The Vice President

Thomas Pynchon, oh you wily old bastard. Always hiding out, never showing your face in public. Lurking in dark corners and leering at the pretty girls in cut-off tops and bikini bottoms that pass you by on the beach. Your imagination drags us by the hair into dark subterranean spaces, sparse suburban housing development sites, like, zomes?, dirty-mattressed surf rock band houses, 1960s Vegas dive casinos and cultish reprogramming spas for Yup-dogs. Your characters have cute & sometimes brain-tickling names, like Doc Sportello (who could also be called The Dude in another dimension or storyline), Japonica, Puck, Trillium, El Drano, Coy and Shasta.

And, dang, dude--can you write a sex scene!

We tittered at your made-up song lyrics, rode shotgun with Doc those times he nearly burned a hole in the front seat of his Datsun dropping doobies while speeding away from bad-guys, we shook our little rebel fists at the likes of Bigfoot Bjornsen when he scolded Doc, then we had to admit we liked the guy and that they were kinda in the same business all along.

Overall, most found Inherent Vice to be a righteous, sandal-trippy, Gordita Beach flippy, hippie-dippy good time. There were plenty of highlights including when neighbor buddy Denis dropping his cosmonaut musings on us ("Dude, Drug? Store?"), hot random sex in a dark closet on a bare mattress with the maid, the reunion of MIA characters with their loving families and of course, a good old-fashion shoot-out at the end. Raymond Chandler would've been proud.

There were some things we weren't 100 percent AOK with. Namely that every lead wraps up pretty nice and tidy, most endings come up happy and all roads lead to Golden Fang (even probably-madeup words like Chryskylodon).

But in the end, you left us with a very nice, love your neighbor, Catcher in the Rye message. As Doc Sportello drives away into the fog, we know that where ever his road leads, he's going to be doing good for others, piecing together puzzles and figuring it all out, man. Thanks for the jokes, the tokes, and the memories... --Jenna

P.S. JW -- thanks for the link to the trailer: http://www.thomaspynchon.com

Nothing Salvaged, Nothing Doused

(a review of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower)

I went to see Wells Tower read in Bryant Park one afternoon. It turned out to be just a moderated Q&A session with two other authors. As he responded to the queries, what immediately became clear was that Wells thinks a lot. He spends a great deal of time in his brain, choosing his words carefully. He has a big forehead, and in response to each question, he’d tilt it down, further intensifying the glare, a scribe looking up from his dusty tome, over the glint of his glasses. Wells wears no glasses.

How does a guy in button-down plaid, Chuck Taylors and jeans come across with such an air of authority? He must read a lot. Not just short stories and the classics, but dictionaries, manuals and encyclopedias. It’s apparent in his work, rife with obscure terms and jargon privy only to the experienced. He possesses acute, technical knowledge, and his readers instinctively trust his grasp of internal workings.

But this is the work of a fledgling sage. His stories have an unpolished feel, an unrefined edge that suggests an apprentice albeit, a precocious one. His stories hinge on obvious literary devices and conceits. The mechanisms are without guile, thinly veiled like a clear-faced watch, and any reader can plainly see how a Wells Tower story tick. The strategies could be taught with diagrams in a writing class to exemplify the tools needed to shape a story.

The collection is varied and eclectic: a man caught cheating on his wife sorts things out in a remote shack, finds kinship with a sea slug; a divorced man somehow gets roped into chauffeuring around his ex’s new husband; a newcomer to carnie life becomes suspect of raping a young boy; a Viking reluctantly leaves his woman home to pillage a distant town and save face in his community. These tales, despite their differences, share a common thread by following disenfranchised characters as they seek passage through misfortune and alienation. Wells writes of people who've lost their footing. They try to regain balance, but they are tired and listless, and receive little respite from the tedium of daily existence. Time grinds on. So it goes. C’est la vie. Disenchanting and honest, Wells does, however, allow them at least that tiny, unsatisfying enlightenment: his characters learn to accept (or at least, to acknowledge) that this weariness is the human condition, and they are granted the strength to continue, for now.

