M Train - Patti Smith (2015)

M Train is Patti Smith's follow-up to Just Kids and I misunderstood it to be a kind of sequel or continuation of that critically-acclaimed volume.  I understood M Train to be about Patti Smith's life in the late 70's through the mid 90's, or at least focusing on that period.  I do not know why I labored under this delusion, and it had to be from some kind of misinformation in a review I read about a year ago or whenever it was released (not quite--October of 2015, ironically close to the release of our previous review).  Certainly one wouldn't get that impression from reading the inside jacket.

So it goes without saying that this is not the book I expected it to be, but I would have read it regardless.  And while I personally cannot rate it as highly as Just Kids, it is very close.  It's a loose, experimental book, and it mostly works.  Some moments are as brilliant and heartbreaking as anything that came before, and at other moments, there's just a lot of coffee.

M Train is about many things, but there are several major themes, and chief amongst them has to be coffee.  The #1 topic of this book is coffee.  All Patti Smith does is drink coffee. She is like Balzac, though I believe her reflection on that literary subject and his caffeine addiction is in Just Kids.  Much of the book consists of Smith waking up and crossing the street to Cafe Ino which is somewhere near 6th Ave and Bedford Ave. in the Village.  (Note: Smith also recalls getting falafel at Mamoun's the night before Hurricane Sandy struck.)  She sits at the same corner table and orders brown toast and olive oil and drinks coffee and writes in her notepad, or on napkins.  She develops a possessiveness about the table that is humorous.  One scene where she confronts another woman trying to take it from her is pretty hilarious:

"The cafe was empty, but the cook was unscrewing the outlet plate above my seat.  I took my book into the bathroom and read while he finished.  When I emerged, the cook was gone and a woman was ready to sit in my seat.
-Excuse me, this is my table.
-Did you reserve it?
-Well, no, but it's my table.
-Did you actually sit here?  There's nothing on the table and you have your coat on.
I stood there mutely.  If this were an episode of Midsomer Murders she would surely be found strangled in a wild ravine behind an abandoned vicarage.  I shrugged and sat at another table, hoping to wait her out.  She spoke loudly, asking for eggs Benedict and iced coffee with skim milk, neither offered on the menu.
She'll leave, I thought.  But she didn't.  She plopped her oversized red lizard bag on my table and made numerous calls on her cell phone.  There was no way to escape her odious conversation, fixed on a tracking number for some missing FedEx package.  I sat and stared at the heavy white coffee mug.  If this were an episode of Luther, she would be found faceup in the snow with objects from her purse arranged about her: a bodily corona like Our Lady of Guadalupe." (74-75)

For a second I thought Smith was being a little too crazy, but then I realized that she must have a different sort of life.  I'm not saying she deserves to be entitled, but she deserves to feel entitled with everything she has done over the past forty years.  If you don't know who she is, and you don't give her the deference she should command, you kind of deserve it.

The book is not a memoir of 1978 - 2015, but more like a series of snapshots in a life, roughly centered around the 2012-2013 year in Greenwich Village and Far Rockaway.

There are several dream sequences in this book--a certain "cowpoke" bedevils Smith throughout the book--and some of them are heartbreaking and beautiful:

[Smith describes dreaming of a winding path up a mountain with a guide who then abandons her in a very steep open area and then is suddenly safe on the ground approached by a youth and told that they called to Fred, then seeing two men who give her tea and feed her cake and tell her they intervened and called to Fred and he carried her there, but there was the matter of a fee, one hundred thousand dirhams]
"I reached into my pocket and it was filled with money, exactly what he asked for, but the scene had shifted.  I was alone on a stony path surrounded by chalky hills.  I paused to reflect on what had happened.  Fred had rescued me in a dream.  And then suddenly I was back on the highway and I saw him in the distance trailing after the wheel with the face of a clock with no hands.
-Get it, Fred! I cried.
And the wheel collided with a massive cornucopia of lost things.  It fell on its side, and Fred knelt and placed his hand on it.  He flashed a huge smile, one of absolute joy, from a place with no beginning or end." (244-245)

Fred of course is her late husband and the book opens up with a description of their trip to Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, "a border town in northwest French Guiana, on the North Atlantic coast of South America," the site of a former French penal colony, where hardcore criminals would be kept before going onto Devil's Island.  Jean Genet had supposedly wanted to go there (to ascend the ladder of criminality), and he was about 70 at the time, and Patti wanted to bring back some stones from the jail to give him, with William S. Burroughs promising to help deliver the stones to him.  This is easily one of the best parts of the book.  It reads like an adventure thriller.  A movie could probably be made about it.

The ending finds Smith at Genet's grave in a town outside Tangier in the late 90's, on assignment interviewing Paul Bowles, taking a side trip to deliver the stones she never got to him in person.  It's a beautiful opening and closing motif.

