Post #157: Help Me Celebrate R.D. Stevens’ The Freeze

One of the best parts of being an author out in the world is the chance to meet and support fellow authors. I met R.D. Stevens in the summer of 2022. We connected as people do–on Instagram. We read and reviewed each other’s debut novels, which both came out last summer, and pretty quickly, I could tell we were going to be friends. Stevens is not only a whip-smart philosophy teacher with a great sense of humor, he’s also a damn fine writer. And I’m thrilled to help him virtually celebrate the launch of his brand new young adult dystopian novel, The Freeze. It’s a fun, fast-past romp full of conspiracies, taut action, big-brother moments, and memorable characters.

We’ll be hanging out virtually this coming Friday, February 17th at 4 PM EST / 9 PM GMT. Come join us for some good conversation! Click HERE to register for free.

Here’s a bit more about The Freeze:

It is the year 2064 and London is in crisis. More than thirty percent of the world’s population has been killed by a global pandemic and the city state is divided into four zones to prevent further spread. For the past twenty years, each month has seen a different zone plunged into ‘freeze’ state, the space and its inhabitants literally frozen in time for thirty days. The government explains this as a natural quantum temporal anomaly, but there are those who suspect foul play.

17-year-old James is stuck in the poverty of Zone 4, moving between foster placements with his twin brother, Jake. When he meets the magnetic, rebellious Sasha, he is introduced to the dangerous world of ‘tripping’ – the illegal practice of breaking into frozen zones. Before long, James is caught up in the schemes of Thaw – a group of young misfits working together to stand up to the government’s inequalities – and finds himself with an impossible decision to make.

James wants to uncover any hidden truths about the freeze and save those he cares about from injustice, but how can he do this when it’s hard enough to save himself?

The Freeze is a dystopian novel for young adults, brought to you by R.D. Stevens, the award-winning author of The Journal.

Post #141: In Light of Recent Events

Book Reviews, New Writing, The Writing Craft, writing news

One of the best things about being friends with other writers is celebrating their successes, and I’m so here to celebrate. My good friend Amy Klinger recently published her debut novel In Light of Recent Events, and it’s such a likable, lovable book. I can’t wait for you to read it. Here’s what it’s about (from the back cover):

In the 1990s American workplace, survival of the fittest is sometimes less about clawing your way to the top than developing good camouflage. And Audrey Rohmer is doing her very best to blend in as an undistinguished middle manager. Uninspired by her job and uneasy about her father’s new marriage, Audrey coasts through the work week leaning on her “partner in apathy” – an admin assistant named Pooter – to keep her relationship with the married head of her department from becoming water cooler gossip.

But when an old family friend-turned-Hollywood-superstar crashes on her doorstep in the midst of a publicity crisis, Audrey’s under-the-radar status quo gets upended, and the writing may literally be on the bathroom wall that secrets will find a way out.

Sounds fun, doesn’t it? Like the kind of book you really want to read? It is.

Amy’s prose is airy, witty, and packed with observations so crystalline they make you want to read them again and again.

Did I mention this book is funny? Like, laugh out loud funny. Amy also is fantastic at set pieces and situational comedy making for some fantastically awkward moments.

Perhaps my favorite thing is the way Amy is willing to gently upend our expectations, making this book more surprising than you expect it will be.

It’s also quietly a book about grieving and loss, about the very blurry line drawn in our lives between childhood and adulthood, and about how hard it is to be a good person, even when it seems like it should be the easiest thing in the world.

This book has a huge heart and it will make you giggle. What’s not to love?

Friends, put this one on your to-read list. You can pre-oder it here and help support local bookstores.

Then register HERE for Amy’s virtual book launch on March 22nd at 7pm EST. I’ll be playing MC and helping facilitate some Q & A with the author.

Post #117: One Man Book Club, Part Three (Herman Koch’s “The Dinner”)

Book Reviews

I know, I know. You’ve been salivating for the next installment of our series One Man Book Club (for the un-initiated, prior to now we’ve discussed Pride and Prejudice and The Family Fang). Lucky for you, so has our beloved intern here at The Almost Right Words, Zane Kai, who suggested we read Herman Koch’s The Dinner. We did so, and the other day, as has been our custom, Zane and I caught up over a cup of coffee on our work breaks and had a discussion about the book, which Zane recorded for posterity. Namely, for you.

Zane Kai: Well, well, well.

Benjamin: Well, well, well? What’s that supposed to mean?

Zane Kai: It’s supposed to mean, mister, that it has been way too long since our last book club chat and it’s about time! Readers have been getting in touch and requesting more!

Benjamin: Don’t get too excited Zane.

Zane Kai: Well, darnit, I am excited! I’ve missed our little chats and I am just DYING (puts hand over heart) to hear what you thought of The Dinner.

Benjamin: I’m actually pretty curious to hear what you thought about it as well, because, to be honest, I can’t really decide. What a strange book, don’t you think?

Zane Kai: I do think! It was almost like reading several books at once, the way it blends genres and tones.

Benjamin: Yeah, agreed. It begins as a sort of set piece, almost like a one-act play. These people are going out to dinner. The narrator and his wife and another couple, who there’s clearly tension with. It then turns out to be his brother and his brother’s wife.

Zane Kai: And the brother isn’t just his brother, but is also a big time candidate for a major political position and, unless I’m wrong, they’re on the cusp of some major election cycle.

Benjamin: Yeah. I think that’s right.

Zane Kai: And then, since we’re sort of summarizing, the dinner itself starts and, it’s narrated in first person, and the narrator is reacting to lots of things, commenting on the cost of the food at the restaurant, the overbearing wait staff, and how annoyed he is that he knows the whole place will be in awe of the fact that his brother, the famous politician, is eating there. It’s all very domestic at first.

