A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara (2015)

melodrama
NOUN
a sensational dramatic piece with exaggerated characters and exciting events intended to appeal to the emotions. 

see also, A Little Life. 

I met someone who had recently finished her Ph.D. in English and I asked if she had read this. I told her I was going to write a positive review, but tear it apart, because there was so much in it that annoyed me. I told her it was a melodrama. She said she eventually found it funny, because she began to look at it as an experimental novel, in which the author was doing everything she possibly could to pile it on and write the most depressing book of all time. But she also liked it.

Oeuvre rule: I haven't read anything else by Yanagihara. This book references The People in the Trees prominently on its front cover, but she has a new novel out, To Paradise, published this year. She also edited anthologies of stories about roommates, bridesmaids, and first jobs.

"Why I read it rule": I first became aware of this book when my younger sister received it from Santa Claus on Christmas morning, either 2015 or 2016. We did not discuss it in any detail. Later, I saw a friend on Facebook reference it in a re-post of something off Tumblr, to make some other joke about depression (i.e. self-deprecating). Then finally, two friends recommended it during a discussion about soliciting reviews from other contributors for Flying Houses. I promised to read A Little Life if they promised to contribute a review. So now it is their turn. 

The plot? Well, this is going to be one of those reviews with an asterisked section for spoilers. And the part above the asterisks will be short. 

The novel concerns four friends and their evolving friendship over the course of five decades. These are Jude, Willem, Malcolm, and J.B. Except it's not really about the four of them. It's about the four of them for about the first 100 pages. (I'll set the spoiler cut-off point around page 400). 

There are not very many chapters or even sub-chapters or page breaks in this book, and for 720 pages, it's pretty easy to describe. 

Except the first 100 pages are more interesting, because it charts how the novel could have gone in a different direction. That is, it begins as a dovetailing narrative, with sections from the perspective of each of the four characters. They go through this cycle once or twice, and then focus almost exclusively two of the characters, along with other ancillary characters at random points. 

We know a fair amount about J.B. and Malcolm, but not nearly as much as we do about Willem and Jude. And while it seemed at first the novel would be equally split between the four of them, it then effectively does away with J.B. and Malcolm and relegates them to supporting cast. This may be because they are not as interesting, but by the end of this novel, you will wish that there had been more "breathers" of chapter/section breaks returning to J.B. or Malcolm. It does this once, memorably, when J.B. is in an abusive drug-fueled relationship and suffers a breakdown, and then makes fun of Jude in a grotesque way from a hospital bed. 

Jude does not ever want to forgive J.B. for doing this, and Willem certainly never would forgive him, either. I forgot how Malcolm felt about it, maybe he recognized that J.B. wasn't in the best state of mind and immediately deeply regretted what he had said and apologized, so it was OK to stay friends with him. Anyway, it is at this point where the group of four breaks off into a group of three, and really, a group of two. It was also at this point that I thought the novel became too sensitive for its own good. (Or perhaps that became clear in pages 200-300, when we hear so much about how so many people care so much about Jude and all of their inspirational speeches on the subject.)

Now I did not know anything about this book, really, going into it. Just the basic idea and that a few people recommended it. Around the time I reached the chapter "The Axiom of Equality," I met with one of the three friends that recommended it, and asked if it got any better from that point. She said it did not. 

Question: what does "better" mean in the context of this novel? More entertaining? Less extreme? (The extremity is purposeful, that much is clear.) A nice story about nice characters? Well, yes, and the chapter of "The Happy Years" is effectively that (but not really). At a certain point for a certain sort of novel, how quickly you finish it in a relatively satisfied state becomes the criterion by which "better" is measured. It's already an engaging book, it's something of a page-turner, but then again, it really is just a parade of horribles. You will want to be finished with this book by the time it ends, I think. 

J.B. is black and an artist who takes photographs and makes paintings out of them, among other mediums. Malcolm is black (half-black? I forget because there's barely anything about him in here comparatively) and his family is rich and he will never need to worry about money but he wants to be an architect and he builds little models of houses for his friends. Both of them have families in or around New York City, and so they are able to stay there to avoid paying the ridiculous rent. J.B.'s family is not as rich as Malcolm's, but they are not living in poverty. 

The other two characters are white (basically). One of them seems relatively empty-headed and is ridiculously good looking and is a struggling actor for a while but eventually starts seeing his star rise. The other one is disabled, but not really, just maimed and utterly traumatized/broken, enters college early, goes to law school, (does he get a PhD in Math, too?), excels at everything, and has a great gig at the U.S. Attorney's Office after doing a clerkship (I think).   

These are Willem and Jude and 90% of the novel is probably devoted to them. But the four of them are super close and love each other. They meet in college at a school in Massachusetts, which I eventually began to code as Harvard. I'm pretty sure Willem goes to Yale with J.B. for graduate school, too. Pretty sure Jude stays and goes to Harvard Law School. And yet they are struggling at the beginning of the novel, comparatively, in their mid-20's. Jude will always be struggling despite his professional achievements. But none of the other three have especially achieved anything at that point.

And so, the novel at this point (maybe page 200) has an amusing quality about it with occasional flashes of intrigue. It could have kept going like this and potentially done something much more interesting. I mean, you still could have made it all about Willem and Jude (and really, let's be honest, if 90% of the novel is about the two of them, 85% of the novel is about Jude, and it seems clear from the beginning that he is the real protagonist). But you could have kept the dovetailing narratives going, you could even make them shorter. You wouldn't even have to be super consistent; you could just do it a few times to break up the relative monotony that the novel then becomes. 

Willem had a younger brother that was disabled and eventually died at a very young age and he has a very icy relationship with his parents perhaps due in part to their extreme religious views, so we know that he has a certain instinct to want to take care of someone. He is basically perfect. He never does anything wrong. Never. Maybe he cheats on a girlfriend, I forget, but I don't think so. This is another "extreme" quality of the book. Yanagihara may be making some sort of statement with the book, the extremity of it lends it an air unreality, turning it almost into satire or parody, and this has to be intentional. 

Because we wouldn't really want to get into the complexity of Willem's feelings. It is easier to have him be simple-minded. We certainly get the full panoply and range of Jude's emotions and thoughts. And in fact, these three people that recommended the book to me, I am not sure, perhaps they did not know at all that I once wrote a [second] novel [not available as a link on this blog] about self-harm, self-mutilation, and you know what, the parallels are a little unsettling, but I also could not write about self-harm quite like Yanagihara does here. Say you what you will about this novel but her description of the various bloody scenes of cutting as well as the mentality that drives one towards that kind of compulsive behavior is expert. 

Technically, this is a very good novel. However, one sees several ways it could have been much better. And yet, taking it to full fruition may have taken several hundred more pages. And so it ends in a place that feels a bit premature, still, but as noted earlier, not too soon.

***SPOILERS BELOW****

I recently read a piece from The New Yorker that seemed to confirm a lot of my impressions about this novel, and also give me new ways of thinking about it. That being said, I tend to side with Daniel Mendelsohn's interpretation rather than Garth Greenwell's. This is not the Great Gay American Novel. No, there are a few of them, probably, and the newest one is The Great Believers (even though it's "basic" because its narrative is framed around the AIDS crisis). I am not here to tell you how gay people are, or that they are all different, and Yanagihara is not trying to write a realistic novel, but the temporal aspect of the novel confused me.

It seems to take place in no time or space. There are no references to the world as we know it. Nothing about 9/11 in NYC. All of the movies that Willem does and all of the other artists he meets do not reference any works that influenced them or previous actors. Everything is coated in a vague patina. I get this. This is intentional. This is a novel about interior lives. 

And also, sometimes you do not want to say the thing explicitly so the reader can sense for themselves what you meant, or they can do the research and figure it out and have the easter egg "solved" on their own. Because sometimes if you just say what the thing is explictly, it minimizes it, it makes it more quotidian and less meaningful. To pin something down is to complete the analysis and define it, negating any further mystery or meaning to be harvested from the expression.

Then again maybe it's not fair for me to say that people who had cell phones and texted during college would not have any sort of sexual identity crisis because social mores dictated relatively widespread acceptance of same-sex desire in the same era (even though this novel isn't realistic, it has to take place at least partly in the future). Then again none of these characters has a sexual identity crisis (except Malcolm, the only "straight" friend in the group, who briefly thinks he might be bi). Greenwell thought it was the great gay novel because of the very reason noted at the top of this review: it is a melodrama par excellence, which is a classic queer expression. Mendelsohn felt it was regressive because it showed that gay people deserved to be punished for having good lives (yes, The Great Believers could be seen as regressive for a similar reason--or at least mining the tense relationship between sex and death in that community--but that book was kinder to its characters, and realistic). I don't agree with either of them. I just think it's the straightest gay novel there is, or the gayest straight novel there is. And really, I don't think it needs to be viewed through this lens at all.

