The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt (2013)

Back on June 11, 2014, I was working a document review project in the Willis Tower.  I sat next to a guy named Frederick who went by Eric.  He liked to read, too, and I mentioned how I had posted this article on my Facebook page.  I said I hadn't read The Goldfinch, but no book had a bigger buzz attached to it at that moment.  The next day he picked it up and started reading it and told me it was good.

It took me another two years to get up the nerve to tackle it, and I can say that, while I didn't get into it immediately, after about 150-200 pages, I got into it, and I thought it was very good.  Having said that, I am curious to revisit the article.

Basically, the article posits Tartt as a stellar storyteller, but a weak wordsmith--at least, in the opinions of Francine Prose and James Wood.  And to a certain extent that is true.  This does have a pretty good story and it is not surprising that it is being made into a movie.  As for the poetry of the words, I desist.  All I want to say, for starters, is that The Goldfinch bears striking similarities to my second novel S/M (as well as DST), but couched in a much more compelling story.  If you don't already know, this is a pretty big book--about 770 pages--but it goes down pretty fast.  I mean, I did not really get into this book at first, but once I did, I finished it in just a few weeks.  One night I must have read 50-70 pages before falling asleep, and that is rare for me.  That may have happened with City on Fire, but I would recommend this over that, whether it makes me a philistine or not.

Quick plot summary: Theodore Decker, 13, has gotten in trouble at school, and his mother has taken a day off work to go with him to a conference.  For some reason the conference doesn't start right at the beginning of the day, or the end, and they decide to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to check out the new Dutch exhibit.  Then, a massive bomb goes off inside the museum, and there is a great deal of confusion, and an injured old man convinces Theo to take the famous painting of The Goldfinch to protect it, or something.  I think I need to consult the text for this:

"'No! They mustn't see it.' He was frantic, gripping my arm now, trying to pull himself up.  'They've stolen the rugs, they'll take it to the customs shed--'" (37)

The man seems half-delusional, but perhaps there is a threat of it being damaged or stolen.  So Theo takes it, and gets out and goes home and waits for his mother to return.  When she doesn't, he starts to worry, and makes a number of phone calls.  The events during these tense hours seem realistic.  Ultimately Theo ends up going to his friend Andy's house and lives with him and his family, the Barbours.  His mother's life was lost in the bombing, and his father had walked out on them a year earlier.

Then, his father comes to New York with his new girlfriend, and they take Theo back with them to Las Vegas, where he meets his best friend, Boris.  I would say that this was the turning point in the novel for me.  Even though the bombing seems like it makes for an exciting opening, I didn't get into this book until Theo's father shows up.  I also think I will stop there with the specifics and try to avoid spoilers.  Let's just say Theo ends up going back to New York to live with Hobie, who was the old man's business partner in an antique shop in the west village.  There was also a younger girl with the old man at the museum, Pippa, and she also visits Hobie from time-to-time.  Pippa is the object of Theo's affection throughout the novel.  Then, the novel skips ahead a few years to when Theo is in his early 20's, and has become Hobie's partner in the business.

Many people die in this novel and sometimes it feels like a plot device, but it is really one of the major themes of the novel.  Antiques are another.  The meaning of art is another.  Drugs are another.  When I say that it reminds me of my second novel, I am talking primarily about the Las Vegas section (Part 2, starting at Chapter 5, which is at page 211) and the friendship between Theo and Boris.  There is even a passage that comes straight out of it:

"And yet (this was the murky part, this was what bothered me) there had also been other, way more confusing and fucked-up nights, grappling around half-dressed, weak light sliding in from the bathroom and everything haloed and unstable without my glasses: hands on each other, rough and fast, kicked-over beers foaming on the carpet--fun and not that big of a deal when it was actually happening, more than worth it for the sharp gasp when my eyes rolled back  and I forgot about everything; but when we woke the next morning stomach-down and groaning on opposite sides of the bed it receded into an incoherence of backlit flickers, choppy and poorly lit like some experimental film, the unfamiliar twist of Boris's features fading from memory already and none of it with any more bearing on our actual lives than a dream.  We never spoke of it; it wasn't quite real; getting ready for school we threw shoes, splashed water at each other, chewed aspirin for our hangovers, laughed and joked around all the way to the bus stop.  I knew people would think the wrong thing if they knew, I didn't want anyone to find out and I knew Boris didn't either, but all the same he seemed so completely untroubled by it that I was fairly sure it was just a laugh, nothing to take seriously or get worked up about.  And yet, more than once, I had wondered if I should step up my nerve and say something: draw some kind of line, make things clear, just to make absolutely sure he didn't have the wrong idea.  But the moment had never come.  Now there was no point in speaking up and being awkward about the whole thing, though I scarcely took comfort in that fact." (300-301)