Benjamin: Right. Right. Except for a seed of foreshadowing, planted early, that there’s something up with the narrator’s teenage son, it all feels very Cheever and Raymond Carver.

Zane Kai: And then, the bottom drops out.

Benjamin: Yeah. Sort of. Wait. What do you mean?

Zane Kai: Well, there’s kind of a spoiler alert here, don’t you think?

Benjamin: Yeah. Do you think we shouldn’t…

Zane Kai: Uh, hey, if you’re reading this, please know that we’re able to divulge some revealing details about a twist in the book.

Benjamin: So anyway, it turns out that the dinner is not just a dinner. It’s been arranged, and for an urgent conversation, because both couples have recently learned that their teenage sons beat up and killed a homeless person, and have filmed themselves beating up others. The crime has been on the news and footage from the ATM camera where the killing happened, but the footage is grainy and the boys’ faces are obscured, but both parents know immediately it’s their kids and now they’re holding onto this secret, trying to decide what to do with it.

Zane Kai: One thing I wanted to ask you about is how the narrator’s character changes over the course of the novel. At first, he’s a somewhat familiar, overly judgmental narrator, but perhaps no different from you and me. But…

Benjamin: It turns out he’s got major issues of his own.

Zane Kai: I’ll say he’s got issues! He beat up his boss and has some serious anger management issues.

Benjamin: What’s interesting about it is the implication that the narrator, this father, quietly knows that his own violent tendencies and problems controlling his anger, have now gone on to negatively affect his own son, a boy who has not only committed this violent act, this accidental killing, but may not even feel that bad about it.

Zane Kai: Totally.

Benjamin: But, I don’t know…

Zane Kai: What?

Benjamin: Well. It’s a powerful revelation, and in this situation, certainly a haunting one. But from a writerly stand point, it’s a little nail on the head for my taste, you know?

Zane Kai: I disagree! I totally do. I think you’re being too influenced by the intimacy of first person.

Benjamin: Maybe.

Zane Kai: What did you think of the ending?

Benjamin: Totally lost me.

Zane Kai: Really! Oh, I loved it.

Benjamin: Yeah, I just…I don’t know, I don’t want to say it wasn’t believable, because I hate when people say that. It’s such a cop out, lame ass criticism.

Zane Kai: So, what then?

Benjamin: I just didn’t find it satisfying.

Zane Kai: Why? I thought it was a fantastic transfer of power. All this time you think the narrator, the father, is going to be the one to flip, and then it turns out to be the wife.

Benjamin: But that’s what I mean. I just didn’t find it in sync with the rest of the book that she would actually physically harm her brother in law in order to keep him from going public.

Zane Kai: She was doing it to protect her son! You never know what people will do to keep their kids safe.

Benjamin: Yeah, maybe.

Zane Kai: It’s one of those storyteller black holes, I guess. Where you take the reader in this purely speculative place where pretty much no one knows how they would actually respond. Like whether you’d eat your friends flesh to stay alive or something. Until it’s you, you don’t know what you would do. And…morally, she turns out to be the weak link.

Benjamin: Yeah, that I agree with. And like. The politician seems like the thin and insubstantial character in the book, but that’s just the smoke of first person, as you were saying. Just us seeing things from the brother’s POV. The truth is that he’s the one who’s willing to sacrifice his son, even willing to see him go to jail so that he’s accountable for what he did and doesn’t have to walk around with this festering wound of guilt his whole life. He’s also decided to end his political candidacy.

Zane Kai: I just saw you look at your watch.

Benjamin: We need to wrap this up and get back to work

Zane Kai: I guess I have to ask, would you recommend The Dinner?

Benjamin: On the whole, yeah. A very unusual and exhilarating book. Taut and very well written, if a bit uneven. Just don’t blame me if it also kind of pisses you off.

Zane Kai: Can I just add one more thing.

Benjamin: No

Post #104: One Man Book Club: The Family Fang

Book Reviews

At the insistent urges and blasting emotional hornpipe of my beloved, but total pain in the ass, intern, Zane Kai, we’re doing another round of One Man Book Club. Zane felt that our first foray into the scene with our multi-part take on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was a success and not long ago in the office, told me he was about to read Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang. I’d heard of the book and was intrigued. “Just in case,” Zane had bought not one, but two copies of the bestseller, in hopes we could read it together and then chat about it for the book club, which he’s “seriously hoping can become a regular part of the blog because it’s way fun.” He also lobbied that we call it Two Man Book Club instead of One Man Book Club, since technically there’s two of us, but I pulled rank and told him we’d already called it One Man Book Club and that we didnt’ want to confuse people.

We both read the book last month, then over lunch the other day (carry in Thai food), Zane cued up his digital recorder and he’s what happened.

Zane Kai: Benjamin, I have to tell you, I’m thrilled we’re doing another round of the book club.

Benjamin: Yeah. We’ll see how it goes. I have some errands to run, so…

Zane Kai: And I have to say, I loved, loved, loved this book!

Benjamin: Me too, actually. It was…

Zane Kai: The way Wilson blends comedy with pathos is really effective, don’t you think?

Benjamin: Yeah, I…

Zane Kai: And it was funny! Don’t you think it was laugh out loud funny!

Benjamin: Totally, I…

Zane Kai: But sad too! So sad. I mean, some of what happens to Annie and Buster has to border on child abuse, right? Like…somebody call DCF!!

Benjamin: Are you going to let me talk now or keep interrupting me?

Zane Kai (looks at floor): Sorry.

Benjamin: Maybe we should give a quick synopsis for anyone who hasn’t read it?

Zane Kai: Do you want to?

Benjamin (waving hands): No, no. You’re clearly rolling.

