The Soft Machine - William S. Burroughs (1966)

I'm having a really hard time reviewing this book, so I'm just going to be completely honest: I got this book in 2006 or 2007, I think, and when I read it, I thought it was better than Naked Lunch.  It made more sense to me.  However, now after reading it eight years later, it makes less sense to me.

Am I losing my ability to experiment, or appreciate experimental fiction?  Not a chance, but sometimes I need an author that's at least going to give me a little hint about what it all means.  Burroughs does this in the chapter titled "The Great Mayan Caper," but the rest of the book is a puzzle that I'm not sure many readers will be willing to re-assemble.  Rather, the book becomes a sort of poetry (and I would assume this happens in most of his "cut-up" novels) where the story is secondary to the sensory nature of the language, which, oftentimes is uncomfortable and surreal.

It appears that the book is about a technology that allows a person to switch bodies and/or travel through time.  Moments of lucidity in this novel are rare, but here is one:

"At the end of the three weeks he indicated the time has come to operate--He arranged us side by side naked on the operating table under floodlights--With a phosphorescent pencil he traced the middle line of our bodies from the cleft under the nose down to the rectum--Then he injected a blue fluid of heavy cold silence as word dust fell from demagnetized patterns--From a remote Polar distance I could see the doctor separate the two halves of our bodies and fitting together a composite being--I came back in other flesh the lookout different, thought and memories of the young Mayan drifting through my brain--" (86)

So in a sense you could say that Being John Malkovich rips off The Soft Machine, but that's really not fair because the film does something entirely different with the concept.  Burroughs doesn't seem interested in plot or action--though there certainly are moments sprinkled throughout.  On another note his use of the em dash is without parallel.  It produces a feeling in the reader that they are not reading a traditional book, but some weird kind of transmission conveying non-quantifiable information.

Of course there will always be critics that consider his work absurdist shock pornography, and one is hard-pressed to defend it as anything more, but at times it does seem to be an allegory rather than an actual sci-fi story:

"Biological parents in most cases are not owners of the property.  They act under orders of absentee proprietors to install the indicated stops that punctuate the written life script--With each Property goes a life script--Shuttling between property farmers and script writers, a legion of runners, fixers, guides, agents, brokers, faces insane with purpose, mistakes and confusion pandemic--Like a buyer has a first-class Property and a lousy grade B life script." (154)

So there are moments that can inspire a moment of reflection in the reader, but they are generally few and far between.  This is a pretty cold emotionless book that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, so don't pick it up expecting any easy answers.

However, this is a very good book if you want to read it on the CTA and freak everybody out around you.  It has a nice, sharp pink cover, and Burroughs's name, for me at least, inspires thoughts of college and mind-exploration and experiments with form and philosophical conversations fueled by chemical indulgences, as does much of the writing of his coterie.  But where Kerouac relentlessly grounds his observations in actual events from his past life, Burroughs is content to fuck with you endlessly, almost daring you to give up and start a new book that will remind you that you know what words mean.

In this sense, The Soft Machine is based in the English language, but told in such a way that one must consult other sources to arrive at a reasonable conclusion to draw from it.  Most people can say Naked Lunch is about heroin addiction and withdrawal, and the easy response is to say The Soft Machine is about that too, but it feels more focused and less scattershot, if still ultimately confounding.

Increasingly I have needed to consult Wikipedia to supplement my own inadequacies of intelligence with regard to certain books, and no more was this true than here.  I suppose after reading this review, one wonders whether I will ever revisit Burroughs, or could even be said to truly "like" him.  To the latter ponderance let me respond that I will always hold a special place in my heart for him, and appreciate him greatly, particularly in his more "terrestrial" moments; as to the former, I share the same uncertainty.  But in a certain sense that does not matter: the exposure to Burroughs in the first place is what matters (I'm not sure, but I think if I review Nova Express or The Ticket That Exploded, I'll say some very similar things).  I think I'd be more likely to check out Junky or The Wild Boys.

For the "cut-up trilogy," at least, the draw of the material is the rare moment of lucidity or profundity.  In this sense, the prose is dreamlike, and aims to tap into a different set of of  a reader's perceptions.  Unfortunately, while the style may be original and bold, if the "cut-up method" is still in vogue, I have not seen an effective use of it, other than to disorient.  I think you could say that sometimes David Foster Wallace seemed to be using a different sort of cut-up method (where the language is much more lucid but the sequencing seems almost random), and while I'm sure Burroughs was far from the first writer to experiment with chronological uncertainty/confusion, he has left his mark on the canon of American literature, and will continue to be required reading for future generations of writers.  

S/M: Experience #4

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

Experience #4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE END 

Interview - Kyle Thomas Smith

After reading 85A, I reached out to its author, Kyle Thomas Smith, and asked if I could interview him.  Graciously, he accepted and I sent him 20 questions on sometimes absurd topics (i.e. the question about the BRT system on Ashland Ave.).   The interview sheds light on the writing process, certain details about the novel (though I did my best to avoid spoilers), and some recommendations for further reading.  Hope you enjoy it.

JK: When did you first begin writing 85A?  How long did it take you from the writings of the first pages of the first draft, through the final publication of the book?

