The Awful Possibilities

i was in ninth grade when i popped my dubbed copy of the cure’s standing on a beach…the singles into the cassette player as my dad drove me somewhere i don’t remember now. this was a little act of rebellion because, as the son of two preachers, i was supposed to be a role model for the church kids by listening to only christian rock. but robert smith’s lyrics were obscure enough to me that i didn’t think my dad would notice. i was wrong. when smith sang that line about it all meaning “absolutely nothing,” my dad said:

“this is existential crap.”

i didn’t know what existential meant so i asked him and he told me kierkegaard.

within a week i had read the sickness unto death, and not long after that i figured out, with the help of the guy at my local used bookstore who eventually became my first employer, that it was camus’ the stranger that had inspired the lyrics that provoked my dad’s outburst, and with that, kierkegaard and camus were my favorite writers, at least until tenth grade when i discovered dostoyevsky, nietzsche, and kafka.

in other words, albert camus was my adolescent rebellion. i even learned to read him in french.

i always thought my adolescent rebellion was pretty tame, a reflection, i guess, of how much i liked my parents and how little desire i had to go against there wishes for me. but then last week i reread the stranger for the first time in probably 10 years, and it occurred to me that i might have been more of a rebel than i thought, because i realized while rereading it that i had devoted my adolescent rebellion to a book that was not very good.

my french is now way too rusty, so i read it in a new-ish american translation i hadn’t read before, and i think it’s a good translation, so i’m not blaming that, though i’m not thrilled with the rendering of the first line:

Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.

becomes

Maman died today. Or yesterday, maybe, I don’t know.

i’m not a translator, but i don’t understand why it can’t just be:

Today, maman [or even my mom] died. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.

my version functions fine in english and reflects the structure of camus’ sentences. but it isn’t a fight i would get into. what we can all agree on is that it is, and remains, a great first line. what we can’t agree on is what the hell it has to do with the book.

of course, it has to do with the plot of the book and whatnot, but i mean the structure. that first line is in the present tense, and then everything else in the first chapter is in the past. the same thing happens with the second chapter. and then all the rest of the chapters in the first section are past tense. in the second section it goes back to veering erratically.

the only modes i can think of where this structure makes sense are diaristic and epistolary (or some variation thereon). but this book can be neither, one because there’s a very long lapse between his arrest and his account of imprisonment and trial, and two because the trial hinges on the contents of the first, and if the first had existed in fact, it would have been damning.

a minor quibble, for you maybe but not for me. it makes me wonder what this book is doing in my hands. it’s like the book itself begins with bad faith.

speaking of bad faith — a quibble we can both agree is major:

my dad thinks i'm the next cs lewis

the second half.

i don’t know what i was thinking back when i was liking it. sure, there are passages of real beauty and insight, but these seem even more contrived in light of the most contrived thing of all — camus turns mersault into a simpleton. i could point out a few dozen examples, but here’s one:

“Everything was so natural, so well handled, and so calmly acted out, that i had the ridiculous impression of being ‘one of the family.’”

this is a description of his months of interrogation in prison. now, maybe the interrogations were less bad than he might have imagined they’d be prior to committing murder, but no reasonably bright person would really get the impression, ridiculous or not, of being “one of the family.”

it’s possible that we’re meant to read mersault’s reactions as manifestations of socratic irony, but this raises two questions:

1. who is the audience for this irony?
2. what is camus’ purpose in using this irony?

see, the minor quibble about form comes back to haunt us, because if the audience is us, how, as in, in what form (how does he presume an audience?), is he addressing us, and if the audience is mersault himself, why the hell would anyone be socratically ironic with himself? although that’s funny.

with regard to the latter question, i can see no purpose for camus to be socratically ironic here. socrates was socratically ironic in service of a truth he really believed in. mersault believes in nothing, and socratic irony in the service of nothing isn’t absurd, it’s ridiculous.

but i was being a little bit socratically ironic there, because i can see one reason for camus to be socratically ironic there — it’s because he doesn’t want to make mersault an ideologue.  the problem is, a person who goes to his death for the sake of nothing (in a positive sense) is an ideologue inherently. either that or stupid. to me he just comes across as stupid.

you painted yourself into a corner camus, but i still think you wrote some good lines, had some great ideas, and were way better than sartre.

as for my adolescent rebellion — that shit backfired badly. my parents encouraged me to read anything i wanted — even tropic of cancer — and i ended up painting myself into my own corner of being a writer when i could have been, like, a rapper or something. and also, many years later, i was going through my father’s papers from seminary and found a long essay he had written on kierkegaard’s attack upon christendom. was my dad being socratically ironic in the car that day? thanks, dad.

i’m back. actually i’ve been back for a minute, but things have been hectic. the same day the dollar store show rolled into philly, my woman left for a summer in vienna. but it’s not a vacation; she’s there for a dance festival. then i thought about joining the dollar store folks for the trip to boston, but decided to skip it and meet them in albany where i got to read disturbing shit in front of an intimate audience of other writers, my entire family, and some childhood friends. also i sang a michael jackson bridge.

while i was gone i was reading many things and the biggest of these was fiona maazel’s last last chance.

i’ll be honest, i’m conflicted over this one. one the one hand, i wasn’t always compelled by it (and this is demonstrated by the fact i was reading it on and off over the course of about a month, which is a long time for me and a book); on the other, i can see that it’s daring and smart and that there’s very good stuff in it.