Zane Kai: Okay. So, The Family Fang, for anyone who doesn’t know, is about The Fang Family, headed up by performance artist parents, Caleb and Camille, who are already quite famous in the art world by the time they have two kids, Buster and Annie. At first, because it’s what they’ve been taught, they worry having kids will ruin their art, but instead they decide, even when the kids are young, to incorporate them into their performance pieces, which mostly consist of staging random unexpected happenings and distractions at various malls, all engineered to see what happens. They’re outrageous. As the book opens, we meet Buster and Annie when they’re both adults and both floundering, Buster as a fledging novelist, and Annie as an up and coming movie star who’s an emotional mess and may have messed up her career. Both end up, for reasons I won’t spoil because they’re so funny and wonderful, living back at home where they fight against becoming re-embroiled into the sphere of their parents’ artistic web. Is that enough for now?

Benjamin: Yeah. That was good. Don’t want to give away too much. Nice synopsis, Zane.

Zane Kai: Thank you!!

Benjamin: So, how do you want to do this? Like last time?

Zane Kai: Well, I was picturing more of a conversation instead of an interview since we both read this one and only YOU had read Pride and Prejudice and I was asking you about it. Is that okay?

Benjamin: Fine by me. What struck you about the book?

Zane Kai: Well, the format, for one.

Benjamin: Yeah, by description, I wouldn’t necessarily jump at a book that alternates so frequently, but it really works, going back and forth between present action and past detail of all the artistic events the Fangs have staged over the years.

Zane Kai: I agree. I wonder if that’s how Kevin Wilson always envisioned it, or if that structure came later.

Benjamin: I would hazard that it came later. Who knows? But I have a hunch the artistic flashbacks were at first more organically interwoven into the present, but it works better with them pulled out. It’s also clever how, even though the performance pieces are in the past, they’re chosen to add something to what’s happening in the present. You know? And they, for the most part, move forward in time.

Zane Kai: Yes! Good point. I totally hadn’t thought about that. You are such an astute reader.

Benjamin: Don’t try to butter me up, Zane. You’re not getting another raise. We already had this discussion.

Zane Kai: Can’t blame a guy for trying!

Benjamin: Did you have a favorite, I mean, among the performance pieces? They’re pretty outrageous.

Zane Kai (flipping through his book): Let’s see. I…uh…yes, I mean, for pure laughs, the one where the kids are the horrible two piece band and the parents pretend to be angry hecklers is amazing. I felt so bad for those children! For power, though, and cleverness, and sheer bizarreness, the Romeo and Juliet thing really stands out. The way it all comes together. I don’t want to spoil it for readers, but…

Benjamin: God, I forgot about that. Oh man, that was awful. That’s the thing with this book. So many of the laughs and situations are engineered both for laughs and for heart ache, especially when you are always re-visiting Buster and Annie in their tumultuous present, where, essentially, they’re both cripples of a sort, pretty much unable to deal with life and love and friendship. That’s how scarred they are by this experience. And they both really know it. There’s no gray area in their minds about why they can’t function well in life.

Zane Kai: Yeah. Even though it’s satirical much of the time, the book asks some pretty poignant questions about art, the nature of art, and what it’s okay to do in the name of art. Caleb is always saying grand things about art, like “great art is hard.”

Benjamin: Yeah.

Zane Kai: It’s true, though, isn’t it? Great art is hard. And demands sacrifice.

Benjamin (flipping pages): And what about this, towards the end of the book, when Caleb says, “And now, we’ve made something better than anything we’ve done before, and you two are not a part of it.” “We’re a part of it,” Buster said. “We’re your son and daughter.” “That doesn’t mean anything,” Caleb said. I mean, those words are not said in jest. These people truly care far more about their art and its execution than about their own children.

Zane Kai: Do you think that they love them?

Benjamin: Good question. I don’t know. In so much as they are contributing to the art and the furthering of it. It’s hard to imagine hearts quite that cold and detached. It’s actually right there that the book lost me a little. Even though it’s true for the characters and consistent, that’s a little hard to get over.

Zane Kai: I thought the book lost a little steam in the last third.

Benjamin: Undeniably. Though it didn’t slow me down. I destroyed this book. Read it in two or three days.

Zane Kai: Me too! I got into the bath one night and had nearly seventy-five pages left and I was so engrossed I didn’t get out until I was done. I was so pruney! I posted pictures of my fingers on Instagram!

Benjamin: That’s a lot of information, Zane.

Zane Kai: Do you think the book is offensive at all? I was talking to a friend who also read it. You remember Wu Cole? My ex? He wants to be in the book club by the way.

Benjamin: Let’s not get carried away. We can’t have a One Man Book Club that had three people in it.

Zane Kai: It’s not a one man book club! We’re sitting here talking, two men, right now! Gosh!

Benjamin: You were saying…

Zane Kai: Oh. Well, Wu, he read it and stopped reading because he found it offensive. He felt like the Fangs treatment of their kids was just too much. He said he was laughing at first, but when he realized how screwed up Annie and Buster really were, he lost interest and it felt too heavy. Like it’s not okay to laugh so much at something that’s actually so sad.

Benjamin: Yeah, I guess I can see where he’s coming from. I didn’t have that reaction, but.

Zane Kai: Do you think, ultimately, the book argues anything?

Benjamin: I wonder. I think he’s pretty sly about it actually. This book seems to almost debate with itself about the lengths you can go to create art. On a macro scale, it’s played for laughs much of the time here, sometimes not, but on a day to day basis, there’s a lot to think about. I thought a lot about it…what I’m willing to do and give up in the name of my art. It sounds heavy handed to pontificate about it, but…I mean, a lot of artists and writers spend time away from their family, use the people around them. A lot of artists are leeches. And very selfish. I think as an artist himself, Wilson knows this. It’s hard not to imagine he’s kind of making fun of himself at times.

Zane Kai: I wonder about that.