KTS: I began writing 85A as a short story in early 2008. Next thing I knew it was 80 pages and I wasn't even at the quarter mark for the first draft. I kept writing at white heat, it was a cathartic venture. Within a year, I had a manuscript. Within two years, by 2010, I had a published novel.

JK: How did you go about getting the book published?  Did you send query letters to agents or the publishing house directly?

KTS: I did the standard drill. I shopped around for an agent and met with rejection, which I pretty much expected given Seamus' gutter mouth and illicit affair with a man more than twice his age. Then I got lucky. I had registered in an online forum - I forget which one, it was one of those informational symposiums on how to pitch your breakout novel - and I happened to chat with a publisher who owned a small press in Minneapolis. I told him about 85A, he liked the premise, I sent him the manuscript, he accepted it. 

JK: Who are your top five favorite authors of all time?  

KTS: That's a tough one. I read a lot, and I like different authors for different reasons. Maybe the best way to answer your question would be to say that, when my husband Julius got me a Kindle this past Christmas, I scrambled to download the authors whose works I'd broken the most bag straps lugging around. They included D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Patrick Dennis, Flannery O'Connor, Yukio Mishima, Raymond Carver, Allan Sillitoe. One of my cats is named Marquez, if that helps. I don't read too many contemporary authors, though I do like early Paul Auster, and Elisabeth Strout's "Olive Kitteridge" was nothing short of a masterpiece. I'm also huge into theater and my favorite dramatists are Ibsen, Tennessee Williams and Joe Orton, whose life was cut short before he could write his best plays. That's more than five, I know, but it's hard to be decisive in the shadow of so many giants.

JK: Did you write exclusively for a living at the time you wrote 85A or did you need to work a separate job too?  Is this situation still the same (i.e. how did your life change, if at all, after publishing it)?

KTS: For about ten years, I was one of those writers who woke up at 4 o'clock every weekday morning to write before work. Through most of my post-college life, I made my living writing for nonprofits--grants and marketing materials and so forth. It was hard work, long hours, made all the more onerous by my ADD. I was stretched way too thin and, through it all, was trying to salvage my dream of being an author. By the time I began writing 85A, though, I'd moved in with my then-boyfriend, now-husband. He believed in me and I was able to exit cubicle hell and devote myself full-time to writing. I know I'm lucky, I know that, but if you'd seen me and the circles under my eyes back then, you'd agree I'd paid my dues, and I don't take my good fortune for granted today.

JK: Much of 85A seems drawn from real-life experiences in Chicago in 1989.  How much of it is autobiographical? 

KTS: 85A is about as autobiographical for me as "The Glass Menagerie" was for Williams. I grew up on the northwest side and went to school on the south side like Seamus, although unlike him, I'm the youngest of seven kids (he has only one sibling), but when things got unbearable at home, I moved in with my Grampa in Rogers Park, which was 100 percent more integrated and creatively fecund than anywhere to the north and west of Logan Square at the time. Between Rogers Park and West Town, which was just beginning to attract artists en masse then, I had a vision of salvation. Sometimes I wish I could recapture that vision.

JK: Do you know if the Blue Line changed its route?  The only factual error that stood out to me is that it stops at Division and Milwaukee, while it appears in the book that it stops at Division and Ashland. 

KTS: That's actually not a factual error. Growing up, the conductors almost always announced that stop as Division and Ashland, rarely Division-Milwaukee. That might have changed in time, I don't know. Later, I lived at Division/Ashland/Milwaukee as a young adult when it was a far different place than it is today. But bear in mind, I'm pushing 40 now. When I was taking the L to and from school as a teenager, they didn't call them the blue line or red line or brown line. In fact, they'd only recently begun calling the blue line the O'Hare line as they'd only extended the L past River Road (now Rosemont) in 1984 or 1985. The Red Line was the Howard-Englewood Line. The Brown Line was the Ravenswood Line. I can't remember what they called the Green Line but the Orange Line was the Midway Line. It's a different nomenclature now.

JK: Do you have any thoughts on the proposal to establish a rapid transit bus operation on
Ashland Avenue?

KTS: No, I'm sorry, I don't have any thoughts on it. I know nothing about it. I haven't lived in Chicago in ages so I'm not sure what's going on there.

JK: Did you obtain approval from the CTA before publishing this book (full disclosure: I work at the CTA Law Department and really enjoyed the details you included about the Blue Line because I live right at the Logan Square stop)?

KTS: In the process of publishing, I'd consulted attorneys on copyright matters and they indicated that I did not need to obtain special permission to mention public-transportation stops as it was no different than mentioning street names.

JK: You live in Brooklyn, and you've written a novel, so you probably understand the phenomenon of so many books taking place in New York.  Why do you think this is?  I haven't read many great books about Chicago.  Crossing California is the only thing that comes to mind.  Have you read that? 

KTS: I'd never heard of "Crossing California" until now, though I did love Langer's "The Thieves of Manhattan." Thanks for the rec, I'll check it out. 

I don't know why there aren't more great books about life in Chicago. Nelson Algren and Stuart Dybek found plenty to say about it. It's pretty evident why people write about New York, though. It's a whirlwind, a maelstrom, there are all sorts in all places at all times from all over the world. No matter where you're from, if you can find a way to stay there (which is infinitely easier said than done), you can reinvent yourself and you'll rub shoulders with some of the most extreme characters, for better or for worse, you'll ever meet. The problem is, how do you find time to write about New York when you're so busy trying to make rent, which is triple what it is just about anywhere else in the country? 