Would I have identified with the novel as much as a woman? I think I would. Even though it is tied to rather specific forms of abuse and trauma, they cut across all genders, identities and orientations. There is no tension about "coming out," except briefly after Willem and Jude become an item, and he has to come to terms with being known as a "gay actor" and fears of being pigeonholed. Over the first 100 or 200 pages, I felt there was something "off" about the way male friendship was depicted. These four friends are obsessed with one another and don't seem to have much interest in hooking up or dating anyone. I could say I had a few friendships like this in high school or college, but I don't think any of us wouldn't have balked at spending like, 100% of our time together. But the novel isn't meant to be realistic. This group of friends is more like a family.

A good example is how Willem and Jude live together in Lispenard Street. Certainly, there are situations where two people share a one-bedroom apartment, but there is usually the barrier of a living room arrangement for one of them. This does eventually become the case for them, but they seem to have no problem sleeping together in separate beds for years, there is no existential panic that they are getting older and settling into this pseudo-gay arrangement as if it is the only future they wish to have. 

And so, when the "big reveal" happens, it was a bit of a relief for me. Okay. They were not all too precious with one another. It made more sense. Still, it doesn't make as much sense for Willem. Casual reference is made to his sleeping with both men and women, but nothing in the entire novel up to that point had suggested that was the case. It feels a bit like the relationship is shoe-horned into the narrative.

Because what is the difference between friendship and a relationship? This is one of the Big Questions that the novel is actually very good at examining (though as noted it doesn't play into these existential, time-running-out concerns--except when Harold points out that Willem is almost 30, and questions what he is waiting for). How important is sex to a relationship? Obviously, if it is sexless, an arrangement can be made, and here, it is an easy and simple arrangement that doesn't lead to any sort of jealousies. How does sex complicate a friendship? Obviously, it can lead to ambiguities as to status, conflicting views on it, and it can potentially derail that friendship and test its limits. This isn't an FWB situation between Willem and Jude. This is different. And I guess, even though I found it completely ridiculous, I accept it. It makes sense in the context of the novel. Willem needs to take care of someone, and Jude needs someone to take care of him (several people, actually). 

That's the main spoiler, I think. Of course, Jude's whole story is something that gets spoiled by basically anything written about this book, so I have tried to avoid that above, though I said the cutting made better sense. What happened to him is about as horrible as anything anyone could ever have possibly experienced growing up. (In that New Yorker article linked above, Yanagihara acknowledges that she wanted the novel to feel like a "piling on," and she certainly achieved that.)  It does devolve into "torture porn," and yet how could it not, once a writer decides to go there. Does it say something about me if I say these were the most gripping sections of the book? They are obviously the hardest to read, but they are also the fastest to read. Maybe it's because the rest of the book feels somewhat "antiseptic," and that works, too, because Jude's entire life after age 15 is an exercise in attempted antisepsis. Anyone that has been ravaged by early childhood trauma will undoubtedly find comfort in its exhortations on the nature of memory-repression and the impossibility of wiping certain memories from the mind (though doesn't electroshock therapy accomplish that goal?). The descriptive power of these scenes is unmistakable. 

We have no excerpts in this review, but we will bring back the 420 Test. Spoiler alert: it fails, and page 420 happens to be one of the more disturbing pages:

"The brother still talked of their being together, although now he talked of a house on the sea, somewhere in central California, and would describe the stony beaches, the noisy birds, the storm-colored water. They would be together, the two of them, like a married couple. No longer were they father and son; now they were equals. When he turned sixteen, they would get married. They would go on a honeymoon to France and Germany, where he could finally use his languages around French and Germans, and to Italy and Spain, where Brother Luke had lived for two years: once as a student, once the year after he graduated college. They would buy him a piano so he could play and sing. 'Other people won't want you if they knew how many clients you'd been with,' the Brother said. 'And they'd be silly to not want you. But I'll always want you, even if you've been with ten thousand clients.' He would retire when he was sixteen, Brother Luke said, and he had cried then, quietly, because he had been counting up the days until he was twelve, when Brother Luke had promised he could stop." (420) 

There's the other major spoiler, which comes around page 600, I think. That's probably the True Spoiler. And of course, it is another blatant instance of emotional manipulation. There is some unease concerning the nature of the "happy ending," because that is not always realistic. In this case, the "unhappy" ending does seem to fit into the themes of the novel, but I would not have complained one bit if this novel had a more conventional happy ending. You could still have the emotionally manipulative death trope, but you could also depict emotional growth. As it is, it seems to stand for the proposition that people do not change. Whether you agree that people change or that people do not change, it is depressing to think that people do not change. I prefer to think the opposite. And for all of the veritable metaphorical mountains that Jude has to scale--which he does, at an incredibly high level of success--it's a little unbelievable that he never is able to conquer his trauma, that with dozens of characters shouting at him that he is not a bad person, that he is not completely damaged goods (though only a couple know the specifics), he can never believe that for himself. I'm sorry, but eventually, after enough time, it feels incredible that one cannot forgive oneself for what was done to them, when there is zero question on the assignment of victimhood. A lot of people really love this character but by the end of the novel I just wanted to slap him and say, "snap out of it!" and did not feel much sadness at the very end.

This is a complicated part of the novel, too, because it seems to permit suicide under appropriate circumstances. That makes it all feel rather hopeless. Truly, if Jude had nothing to offer the world, no money, felt horribly disfigured and suffered chronic (physical) pain, then it would be more palatable. But I simply cannot accept that he would not live on and try to do good in the world, work against some of the evils that had destroyed his early life. But this is the easier way to end the novel. It's already too long as it is. 

And for something as long as it is, we could do a little bit better on character development. Asian Henry Young is maybe explained once, and he becomes a lifelong friend, one of the "acquaintances" that are included in the bigger circle of friends beyond the four. So is someone named Phaedra. A couple of the other random people (Citizen, Rhodes) are co-workers of Jude's at the U.S. Attorney's Office, so they aren't as superficially defined. There are a few other friends that get included in this roll call for certain parties and gatherings and celebrations, but they add nothing to the novel whatsoever except to show that they have other friends, too.

Again, as I said at the start of this review, I could tear it apart. And yet with everything I've read from Yanagihara on the reception of this book, she understands that, she anticipates that, she wants people to tear it apart. There's no question that it provides an indelible emotional experience (even the lack of "white space" in the novel is intentional--she did not want to provide the "breather" that I suggested near the beginning of this review) so we can consider her choices well-made. The book has certainly been successful enough to bear that out. Yet this "messy" quality, with so many absurd elements, feels slapdash, as if the enormity of the text itself justifies any weaknesses in it. It may be nearly as long as The Magic Mountain, but it does not suggest alternative dimensions: we have a sad human story here, an examination of the contours of friendship, but we have no greater statement on History or Philosophy. Perhaps we do have a statement on Art, and perhaps that should be enough.  

It's a page turner, and a significant accomplishment that deserves recognition. It's not the definitive Great Gay American Novel, but despite all my above-listed complaints, it belongs in the Top 10. Probably.  

Corporate Rock Sucks: the Rise & Fall of SST Records - Jim Ruland (2022)

The place to start in this review is Our Band Could Be Your Life. Because Ruland writes this in the Bibliography:

"Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, by Michael Azerrad (2001); Enter Naomi: SST, LA and All That, by Joe Carducci (2007); and Spray Paint the Walls: The Story of Black Flag, by Stevie Chick (2011) form the foundation for any serious consideration of SST Records. If this book is your introduction to SST Records and its many sagas, they are required reading." (401)

So, do I have to read the other two books now? I wouldn't necessarily mind. The experience of reading this book was affected by trying to read it at the same time as A Little Life. Eventually, I realized it was more efficient for the purposes of this blog to just pick one and finish it first. This one was shorter, but also more amusing. 

We have to start with Our Band Could Be Your Life because this is, essentially, Our Band Could Be Your Life, Part 2. But that wouldn't be accurate--a true part 2 of that book would feature a dozen different bands. Thus, an effective "part two" would be a 25th anniversary edition of it, with a new introduction or afterword, as well as revised histories of the bands featured to capture their activities post-2001. 