At the Q&A, when asked about inspiration and his writing process, the author likened it to defeat, of being forced to abandon something. At the end of the day, when faced with the world, Wells caves in. He must crawl out of the mire to begrudgingly take up the pen. “It’s like I have to give up,” he says, “before I begin to write.”

The literati have gobbled Wells up. The critics rave, and any story off his desk is pretty much guaranteed publication. He is hot, buttered shit, as they say. But what struck me most when I read his collection was that not a single one of his stories was solid gold. I am not compelled to say that any one of them was thoroughly amazing. There are, however, stunning moments, gold flecks scattered here and there—so refreshing to be reminded that perfection is not easily stumbled upon. In his debut collection, Wells Tower is an author openly humbled by his limitations, sharing the harsh reality that the work before us will always remain difficult.

-s

Small Rooms and Cigarette Butts

I'm bummed I missed the Cortazar discussion last night. I was so curious how this band of b-gangers reacted to such a novel novel. I was looking forward to finding out what level of discord or satisfaction other readers felt deciphering this book. Was it all one big metaphor? What was Cortazar trying to teach us? Overall, I felt like what I've been feeling with a lot of the novels we've been reading and discussing lately: that we dissect the writer and his patterns and style (more so than the book sometimes) and how that unfolds within reading the book, and I can't help but wonder what kind of "fuck you" Cortazar was after we he set out to break so many habits of the conventional reader. Saying it now doesn't mean we haven't realized it all along with other authors. So when I use words like "plot," or "chapter," or "protagonist," know that these terms are in some sort of definition limbo, where I don't know if Cortazar used these tools to distribute his metaphors or if in some way (fucked up or genius) this was simply his version of a novel.

I chose to read Hopscotch the "traditional" way starting with chapter one and ending with fifty-six. And I must admit, I was counting on the discussion among other readers to fill me in on what I missed, having read the shorter version, and also if they felt I had indeed missed out. I thought the plot was loose and left up to my own feelings with past and current "clubs" I've found myself in where, holed up with copious amounts of cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, and wandering intelligent minds, to fill in the gaps where description didn't. Or late nights (in Paris in spirit) wandering the streets (in my mind) in search of something that's really nothing. I was thrown back to my college days when I practiced many a "quiet exercises in freedom," tortured and arrested by my own thoughts and what they were capable of. (Although, an elaborate system of threads to make sense of and choke out those mind wanderings, I doubt I could ever concoct.) And it was lovely to revisit those days of unapologetic self-destruction through Oliveira and it reminded me how much I missed thinking, speaking, and writing outside of logical habit. He called the club once "a band of failures . . . bothered by legality when some logic begins to function too well." (Screw/I love you Cortazar!) Once again, I couldn't help but think of JC and who he is and for that matter, what role mate, jazz, and Goulouise cigarettes play in his life. I can understand him having some personal connection to Oliveira, culturally speaking, but there was so much more to this book than the protagonist. And my creative mind begs to know, where did the rest come from? I also thought: Jean-luc Godard's film Band a part. Anyone else?

So was Cortazar looking to break down this conventional wisdom or was he simply just answering his personal needs as a writer? I think we can all agree that the language was beautiful and some of the existential ideas presented were provocative and amusing. I think it was Babs, writing "a story about a sound" . . . or Oliveira being a "firm believer in autosuggestion." And then there was chapter 34. Oh chapter 34 how I loathed and loved reading you! I would giggle out loud as my eyes crossed again and again trying read every other line! And after reading the same line five times give in and switch to the other letter. I was furious at the same time I had to applaud Cortazar for this new experience. And it went back and forth like this the entire novel. So how can I form a solid opinion on such a wobbly (but not hollow) book?

That's where bookgang would have been nice. Having missed last night, I feel restless and unsettled about the whole book. So this is surely one that will stay with me for a while at least until I can work it out. Jury's still out. Perhaps a mate and a Goulouise a walk on a Parisian street will do the trick.



