03:44 The Savage Detectives

The Savage Detectives
Roberto Bolaño

While in his early forties, Chilean author Roberto Bolaño discovered that he had an incurable liver disease that would ultimately prove fatal; precisely “when?” was unknown. After this diagnosis, Bolaño seems to have turned away from his previous life as a combative enfant terrible and spent his remaining years focusing on ambitious literary works including The Savage Detectives, which details the failure of a literary movement made up of combative enfants terrible.

The above is not intended as gossip but as context. Bolaño’s life is discussed in detail in the excellent introduction by translator Natasha Wimmer. Knowing this, it’s hard to read The Savage Detectives without thinking of it as a roman à clef or perhaps a parody of Bolaño’s life. One of the main characters is named Arturo Belano, for example, and his misadventures seem to follow a pattern similar to his creator’s.

The overriding theme is failure, the wasted potential and the directionless lives of middle aged men whose youthful dreams never paid off. The book is made up of three sections; the first, “Mexicans Lost In Mexico,” is perhaps the most enjoyable. It consists of diary entries by Juan Madero, a teenager who has fallen under the spell of a loose collective of poets called the Visceral Realists, who are defined less by what they stand for and more by what they dislike. As I live in a country in which poetry is irrelevant and literature is just another entertainment option among many, it’s heartening to read about characters who take poetry so seriously that they get into brawls over it. This is the “youth” section of the novel, which captures the joy of discovery, the excitement of new ideas and the mixed blessings of being accepted by those older than you but also dragged into the soap operas of their lives. Juan’s coming of age tale, however, ends abruptly with a cliffhanger. His absence and the lack of any explanation is keenly felt in the second section “The Savage Detectives.”

This is the longest section of the novel and consists of first person remembrances by those who encountered Belano and his fellow Visceral Realist Ulises Lima in the years after “Mexicans Lost In Mexico.” It’s an oral history (similar to George Plimpton’s biography of Edie Sedgewick) about a literary movement that produced little in the way of literature because its founders were too busy discussing it rather than writing. Love affairs, jail terms, dead-end jobs, political turmoil: it’s all here and at length, which makes the breadth of this section problematic.* It seems churlish to say “Can you cut your life story down a little bit cause I’m getting a bit bored” to a terminally ill man, but I think the novel would have been stronger had this section been edited. I was talking to a friend of a friend who was having the same experience with the book: he loved the first section but was stuck in the long second part.** However, at that point I had finished the novel and could tell him the payoff at the end was worth it, just as in Joyce’s Ulysses you have to slog through the novel’s two most tedious sections before you can reach the transcendence of Molly Bloom’s monologue at the end. Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima’s final tales include moments of grace for each man, and one of the most moving depictions of the selflessness of true friendship I have ever read.

The final section “The Sonora Desert” functions as an epilogue, returning us to Juan Madero’s diary and explaining what happened after the cliffhanger at the end of section one. It also provides closure to one of the storylines in section two and relates an “original sin” that explains the end of Visceral Realism as a movement and why Belano and Lima were doomed to lives of failure.

There’s much in The Savage Detectives that’s impressive. Bolaño is address a variety of life’s basic experiences by examining the day to day stories of a number of characters. He doesn’t overdo either the contradictions between stories or the distinct voices within. Even living as failures, the experience of life, with its attendant joys and sorrows, comes through. The book is also very funny.




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* This is the first book I wished I read on a Kindle. I didn't take notes while reading and the ability to instantly SEARCH the text to access the myriad character names, places and incidents would have been a godsend.

** My nephew had the same reaction. While reading "Mexicans Lost In Mexico" I impulsively bought him a copy, thinking that, as he was going through some of the same things as Juan Madero, he would love it. He did, but then got bogged down in the second section's various monologues.

The Book I Read

My 2009 new year's resolution to read 44 books over the course of the year ended in dismal failure. In fact, I don't have a final count, but I know I did not even accomplish half my goal. Oh well. At least I can take comfort in the fact that I liked a number of the books I did read this year and will be posting about them in the days to come.