Benjamin: Would be interesting to learn more about Wilson’s background.

Zane Kai: I’d say on the whole we really liked it! Wouldn’t you?

Benjamin: I would. Two thumbs up.

Zane Kai: Make it four thumbs!

Benjamin: Jesus.

Post #91: One Man Book Club (Pride and Prejudice), Concluded

Book Reviews

Sincere apologies for taking so long to conclude this inaugural edition of One Man Book Club, Pride and Prejudice. If you’ve been waiting and grown tired of waiting, blame me, not my intern Zane Kai. Zane has been all over me like bubbles on beer to talk about the last third of the book, the details of which are beginning to elude me, but which I attempted to recall with as much thoughtfulness and detail as would please the ever picky Zane Kai when we chatted in the office the other day over lunch.

Zane Kai (Clicking on his tape recorder, licking mustard from his index finger): Benjamin! Glad we could finally sit down to talk about the last third of Pride and Prejudice. It feels like a million trillion years since we’ve talked about it.

Benjamin: I’ve been really busy Zane. You know that. You work here.

Zane Kai: Of course! But you know me and Jane Austen. Can’t get enough. I’ve been dying to know what you thought of how it all turned out. So…

Benjamin: Honestly, Zane. I feel kind of bad saying it, but…I skimmed the last eighty pages.

Zane Kai: What!

Benjamin: I’m just being honest! I don’t want to lie.

Zane Kai: Well…

Benjamin: Wait, wait. Not because I didn’t like it.

Zane Kai: Then, why…

Benjamin: I don’t know. It just. I mean. I did like it. I sincerely did. I’m glad I read it and, for the most part, I can see why so many people love the book. And why it’s a classic. It’s so well written. And full of great characters and, it’s totally hilarious. That’s actually probably my favorite thing about it, how funny it was. But…it all started to seem a little obvious, don’t you think? It kind of wore me down.

Zane Kai: What started to seem obvious?

Benjamin: The ending, Zane! The ending. Why else would I skim?

Zane Kai: Okay. Gosh. Sorry. You don’t have to yell.

Benjamin: I didn’t yell. You’re so sensitive. This is how I always talk. You should know by now that I’m not mad at you or anything.

Zane Kai: Okay. Sorry. So…the ending.

Benjamin: Right, the ending. Well, I mean, there’s no doubt that they’re all going to get together, the two couples. But Lydia and Wickham. I didn’t see that shit coming. I don’t really get Wickham. He’s a jerk, right? A liar and a thief. But then he’s, sort of, cured by his authentic love for Lydia? I didn’t really follow the arc of his character. It feels like we’re meant to judge him against Darcy the whole time, or to wonder about their relative virtue, except not really because Darcy is so much the better man all along that it feels unfair, even as Wickham is the honorable soldier and Darcy just the moneyed lord. And then when Lydia ends up with Wickham, it feels as if Austen is commenting on Elizabeth in comparison to Lydia. But maybe I’m reading too much into it. I think Austen kind of worshipped Elizabeth if that’s fair to say.

I will say this. By the time it all came down to the inevitable marriages and clarification of being self-involved gossiping blithering idiots, I was more moved by Jane and Bingley getting together than I was by Elizabeth and Darcy.

Zane Kai: Why?

Benjamin: Honestly? I got kind of tired of waiting for Darcy and Elizabeth. This novel kind of gave me blue balls in that this love, which you know is there, and you know damn well is going to eventually come to fruition and in the company of massive forgiving and admitting-I-was-an-idiot kind of talk, takes soooo long to get to that point. I mean, sooo long. At least with Bingham and Jane the drama felt a bit more authentic. Not just in Elizabeth’s head. Still subjected to the same gossip machine and rumor mill that dominated these people’s lives, though. Amazing to think that people would ignore a heart full of love based on conjecture and innuendo. The Victorians would have gone fucking hog wild with Facebook and Twitter.

Zane Kai: What, in the end, do you think the novel is about? Or what is it trying to say?

Benjamin: I don’t know. Self-discovery?

Zane Kai: Not love?

Benjamin: Not as much as discovery. I mean it’s Elizabeth’s novel, right?

Zane Kai: Do you find that satisfying? As the basis for the novel, I mean?

Benjamin: I’m going to answer that question more tangentially by saying it’s unfair for me to judge harshly the terms on which a person does or doesn’t find herself and that self-discovery is a totally legitimate topic for a novel, whether it’s set on Mars or in my local post office. I mean, it’s not Elizabeth’s fault that her life is small and boring. At least boring in my eyes. She might have been searching for herself on the open sea. Or in a war. It doesn’t make the search for self any less authentic that it’s a search that happens mostly in living rooms and bedrooms and over meals and fancy dances. And here’s where Austen really achieved something, I guess. In projecting that urgency on the drawing room. Elizabeth is still out there, doing it, trying to make sense of life, trying to figure out what life is and how she fits into it. Dealing with her crazy family, her own prejudices and limitations. Trying to decide what kind of person she is and wants to be. What kind of man could make her happy. What she needs to overcome to improve as a person. All those things are legitimate characteristics of any search for self. So I guess it’s about that. And love, sure. Fine. And realizing that what’s best for you might be staring you dead in the face, even if you can’t see it.

Zane Kai: Care to give it a rating? Out of five stars.

Benjamin: No. I’m not going to rate it. Who am I to rate it? People have been reading this book for two hundred years. Devouring this book for two hundred years. Adapting and worshipping it. Just call me one more and we’ll leave it at that.

Post #85: One Man Book Club, Continued

Book Reviews

My intern, Zane Kai, has been anxious to talk to me some more about Pride and Prejudice, which, as you know, I’m reading as an endeavor I’m describing as a One Man Book Club. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m reading P&P because it just celebrated the 200th anniversary of its publication. And because I never have.

