Oh, the webs we weave

spiders.. n stuff

” It all began with a song.

In the beginning, after all, were the words, and they came with a tune. That was how the world was made, how the void was divided, how the lands and the stars and the dreams and the little gods and the animals, how all of them came into the world.”

Neil Gaiman, why do you tell such awesome stories?

I feel like Anansi Boys was written as a side project, whenever Gaiman was bored or when he got tired of being awesome for coming up with Sandman. Whether this is true or not, Anansi Boys is an amazing story. There are several drawbacks – british humor, internal dialogue, and no comix. Use of run-away thoughts for a kind of lack-a-daisy main character   is funny approximately once. Maybe I’m just a stuck up arse. Also, use of the words “bum” and “bugger off” will always induce giggles from this American.

I never reviewed Neverwhere, but this is what I thought of it: This is such an awesome story! It’d be so cool if it was a comic! And this is what I think of Anansi Boys: same thing as Neverwhere! Man!  Luckily Matthew Vaughn read my mind to create some visual aid (a movie) for Stardust. Here’s the thing: Gaiman creates such freakin’ awesome worlds with all the mish mashed myths of gods and demi-gods you read about when you were a kid, but he writes very plainly.. such that the characters in his stories are predictable. Not to say that’s a bad thing: it’s actually what makes his stories more approachable, in the way in which you see the hero getting cornered in, and knowing that he/she will be saved by his/her stupidity/innocence. However, when you’re expecting something deep like Sandman in his books.. it’s just a little disappointing. Hype sucks. Anansi Boys is interesting and captivating, but not really seasoned with salt and pepper like American Gods was. In conclusion, this is a fun story in which you just have to sit back, relax and let Anansi weave you in.

I finished the book in between classes in the ever so classy Morrison library in UC Berkeley. Huzzah, Morrison!

— On a side note

Guess what I’m reading now? Is it War and Peace? One Hundred Years of Solitude? House of Leaves?

It’s all three! But really I’m reading the Batgirl comics right now. Stop snickering. Seriously. It’s actually not that bad. I think I read comics because I don’t feel totally disgusted about it (like when I watch nine seasons of southpark)but at the same time it’s not as big of a task or as commiting as reading a book. I have such commitment issues.Comics are so awesome and addicting. I wish I read them when I was little instead of watching an unearthly amount of anime. Anime is the biggest waste of time ever by the way.

Oh yeah I also think it is a sad thing that I’m way more excited about my english class than the fact that I am now in charge of a line of mice sells for my lab or the fact that I know way too much about o-chem. That wasn’t an indirect way of bragging, which is even sadder. Haha I’m so un-pre-med.

 

The importance of reflection.. and being Ernest

don't be fooled

It’s been a year since I’ve been in college, and probably 2 years since I started reviewing books. Unlike a lot of other things in my life, I started this blog and my other book blog purely for myself – such that I wouldn’t depend on other people’s responses to keep me continuously reviewing. Because once you depend on other people for happiness, well, it’s over. My life is based on so many insecurities, and this is probably one of the only things that isn’t affected by that. It’s not really for anyone beside myself such that I can look back on what I thought of each book and how I attempted to analyze it. Lots of things have changed with college, but not too much. Mostly it’s a lot of realization of who you really are. People say that you discover yourself in high school, but I think college is really the place you test yourself and push yourself, and the place you realize a lot of ugly truths inside you. But the beautiful things will always outweigh that. Living by yourself, complaining, laughing, grubbing with friends, studying way too much, not studying enough, missing your dog, reading, soaking it all in.  Life.

On another note, Naked Lunch was ridiculously insane. I know it was written to shock and disturb people, but goddamn.  Burroughs, a notable 60’s writer is the very author postmodernists worship and get their material from. He’s the inspiration and friends of Ginsberg and Kerouac.  Who could resist picking up the book that has shocked and inspired so many?

Needless to say, I couldn’t resist it. I mean, just look at the cover, the screaming bright yellow and cool hip style of writing. In the first few pages, Burroughs writes with a bitter rage, of what it’s like to need junk, to want junk so badly that it completely consumes you.  The science behind detoxing and the drugs he’s been through were also carelessly written in as an after thought.

