The Awful Possibilities

let me skip the apologies and explanations because even if i was too busy to write anything here i was still reading and thinking and i want to tell you about it.

one of the things i was thinking about was young writers. because, well because i used to be one. and from some angles i suppose i might be for a couple more years, though i don’t feel like one and i definitely won’t feel like one when my boy gets here. (he is such a freedom-lovin’ dude.) and also because the new yorker did another 20 under 40.

listen, i didn’t actually spend much time thinking about the new yorker’s list, at least not as list. the general consensus is it was safe, predictable, boring, and that is all true. i tried reading the jonathan safran foer story but it was a sappy piece if shit and i don’t feel the need to justify that conclusion.

but i was interested in your reactions. the one that amused me the most was the whole “why 40?” thing. and then the suggestions that there should be an over 40 thing. which is stupid, because we already have a bunch of over 40 lists — they’re called major prize shortlists. and they come with actual scratch. even that hot young thing that won the pulitzer this year was 43. for real kids, quit with the slave morality. be more like my son wes.

tell 'em, kid.

anyway, i was thinking about the age thing because at the exact time the new yorker list was coming out i was reading a book called Incidents of Egotourism in the Temporary World. here, have some backstory –

the book is by a friend of mine, lee klein. you probably know him from his role as editor of eyeshot where he worked (and rumor has it will work again) tirelessly to teach the internet to write right and to keep it honest. lee and i mostly end up meeting up accidentally (it’s philly) and then accidentally get drunk. once when we were drunk he mentioned a book he had written that you couldn’t find anymore because there were only ever a few hundred copies printed and he seemed to have disavowed it or was embarrassed.

well, when i went to chicago in april (chicago was awesome by the way, those dudes are just the best), i found a shiny new copy at myopic and bought it thinking i could read it and maybe tease lee a little. but then i read it and it was good. and it was completely of its time (1997-ish) and of its author’s age (mid-20s-ish).

it’s as exuberantly overwritten and self-conscious as it’s title (both to its credit). a series of seemingly fact-based but highly mythologized vignettes about a young man who, having taken a series of dead-end jobs after college, moves home to jersey in order to save up enough money to spend three years in south america developing the tenets of egotourism, which is pretty much what it sounds like and what most people actually do when they travel. imagine someone with an intellect and background much like david foster wallace’s planning to recreate the beat ethos while knowing that it’s too late in history for that and you’ll have a sense of the book as a whole. and of course, he never makes it out of jersey.

there’s a piece in there called “Here’s Something I’ve Typed Up So If One Day You’re Staring at the Center of My Face & Feel Compelled to Ask I Can Just Give You This So I Won’t Have to Repeat the Same Story for the Hundredth Time & Thereby Risk Losing All Sorts of Valuable Soul Points.” the title basically dares you to call it too clever and be annoyed before you start, but the piece itself is actually a great yarn about “toasting Satan with tribute bands and keg beer. A rite of past-time, a hallowed passage in this state of New Jerusalem.”

what i find impressive about this section, and much of the book, is the way lee balances this consuming self-consciousness (the title) with the desire to tell a story (it really is about a party with a black sabbath tribute band) with prose that reflects deep, but young, thinking about that balance. the language gets religious in that last fragment, but look, it’s a rite of past-time, not pastime, because the narrator has a sense of nostalgia for things as they happen, and because he’s trying to connect his own experience to something bigger because our generation didn’t get awesome wars or boar hunting. and then you get the visual pun on new jersey that does a really brilliant job of expressing the creepy, almost occult fondness that everyone from jersey has for it.

but mostly it does a better job of evoking what it was like to be a middle class twenty-something in the nineties than anything i’ve read aside from maybe the eggers book (and this was apparently written two years before the heartbreaking work, though published several years after) (i mean there was something in the air).

lest it seem like i’m just blowing sunshine up my neighbor’s ass, i’ll point out that there’s too much book here, that he could have cut out at least a half dozen vignettes and it would probably have been stronger, and that, while i would argue with anybody for the book’s literary merits on the level of prose and as a sociological document, it would probably rub just about anyone non-white, non-middle-class, or over forty the wrong way.

but this is exactly why i decided to write a long-ass post about an out-of-print book that even it’s author doesn’t seem to think much of anymore:

because when i got in trouble in high school for writing self-indulgent, allegorical stuff in english class, my teacher suggested i read an exemplary story by a classmate. it was about a middle-aged man going through his attic, reminiscing about how great high school was. and because  in college and grad school we were discouraged from writing young (not from writing about youth, but from writing about youth like young people). and also because keith gessen’s book, while flawed and maybe less ambitious than i’d ultimately like to see from him, was ballsy just for being about “sad young literary men” and he got shat on for it, while jonathan safran foer gets dap for twee shit that isn’t actually like any conscious young person’s actual experience but more like what somebody wishes youth had been like and his wisdom is pure funk-faking. and because it is good to think that this side of paradise is fitzgerald’s best book when you’re fifteen and then realize that gatsby is way better when you’re thirty.

take it from an old guy, okay?

soon i will write about another book by a very young person that you were also wrong about.

this is gonna be fuckin incredible.

get gooey

look, it’s my chicago book release party. but better than that, i get to read with adam levin (whose book with mcsweeneys, out this fall, is gonna change the game), jeff parker (my hero — his collection the taste of penny should be out now from dzanc, and you’d better get it), lindsay hunter (labelmate/have you seen the desciption of her book?/have you ever seen her read? — do not miss), and tim kinsella (zach says cap’n jazz hisself is as good at writing as rocking, and you know you can trust zach). also, djs, which i assume means dancing.

