Not softly into that Blue Night [a review]

At a glance, Joan Didion's latest book, "Blue Nights," looks much like her last, the National Book Award-winning "The Year of Magical Thinking." Once again, the front cover bears amply spaced blue letters with thick trunks and delicate serifs spelling out her name and the book's title. And once again a black-and-white photograph--this time of her daughter Quintana Roo--dominates the back cover. What lies within is also, at least superficially, similar. Magical Thinking was written in the wake of the sudden death of her husband, while Blue Nights comes after her daughter--who in the previous book had rallied from pneumonia-induced septic shock to full recovery--has ended another long hospital stay, this time in death.

No two losses are equivalent, of course, and therefore neither could--nor should--two books be. Didion previously comforted herself with precision--quoting the time, "May 20, 2004, 11:11 p.m.," that she wrote her first words after her husband's death; the size, "three-by-six-inch," of the index cards in his pocket; and the chance medical facts that littered her life, "Tissue anoxia for > 4 to 6 min. can result in irreversible brain damage or death." She quoted widely, borrowing from the 9/11 Commission Report and The Merck Manual, 16th edition. She pile on the certainties and firm facts, as if research alone could overcome her disbelief, could convince her that her husband was really, truly gone.

Uncertainty has given way to a blameful regret in Blue Nights. Didion crafts her memories -- each heavily freighted with portent -- into mantras that echo through the book. She guiltily repeats the list of "Mom's saying" posted in the garage by a young Quintana: "Brush your teeth, brush your hair, shush I'm working." She finds answers in the quartet of questions that the adopted Quintana asked as a child, apparently often:

What if you hadn't been home when Dr. Watson called--
What if you couldn't meet him at the hospital--
What if there'd been an accident on the freeway--
What would happen to me then?

She recalls her daughter's calls to a mental hospital ("to find out what she needed to do if she was going crazy," she explained) and Twentieth Century Fox ("to find out what she needed to do to be a star"). She remembers how, like her parents, who financed their life with Hollywood scriptwriting, Quintana reacted to movies not with pleasure, but evaluations of commercial potential. She sees in these memories all the signs of a childhood stifled, of a child forced into adulthood, of, inevitably, a mother who did not quite measure up. "How could I have missed what was so clearly there to be seen?" she asks again and again, in one form or another.

Magical Thinking draws to a close with Didion still listing, still drifting, still unwilling to let go of her memories. Yet she acknowledges that they too grasp her. She sees that they are a fiction borne of an impossible hope--for return her life past--and with that realization we glimpse her journey onward. In Blue Nights, she wants none of that fiction. She rejects memento but clings to memory. She quite literally collapses on the floor of her apartment -- she watches, still in shock, as her own blood pools on the floor -- and yet she clings to life. She doesn't seem quite sure what to make of it, but still she clings.

"The fear is not for what is lost… The fear is for what is still to be lost. You may see nothing still to be lost. Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her."

Ten days at sea with Gabriel Garcia Marquez [a review]

In February 1955, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was 27 years old. He had finished his first work of fiction, a novella, nearly seven years earlier, but he had not yet found a publisher. He was working as a film critic at the Colombian newspaper El Espectador. He also wrote the occasional news story. Perhaps for that reason, he was assigned the story of Luis Alejandro Velasco.

Late that month, the Colombian destroyer Caldas was swamped as it returned home from a repair mission to Mobile, Alabama. The ship survived, but eight sailors were washed overboard. The 20-year-old Velasco was among them. Rescue teams from Colombia and the U.S. combed the waters for the lost seamen, but found no one. After four days, the search was abandoned. Nearly a week later, an all-but-dead Velasco washed onto a beach in Northern Colombia.

What followed, naturally, was a Jessica Lynch-esque media frenzy. By the time Velasco arrived at the newspaper's office, "he had been decorated, he had made patriotic speeches on radio, he had been displayed on television as an example to future generations, and he had toured the country amid bouquets and fanfares, signing autographs and being kissed by beauty queens." He had even done advertisements: for watches ("his watch hadn't even slowed down" during his time at sea) and for shoes ("his were so sturdy that he hadn't been able to tear them apart to eat them").

This much we learn from the introduction to the "The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor," Marquez's 106-page account of the young seaman's ordeal. As it turned out, Velasco showed up at El Espectador not merely in search of another check. In the course of 20 six-hour interviews with Marquez, the sailor would reveal that there was no storm the night he and his shipmates were swept overboard. The problem was one of weight; the ship was overloaded with contraband television sets, refrigerators, and washing machines. The revelation, which following the solemn denials of the dictatorship of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla was accompanied by photos in which one could make out the labels on the illegal cargo, made the story a sensation.