Then shit hits the fan.. literally. You’re tossed in this alternate world of the Interzone with a bunch of pedophilic men who use heroin and other drugs like nothing and exist solely, it seems, to hold another orgy with little boys. I tried looking for analysis and explanations of the point of orgy after orgy but the internet is not my friend. Basically, junk is compared to all kinds of addictions – and in this case, the need to defile a young boy in any disgusting way you think of. I’m not saying it’s not a great work, because I have by no means closely studied it , but it is definetely not to be read all in one sitting (like me) otherwise you’ll just keep wondering  why this is happening, and why am I reading this?

Summary: Orgies + drugs + disgusting sex.

Postmodern isn’t always cool, I guess.

Bunburying? oh yes

The Importance of Being Earnest is a clever play written by Oscar Wilde (!)  A master of twisting words and homophones, this play is definetely one of his most famous works for the underlying homosexual tones and for the tongue in cheek humor that is rare during his time era. I mean, he had 2 pages dedicated to the greed of eating muffins! That’s freaking awesome in so many ways.

The story is about two friends named Algernon and Jack. They both lie about the existence of two invalid brothers that exist in a place where they do not live so that they can get out of social parties if they do not wish to attend. Jack calls his brother “Ernest” and Algernon calls his brother “Bunburying”. Algernon is in love with Jack’s niece Cecily and Jack is in love with Algernon’s cousin Gwendolyn. Both have assumed the name “Ernest” in which the ladies fall desperately in love with – “Oh I love a name like Ernest. I absolutely love that name,” Ladies are silly. Both panic and try to rechristen themselves to change their name to Ernest. A quick read for a few laughs and good natured isunderstandings.

 

viva la revolucion

follow the setting sun

“And here’s a story you can hardly believe but it’s true, and it’s funny and it’s beautiful. There was a family of twelve and they were forced off the land. They had no car. They built a trailer out of junk and loaded it with their possessions. They pulled it to the side of 66 and waited. And pretty soon a sedan picked them up. Five of them rode in the sedan and seven on the trailer, and a dog on the trailer. They got to California in two jumps. The man who pulled them fed them. And that’s true. But how can such courage be, and such faith in their own species? Very few things would teach such faith.

The people in flight from the terror behind – strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.”

Steinbeck’s plodding, steady writing in Grapes of Wrath follows the story of a family of 12 move from Oklahoma to California after the foreclosure of their land. Along the way, they discover the world beyond their land, how much they are willing to sacrifice, and the dawn of a new world of which they don’t belong. The simplicity of the Joads is both heartwarming and heartbreaking such that their naiveity and their genuine honesty will be their downfall in a world where a man is valued lower than machines and the link between man and nature is lost. Even though Steinbeck wrote this great classic over half a century ago, Grapes of Wrath is written with such powerful imagery and with such passionate description of the philosophy of man that it will be read for many more generations after ours.

The reason this book is a classic is because Steinbeck incorporates so many general concepts that can be applied to modern day. Specifically he wrote about the plight of the migrant workers in Salinas, a microcosm of the bitter strikes all over California during that time period. The only break the Joads get is their stay in a government camp in which the people govern themselves (it screams communism) and yet they still have to continue on to find jobs. They travel far just to get a few cents for the next meal, competing with other people who have traveled west following a flyer claiming “800 pickers needed”.  Only, there’s thousands that need jobs. Capitalism tells the boss to cut wages to get the work done faster – the fewer bosses there are over more amount of land, the more inhumane the bosses are. Grocery stores nearby raise prices because they know workers can’t afford to drive to town to buy food. Steinbeck writes of the disconnect between man and nature which in turn affects the way man treats each other.

The story is bleak and depressing despite the Joads’ naive hope that pushes them forward to find the next job. Interspersed between chapters of the Joads tale, Steinbeck writes with a fiery passion of the plight of the workers, how hunger has made them band together and become the start of a revolution. We never actually read about it, but at the end we get the glimpse of how simple men who were happy with just an acre or two of land become strong and mean.

What does this book mean for us? Over 50 years ago, the workers had bitter strikes against this cruel idea called capitalism which kept them from their next meal. Now? We still have strikes: if not for a few cents for the next meal, more for our basic health and our standard of living. Marginalization due to race, due to socioeconomic standing. Turning us into competitors, putting us into debt, so that when we’re finally decently surviving, nobody has the energy to help or care about others.