Zane Kai: Benjamin! Wow! It looks like you’ve really made some progress. When we spoke the first time, you’d read only 70 pages or so, but it looks like you’re well over two thirds the way through.

Benjamin: I am. Just broke two hundred. Slow but steady wins the race with this one.

Zane Kai: So bring me up to speed, what’s been happening?

Benjamin: But…you know the story.

Zane Kai: I know! But I want to hear it from you.

Benjamin: Well, let me see. There’s been a lot of drama for Elizabeth. First she was sure Darcy was a total prick because she thought he was proud and conceited, and then she got duped by this hot shot asshole good looking dude Wickham who sold her a bill of goods about Darcy and what kind of man he was. All the while, Darcy is in love with Elizabeth. He has been the whole book. He confesses to her, but she’s full of false information about him, both the Wickham stuff, but also stuff about this guy Bingley, Darcy’s best friend (they seem like they might be gay) who had the hots for Elizabeth’s sister Jane.

Zane Kai: What happened there?

Benjamin: Why do you keep asking me questions like you don’t know the novel. It’s driving me crazy.

Zane Kai: Because it’s an interview.

Benjamin: Anyway, Bingley and Jane had this amazing connection, or so it seemed, but then Bingley vanished away to the country or something, leaving Jane hanging and wondering and feeling pretty lousy about things. Jane and Elizabeth’s family doesn’t have a lot of cash, and so she thought it was about that. Come to find out that it was Darcy who persuaded Bingley to get away from Jane.

Zane Kai: That’s right!

Benjamin: So, when Darcy tells Elizabeth he loves her and asks for her hand, she pretty much kicks him in the balls and eats his lunch for him.

Zane Kai: Oh man.

Benjamin: She really rips him a new one. Wait, let me find the…okay, “I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.” And this was in a time period when, it seems, women who didn’t come from big money did NOT turn down marriage proposals. And this is E’s second refusal in a hundred pages. First this other guy, Collins, I think, asked her to marry him an she was like, hell no. Eventually, though, Darcy writes her this long letter that clears the air and explains that he got Bingley away from Jane because he doubted Jane’s feelings for his friend and he was just looking out for him. And it also turns out that Wickham is the bad guy, not Darcy and there was some shady dealings with Darcy’s father and his will. So now Elizabeth is feeling really stupid and judgmental and girlish and all that, preyed upon by the very emotions that she is so often disdaining in other people. Pride and pre-judgment, mainly. Hence the title. It’s pretty clever actually, the way she’s always deceiving herself and walking into walls and learning.

Zane Kai: Where are things now?

Benjamin: Kind of in a holding pattern. Darcy seems changed to Elizabeth, less prideful and full of himself. Clearly he loves her and wants to marry her, and she seems to be coming around to liking him. But there’s all this jealousy and catty bullshit with some of the other female characters. These women are seriously shallow. There’s this one section where Bingley’s sister, who doesn’t like Elizabeth, starts talking shit about her looks, saying she hasn’t earned her reputation as a beauty. She even criticizes Elizabeth’s teeth! She says, “her teeth are tolerable, but not out of the common way.” What the hell does that even mean, the common way? And who rags on someone else’s teeth?

Zane Kai: Are you enjoying the book? It sounds like you are. You’ve been very animated talking about it.

Benjamin: Have I?

Zane Kai: You have.

Benjamin: I am. For sure, I am. It’s terrific. I often put books down that I’m not enjoying and I’m anxious to finish P & P. The characters are genuinely compelling. Mostly. There’s some things that get on my nerves. In some ways, I wish I was reading this book with other people. I think I’d be enjoying it a little more.

Zane Kai: What do you mean?

Benjamin: Well…then they could tell me to stop being annoyed by things that are totally unreasonable to be annoyed by when reading a book about another time period where part of the point is that society is different. Thus, people are. I mentioned before how I don’t have a big romantic place in my heart for the Victorian age.

Zane Kai: Be more specific.

Benjamin: Well, it’s a love story, right?

Zane Kai: Well…yes…of course.

Benjamin: But they’re never together! Doesn’t that bother you?

Zane Kai: They’re together. What do you mean?

Benjamin: Not really. Not like people who are getting together usually are. Or are now. They never get to, you know, hang out, or go on dates, or even get to know each other. The courtship ritual is so alien to me. So much is left to chance. Most of what Elizabeth knows and feels about Darcy is based on conjecture, rumor, reflection, and day dreaming. She has all these beliefs about him, then they change, but they might just as easy go right back to where they were. She has no real access to him. They certainly can’t have sex or be intimate until married so she has no idea if they’re compatible physically.

Zane Kai: But it wasn’t appropriate then.

Benjamin: I know! That’s what I mean. Other people could tell me to stop caring about this stuff. And…

Zane Kai: What?

Benjamin: I just, I feel bad for these women. I can’t help it! Their lives are so shallow. All their happiness and energy is bound up in the pursuit of men and they have so little control over it in the end. There’s so much petty gossip. They hardly seem to have other endeavors or passions.

Zane Kai: That’s not their fault!

Benjamin: I know, I know.

Zane Kai: How do you think it all turns out?

Benjamin: I honestly don’t know. She keeps it pretty lively, Jane Austen. A lot of twists and turns. Lots of misdirection. Though hardly anything really happens, the book is surprisingly suspenseful. I’d be pretty shocked if she and Darcy don’t end up together.

Zane Kai: It’s amazing you’ve managed to be alive so long and not know how Pride and Prejudice ends.

Benjamin: Thanks, Kai.