I'm not going to even bother setting a goal for 2010 for several reasons:

One: I have several big books this year I'd like to finish and I just don't see how I'm going to tackle Against The Day or The Complete Stories of JG Ballard and stay on a reading schedule.

Two: I have a couple of projects in mind for the coming year that will severely cut into my reading time. This means, of course, I'll probably read more in the coming year than I have in a long time because I am Mr. Contrary. Best way to get me to do anything is to tell me I don't have to do it.

Unfortunate Headline of The Day

Clueless Star Brittany Murphy Dies

It took me a moment to realize that she was in a film called Clueless. I know it's a Sunday before Christmas and a huge snowstorm has hit the northeast, but was no-one around to proofread or copyedit this?

Tales of Uncle Chuck

My uncle Chuck's funeral was this past weekend, and Lyle Lovett summed up my feelings in a song he wrote over 15 years ago:

I went to a funeral
Lord it made me happy
Seeing all those people
I ain't seen
Since the last time
Somebody died

Everybody talking
They were telling funny stories
Saying all those things
They ain't said
Since the last time
Somebody died

I served as a pallbearer, honored to be asked. Pallbearers pay their respects to the deceased first, then wait in a room while the other mourners say goodbye. While waiting in the room, my cousin Chip told several stories about his father that I thought I would post, as I think they're too good to be lost in time.

My uncle was born to a wealthy, or once-wealthy but still pretending, family. He had a habit of getting expelled from the private schools in which he was enrolled, and it was during one of these enforced vacations that, rather than immediately tell his parents he was thrown out of school, Chuck decided to enjoy his freedom for a while. As a way of evading truant or police officers who might question what a teenager was doing driving around in a convertible all day, Chuck asked a friend whose late father had been a doctor to forge him a note saying that he had the measles. The ruse worked for a while until the unexpected happened: Chuck came down with the measles. Going for treatment, the inevitable questions came up: how does one get the measles twice? and how does one get treated by a doctor who's been dead for a couple of years?

I also heard the story of how my uncle messed up his nose. Apparently, he and some friends were having an impromptu kegger in the woods. They didn't have a tap but weren't deferred. They instead popped the cork and then poured all the beer from the keg into a small metal tub, dipping their cups into it punchbowl style. But the police raided the party and everyone scattered, with Chuck putting the tub of beer in the back of his convertible.

Trying to stay ahead of the cops, Chuck took the highway's curves at high speed. From the driver's seat, he reached back to steady the tub and keep the beer from spilling out, only to crash and smash his face against the windshield and break off (?)/ cut off (?) the end of his nose. He then dropped his nose in his cup of beer and drove to the hospital to see if they could reattach it. At the hospital, they put the nose in a sterile metal cup until ready for reattaching. This was in the 1950s, so plastic surgery was still fairly primitive, and from that day forward, Chuck had a nose that was always "off." Something else he had from that day: the metal cup from the hospital. It was used as the bathroom cup for many years afterwards.

"What?" my cousin Chris said. "I drank from that cup and it had his nose in it?"

"That's what he said."

"Keep in mind," my cousin Bill said "our father liked to embellish. A lot."

RIP, Uncle Chuck.

Sometimes

Sometimes it's just easier to post photos I've taken than try and write something new.

The Best of 00's (Intro)

To be honest, I wasn’t even thinking about the fact that this decade is ending until I saw the Onion’s AVClub summing up the last ten years by picking their favorite tv shows, albums and movies. Years ago, when my friend Troy’s Cheeky Monkey website was a collective effort, Troy actively sought year-end “best of” lists from his friends, including a decade overview in 1999. The most difficult thing about those lists was avoiding repetition. How many times could I say I liked “The Sopranos” before seeming like I liked little else?

Things have changed. This has been a strange decade and not just for culture. The Bush administration’s unnecessary war in Iraq in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2001 had a paralyzing effect on this country and its culture. We became the land of magical thinking: if we conform and don’t question, then we’ll be safe and we’ll win the war and the troops won’t be harmed. If you do anything else, then the terrorists win. This attitude wasn’t just about politics. The post-9/11 timidity seemed to influence all media. Anyone who challenged this mindset fought an uphill battle just to be heard. Not an ideal atmosphere for creating interesting work.