JK: Did you live in Chicago after college?  If so, what made you want to live in New York?  Do you think Chicago is dying?  Which city do you think has a brighter future?

KTS: I was born and raised in Chicago. I went to UIC and continued living in Chicago for several years after graduation as I worked on my writing. I had just been there too long. I was itching to get out. I'd made a failed attempt at living in Europe, just couldn't set down roots and kept wandering. New York was alive and vital and called out to me like a Siren. There seemed only one viable place to go. I made friends there right off the bat and found my true home. There have been harrowing challenges but they didn't bother me inordinately, they just seemed to be part of the game.

Is Chicago dying? Hell no! Chicago is a never-say-die town. I go all over the world and I've never seen a city that affirms itself anywhere near as much as Chicago does. Friends from home come see me and I'm floored by how each and every one of them won't stop rhapsodizing about all that's going on in Chicago, whether it's the horrid politics or the amazing Taste of Chicago or Millennium Park or Steppenwolf; the way they talk, you'd think there's nothing else going on on this planet if it ain't happenin' in Chicago. New York doesn't do that. It's already New York, so dot dot dot.

Which city has a brighter future? Well, since so much of the world financial industry is based in Manhattan, there will probably always be more investment in New York, so its economic future as a city is most likely brighter--just as long as this new spate of hurricanes we've been experiencing doesn't wipe us off the map.

For artists, New York is becoming prohibitively expensive, though. In Chicago, however, you can still afford to try, fail and try again. In New York, you're one flop away from the next Greyhound back to Dodge--so Chicago gives more latitude for experimentation, the mother of mastery.

In terms of whose mayor is bringing along the next generation better, I'd put my chips on De Blasio. Yes, he's still untested but he's going all in for universal pre-K and efforts to reform Bloomberg-era charter-schools initiatives so they don't stay on track to becoming yet another extension of a failed No Child Left Behind policy. He's putting forth measures to create more affordable housing and to reconcile the city's appalling income disparity. He's clamping down on stop-and-frisk. Rahm Emmanuel, by contrast, has been systematically shuttering the Chicago public school system and, at one point, had suspended red-line service on the south side with little expressed interest on how that would impact the lives of low-income families, many of whom already had to travel far and wide for work every day. Daley might not have been any great crusader for the construction of fair housing in opportunity areas or for reinvestment in blighted neighborhoods but at least he was a south-sider! He never would have let that happen.

New York's homicide, gun violence and violent crime rates are much lower than in Chicago. The reasons for this are many and varied and too much to unpack in a single interview but I do hope to see those tragedies diminish in my city of origin.

JK: Did you actually grow up in the city of Chicago, in the same area of Rogers Park as Seamus?  If so, do you ever wish you grew up in the suburbs, or closer to the center of the city (full disclosure: I grew up on the North Shore and often wish I grew up in the city)?

KTS: Yes, I grew up in the city, a little north of Jefferson Park. To be clear, Seamus did not grow up in Rogers Park. If he had, he'd have no cause to complain about lack of diversity in his neighborhood. In the book, he's living on the far northwest side - in fact, Part One is called Northwest Side.

I've never lived in suburbs. I've always felt an intense aversion to them. The northwest side gave me quite enough angst to chew on growing up. There was no need to cross the city limits for more.

JK: Do you have any opinions about the present state of the Chicago National League Ball Club?

KTS: No. Haven't watched baseball since I was about 12.

JK: What are your top 3 favorite bands?  Is your taste in music comparable to what Seamus likes in the novel?

KTS: Wow, I'm really gonna lose some cred here. Yes, I shared a lot of the same tastes as Seamus as an alterna-teen but I don't listen to much of any of that stuff now. If I had to pick three faves, I guess they'd be Stones, Pixies, 70s Bowie (all phases of that decade of his career) and Dylan (tied for third). While writing, I listen to Chopin and Krishna Das. I practice in the Theravada tradition of Buddhism so most of what I listen to is the sound of silence and the yammering of my own head on the meditation cushion. Here is an essay I wrote about eight years ago about how The Stones' "Exile on Main Street" saved my life when I was trying to wean myself off the scene in my late teens (note: it talks a lot about what Chicago was like in those days, a far different town from what it is today):

http://streetlegalplay.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/finding-exile-on-main-street-a-patchwork-confessional/

JK: Would you ever want 85A to be turned into a film?

KTS: People have said it should be a movie but no filmmakers have ever approached me. I'd be open to it but it'd be hard to get Chicago to look the way it used to.

JK: 85A seems heavily influenced by The Catcher in the Rye.  Can you comment on that book and whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that people will inevitably compare it to that?

KTS: The truth is, when I'd read Catcher at 15, I liked it fine but I didn't think about it again until after I'd already written 85A, nearly 20 years later. I was 34-years-old and was taking a train from the south of France to Paris for my flight back to JFK. I'd already read all the books I'd brought with me on my trip and the station at Avignon had an English language copy of Catcher. I bought it and had read it cover to cover by the time I’d touched ground in New York. I was stunned by how I must have absorbed the book subconsciously as a kid. Next day, I talked to the editor in Minneapolis who only then started citing Catcher comparisons. That was fine by me, so we underscored the similarities on the back-cover copy, knowing people were going to form comparisons anyway. But, to me, the book is far more greatly influenced by Sillitoe's "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner." 

