Rarely Likable

The enjoyment of bleakity bleak

the dead and the gone
Susan Beth Pfeffer

Everyone sighs over how cool toys and games are now, and how Kids These Days don't have the capacity to truly appreciate them. I feel that way about this series of books sometimes (a third one is one its way and no collective name makes this post awkward to write). When I was the target demographic, I read stuff like On the Beach and WarDay and Lord of the Flies (which is applicable here, I think) voraciously and repeatedly. Apocalyptic lit that was plausible...because somehow, anything with magic scanned as silly in my thirteen year old brain.

Anyway. Most will call this a sequel to Life As We Knew It (mentioned briefly by me here last year) but I think it's more accurate to use a term my sister taught me -- it's a sidequel. The two books cover about the same time chronologically, but you really should read Life As We Knew It first. (Good thing it comes out in paperback at about the same time.)

In short, the series is about what would happen if an asteroid knocked the moon out of its current orbit. In short, things would not go well. Devastation along the coasts, new volcanoes which in turn darken the atmosphere which in turn kills all the crops and starts winter early, you get the idea. But rather than having omniscient narration as plenty of apocalyptic-lit does, both books are from the points of view of teenagers. Life As We Knew It is told by a Pennsylvania girl, Miranda, who lucks out enough (though not in a Mary Sue way) to be able to talk about the outside world, and about her family's own desperation.

the dead and the gone's main character is a boy named Alex Morales, who's a hardworking senior at a Catholic school in Manhattan. When the asteroid hits the moon -- no one expected it to be anything but a pretty sight in the sky, due to a miscalculation -- he's at home with his two younger sisters. His mom is at work, his dad is at his grandmother's funeral in Puerto Rico, his older brother is in the military. I refuse to spoil very much for prospective readers, but Alex isn't nearly as lucky as Miranda. This should please everyone who reads this kind of stuff and mentally compiles a body count, myself included. There might not be any Randall Flagg or zombies or catastrophic biotechnology error or mushroom clouds, but guts? Prepare to be wrenched. Also, you'll never think of Yankee Stadium quite the same way again.

Something that surprised me, and also surprised me in its effectiveness: When I heard there was going to be another book in the Life As We Know It universe and that it would be set in New York, I fully expected it to be either full throttle reportage of a world gone horribly awry, or something akin to Cloverfield in which we get a shot of people running down Broadway just ahead of a giant wave with a sinister Giant Moon in the sky above. If anything, the dead and the gone is told at a closer narrative range than Life As We Know It. It asks What stuff do you loot from a corpse you find on the street, sure. But more prominently, it asks What will Alex do from day to day because, well, he has to? Plenty of other books pay lip service to the question, but relatively few explore it with any detail.

Even if you aren't a lifelong bleak-and-mundane junkie like myself, I strongly recommend you check out Pfeffer's blog. In an Internet world where a lot of fiction writers are very cagey about their plans and their progress with their work, she's an extremely candid and engaging read. As I said, a third book is in the works -- one that is, in fact, a sequel of sorts -- and the posts in which she describes the decisions she faces as its creator have been some of the most interesting stuff I've read online all winter.

Talking about a book I haven't read

'Last Night at the Lobster' chronicles life in Rust Belt America

Note: The International Herald Tribune is quoting this LA Times review in its title for this Stewart O'Nan interview.

Casual Googling suggests that the Rust Belt is generally regarded as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Wikipedia throws in what it calls "upstate" New York and implies that this means Buffalo, but I'd wager most people from that part of the state hear "upstate" and think "Adirondacks." "Western" is more accurate, turning to "Central" as you drive past Syracuse.

Anyway, Last Night at the Lobster isn't set in any of these places. It's set in New Britain, Connecticut. New Britain's not even vaguely a Lower-Fairfield-mansion-Range Rover-horses kinda town, but it's definitely not in the Rust Belt. Sure, there are strip malls in the Rust Belt and yes, of course there are Red Lobsters. But "Rust Belt" is not shorthand for "working class." I can't help but wonder what the LA Times would say if I claimed that Silicon Valley was a northern suburb of Los Angeles, because that's a similar scope of geography.