This is not that book, but it is close to that book. This is because about half (if not more than half) of the bands from Our Band Could Be Your Life are featured similarly in this one. Most prominently, this involves Black Flag and the Minutemen. Then Husker Du, to a lesser extent. And then finally Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr., in somewhat cursory sketches. Every other band in that book is also mentioned (not 100% clear on Mudhoney or Fugazi, but you certainly get Green River (in conjunction with Soundgarden) and Ian Mackaye/Teen Idles/Minor Threat (in conjunction with Henry Garfield and Bad Brains, who must have been one of the "outtakes" of that predecessor volume, and command more space here than Dinosaur or Sonic)). Many familiar figures, such as Roger Miller from Mission of Burma, releasing a number of solo items on SST, the Replacements as major label jumpers with Husker Du, Big Black and Steve Albini and his writings in zines, and Calvin Johnson and K Records (in conjunction with Screaming Trees), show up throughout the text. Perhaps only Butthole Surfers are left out, but they are an anomaly in any case.

This came out in 2022 and since 2001, the stories on these bands have evolved in sometimes surprising ways. Certainly, Fugazi's presence, influence and status ("on hiatus") has not changed. While Black Flag never jumped to a major label, Azerrad did not spill much ink on Greg Ginn's multitude of side and solo projects. The competing reunions of FLAG and persistence of Black Flag itself as a known quantity are briefly detailed here. There is not a great deal of material on the Minutemen/Mike Watt post-2001, and the same for Husker Du (in fact their role in this book is almost exactly the same as that earlier one). This is also the case for Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr., whose major label efforts are deemed irrelevant to the story. But we really should get to the substance of this book, which essentially is Greg Ginn. 

OBCBYL opens up with Ginn as the progenitor and founder and CEO of SST Records, which is totally appropriate, really the only place that book could start, and Corporate Rock Sucks begins in almost the same place, before quickly taking the deeper dive into SST and SST alone.

Ginn is, to put it simply, "an enigma," which was how Mark Lanegan defined him, shortly before Lanegan passed away, far too soon. He is an iconoclast that started from the bottom, perfected his brand and commissioned several masterpieces, and spent the last 25 years mostly in a state of maligned repose. SST crushed all competition up until about 1988. Nirvana really wanted to be on the label (Ginn wasn't impressed), and who knows how that might have affected the life cycle of the band and/or changed history. It was cool, it had its own aesthetic, its own philosophy and attitude, and most importantly, it was a sign of the quality of the record. Many fans would simply buy every album that SST put out, in its earlier years, because they were hand-picked and curated by Ginn, whose tastes were respected. 

There is no SST without Greg Ginn, but SST would never have become as successful without his brother, better known as Raymond Pettibon. Ginn and Pettibon have not spoken to one another in about 30 years, not even when their father passed away. Both of them are expert keepers of grudges, apart from being groundbreaking artists. Pettibon comes off better than Ginn, because the source of their estrangement was Ginn's unauthorized use of some of Pettibon's work, as their partnership became frayed towards its end. Black Flag would never have become as big a concept without Pettibon. Pettibon made the logo, and that logo accounts for 50% of Black Flag's legacy and continuing appeal. Pettibon also made the artwork that adorned many covers of the early SST releases. While some may consider his work gruesome or unnecessarily dark, it is unmistakably iconic. The artwork informed the lyrical content, and as the subject matter was generally ugly, they complemented each other beautifully.

Hardcore is seen by the general public as music for neanderthals and skinheads and lunkheads, but this belies its intellectual foundations. Ginn got his degree from UCLA. Kira Roessler got a graduate degree from Yale after playing bass for Black Flag. Mike Watt read Ulysses and wrote the song "June 16th" as a tribute. Pettibon had his first gallery shows after cutting ties with the label. Much of it sounds like "low art," but that is intentional (sometimes), and that makes it easy to misinterpret.

To be sure, the earliest releases had serious limitations in terms of budget and studio time and equipment, but more often than not these limitations proved inspirational. While Ruland sometimes writes in a sort of sensational style, this tone seemed to fall away after about 100 pages, and he does not balk at criticizing the music (both he and Azerrad express their disdain for "Slip it in," which I still believe is misplaced). Damaged and Zen Arcade are good examples of inspiration out of limitations. The lesser quality of all Black Flag material post-Damaged is not ignored. 

***

On the subject of Zen Arcade, the release that put Husker Du into the spotlight, Ruland makes a fascinating interpretation of the album, quite different from Azerrad's. Azerrad's is rather brief and seems to position this "concept album" on similar grounds to what Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness would later define: depressed teenager comes-of-age. This is Ruland's reading:

"No one leaves home without a reason. The opening tracks on Side 1 focus on the courage it takes to put a bad situation behind ("Broken Home, Broken Heart") and how empowering it can be to make a clean break with the past ("Never Talking to You Again"). But things get more challenging for the young protagonist after he leaves home, and he entertains thoughts of joining the military ("Chartered Trips") or a cult ("Hare Krsna")--systems of control that provide the comfort of structure but risk leading him away from his dreams.
Side 2 explores the wild world outside the safety of home ("Beyond the Threshold"), which tries to lure him back with promises of security ("Pride"). He has a very particular dream to create a video game. He lands a dream job developing this project in Silicon Valley, but he can't escape the pull of the past ("The Biggest Lie").
Although Side 2 is far from mellow, on Side 3 things take a chaotic turn for our hero. He throws himself into developing a game called Search. The game's title implies that its creator still hasn't found what he's looking for, and his journey continues on a deeper level ("Somewhere"). After his girlfriend overdoses ("Pink Turns to Blue"), he ends up in a sanitarium and questions everything from the state of the world ("Newest Industry") to his own tumultuous past ("Whatever").Zen Arcade concludes with just two "songs" on Side 4: the galloping "Turn on the News" and "Reoccurring Dreams," a sprawling fourteen-minute instrumental that returns to the motifs expressed on Side 2 in "Dreams Reoccurring." While "Turn on the News" suggests a mental patient's interest in returning to the concerns of the world, the shimmering guitars of "Reoccurring Dreams" signifies a return to consciousness. Our hero's search was all a dream. Husker Du preferred to 'leave things up to people's imaginations instead of making concrete definitions,' Mould said. 'We didn't want it to be a rock opera.'" (138)

Ruland goes off even more about the album, but, seriously, WTF, developing a video game called Search? Perhaps this demands another listen*. Suffice to say, what Ruland considers a "wake up call" at the end of the album, Azerrad considers the flatlining of a heartbeat on a life-support machine. The album can be whatever the listener makes of it, and these wildly diverging interpretations illustrate the difference between the two books: this is the more passionate one. 

Of course, Azerrad is clearly a big fan of the music, but these are very different books. I would say this is better than OBCBYL, except that book is intended more as a survey of bands, while this one is far more detailed about one specific label. The book's appendix lists every single SST release, and nearly all of these are referenced in the text, if only for a line or two. Azerrad's is more engaging because he can pick and choose the most interesting parts of many different bands' stories. Ruland's is more evocative and authoritative in terms of the intricacies of the label and many of the "forgotten" bands that had their albums released on it. Some of these stories are just as good as those about more "famous" bands.

***

For example, to start with Ginn again, few probably know just how many bands he "ran" apart from Black Flag. Some of these bands are "imaginary" and most of the albums are glorified jam sessions. We might consider Gone the most prominent of his post-Black Flag activities. Gone emerged in December 1985 and put out their last release, The Epic Trilogy, in 2007:

"...a double CD that is one of the strangest releases of Ginn's post-Black Flag career, which is saying something. The trilogy consists of three instrumental songs on the first disc, each approximately fifteen minutes long, and the exact same songs on the second disc with vocals from H.R. that had been tracked many years before when Batwinas was running Casa Destroy." (350)

It would probably take me an hour to itemize all of these bands, such as October Faction, Mojack, Greg Ginn and The Taylor Texas Corrugators, Good for You, the Killer Tweeker Bees (who put out The Killer Tweeker Blues), Bias (who put out Model Citizen), and Get Me High (who put out Taming the Underground), Hor, Confront James, and El Bad. Suffice to say, few of these releases are essential. 

I daresay that while The Epic Trilogy is strange, it is worth hearing. Because in 2007 I was living in the South Bay and super into Black Flag and Bad Brains and bemoaned the lack of new music from either (Apparently, I missed it when Bad Brains released an album in 2007 that probably would have been super exciting at the time - Ed.). Yet while this is not a Black Flag/Bad Brains collaboration, it is a side-project for each. It doesn't sound all that great but it's interesting at the very least. 

***

There is also SWA, which is Chuck Dukowski's band. For all of the many members of Black Flag over the years (which is oddly akin to The Fall in this respect, Greg Ginn as Mark E. Smith if he ran his own record label), Dukowski is #2 to Ginn's #1. Henry Rollins may be the most famous, but he clearly was just following orders, though he did something with the music (which had become far less "catchy" than the material recorded before he joined) that was undeniably special and elevated the band into legacy territory. It wasn't just Greg Ginn, it was also Raymond Pettibon, and Henry Rollins--and Chuck Dukowski, who was not only #2 in Black Flag, but #2 at SST. 