JK: What advice would you give to a young writer in Chicago looking to get published for the first time?

KTS: You mean someone who already has a manuscript ready to submit? Just work on finding an agent through a directory. Gone are the days where you have to move to New York, get a no-pay job as an editorial assistant and sidle up to the Xanax-popping big shot. The industry is changing, formats are changing, indie presses are the new majors and living outside New York isn't much of a deterrent anymore. 

JK: The character of Brody paints a rather negative picture of people in the legal profession.  Do you have any experiences with attorneys that led to this characterization?

KTS: Didn't mean to leave that impression! My husband is a lawyer, some of my best friends are lawyers. I worked for lawyers throughout college and totally appreciated them signing my paychecks. I've been screwed over by lawyers and I've been helped out enormously by lawyers. They're no better or worse than anyone else. We're all just people!

That said, Brody is the type of guy who's popping his buttons over how he's fulfilled his parents' expectations by having worked his way into more advantaged, white-collar corners of society. You used to see that type of guy—they were mostly guys, males--a lot around the board of trade and as junior associates in law firms on LaSalle Street. They were kind of nouveau riche before they could get riche - and if you hung around enough, you'd hear a lot of the talk that would come out of their mouths and it was often pretty stridently racist and homophobic. Remember, this was the eighties. If racial stratification in Chicago is bad now, it was worse then; and as for LGBTQIAs, if they were going to be like that, then they deserve what they got - that was the accepted code of the road, not much different from Putin's Russia, although these guys tended to find street violence against gays to be a bit too blatant and it might cost them their jobs. (You even sense that Seamus, who wants so much to be cosmopolitan and to see racial unity, is still unlearning a lot of racist and homophobic attitudes. I did not disguise that in him.) Not everyone in those trades was like Brody but a lot were and I had grown up around a lot of those guys, ones who didn't grow up in rich families but who leveraged their white, heterosexual privilege for all it was worth on their way to making money. And God help a gay kid like Seamus who couldn't fill those shoes or toe that line. Fire and brimstone were just the warm-up acts for what their homes and neighborhoods had in store for them in those days.

JK: One of the more difficult parts of the book for me to accept was that Seamus's parents and brother could be so mean to him.  It seemed almost over the top to me.  Was this intentional, or do you feel that's just how people were in the 1980's (i.e. blatantly homophobic and non-supportive of countercultural types)?

KTS: Hmmm...it might seem over-the-top from the standpoint of today but it was not all that uncommon even as recently as the Eighties. David Sedaris writes about this well in one of his more recent essays, "Attaboy." He says of his upbringing in the Sixties and Seventies, "Self-esteem hadn't been invented yet." By the Eighties, there was only a dawning consciousness in the mainstream that maybe shaming and corporal punishment were bad for child or adolescent morale--commercials started coming on TV encouraging parents to count to ten before breaking out the belt, etc.--but these concepts were mostly accepted by baby-boomer parents, the new generation of yuppies who didn't want to see their kids raised the same way they were raised. Suddenly enrollment in Montessori schools goes up, individuality is encouraged and living-room coffee tables are decked with alluvial fans of Conscious Parenting magazine. This was still a pretty new idea by the Eighties.

Seamus' parents were older than those of his peers, they grew up in the Depression. He makes mention of how they were the children of immigrants and educated by autocratic nuns. It's the kind of thing Mary McCarthy writes about in "Memories of a Catholic Girlhood." In Seamus' parents' time, you didn't dare tell your parents that Sister Mary Holywater bloodied your nose in school that day, not unless you wanted a black eye on top of it. So when Depression-era children grew up to have kids, "spare the rod, spoil the child" wasn't considered child abuse, it was considered a good rule of thumb. If you couldn't whip your scions into shape, then you weren't whipping them hard enough. Add to this that Seamus' dad had been a marine a la "The Great Santini" - the threat of military school is always in his holster and he's exceedingly competitive with his fractious son.

The movement away from this mentality was still in its infancy by the Eighties. Old school authoritarianism was still alive and kicking ass in many American homes - though it's true it was on its way out. Kids started reporting their parents to the police. All this might seem inconceivable today but it was still practiced and applauded not so long ago by parents who came up in the lockstep Silent Generation, as Seamus' parents did. They called it tough love. There's a whole sociology embedded in these generational dynamics.

JK: Are you working on any new pieces of writing right now, and would you be able to comment
on the subject matter briefly?

KTS: Yes. I am writing a new novel, although it's been put somewhat on hold as I work with a wonderful new agent I recently got in Manhattan. We've known each other a long time and she's always encouraged me in the direction of personal essays and humor pieces. I've written volumes of them by now, so she's helping me to build a cohesive collection of them.

JK: What was the hardest part for you personally in the writing of 85A?