—

“Is it a rebellion?” asked Louis XVI of the count who informed him of the fall of the Bastille.

“No, sire,” came the reply. “It is a revolution.”

 

“We used to make shit in this country… now we just put our hand in the next guy’s pocket”

In the second series of The Wire, Burns and Simon explore the ports of Baltimore first introducing the honest to goodness good ole’ days of battered stevedores and longshoreman and then digging deeper into their relationship with the Greeks, and ultimately leading to the top of the pyramid, the multigenerational Barksdale family.  We are introduced to the shipping industry, its hardships and Sabotka’s fight for the union. The Barksdale case gets put on the back burner as season 2 shows an explosion of Polaks and Greeks, interestingly at the bottom of the food chain in shipping and smuggling drugs from shipments. While Avon runs his drug business from prison and Stringer executing orders via phone calls, the police have a lot on their hands.

McNulty, suffering the rage of his superior, gets put on a boat after the detail is dissipated last season. Boring as it is, he pulls in a floater and connects it to a murder case of 13 jane  does to the fury of Rawls. At the same time, Prysbelewski’s stepfather has a problem with Frank Sabotka, spokesperson of the longshoremen suspecting him of smuggling and, more importantly, shaming him in front of a large group of burly guys. You can’t scorn a man of power and not expect to get spanked for it – so the guy demands a detail just to bring one union head in because of some petty trifle over who has prettier windowpanes.   Daniels initially has some trouble getting Kima, and convincing his own wife that the detail is worth it – not just for his career, but for himself. McNulty has similar problems with his ex-wife, trying to come clean and winning her back. These stories  illustrate how much the detectives sacrifice for their job, and demonstrates that may be what it takes to be a good cop.

Frank Sabotka’s family, namely his son and his nephew are workers at the shore, occasionally smuggling goods for the Greeks for extra pay. They live together, kids in the basement, grown-ups upstairs. Upon the beginning of the second season, Sabotka was all ready to throw in the towel after the Greeks were responsible for the 13 dead girls in a shipment, but his smartass, loud-talking son Ziggy and his cool-headed nephew Nikko continue dealing on the side because they can’t get enough work on the docks. Ships have ceased coming to the docks because dockworkers aren’t efficient and the city refuses to give them a union.

These two seemingly different cases are intricately tied together by one thing: drugs. The Greeks get the smuggled chemicals off of the docks from the workers, and then negotiate with Barksdale’s crew, who in turn sell it back on the streets. It’s a nasty cycle in which the police are completely out of the loop of. Only at the middle of the season do the police see the ties between the smuggling and the drug training, and by then, as they usually are, it’s too late.

Season 2  fills out the details of the drug trade, more of the origin of where it comes from, and the plight of the longshoremen. While it is very different from the typical Wire season, I found it necessary, and enlightening in other aspects he is trying to depict. This season proved that Burns can do a lot outside of the cops/robber directing. Once again, the director makes a point that the little people always get nothing when promised their grandiose version of the American Dream: Nicky strives for a house of his own, Sabotka hopes to start a union, Ziggy just wants to be cool. The story criticizes, above all else, the greed and corruption of the people up top.  I’m not talking about the bosses of the drug trade and smuggling.  I’m talking about our very own bosses of the “good side”, our very own politicians and representatives.

 

Henry Detamble and Mr. Darcy should face off

“We’re walking down the street, holding hands. There’s a playground at the end of the block and I run to the swings and climb on, and Henry takes the one next to me, facing the opposite direction, and we swing higher and higher, passing each other, sometimes in sync and sometimes streaming past each other so fast it seems like we’re going to collide, and we laugh, and we laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead, or far away: right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment”

What’s this? A well written romance? Is that even possible? Audrey Niffengger proves that with good writing, love doesn’t have to be cheap and sloppy like most romance novels.