Dukowski was fired from Black Flag but maintained a working relationship with Ginn and the label. SWA commands a fair amount of space in this book, and it was unfortunate that I could not locate any of their albums on Apple Music. Because I'd want to listen to at least one (Sex Doctor, SST 073):

"While concepts for SWA had been percolating for years, Dukowski teamed up with Ward to write some songs and record an album with guitarists Ray Cooper and Richard Ford and drummer Greg Cameron (a.k.a. Nazi Sex Doctor). Ward worked at a bookstore with an adult section, and he would occasionally bring titles to the office at Global. While waiting for rehearsal, Cameron perused a novel about a German commandant of a labor camp who fell in love with one of his prisoners. When Rollins and Davo returned from getting coffee, they found Cameron engrossed in the book. They were delighted to discover its title was Nazi Sex Doctor. 'Boom that was it,' Cameron said. 'I was the Nazi Sex Doctor...Of course, it was so opposite of who I was. In fact, I was still a virgin, but the nickname stuck like glue.'
His friends at SST would call him Naz (prounced 'Knots') or Nazi for short, which created some uncomfortable situations for the young drummer. On tour, Dave Rat did SWA's sound, and during soundcheck one day he addressed Cameron by his nickname through the talkback mic, which was also going through the house sound system. Cameron recalled, 'He actually said, "Okay, Nazi, go ahead and hit the kick drum." Everybody that worked at the venue just stopped what they were doing and all eyes were on the stage.'" (191-192)

***

I've listened to a bit of the band Leaving Trains, and they are relatively accessible, perhaps worth hearing, but perhaps just a curious footnote:

"Like Divine Horsemen, the Leaving Trains started out on Enigma Records before jumping ship to SST. Founded by Falling James Moreland in the early 80's, the original lineup featured future SST artist Sylvia Juncosa on keyboards. Starting with Kill Tunes (SST 071), the Leaving Trains issued a slew of grungy pop records for SST, including Fuck (SST 114) and Transportational D. Vices (SST 221). A productive run, considering Moreland was married to Courtney Love long enough to produce Hole's first single for Sympathy for the Record Industry before the relationship crashed and burned." (256)

Painted Willie is another fairly accessible band, noteworthy for featuring Dave Markey on drums. Painted Willie opened for Black Flag on their final tour, and Markey made a documentary about it, which I watched on YouTube a while back. While not as essential, it clearly set the template for the seminal The Year Punk Broke, which was also shot and directed by Markey: 

"Later that year, Ginn ventured up to North Hollywood to produce Painted Willie's debut, Mind Bowling (SST 057), at Spinhead Studios. 'It was just a play on mind blowing,' Markey said of the album's title. 'It was just mind blowing to be welcomed into that world, to be invited into that by Greg Ginn himself.'
The album opens up with '405,' an instrumental with multiple time changes that builds to a gallop and slows to a crawl--just like driving on L.A.'s most infamous freeway. The dynamic nature of the song must have caught Ginn's ear right off the bat. Like all of Markey's projects, Painted Willie has a sense of humor that comes across in songs like 'Chia Pet,' in which the eponymous plant grows into a jackbooted Nazi, and 'Monkey Mia,' a whimsically weird tale of cannibalism. Side 2 includes a spirited cover of 'My Little Red Book,' a faster, fuzzed-out version of the 1965 hit by Burt Bacharach and Hal David that was made famous the following year by L.A.'s Love. Painted Willie's take on 'My Little Red Book' wouldn't be out of place on a Husker Du record." (210)

There are many more of these short-lived, semi-forgotten bands memorialized in the text, and suffice to say, one of the virtues of the book is that while it may not give these bands a "second life," it will at least provide readers with knowledge of them, and some of those readers will become listeners.

***

There is a lot more I could say about this book, and I haven't even touched on Negativland, which is not so much a band as an art project. The story of SST and how it "disrupted" the record industry, along with Ginn's litigiousness and penchant for writing angry letters telling his side of the story, is epitomized in the Negativland material. It would take too much space to get into this in the review (which is already running long), but it is truly one of the more fascinating sections of the book. For just a small taste, we may excerpt the band's first foray into controversy and irreverence:

"Michael Whittaker was working in the office at SST when one of the members of Negativland called to ask whether he knew anyone in the Minneapolis press. A sixteen-year-old boy named David Brom had murdered his father, mother, brother, and sister with an axe. One detail in the shocking tragedy seemed like it had been planted to provoke a media firestorm: Brom's murderous rampage was instigated by an argument between Brom and his conservative Catholic father abotu music. Negativland wanted to know if Whittaker would tell the media that the music in question was none other than 'Christianity is Stupid' from the band's SST debut Escape from Noise (SST 133)." (286)

This would not be the first "prank" the band would play, and because the label often had to pay for them in court, Ginn's relations with the band were contentious, but also complicated, because while Negativland later tried to capitalize on the popularity of U2 through a stunt, SST later tried to capitalize on the controversy by printing up t-shirts that read "Kill Bono." (The members of U2 and Brian Eno seemed to have some understanding of what Negativland was trying to do and did not take major offense; Island Records, however, did.)

***

This book is not perfect. Like many other works of non-fiction charting the entire history of a business, there are many players, and many references to those players' last names that will be lost on the reader, particularly without proper context in the preceding 2-3 paragraphs to "remind" the reader of who they are (i.e. "Ward" above, in the excerpt about SWA).

As noted previously, this book is really all about Ginn, because Ginn's baby was SST. And one wonders how Ginn must feel about this book. It bears a striking resemblance to The Contrarian, and while Greg Ginn is not Peter Thiel, they have many similarities. They are enormously influential, and given credit for their numerous accomplishments, but also widely reviled for different reasons. Ginn did not espouse vile politics (occasionally questionable lyrics aside), but many of these bands left SST because of so-called "accounting irregularities." SST was a good place to put out an album, but not a good place to get paid. Ruland's mission with the book, it seems, is spelled out in the final chapter, which advises the label to give the rights to the music back to (some of) its creators. Ruland wants Ginn to redeem himself. And it seems totally possible.  

Ruland did not interview Ginn for this book, and it seems obvious that he tried. Thus, it is an "unauthorized" history, and probably the better for it. One can imagine that Ginn would not like it very much, but Ruland gives credit where it is due. Perhaps somewhere, Ginn is writing a letter, debunking many of the "facts" in the book, or perhaps filing suit for defamation. Or perhaps not, for he should know as well as anyone: even bad press is still good press. This book will not cancel him, and he should not be cancelled; it merely encourages him to try to do better by the artists he signed, and one hopes it will lead the way towards better outcomes for all. 

*Open invitation for comments that directly link lyrics of songs from Zen Arcade to the interpretation provided here. 

The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves - Stephen Grosz (2013)

I have been listening to the New York Times Book Review podcast for about five years. It has been the source of many of the reviews here. I would not have read a great deal of the books here had I not listened. The first was Avid Reader. It took a bit while longer for there to be a second, and truthfully, Avid Reader was not discussed on the podcast--Robert Gottlieb just appeared on it--and so The House of Broken Angels was arguably the first.  Less came two months later, though that selection may have been swayed by the New Yorker Radio Hour (but the NYTBRP, if anyone calls it that, is far superior). We will leave the Paris Review podcast alone, which is highly stylized and niche, releasing only a few episodes a year, but that one led me to Homesick for Another World. I then stepped away. 

I stepped away and retired the blog to focus on more creative pursuits. Yet 5 months later, I settled on the idea of "short form" reviews, which were relatively painless to write. That first return included both Asymmetry and Sabrina. A few months after that, The Great Believers showed up in short-form. Early in 2020, Conversations with Friends and She Said shared space. Trick Mirror could not just have been discussed on the New Yorker Radio Hour, it had to have made it onto the NYTBRP. And it was there that the short-form died and the long-form returned. There were too many things I wanted to say about certain books.

As the pandemic hit, The Night of the Gun provided good company. Later that summer, I found the book I would recommend randomly to other people more than any other (and its follow-up). And I might have read Catch and Kill regardless of the podcast (to be completist), but I would not likely have found Indelicacy. Or Cleanness, for that matter. I had heard of Trust Exercise from other sources, but I feel this had to be discussed on the program, and I know for certain this was the case for Fake Accounts.

So those amount to about 15 different posts out of 420 (yes that is where we currently stand). It's only 3.5% of the total (which seems like almost nothing) but truly, many of these posts represent the best of the criticism on the blog. I daresay no single other source has inspired more.