From here the book goes to Cafe Ino, already described above, and she fantasizes for a moment about opening up a cafe in New York, even going so far as to procure a space with a down payment, before Fred "Sonic" Smith asks her to marry him and move to Detroit with him.  She laid out her inspiration, and I was pleasantly surprised to find an establishment just a few blocks from my present abode:

"An unwinding spool of obscure angles, a glass of tea, an opened journal, and a round metal table balanced with an empty matchbook.  Cafes.  Le Rouquet in Paris, Cafe Josephinum in Vienna, Bluebird Coffeeshop in Amsterdam, Ice Cafe in Sydney, Cafe Aqui in Tucson, Wow Cafe at Point Loma, Caffe Trieste in North Beach, Caffe del Professore in Naples, Cafe Uroxen in Uppsala, Lula Cafe in Logan Square, Lion Cafe in Shibuya, and Cafe Zoo in the Berlin train station.

So Patti must have come back fairly recently to her place of birth.  Actually, she was here just a few days ago, hosting an event at the Old Town School of Folk Music with her family.  It was $25 and I thought it was too much, but really I should have looked more closely into it because I thought it was just a speaking gig.

From there she remarks upon Zak, the owner of Cafe Ino, telling her to visit him at the new coffee shop he's opening near Rockaway Beach, which opens up the whole narrative about her finding a little bungalow that she falls in love with there and ends up buying after touring and making a bunch of money over the summer of 2012.  Then, Hurricane Sandy hits.  This is another great part of the book, because its a narrative of one of the quintessential New York disasters of late.  Like the way City on Fire depicts the blackout in 1977, Smith depicts Hurricane Sandy memorably and accurately.

Smith also writes about her membership in the CDC--the Continental Drift Club, which celebrates the life of Alfred Wegener, who pioneered the idea.  I would imagine that most people would think this is another hilarious facet to her.  But she meets Bobby Fischer on a trip to Iceland with the CDC, and that is another classic scene.

She also writes about a trip to Mexico to see the coffee capital Vereacruz, followed by an engagement to photograph Frida Kahlo's home and belongings in Casa Azul.  This was the only part of the narrative that baffled me--did Smith really fly home in between the two trips?  Because it seems like she was pretty much in the same area.  She flies into Mexico City, buys a round trip train ticket to Veracruz, checks into Casa Azul, finds it closed, goes to Veracruz, has adventures there.  Then, it cuts to her packing in New York and flying out to Mexico again.  Maybe she has to go to Casa Azul twice?  I digress...

One of her favorite authors over the course of the book is Haruki Murakami.  She writes of first discovering him in St. Mark's Bookshop and reading a few books but then getting bowled over by The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.  And she becomes obsessed with this image of a well on an abandoned property in Japan.

Smith later does go to Japan, and visit several graves of artists she admires,  I think I've done a pretty good job of spoiling almost every little thing this book is about, but it won't matter (oh right--also detective shows, especially The Killing) because the pleasure of it lies in Smith's voice on the page and the poetic flourishes she sometimes employs.

While there is so much to admire in this book, its reach is more limited than her previous volume (she would not sell a Showtime series based upon it).  It is much more of a "journal" type book.  It's labeled as a biography, which just seems blatantly wrong.  It actually says "biography" on the back near the bar code.  In any case it's beautiful writing, but it sometimes dissolves into basically what amounts to a diary.  I never wrote this well in a diary or journal so there's a difference.

Some sequences in the book are better than others, and it tends to ebb and flow with momentum.  I'm not sure what Smith expects us to think about her life, but basically, she is human.  Her talk of detective shows makes her seem like less of an otherworldly artist who would shun television.  She even writes what amounts to fan fiction at one point.

Fans of Smith will love this, and those still unacquainted probably will too.  And others may not get it, or find parts boring, but on the whole this will likely be a pleasurable and educational experience for most.  It seems like a good book to read while you're traveling to an exotic city.  Or holed up in a storm.      
   

Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life - Carol Sklenicka

Go back to the year 2000 with me, if you please.  I'm in Wilmette, IL at my parent's house, home on break from school out east, getting ready to apply to college, sitting in an armchair in the living room (designated "the library") leafing through an anthology of American literature.  I'm vaguely familiar with Raymond Carver from Roger Ebert's review of Short Cuts, which I read a few years earlier, and I see the story "Cathedral."  I decide to read it, and it's beautiful, a sketch of a blind man being helped to draw a cathedral from an image in his mind of which he can have no reference.  It's a pretty quick read, but enormously moving, and I decide this might be a writer worth checking out.

Fast forward a year and I'm at NYU in a Prose Composition class and our professor gives us a xeroxed copy of Carver's poem "Fear," a list poem about things he fears.  I've seen Short Cuts at least a time or two by now (even going so far as to call my favorite movie at the time (Magnolia) a rip-off), and I go to one of those used book tables in Greenwich Village and pick up a copy of Where I'm Calling From and I read the stories sporadically throughout the course of my freshman year, all the while hearing praise of Carver from anyone the least bit connected to any creative writing class.  I pick my oldest sister for Secret Santa for Christmas that year, and though she has never really expressed an interest in so-called literary fiction, give her a copy of Where I'm Calling From, asterisking all the stories in particular that I think she should read.