And then there is also the ending, where Theo languishes in a hotel room in Amsterdam, contemplating that no move is a right move, and that the only thing left to do is leave this world.  There are great moments of suicidal depression, sexual confusion and substance abuse/addiction, so of course I liked this book.  But yes, even though it won the Pulitzer Prize for 2014, I can't quite put it on the Best Books list because a lot of it just seems random and crazy.  Most especially, I found the whole "action sequence" in Amsterdam more confusing and tedious than not.  There is a lot of dialogue in this book, and much of the explanation in this situation comes from Boris, and I didn't fully understand what kind of scheme they were carrying out--but perhaps that thin layer of confusion was intentional on Tartt's part.

So I just read the original James Wood review in the New Yorker, and it's not the worst review in the world.  It does make the book sound like "children's literature for adults," but he also says a few nice things.  We actually agree that the writing in the Las Vegas section of the book is probably the strongest.  He also imagines whether the book would have been much better if the whole trope and theme of the "The Goldfinch" was excised, and focused instead on the emotional development of the main character.  And I think this is why it touched me, because that is essentially what I was trying to do with S/M.  But nothing really happens to that character that he doesn't bring on himself--nothing that traumatic, at least, compared to what Theo goes through.  There are a lot of similarities though, and it made me feel like, if we were writing about similar things, I was at least on the right track with a book as popular as this.  However, if there wasn't the trope of "The Goldfinch," then this book would be noticeably slimmer, and a completely different genre.  It would only be published because Donna Tartt seems like a total badass.  Put it this way: it made me want to read her other two novels.  I can't help but feel a huge soft spot for any book that has passages such as this:

"But depression wasn't the word.  This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time.  The writhing loathesomeness of the biological order.  Old age, sickness, death.  No escape for anyone.  Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil.  And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game.  Squirming babies and plodding, complacent, hormone-drugged moms.  Oh, isn't he cute?  Awww.  Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells awaited them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital.  Most people seemed satisfied with the thin decorative glaze and the artful stage lighting that, sometimes, made the bedrock atrocity of the human predicament look somewhat more mysterious or less abhorrent.  People gambled and golfed and planted gardens and traded stocks and had sex and bought new cars and practiced yoga and worked and prayed and redecorated their homes and got worked up over the news and fussed over their children and gossiped about their neighbors and pored over restaurant reviews and founded charitable organizations and supported political candidates and attended the U.S. Open and dined and travelled and distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were.  But in a strong light there was no good spin you could put on it.  It was rotten top to bottom.  Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home.  It was better never to have been born--never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything." (476-477)

Occasionally, The Goldfinch is great.  There is a kind of Catcher in the Rye feel to it, only on a much bigger scale, with a kind of noir edge.  It's a pretty original story, ridiculous and absurd though it may be.  I've never been very interested in antiques, nor did I want to read about antiques, which is maybe why I thought the book started slow.  But eventually, Tartt made it compelling enough to me that I could tolerate it.  Perhaps the writing seems clunky at times, and it could probably be a lot shorter if there was more of an economy of language, but one cannot deny the way it pulses forward, pushing the reader with it.

The general consensus seems to be that the ending is "overwrought."  That is, not the action that closes the story, but what comes after--and the endless philosophizing of Theo about the nature of art.  I think it's a section that's designed to be quoted on mediums like Flying Houses.  So I'll try to pick something out, and maybe it'll be a nice way to end the review.