***

I start here because I want this review to be something of an homage to Ms. Paul. While every element of the podcast is excellent--the two author interviews, the news from the publishing world, the historical items from the Book Review--the final segment ("the latest in literary criticism" or "what we and the staff have been reading") is often the most amusing. On her penultimate episode, she offered this book as the recommendation--one her colleague (and now successor) John Williams had read and recommended earlier, closer to the time it was published. 

I do not disagree with their recommendation (which was, to be sure, somewhat qualified). I picked up this book because I had a hard time with the limited other titles I'd digested (primarily Maybe You Should Talk to Someone) dealing in similar territory, and I wanted to believe that a psychologist or psychoanalyst could write about their work in an interesting and artful way. So many people do not seek help out of a sense of weakness, or fear, and so books such as these are extremely valuable. If the reader cannot work with another person to learn something about themselves, there is always the chance they can learn something about themselves through literature. But books such as this clearly do not belong in the self-help category. 

***

It is easiest to compare this to [Lori] Gottlieb's book because they are a study in contrasts. That book was too long for me. This book isn't too short for me, but just right, at 215 (small) pages. That book delves into a lot of relationship issues from the author's own life (it is as much personal memoir as "work memoir"). This book has limited few of those. That book focuses primarily on four different patients and the evolution of their treatment. This book focuses on dozens of patients, and confines each to one chapter. There are more differences still, but the biggest (and the one that matters to me most) is the quality of the writing. 

Grosz's style is pithy. It almost seem as though he is making fun of his patients when he writes about them. Clearly, he is not. But there is so much ambiguous humor in here that one may do double-takes. 

It is also casually erudite, for example, when it contains a passage which moved me greatly, particularly as I read it to a person in a similar stance (that is, Felice's):

"For a moment he seemed lost in the contemplation of something visible only to him and then he said, 'Do you know the story of Kafka and Felice Bauer? For five years, Kafka was intensely involved with Bauer, sometimes sending her several letters a day. She lived in Berlin, he lived in Prague--not a great distance even then, but during the five years they were engaged, they met only ten times, often for no more than an hour or two.' If you read Kafka's letters, Michael said, it's clear that he was distraught--anxious about where Felice was going, who she was seeing, what she was eating or wearing. Kafka wanted instant replies to his letters, and he was furious when he didn't get them. He proposed twice and broke it off twice--the wedding never took place. Michael said that for Kafka, separation from Bauer was unbearable. 'The only thing more disturbing was her presence.
'Kafka got into that sort of relationship over and over again,' he told me. 'Nowadays, we'd say he was schizoid or suffered some mild form of Asperger's, but those words give no sense of the central thing. The person he most avoided was the person upon whom he was the most dependent--the person he most wanted." (50-51)

This is from the chapter titled "On not being in a couple," which Pamela mentioned (along with "How praise can cause a loss of confidence," and maybe "How paranoia can relieve suffering and prevent a catastrophe"), perhaps to underscore the nature of its literary style. I daresay there is something Nietzschean about it, but I did not read the entirety of Ecce Homo. Suffice to say, there are lessons to be learned in life that we can sometimes whittle down into bite-sized morsels of universal truth. It might be more accurate to call it Montaignean (though that is not apparently a word), maybe Montaigne-esque.

***

The book touches on many topics and illnesses: grief, imaginary problems, irrational behaviors, incomprehensible violence, disappointment, boredom, autism/Asperger's, HIV/AIDS, dreams, envy and love, to name a few. 

"Loving" is one of the 5 sections that comprise the book. The others are "Beginnings," "Telling Lies," "Changing," and "Leaving." (Nitpicky note: I would remove the S from Beginnings.) Indeed the subject of love is essential in psychoanalysis and plays into many other facets of living and surviving in this world (statistics bear out that being in a couple leads to increased longevity). In my own psychiatric sessions over the past 8 years, "love" and the status of various friends and partners has taken up a significant portion of our time. So while I am not an expert, I was particularly intrigued by "How lovesickness keeps us from love." (Nitpicky note #2: I don't know how I feel about the lowercase chapter titles.)

About three months ago, shortly before Valentine's Day, I discovered a new term: limerence. For all intents and purposes, "lovesickness" is an appropriate synonym for limerence, yet I feel there are slight differences. Limerence contains its own vocabulary, and we do not consider people "crushes," but rather, "LOs." We recognize ourselves as limerent individuals because our relationships follow similar patterns: (1) intense crush and placement of LO on pedestal; (2) extraordinary happiness at reciprocated feelings; (3) extreme depression at lack of reciprocation; (4) locking into dynamic of misaligned expectations of relationship; (5) texts and communications from LO take on magnified importance; (6) obsession/infatuation with LO; (7) no contact ("NC") with LO as necessary self-care; (8) breaking NC with LO, revisiting relationship, restarting cycle.

We see limerence in society as something to shun and demonize. We consider them "stalkers" and presume they lack self-control or any sense of boundaries. They are, effectively, one of the "lower forms" of human beings. We consider them "toxic" and "unstable." I have not watched "My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" (though I keep telling myself I will) but that archetypal figure is the poster child for limerence. We keep irrationally hoping that we can get back together and everything will be magically better this time. 

So it was heartening to read something so precise here:

"Most of us have come down with a case of lovesickness at one time or another, suffering its fever to a greater or lesser degree. In severe cases, lovesickness can lead to delusional behaviors (stalking, for example) or sexual obsession. When we are lovesick, we feel that our emotional boundaries, the walls between us and the object of our desire, have fallen away. We feel a weighty physical longing, an ache. We believe that we are in love.
Many psychoanalysts think that lovesickness is a form of regression, that in longing for intense closeness, we are like infants craving our mother's embrace. This is why we are most at risk when we are struggling with loss or despair, or when we are lonely and isolated--it is not uncommon to fall in love during the first term of university, for example. But are these feelings really love?
'I sometimes say--but not entirely seriously--that infatuation is the exciting bit at the beginning; real love is the boring bit that comes later,' the poet Wendy Cope once told me. 'People who are lovesick put off testing their fantasies against reality.' But given the anguish that lovesickness can cause--the loss of mental freedom, the dissatisfaction with one's self, and the awful ache--why do some of us put off facing reality for so long?
Often it's because facing reality means accepting loneliness. And while loneliness can be useful--motivating us to meet someone new, for example--a fear of loneliness can work like a trap, ensnaring us in heartsick feelings for a very long time. At its worst, lovesickness becomes a habit of mind, a way of thinking about the world that is not altogether dissimilar to paranoia." (110-111)

Grosz then later goes into an illuminating discussion of Dickens' A Christmas Carol and makes the point that we cannot redo the past or be certain of the future--change can only take place in the here and now, and sometimes we change most when we repair our relation to the lost, the forgotten, the dead. While this passage was not a cure for limerence, it presented a different way of looking at the problem, a different perspective to take, and so I at least personally found it helpful, along with many other such moments in the book--when Grosz steps back from a specific discussion of x patient and makes larger observations about humanity as a whole, drawing from personal experience with numerous other individuals he has seen that do not star in their own "mini-feature" in this book. And it is this type of "wisdom" that makes the book a valuable resource for anyone, and especially for those experiencing trauma or any other great upheavals in their lives.

***

Today (last Friday, really), Jennifer Egan appeared as a guest on the NYTBRP. I haven't read Manhattan Beach or A Visit from the Goon Squad, but they are a couple I've considered, waiting for one to reach out and grab me, from word-of-mouth or a chance twisting-of-the-arm. She was talking about her follow-up, The Candy House. I am not sure how often I will listen to the podcast (query whether many podcast listeners continue on after their host moves on), but I still consider the newspaper (for all of its recent questionable op-eds and headlines) one of the preeminent outlets of literary criticism. Pamela will still appear as a guest, sometimes, and while Egan's voice was the first one to be heard on this episode (which was never the case with Pamela as host), I did appreciate Williams and what he had to say about his recent selections (he is in fact responsible for this choice), and so I think he will be a fine host as well. It just remains to be seen what interesting and new directions he can take the show.

As for Grosz, we should all be so lucky to have our therapy turned into literature, etched into history and the understanding of human beings in general. In this way, he has succeeded, and avoided the fate of several other psychiatrists and psychologists before him, whose books were longwinded and boring. This really cut to the chase and didn't waste any time getting into the philosophy of his practice. It might help other practitioners refine their practice, and it might help those that seek them out to become better patients. It may, also, lead to conversations that can change lives and reconfigure destinies. For all of these reasons, it is worth checking out (and so is the NYTBRP). 