So yes, I love Raymond Carver, and this biography easily makes the list of the Best Books reviewed on Flying Houses.  It's not a perfect biography, but it's very close.  It's so painstakingly researched that a reader can almost observe Carver's movements on a day-to-day basis.

Also, Carver went to the same high school as Justice Douglas.  So two of the graduates of Yakima High School would go onto lives worthy of biographies listed as Best Books on FH.  Therefore I believe my friends Byron Johnson and Erin Ecklund will be moving on to live great lives (though I think they went to a different high school).  Boarding school was a waste of money.  Families should move to Yakima to go to this school.  Then again, it would be inadvisable to base one's child's future on a career in the arts, or the law...

***

The book is subtitled "A Writer's Life" and indeed the first half of the book lays out in excruciating detail all of the obstacles that Carver had to overcome to become an author worthy of publication in The Best American Short Stories series and The New Yorker.  He marries quite young to Maryann Burk and they have their first child before he turns twenty.  Even before then, he had developed enough of an interest in creating writing that he paid $25 to the Palmer Institute of Authorship in Hollywood at the age of 16.  Sklenicka cannily observes that some of the correspondence has a ring of destiny about it--the first lesson is aimed squarely at the short story and reads:

"In becoming a Palmer student you are taking an important step in establishing yourself in a profession that enjoys the respect and esteem of all classes of people, a profession you may be proud to claim as your own...This may be the vital turning point in the course of your life...." (39)

Later, Ray goes to the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa, several times, in varying guises--never quite earning an MFA, but sometimes taking credit for it.  In the meanwhile, he works at sawmills and barely earns enough to support their family.  Their continual poverty is a constant theme of the biography.  However, what struck me most about their family was Maryann.  She just seems awesome.  This is a biography of Raymond Carver--but there is so much Maryann in here that it might as well be a biography of her, too.  And this was the surprisingly compelling aspect of the book to me: they have this beautiful relationship, but also an extremely difficult one, and they stick it out for so long.  He owed his early career to her.  He would not have accomplished what he accomplished without her.

His first stories were published in the late 1950's and early 1960's, but he seemed to hit his first stride in 1964 with "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" Eventually that would be the title story for his first collection, which would be released thirteen years later.  More than any other book I've read, this truly depicts the "writer's life" of living your life for your work and spending a considerable amount of time submitting to journals and magazines for publication.  The "second stride" probably came with the publication of "Neighbors" in Esquire, where Gordon Lish served as fiction editor.

There are several literary friendships depicted here.  First there is John Gardner as Carver's writing professor at Iowa (though he is only a few years older).  Second, there is Lish, who certainly comes across as one of the more entertaining (and ruthless) characters in the book.  Third, there is Tess Gallagher, and later Tobias Wolff and Richard Ford.  There is also an entertaining and sad section where a 61-year-old John Cheever drinks and teaches alongside Carver at Iowa in 1973 (Chapter 18 "Drowning," which is not quite rock bottom for Carver, but very close).

Alcoholism is another major theme of the book, and it is written about with such precision and empathy that I thought Sklenicka must have battled demons of her own on that score.  He would drink for three more years after the episodes with Cheever up until the publication of Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?  Roughly a year after that was published he would become sober and remain sober.  It is quite harrowing to read about his plight during these times, all in the "Celebrated and Homeless" chapter.

One quick side note:  one of his earlier stories is called "Are These Actual Miles?"  This is just an awesome title for a story:

"One of those new stories configured the rock-bottom days of the Carvers' lives in Sacramento when they were forced to sell their convertible.  'Are These Actual Miles?' is about bankruptcy, suspections of infidelity, and suicidal depression.  Ray pushed into new territory with this story, and it proved to be exactly what Lish was waiting for.  Late in November, Lish telephoned to say that Gingrich and Hayes were 'wild' about the story.  Not only that, but Lish planned to include both 'Neighbors' and 'Miles' in an anthology of fiction from Esquire that he was editing for Doubleday."  (214)

But they change to the title to "What is It?"  Worst title change ever!  Ray is upset about it and Maryann calls him a "whore" for selling out, but Esquire gives them another boost in credibility and they accept it.

I really shouldn't give away the whole story--I'll speak in generalities.  It is an impressive story.  You know, people think that writer's lives are boring.  This is anything but a boring life, but I do not think anybody in their right mind would ever want to live it.  It is filled with so much uncertainty and chaos and desperation that no one should set their sights on a literary career unless they are willing to sacrifice almost everything in favor of that pursuit.

***

This is a really hard review to write because there's so much to say.  This is a big book--not quite as big as the Ernest Hemingway biography that holds the record for longest gestation time on FH--but at 496 pages a hefty read.  I tore through it.  It took me less than 2 months.  Maybe a month and a half.  It was a little slow going in the beginning, but within the first 100 pages Carver is publishing his first stories.  It seems that the period up until say, Cathedral, is very tightly documented, and that the last five years of Carver's life, when he finally began to taste the fruits of literary success, pass a bit more quickly.