Is there anything else that needs to be said?  I think most of the controversial debate about this book took place two years ago, but maybe a brief conversation I had with a friend puts it into perspective.  I hadn't spoken or seen this friend in almost five years, but he told me about how he read Moby Dick and was completely blown away by it and how I had to read it--so it will go on "the list."  But I also mentioned this book to him and he said, "What, is that by Donna Tartt?" It's not fair to say that this book could be mentioned in the same breath as Moby Dick, but a person appreciative of that classic tome is at least aware of the author of this one.  I'm sure this is a much easier book to get through than Melville's.  So maybe so-called millenials and other similarly-situated future individuals with warped attention spans will consider The Goldfinch their Moby Dick.  I can't say if this book will last down through the ages or not, but I would venture a guess that the movie (if it manages to come to fruition) will have a huge influence on that result.  It will make for a difficult adaptation, to be sure, but I would humbly volunteer myself to be part of the "crack team of writers" (if Tartt was not interested herself) to do it.  One cannot doubt that it will at least make for a "fun" movie, despite the extremely depressing subject matter.

And here is a representative sample of the last 20 pages:

"And as terrible as this is, I get it.  We can't choose what we want and don't want and that's the hard lonely truth.  Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it's going to kill us.  We can't escape who we are.  (One thing I'll have to say for my dad: at least he tried to want the sensible thing--my mother, the briefcase, me--before he completely went berserk and ran away from it.)
And as much as I'd like to believe there's a truth beyond illusion, I've come to believe that there's no truth beyond illusion.  Because, between 'reality' on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there's a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic." (770)

I don't want to analyze this passage too deeply; suffice to say, it speaks to me as a writer.  After this, I trust that Donna Tartt's other two books are worth reading, and I look forward to checking them out one day.

Animal Collective - Centipede Hz

The last time I wrote about music on Flying Houses was on July 20, 2010.  It was a review of the Pitchfork Festival and it is strangely enough one of the most popular posts on Flying Houses.  I felt it was a missed opportunity when I did not review this year's festival--but I only went to Saturday's shows, and felt that something so incomplete should not be included (but to summarize: Cloud Nothings in the driving rain playing 10 minute version of "Wasted Days" = euphoria/horror, 9.3/10; Atlas Sound playing slower songs in heavy torrential rain, Bradford Cox wearing suntan lotion he forgot to rub in, seemingly auditioning for a second career in stand-up comedy = hilarity/boredom and discomfort, 6.7/10; Lotus Plaza in between those two sets, Lockett's dreamy voice floating across the atmosphere through the trees, about two or three songs performed as they should be live = pure abbreviated satisfaction; 8.0/10; Wild Flag opening up with "See No Evil," closing with "Romance," and tearing s*** apart in between = ecstasy, 9.6/10; Sleigh Bells sounding way too eager to please, shouting "F***!" and "S***!" a lot as if exhausted/exhilarated, being way back in the crowd due to later set time and burgeoning popularity of that band = i'd rather be listening at home alone, 5.3/10; leaving before Godspeed You! Black Emperor because I felt that nothing could top Wild Flag, was bored, was tired, was there alone (horrible way to go).  In some fantasy world I'll get a job in Chicago and be there next year even though the Bar will be like, one week later, and actually have friends who like indie rock and will enjoy myself more--but in reality, the festival will probably continue to be populated by increasingly obscure bands, with the best moments saved for the rare new acts that happen to be magnificent, like Cloud Nothings.

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Animal Collective played Pitchfork in Summer 2011--the only other year I missed besides 2008, which appeared to be the best line-up of any year, but I digress....I did sort of see Panda Pear at the 2010 Festival while waiting for LCD Soundsystem, but as has been the rumor, live, their band(s) does not seem to inspire excitement, but confusion, delirium, boredom, and incredulity.

It's all hearsay I guess, since I've never made an effort to see them live because of such fears, and because I like listening to their albums over and over just fine.  That said, I believe I stated that Merriweather Post Pavilion was the best album of the 2000s (better than Kid A), and that LCD's This is Happening would be remembered as one of the best of the 2010's (even though we are still in the early stages of the decade).  Where then, does Centipede Hz. fit in?

I am not going to open myself up to ridicule and claim that this album is better than Merriweather.  But I will say that the visual component of this album gives it another dimension that should be taken into account in any review.  Now true, most people do not want to put on a 53 minute collection of psychedelic visuals to complement the same 53 minutes of music.  You simply have to be on drugs in order to give yourself away to such a meditative exercise.  However, it is worth doing at least once.  I have done it at least five times, I think.