John the Angelic: A Chronicle of Pope Joan (Volume I of The Latecoming West) - A.P. Andes (2021)

   As usual, we start with how we came upon the book. In this case, I met the author through work. He had made vague references to his book(s) in conversation, and later sent a couple e-mails about how it was available, in what format, etc. I knew he happened to live along the same route I would be taking to visit my parents, so I stopped by his house one chilly Sunday afternoon a couple months ago, and requested a signed copy. 

    I had known enough about it back in July of 2021, shortly before I went to Italy--enough to ask if he wanted me to do any particular research, if I got the chance, going to the Vatican and everything. He said no, but I looked for remnants of Pope Joan (referred to as Pope Johannes, I'd imagine), and I do not recall any. I regret that I did not read this book before that, because I would have had a better idea of where I was looking (at least which century).

    So the subject of the book is a female pope that was effectively erased from history. Just here, looking up Pope Joan on Wikipedia, I am amazed to see that a bust of her (among all of the other pontiffs) had been featured in the Siena Cathedral, but was removed in 1600 after protest. I remember seeing all of those busts when I visited the Siena Cathedral and specifically looking for Pope Joan (or Ioannes), so I had some presence of mind at the time. There was another list of all of the Popes at the Vatican, which she was not on. Perhaps I will attempt to post photos of these. 

(I included some other pictures because I thought more of those two magnificent Basilicas should be seen for context.)

    Actually, from the Wikipedia page, it seems there is a fair amount of recognition of Pope Joan as a figure, whether real or fictional. There have been a number of books either about her, or referencing her, even a couple of films and a video game--but I had never heard of her. I normally do not read historical fiction so I went into it with a certain hesitation. 

    After finishing it, I can say that it is a very good debut novel that will shock the reader in several different ways. Its chief virtue is in its retelling of the history of early Christian theology through the narration of Joan, who is particularly scholarly and knowledgeable of the available literature at the time. It is casually profound, and feels deeply and richly researched. And then it shifts to being something else entirely.

    Some of these decisions, in my very humble opinion, are questionable. Sometimes when reviewing books, I am wary of spoilers, and spoilers need to be discussed to enrich the substance of the review, to inform the overall digestion of such. I generally do this with specially denoted asterisks. However, when the first such instance of this experimental element emerges on the second page, it feels pointless to bifurcate.

***

    Pope Joan is born somewhere in the early-to-mid 800's, to a drunk brute of a father and a broken mother bent on instilling perfection in their daughter. The novel has a touching (but also gruesome) moment towards its end, where Joan reflects upon an incident that she apparently buried in her subconscious, which shifts her perspective on her mother, to a degree. But early on, Joan is a model student and has a couple run-ins and "puppy love"-type experiences with boys. Notably, Joan interacts with barely any women in this novel at all, save her mother and a lady renting a room. Then, before anything of real import happens in the novel, apart from these picaresque episodes of "normal life," there is a Viking raid on their town and many of the men and women are killed and/or raped. Joan's father is killed, but this seems to traumatize her less than the death of her friend Gawin's father--who is murdered right in front of him, which she also observes. 

    This is a bombastic confusing scene that seems to come out of nowhere. As it is the event that sets the story in motion, I would have liked to see a little bit more background on the Vikings and how they came upon Mainz and their general modus operandi. But we learn about as much about the Vikings as we knew before, which is that they pillage and conquer. 

    Joan tries to live with her mother, for a couple of years, I think, but when she is 16, she runs away from home, and then the novel (or at least the "hero[ine]'s quest" portion of it) truly advances forward. 

***

    This happens around page 66 of the novel, however, and by this point the reader has been exposed to two elements which completely have nothing to do with this novel at all. Certainly, one of them may connect a narrative throughline, but I have a hard time imagining what the second is meant to do. I will not spoil it outright, but they jump ahead about 1100 years in time. One of them is an impassioned essay rhapsodizing over (and perhaps overselling) a legendary English post-punk band; the other is a scene taken straight out of Stand by Me (e.g. it involves an eating contest and projectile vomiting).

    I found these things engaging, but this is only because I know the author, and because I too, can appreciate this act of "tricking" the reader--like, "Oh, you thought the book was going to be about this? Well, you're wrong!" But no. The book is really mostly about Pope Joan.

    Just her early life, though. The first page of the novel describes a day later in her life--when she is serving as the Pope--and we never get back to that point. Perhaps this will come in a later volume, though I am unclear if the subsequent iterations of The Latecoming West also serve as a chronological narrative of her life, amongst the other stories I understand them to tell (about the Holocaust, for one). 

***

    But after Joan leaves Mainz, she sets a plan for survival, and this is the first moment where the novel begins to shine, for it is rather exceptional and extraordinary in its setting and competing concerns. From another angle, this is a novel about finding oneself, trying to set a course for one's life, settling on an occupation, and pursuing passion. This is a treacherous setting for Joan, but a rather simple one for the reader: she does not have many options available to her. In the 800's, it was not nearly as difficult to settle on an occupation, but the options available to women were extremely limited. Joan rather quickly determines that her best chance of survival is to disguise herself as a teenage boy and study at a Benedictine Monastery, for they will provide shelter and food. The monks are also the recorders of history and literature at the time, and given Joan's passions, the monastery is clearly the perfect place for her. So she attempts to head in the direction of one and has a rather amusing episode with a rather unpleasant lady renting a room. Then the next day she has a chance encounter with the other major character in the novel.

    This is Clovis, whom I imagine as a rather hulking man, and who takes Joan under his wing and provides a lay of the land and sets her on a course to Lorsch Abbey. She rather quickly falls in love with him and I question how much detail to provide on their relationship, or the plot going forward.

    Suffice to say, she does eventually settle in at Lorsch Abbey, and this is another strong part of the novel--the description of all of the daily activities. The novel also shifts into a different mode here, and becomes more of a theological treatise than human interest story. And as noted above, for me personally, this is the great value the novel confers.

***

    In a sense, this reminded me of Leave Society, with its themes of erasure from history and lost and discredited texts, leaders, worshipped beings, and the manipulations ever-present in a "dominator" society. The dichotomy of the church--as a spiritual ideal and as a corrupt institution determinative of political power--is frequently discussed, along with its desultory attitude towards women. Many excerpts of such sections could be taken, and it is hard to choose a representative one, but as for one:

     "The Historia Ecclesiastica's standing as one of the seminal works of Christian scholarship is due in no small part to Eusebius's quotations--often at great length--of his sources, thus constituting in many instances the sole extant record of a host of crucial original voices in Christianity. So, for example, the Greek's lengthy citations from a now-lost treatise of an anonymous writer, most likely a Phrygian bishop at the time of its writing, provides the sole surviving connexion to the origins of the ascetic and apocalyptic movement of prophecy in the second century, called the New Prophecy by its followers and known today as Montanism. 

    Introducing the sect as the 'so-called Phrygian heresy,' the name it was known by in his time, Eusebius quotes at length from the anonymous writer's work, which recounts the origins of Montanism. The bishop had visited the Galatian Church in Ancyra, a Phrygian village, and found it in thrall to this false prophecy, where a 'recent convert' named Montanus with an insatiable desire for leadership became frenzied and ecstatic, babbling in cant and prophesying of miracles to come.

     Among others, two women, named Priscilla and Maximilla, were brought to possession by this vision, and they spoke and behaved as incoherently as he had. Before long all his followers were banished from the Church and denied communion. 

    Montanism questioned the moral authority of the Church hierarchy and of bishops impure in spirit to lead the masses to God, emphasising instead the people's communion with the Holy Spirit. I confess these words thrilled my soul, for they spoke directly to qualities I had long felt lacking in Church leaders. Priscilla and Maximilla, Montanus's acolytes, left their husbands and families to follow him, lending a more 'demonic' aspect to the New Prophecy by way of the sweeping powers they shared with their founder in the movement--roles the leaders of the Christian Church found blasphemous. 

     The fact two women assumed such key roles within this movement and drew the ire of the Church elevated my excitement even more. Alas, my hopes were dashed not long after, for I learnt Montanus conveniently identified himself as the Paraclete prophesied in John 14:26 through which the Holy Spirit would convey Christ's kingdom, Heavenly Jerusalem, in the Phrygian town of Pepuza, the site for his church,. 

    Epiphanius, to whom I was led after Eusebius, in his Panarion or 'medicine chest' of remedies to counteract the ills of heresy, cites Montanus's own words:

    I am the Lord God omnipotent, who have descended into
    Man. [...] neither an angel, nor an ambassador, but I, the Lord,

    the Father, am come." (171-173)

    Or another, shortly thereafter:

    "Of the dozens of gospels in currency prior to Constantine, only four were adopted into the Biblical canon. At some point the question must arise: when is the 'heretical' passage heretical, and when does it merely transmit the vagaries of human perception that lend credibility and authenticity to a collective experience? For the exclusion of the latter debases it in the realm of consensus and uniformity for the sheer sake of convenience and control.