Post #82: One Man Book Club

Book Reviews

So, as you know, I’m reading Pride and Prejudice as a sort of one-man-book-club, and as a way to respond to the first 70 pages, which is all I’ve had time to get through so far, I thought it best to have my intern, Mr. Zane Kai, interview me about my experience. He’s a big Jane Austen fan, though, I’m sorry to say, not that great an interviewer. But he’s free. The interview, albeit a bit short, is in its entirety below.

Zane Kai: Good morning, Benjamin

Benjamin: Hi, Zane. Hi. Sorry for being late.

Zane Kai: That’s okay! I work for you, remember!

Benjamin: Right.

Zane Kai: I see you’ve got your copy of the book with you.

Benjamin: Want to be able to find passages and all that.

Zane Kai: So, where should we start?

Benjamin: I don’t know.

Zane Kai: I could ask you what you think of the novel so far.

Benjamin: You could ask me what I think of the novel so far.

Zane Kai: (awkward laughter) So…what do you think of Pride and Prejudice so far?

Benjamin: It’s good.

Zane Kai: Care to elaborate?

Benjamin: (12 second pause) It’s funnier than I expected.

Zane Kai: Is that a good thing?

Benjamin: Definitely. No, definitely a good thing. I didn’t mean that as, like, when you say someone has a great personality because you don’t want to name the fact that they’re ugly. I just mean it’s one of the things about the book that stands out.

Zane Kai: In what way does humor affect the book?

Benjamin: Mostly, Jane Austen seems to employ humor to tell us things about the characters. Like when, early in the novel (flipping pages)…in discussion with her daughter on the subject of a certain Mrs. Long

Zane Kai: Uh huh

Benjamin: Mrs. Bennet comments, saying, hold on, let me find it, saying…”she is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion of her.” I mean, that’s funny. I laughed and underlined it. And we learn something about Mrs. Bennet while we’re laughing.

Zane Kai: I love that line too! Cool, what else? How else does she use humor?

Benjamin: Well, I don’t know, um…the humor also creates tension. There’s constant verbal bantering that goes on between the characters that almost reminds me of the kinds of battles of wits Shakespeare’s characters often engage in.

Zane Kai: Such as?

Benjamin: Like when Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy–can I just ask, does he have a first name?

Zane Kai: Um…I don’t know. I don’t think so…just Mr. Darcy!

Benjamin: Anyway, when they’re coyly flirting/feeling each other out at a ball early in the book. Hold on, let me see if… (More flipping pages)…yeah, here. Before they are in proximity of one another, this guy Sir William, this idiot at the party, says to Darcy, “what a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Darcy. There is nothing like dancing after all,” to which Darcy dryly replies, and you can just feel this guy’s icy glare, “…it has the advantage also of being in vogue amongst the less polished societies of the world. Every savage can dance.” Moments later, Elizabeth Bennet comes up and Sir William tries to get her to dance with Darcy, and Elizabeth says, and we can start to feel how smart and sassy she is, “I have not the least intention of dancing. I entreat you not to suppose that I moved this way in order to beg for a partner.” Damn! Darcy then asks her to dance but she rebuffs him, playing very very hard to get. So, you know, there’s a lot of that kind of tension driven humor. Austen’s pretty crafty the way she shows us stuff and ratchets up the stakes through these kinds of interactions.

Zane Kai: So…I can’t help noticing, and I’m sorry to say this, and don’t take it the wrong way, but it looks as if you haven’t read that much. You told me you’d hoped to be half way through the book by now and I can see your bookmark isn’t a third the way in.

Benjamin: Yeah. Well, I’ve been pretty swamped at work this week.

Zane Kai: Are you planning to keep reading?

Benjamin: Definitely! I mean, I’m enjoying it a lot. I don’t know that I find it a page turner necessarily.

Zane Kai: Because of the writing?

Benjamin: It’s less that. I think it’s more the situation and the conflicts. I’ve just never been that into British society the way a lot of people are. There’s a bottomless well of romance in 19th Century British life for some people…although, I’ve watched a couple episodes of Downton Abbey and it’s pretty rocking. And Ang Lee’s film of Sense and Sensibility is unreal.

Zane Kai: And there’s always, you know, Shakespeare.

Benjamin: Smart ass.

Zane Kai: Sorry.

Benjamin: And Shakespeare’s work was often set outside of England.

Zane Kai: Good point.

Benjamin: Thank you.

Zane Kai: What else?

Benjamin: Well, now I know where the idea for pretty much every romantic comedy ever comes from.

Zane Kai: What do you mean?

Benjamin: The set up of the novel feels like When Harry Met Sally or something. They don’t like each other at first, but there’s clearly sexual tension beneath the surface and you sense they’ll probably end up together, but everything will conspire against them.

(Pause.)

Benjamin: So…are we done for now?

Zane Kai: We can be. Remember, I work for you!

Benjamin: Let’s check in after another 70 pages.

Zane Kai: Deal!

Post #78: New Acquisitions

Book Reviews, Things You Should Be Reading

I need more books in my house like I need a hole in the head, but somehow or another I found my way to the bookstore yesterday and picked up a couple new acquisitions. There’s just nothing like a new book, is there? The smell. The crisp, unbroken spine. The promise of what’s inside that you haven’t yet discovered. The buzz never fails.

And, yet, my house is full of books I haven’t read. There’s dozens. And I’m not talking clunker hand-me-downs or boxes of thrift store throw aways. I’m talking about never read, bookstore fresh books that I bought and never picked up because I bought other new books before I could read them. Which brings me back to the hole in the head.