On the basis of the music alone, I might be inclined to agree with Pitchfork's 7.4/10 assessment of the album, but taking the visuals into account, this album deserves a score in the early 9's.  While the visual accompaniment is nothing new, it is a throwback to more innocent times for me.  It reminds me of going to see concerts at Irving Plaza ten years ago where, in between sets, the big projector screen would descend, and DJs would play either music videos or random songs with crazy visuals that only made sense on the most  esoteric level.  This was way better than standing awkwardly for thirty minutes, trying to think of something to say to your friend when you are amidst a spectacle and are curiously bereft of other interesting topics of conversation.

Centipede Hz. is basically made for this--but I have to be honest and admit my suspicion that it is also made especially for stoners.  Animal Collective albums have always been "druggy," but this album goes further than any of those and into all-out psychedelia in its visuals.  Sometimes they are exhilarating, hilarious, profound, spine-tingling, beautiful, or just awe-inspiring.  None of the videos seem professionally shot by the Collective's contemporaries, but rather appear to be pieces of "found footage" with a few self-made lo-fi shots thrown into the mix.  There is lots of repetition and sometimes the lyrics reflect the visuals, which is usually when it is most hilarious.  Like when there is a lyric about a "See-saw" and you see two horses on a see-saw.  Or when darker sounding songs include black-and-white videos that look like they came out of Cold War propaganda, or really sad/scary Disney-type animation.  In particular the openings of "Mercury Man," "New Turn Burnout," and "Amanita" just make me very excited for what is about to come.

But every song is good --there are about three great songs, and about four or five really good songs, and a remaining three or four sounds that are only merely good.

This is not as high a percentage as Merriweather, but these two albums are quite different.  Merriweather is unabashedly mainstream--or least as mainstream as you can get with Animal Collective.  Centipede is the 2nd most mainstream album they have made, and it is the 2nd best album they have made period, in my opinion.

I am sure that other people will claim Feels and Strawberry Jam and even Sung Tongs are better (to say nothing of comparisons to Panda Bear's solo work) but it depends on the kind of person you are, and the kind of mood you are in.  If you like your music fast, loud, weird, and thought-provoking--this is your album.  However if you like it slower, more contemplative, quieter, potentially pleasant-nap-inducing--surely Feels or Sung Tongs is up your alley (or Panda Bear's albums).  If you like an album that's a ridiculous mish-mash from beginning to end but builds to an undeniably mind-blowing mid-album 13 minute two-song suite, then Strawberry Jam is a good option.  And obviously if you like hearing highly-polished Animal Collective at their least weird and most poppy, Merriweather is the place to start (as it should be for anyone new to the band).

This is not a perfect album - I fully admit that a few songs I can look away from the visuals and do some reading or something - but most of the time my attention is too closely drawn, and the songs are just too awesome.  Particularly great is "Amanita" as a closing number, which, along with "Rosie Oh" and a couple other songs, has at least three distinct "parts" which you can't easily define as a verse or chorus, but that add something new each time so the song evolves, while still keeping its basic rhythm.  "Rosie Oh" and "New Town Burnout" are the two Panda Bear songs here, and while I want to say they are the best, I cannot.  While they are certainly among the best, you have to include several Avey Tare songs with them that are on just as high (if not a higher) level.  "Amanita" is the culmination of everything they do on this album, and in a way, their career.
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The last album reviewed here was on July 8, 2010.  It was Wolf Parade's Expo '86, which I praised.  That is [probably going to be?] Wolf Parade's last album, as they are now on indefinite hiatus.  I do not mind so much because if Handsome Furs and Sunset Rubdown ever toured together, it would become apparent that Wolf Parade is not greater than the sum of their parts.

Another review right before then was This is Happening which most people believe is the final LCD Soundsystem album.  I'm not trying to jinx Animal Collective by writing this.  I just write reviews of albums when I think they are special, or deserve comment.  The visual aspect of this album is what makes it incredible--and song-wise it's not too bad either.  But I hope that more bands in the future will take a similar approach to joining video and music--not necessarily in the expected music video format, but something like this.  It's true that Sonic Youth did a similar thing with Goo, but those videos are all, distinctly, music videos, usually directed by then-obscure, now-famous directors (Sofia Coppola, Todd Haynes, et. al.) and the album does not hang together as a cohesive whole but just feels like a collection of songs (and even though they're really good songs--the vast majority at least--the effect on the listener-viewer is nothing compared to that of Centipede Hz which is so powerful as to almost totally remove the spectator from reality).