The politics of a now-dead dictatorship may now be of little interest--except perhaps as a reminder of the Lynchian tendencies of all governments--but the story remains a sensational read. All the aching monotony of ten days adrift at sea is magically (although you'll find no magical realism here) packed into an often breathless narrative. Some critics have called it a nonfiction competitor to Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea. Marquez, however, seemingly would rather not have us read this story. The concluding paragraph of his introduction:

I have not reread this story in fifteen years. It seems worthy of publication, but I have never quite understood the usefulness of publishing it. I find it depressing that the publishers are not so much interested in the merit of the story as in the name of the author, which, much to my sorrow, is also that of a fashionable writer. If it is now published in the form of a book, that is because I agreed without thinking about it very much.

It should be noted that at the time of its publication in Spanish, Marquez had never before been credited with the story. It had originally ran under Velasco's name as a first-person account. Perhaps in a reflection of his unease about the publication, Marquez reportedly signed over the royalties to Velasco. 

There are, true enough, very few signs of the baroque poetry of Marquez's later works. Marquez describes, earlier in the introduction, a photo he recently saw of a middle-aged Velasco: "He had grown older and heavier, and looked as if life had passed through him, leaving behind the serene aura of a hero who had had the courage to dynamite his own statue." Those are the words of an older, more adept writer. Yet much of that keen and easy observation is here, in its infancy. And measured against today, the tale stands tall. Marquez's deceptively spare sentences pack a punch that knocks flat most of today's journalism.

Kids in the cauldron [a review]

Patti Smith was ten cents short of a cheese-and-lettuce sandwich when she met Allen Ginsburg. The Beat poet, whose famed epic "Howl" rejoices in his own homosexuality, stepped up behind her to pay the difference. He was trying to seduce her. He thought she was a "'very pretty boy.'"

In her National Book Award-winning memoir, "Just Kids," Patti Smith can't seem to turn around without bumping into history. She acts and Andy Warhol and Tennessee Williams come to the play. She plays music and William Burroughs attends. She goes to a party and hears Janis Joplin sobbing that her date has vanished with a cute groupie. She bumps into Jimi Hendrix and he tells her he wants to create a universal musical language. "'The language of peace. You dig?'"

That this fairytale procession of co-stars never take over the show is a testament to the power of her book. The juicy anecdotes just detail her world: the creative cauldron of 1970s New York. She is overawed by these living legends, but never overwhelmed. She marches on fueled not by determination to join their young pantheon, as we might suspect today, but by a pure--there is no other word for it--conviction in art. Her self-confidence seldom flickers. She moves, with little doubt at all, through the mediums as her spirit takes her: poetry, mixed media, acting, songwriting. Art is the ends.

But let's not forget the kids. "Just Kids" is not just about art. It is the story of two young artists--Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe. Their upbringings, their paths to New York, their young love, their transcendent bond, their striving for art. While legends people their lives--Ginsburg becomes her writing tutor--they do not soften its hard edges. Robert turns tricks for rent money. Patti nurses him through detox. One night, burglars ransack their apartmentand destroy months of artwork. In another apartment they awake to find a chalk outline outside the door. Throughout it all, their bellies ache for food. They are often ten cents short.

While reading "Just Kids," I had moments where I could scarcely fathom that such a time and a place--such a potent stew of talents and personalities and drugs and art and love--had ever existed. Yet it was the missing ingredient--one whose absence I could, at first, feel but not name--that shocked me most of all. Irony. And with the realization, I understood my disbelief.

Animals in upstate New York [a review]

In a world with many lifetimes of worthwhile reading always a few keystrokes away, I cherish the slim volume. A book weighing in under 200 pages provides an impetus all of its own. Like the running trail whose length matches your evening energy and leaves you eager to strap on the shoes again tomorrow. Sure, the work has to be promising. But for me, the thought always creeps in: "I could read that in an afternoon."



Justin Torres' debut work, "We the Animals," is about as promising as they come. Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, called it a "dark jewel of a book." Marilynne Robinson thought it was "brilliant, poised and pure." Both have won Pulitzer prizes.  The book comes in at a featherweight 125 pages, even with comfortable margins and ample line spacing. I did not, however, read it in a single sitting. 



Density was not the issue. Torres deploys simple, unadorned language in tracing the coming of age of a half-white, half-Puerto Rican boy and his two older brothers in upstate New York amid the often violent gyrations of their parents'  relationship. (Torres has called the work "semi-autobiographical": he is a child of a Puerto Rican father and white mother, one of three boys, and was raised in, where else, upstate New York). The book captures the wondrous discovery and exuberance of youth: dancing with dad in the kitchen, watching through the shower curtain from the tub as his parents make love. Yet there is much more pain. He sees the aftermath of his father's beatings, he listens to his mother's pleas as his father rapes her. Despite it all, or perhaps because of it, his world is ethereal, translucent. And amid the mist, with such minimal narrative guidance, one must travel slowly. 

While it bears the label "a novel" on its cover, the book might better be called something like a narrative poem. Torres layers on the detail through the accumulation of stories, without the traditional threads pulling the mass into a more recognizable narrative tapestry. But such delicate grace transcends structure. Such a tale of woe would feel heavy in hands of many a writer. That it is so light makes it all the more haunting.