The other major influence on culture in the 00’s? You’re looking at it right now. My blog? Yeah, right. No, I was referring to the internet. With its immediate access to almost anything, mainly video and audio (text seems to be lagging behind, thank God), the internet has changed the economics of show business, helped put record and dvd stores out of business, and altered how we think of and experience entertainment. Two examples of how downloading from the internet has changed how I experience entertainment. Two weeks ago, I saw the tv show Glee for the first time. I liked it. Within a week, I had seen every episode save one, either by downloading or watching on the official website. Previously, when I discovered I liked a show, I would have to (old school) wait for re-runs and plan my life or vcr around them or (new school) borrow or buy dvds of episodes I missed. The difference is one of time. Then I had to wait; now I have easy access and instant gratification. I still pay for much of my entertainment and have justifications when I download something for free. The fact that I even care makes me a bit of a fossil.

A better example concerns Jacques Rivette’s movie Out 1. Long considered a holy grail among cinephiles, the movie seems made for obscurity (it’s French, it’s 13 hours long, there are very few copies of the film, a new print hasn’t been struck since the early 70’s, etc.). I had resigned myself to never seeing it and only reading about it in books. Then, in 2006, it was announced that the film would be showing in New York and in London. The New York screening quickly sold out. I began planning a trip to London to see the movie, but before I booked my airline tickets, a second screening was announced in New York in March 2007. I went, liked the movie, and accepted that it would be the only time I would see it. Two years later, I found a copy on the internet complete with subtitles and downloaded it. It’s now on my hard drive; I can watch it any time I want. From impossible to see to once-in-a-lifetime event to something I own (for free) in the space of two years. That’s how the internet has changed things.

I think this easy free access to whatever you want has fragmented culture and entertainment to an unprecedented degree. There is no more mainstream, the center could not hold. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly if you live in times during which the mainstream sucks. When Michael Jackson died earlier this year, it was said that “there would never be another Michael Jackson,” meaning “there would never be a pop star that big.” To which I reply “Good!” If it saves me from having to hear his shrill threadbare music again, hooray! I would rather live in a world in which the mainstream has crumbled and I can find Out 1 or Deltron 3030 online than be stuck with a monoculture that doesn’t interest me at all. However, this fragmented culture doesn’t seem to produce anything that speaks to or explains our current times. Everything exists on its own terms, pursuing its own goals. There was a lot of work from the last ten years that was very good, but it’s hard to think of much that was great and even harder to think of anything that addressed the times and expressed what it was like to be alive during them.

Looking over my list of favorites from this decade, there’s little that couldn’t have come from an earlier decade. We often heard how this was a golden age for television, and while there were many good shows (sometimes it seemed like too many), nothing from this decade impresses me as much as The Dick Van Dyke Show or The Prisoner or Monty Python’s Flying Circus, shows that aired over 40 years ago, and are both of their time and transcend it. With few exceptions, there’s been little in the last ten years that does this.

Eventually I will post my list of favorites from the last ten years, but first I had to explain how difficult it was coming up with such a list.

Up On The Roof

Last night my friend Lysa and I were having a drink in the bar of a swanky new hotel downtown. After checking out the bathrooms in the basement, we decided to see what the roof was like. Well, there was no roof deck or public access, but the doors were unlocked so we decided to go ahead and see what the view was like, at least until security came up and dragged us off.

They never did.

Below are some iPhone photos of the view.




Along those lines, this past summer, I was hanging out with friends when one of them, Kevin, suggested that we go see the view from his roof. "They were refinishing and tarring the roof earlier today, but I think it's dry by now." His building was in Hell's Kitchen so we were surrounded on all sides by the skyscrapers of NYC, illuminated by white lights that compensate for the stars you can't see from the city.