And it is in my humble opinion, that removing the spectator from reality is one of art's highest aims--even if for only an hour, and even if reality must be faced again--these new, dream-like sensations nurture the soul, and may contribute to a person's happiness (if not long term, at least in the short term) and help them find a way to overcome the obstacles that the 2012 daily existence throws in their paths.

Big Sur - Jack Kerouac

We all go a little mad sometimes.

That line is from Psycho, but Kerouac might as well have written it.

Kerouac gets a bad rap, I think.  Most people go no further than On the Road, or The Dharma Bums if you are really lucky.  Almost no one can talk about Desolation Angels, The Subterraneans, or Big Sur (not to mention And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks..).

In terms of ranking, I would put Big Sur just beneath Desolation Angels (slightly) as my favorite.  Desolation Angels is much longer, a real "adventure" novel.  Big Sur is a pretty compact little book, but does not appear as well-edited as The Dharma Bums.

The plot can be described as follows: Jack Duluoz stays at Lawrence Monsanto's cabin alone in Big Sur and does not drink, decides he's bored, goes back to San Francisco to get people to go with him to Big Sur to drink, gets sick and tired of everyone and thinks about not drinking, goes back to San Francisco and drinks and decides he likes everyone again, then goes back to Big Sur with them and drinks and has a total breakdown.

That may sound facile, but Big Sur is quite excellent.

Much of this book is devoted to describing the psychological conditions giving way to addiction and insanity.   And it is on these topics that Kerouac shines:

"I can hear myself again whining 'Why does God torture me?'--But anybody who's never had delirium tremens even in their early stages may not understand that it's not so much a physical pain but a mental anguish indescribable to those ignorant people who dont drink and accuse drinkers of irresponsibility--The mental anguish is so intense that you feel you have betrayed your very birth, the efforts nay the birth pangs of your mother when she bore you and delivered you to the world, you've betrayed every effort your father ever made to feed you and raise you and make you strong and my God even educate you for 'life,' you feel a guilt so deep you identify yourself with the devil and God seems far away abandoning you to your sick silliness--You feel sick in the greatest sense of the word, breathing without believing in it, sicksicksick, your soul groans, you look at your helpless hands as tho they were on fire and you cant move to help, you look at the world with dead eyes, there's on your face an expression of incalculable repining like a constipated angel on a cloud--In fact it's actually a cancerous look you throw on the world, through browngray wool fuds over your eyes--Your tongue is white and disgusting, your teeth are stained, your hair seems to have dried out overnight, there are huge mucks in the corners of your eyes, greases on your nose, froth at the sides of your mouth: in short that very disgusting and wellknown hideousness everybody knows who's walked past a city street drunk in the Boweries of the world---"(95-96)

And, as in Desolation Angels, there is some of the world-weariness that Kerouac felt upon being crowned "the King of the Beats":

"Because after all the poor kid actually believes that there's something noble and idealistic and kind about all this beat stuff, and I'm supposed to be the King of the Beatniks according to the newspapers, so but at the same time I'm sick and tired of all the endless enthusiasms of new young kids trying to know me and pour out all their lives into me so that I'll jump up and down and say yes yes that's right, which I can't do anymore--"(94)

Kerouac was about 38 or 39 during the events taking place in this book and he would be dead seven years after its publication.  His portrayals of himself as an "old man" therefore, may be somewhat accurate for the truly wild of the partiers amongst us.  Kerouac and F. Scott Fitzgerald (and to a lesser extent Hemingway) therefore represent the "second tier" of the so-called 27 Club.  While Fitzgerald is in the 44 Club and Kerouac is in the 47 Club, neither was apparently addicted to seriously hard drugs (I will leave Burroughs--84 Club--out of this...) but could not overcome their passion for drink.  While they went on to contribute several masterpieces to the American literary canon, they did so at their own expense, or perhaps out of the fear that they would not write anything better than their first books.