It is worth telling how I found this book, because it is quite fortuitous.  I live in a very bad apartment building, but we do have a free washer and dryer in the basement.  The machines themselves leave something to be desired.  The room is disgusting.  No one ever cleans it, except for me the one time my landlord took $40 off my rent one month when I agreed to do it.  Despite this atmosphere, it also becomes a kind of dumping ground for unwanted items that could be used for other tenants passing through.  You see, my landlord does not rent out three, 3 BR apartments--he rents out 9 rooms.  Each of them is around $600, so he is making over $5000 per month off us.  But we live in relative squalor.  Some of this is the doing of my roommates, but it is mostly the doing of the 1st and 2nd floor tenants, over the years.

Sometimes though, a treasure appears.  I had noticed a very good book collection laying on the ground.  Sometimes I would flip through the Williams S. Burroughs compilation Word Virus while waiting a few extra minutes for a garment to be dried.  But this one particular day in late October or early November, I saw the Raymond Carver biography and I thought it was such a quirky book to have that I had to seize the opportunity and read it quickly and return it in case the person that owned it moved out.  Finally I talked to two of the basement neighbors and asked whose it was and they said somebody who had moved out had left it and I could keep it.  That took the pressure off, but I read it quickly regardless.  At a certain point I read "Fires" out of Fires (which is the only Carver collection I own) and a description of a scene in a laundromat stands out as imminently moving:

"The dark heart of 'Fires' is a two-page anecdote about doing his family's wash at a laundromat in Iowa City.  The laundromat was on the corner of Burlington and Gilbert, around the corner from the writers' favorite beer joints.  Canadian writer Clark Blaise sometimes chatted with Ray while their clothes spun at this laundromat, as Blaise and his wife, the novelist Bharati Mukherjee, struggled to keep up with their baby's diapers.  But Carver is alone in the laundromat epiphany he reports.  Maryann is at work, the kids are at a birthday party, and Ray is waiting for a dryer.  It's Saturday afternoon and crowded, so he is becoming frantic. Another dryer has stopped, and Carver is moving toward it, ready to replace the other clothes with his own, when the owner of the clothing decides to let it go for another cycle:

     ....I remember thinking at that moment....that nothing could come anywhere close, could possibly be as important to me, could make as much difference, as the fact that I had two children.  And that I would always have them and always find myself in this position of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction.
     Like that it came to me.  Like a sharp breeze when the window is thrown open.  Up to that point in my life I'd gone along thinking...that things would work out somehow--that everything in my life I'd hoped for or wanted to do was possible.

Is Carver writing fiction here?  Could this one moment encompass so much?  The essay dramatizes a situation that had smoldered for years.  Carver admits in the essay that many writers have overcome 'far more serious impediments to their work, including imprisonment, blindness, the threat of torture or death...'" (96-97)

Later, Carver's children come to resent him for "Fires" and a few other stories and poems throughout the years.  Perhaps he should have kept his mouth shut, but you know, we all need little anecdotes about the petty frustrations involved with laundry.  Most strikingly though, Scklenicka adds that, in this scene, Carver is 25 and halfway through his life.

***

This review is getting long as it is.  There are just too many little details that I'd like to reference.  One of the cutest, for me, is Ray's favored non-alcoholic beverage:

Okay unfortunately that's not in the index so I can't find it, but at one point his children notice that he always drinks RC Cola.  He likes it because his initials are R.C.  The image of him sitting around drinking R.C. and presiding, like, "Yep, that's my cola," is hilarious.

There are several details about other writers, but the big gaping hole in this biography that we've left so far is Gordon Lish.  Lish's anecdote about J.D. Salinger is worth excerpting (as is almost any anecdote about that controversial legend).  I also wish Obama/whoever wins in 2016 cared more about people like us:

"No project Lish undertook was too humble to become a vehicle for his prodigious personality.  For the Job Corps, a Kennedy-era program for unemployed young men, he created a box set of reading folders called Why Work.  Instead of gathering already published materials, Lish sent telegrams to thirty writers he admired.  One of these telegrams went to J.D. Salinger, who had been in seclusion for more than a decade.  Lish followed his telegram with letters--numerous letters--to Salinger that show Lish inventing himself as a literary impresario.  A few months later, he received a telephone call at work from Salinger himself.  When he understood who was calling him, Lish reports, 'I was grinning so hard that my brain could not have had any room left over in it for one speck of business.'  As Lish tells it, Salinger said, 'I'm calling because I was worried about you.'  Salinger again refused to write for Why Work.  But Lish was not unhappy: 'I mean, forget that it was animating him all four months later, it worked! had worked!--because there he was, J.D. Salinger, the impeccably reclusive J.D. Salinger, calling me--.'" (151)

