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.