Kerouac and Fitzgerald also share the quality of writing "thinly-veiled autobiographies," though Fitzgerald did much more to add veils.  Kerouac admits that his entire oeuvre is one story--the story of his life--and an attempt to imitate Marcel Proust.  This is not the time for a discussion on the merits of burning the candle at both ends, or whatever phrase you like, but it is an interesting side-note.

Perhaps notable if one wants a very-detailed understanding of Kerouac's oeuvre/life is the character of Cody (previously known as Dean Moriarty in On the Road and Neal Cassady in real life) who strongly influences most of the action in this novel--or at least of its second half.  Cody is married to Evelyn, and Jack loves her.  They both believe they will be married in another life.  However, Cody also has a mistress named Billie.  He sets her up with Jack, and she eventually drives him insane at the end of the novel.  But there is this interesting story about marijuana prosecution when Cody makes his first appearance:

"Cody shakes my hand again--Havent seen him for several years because mainly he's just spent two years in San Quentin on a stupid charge of possession of marijuana--He was on his way to work on the railroad one night and was short on time and his driving license had already been revoked for speeding so he saw two bearded bluejeaned beatniks parked, asked them to trade a quick ride to work at the railroad station for two sticks of tea, they complied and arrested him--They were disguised policemen--For this great crime he spent two years in San Quentin in the same cell with a murderous gunman--His job was sweeping out the cotton mill room--I expect him to be all bitter and out of his head because of this but strangely and magnificently he's become quieter, more radiant, more patient, manly, more friendly even--" (55-56)

A key difference in this book is that now, Kerouac is rich.  Or at least semi-rich.  He has begun to receive proceeds from On the Road and characterizes himself as a celebrity disenchanted with what readers have interpreted him to be--a 26 or 27-year-old hitchhiking artist, in search of the next great adventure.  He is hardly this, and near the opening of the novel, he hitchhikes for what he says was the last time in his life.

But he lends $100 to Cody and this is enough for Cody to completely change his life around.  He reappears in what may be the most "exuberant" scene in the novel--at Monsanto's cabin in Big Sur:

"Suddenly, boom, the door of the cabin is flung open with a loud crash and a burst of sunlight illuminates the room and I see an Angel standing arm outstretched in the door!--It's Cody!  all dressed in his Sunday best in a suit!  beside him are ranged several graduating golden angels from Evelyn gold beautiful wife down to the most dazzling angel of them all little Timmy with the sun striking off his hair in beams!....."Happy birthday Jack!" yells Cody or some such ordinary crazy inane greeting "I've come to you with good news!  I've brought Evelyn and Emily and Gaby and Timmy because we're all so grateful and glad because everything has worked out absolutely dead perfect, or living perfect, boy, with that little old hunnerd dollars you gave me let me tell  you the fantastic story of what happened" (to him it was utterly fantastic)..." (106-107)

And then he gives him pot:

"You guessed it old buddy I have here the LAST, the absolutely LAST yet most perfect of all black-haired seeded packed tight superbomber joints in the world which you and I are now going to light up, 's'why I didnt want you to bring any of that wine right away, why boy we got time to drink wine and wine and dance" and here he is lighting up, says "Now dont walk too fast, it's time to stroll along like we used to do remember sometimes on our daysoff on the railroad, or walking across that Third and Townsend tar like you said and the time we watched the sun go down so perfect holy purple over that Mission cross--Yessir, slow and easy, looking at this gone valley" so we start to puff the pot but as usual it creates doubtful paranoias in both our minds and we actually sort of fall silent on the way to the car which is a beautiful grape color at that, a brand new shiney Jeepster with all the equipments...." (108-109)

From there, Jack is later introduced to Billie, and her son Elliott, which sets up the denouement of the novel.  He also meets Billie's friend Perry, who takes the "beat" attitude to its logical extreme, and causes Jack a moment of pause.  As a side note, there are also several meetings with generals in the U.S. Army which cause Jack some weird paranoia, but moving on:

"Strange--and Perry Yturbide that first day while Billie's at work and we've just called his mother now wants me to come with him to visit a general of the U.S. Army--"Why? and what's all these generals looking out of silent windows?" I say--but nothing surprises Perry--"We'll go there because I want you to dig the most beautiful girls we ever saw," in fact we take a cab--But the "beautiful girls" turn out to be 8 and 9 and 10 years old, daughters of the general or maybe even cousins or daughters of a nextdoor strange general, but the mother is there, there are also boys playing in a backroom, we have Elliott with us who Perry has carried on his shoulders all the way--I look at Perry and he says "I wanted you to see the most beautiful cans in town" and I realize he's dangerously insane--In fact he then says "See this perfect beauty?" a ponytailed 10 year old daughter of the general (who aint home yet) "I'm going to kidnap her right now" and he takes her by the hand and they go out on the street for an hour while I sit there over drinks talking to the mother--There's some vast conspiracy to make me go mad anyway--" (133)

This takes place in San Francisco, but later they will go to Big Sur, and Jack will experience his breakdown.

It is perhaps worth noting at this point my personal connection to this story.  While I am no stranger to incredible statements that may in fact be erroneous, perhaps the most incredible statement I have made of late is that I am, in fact, Kerouac's reincarnation.  Now I understand that all people are tied by a common humanity, and certainly some religious upbringings may cause others to experience certain sensations more closely than others--but Kerouac's description of madness in Big Sur is personally significant to me for two reasons: #1: In July 2012, I went to Big Sur and experienced a similar breakdown of sorts.  #2: In March of 2003 I experienced the physical, mental, and psychological sensations that Kerouac reports in this book (which I wrote about in my first significant written work "Autointoxication").  Kerouac would often say in bars, "I'm the greatest writer of the 20th century."  That may be up for debate, but it is not so far from the truth.  For me to say "I'm the greatest writer of the 21st century" certainly comes off as false, since I have not been published--but keep in mind that On the Road was published in 1958, when Kerouac was 35, and keep in mind that we share the same aesthetic sensibilities (to what degree he has influenced me I cannot be sure but I must say that before I ever read him --On the Road when I was 18--I did not have such a different artistic vision as I have today, which is not far from Kerouac's, or Proust's.

With that out of the way:

"I realize I may never come out of this and my mother is waiting for me at home praying for me because she must know what's happening tonight, I cry out to her to pray and help me--I remember my cat for the first time in three hours and let out a yell that scared Billie--"All right Jack?"--"Give me a little time"--But now she's started to sleep, poor girl is exhausted, I realize she's going to abandon me to my fate anyway and I cant help thinking she and Dave and Romana are all secretly awake waiting for me to die--"For what reason?" I'm thinking "this secret poisoning society, I know, it's because I'm a Catholic, it's a big anti-Catholic scheme, it's Communists destroying everybody, systematic individuals are poisoned till finally they'll have everybody, this madness changes you completely and in the morning you no longer have the same mind--the drug is invented by Airapatianz, it's the brainwash drug, I always thought that Romana was a Communist being a Rumanian, and as for Billie that gang of hers is strange, and Cody dont care, and Dave's all evil just like I always figured maybe" but soon my thoughts arent even as "rational" as that any more but become hours of raving--There are forces whispering in my ear in rapid long speeches advising and warning, suddenly other voices are shouting, the trouble is all the voices are longwinded and talking very fast like Cody at his fastest and like the creek so that I have to keep up with the meaning tho I wanta bat it out of my ears--I keep waving at my ears--I'm afraid to close my eyes for all the turmoiled universes I see tilting and expanding suddenly exploding suddenly clawing in to my center, faces, yelling mouths, long haired yellers, sudden evil confidences, sudden rat-tat-tats of cerebral committees arguing about "Jack" and talking about him as if he wasnt there--Aimless moments when I'm waiting for more voices and suddenly the wind explodes huge groans in the million treetop leaves that sounds like the moon gone mad--And the moon rising higher, brighter, shining down in my eyes like a streetlamp--The huddled shadowy sleeping figures over there so coy--So human and safe, I'm crying "I'm not human any more and I'll never be safe any more, Oh what I wouldnt give to be home on a Sunday afternoon yawning because I'm bored, Oh for that again, it'll never come back again--Ma was right, it was all bound to drive me mad, now it's done--What'll I say to her?--She'll be terrified and go mad herself--Oh ti Tykey, aide mue--me who's just eaten fish have no right to ask for brother Tyke again--"--An argot of sudden screamed reports rattles through my head in a language I never heard but understand immediately--For a moment I see blue Heaven and the Virgin's white veil but suddenly a great evil blur like an ink spot spreads over it, "The devil!--the devil's come after me tonight! tonight is the night!  that's what!"--But angels are laughing and having a big barn dance in the rocks of the sea, nobody cares any more--Suddenly as clear as anything I ever saw in my life, I see the Cross."  (177-178)