KTS: The book had been moving along swimmingly and I had a sense of how it was going to end. Then, at about two-thirds of the way through, there was a gap in the story that I did not know how to bridge. I set about trying to bridge it with 200-pages of pure, unadulterated shit, and then confidently completed the last several chapters. I then showed it to a well-known editor, who loved the first two-thirds and the final several chapters but made me wish I was never born for wasting her time with the shit chapters. I didn't know how to rebound from her drubbing until about a week later when the scales fell from my eyes and I knew what I had to do--just take out those 200 pages! It felt like a risk but I went in, excised the mamah-jamah tumor and ended up bridging the hitherto impassable gap with just four paragraphs! But if I hadn't written those 200 excess pages, I'd have never gotten those four paragraphs. And the book itself ended up being only 223 pages.

IV - Chuck Klosterman (2007)

In April of 2008, I reviewed Killing Yourself to Live as the 6th review on Flying Houses.  I have just re-read that post, and I am almost completely embarrassed by it.  However, it did confirm my earlier suspicions about IV.  I first read it in October 2007 (about 6 1/2 years ago) and I ranked it below both Killing Yourself to Live and Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.  I didn't keep up with Klosterman after IV - I seem to remember that he published a novel.  And after checking Amazon it appears that he has maintained his prolific output--he has actually published two novels and two other books of essays.  I am writing this paragraph from the Logan Square branch of the Chicago Public Library, and I will most likely check out at least a couple of these books and review them in a few months.

But why revisit IV?  Well, my sister had borrowed both IV and a DVD of Boogie Nights, and I saw her over Christmas, and she gave them back to me.  I didn't have much else to read and I had a long commute back on December 26th.  I had to take a ferry, then a bus, then wait in the airport for an hour or two, and then a plane.  It was basically 9 hours in various forms of transportation from door-to-door.  I took out IV because I had nothing else to read.  I read 175 pages that day.

Which actually doesn't seem like a lot because Klosterman's writing is a quick read.  However, I barely read anything on the plane ride because I could not concentrate.  I overheard an incredibly frank airplane conversation between two men on a variety of sexual subjects - one was a gay 19-year-old from Macedonia, and the other was a 72-year-old widower from Tennessee.  It was hard to tune out, particularly when I wanted to interrupt and either offer my own opinion or mock-scold them for how graphically they were speaking.  But this is beside the point.

Klosterman divides IV up into three sections: interviews/profiles of celebrities and other ephemera about "trends," theoretical essays on various subjects, and a short story/novel fragment.  Parts of each of the three are very good.  I believe I enjoyed reading IV more more at age 30 than at age 24.

And it must be pointed out that this is a strange book to review.  After all, it is "dated."  Probably the most heartbreaking thing about it is the "cultural moment" that has passed.  Also, while IV is not a book of reviews, it is not far off from that, and reviewing it feels oddly meta.

It kicks off with a profile done on Britney Spears.  This is probably about as accurate today as it was then, even though it is now more than 10 years old.  There are some interesting tidbits about Justin Timberlake and Fred Durst that I had forgotten about, but otherwise, there is little here that the reader will not already know.
The other subjects include Bono, Val Kilmer, Steve Nash, Gilbert Arenas, the White Stripes, Radiohead, Wilco, Billy Joel and Mike Skinner.  Approximately nothing has changed for all of these subjects except Arenas and Skinner.  "Debriefing Agent Zero" is probably the most controversial essay here since Arenas comes off as perhaps the most lovable NBA player ever, and his image suffered considerably after he put a gun in his locker at an arena.  Skinner has since faded into obscurity, though I am sure any new Streets album would receive fairly significant coverage.  The White Stripes are obviously broken up, but their whole mystique and legacy has only grown with time.  

Still, all of these essays are good.  Sometimes Klosterman comes off kind of sounding like a jerk (in the Britney Spears piece, for example, and maybe even the Mike Skinner one), but he always asks good questions and has a clever way of recognizing why certain artists are acclaimed and others remain obscure.

He also writes about eating chicken McNuggets and nothing else for a week, a Morrissey convention with a heavy concentration of Latinos, Some Kind of Monster, "Bats Day" at Disneyland (basically a ton of goths going there on the same day), female tribute bands, Styx, REO Speedwagon, and Journey playing on a cruise, Led Zeppelin's fourth album, fortune tellers, and a collection of obituaries.

This is a hard review to write because there is something quotable in almost every essay.  It could get incredibly long and tedious.  I suppose it was interesting to read the White Stripes essay because it quoted Wendy Case.  Now I wanted to say that I hadn't yet seen the Paybacks play live, but now I realize that I did in 2006 or 2007, before I read the piece.  I don't know if they are still playing, but that was one of the best shows I've seen without knowing a band's material beforehand.  Klosterman's short description of her is a good example of his style:

"Wendy Case is considerably less shy than Meg White.
In fact, Wendy Case is considerably less shy than David Lee Roth.  She is the thirty-eight-year-old lead singer/guitarist for the Paybacks, a band Case describes as "hard pop." Her hair is blond on top and brown underneath, she laughs like a '73 Plymouth Scamp that refuses to turn over, and she can probably outdrink 90 percent of the men in Michigan." (119)

However, that is a kind of personal quote because of the aforementioned anecdote.  But the bullet points in the Arenas piece are a near-perfect example of Klosterman's humor:

• Occasionally plays poker on a laptop computer during halftime, but denies that he plays against other people on-line (he evidently competes against the computer).
• Once took a shower at halftime without removing his uniform.
• Favorably compares himself to a Japanese cooking device.
• Prefers to spend road trips alone in his hotel room, staying awake all night to watch infomercials and do sit-ups.
• Enjoys bowling (his high game is 277) and the work of the rapper The Game (with whom he is friends).
• Installed a hypobaric tent in his Virginia home to simulate high-altitude oxygen levels.
• Has essentially become the guardian of a twelve-year-old boy named Andre McAllister, who lost most of his family in a house fire.  Arenas contacted the boy after reading his story in the newspaper (this, I suppose, is more "nice" than insane).
• A maniacal grudge holder, Arenas claimed he would sacrifice an entire NBA season to play one game at the collegiate level, solely to punish Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski for leaving him off the U.S. Olympic Team.  "One college game," he wrote on his blog.  "That's five fouls, right?...40-minute game...at Duke, they got soft rims....I'd probably score 84 or 85. (178)

The last bullet point is the most ironic point in the essay (Arenas was suspended for almost an entire NBA season, and currently plays in the Chinese Basketball Association) but the essay is one of the most surprising in the book.  So is the essay on Steve Nash.  

But the best part of the first part is the collection of obituaries: Dee Dee Ramone/Robbin Crosby, Spalding Gray/Mary-Ellis Bunim, Eric Griffiths, and Johnny Carson.  The first two pieces in this larger "essay" are fantastic.  Of course nobody remembers Robbin Crosby, and Klosterman perfectly elucidates why: 

"The reason Crosby's June 6 death was mostly ignored is that his band seemed corporate and fake and pedestrian; the reason Ramone's June 5th death will be remembered is that his band was seen as representative of a counterculture that lacked a voice.  The contradiction is that countercultures get endless media attention: the only American perspectives thought to have any meaningful impact are those that come from the fringes.  The voice of the counterculture is, in  fact, inexplicably deafening.  Meanwhile, mainstream culture (i.e., the millions and millions of people who bought Ratt albums merely because that music happened to be the soundtrack for their lives) is usually portrayed as an army of mindless automatons who provide that counterculture with something to rail against.  The things that matter to normal people are not supposed to matter to smart people." (209)

The distinction between Spalding Gray and Mary-Ellis Bunim (who created The Real World) is also beautifully teased out in four short pages.  It is hard to pick out a passage from it (the essay is essentially perfect) but perhaps the main point about what drives reality television should be noted:

"The twentysomethings cast on The Real World were not complex subjects meant to be uncovered and examined; they were supposed to be archetypes of youth culture, and they were supposed to make the melodramatic choices (and exhibit the melodramatic behavior) that would drive a serial TV program.  They were supposed to be hyperreal versions of who they already were.  What they did, ultimately, was unknowingly embody the same aesthetic Spalding Gray invented when he first became a monologist.  'I became a kind of inverted Method Actor,' Gray wrote.  'I was using myself to play myself.  [It was] a kind of creative narcissism.'" (212)

Truthfully, "Part One" is hit-or-miss.  True, all of the essays are "good" but whether or not you enjoy it may depend on whether you find that particular subject "interesting." "Part Two," then, has a more global focus, and I just realized that I hadn't watched Lost when I read this book in 2007, so that was one thing that was new to me.  But more of what comes across is the "lost era" that was 2004-2007 and how Klosterman did not really make it his business to predict what would happen very soon.  

The topics of "Part Two" include Barry Bonds (not Alex Rodriguez), nemeses/arch-enemies, "advancement," the Olympics, clothes, anti-American sentiment, "guilty pleasures," mainstream/obscure culture, staying with one person for your whole life, artists that are neither overrated nor underrated but "rated," pirates, robots, stem-cell research, and a couple other things (I don't want to write a table of contents posing as a review, but that is kind of what this is turning into).  Most of these essays were written for Esquire.  Most of them are pretty good, but they are really more musings than anything else.  These also contain the funniest parts in the entire book.  

"4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42" is a comparison between Lost and Survivor and is fantastic.  However, another personal anecdote is necessary with "I Wanna Get Free."  This essay was written in 2006, so I could not have used it in my colloquium on "Political Rebellion in Literature" at Gallatin (it was delivered in 2005).  However, it is essentially the point I was trying to make in that project.  This would not have any application in reality until the Occupy Movement, but the quotes are prescient:

"Something has occupied my mind as of late, and I can't tell if this thought is reassuring or terrifying: I've been thinking about the possibility of a revolution, or--more accurately--the impossibility of revolution.  I've started wondering what would have to happen before the American populace would try to overthrow its government and how such a coup would play itself out.  My conclusions are that (a) nothing could make this happen, and (b) no one would know what to do if it somehow did.  The country is too large, its social systems are too complex, and its people are too complacent, too reasonable, too confused.  I've decided that the U.S. government is (for lack of a better, preexisting term) 'unoverthrowable.'  And this would probably make a man like Patrick Henry profoundly depressed, were it not for the fact that he's been dead for 207 years." (338) 

I'm not sure which "Part" I like better, but "Part Two" feels like Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs "extra content."  Some of these essays are actually really good, but for some reason, like I expressed previously, I considered SD&CP (no longer SDACP) my favorite.  I should probably re-read that.