I love these views of the city, so much that it kept my mind off the fact that it was difficult to walk around on the roof because the tar wasn't, in fact, 100% dry. We walked around with the grace of Frankenstein's monster when he is first off the operating table, and my friend Kevin hoped that perhaps his building's super wouldn't find out who it was that messed up the roof, a hope dashed after we noticed the trail of tar shoeprints leading to his apartment door. Actually, we looked back and saw there was an extra set of footprints belonging to Jesus that seemed to disappear during the difficult times of our lives. When we asked Jesus how He could abandon us during our times of trial, He said "perhaps you guys shouldn't have gone up on the roof. You are really in trouble."

Recent Graffiti Murals In My Neighborhood

Oy Vey

During my dream this past Saturday night, Groucho Marx told me that no-one in my generation had produced anything of any real worth. I checked with several other people in the dream as to whether he was kidding or not, but ultimately concluded that he was right.

Last night I dreamt I was at the Museum of Modern Art and there was an exhibit on the top floor that I wanted to see, but to get there, I had to go through an exhibit about the Holocaust which included exact reproductions of the train cars, sorting areas and shower rooms. I kept looking for another way to the top floor but couldn't find one and didn't have the heart to ask the staff members "do I have to see the Holocaust?"

Today's Headline

Ted Williams' Severed Head Reportedly Abused In Cryonics Facility

Well, if you don't want your severed head abused, maybe you shouldn't send it to a cryonics facility in the first place.

The Smiths In Cross-Stitch

Somehow it just makes sense.

Meniere's Disease - Inner Ear Problem or Gateway To Psychic Powers?

Found this at work. It was kind of a slow day.

The Way We Live Now

An acquaintance of mine (I avoid using the term "Facebook Friend" ever since the teenage son of one of my Real Existence Friends told me "You don't know how funny it is hearing an adult call someone a 'Facebook Friend'") updated his status this afternoon by noting that it was the anniversary of his father's death. Several people commented, writing that they were sad or sorry, but among them, there was one comment that was, in its entirety, and I quote:

: (

Really? Someone mentions how sad they are over the death of their father, someone who meant so much to them, and your response is a sad-faced emoticon? You can't even take the time to type "so sorry?"

I envision a day when we will only communicate through emoticons, a day when they will act like our typographical moodrings to quickly let everyone know how we feel. Orwell was too optimistic when he wrote about language being reduced to "double-plus good" in 1984. On the other hand, perhaps the depth of your feelings can be summed up by a colon and a parenthesis.

What Amazon.com Really Thinks Of You

It's always nice to find out what Amazon.com and their algorithms think of you. This morning, in the "You Might Like" section of my amazon page, was a recommendation for a book I had never heard of titled Nothing is Strange with You by James Jeffrey Paul. Thinking perhaps is was some sort of self-help book or perhaps guide to esoteric knowledge, I began to read their description:

A young man kidnaps his own nephew and makes him his servant and sex slave.

Thanks, Amazon. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's recommendation The Dos and Don'ts of Restraining Orders.

Last Friday

Last Friday I stopped in my favorite dive bar Grassroots for a drink after work. It's the perfect place to read and chat with the bartender and drink pints of Brooklyn Lager for $3 a pint. At one point, I got up to put music on the jukebox: Nina Simone, Charles Mingus and (out of character for me) the Rolling Stones.

But when I got back to my seat at the bar, I saw that this girl had take my seat. I stood by her, stared at the chair and then stared at her, waiting for either an explanation or an apology. Neither was offered. She just plunked herself down in my chair, and what was worse, had moved all my stuff one seat over to the left. What was really incredible is that she had taken the trouble to place all my stuff in the exact same position it had been in: beer glass, magazine, reading glasses, even my shoulder bag on the floor. She had arranged them exactly as I had left them....

They were exactly as I had left them, of course, because I had been sitting one seat to her left the entire time. Nothing had moved or changed. When this realization hit me, a moment later than it should, I stopped staring and sat in my chair. There was no way to explain what had happened without sounding even more stupid ("You'll never guess what I thought!"). Staring at her with an incredulous look without saying anything was awkward enough for one happy hour. No point in making the situation worse.

