and sometimes deeply so.  Oddly enough, they are the most topical parts of the book, as the last few years have seen several young adults in the news break free from their captors who basically tortured them by forcing them to be their companions.  Wallace eventually does the "right thing" but the wrong way, and the depiction of Jesse's reaction almost made me want to break out in tears.

All throughout, the writing is strong, and I may have only picked up one typo.  Kinsella read from Let Go and Go on and on at the Lit Fest this year.  He sat in front of me with his mom, and then he got up to read and nobody seemed to laugh or "get it."  He was reading something about cockfighting and people living out of their car.  It didn't seem as "mainstream" as this book, but I am really glad I read this and may read that in the future.  Nobody may ever "get" Kinsella, but I feel like I understand where he's coming from a little better after reading this book.  I don't think I'm alone in hoping that Cap'n Jazz reforms yet again (I read one shocking interview where he said Owls' Two was almost released as the 2nd Cap'n Jazz album--which seriously would have fucked with everyone), but so long as Kinsella remains a stalwart on the indie publishing scene in Chicago, I can deal (fingers crossed that I get a copy of S/M out to him and that he's tickled by the fact that a scene in the novel takes place at a Make Believe concert and consequently considers me worthy of Featherproof's support).

Nickel and Dimed - Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)

Barbara Ehrenreich spoke at the Printer's Row Lit Fest yesterday (June 7, 2014) but I could not get a ticket.  So instead I went to the God, Sex and Death Variety Hour, which included a reading by Tim Kinsella, who has just published his second book.  I have just put a hold on his first book from the library, so I will review it soon, and I tried to talk to Tim Kinsella afterwards and he said he didn't really like to read reviews, so I didn't need to let him know when I published my review.  Of course, part of me wanted to see Ehrenreich and ask a pointless question during the Q & A (presuming there was one) and film it with my camera and post it here.  Because it is quite ironic that I could have seen her while I had been putting off reviewing Nickel and Dimed for about a week--this gave me a purpose!  But it was not to be.  Such as it is with this review.  It could have been great--with multimedia and almost real-time updating, on an extremely pertinent issue--but I didn't doggedly pursue a spot at the reading, when I probably could have gotten in if I really tried.  No, I wanted to see Tim Kinsella (and actually all of the performers at the GSDVH were wonderful), and since they were both at the same time, I easily deferred to my back up plan.

My first exposure to Nickel and Dimed came in a law school clinic, the Consumer Counseling and Bankruptcy clinic.  We had to work an internship at a placement (which was easy because they basically found the job for you) and go to a seminar once a week.  We had some readings to discuss at the seminars, and our professor had given us a couple chapters photocopied out of Nickel and Dimed.  She briefly mentioned it in going through the syllabus and I looked forward to it as more enjoyable reading material than one usually encounters there.  I am pretty sure we read the final chapter, "Evaluation," and maybe one other chapter that I can't remember.

I wanted to take this book out of the library because I've been obsessed with keeping track of my monthly expenses--particularly when I was doing my post-graduate fellowship at the CTA.  That paid a stipend of $1000 a month.  I would only be disbursed $1000 after four weeks as the school only authorized 20 hours per week.  This worked out to a wage of $12.50 an hour.  I was obsessed with figuring out if I could live on $460 a month, because that was what was left over after paying the rent.  I am sure a lot of people would say they could live on that amount without a problem, but I wasn't sure.  I usually spend about $300 a month on food ($301.46, in December 2013).  I had a bad cell phone deal and was paying $63.86 a month for that.  It was another $64.57 for utilities, which leaves about $40 for everything else (and this isn't even mentioning alcohol).  Commuting alone - $45.00 for ten days of round trips to CTA Headquarters - put me in the hole.  Of course, that they did not give me free riding privileges, like they did for all the other law school externs, stung.

If I had been working 40 hours per week, there wouldn't have been a problem in covering those costs.  But people tell me I should consider myself lucky--I am not working at Wal-Mart or a fast food restaurant for $7.75 an hour.