All of that said, it was interesting to go back to Rochester at Christmas and discover that, like me, more than one of my friends and family there had heard of the book and wanted to read it. There's usually not that sort of consensus. I had a gift card from Borders, so I figured I'd pick it up, read it before I left, leave it, and then the fam could pass it around. We do things like that sometimes.

I stopped at a fairly large Borders, and was told that it was sold out -- as in, they'd had a number of copies, but not anymore. Did I want to order it? Nope, I said, I'm visiting from out of town.

I have to remember to look for it here, because I still want to read it.

Today's featured guest literary critic

Despite the fact that 30 years have elapsed between my second grade and my daughter's, one thing is apparently the same: It's the school year in which teachers encourage you to start writing stories and themes, and give you a green composition notebook to write them in.

My daughter is currently much more interested in studying penguins in Antarctica when she grows up than being a writer. But she likes making her teacher happy, so we've had a fair number of conversations about writing in the last few months.

One of the things she has to do weekly is write a short paper about the best book she read that week. This was a hair-pulling project until we started sitting down and talking about what she's read before she gets out her notebook. She reads a mix of things each week -- newspapers, magazines, comics (she's very fond of Calvin and Hobbes), Nate the Great books, old picture book favorites.

A couple of weeks ago, we got to talking about that week's pick, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.

"Look," she said, and opened the book to a page where the mouse had left crayons lying around. "There's no red crayon...but on this page..." she flipped a few ahead, "...there's a picture and the mouse used red to draw it. Where did he get a red crayon? Sometimes I want to draw one onto the page with the crayons."

"Why not say that in your report?" I asked her.

"No way!" she laughed. "I'd get into trouble."

"You're not actually DRAWING the crayon into the book, you're saying you WANT to draw the crayon into the book. And you have a pretty good reason, I think. Why would that get you into trouble?"

My daughter looked over at me, and I put on my best if your teacher gives you crap for this, I've got your back face.

Here's what she wrote:

I like how the mouse gets a cookie at the beginning of the story, and a cookie at the end of the story. The mouse draws a picture with a red crayon, and puts red in his picture. Isn't that weird? The crayons he has are: green, orange, black, yellow, blue, and brown. But not a red crayon. Not even a brokin red crayon. I wish I could draw a red crayon into the book. I wonder how the boy can understand the mouse.

You'll be happy to know her teacher thought she did just fine.

(By the way,  in case anyone is wondering, to date my daughter's most glowing review has been for the Ricky Ricotta series.)

A weekend guide from someone who has no life

I almost never get out to movies when they're in theaters -- such is the life of a parent who does not live near family or other potential babysitters. But if you're looking for something to see this weekend, I can make a recommendation based on (1) the book and (2) all of the reviews I've read suggesting that the movie is loyal to it: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. (IMDB) (Amazon)

If you read this blog on any sort of regular basis, you know what my usual fare tends to be...if it's not funny, experimental or talking about the end of the world, it's unlikely I've read it. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is one of the very few exceptions that I haven't tried and thrown across the room. It's a short memoir written by the editor of French Elle, who definitely lived a little more nicely than I do. Until one day, at the age of 46, he had a stroke and was almost totally paralyzed...but was still very lucid. The title refers to how he perceived his body, and his mind.

The book came out when I was doing long train commutes. I was always looking for something that wasn't an abandoned newspaper I could pick off of a seat after a couple of stops. Mostly, I was  fascinated by how it came to be written  -- especially since it was 1997 and I'd pretty much given up on writing at that point, much less with just my left eyelid. But damn if Bauby didn't completely suck me in. I expected the book to follow certain Overcoming Adversity paths -- probably also relevant to my occupation at the time -- but nope.  There is all sorts of ambiguity. And despite the Extreme Makeover feel of the movie trailer? The book is so worth reading that I lent it out and stole it back.