Although The Time Traveler’s Wife is no literary classic, the lyricism, rhythm, and atmosphere Niffenegger writes with pulls you in inevitably into the epic love story of Clare and Henry. Henry, unable to control his sporadic time traveling to the past and to the future strains his relationship with Clare, who knows him from 6 years old. Henry has certain rules he follows: he never tells Clare the future, and never tries to change the future, no matter how tragic he knows it to be. Often times his future self knows things that his past self doesn’t know, and travelling backwards has to endure the pain and suffering of not being able to change things. One of the main problems is that he arrives naked to his destination, wherever or whenever it might be. This leads to stealings, beatings, and many arrests by the police: but only to disappear in jail as he time travels back. Clare always waits with clothes and food, as seen in the cover of the book: a little girl waiting for a strange man that always appears in a clearing just outside her house stark naked. As the years pass, they start their strange relationship – she waits dutifully each time Henry says he will appear in the meadow. While she ages naturally, Henry comes as a middle aged man, always a different age. Underlying the unconditional and unconventional love story there is also a theme of fate and free will.

Niffenger writes with a rare beauty nostalgic and reminiscent of all the summer loves you ever had (or imagined, for some people). Everyone falls in love, and summer is the best time to do it. The setting she puts her characters in, rich Clare in an aristocratic mansion, Henry with musician parents leads to a culturally rich relationship.  There are meadows and flowers to run through, secrets to be whispered, summer breezes to bless them. Setting is everything. Henry’s knowledge and love for books and music comes in handy to make a  heartthrob similar to all the romeos of great classics. He quotes poems in their private sanctuary in the meadow, woos her, becomes the love that every girl would want. The fact that he never knows when he will sporadically time travel makes it all the more romantic – seeing Clare clutching his clothes as he disappears in mid-air, left to wait for the next time he arrives. The perfect ingredients for a sucessful romance story.

While the book includes many interesting aspects of time-traveling and portrays so perfectly the heartache of waiting, the book could be percieved to be a rather boring story of two people in a relationship. Each hardship they come across becomes solved within a chapter or two, and moves steadily on to the next trouble. The fact that it is around 500 pages is because it contains a lot of fluff. It is essentially the entire life of Clare and Henry, backwards or forwards.  There are critics of the absence of real plots and subplots, but I don’t agree with these comments. Take it for what it is: a beautiful love story carried along with the stream of time, unstoppable, romantic, and tragic.

I’m not going to lie. It’s a book for dreamy girls and probably fans of The Notebook. Rachel McAdams is even playing the  Clare in the movie that’s coming out in August.

 

“Thin line between heaven and here”

Season one of the Wire provides the background of the Barksdale multi-generational drug family running the entire west side of Baltimore. Enter Detective Jimmy McNulty, proclaimed “asshole” of the Baltimore Police Department for sticking his nose in business that isn’t his. As a homicide police, he follows a murder into the courtroom and connects the witness’ last minute “Just Kidding, I can’t identify the murderer” to one well-bred gangster staring the witness down with his “don’t mess with me” look. Eager and idealistic McNulty decides to bring the Barksdale case up to the judge, probably the only one with power on McNulty’s side for most of this season. The Judge, genuinely shocked that no one has heard of Barksdale orders a report on McNulty’s police section…

And so with McNulty’s grandiose idea of bringing down the Barksdale family, others get dragged into the game via a ghetto detail set up by less than willing fat cats Major Rawls and Deputy Comissioner Burrells. From narcotics division, Lieutenant Daniels and his underlings Kima, Herc, and Carver, and from everywhere and nowhere dumped on them is inept Pryzbylewski and seemingly inept Freamon. On the other side of the game is the entire Barksdale family and their loyal (or not) peoples: Avon Barksdale, Queen Stringer Bell, Muscle Wee Bey, D’Angelo Barksdale, nephew of Avon, and his pit workers Bodie, Wallace, and Poot. Later, Omar Little as the stick-up man comes in guns ablazin’ Robin Hood style.

Too many names? Too bad. You get tossed in the confusion of the police as they, too, try to put names with faces through CI “Bubbles”, a drug addict on the streets buying from Barksdale’s killers-in-training who reside in a place affectionately dubbed “the pit”. D’Angelo gets thrown in the pit as well as he gets off the hook from the murder case and trains the teens well in dispersing the drugs effectively without showing where the stash and the money are located. Since our view is limited to the police’s point of view for most of the season, we spend a good half of the season catching up with the police trying to grasp policies and lawyers and running drug businesses 101. While people like me are merely dazed at all the effort needed just to bring one little dude in (Avon isn’t even that big), others more in-the-know with our legal system merely shake their heads at the reality of it all.