What's up next?! See the googledoc Hit List for suggestions.

Crap in My Oatmeal: A Memoir

Glaring at me from my clutter ridden desk is this damn copy of a book I forgot to return to Barnes and Noble. It sits on the corner, gathering dust and my loathing. Why do I have to write something about you, you piece of crap? My life would be perfect if it weren’t for your passive aggressive presence, reminding me of my own procrastinations...

It took a while to get over my initial disdain for Saunder’s Pastoralia. I have a programmed revulsion to most postmodern-y works; something about them generally leave me feeling empty and dissatisfied. Upon completing this collection of short stories, I had to ask myself if the dread I felt was a result of the book, the postmodern movement, or, god forbid, my own meager existence.

There is something unsettlingly familiar about the characters that populate these stories. They are pathetic and two dimensional. They are insecure, dependent, petty and unattractive—everything I consciously aspire not to be. Reading this book is like passing through a crackerjack town that I thankfully never lived in. If I had, I would have been so glad to leave it behind.

These stories is just that: a collection of tales from forgotten towns about goofy rednecks that are easy targets of our ridicule. The bizarre settings, absurd situations and stylized rhetoric hyperbolize the struggles of these characters. They become caricatures that remind us of our own dissatisfactions and possible failures.

A pastoral is a picture representing the shepherd’s life. It evokes a sentimentality for rural expanses and simpler times. The title of this book is suspect. Though the settings and inhabitants appear simple, they are involved in complicated and often perverse relationships. Saunders is a gifted humorist. His timing is impeccable, and his impressions make us laugh and guffaw. Then we burn rubber, spray gravel, and get the hell out of dodge.

I guess this dread I feel is that we left them all behind. Ultimately, Saunders does not deliver his characters from their own tragedies, as though holding up that dirty mirror was all he cared to do. His limited action implies that they are the only saboteurs of their own potential, and to give hope is merely to enable their dependencies.

Meanwhile, in NYC, where sexy people live sexy lives...

The meeting was lovely and animated as always. The flock of us, including newcomer Jules, descended on "Mother's" for a round of brews, fries and intellectual snobbery, really, discussing a book in a Brooklyn bar on a Saturday night? Yes, the atmosphere was a little loud for our discussion, yes the other patrons looked at us over their shoulders, what curious people, this band of beautiful intelligentsia... And what pleasant prelude to the debauchery that ensued. Round two rolled around in the form of my 30th birfday party and I had a blast, I hope y'all did too!

~Shomsie

p.s. the pix that follow are courtesy of Mr. Watt, I do not own a mac, so most of the pix didn't convert =(

and, one final p.s.

this is an excerpt from an essay by the late David Foster Wallace that I was trying to work into this bookgang post before I realized I was practically writing a term paper. It relates to my feeling of helplessenss and dread...the essay is called "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction" and appears in the collection "A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again."

"...So then how have irony, irreverence, and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling in the culture today’s avant-garde tried to write about? One clue’s to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It’s not a rhetorical mode that wears well. As [Lewis] Hyde. . .puts it, "Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy the cage." This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks. This is why Hyde seems right about persistent irony being tiresome. It is unmeaty. Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites. I find gifted ironists sort of wickedly funny to listen to at parties, but I always walk away feeling like I’ve had several radical surgical procedures. And as for actually driving cross-country with a gifted ironist, or sitting through a 300-page novel full of nothing by trendy sardonic exhaustion, one ends up feeling not only empty but somehow. . .oppressed."

post-Saunders and looking forward

Hey gang. I was lonely so I wanted to write a blog post. I only took one pict at our last meeting, so please see below.



Anyone know of any good upcoming literary events? Email please, if you do!