Excerpt here. And yeah, it's already in my Netflix queue.

Finally relevant to current news items

I had a few other reasons to blow off Amazon Kindle, like that whole looks like something out of Logan's Run thing. Not that I have anything against Logan's Run, but you see what I mean, right? No Carousel, no Jenny Agutter, what's the point?

Then, I heard that if you want to read what Amazon thinks you want to read blogs, you'll need to pay for the privilege.  Not even Farrah Fawcett could sweeten that deal.

I know how this goes. Everyone scoffed at Random_Internet_Sea_Change_01, and there's a very real possibility that we'll embrace this new direction of information sharing with soma-riddled arms and be the better for it. But if that happens, I reserve the right to be sad then in the same way I'm sad now about not using Galaticomm BBSes anymore.

Speaking of short stories...

I've been reading Roy Kesey's short story collection All Over, and enjoying it a lot. (Here's an interview with Kesey from this past summer. Here's another one.) I know my Short Story Collection Experience is going well when I read a story, think "Well, that's gonna be my favorite story..." read another one, and think the exact same thing.

Scanning the online world for real reviews, "Fontanel" seems to be the one that knocks everyone over (and makes me wince, but in a good-for-the-story way). For some reason, however, I am very partial to "At the Pizza Hut, the Girls Build Their Towers." It's like a contemporary response to John Updike's "A&P," and the last couple of lines...well, slam dunk.  And "Interview" absolutely belongs in the syllabus of American Workplace Fiction.

I usually leave Harry Potter to the experts.

But I heard about Dumbledore being in unrequited love...

She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. "Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling said of Dumbledore's feelings, adding that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down."

Dumbledore's love, she observed, was his "great tragedy."

...and my first thought was, finding your greatest love at the wrong end of your wand, and having to do what's right? I'd read THAT story over some of the more Scooby Doo mysteryesque volumes of the series anytime.

I know there's some speculation about the timing of the OMG GAY bombshell, but I'm willing to believe that Rowling's known about Dumbledore for a while. I've certainly withheld information about characters while writing stories, and geesh...I'm not obliged (so far) to create universes and casts that support seven entire books. If you look at it that way? It'd be weird if she didn't know.

As for this quote:

"Oh, my god," Rowling concluded with a laugh, "the fan fiction."

Like she doesn't say that EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY.

Rarely Kidlit

Every school day, my first grader daughter brings home a book to read aloud. And once a week, I visit her class and read books with her and some of her classmates. Most of the kids I read with have maxed out their reading level for the class, and are allowed to choose their books from the collective classroom shelf.

I'm really only supposed to read about ten pages of each book with them -- and the other moms who volunteer usually do a good job of burning through the roster -- but I have uppity ideas about how if the kids I'm reading with want to read the whole book and there's time to do that, let 'em. Sometimes the books are too long, though. There's one kid I end up negotiating with pretty much every week because he always picks the Holy Grail of First Grade Reading, chapter books.

But lately...with the end of the school year just about three weeks away, all of my regulars have been phoning it in with their choices from time to time -- stuff that takes five minutes from start to finish. What's funny is that they'll often pretty much admit it, so they take a minute or two to talk about the pictures.

My kid does this, too. But yesterday, she brought home The Park Book by Charlotte Zolotow. I'd never read it before, and it was really just sort of wonderful. The story is simple -- 24 hours in a city park -- but the telling is sophisticated in a way that kids can actually get something out of.

Let me back up for a second. In my brief career as a primary school reading helper, nothing has come to piss me off more than lame adult cleverness in kid's books that (1) leave the kid-reader totally flailing and (2) once they DO climb the reading hill, there's nothing there for them. I wish I had an example right at hand. Puns often do this, though. In first grade kids are starting to GET things like puns, but there's nothing like struggling through something that's just a little too erudite to really keep a kid interested in a book.