i held off on this one a long time. mostly because i don’t buy hardcovers unless i’m convinced i have to have a book, but also because, and let me admit my hypocrisy here, i had read the new york times‘ review (negative) when it came out, and though the premise sounded interesting, i decided if what the times said was at all correct, i would hate the book.

oh me of little faith. the times‘ review was not at all correct, and i didn’t hate the book even a little.

reading back over said review, the quibble seems to be that the book is shallow and lacks focus. i would submit that this is the daring part of maazel’s program.

context: it’s been a big decade for apocalyptic narrative. the two undeniably brilliant examples that come to mind right now are the road, by cormac mccarthy (spooky — my brother called me to talk about this right after i wrote this paragraph), and jamestown, by matthew sharpe. the common denominator between the two (aside from, you know, the apocalypse)? both depict humans struggling to survive after a great disaster.

in maazel’s book, fewer than 4,000 people die in the superplague that’s supposed to destroy the world. yes, as the times pointed out, this could work as an analogue to the number of people who died on 9/11, which is safe to make analogues about now because, even though it was a tragedy that changed each and every one of us forever, it was about a thousand news cycles ago.

but i wasn’t thinking about a thousand news cycles ago while reading last last chance, because i read it only a few news cycles after the most recent tragedy that would change each and every one of us forever. that’s right, y’all: flying pigs. maazel is either wise or has done her research or both, because her apocalypse is a lot more like the apocalypses i’ve lived through.

you can see the weakness of a man right through his iris

but here’s the conflict:

i liked the road and jamestown better.

(is this because i’m a dude?)

that means almost nothing as an aesthetic evaluation considering those might also be my two favorite books of our young century, but it does point to what i might point to as a flaw in the book, which is that the addiction narrative that runs parallel to the plague narrative overshadows the plague narrative, not as in, the former is more important than the latter, but as in, the former makes you forget the latter.

see, i would have been fine with just the former or the latter, and the way she uses the relationship between the two as a reference/update/hommage to boccaccio’s decameron is really, really clever, but the balance feels off. while this is justifiable intellectually and probably very realistic (given the self-loathing/egotism paradox inherent to addiction), it wasn’t, ultimately, satisfying to me personally. however, i can’t imagine a way, aside from just finding 75-100 (maybe not necessarily that much, but the book is definitely too long) pages to cut from the book, that it could be more satisfying to me personally, despite the fact that i still like maazel’s program. hence my conflict.

one thing’s for sure — fuck any review that calls the past life regression sections “unreadable.” maazel really swaggers in those passages, and novels could use more shepherd’s pie.

come to think about it, all of the prose swaggers. here is a randomly chosen sample:

Sigrid Hoffman reads some Old Icelandic poetry, which I love. The way the stanzas work, they are always dropping the shoe at the last moment. This simulates a unique sound in nature, which I also love. I guess it’s a thunk. Maybe a thud.

obviously, if this were third person it would be a mess. the “which i love” could refer either to the poetry or the reading of it; the “which i also love” could refer to the sound or the simulation, etc. but in first person it’s pure character. the second sentence in there is the clincher for me. but then the last sentence and also the fragment. they’ve got tons of rhythm and a unique perspective that makes me believe in the possibility of the character.

one quibble that has nothing to do with fiona maazel, but may have something to do with the publishing industry — what the fuck is up with the cover? i do not want rainbows on my books (it can’t be just because i’m a dude). it occurred to me that this could have been an attempt to hedge bets (maybe people will think it’s chick lit-ish?). also, the dimensions of the book itself made it unpleasant to hold, which, i’m not joking here, can really interfere with my take on a book. which is not to say i’m hedging here.

so you know i’m not hedging: i will probably buy maazel’s next book in hardcover.

readings are when i get to slow time down and rearrange  the room without you noticing, and i get to do two of them this week: philly on monday; allbully on wednesday. if you’re within a continent of either, you should come. fuck that, buy a plane ticket even if you’re not. details on the lecture page.

nope. no mercy.

i’m listening to bang your head by the gravediggaz to get going, but the cipher won’t be complete without you.

i will go back to pontificating here ad nauseum when the dust settles.

a review of real life that will not become a metaphor.

those of you who have spent any time in philadelphia know that there are certain people who seem to devote themselves to making life fun for other philadelphians, and when i say philadelphians, i mean people who live in or near philadelphia. in other words, the stuff these folks are pulling off is happening nowhere else that i’m aware of.

one of these people throws parties for a living. these parties tend to make me happy. even when i don’t love them i hate the world less than usual. recently this person threw a party at a private airport in new jersey with a swimming pool shaped like an airplane, and because most of his constituents live in philadelphia and get around by public transportation and bicycle, he hired buses to ship said constituents back and forth between philadelphia and the airplane pool. that was considerate.

i was the pilot

before i left for the party, i have to admit, i wasn’t really looking forward to it. the reason: i swim all the time, four times a week. this swimming is, for me, both exercise and meditation. that’s why i’m used to swimming with goggles.

because i’m used to swimming with goggles, it was hard to imagine having fun swimming without them, with a bunch of (why don’t i just go ahead and say) hipsters, to a soundtrack of (why don’t i just go ahead and say) bloghouse, and dancing and jumping around rather than swimming laps. i’m glad i did it. it was really refreshing.

that motherfucker's spiked with pain

on a totally different and non-metaphorical note, as someone who has had three books published (and has another one coming out), i’m trying to remember what it was like to write without (or at least with less) intent to publish.