Nickel and Dimed has a simple premise: Barbara Ehrenreich goes out to lunch with an editor at Harper's to discuss future articles she might write for the magazine and they start talking about how difficult it is to live on the minimum wage and Ehrenreich says somebody ought to go out there and try it for themselves as a sort of old-school journalism project.  The editor tells her she is just the one to do it.  The year is 1998.  From there, she travels to Key West, FL, Portland, ME, and Minneapolis, MN to work as a waitress, maid, and Wal-Mart associate, respectively.

***

For anyone who has worked these jobs, moments of this book will seem instantly familiar.  Personally I think the strongest chapter in the book is "Selling in Minnesota," because it delves deeply into the culture of Wal-Mart and gives Ehrenreich the occasion to unleash her most sardonic barbs.  I was under the impression that it was the longest chapter, but at 72 pages, it barely edges out "Scrubbing in Maine"'s 70 ("Serving in Florida" is only 40 pages).  However, this entire book is a pleasure to read.  It does feel a bit dated at times, but I have to say that rent is not obscenely higher than it was in 1998.  Nor is the minimum wage--but it seems inevitable that will not be true much longer.  While it is at $7.25 presently, when Ms. Ehrenreich worked as a waitress at "Hearthside" in Key West, it was $5.15.  It looks like it will change to $10.10 soon, and then maybe $15.00 in certain states.  The jump to $15 is unprecedented and could dramatically shift the landscape of the low-wage workforce.  And while Ehrenreich may not be directly cited as an influence on this positive trend, this book has gotten major attention over the past 15 years, and through a kind of cultural osmosis, the sad reality that life on minimum wage is unsustainable has seeped into the public consciousness.  The only criticism I can make is that the book is not pure reality.  It is a great social experiment, but Ehrenreich's desperation is only temporary.  Because she does not need to try and figure out some way to get out of the mess she's in, or resign to struggle throughout the rest of her life, the book is less valuable than the genuine article could be.

Perhaps that gives some of Ehrenreich's observations an air of hyperbole.  While she is looking for a place before craigslist, she does not come across any shared apartments, so naturally any apartment she keeps to herself will be more expensive.  But she writes often about staying in dirty motels:

"There are no secret economies that nourish the poor; on the contrary, there are a host of special costs.  If you can't put up the two months' rent you need to secure an apartment, you end up paying through the nose for a room by the week.  If you have only a room, with a hot plate at best, you can't save by cooking up huge lentil stews that can be frozen for the week ahead.  You eat fast food or the hot dogs and Styrofoam cups of soup that can be microwaved in a convenience store." (27)

***

While going back through the book to try and find passages, I found too many.  I didn't want this review to just be a huge collection of quotes.  But it made me realize that, when I did the same thing for The Circle, I had a lot of difficulty finding good examples.  At a very basic level then, this book is better than The Circle, but it's less surprising and more depressing because it's real.

Ehrenreich does a wonderful job portraying the life of a server--and I say that as a former server of 18 months at 2 restaurants.  She works at two restaurants concurrently to make ends meet, and she provides a fantastic account of a sensation every server must have felt at least once in their past:

"Ideally, at some point you enter what servers call a 'rhythm' and psychologists term a 'flow state,' where signals pass from the sense organs directly to the muscles, bypassing the cerebral cortex, and a Zen-like emptiness sets in.  I'm on a 2:00-10:00 PM shift now, and a male server from the morning shift tells me about the time he 'pulled a triple'--three shifts in a row, all the way around the clock--and then got off and had a drink and met this girl, and maybe he shouldn't tell me this, but they had sex right then and there and it was like beautiful." (33)

A personal favorite part of the book for me is Ehrenreich's experience flushing out her system to take a drug test for Wal-Mart:

"If it weren't for the drug test, I might have stopped looking right then and there, but there has been a chemical indiscretion in recent weeks and I'm not at all sure I can pass.  A poster in the room where Roberta interviewed me warns jobs applicants not to 'waste your time or ours' if you've taken drugs within the last six weeks.  If I had used cocaine or heroin there would be no problem, since these are water-soluble and wash out of the body in a couple days.  (LSD isn't even tested for.) But my indiscretion involved the only drug usually detected by testing, marijuana, which is fat-soluble and, I have read, can linger in the body for months.  And what about the prescription drugs I've been taking for a chronic nasal congestion problem?  What if Claritin-D, which gives you a nice little bounce, shows up as crystal meth?" (125)

Her tales of life as a "Wal-Martian" belong in any anthology of literature or essays on corporate culture.  As I've said, this is the highlight of the book, but I don't want this entire post to be about Wal-Mart either.  Because this book is not about that store--but the way it allows its employees to remain in poverty.

Ehrenreich gets hung up on a few topics: housing, transportation, health care, and food (a dearth of each).  I found her comments about housing surprising, because, while it is understandably difficult to get started on a new apartment on a limited budget and without a job, I still thought the rents would be cheaper in the places she lived.  I say this as a former resident of New York and Los Angeles and current resident of Chicago.  I know rents are cheaper elsewhere, and I am currently paying roughly what the "deals" were for a one bedroom or studio apartment per month, if you added up the weekly rates.

The food issue of note is the lack of nutritional value in the meals the poor can afford to eat.  One footnote, an example of the foodstuffs obtained through a pantry, seems almost too ridiculous to believe, but obviously is true:

"Middle class people often criticize the poor for their eating habits, but this charitable agency seemed to be promoting a reliance on 'empty calories.'  The complete inventory of the box of free food I received is as follows: 21 ounces of General Mills Honey Nut Chex cereal; 24 ounces of Post Grape-Nuts cereal; 20 ounces of Mississippi Barbecue Sauce; several small plastic bags of candy, including Tootsie Rolls, Smarties fruit snacks, Sweet Tarts, and two bars of Ghirardelli chocolate; one bubble gum; a 13-ounce package of iced sugar cookies; hamburger buns; six 6-ounce Minute Maid juice coolers; one loaf of Vienna bread; Star Wars fruit snacks; one loaf of cinnamon bread; 18 ounces of peanut butter; 18 ounces of jojoba shampoo; 16 ounces of canned ham; one bar of Dial soap; four Kellogg Rice Krispies Treats bars; two Ritz cracker packages; one 5-ounce Swanson canned chicken breast; 2 ounces of a Kool Aid-like drink mix; two Lady Speed Stick deodorants." (174, n.8)

The best is saved for last, when Ehrenreich steps back from being the fearless hero of low-wage adventures (which gives this book an appeal similar to Dishwasher) and puts on her Ph.D garb and analyzes the situation.  She makes some wonderful points, and writes powerfully about her subject matter:

"It is common, among the nonpoor, to think of poverty as a sustainable condition--austere, perhaps, but they get by somehow, don't they?  They are 'always with us.'  What is harder for the nonpoor to see is poverty as acute distress: The lunch that consists of Doritos or hot dog rolls, leading to faintness before the end of the shift.  The 'home' that is also a car or a van.  The illness or injury that must be 'worked through,' with gritted teeth, because there's no sick pay or health insurance and the loss of one day's pay will mean no groceries for the next.  These experiences are not part of a sustainable lifestyle, even a lifestyle of chronic deprivation and relentless low-level punishment.  They are, by almost any standard of subsistence, emergency situations.  And that is how we should see the poverty of so many millions of low-wage Americans--as a state of emergency." (214)

I've said about all I can.  Please note that I did not  read the 10 year anniversary edition, released in 2011, as I did not know it existed until now.  Obviously, after the financial meltdown of 2008, Ehrenreich was going to have more to say.  She wrote a long essay that is posted here and is definitely worth checking out: http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/

I could go off about the minimum wage, and the debate that the cost of goods will go up if it is increased, but I am glad it is happening.  I could also go off about my options as a law grad, and how they barely pay more, but I will desist for another day.  I am just glad that a small victory seems likely, and hope that other bigger ones will follow.