It is necessary to take a detour into Lish, and relate one final personal anecdote in two pieces.  First, on the day I finished this biography, the Winter 2016 edition of the The Paris Review (#215) arrived at our apartment (I don't subscribe to it; my roommate does--one of several reasons why I will be sad to see him go).  One of the interviews was of the now 82-year-old Gordon Lish, who is cantankerous as ever.  Lish donated his papers to Indiana University, and he encourages all Carver fanatics to visit this collection to see just how responsible he is for Carver's acclaim.  Now it is very true that Carver is widely imitated and extremely influential, and Lish's labors cannot be diminished.  However, Lish makes it seem like Carver is a stumbling drunk who can barely form a sentence, who spits out a couple dozen pages of gibberish, which Lish then cuts by more than 50% to emerge with a prize-winning story.  Lish is just a very heavy editor, and other writers, such as Barry Hannah, acknowledge how deeply he changed their work for the better.  Carver, on the other hand, was sheepish about this, and fought the accusations that he was really just Lish's puppet.

For Christmas, I got my mother a copy of Beginners, which is the manuscript Carver sent Lish of the stories that would comprise his second book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, which is certainly one of the most famous short stories he wrote.  I haven't read it yet, but it's one of those gifts where you are really getting something for yourself--though I know my mother loves literature and I was just trying to turn her on to Carver.  Maybe it will be weak, though.  I am afraid.  I looked at the opening of "What Is It?" from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?  in the Barnes & Noble and it starts off like a rocket--"First thing, we have to sell the car," or some other such opening.  Lish would remove characters, remove names from characters, cut out whole scenes, remove neat conclusions and leave stories to end on an ambiguous or dark note.  Carver is often defined as a minimalist, but I think it is quite clear that Lish is responsible for that reputation.  Reading this biography reignited my interest in his work, and I hope to read the Lish-edited books and then perhaps Beginners once my mother is finished with it.  Really one would need to read them side-by-side--or at least focus on the story "Beginners" itself--to determine if that 2009 volume, positioned by Tess Gallagher as truer versions of the stories, is responsible in the least for Birdman, which I feel like put Carver back into the national consciousness.   To be sure, Birdman is an achievement all on its own--but would it really have been the kind of Best Picture type film it was without the Carver motif?  I'm sure plenty of people watching didn't know a thing about "WWTAWWTAL," but those that did understand why the film is such a powerful statement on artistry and fame.

Carver never became "famous" until he stopped drinking, though it was his many drunken misadventures that became the stories of "Bad Ray" which "Good Ray" would then write in his sober years.  There are so many little things in this book that are just hilarious; there are just as many that will break your heart.

A brief word on domestic violence: Ray beat Maryann, and Sklenicka does not shy away from describing it, though she does perhaps whitewash it a bit--but understandably so!  Because Maryann would beat him back, too, and often drank as much as he did.  There is one shocking incident though, where Maryann is nearly killed by a bottle of wine broken on her neck, which opens an artery.  They have a volatile, tempestuous relationship, and it nearly kills them.  One does not get the sense that Ray is the typical abuser and Maryann is the typical victim.  It never seems like she is "scared" of him, though she is remarkably loyal to him.  I will not spoil what happens when they finally divorce, and the alimony arrangement they reach, but let's just say, as I've intimated above already, that Carver owes his career to Maryann.  He owes a debt to Lish as well, but Maryann most of all--because she nourished and cared for him and supported him through the worst times most human beings are ever made to suffer.

Amidst all the messiness of life, Carver eventually succeeds.  Really, here we have someone--in the generation of the "post-Beats" or the New Journalism (or "the New Fiction" Lish curated)--who grew up wanting to be a writer, who did all the things that people still do nowadays (like go to Iowa, submit to journals, etc.) and who made it, but not without extreme difficulty.  It's just such a true story that it has to be one of the Best Books.  Even with a few weird moments--I admit that a few of Sklenicka's rare exclamation points are quirky--this is an incredibly valuable tome for anyone that wants to be a writer.  You cannot help but smile at certain passages.

Okay I had a good one to end with, but we have to keep Thomas alive, too:

"In Zurich, a friend secured them entry to Thomas Mann's archives and Mann's large study with its fine mahogany desk, parquet floor, couch, and easy chairs.  They opened Mann's books and handled his fountain pens and Asian figurines.  'Who couldn't work well with a study like this?' Ray wrote on a postcard, before grumbling that Zurich had 'more Japs than Swiss' and more gays than straight people.  Tess's journal indicates that Ray felt anxious about getting meals at specific times and taking a nap in the afternoon.  Those difficulties were somewhat offset for him by the availability of Swiss chocolate.  After making their third visit to the cemetery where James Joyce is buried and studying several funerary sculptures there, they dined at Kronenhalle, which Joyce had frequented.  Lectures and meetings with publishers in Rome and Milan closed the trip at the end of April.  Weary of media attention and foreign food and foreign languages, Ray gratefully returned to Port Angeles."  (456)

But it's a scene from Syracuse with his son, Vance, that may have touched me more than anything else:

"When Vance took Tobias Wolff's survey course in the short story, he said to Wolff, 'My dad's really good, isn't he?'  Wolff said, 'Vance, your dad is one of the greatest short story writers who ever lived!'  And that had some meaning for him because he was learning about this art form that his father pursued so single-mindedly.  He could see him in this landscape of art." (365-366)

Biographies can be tedious and disappointing.  They can also make you love their subject even more.  Raymond Carver was far from a perfect human being.  In fact, he is downright dastardly at times, but it's the humanity peaking through such moments that give this book its heart.  Not everyone will love it--it seems targeted at Carver's fans, of which there are many--and though there are many writers one might care to emulate if they hope to "make it" in short fiction (Joy Williams comes to mind as she pops up throughout the book as a sort of contemporary female counterpart to Carver), one ultimately must find greatness within themselves.  This book portrays that process beautifully.

The Soft Machine - William S. Burroughs (1966)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

Who reads Watchmen? 

Undoubtedly many people do.  If, for some reason, you have not heard of Watchmen, it is likely that you hang around with non-artist types, or other assorted individuals that do not find value in the graphic novel medium.  And if you have been denied exposure to this book, it is unlikely that you will ever read it.  And if you never read this book, you will have just avoided one of the most creative works of art of the 20^th century. 

That may sound like undue praise, but the cover to the book goes further (“One of Time’s 100 best novels”). 

Watchmen’s two-decade legacy was tested by its film adaption in 2009.  I saw that film in 2010 before I had read the book.  At the time, I felt that the film was overlong, but that certain moments in the film exhibited striking originality—most especially, in the sequence that tells the origin story of Dr. Manhattan.  But on the whole, the movie cannot do justice to the book.  It is not a bad movie.  Zack Snyder probably did about as good a job adapting the book into a 162 minute spectacle as practicable.  Originally, Terry Gilliam was attached to the project, but later dropped out, deciding that the book would be better filmed as a five hour miniseries.  I am easily tempted to agree with that conclusion. 

The two major criticisms I can make of the film are the performances and—an accusation that no doubt holds true for all novels turned into films—the great parts that got left out.  It is not that any of the actors are bad, but Watchmen is a very strange work of art in its tone.  Sometimes, the book is just flat-out hilarious.  There are moments where the cynicism is so severe that the humor branches out into territory seldom ventured.  Moreover, the characters do not always take themselves so seriously.  At the end of the day they realize they are all somewhat antisocial recluses who like to put on costumes and run around and catch bad guys.  The movie could lead the viewer to believe that they take themselves totally seriously, and this would be a huge misinterpretation.  

To be sure, this book contains scenes and moments of unmistakable genius, sheer creativity, and true profundity.  The movie attempts to engage the viewer in some of those moments that only the reader will be able to fully appreciate, but in so doing, almost all of the humor and “radicalism” of the book are lost in a morass self-proclaimed greatness.  And while most of the major scenes (along with the best scenes) are contained in the film, the small details that make Watchmen such a treasure of a book must inevitably be left out in any film version.  The most glaring omission from the film is the exposition of the Tales of the Black Freighter comic book.  While honestly I felt that this was the weakest element of the book—indeed the most striking case of the peripheral niceties overshadowing the exciting main story—this is likely a literary trope that is practically impossible to film without losing a viewer’s interest or deeply unsettling their expectations.  Tales of the Black Freighter will be addressed later but the failure to account for it is the biggest “gap” between the movie and film.  Also missing are the literary interludes and fictional documents between chapters, which, conversely, contain some of the greatest moments in the book.

  

The plot deserves little comment but should be briefly noted: the Comedian (a.k.a. Eddie Blake) has been murdered.  Rorschach (a.k.a. would-be-a-spoiler) investigates, starting October 12, 1985.  He goes to Nite Owl (a.k.a. Daniel Dreiberg), Dr. Manhattan (a.k.a. Jon Osterman), Sally Jupiter (a.k.a. Laurie Juspeczyk), and Ozymandias (a.k.a. Adrian Veidt) to inform them of the killing and to warn them that they may be next.  

The plot of the book is very straightforward, but immaculately paced.  Each of the characters' back stories emerge in a complex interwoven narrative, supplanted by the interludes between chapters.  It is complex in that Nite Owl and Sally Jupiter were members of the Minutemen (along with the Comedian, and other costumed vigilantes such as Hooded Justice, the Silk Spectre, Captain Metropolis, Mothman) who "passed their titles" onto a younger admirer and a daughter, respectively.  The book is, arguably, just as much about the Minutemen as it is the Watchmen.  The plot is essentially a search for the person behind the killing, and the meaning of it.  Later, Moloch, the "arch-nemesis" of the Watchmen (or Minutemen), who is now an elderly man dying of cancer, tells Rorschach that the Comedian came into his bedroom one night, apparently drunk and babbling on about some kind of island.  Later, the author of Tales of the Black Freighter goes missing, and this is where that narrative strand is finally tied together.