French philosopher Jacques Lacan wrote about Objet Petit a (object little a, for those non-francophiles), which he described as the object of unattainable desire. It’s like this. It is not the objects you acquire, or the thing itself, whatever it may be (new tits, a car, leather gloves, earrings, paperbacks, lamps etc), it is the desire to acquire that we over and over again trick ourselves into believing will be satisfied and quieted by said acquisitions. Except it isn’t. We’ve all felt this desire and we will all feel it again. Every time I buy new books I am compelled not just by the desire to read and to experience stories I’ve not yet experienced–it’s not just an adventurer’s buoyant gusto at work–but also a small but persistent voice inside my brain (let’s call him The Idiot) that tells me I’ll be happier if I get stuff that I don’t already possess. The name works because it’s idiotic behavior. Picture me. Or picture you. You stand there, whatever it is you don’t need tucked under your arm, or in a basket, staring around the store, beating yourself up for spending money you don’t have on stuff you don’t need. You put the things back. You pick them back up. You walk over there. You come back. You scan the wall. You put the things back. You pick them back up. And do so until you either buy them or leave empty handed and say to yourself, “I should have just bought them.” Either way, the feeling persists. Soon after the purchase, be it days, or even hours, the desire is back and must again be quelled. The Idiot is not easily satiated or mollified. He is an Idiot of massive appetite with a great big fork and knife. And my Idiot is most often hungry for pages with writing on them.

Anyway, so I bought a couple of new books, okay? And, so sue me, they were both hardcovers. And aside form that Lacan interlude, and some lingering guilt, I’m genuinely excited about them.

I’ve already started Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max. It’s sad and kind of wonderful so far. Even if there’s something porn like and oddly voyeuristic in reading about a person who you know was mentally ill and committed suicide. Still, who doesn’t like porn? But I’m fascinated by Wallace and his life and work and though I’ve put it off, I was going to work my way around to this one eventually.

And now waiting in the wings is George Saunder’s new story collection Tenth of December. I love Saunders. Have you read him? If not, do yourself a big one and get on it. His collection of essays The Braindead Megaphone is a personal favorite and I’m looking forward to reading more of his fiction. If I haven’t gotten bogged down in a pile of new books by the time I remember I even bought it, I’ll let you know how it is.

Post #65: Lifting the Veil

Book Reviews

I am a huge fan of Jay-Z. I don’t listen to a ton of hip-hop, but what I do listen to (mostly Tribe Called Quest, Jurassic 5, The Roots), I listen to fervently, and the Jigga is right at the top of my list. I can’t get enough of his flow, his layered point of view, or his effortless cool. Whether or not you’re a fan, you’re reading this, which means you’re drawing breath, which means you’ve heard some Jay-Z. His music is ubiquitous, as omni present as Michael Jackson’s was a generation ago. What you may not know is that Jay-Z is also an author and that two years ago he published a book called Decoded. I read it. It’s wonderful. Part memoir. Part social history. Part musicology. Part celebrity gossip. At its essence, it’s an exploration of Jay-Z’s life and evolution into the king of hip-hop, but he doesn’t stop there, and takes on a broad and multi-layered approach to explaining, and justifying, hip-hop as a legitimate art form. As poetry. He does this through inviting us into his world, into Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects where he grew up and cut his teeth as a fatherless drug dealer and hip-hop dreamer, writing rhymes and song lyrics on paper bags from the corner bodega, recording basement demos, trying to get a deal, playing the occasional show, battling other MCs at the center of cheering circles. He invites us into the world of the hustler, into the life he lived and the persona he adopted as he morphed from Shawn Carter into Jay Z. It’s a pulling back of the curtain so naked, and so academic, that I was shocked by the patient way he tells all, the lack of irony as he explains inside jokes, right down to the most cryptic hip-hop slang. Part of the time he does this through stories and riffing, and photos, and part of the time through lyric deconstruction, annotating the words to many of his songs to explain the stories and inside references necessary to bring the complexity of his vision to life. You don’t often find great artists taking the time to explain their work to the audience; most often a great artist lets the work speak for itself. But hip hop, Jay shows us, is an art form worthy of and needing defense. Obviously Jay Z knows how popular and lucrative rap is, but how seriously do fans and critics really take it? How about the average citizen?

One of my favorite moments in the book is a story Jay Z tells about his song “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem),” which famously borrows the chorus from the Annie song with (roughly) the same name. You know this song; you can picture the scene from the movie right now, can’t you? Jay talks about how the symmetry felt right to him, how the black men of his generation, while not all orphans per se, felt abandoned and overlocked. Kicked instead of kissed, as the song goes. If you don’t know Jay Z’s song, here’s a refresher.

But problems arose. Apparently, the parent corporation that owned the rights to the songs from Annie didn’t like the idea of Jay Z putting it in a rap song about young black kids in the ghetto. I can hardly blame them, even if they were missing the point, and probably not listening very closely to the words in the song. So what did the Jigga do? Like a true hustler, he told them the story they needed to hear. It was in the form of a letter. In it he told the heartless record execs the story of when he was in seventh grade and how he entered an essay contest at his middle school, the winner of which won tickets to see Annie on Broadway. He wrote his heart out and won the contest and tickets and the trip to the Great White Way and now he’d really appreciate being able to use the chorus of “It’s a Hard Knock Life” as a way to complete the circle, not to mention bolster a kick ass song he already had in the can. The parent corporation, touched by the story, assented and the rest is history. The single went gold and was recently ranked #11 on VHI’s 100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop. The funny thing, though, is that he made it up. The whole story. There was no essay contest. There was no trip to Broadway. He sold them a bill of goods and they happily bought it. Or so he tells us in Decoded.

It’s a great story, right? But as much as I love Jay Z, I’m calling bullshit. I think he’s doing the same thing to us he did to them. I don’t think he ever said any such thing to earn the rights to the song. I’m guessing the matter was handled the old fashioned way. With lawyers and cash.