02:44 Columbine

Columbine
Dave Cullen

When I was young, one of the reasons I always looked forward to going to my Aunt Juleann’s house was the fact that she had a hardcover copy of Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi’s account of the Manson Family murders and his memoir of successfully prosecuting them. For a time, as soon as we got to my aunt’s house, my sisters and I would race to that book, whomever was lucky enough to get there first got to pour over its creepy crime scene pictures in blurry black and white with the mutilated bodies tastefully cut out, leaving an eerie ghost white blankness where the victims had been. The only comparable objects of fascination were the Sears and JCPenney’s Christmas catalogues that arrived every autumn.

Since then, every true-life crime book I’ve read has had to compete with Bugliosi’s luridly fascinating tale. Dave Cullen’s Columbine is written with a novelist’s skill, such that, while I had the book out of the library, all I wanted to do was read it until I was finished. It’s a book that reminds you of what you had forgotten and corrects what you (and the media) got wrong. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold weren’t loveless loners but had friends and girlfriends. They didn’t “snap” and decide to walk into school and shoot people. Harris had planned it for over a year and it was actually supposed to be a bombing, which, if it had worked, would have resulted in a death toll in the hundreds. The inspiration wasn’t lonely school shooters, but terrorists like Timothy McVeigh.

Why did they do it? Cullen’s answer is so simple you can’t help but try to reject it. Harris was a psychopath. Dylan Klebold was suicidally depressed and turned his rage to the outside world. That’s it. No inciting incident, nothing specific provoked the attack. The attack on Columbine happened because the boys conceived it, planned it and carried it out. It happened because they made it happen.

Cullen’s chilling debunking of Columbine myths takes an ironic turn:

Dylan was heavy into school stuff. Eric, too. They attended the football games, the dances, and the variety shows and worked together on video production for the Rebel News Network. School plays were big for Dylan. He would never want to face an audience, but backstage at the soundboard, that was great. Earlier in the year, he’d rescued Rachel Scott, the senior class sweetheart, when her tape jammed during the talent show. In a few days, Eric would kill her

Written ten years after the shootings, Cullen is able to jump around in time, highlighting victim’s lives before the shooting to give you a queasy sense of suspense, which contrasts with stories of survivors after the shooting as they try to put their lives back together. This structure also gives him the opportunity to address diverse topics such as the rivalries among local religious groups, how false memories are created, and the way the human brain can re-wire itself after a trauma. It’s not just about the shootings.

As mentioned, Cullen’s explanation of the crime is that Eric Harris was a psychopath who hated the world and wanted to destroy some of it, and Dylan Klebold was clinically depressed, wanted to die and eventually agreed to take as many people with him. No Trench Coat Mafia. No victims of bullying getting revenge. Cullen finds plenty of evidence of pathology in Harris’ notebooks. Sometimes what seems like pathology may be the typical thoughts of a teenager. Harris seems constantly amazed at how well he is able to play the role of whatever adults want to see and how easily adults are fooled. Seems like a typical teenager, though other excerpts from his journals are chilling.

After reading Columbine, I was curious to see what other readers thought. I went to the reader review section on amazon.com and was amazed at the hornet’s nest lurking there. There were a number of angry reviews from those for whom Columbine is simply the story of bullied boys lashing out. They believe it should only be discussed with the goal of eliminating bullying from our schools, which is a noble goal but probably about as realistic as peace on earth. At least they have a goal and a hope that human behavior can be improved. If Columbine is just the story of resourceful psychopaths, how do we prevent it from happening again?

Mr. Hearing Strikes Again

I was talking to my friend Troy about the usual things: work, music and friends I haven't seen in a while.

"How's Ron?" I asked.

"Oh, I guess he's alright, except he broke Val's heart."

"Oh no. What happened?"

"I don't know. These things happen. Accidents happen, things break, things catch on fire."

This seemed a little cavalier, especially when talking about a good friend's breakup. Even for Troy.

"But he broke Val's heart?"

"No! His boat caught fire!"

If anyone reading this ever meets anyone from the band Guided By Voices, please tell them that while I enjoyed seeing them in concert, I really would like my hearing back.