I saw some fellow book gangsters this weekend and we discussed the necessity of selecting a place with good volume levels to hold meetings. A couple of bars we've met at had background noise levels which were less than (or should I say GREATER than?) optimal. Second Chance Saloon, while a fine place to elbow punkers in the guts and get beer spilled on you, is not a great place for a book meeting, volumewise. Mother's had a lot of perks, fine beers and $5 burgers for those of us who eat meat, yet I felt like I was my aging Viet Nam vet father screaming across the table, "Eh sonny? What was that? You think Saunders might be stuck in his Phallic Stage, speaking Freudiantly, and has some weird attachment to his mother and therefore writes about all these relationships where an imperfect, damaged guy is trapped with a faulty female, yet refuses to change his situation? What?"



That said, I am heartily looking forward to some peace and beatitude in the Park Slope area in a few weekends here, where we can brunch together in a controlled-volume atmosphere. I can't wait to try out some fancy schmancy recipes, my new waffle iron, and maybe even whip up homemade whipped creme. Has anyone gotten the book yet? Further, what does the M.F.K. stand for in M.F.K. Fisher? Can I take a guess? Master of Friccassee Kabobs Fisher.



Did we ever come up with what the acronym FIRPO stands for? When I google'd it, I got the Wikipedia.com page for boxer Luis Angel Firpo. I think we can come up with a better acronym than that!
--Jenna

Bookgang Takes a Bath with Tolstoy

In the chapter on Anna Karenina in his Lectures on Russian Literature, Vladimir Nabokov insists “that literature is not a pattern of ideas but a pattern of images. Ideas do not matter much in comparison to a book’s imagery and magic.”

Bookgang is also not without patterns. Our uniformly good looks and intellectual agility certainly stand out. And month after month, our epicurean acumen manifests itself in the swirl of fine wine in our chinking glasses and the array of foods sweet and savory that pass our lips – a pattern that Oblonsky would call first-rate. If there was a pattern among Bookgang’s experience with reading Tolstoy’s canonical masterpiece, it was one of procrastination: despite New York’s best efforts to snow us in or otherwise chill our efforts to leave our snug apartments, our calendars often prevailed and left most of us rushing to finish the reading. But finish we did, most of us anyway, and we celebrated breaking this literary ribbon with a trip to the Russian and Turkish Baths in the East Village. Sadly, no cameras are allowed inside so you’ll just have to trust me when I declare myself the out-and-out winner in the contest of the hirsute chests: consider it my Slavic badge of honor.

It had snowed on and off all that day, so the transition from icy afternoon to reclining in the blaze of the bathhouse seemed that much more incongruous, and unlikely, some kind of instant cure for the disguised ailments of winter. No wonder then, the popular tradition of Russians like Tolstoy’s tubercular Nikolai traveling to Europe to “take the waters.” The Russian room was so hot I began to fear my facial piercings would burn me. When our blood collectively reached a point of brain boiling, a few of us went out onto the open air deck, our heads wet, the girls in their bikinis and we men in the uniform - those unflattering light blue bathhouse shorts. A gentle snow sifted down. We stood impervious to cold and smiling at the world from inside the warm halo of our bodies. On the bench nearby some people were drinking beer and drawing on a spliff. Sebastian bummed a smoke. Yelena walked barefoot through an arm of snow. It was quiet and perfect, and high time to talk books and get some damn food. For those purposes, we made our way to the Russian themed Anyway Café, whose “Russian bloody martinis” – made with the house’s remarkable infused vodkas – could make even the most ardent capitalist see the virtues of going red.

Just as the meal arrived, so did Emily, and Bookgang did what it always does so well: parse the “image and magic” of literature into the realm of ideas.

Hours later, we stepped outside to discover the weather had been as animated as we had been. The streets of New York were white as a new egg. We stood at the corner of Second Avenue. It was a Sunday night and it had that Sunday feeling, when your heart fills out like a sail. The faces of my friends were collectively flushed, a rosy afterglow earned from the baths, from the food and drink, from the time (and dollars) well spent with in the company of one another and Mr. Tolstoy. From the heavens fell a rich, downy snow as if the clouds were tossing confetti. The East Village was quiet, and the streetlamps and storefronts emitted a golden light. Anna Karenina is a book about life; fitting, then, that our night ended with a magical image of what life is all about.

- Jason Watt