The Park Book, however, adds a layer by presenting characters according to details that reach a little outside of the immediate action. Example: A girl who goes to bed each night at seven-thirty plays on the see-saw with a boy who goes to bed each night at seven. The language is still simple, but the goings-on have more depth. There's a way-of-the-world feel to it that isn't at all alienating.  We had a nice time reading it together.

Tomorrow I'm totally expecting something like Let's Talk About Plain White String for Four Pages to come home in my daughter's backpack, of course.

Pass the cold cuts

When you gather people together in a room to tell them someone has died, they react in different ways. Some people immediately begin to weep. Some get angry. Some provide comfort. Some have eloquent, thoughtful things to say. Some leave the room, go sit outside for a while, and drool. I came back inside today.

If you're in this room right now, you've probably talked to someone else who's in it. What I've heard the most besides good quotes is Which one is your favorite? It's a nice question to ask because everyone in the room already has an answer. There's no need to think it over very much.

My answer has always been the novel Slapstick: Or Lonesome No More!  Published the year of the American Bicentennial, here's the summary:

Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, centenarian, the last President of the United States, King of Manhattan, and one-half (along with his sister, Eliza) of the most powerful intelligence since Einstein, is penning his autobiography. He occupies the first floor of a ruined Empire State Building and lives like a royal scavenger with his illiterate granddaughter and her beau. Buffeted by fluctuating gravity, the U.S. has been scourged by not one, but two lethal diseases: the Green Death and the Albanian Flu. Consequently, the country has fallen into civil war. (Super-intelligent, miniaturized Chinese watch the West self-destruct from the sidelines.) Swain stayed at the White House until there were no citizens left to govern, then moved to deserted New York City, where he writes a thoughtful missive before death.

Of course, I can't find a cite now...but Slapstick wasn't one of Vonnegut's own favorites. The New York Times review, hidden behind the velvet curtain, calls it a "book full of air" -- and not in a nice way, either.

While the summary makes Slapstick sound like a end-times dystopian novel, I've always thought that was incidental. For me, the book has always been a love story. Wilbur and Eliza. They are  utterly incomplete without each other. When they ARE together? Things happen which are both terrifying and beautiful.  But their obstacles aren't ones that people typically fantasize about having, either.  They're both utterly grotesque, they're siblings. They live in a society filled with people who don't understand much of anything, and next to one that has its own plans entirely.

There is one scene in the book that comes closest to being romantic. It says more about the nature of love than a lot of art that proclaims loudly to be about love does.  And according to the prologue of Slapstick, Vonnegut says he can't distinguish between love for humans and love for dogs? So much the better. If anyone ever tries again to make a movie, this is the scene I pray they get right:

Since Wilbur is the twin who can read and write, he receives an education and his sister is sent to a mental institution. Wilbur does nothing to interfere with this. When Wilbur graduates from medical school, he has a graduation party and Eliza flies over the party in a helicopter. She reads him the first half of Sonnet 39 over a bullhorn (!!), and then this happens.

********

I called up to her through my cupped hands. "Eliza!" I said. And then I shouted something daring, and something I genuinely felt for the first time in my life.

"Eliza! I love you!" I said.

All was darkness now.

"Did you hear me, Eliza?" I said. "I love you! I really love you!"

"I heard you," she said. "Nobody should ever say that to anybody."

"I mean it," I said.

"Then I will say in turn something that I really mean, my brother - my twin."

"What is it?" I said.

She said this: "God guide the hand and mind of Dr. Wilbur Rockefeller Swain."

 

And then the helicopter flew away.

Hi ho.

********

I never met Kurt Vonnegut. I'd heard he was ready to go. Yet, like everyone else in this crowded room, I miss him.

So it goes.