So what does The Wire offer to you? It’s not going to offer A-list celebrities or McDreamies, but it does offer a lesbian couple – even though Grey’s Anatomy and House has been there and beat that horse to death. To say The Wire as a show is a form of entertainment isn’t really true. Watching it is not easy, and it’s not fun, and the smiles cracked in that show are often because there’s nothing that can be done to make things better- so, what the hell, crack a joke. What it does do is provide a mirror for America and what we praise as the fairest country in the world. It reflects a system much too marred by politics and personal gain – a criticism of the fundamental belief of our society: capitalism. People who make it at the top make sure nobody else gets there and always, the little people suffer. The most interesting thing is that the system isn’t contained in what we consider the good guys. Slowly you see the system in the street. Who is Avon but another Burrell? McNulty and D’Angelo? For any Barksdale crew wanting to get out, they’re trapped with the promise of death if they ever leave. For McNulty and his detail, they’re trapped in the war of politics. Lastly, at the eye of the storm is young Wallace who saw a glimpse of what it means to be in the game and wants out. But it is too little and too late, just as Omar says “The game’s out there, and it’s play or get played.”

As for its shooting techniques, the film doesn’t do any special effects or curiously enough, sentimental music. The Wire was meant to portray Baltimore realistically (which didn’t go so well for Baltimore’s mayor) and without much fanfare. Any music we hear is only enhanced from the radios and jukeboxes in bars on screen. Spoilers (as if you haven’t seen this show already- why else would you be searching for it): the scene of Wallace’s death was shot without any music by Death Cab for Cutie or any spine-tingling nonsense adrenaline death metal. All that occurred was a short dialogue between Wallace and Bodie, a pitiful plea from Wallace “But we’re just boys…” . If it was done in any other show, you’d have cameras whirling about for 360 shots of the person about to die and all this sentimental music that would have you sobbing even before the poor sop was shot or died of cancer or something else. But all you hear from him is “You’re just a boy” when Bodie just said not 10 minutes ago that he “was a man”. This is the way the world ends – not with a bang but a whimper.

Hailed as the “best show on television” by critics, Okay shut the hell up: we know it’s the best show on television. We listen to people we consider smarter than us, or at least more tv-savvy, so called “critics” and watch what they tell us to. Or in this case, we don’t listen to them. The Wire, along with other underrated TV shows (don’t get too excited, hipsters) such as Arrested Development, all got ratings through the roof – yet it was not enough to bring in viewers.  In the same manner of its plotline The Wire quietly suffocates in the shadows of paparrazi flashes and glamorous celebrities, starving but strong. Ed Burns bears his teeth in an interview: “This last season of The Wire almost didn’t get made because I was squeezed between a fanciful and well-done story about four beautiful women bored to shit on their suburban court and fucking their way through episodes..” This isn’t a criticism of Desperate Housewives, just a commentary that we as a nation have become so desensitized to all the crap in the world that we step on that we find ways to not think about it.

Twisted, gnarly, tangled, powerful men and women make up the crew of The Wire. The directors had a lot to say – and they did it well without adding anything remotely resembling silly drama and a ridiculous amount of sex. You’re not going to get lured into this show with the promise of more of Izzie’s rack or Number 13’s bisexuality. What’s scary isn’t the futility of police work or the effectiveness of the Barksdale generation. It’s the prospect of knowing that somewhere out there, all this shit is real and it’s not just on your TV screen, that little kids barely in their teens are getting shot or innocent people are compromised because they want to do good. And if that isn’t enough for you to watch, if this story isn’t for you (it really isn’t for anyone) I wouldn’t be surprised.

 

Fiat Lux this, sucka

Apathy is easier than those yelling faces you see parading around your Sproul Plaza when all you want to do, really, is get to your class. Where you then take down notes without understanding them, even if your eyebrows are knit and your hand hurts like hell, not fully understanding – what are the things you write down? Someone else’s thoughts, ingrained in your mind, copying word-for-word, thought-for-thought on to that piece of paper that you just regurgitate it right back out for a test that proves you’re trainable.