And this is essentially the genius of the book.  Everything is perfectly connected together.  Moore peppers a variety of cultural references into the book so that it all becomes a disturbing mirror of reality--an "alternative" 1985.  One of the two dueling newspapers reporting on the cataclysmic events that befall the world is called Nova Express, and the influence of William S. Burroughs is apparent.  He is even directly referenced at one point (I am sure of it, though I cannot find it--one of the problems with quoting passages from a graphic novel).  Regardless, I have to say that Moore succeeds with the "cut-up" method in a way that I never was able to fully appreciate in Burroughs.  In his books, the narratives fall prey to the weird nonsensical prose--but here, where the narrative strands are disconnected, they are artfully re-assembled in such a way that perhaps you cannot call it a "cut-up" anymore.  

In any case, the writing is excellent.  For example, Rorschach's "voice" is indelible, and his journal entries are always a pleasure:

"October 16th, 1985: 42nd Street: Women's breasts draped across every billboard, every display, littering the sidewalk.  Was offered Swedish and French love...but not American love.  American love; like Coke in green glass bottles.  They don't make it anymore.  Thought about Moloch's story on way to cemetery.  Could all be lies.  Could all be part of revenge scheme, planned during his decade behind bars.  But if true, then what?  Puzzling reference to an island.  Also to Dr. Manhattan.  Might he be at risk on some way?  So many questions.  Never mind.  Answers soon.  Nothing in insoluble.  Nothing is hopeless.  Not while there's life."  (Chapter II, 25)

Or take a newspaper "interlude" that is dated September 1976:

"PROBE: There was Ursula Zandt, the Silhouette...
SALLY: Uh-huh.  Well, sooner or later, okay, that's going to come up, so let me deal with that...First off, I didn't like her as a person.  I mean, she was not an easy person to get along with.  But, when the papers got hold of it, her being a--what is it--a gay woman they say nowadays, when that happened, I thought it was wrong.  I mean, Laurence, who was my first husband, he got everybody to thew her out of the group to minimize the P.R. damage, but...I mean, I voted along with everybody else, but....well, it wasn't fair.  It wasn't honest.  I mean, she wasn't the only gay person in the Minutemen.  Some professions, I don't know, they attract a certain type....
PROBE: Who else was gay?

SALLY: I'm not naming anybody.  It was a couple of the guys, and they're both dead now.  One died recently.  I'm not saying who it was, I'm just saying that we all knew, and we knew she wasn't the only one, and we slung her out just the same.  When she got murdered like that...I mean, I never really liked her.  Ursula.  Was that her real name?  I didn't know that.  I didn't like her, but...throwing her out.  We shouldn't have done that.  I feel bad about that."  (Chapter IX, 22)

I have made all of the glowing comments I possibly can about this book and will not exhort myself any further because they likely fall on deaf ears: as I said, if you have not already read this book, you will probably never read it.  I came late to the party.  But if you have seen it in your pseudo-artist friend's bookshelves and have had your curiosity piqued, I highly recommend you follow that urge.                   

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.