This passage represents the closest I have seen Kerouac come to describing a delusional episode with perfect accuracy.  Indeed I am hard-pressed to think of any other writer who has summed up those horrifying moments when one is alone in their mind and confused and cannot summon a rational thought but is instead reduced to broad, dualistic sensations of good and evil, heaven and hell, God and the Devil, blue and red, or white and black.

While this review is pretty much complete, a passage or two on gayness is always appropriate, particularly since my visit to Big Sur hinged upon whether I would hike to the hot springs or not (the same ones I cannot be sure):

"The boys reassure me the hot springs bath will do me good (they see I'm gloomy now hungover for good) but when we arrive my heart sinks again as McLear points out to sea from the balcony of the outdoor pools: "Look out there floating in the sea weeds, a dead otter!"--And sure enough it is a dead otter I guess, a big brown pale lump floating up and down mournfully with the swells and ghastly weeds, my otter, my dear otter I'd written poems about--"Why did he die?" I ask myself in despair--"Why do they do that?"--"What's the sense of all this?"--...--The hot water pools are steaming, Fagan and Monsanto and the others are all sitting peacefully up to their necks, they're all naked, but there's a gang of fairies also there naked all standing around various bath house postures that make me hesitate to take my clothes off just on general principles--In fact Cody doesnt even bother to do anything but lie down with this clothes on in the sun, on the balcony table, and just smoke--But I borrow McLear's yellow bathing suit and get in--"What ya wearing a bathingsuit in a hot springs pool for boy?" says Fagan chuckling--With horror I realize there's spermatazoa floating in the hot water--I look and I see the other men (the fairies) all taking good long looks at Ron Baker who stands there facing the sea with his arse for all to behold, not to mention McLear and Dave Wain too--But it's very typical of me and Cody that we won't undress in this situation (we were both raised Catholics?)--Supposedly the big sex heroes of our generation, in fact--You might think--But the combination of the strange silent watching fairy-men, and the dead otter out there, and the spermatazoa in the pools makes me sick....." (91-92).

Shortly after that is a mention of Nepenthe, which is where I rushed to catch a bus off of Big Sur to Monterey, and another mention of generals because there was something "sinister" about the fact that he had never met any general in his life and now he had met two of them (the third would be in a passage quoted above).  Henry Miller is also mentioned two or three times in the novel, apparently lurking somewhere around Big Sur, but unfortunately he does not make an appearance.  I went to Big Sur and attended a wedding at the Henry Miller Memorial Library and Museum, so that would have been the icing on the cake for me.

Later everyone leaves and he has a dream:

"Then I turn my rumbling attention to a couple of unknown Fin du Siecle poets called Theo Marzials and Henry Harland--I take a nap after supper and dream of the U.S. Navy, a ship anchored near a war scene, at an island, but everything is drowsy as two sailors go up the trail with fishing-poles and a dog between them to go make love quietly in the hills: the captain and everybody know they're queer and rather than being infuriated however they're all drowsily enchanted by such gentle love: you see a sailor peeking after them with binoculars from the poop: there's supposed to be a war but nothing happens, just laundry...." (102)

Perhaps you can tell from these passages that Kerouac paid scant attention to punctuation--there are probably more em-dashes in the novel than periods, and apostrophes in certain contractions are omitted.  This just shows Kerouac's increasing comfort in his own prose-style, and I do not think the style ever hinders the readability of the text.  In fact I think it makes it more readable, and perhaps this is why I like it better than On the Road.

But to be fair, I have not read On the Road in many years now (6 maybe?) and perhaps it is time for another reading and a new perspective on it.

This marks the end of Flying Houses book reviews for a while now--while I may attempt to review Americana by Don DeLillo, classes have started again today, and sadly (and for the last year) Flying Houses will experience significant hiatuses, and only include Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress columns, or other writings not deemed publishable by those outlets to which I submit.

Bottom line: Read Kerouac.  And don't just stop at On the Road--even if you don't like it all that much.

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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