Which is good. That’s the reason you come to college- to prove you can function in the real world without parents. Parents guide you (sometimes more than guide you- and sometimes even misguide you). Nonetheless, there’s always someone there to guide you. Then you come to college, where you can go one of two ways – completely apeshit on the ‘freedom’ you’ve acquired, or go the route you’ve been trained for – studying your ass off for delayed gratification. Very few people balance these two well – and in my opinion, unless you’re a swaggering street-smart genius (and these are rare- despite what TV tells you), this is really rare. It’s never 50/50, you always lean to one side of the spectrum.

I try to balance going apeshit with my studies, but I find my studies severely limiting, considering I happen to be interested in the physiology of a human being. That’s pure science. It also sucks out my soul – take a look at lab buildings: bare, sterile, clean, mostly white and black with weird-shaped instruments you use to extract, drop, cut, grind, burn, boil, stir, recrystallize, weigh and in general, measure stuff with. And isn’t that what everything important in life is about – measuring up to standards. Everything says that if there’s an inaccuracy, it’s your fault, thus “human error”: mouths closed, ears and eyes wide open so you can take as much shit in as you can, be the biggest shit in the class, or better yet, The Shit if you are full of enough shit. You look at, say, Dwinelle(a building for language and humanities) full of colorful flyers stapled on top of each other in a mess – come to chess club, calligraphy club, this discussion, that discussion, ballroom dancing -want to learn how to foxtrot?-, frumpy people sitting on the floor checking their Macs and reading their facebooks, eyes wide, ears closed, mouths open always chatting, always in the know that white shoes are out after labor day or that purple is the new black. No structure, complete freedom : just as worse.

Your eyes, mind, body, soul are being assaulted- mentally and physically – flashes of color and people forcing you to accept their flyers (after all, they need to get rid of them by such-and-such time) crazy homeless people on the streets you cry about at night, glowing embers in wasted bodies begging for spare change from a crowd of middle class Asians who wear the latest Juicy Courtore but don’t want to give them money, no, not their money saved from Chinese new year’s, meant for that cute dress they saw on sale. There’s no shame in that. I say that without any sarcasm – because they, too, are balancing their budgets in the “failing economy” that you live and breathe in today – things you’ll be telling your grandchildren, but not really, because if you go to a good school, chances are your parents aren’t really that bad off. Maybe you’ll have a story about how you couldn’t get into a specific class – God forbid you’re knocked off your pre-med track.

but apathy is much easier, when you’ve got to study, make a career for yourself, step up that resume.. until you meet someone that actually matters (maybe the doctor you’re shadowing in PH116) in the course of your pathetic life and they ask you what you think about some issue or that, and you draw a blank and you don’t even know what to say because you don’t know if you’re left or right or pro or con or up or down, because you chose to block it all out. There’s nothing wrong with that, besides the fact that you’re a sheltered lie that lives on top of a mountain of the greatest public university in the state, or even the nation, and you don’t bother casting your eyes downwards. And even when you do, it’s for the sake of yourself (stack that resume -!), and all in all that’s what this world is all about and what’s the point of thinking about it when you just go in circles and circles and circles…

Apathy is easier than those people with their fliers and those discussions and questioning what you believe in and why you do – not realizing that when we’re done with 4 years of acdemic bootcamp we become the very people that we protest against because you either vomit words or you create word vomit within the limits of your boss. This is what my mind goes through everyday when I walk to class through Sproul plaza: that everything is about augmenting your life without ever having to live with that augmented nuisance, graffiti, dicks drawn on posters with people on it -I don’t want a community based on promoting yourself – I want a community based on doing something that matters… well what really matters? More like, what’s the cool thing to matter right now? That’s the only way to get young people to care”

and you ask me, a young college kid full of potential, full of opportunities in the land of opportunity, “what do you want to do with your life?”

There’s only two answers to that, people: you live the lie or you find the truth. Makes me think about crawling back into that safe bubble of mine when all you had to do is memorize shit, but this here, Mount Olympus with all our academics to brag about – with no competition except the clouds – just a bigger bubble, that’s all.