Facebook, smartphones and bodily functions: Is technology ushering in a dark age of frivolity?

I often encounter things that, I feel, justify my sometimes-dystopian view of technology.

For instance the earbud-donning young women I have frequently seen jogging at twilight in Los Angeles County’s many parks make me fear that even our most basic survival instincts are losing out to electronic entertainment. The rattlesnake along the trail, the scantily clad weirdo in the bushes, the pack of hungry coyotes, and the skulking mountain lion – all possibilities on a park trail in LA County – should be these joggers’ primary concern, not music. It makes me want to run out of the bushes while waving my arms frantically and shout “what are you thinking?” to these oblivious harriers.

Then there’s Facebook, the social media website that has turned life into a never-ending yearbook and made over-sharing cool. Throughout most of civilized humanity’s history, telling friends and acquaintances about the interesting things you found in your morning stool was considered a major faux pas -- that is, something only a complete social imbecile would do. Not in the era of Facebook. Today, if you don’t share such things, you are an un-vetted outcast who should be viewed with suspicion.

There’s also the way these distractions seem to have altered our interactions with each other. Today, when I walk into a coffee shop, the scene is usually dominated by 20-somethings seemingly separated by a personal bubble. Conversation is a thing of the past in these places. Instead, gazes are directed downward at smartphones, which are often utilized to access the latest over-sharing tidbit from a shameless friend – who’s likely sitting across the table.

The bottom line is, to borrow a colorful phrase from an old-school lady friend of mine (if she were 35 years younger, we might be married): I often feel that technology is threatening to turn our brains into vestigial organs.

I’ve also frequently wondered: How many Chinese kids does it take to build a smartphone in a fume-laden sweatshop? And: How big are the open-pit mines where the rare earth metals for such phones come from?

But despite these concerns, there’s a part of me that knows I’m wrong about technology. I suspect, in certain moments of weakness, that I have prematurely developed into an unreasonable curmudgeon and the world is threatening to leave me behind as a result. These moments usually arise when my latest-gadget-wielding roommate Mickey preaches about how technology is enabling small businesses to thrive or I find myself in awe of the internet while doing research.

For me, it’s not the ability of the internet to bring long-lost Jr. High School sweethearts together through Facebook to discuss bodily functions and shared nostalgia that’s impressive. What is truly fascinating about the internet is its ability to bring information of the most esoteric variety to the unwashed masses, including lay writers like me.

Over the past few years, I’ve discovered videos of deceased intellectual and creative giants such as Carl Jung, John Lennon, Terrance McKenna, Bob Marley, Christopher Hitchens, Erich Fromm, David Foster Wallace, Hunter S. Thompson, Jim Morrison, and Aldous Huxley. And it was easy -- just a few keyboard hits and mouse clicks on Youtube enabled me to become a slightly more enlightened person. No effort needed.

Deep down, I think it’s my admiration for such information that colors my disdain for Facebook and its users’ billions of “status updates.” I can’t help but wonder why, with all the information so easily available to us online courtesy of humanity’s greatest minds, do we focus our attention on what our cousin had for dinner or whom our fifth grade acquaintance is dating?

My participation in this blog is my attempt, albeit limited and a bit late, to come to terms with this new age. It’s one of over-sharing, sure, but it also seems to have some promise.

Maybe dystopia isn’t around the bend after all.

Manifesto

Hello. We are The New Curmudgeons. Our mission is simple: Write. We harbor no illusions about our presence here.  We know our words amount to merely a few additional peeps in the overcrowded digital multiverse that is the World Wide Web. Maybe an eye or two will glance at our essays, political rants, film critiques, or whatever we might produce. Or maybe not. Perhaps we won’t be able to yell above the din of cyberspace or compete with its more glorious (and, in all likelihood, scantily clad) offerings.

But that’s not the point. This site is a labor of love. You see, some months ago we became aware that we were no longer doing any real writing. We had each, in our own ways, previously spent quiet time turning thoughts -- sometimes our own, sometimes others' -- into prose. But we found we were no longer writing creatively, neither for our jobs nor on our own. Which meant, ultimately, we weren't doing any deep thinking.

In an age of so much information, where just a few clicks can connect you to anything, from the secrets of the Bhagavad Gita to what Snookie had for breakfast, writing fosters clarity. It forces confrontation with this muddled mess of facts constantly refreshed by news flashes, instant text updates, and live-blogged pre-event coverage. Information is cheap, reflection is not.

Therefore, here we are, ready to write, ready to think. By joining forces, we hope to both inspire--if not pressure--each other to continue returning to the keyboard. Topic is of little importance. We may cover politics, culture, literature, mere books, more politics, technology, economics, pet peeves, happy aggravations, still more politics, and so on. If it engages us, we will engage with it. We are not narrowly targeted, Google PageRank-checking, SEO-calculating, Twitterastic, Facebookotic blogsters. That's just not our way.

We are here to write. As well as we can. That's it.