    When I dwelt upon it, I realised further that Acts of John could not but be deemed heretical. A God who invites us to dance, as Christ does earlier in Acts, a God in need of our love and devotion to Him in order to achieve His true divinity--and ours--what kind of God would that be? No more than His Son would be by the loins of Man. I was discovering there were irreconcilable hypocrisies in ecclesiastical doctrine which had nothing to do with content or value and everything to do with preserving power." (176)

    Sections such as these serve to further educate the reader on such arcane items, knowledge that they might never come across despite the omnipresence of Christianity in our world today, due perhaps to the machinations of the Church, banning censored texts that seem to allow for divergent interpretations. Regardless, quotations are often exhumed from the Bible in support of various propositions that do not exist in harmony with the teachings of Christ. It happens anyways, but if we knew more about texts such as the Acts of John, we would at least have a wider prism through which to investigate Christianity. Because John the Angelic refers to some of the substance of such texts, we are all the richer for its existence. Surely, all of this information must be kept somewhere, but that would generally be within the ambit of scholars and theologians, not lay readers. 

***

    Further word need be said about the experimental elements of this novel before this review is concluded. The first is the interpolation of the music-journalism text. While I did not understand the connection between the narratives, it would have been less jarring without the interpolation, and felt that it might have worked better as a separate chapter. Perhaps a series of essays, because this mostly seems to be one, about one song. As it stands, it gives the reader the feeling of channel-switching between VH-1 and the History Channel. So, we might refer to this as the "VH-1 element." 

    There is also the "Stand by Me-episode," which does not interpolate text, nor separate as a chapter, and I have a harder time understanding where this lends depth or substance to the work. I can understand how the VH-1 element could work--for it seems to posit the cultural figure in question as a kind of spiritual descendent of Pope Joan--but while the Stand by Me-episode was probably the most amusing part of the book, I did not sense its connection to the larger narrative. Perhaps it is metaphorical--the foolish and unhealthy ways people compete with one another to win questionable acclaim--but I did not "see Joan" in any of the contestants in the episode. Perhaps it demands a closer reading but to be perfectly honest, it is not an analysis I want to undertake at this time.  

***

    Then, there is the experiment that works: the Socrates chapter. This comes towards the end of the novel, and I would say from this point forward, it is at its strongest, though it ends at an anticlimax. But the Socrates chapter is completely separate, and serves as a coda to Plato's Phaedo. The Phaedo may be one of the most profound works in the history of Western Literature and so composing a kind of addendum to it is a dangerous and ambitious task. It is to the author's credit that it comes off. It bears a certain resemblance to the "Penelope" section of Ulysses (i.e. Molly Bloom's 80-page stream-of-consciousness fever dream, shorn of punctuation or any spacing of text), but thankfully there are actual sentences, and it probably works just as well as that section of that novel, because it feels like an accurate representation of the inner working of Socrates's mind after drinking the hemlock. In particular, there is a vision of Theseus and his ship. Now I had heard vague rumblings about Theseus's ship, as an intellectual-philosophical exercise (even Elon Musk tweeted a reference to it recently), but the way it is presented here feels surreal and otherworldly, profound; it is arguably the most powerful moment in the novel. To give some sense of it:

    "The death of his father transformed Theseus from a hero-prince into a founder-king. Something spirited the ancient light away, and Socrates was returned to his cell, dizzy from the enormity and detail of the vision that had just been pushed through his mind and his senses. How could he know these things? And were they all true? The vivid succession of dreams that had throttled Theseus's heart where he lay in grief over the death of his father was as real as any actual event Socrates had experienced himself. Had the hemlock caused this, or something greater working in and through him in these closing moments of his life? And why Theseus? Perhaps to remind him of the nexus between the history of this ship to Delos and his own fate, a confluence of ceremony and destiny to afford him insight into the nature of both? And what of that tempest off the coast of Cyprus, if not the will of the gods and the destiny of Athens in inheriting a new leader? Do we see what we see because they are revealed to us, or are they revealed to us because we see them? Which is the mover and which the thing moved? At the brink of death, in this final embrace of the living with its own flawed boundary, the philosopher thought at last to himself: How much I will miss this. For the world of the question not only embodied desire, it constituted the very body desired itself. The philosopher's being dwelt not in the answer but in the voluptuous contours of the question." (146-147)

    This is not a perfect novel, but as noted previously, in this review and others, a perfect literary debut is extraordinary, especially a self-published one. While I disagree with a few of the choices, the author accomplished a great deal with this text, and at the very least it piqued my interest to see what comes next in The Latecoming West. Ultimately, it stands for the proposition that history is a cycle, and that a great many questions we have about living and how to do it best have already been asked and answered for centuries. Too many of these lessons from history continue to be lost, and it is to the credit of books like this that they are brought into the light. 

Crying in H Mart - Michelle Zauner (2021)

We do not need to run through all of the so-called indie rock memoirs reviewed on Flying Houses. Suffice to say, there are many, and if I happen to do another in the near future, I will make a separate post compiling them for easy access, rather than needlessly clutter this review with links and comparisons. Because this is a very different type of memoir from those.

With Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner has established herself as one of the preeminent artists of today, probably because this book is not really about the music. I am sure many other musicians are hobbyists in some other discipline and possess redoubtable knowledge on certain topics--but they never choose to write about them at length. 

Zauner's material on Japanese Breakfast and her earlier band, Little Big League, comprise 10 or maybe 15 pages out of this 239-page narrative. This isn't a book about her travails in trying to "make it." It does, however, reflect upon her meteoric rise in beautiful fashion. And this was one of the many, many pages that brought tears to my eyes--of sadness, happiness (for others) and hope. This is to say, I often begrudge others their success, particularly when they are quite a bit younger than me. But Zauner isn't really that much younger than me, and one cannot help but see her success as hard-earned, beautiful and touching.

This book took me quite a long time to read--perhaps six weeks--owing as always to other life events, but also because, this is very heavy reading. It's not leavened with photographs (clearly, there could be many, as evidenced by one of its final episodes) or sprinkled with clever asides or footnotes. There clearly could have been footnotes in this, but they would have detracted from its overall power. There is levity in this book, but it is juxtaposed against heartbreaking anguish, and the overall mood is honorary and respectful towards its true subject, which is Zauner's mother. 

I cannot locate her proper name in this book, which probably is best written in Korean, though one of the many things Zauner does well is translate Korean into English as "Konglish." We know her mother's sisters are Eunmi and Nami. Michelle doesn't speak Korean particularly well, but she was born in Seoul; her mother was from there and her father was American. 

The book opens up like The Stranger, as it should:

"Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart." (3)

From there, she launches into a description of the H Mart franchise and the magic she feels upon stepping into one, tinged with nostalgia and sadness: she cries in several places in the store, and apparently does this often. The opening is kind of a delusive move, because it makes the book seem like it will be an exercise in dark humor, or irony--and while it has such moments, it is more closely about the absurdity of grief that many of us have endured or must endure, at some point. Really though, it's all about the food.

***

Our previous subject, Parker Posey, included several recipes in her memoir. These were kooky but not unwelcome. Here, Zauner could clearly justify an appendix of recipes. So why does she not? Perhaps it is to maintain the sanctity of the dishes, or perhaps because she doesn't want to cheapen it by offering facile instruction. The text itself should be sufficient for anyone seeking to replicate these recipes. 

We need more books like this, about food from other parts of the world. We have every kind of food imaginable in a big city, but there is nothing better than authentic cuisine, recipes passed down through generations, tied to homeland traditions and memories of being together, intrinsic to one's identity. I knew about H Mart but I haven't been in one. The first time I go, I might just cry. I'm actually feeling pretty emotional today. I finished this last night. Maybe I'll go today. 

***

Briefly, the book concerns the period between 2013 and 2014, in which Zauner lived in Philadelphia, playing smaller shows with her smaller band, Little Big League, for a few years after graduating from Bryn Mawr College.

Now then, she does write a bit about her high school years, and the bad relationship she had with her mother at the time, and how poorly she performed in school, and how it was a miracle she got into college at all, later graduating with honors--but she downplays Bryn Mawr's prestige. While there may have been personal issues, clearly her parents did something right with her education, and this book is proof that she contains multitudes and can do these things at a high level. She is the only person that can get a "Best New Music" designation on Pitchfork, publish a NY Times Bestseller, and make a proper bowl of nurungji, or galbi, or jatjuk, or authentic kimchi.