–*

 

I shook Michael Chabon’s hand…

Reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is like going on a wine tour. You have to be a certain age to even drink wine and you have to be subtle/intellectual enough to care about the differences. Also, you have to resist the urge to slowly become a douchebag. That’s how I felt about Kavalier and Clay: mostly because I’ve heard the hype and I know it’s going to be a great gosh-golly punch in the face story- but in a good way- type of book. And it was. There’s no denying that.

Michael Chabon, as everyone probably knows, is a master of storytelling. His sentences are so cozy and elaborate, they “just pick you up and tuck you in bed” as one critic put it. I would have to agree. His book was dense to the point that I felt like I was eating a 5by5 burger at in-n-out. Like damn, talk about hindering the story. I suppose people like the elaborate descriptions that gives every object in the room some kind of personal attitude, but I thought there was too much of that.

I tend to shy away from things that everyone just adores. It gets old. But Kavalier and Clay is definitely a “classic” that will last for generations. The story encompasses the magic of youth and puppy love, but also draws in comic-book fanatics: the long lost fantasy of every true American boy. It’s also a commentary on the American Dream – for all its sleazy business men and riches beyond any poor Jewish boy’s imagination. It’s also written amazingly well by  a writer who is indeed fluent in the language of sentence construction.

Perhaps when I am older, old enough to taste wine and appreciate the value of Michael Chabon’s hand, and less cynical to the fanatics that surrounded me at his book reading, I can let his sentences “tuck me into bed”.But right now, when I’m young and impatient, I’m going to end up swallowing delicacies whole.

 

it’s like eating 1000 jalapenos

One would think that we would get tired of self deprecating narratives  (see Augusten Burroughs, David Sedaris) starting from elementary school to middle school until forty, when old age and a life of bullying leads to a happily ever after ending. Sometimes their  lives are split in half by dragging it over 2-3 books (see Running with Scissors to Dry). In any case, it seems like the rage these days are the raw confessionals and gross secrets told facetiously, sardonically through a sneer of a book. And it seems like we, as the general public, can’t get enough of it.

The book is about a teenager going through some girl problems. Sound boring? Put the word “Dominican” in front of teenager, and the sentence makes a little bit more sense. To say Oscar is having girl problems is a severe understatement, underscored by the fact that he is Dominican. For those unfamiliar with the prowress of Dominican men, the “tigres” of the jungle, “Atomic Level G” as Diaz puts it, Dominican men are supposed to be “bringin’ in the girls with two hands”. Now poor Oscar over here, horribly overweight and even worse, 1000X nerdier than the nerdiest boy you know doesn’t have a chance. New Jersey has enough attitude on its own; add a community full of Dominicans, the setting is harsher than necessary. It makes you want to beg Diaz to be a little nicer, show the kid some hope and maybe even a kiss or two.

Backing up Oscar’s stories are his mother and his sister’s intertwining narratives. Told in different perspectives and different timelines (especially his mother’s), their stories serve to flesh out their Dominican background and the way the “fuku” has been passed, a curse believed to give the family such bad luck. The fuku stems from dictator Trujillo (don’t worry, your lack of knowledge of Dominican history will be remarked upon and filled in with Diaz’s page-long footnotes) and when Oscar’s mother was arrogant and bold enough to disregard fuku as an ancient curse. The stories are interestingly told by a close outsider who took care of Oscar briefly during his college years.

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar-Wao isn’t told like the above mentioned authors, but it is related in the genre of self-pity and (you should go to hell) this-kid-is-so-unbelievably-screwed-up that we feel a little better about our selves. Junot Diaz writes with a rapid-fire latino passion, making the reader  feel a little burned after putting it down. Diaz often switches from English to Spanish midsentence – sometimes the passion coming from Oscar’s family is so great that it can only be expressed in Spanish.  There are always little sayings in every language that can not be translated to English: it would not be as sharp, abrasive, or insulting enough in the original tongue. I think this is the most in-your-face emotionally expressive book I’ve ever read the words are so unbelievably fierce and passionate, it’s like eating a 1000 jalapenos.

I digress. The story is unbelievably awesome, told in a style that punches you in the gut and slaps you in the face. Kind of similar to Latino culture, intertwining machismo and beauty and pride – so hot it has to end in tragedy. The book will strangle you and shake you and will make a damn good movie.