"Part Three" is a piece of fiction that is pretty good, though I seem to remember not liking it that much the first time I read it.  However, I also wrote that it was "pretty good" in 2008 so my opinion has not changed on it.  I guess it just feels to me like a piece that someone in one of my former creative writing classes would have written.  Now, it would have been "one of the best" of those stories, but if this is "publishable fiction" then we get to the heart of why I have a love-hate relationship with Chuck Klosterman.  

I love his writing because it is breezy, articulate, and occasionally surprising (like seeing a reference to Comets on Fire in "Cultural Betrayal").  He is very witty, and knows how to write well.  However, I hate him because I am jealous of him.  Perhaps he is not fabulously well-to-do, but I would imagine he's been paid pretty well for his writing.  And he gets to publish pretty much whatever he wants.  

Now I get to publish pretty much whatever I want on Flying Houses, but I get no pay from it (in nearly six years I have made about $10.00 that should be mailed to me in a check relatively soon).  So I am jealous and I am sure if Esquire or GQ or some other such magazine gave me a chance to write for pay, I could do just as good a job.  Some of these essays date back to 1996.  Klosterman knew what he was doing from a young age and managed to progress through the journalistic ranks to his current position, and I should not begrudge him for my failures.  I just tend to feel like a superfluous figure in the universe as of late, and I know I should be getting paid for something.   

We All Sleep in the Same Room - Paul Rome (2013)

That said we never had a creative writing class together, and had we, I would have included him on the short list of best student writers I had read while in attendance at that institution, alongside, oh, Paul Rome, Adam White (technically from Dartmouth), Xenia Viray, and Jordana Rothman--and it bears mentioning that they all came from the same single class out of the eight or so I took.
-Review of Eeeee Eee Eeee (11/26/08)

I don't want to spend this entire review comparing Paul Rome to Tao Lin, but it's unavoidable.  I never had a writing class with Tao, but I had one with Paul.  It would have been fun if all three of us were in that same class--but that above quote suffers from slight inaccuracy: Adam White was not in that class.  I studied with him in Paris in 2003 and he just happened to write a novel while we were there that contained flashes of greatness.  The class to which I was referring was taught by Chris Spain.  I do not want to air dirty laundry but I cannot resist: Mr. Spain did not like me.  During one class, my peers gave comments on a story I had written while I joked quietly with a friend I brought in as a guest of the class (whom I also would list among the "best student writers" I knew if we had not suffered an "epic" falling out two years later).  Mr. Spain did not appreciate my gesture, as he felt it was enormously disrespectful.  He tore into me in the "notes" he handed out during the next class.  His "notes" were classic and I still have most of them saved somewhere.  They were his prescriptions for good writing, though he was always quick to mention that he was probably wrong about everything anyways.  He was very modest.  And in time, of course he was right: I needed more humility.  My ego was too big.  It was good to have too big of an ego, and maybe I would make it big after all, but more likely I would suffer a serious reality check before that happened.  Of course he was right.

Now I realize that 9 1/2 years ago, I had no clue what I was doing.  I majored in Writing and Politics at Gallatin because I liked it when people told me I wrote a good story.  There was no practicality to the matter.  In hindsight it was a colossal waste of $160,000 ($180K?) and I would be much better off today had I gone in for IT or Science or Economics or Business or almost anything else.  I was very much an epicurean.  I lived for the present and did not think of the future, unless it was a future where I was a rich and famous author that got away with being a big slacker throughout most of his adult life.  

Paul Rome acknowledges Chris Spain at the end of We All Sleep in the Same Room, along with a couple other MFA-preppers, saying, "their teachings resonate."  I would have done the same thing in my first novel, except I never wrote an acknowledgments section because nobody ever thought it was good enough to publish.  And to be fair, it is a bit of a mess, and people have told me I am a terrible writer because I do not believe (super-strongly) in the virtues of revision.   I think Paul and I differ on this count:

"After attending NYU's Gallatin School, Rome began his first novel.  Surviving countless edits and multiple formative relationships, We All Sleep in the Same Room is due for release by Rare Bird Books on October 15, 2013." 

That is from the "about the author" section of the press materials I received.  By my count, that is an 8 year gestation period.  And I guess this is where I start with my review: We All Sleep in the Same Room is engaging, humorous, insightful, and memorable.  And it's all over much too soon.

At 179 pages with fairly large type, it reads more like a novella than a novel.  And I have no problem with that!  I subconsciously listed Paul first in that line at the top of this post because the stories he wrote in class seemed effortless.  He has apparently made something of a name for himself in Bushwick with the readings of recent short stories he has written.  I've enjoyed them all!  In particular I remember a funny story about a "bromance" involving bird watching in Prospect Park.  And while this novel has a lovely arc, and builds and builds to a powerful climax, I must admit that I was let down by the ending.

I will do my best to avoid "spoilers" because it is a rare moment on Flying Houses indeed where we review a book two weeks before its release date.  

The main character is Tom Claughlin, a labor lawyer living in Manhattan, near Union Square.  He is married to Raina, and has a 3-year-old son named Ben.  As the novel opens, Tom is watching Ben being carried around by their new babysitter, Frank.  And here it is perhaps worth noting that I am glad Paul includes a male babysitter in the story.  Babysitting is not an equal opportunity profession, and there is little good reason for its rampant sexism.  