There are certainly moments of ridiculous "culture-specific" humor:

"I was afraid of my grandmother. She spoke harshly and loudly and knew maybe fifteen words in English, so it always seemed like she was angry. She never smiled in pictures and her laugh was like a cackle that ended in loud hacking and coughing. She was as hunched over as an umbrella handle and always wore plaid pajama pants and shirts with glittering, rough fabrics. But I was chiefly afraid of one particular weapon she brandished--the ddongchim. Ddongchim literally means poop needle. It involves clasping your hands in the shape of a gun, index fingers pressed together to create a needle used to penetrate an unsuspecting anus. As horrifying as it sounds, it's a common cultural thing, something akin to a Korean wedgie and not some unique form of sexual assault. Whenever she was near, I constantly hid behind my mother or Seong Young, or scooted by her furtively with my butt pressed against the wall, anxiously expecting my halmoni to prod her index fingers through my pants, cackling and then hacking at my surprise and terror." (28-29)

There is some material on indie rock, and it was heartening to read that the first song Zauner learned how to play on guitar was "Carry the Zero" by Built to Spill (an impressive start, especially if she could do the solo). She rhapsodizes about Modest Mouse as the keystone to the regional scene. She waxes poetic about seeing Karen O and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and how she gave her the confidence to believe that someone that looked like her could be in a band like that. But she was also ambivalent and cynical: maybe Karen O had fulfilled the demographic quota, and there was no space for another half-white, half-Korean indie rock icon:

"Back then, I didn't know what a scarcity mentality was. The dialogue surrounding representation in music was in its nascent stages, and because I didn't personally know any other girls who played music, I didn't know there were others like me struggling with the same feelings. I didn't have the analogical capacity to imagine a white boy in the same situation, watching a live DVD of say, the Stooges, and thinking, if there's already an Iggy Pop, how could there possibly be room for another white guy in music?" (55)

So, there is a little bit about music, but that's just her career, and she does not have many anxieties about deciding what she wants to do with her life, though she does later work at a pizza restaurant as a way of distracting herself from grief. I am not sure if the phrase "tiger mom" appears in print here, but a word need be said about this.

Now I do not know what it is like to grow up with an Asian or Asian-American mother, but they are apparently very tough on their kids and hold very high expectations for them. Some consider this brutal treatment, and this entered the cultural conversation when Amy Chua published her book The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. But Chua's mother was Chinese and I wouldn't want to conflate the cultures.  Regardless, it's impossible to avoid that disambiguation in America, unless it's part of your own identity, or has become your adopted identity. I can try to be sensitive to these differences, but I will inevitably stick my foot in my mouth. 

Zauner's mother is harsh, but lovely in that harshness. She only wants to steel Michelle against the innumerable criticisms of the world, so that she may transcend them. She criticizes her extensively, and the relationship is so bad that at one point, in a fit of anger, she instigates physical abuse, asks her husband to overpower their daughter, and loses it:

"'Why are you doing this to us? After everything we have given you, how can you treat us this way?' she yelled, her tears and spit falling onto my face. She smelled like olive oil and citrus. Her hands felt soft and slick, greased with cream, as they pushed my wrists against the coarse carpet. The weight of her on me began to ache like a bruise. My father hovered over us, unsure of his place in it all, searching for a reason why a kid like me could wind up so miserable.
'I had an abortion after you because you were such a terrible child!'
Her grip went slack and she shifted her weight off me to leave the room. She let out a little cluck, the kind of sound let out when you think something is a real shame, like passing a dilapidated building with beautiful architecture." (65)

This is the major thread running through the book--Zauner's regret over the wasted years of her upbringing, when she couldn't properly appreciate her mother's form of love. She could appreciate the food, but little beyond that. By the end it is clear that she has made good, and they are about as close as a mother and daughter can be. 

***

There was one surprising element to this book, and I will not spoil it, but I will just say there is a kind of House of Broken Angels-vibe to it. Of course, as a grief memoir, there is plenty of material about hospitals, chemotherapy, hair loss, nausea, bodily fluids, humiliation, thankless caretaking, dreaded phone calls, and magical thinking. 

But there is more about love in here, and food. Zauner does not shy away from graphic details, and while she conveys the horror of the events in question, she prefers to remember her mother at the height of her powers, focusing on the knowledge and the memories that she hopes to preserve. 

But God, the crying. I am not sure this book will make you cry, but it definitely made me cry. Like, a lot. Like, I had tears welling up for maybe 15-20% of the pages I read. This is why it was a heavy read for me, because I felt that every time I picked it up, it would remind me of things, things that didn't even have to do with death, such as the trip to Seoul she takes with her husband Peter. The book is also an account of their relationship, from a certain remove, and it seems so effortless, we can only imagine how much more difficult the grieving process must be without a good, supportive partner. If anything, this thread shows all the elements that comprise a good relationship. Those of us with less impressive partners (or delusional crushes) may find deeper longing in it.

The true beauty of the book, however, comes at its end, and while it is something of a spoiler, I cannot help myself:

"I hadn't believed in a god since I was about ten, and still envisioned Mr. Rogers when I prayed, but the years that followed my mother's passing were suspiciously charmed. I had been playing in bands since I was sixteen, dreamt of succeeding as an artist practically my whole life, and as an American, I felt entitled to it in spite of my mother's aggrieved forewarnings. I had fought for that dream thanklessly for eight long years, and only after she died did things, as if magically, begin to happen.
If there was a god, it seemed my mother must have had her foot on his neck, demanding good things come my way. That if we had to be ripped apart right at our turning point, just when things were really starting to get good, the least god could do was make a few of her daughter's pipe dreams come true.
She would have been tickled to have seen the past few years, me dressed up and shot for a fashion magazine, watching the first South Korean director win an Academy Award, YouTube channels with millions of views dedicated to fifteen-step skin-care regimens. And though it felt contrary to my beliefs, I had to believe that she could. And that she was glad I had finally found a place where I belonged." (233)

Sometimes, success brings the unfortunate tragedy, and sometimes the unfortunate tragedy brings success. The only problem with this book is that it will make other writers want to give up. There's a span of a few pages towards the end, which I will not excerpt, where she puts some redoubtable vocabulary on display. There's poetry in the language, and she writes about taste sensations with such precise detail that she could easily moonlight as a restaurant critic. The book ultimately hits every nerve of the human experience and imbues it with truth. As such, it is one of the Best Books reviewed on this blog. 

Grade: A

****APPENDIX****

For my own personal perusing, I want to include one recipe. I won't do the kimchi (pp. 214-216), because that would be a long excerpt, but that may be the most instructional one in the book. She writes a bit about Maangchi, who does videos on YouTube and who seems almost like an avatar for her mother. She seems to consult the videos for verification purposes. Maangchi does do a video for jatjuk:

"The recipe was simple--pine nuts, rice, salt and water, all ingredients we already had on hand. Per Maangchi's instructions, I soaked a third of a cup of rice and set it aside for two hours. I measured out two tablespoons of pine nuts, and began removing the tips, then tossed the soft, picked kernels into the blender. When the rice was finished soaking, I rinsed it under the faucet and added it to the pine nuts with two cups of water. I closed the lid and ran the blender on high, then emptied the liquid into a small pot on the stove.

'You don't need many ingredients, but as you can see it takes time. That's why jatjuk is very precious. Like, for example, one of your family members is sick, nothing much you can do. When we visit the hospital we usually make this jatjuk because patients can't eat like normal food. Pine nuts has protein and good fat for body so this is perfect food for patients who are recovering from their illness,' Maangchi explained.

The mixture was a beautiful milky-white color. On medium heat I stirred it with a wooden spoon. At first, impatient for it to thicken, I was afraid I'd used too much water. Then, as its consistency turned from skim milk to peanut butter, I was afraid I hadn't added enough. I lowered the heat and continued to stir, hoping it would thin as Maangchi's had. When the pot began to sizzle, I took it off the heat and added salt, then poured it into a small bowl. 

I cut chonggak kimchi into small disks and ladled some of the brine over the radish pieces. The soup was creamy and nutty, and felt soft and soothing as I swallowed. I ate a few more spoonfuls before crunching into some kimchi to break up the rich flavor with something spicy and tart. That wasn't so hard, I thought to myselff, happy to have conquered the dish that Kye had mystified. 

This was all I wanted, I realized, after so many days of decadent filets and pricey crustaceans, potatoes slathered in the many glorious permutations that ratios of butter, cheese, and cream can take. This plain porridge was the first dish to make me feel full. Maangchi supplied the secrets to its composition step by step, like a digital guardian I could always turn to, delivering the knowledge that had been withheld from me, that was my birthright. I closed my eyes and spooned the last of the soup into my mouth, picturing the soft mixture coating my mother's blistered tongue, the warm liquid traveling slowly into my stomach as I tried to savor the aftertaste." (189-191)