Desolation Angels - Jack Kerouac

Of all the great 20th century American novelists, Kerouac stands as probably the coolest. He will probably remain the coolest novelist of all time until for establishing so much of the American “hip” character. But he himself is not proud of this achievement! Desolation Angels is Kerouac’s attempt at explaining himself fully, without ornament, and apparently, more directly from his own diaries than in any of his other work. For further proof that I am not crazy in thinking Kerouac was not proud of creating an archetypal image of hipness, see the experience captured in Kurt Vonnegut’s Palm Sunday of Vonnegut’s son returning to his father’s house on Cape Cod carrying a duffel bag and wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, with Kerouac sitting at the table, suddenly starting up, claiming, drunkenly, “You don’t know anything about me!” or his ruminations appearing near the end of Desolation Angels, documenting the period in which Road was published:
“And just like in New York or Frisco or anywhere there they are all hunching around marijuana smoke, talking, the cool girls with long thin legs in slacks, the men with goatees, all an enormous drag after all and at the time (1957) not even started yet officially with the name of “Beat Generation.” To think that I had so much to do with it, too, in fact at that very moment the manuscript of Road was being lineotyped for imminent publication and I was already sick of the whole subject. Nothing can be more dreary than “coolness” (not Irwin’s cool, or Bull’s or Simon’s, which is a natural quietness) but postured, actually secretly rigid coolness that covers up the fact that the character is unable to convey anything of force or interest, a kind of sociological coolness soon to become a fad up into the mass of middleclass youth for awhile. There’s even a kind of insultingness, probably unintentional, like when I said to the Paris girl just fresh she said from visiting a Persian Shah for Tiger hunt “Did you actually shoot the tiger yourself?” she gave me a cold look as tho I’d just tried to kiss her at the window of a Drama School. Or tried to trip the Huntress. Or something. But all I could do was sit on the edge of the bed in despair like Lazarus listening to their awful “likes” and “like you know” and “wow crazy” and “a wig, man” “a real gas”—All this was about to sprout out all over America even down to High School level and be attributed in part to my doing! But Irwin paid no attention to all that and just wanted to know what they were thinking anyway.” (358-359)
True, it may all be “dreary,” but it’s amazing how many people will namedrop Kerouac having only read Road (if even all of it, word by word) and diffuse so much of his energy through their own ambitions towards literature or celebrity. Kerouac is notorious for having written Road the way he did (people disagree with me, but I believe I am correct in saying, in three weeks, on one long sheet of paper (which no one debates, and which was actually on display in a bookstore in Boulder, CO one day I happened to be there, but which I passed up, for what reason I do not know, something stupid, so many stupid decisions of late…) and probably on some form of pep pills or something or other), and less-famous for the Subterraneans (a three-day-novella) and justifiably noteworthy for the crisp, more-straightforward narrative of The Dharma Bums. Now, after Desolation Angels, which I am prepared to say is my favorite Kerouac novel so far, my interest in him has been resuscitated, if only especially because everyone seems to have missed his point. And studying him for the purposes of literature ends in claiming that he himself often threw caution to the wind when it came to providing work worthy of “literary criticism”—there is a passage I will quote later (when I find it) where he details his method somewhat iconographically. There are no secret Nabokovian games Kerouac plays (he usually doesn’t leave the reader in the dark), beyond giving one character appearing in a brief moment the last name of Nabokov, certainly not an invisible personage several years after Lolita came into print. He doesn’t need to, because he’s got Irwin Garden and Bull Hubbard to talk about, and their equally famous recently published masterworks “Howling” and “Nude Supper.” Other characters pop in and out—famously Cody, who more or less makes a series of cameos, Ben Fagan, a Frisco buddhist appearing significantly in The Dharma Bums, Raphael Urso, a New Yorker poet who I still don’t was in real life, Simon (Irwin’s lover), his younger brother Lazarus, the Ruths Heaper and Erickson, Julien, who plays a large role in Subterraneans, Alyce Newman (Joyce Johnson, who wrote the introduction of the edition I read), and finally Keroauc’s Mother, often talked about as if a legend, finally given a total portrait to close out this amazing 400 page + prose masterpiece. I have not read Proust. I may have mentioned that before. But Kerouac does it so well. The self-styled novel-memoir can only be taken so many places. I must read Proust. I must read Big Sur. I must read Tristessa. I must read Doctor Sax (which I remember reading somewhere that he wrote entirely on “tea”). I must read Vanity of Duluoz. I must read Swann’s Way before most of those, though.
Kerouac’s importance in literature is often undersold by scholars and oversold by dilettantes who don’t really understand him and just like getting fucked up, and writing while they’re getting fucked up, and believing they don’t need to revise because everything a person says is holy and true when uttered in that one, original, unique moment, and everyone is God and everything is God, and we’re all far too uptight about the way we go about our lives. Important lessons all—but if we are going about it all wrong, what is the right way, Mr. Kerouac? He offers many instances of appreciating life, but finds little all-consuming happiness. With Ruth Heaper and Alyce Newman there appear fleeting moments of “normal” American domestic bliss, but after an opium high in Tangiers, he suddenly realizes that he no longer wants to participate in life. He wants to live in a quiet house and have no one bother him. All of the madness of his youth and the Beat generation has gotten him nowhere, except it has made him famous. One of the funniest lines in the book is when Raphael says, “Don’t comb your hair!” when talking about the Life magazine photographer coming to take pictures of the three of them together.
His love for his Mother, which some may laugh privately at, or roll their eyes at, or furrow their brows at, is actually one of the most beautiful sections of the book. There are only about forty or fifty pages with Kerouac and his Mother as the primary characters, but the way Kerouac describes her—how good she is to him, how greatly she still takes care of him even though she is 62 and he is 34, how she is willing to try to move from Florida to Berkeley with him on cross-country Greyhound bus trip, how he takes her to Mexico briefly and she experiences a higher revelation, how she drinks with him on the bus and talks about how she doesn’t like the Rocky Mountains because she thinks they’re going to fall over and crush them at any minute—is more loving than any other character portrayal, with Cody being the only one that even comes close. When he first mentions her he says, “Now we’re getting to the best person in the book,” and indeed that’s exactly what she seems. Though the narrative with her may actually deal more heavily in frustration than the other segments, and though it may not present anything so nearly transgressive or titillating as the rest of the book by the literary standards of the mid 1960’s, it is sort of the perfect ending for the book—slow, contemplative, and finally true, more honest and true than any other section in the book.

And at the end Kerouac seems to sneak in a few “trailers” for his other books, talking about Cody’s fate, saying something tragic happened, but then things went back to the way they used to be, and even though he swore off living wildly, Kerouac still goes out to have an adventure at Big Sur that he alludes to. The complete story of Kerouac can only be known to someone who takes the time to read all of his books, and then maybe someone who takes the time to read his journals and his letters to analyze how much truth and how much fiction comprised his work. I would say it highly consists of truth.