Decoded is a book to check out, especially if you’re into or curious about hip hop culture. You may not think its content will hold a lot of appeal if you’re not a fan of hip hop, but I would say it’s the hip hop critic and those who think it’s all just thugs and idiots who rap that would really get something out of this book. That might be surprised by how crazy intelligent, insightful, and totally in control Shawn Carter really is. I highly doubt Jay Z wrote every word of it. Few celebrity autobiographers do. Just ask Andre Agassi. Or Miles Davis. Jay Z is one of the most gifted of modern musical poets, but the prose here is lush and seasoned, that of someone who’s been writing prose his whole life. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. It hardly matters. The point of view is legit, the persona is all HOVA, and the defense of this modern art form is thoughtful, unapologetic, and very personal.

Post #48: Review Static

Book Reviews, Things You Should Be Reading

The question up for debate today is:

Can you read or hear strong opinions (positive or negative) about a piece of art without your own judgments and ideas being warped and affected? A corollary question is: does the volume and passion of said opinions have a relationship to said (potential) affect? A corollary to that one is, are we more prone to react to criticism or praise? But you can ignore that last one because it pretty much answers itself.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. It started with Billy Joel. It started with Ron Rosenbaum’s Slate article in which he essentially takes a massive dump all over Billy Joel’s music and employs some serious intellectual bullying to convince his readers he’s correct. Read the article and come back, but if you don’t have time, simply imagine any criticism that could ever be levied against Billy Joel (overrated, lite rock schlock, insubstantial fluff), then turn it up to 11. Rosenbaum was so adamant that I, a life long Billy Joel fan, began to wonder whether I’d been wrong about the Piano Man my whole life. It shouldn’t matter what Rosenbaum thinks, of course. He’s just one opinion. Why should he even enter in to the conversation against decades of liking? But he sounds smart enough, and he writes for Slate, and he writes with the kind of spite that you can’t help but sit up and listen to, even though you kind of know he’s an idiot. His intention is clear: to convince you Billy Joel sucks. For those who already hate Billy Joel (he refers to him simply in the sexually overt moniker “BJ” as if everyone calls him that) he wants to affirm and explain to you your hatred so that you can clarify exactly what you mean when talking to your friends at the next Radiohead concert. If you like Joel, he wants you to doubt your own allegiance, to shout you into submission so that you’ll eventually say, “Okay, okay, you’re right, he sucks, I’m sorry!”

It shouldn’t matter.

The problem, of course, is that it does matter. Someone shouts in our ear and, if we’re thoughtful and impressionable (as most of us are), it affects us. I did feel just a little bit of doubt about Billy Joel after reading. I wondered: does he actually suck? I always thought he was a pretty good singer and a hell of a songwriter. And I’ve spent more than a few hours in the man’s musical company, much of it singing along in a very loud and horrible way. In the end, this doubt derived from Rosembaum didn’t go anywhere. It died on the vine. That night I cued up “Easy Money” and white-man-overbit my way back to the mid-level allegiance I’ve always felt for Billy Joel.

This brings me to Chard Harbach’s blockbuster debut literary novel The Art of Fielding. Without a doubt, Fielding has been the IT literary novel of the year. Darling of critics and readers and book groups and the subject of a very very long Vanity Fair piece that detailed its slow ten year grind from MFA project to $650,000 bidding war and author advance. Like with any piece of art that becomes really really popular, a critic was there to tell these many readers they were wrong. In this case, it was B.R. Myers’s article in The Atlantic a couple of months ago entitled “A Swing and a Miss” that heatedly and expansively debunks the literary merits of Harbach’s debut and reveals it to be a soft and unimpressive book and the beneficiary of the cultural boon that accompanies the IT literary novel of the year.

I hadn’t read Fielding when I read Myers’s article, though I had been very aware of it, seeing its cover on the book store shelf many a time and hearing strong praise about it from a friend whose opinion I greatly respect and who has similar reading tastes to my own. After reading Myers’s article, I couldn’t deny I had a similar kind of knee-jerk reaction (by the way, I may be deluded, but I’m telling myself over here that I’m admitting to a kind of reaction that many of us feel but may elect not to express) to Rosenbaum’s piece. Granted, I’d been a lifelong Joel fan and not read a word of Fielding, but still, I wanted to read the book and now wondered whether I could go into it without judging it as overrated. You could argue that I’d been swayed similarly by my friend’s positive approbation (see question 3 above, the one that answered itself), but I felt a stronger reaction to Myers than to my friend (and this is nothing against my friend, who was convincing). For me, it became: How can I read Myers and the like and not let them hinder my individual experience with the piece of art being discussed? Can I? Should I? Do I read these things just for intellectual fodder or do I read to be informed and/or convinced? Don’t I secretly want their opinion so I can later pawn it off as my own? But who wants to read a book just so that they can hate it and then be like, yeah, I knew that was going to suck, Myers was so right!

The conundrum for me is that I enjoy reading. Everything. I read a lot of reviews (my friend, interestingly, does not because he doesn’t want them tainting his experience). I can’t help it. I’m just into knowing what people think and many times I’ve thought of buying a book or album and hustled over to Amazon to read reviews to see whether it’s any good or not. And yeah, this practice has burned me more than a few times (if you didn’t know, people are much more likely to write positive reviews than negative).

By the way, I finally read The Art of Fielding a couple weeks ago and became so engrossed in it that I literarily felt physical pain at having to put the book down. That sounds like hyperbole, but it’s not. I got a headache because I couldn’t read it. It completely owned me for three days. It had been a long time since I’d felt that way. So, I was able to ignore Myers for the duration of my joyful reading, and yet, upon finishing, there that fucker was, whispering in my ear: “it wasn’t as good as you thought it was, really, think about it, you idiot. Just listen. I’ll tell you. I know. I’m smart. My opinion is more important than yours. I’m in The Atlantic.”

And I’m thinking: SHUT UP!

And I’m thinking: TELL ME MORE!

I’m going to cue up “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” while I ponder this some more.