so let’s dance y’all.

i’ll be in town (chicago, i mean) tomorrow, so if i know you, let’s get down.

as for other stuff –

brooklyn, were you trying to prove my suspicions of you? yes, the place was packed and the crowd seemed to enjoy themselves and it was great to read with dottie and sasha, but, well, i guess i’m ok with the cover charge, even if i don’t get a cut, but why does my wife have to pay that cover charge, and why are you gonna charge two bux over retail for my book when i would have been happy to bring my own copies and sell them for five bux under? i’m disappointed in you, brooklyn. and will you ever be able to make it up to me.

let me tell you two things i wasn’t disappointed with:

1. matthew simmons’s book a jello horse. i held off on getting this for a long time (which is why i’m late to the game) because the name sounded kind of whimsical or whacky, but i picked it up at awp and read it last week and it’s very good. a road trip story that, in it’s calm, deliberate style reminded me at times of brautigan. but the complaint i always had about brautigan — that a lot of the sadness i feel when reading him comes from my awareness of his unwillingness to face some real issues (informed, probably by my awareness of his biography, but there nonetheless) — doesn’t apply with simmons. the book confronts everything it comes across in this kind of stoic but vulnerable way. even the title ends up being pretty cool once explained. i look forward to seeing what he does next.
2. adam robinson’s adam robison and other poems, poems by adam robinson. this is a really good book. it also happened to be just what i needed at the time i read it. i thought a lot about what it would be like if there was a male dottie lasky (is that okay, everybody?) (i mean it as a compliment to both of them). i also thought a lot about calvinism (close to my heart), which the book seems to (i’m willing to accept that i might be misreading this one, but it’s the way it rang to me, really loud and really clear) engage in tricky ways, finding a weird trajectory from kierkegaard through contemporary criticism and back to a refreshing take on modern culture (the real kind, not the literary kind) while still being fun.

i would have done a better and more thorough job talking about these if i weren’t so swamped right now (as in, for the last month and the coming month).

the house thing went through. kathryn and i now officially own a home. we are hoping someday someone gives us the keys to it because sooner or later we will need somewhere to put this baby we are really excited about having.

also, i’m itching to get back to pontificating here. there is a break between chicago and austin and i will try to say something with some substance.

but i’m gonna be up in you tomorrow night, along with dorothea lasky, sasha fletcher, kseniya melnik, and amy kandathil. it’s a reading, in brooklyn, in a series called earshot at a venue called rose live music, and you can get the other details here.

denver was bananas. i’m still recovering. we sold out of the book quickfast so all i had to do was the reading (which turned out to be more of a singing, in a kind of blue-eyed soul mode) (which is nothing compared to the show the other f’proof kids put on at the afterparty — it included banjo, short-shorts (the apparel, not the literary kind), singing, and two jugs of milk).

i also got to spend a bunch of time with old friends, some of whom i haven’t seen in years (one i hadn’t seen since high school, and i didn’t even know he’d become a writer), and make some new ones.

i bought a shitload of books, some of which i hope to write about here later.

probably my favorite part was seeing adam novy read from his forthcoming novel the avian gospels. that book is gonna be fire. keep an eye out for it, for your own good.

i stopped in at the barnes and noble at penn on my lunch break monday and saw the awful possibilities on the display table. i was psyched and took a picture with my phone, but i don’t know how to get the picture from my phone to the internet. anyway, that’s the picture for this entry. it’s on the corner of the table, a stack about 4 or 5 thick, right next to a jasper fforde book. the ooze on the cover is dripping onto the table and making it sizzle and smoke a little. the other books are cowering in fear. i should go back soon and see if the store is still standing.

next weekend is chicago.

let's do this, denver.

i’m doing it again, leaving philadelphia to preach the good news. this time to denver. the wild west.

i don’t know what it will be like to drink shots while reading stories at that altitude, but ok i’ll try it this once.

if you’re reading this and you’re going to awp, we should get down, whether you can make the reading or not.

also, it looks like the awful possibilities is now really really out. i was at the office today and jason got it delivered to his desk by amazon. why can’t you be more like jason.

yesterday i got a starred review in publishers weekly, and a lot of wonderful people wrote to congratulate me, and i appreciated that. it’s nice when folks say nice things about my stuff.

but only kathryn knew to congratulate me on this:

i'll take it.

the top paragraph says:

Reviewed this week, new fiction from Stieg Larsson, Bret Easton Ellis, Robert B. Parker, Brunonia Barry, Tom Knox, and Nikki Turner. Plus, Ayelet Waldman tracks the fallout of an unlikely and very short-lived marriage, John Harvey delivers a solid sequel to Gone to Ground, Christian TeBordo’s fiction doesn’t get any less weird, and more.

does this mean i have a reputation?

in other news, the philadelphia readings were awesome. i think toiling in obscurity proved that jaime and jeremy have really got something going for fiction writers in town, and they also kicked ass with their own work. then me, molly gaudry, and jason napoli brooks — three fiction writers — went to chapterhouse (and on to a certain dive bar that i may be spending too much time at) and it was awesome to be able to throw down with some people (you know, the poets) responsible for getting philadelphia back on the literary map these days.

next is denver:

speaks for itself.

well, just look at it. it’s gonna be bonkers. and i think i have to wear shorts? tell your friends.

as ever, i’m happy to come read for you, as long as there’s booze. or a podium (i fidget) (it’s part of the fun for me). preferably booze and a podium. go ahead and tell me: christian dot tebordo at gmail dot com.