 

the importance of storytelling and how we all stay sane

how to deal with death

In a series of four short stories, Martel weaves thoughtful stories of people concerning death. One deals with his friend’s slow, cruel death of AIDs, another goes to an underground quartet performance only to find the death of the world, the mother of one man on death row recieves multiple letters claiming her son acted differently upon death, and lastly, the story of an old grandmother and her grandchild reminds the child the importance of memories.

The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios is a sad story. What can you do when your friend is dying with AIDs? Grief? Denial? How do you deal with someone suffering from an incurable disease, much less say or do the right things? As with any human suffering, imagination saves sanity. So unfolds the story of the Roccamatios family, an imaginary family that two friends make up to pass time and eventually express their anger, grief, hope in a constructive way. The narrator and the friend research what happens in each year of the century, starting from 1900 and then summarize an important event. From silly things like 1913: the zipper was invented to crisis:1914 war is declared on various countries, the friends express their feelings through the imaginary family. As a coping mechanism, it serves them well in the last few months of Paul’s life. And at such a young age for both of them (19), they share a youthful bond that Paul’s family doesn’t quite understand. Their made up story is secret and sacred to only them, a creation of adolescence and youth and vigor, something Paul would be losing to death soon. The power of storytelling allows a transformation of the world such that Paul can embrace the world instead of flee.

“What are you at nineteen? You’re a blank page. You’re all hopes and reams and uncertainties. You’re all future and little philosophy. What I meant was that between the two of us we had to do something constructive, something tha towuld make something out of nothing, sense out of nonsense, something that would go beyond talking about life, death, God, the universe and the meaning of it all and actually be those things.”

“The Time I heard the Private Donald J. Ranking String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton”

A young twentysomething with a law degree wanders around in Washington for something to do. Upon seeing a flyer advertising a performance for “One Discordant Violin”, he decides to go. The performance is 10 dollars for a reason: the place is a rundown auditorium filled with rot and decay. There are not that many people there. People are there for the strange discordant violin. The narrator describes the performance with vivid imagery, with blooming colors and clashing waves crashing over the audience. In the last performance, possibly a modern piece as described as an unstructured piece with nightmarish qualities, John Morton plays with fierce agony and obviously in imperfection.

Martel is a beautiful writer. He drops thought provoking sentences in between wildly imaginative similes and analogies, as if we were blindfolded and he is trying to describe to us the world. In that chamber music performance, an ugly 40something year old with a dead end job became beautiful. It makes the narrator think of what he wants with his life, if he could ever achieve something as intangible or ethereal. He was afraid, ultimately of the ghost of John Morton haunting him when he gets a yuppie job, staring at him with the thought: “Why doesn’t he ask for more?”

“There was no robotic flawlessness here. Like punk rock, like Jackson Pollock, like Jack Kerouac, it was truly human, a mix of perfect beauty and carthatic error.”

I won’t review the “Manners of Dying”, but it’s mainly a series of 1 page letters describing to the mother of a son on death row how the son acted that day. They are all vastly different.

The last story, “The Vita Aeterna Mirror Company” is about a grandmother and her grandchild. The grandchild is clearly bored with the grandmother’s life story. Whether the narrator has heard it a million times, or the grandmother tends to ramble, the narrator is clearly not listening when she starts “I remember when I first met your grandfather….” The book is physically split into two columns: one with the grandmother’s story, gradually fading into paragraphs of “blah-blah-blahs” and the other column the grandchild with inner thoughts of the grandchild about the grandmother’s rat packing tendencies. I found this really interesting that the page is literally split into to. It so perfectly captures the image of an elderly grandmother and a bored but polite grandchild.

The story goes on with paragraphs of “blahs” until the grandmother reaches the point of her husband’s mirror company. The mirror making machine is run purely on memories. To show the suddenly interested grandchild how it works, she begins, again, at the beginning “I remember when I first met your grandfather…” and the child turns her words into “blahs” again. The beauty of homemade mirrors is not lost on the child, however. The child starts listening more intently. There are less blahs. Later, years later, when the grandmother is dead, the child stares at the mirror and tries to remember all the words he ignored.

Martel captures suppressed and agonized motions at their best. He deals with how to express yourself through various mediums, mainly, however, through storytelling. Storytelling is a fine art, and done with the just the right flare, can evoke some pretty powerful stuff.