Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Tuesday, July 19, 2005 The Pitch: It's like The Blob meets The Thing! I finished Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude yesterday, then suspiciously re-read the blurbs on the back of the book. How could a book write so well about Marvel Comics (specifically Omega The Unknown), Brian Eno's Another Green World, New York in the '70s, Hoagy Carmichael, Berkeley, CA, science fiction conventions, prison, bullies, grafitti and hip-hop, and also feature a cameo from Stan Brakhage, and still be bad? One of the reviewers referred to Fortress of Solitude as the best book of the year, and I can almost see it: FoS may be the best bad book of the year, or maybe the worst good book of the year, or, or--something.I haven't read much by or about Lethem but what I have presents Lethem as a guy from Brooklyn who grew up there in the late '70s and early '80s and whose mother died when he was young: compare and contrast this with Fortress of Solitude, about a guy from Brooklyn who grew up there in the late '70s and early '80s and whose mother ran off when he was young, and you might think that FoS would be Lethem's most autobiographical novel. I am also inclined to think so because the book is such a mess: it's in two parts, the first told in third person, the second in first person. It's presented on front cover and back, inside and out, as the story of two boys. (It's right there on the front of the Fortress of Solitude's home page: "This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude.") The protagonist, Dylan, is white and friends with Mingus, who is black, and although Mingus is introduced early, and well, he is rarely used throughout the book, he barely exists. Again and again, we return to Dylan who for the first part of the book barely speaks, barely thinks, is passive and reactive and grows up under the yoke of bullies by being as silent and still as possible. We are told how close he is to Mingus and shown it, but we never see how it develops from the first time they meet. It just is. Dylan just is. Brooklyn just is. And everything that happens, happens. On the one hand, this is pretty laudable: Lethem takes a novel about growing up, about friendship, even throws in a magic ring, and then mercilessly buffs away anything that might resemble sentiment. To grow up young and white and scared in pre-gentrified Brooklyn is the book's subject, and it captures that subject with a lacerating clarity, but despite every blurb on the back, every promise made by the appearance of another enticingly drawn character, it is incapable of escaping that subject. The book feels less like a novel and more like psychic surgery--Lethem seems to be using the theater of fiction in which to dissect himself and to clinically share the results with his audience. As surgical demonstration, it's impressive. But for those of us who came to a book expecting the joys of fiction, it's frustrating. Lethem creates a dozen richly fascinating characters and barely lets us see any of them, returning again and again to his doppelganger, picking at him as if he were a scab. Maybe Lethem is trying to tell us that although we are the central character of our own life, we are probably the least interesting. Perhaps Lethem is telling us that stories are possibilities, and most of us don't bother to take those possibilities, are to busy stinging under the weight of the yoke to do anything else. Could be that Lethem is trying to present a real life, both in its dreams and in its reality, and the dreams, being dreams, are as real to us as our reality, but they exist separate from us and we can only watch them passively play out. But, to me? It's more likely that this book was a substantially painful and messy birth, psychically incapicitating, and the author spun through thousands and thousands of pages, then had to cut it all down to everything that couldn't be let go. He took every ending that smelled false, every conclusion that threatened to offer the comfort of story to the reader (that perhaps in an earlier draft comforted the writer as he worked harder and harder to unseat the cold truth of his self that had held him in thrall for so long) and left only the unpatchable, impressive blob that remained; passive protagonist, disappearing characters, endlessly unhelpful digressions, and all. With the exception of Infinite Jest, I think I've never been as impressed with a book that left me so frustrated (or vice-versa). If you only read twelve books a year, I don't recommend it and yet I still want to urge people to read it, as if the book will be more fully grown and better developed by the time you encounter it. That's the kind of book Fortress of Solitude is. posted by Jeff | 8:44 AM | Saturday, July 16, 2005 The Pitch: It's like The Invisible Man meets Missing! Yeah, I'm still alive. Have not updated even one eensy little tad because, well, I dunno. For one thing, I went on The Master Cleanse, which sounds kind of creepy & Aryan, but is really just the name of this ten day thing where you don't eat solid food and can only drink a concoction of lemon juice, distilled water, maple syrup and cayenne pepper. Not eating solid food was a really kind of profound thing for me, so much so that I couldn't even begin to think of how to write about it. I really curse myself for not keeping a little diary of the whole thing. If I ever, ever, ever do it again, I will.I finished the cleanse on Tuesday but since then have only had fresh squeezed orange juice and organic vegetable broth (day 1), organic vegetable juice and one meal of raw food from Cafe Gratitude (day 2), almonds, a banana, a piece of corn on the cob, grilled vegetables, and maybe a third of an order of Vietnamese vegie noodles (day 3). Interestingly, I'm finally updating this on the day I finally had what one might call "real food"--garlic naan, palak paneer and bismati rice (and a few mini Reese's peanut butter cups)--which I had, in part, because I was walking back from Chinatown and realized that maybe I should eat something at the exact same time I stepped in front of Naan & Curry. On the one hand, I'd really like to continue some of what I took from the cleanse--feeling both surprisingly free from food, realizing how much of my day is structured around meals, and the slow, small and very mindful eating I engaged in when the cleanse was done--and on the other hand, I spent the first three days literally grieving of my departed friends the Ho-Hos and the Ding-Dongs. Wouldn't I be a sap to not eat them now that I could? Ironically, like something out of bad New Yorker fiction, after the cleanse was done, the refrigerator in our apartment died. Dribs and drabs of water had been appearing at the threshold of the kitchen and I thought our water heater was leaking. Too late, when I opened the refrigerator door Thursday night and could tell the water was warm, we realized the truth. Edi spoke with the landlord today and discovered our refrigerator had been installed in the apartment in 1987. The god-damned thing was at least 18 years old! There should be a new fridge by the time we get home tonight, which is good: we've got a cooler filled with condiments that won't hold out much longer. I'm playing Romance of the Three Kingdoms X which is awesome and satisfying. Hibbs laughed at me the other day when I told him the debating minigame kicks ass, but it's true. The debating minigame kicks tons of ass. It's much more RPGish than RotK VII in a way an experienced gamer like Hibbs would laugh at (lots and lots of what's called FedEx quests: go to point x, pick up object y, deliver to point z) but I like because it's so low-key. Currently all I want is to hang out and throw banquets and meet important heroes so that later I can form a kick-ass army with them and maybe run a province or two, and RotK X is more than happy to let me do that. I bet I won't be playing much of it, though: Edi and I get married in nine(!) weeks. I'm happy with the fact that shit is coming together pretty smoothly--we're at the point where I think we could get married, but not at the point where anyone attending would have any fun at all. Considering the share of weddings I've attended that fit that description anyway, we've still got time to make sure that you all enjoy yourselves, too. Whew! I was afraid my post was going to be about nothing but movies and video games, as usual. Give me a few more entries--I'm sure I'll get right back into it. posted by Jeff | 6:40 PM | |
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