I wasn't sure what kind of novel this was going to be when I started it.  It struck me as almost some sort of mystery or detective thing, along the same lines as Paul Auster's New York Trilogy. But in fact it lands squarely in the "literary fiction" category.  

I don't want to give away the plot (it pretty much comes down to a few bad decisions) but the novel splits time between Tom's work life and his home life.  It is written in the first person, and spare.  It flows beautifully.  It reads like a charm.  It's endearing.  It's a pleasure to behold.

But I am sorry.  I cannot get over the ending.  This book has enormous potential and then the ending comes.  Some people may like the ending a lot.  I don't.  I can't help but compare it to "Breaking Bad," since that is the most topical "ending" as of this date.  I liked that ending because it wasn't a WTF ending.  WTF endings sometimes work best, and I have even tried a couple times to use them.  And maybe I'm just getting older, but I like to feel some closure at the end of a book.  Complete and total closure may be too much because a book is sort of different from a movie or TV show--it plays in your mind and seems to exist in a peculiar environment created by both your imagination and the author's.  As such the characters can seem even more real and ending their story can seem like their death and make you sad.

That Paul is able to accomplish this in his first novel is remarkable.  The novel seems plucked out of real life.  I couldn't help but thinking about my cousin and his wife, who are pushing forty and have a four-year-old and a two-year-old and all share a small apartment in Brooklyn Heights.  This vision of "small family life" in NYC is delightful--but it has a certain dark side that I won't get into.  

Usually I like to excerpt the especially beautiful passages, but there's not much I can include.  There's really not.  Like I said, the entire novel is a pleasure to read, and there is such a logical progression from sentence to sentence that nothing ever feels awkward or forced.  I can, however, point out one thing I am almost 100% positive is a mistake:

"'And you're happy for me?'
'Yes.'
"I'm taking the bar soon, in January.'
'Wow.  So soon.'" (119)

Tom should be responding, "Really?  I thought you could only take it in February!"  I don't mean to be snarky but I mention this primarily because today I found out that I passed the Illinois Bar Exam.  So this is my own little memento on Flying Houses to remember a special milestone day.  But yes, the bar exam is administered in February and July--and from what I understand the last two days in each (except in California where it is 3 days).  Thus even though this novel takes place in 2005 (Hurricane Katrina is mentioned twice, along with a transit worker's strike) and perhaps it might be theoretically possible for there to be an earlier test date, I highly doubt that.

But to make up for that admittedly minor blunder, there is an excellent account of labor law litigation that I know several of my labor-obsessed classmates would read with interest.  It is a relatively small case, but the way it evokes passion in Tom is one of the highlights of the novel.  I was going to excerpt a passage from the climactic scene, but I will not spoil it.  All I can say is that Paul shies away from the typical portrait of litigation in mass media and goes for something much more realistic.  Perhaps it seems a bit like, "that's it?" but in that case it is true to life.  

In the case of the ending, however, the "that's it?" feeling is much more pernicious (for me, at least).  Because I feel like this novel is close to perfect.  I love the scene in McCarren Park, I love the scene at The Polar Express, I love the scenes at Tom's law firm, and I love the scene at the Christmas Party.  And then, something happens.  We don't exactly know what.  The reader can guess.  But it's not clear that's what really happened.  

Thus, We All Sleep in the Same Room suffers only from its WTF ending.  As I've said, I could be completely wrong about this.  I know the MFA contingent is a fan of WTF endings, but I don't know where Paul fits in with the MFA contingent.  He has not gotten his MFA and the question is, is he going to?  

When I reviewed Eeeee Eee Eeee, I interviewed Tao Lin.  I kind of wanted to interview Paul, too.  But I don't have many questions for him.  I would just ask him if he was going to get his MFA.  I'd imagine not.  Most people seem to do that to get their first book published.  Paul did it on his own.  And he did a good job of it.  Why get the MFA?  Because you can always improve your writing?  Maybe, but I know that 9 1/2 years ago Paul was a natural and nothing has changed.  I would not be surprised if Paul follows this up with a collection of short stories, since I would expect him to have a pretty good portfolio by now.  

But the big, big, big question: who is better--Paul or Tao?  Tao is an acquired taste.  Truthfully, Tao is more of an original, just because of the bonkers marketing machine that is his internet presence.  Paul is more of a "one size fits all" writer.  I don't want to say one writer is better than the other, but I will say that We All Sleep in the Same Room is better than Eeeee Eee Eeeee and Richard Yates and about as good as Shoplifting from American Apparel.  I have not read Taipei, though to be fair Tao did try to send it to me, but it is published by Vintage (i.e. "big-time") and Vintage does not care about Flying Houses (though Random House may...).  I have read that Taipei is Tao's best book yet, and that perhaps should be compared to this.  But it will need to wait.

Regardless of who is better, let Paul Rome become as famous as Tao Lin.  Let all of the NYU alumni of the Class of 2005 go on to fantastic, wonderful lives and careers where they create beautiful art.  I will look forward to reading all of Paul's work and I hope he goes on to construct a powerful oeuvre.  It is at least fun for me to pretend I was friends with people before they got famous.