Begin Counting The Hours

People who know me might find this hard to believe, but I don't really think of myself as a complainer. Along those lines, I don't see this blog as the forum for airing what complaints or woe-is-me's I do have: that's not why this blog was created and it's certainly nothing I'm interested in perpetuating.

Having said that, this has been a shit week and I, for one, will be happy to see the end of it. When did it begin? When my mother called me last Saturday to inform me that she has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and that one of my sisters was going into the hospital for surgery? When I learned that J. G. Ballard, one of my favorite writers, had died of cancer? How about when I was yelled at at work for doing my job? I had not been yelled at like that, like I was a child, in such a long time I can not remember the previous occurrence. One of the advantages of not having a girlfriend is that I don't have someone yelling at me on a regular basis, so I've sort of forgotten what the experience is like.

Those were the various beginnings to a bad week. It continued: work was very busy, I felt almost punch-drunk at night, my sister had her surgery (I was concerned), I saw a friend go through a tough time, everything and everyone seemed to be suffering from a pre-spring neurosis or upheaval. A co-worker and I joked each day about having a liquid lunch and even though neither one of us did (to the best of my knowledge), it was a comforting thought.

So I'm counting down the hours until the week is over and I can just stare into space this weekend, hit reset and hope that next week is better. We'll see. Tonight in a bar I overheard two asshole businessmen make fun of the idea of working for a non-profit. I know that's sounds trite and cliched, but it is true. On the other hand, while walking home, I saw a toddler in a stroller get excited when he saw a bus. Happily, his enthusiasm was contagious.

40 Days of Lent: Day Forty

Sights

Not Graffiti Murals, But Drawings On Paper Plastered On Walls In My Neighborhood

Sadly, even more transient that graffiti murals.





Sounds
The other day, my boss' wife was in the office. She walked over to my desk and said "I hate orange shirts." I nodded, a little confused because no-one in the office was wearing an orange shirt, but said "oh, yeah." She repeated herself "I hate orange shirts!" I kinda shrugged, and while I agree, I couldn't understand a) why the bothered her so much and b) why she was telling me. She then presented a number of receipts and medical forms, and I finally understood that she was in fact saying "I hate our insurance!"

Amen.

Hope you've enjoyed this Lenten season. Sunday, I get to begin cursing again.

40 Days of Lent: Day Thirty Nine

If life's for living/ what's living for?
from "Oklahoma, USA" by Ray Davies

One of my pet theories, as far as I know unproven, though I really haven't done the research on that point, has to do with the way human beings will create meaning for their lives as a mechanism to keep existing. To wit: the reason we create reasons to live is so that we will continue living. I don't believe this is a conscious decision but something wired into our brains by years of evolution, a psycho-biological feedback system. It's as if the brain realizes that without a reason to live, the entire organism (the person in question) will fall into despair and eventually die. An individual can die from depression or despair if they neglect eating, sleeping, or bascially taking care of themselves. To prevent this, the brain will create meaning, even if it is harmful or a complete lie, so that the individual will continue to eat, sleep, breathe, and continue the fundamentals of life. Anything will be believed so long as it keeps the person functioning. What matters is keeping the individual alive; the belief systems or personal mythology their brain creates to keep them living is secondary.

This explains why people can live for years with outlooks that might seem self-defeating or negative. It's not what their values are, only that they have values that keep them functioning. The bitter man who lives only for revenge, the alcoholic who lives only for happy hour, the soldier who is willing to die for his country: all their minds have adopted belief systems that may eventually destroy them, but until then give them a reason to continue living. As I said, this mechanism isn't conscious. People think they believe things because they have thought about them and determined them to be true. But I say that people would believe things anyway: that the mind creates belief systems, narratives and personal myths just as sweat glands produce sweat, as a way of regulating behavior and ensuring continued existence. The mind creates meaning to keep the body functioning, which in turn provides the material that keeps the mind alive. The goal of all this activity is simply to keep existing for its own sake. Or, more likely, exist until you produce offspring, then protect and provide for them until they are old enough to produce their own offspring.

The world doesn't inspire meaning within our brains. Our brains naturally generate meaning and use the world as its raw material.