I Am Of Course.... An Idiot

Sorry for my extended absence from this space. Summer is a nightmarish busy time. As I type this I am watching Governor Sanford melt down on the 24 hour news cycle thinking how sad it is on so many levels. How sad it is that this dogmatic, morally scolding conservative should have to be brought down in this way. How sad it is that we are all sinners and all only a few bad decisions away from a total meltdown. How sad it was that you knew when he disappeared that there was an illicit relationship with someone. You always hope that being brought low will make people more understanding of other people’s faults but people like Rush Limbaugh who have had difficulties with drug abuse and never stopped condemning others weaknesses in their hypocrisy does not give much hope. Other then his attempted refusal of TARP money I had never heard of the guy but he seems like a nice guy. They are running some his “Christian Values” campaign commercials right now and it is pretty painful. We force our politicians to pretend that they are without sin and it is really stupid. This is not just a Conservative thing or a Republican thing. It is a political thing and it is no wonder that these deeply flawed people rise to the top because anyone with any sense would not expose themselves to such an ultimately damning system of curring favor with special interest groups by publicly pretending to embrace their agenda. Now that i know what happened I am sick of the story. I hope he does not resign. I also hope he does not run for President, at least until he gets his shit together. Blah, blah, blah.

*****

So I got to spend a whole week with a bunch of teenagers up in Michigan. I drove 6 kids from St. Louis up there and they joined a group of about 160 kids at beautiful Camp Arcadia. As always it was sweet. I get to go up and they give me 11 kids for a week and put us through “the program”. Inevitably these are some of the best people I get to deal with all year long. Not the best teachers but the best people. It was a little creepy. Several kids had parents out of jobs or under employed. This obviously was causing added stress in their houses. We don’t sleep much when we are up there. I also don’t drink much or engage in any other of my many vices when there. Other then eating like a pig it is a place where I get a little cleansing. In light of how I treat my body day to day any cleaning would seem positive. It was sweet being away from work for a week and getting to know 11 kids who I did not know before gives me some meager hope for the future which is better then no hope at all.

****

On the way home from camp I only had two kids in the car with me and was in a hurry to get home (for no good reason). When driving south down the west coast of Michigan you take highway 31 and it is 70 mph the whole way other then a 30 mile or so stretch from Muskoegen to Holland where it intermittently drops to 55 and below. I was blowing along at 74 when pulled over. It never ceases to amaze me how sick to my stomach I get at the sight of flashing cherrys in the rear view. I always want to puke. The office was the kind of large, blue eyed Dutchman that you can only find in Holland Michigan and had probably been fairly formidable when playing middle line backer for Hope College. he was polite. He inquired if I had a good reason for speeding (I did not) and went back to run my plates and I assume write me a ticket. When he got out of the cruiser without his ticket clip board I thought perhaps he was going to let me skate but then he informed me that I had an old unpaid ticket in Michigan and therefore was no longer authorized to drive in the state. He also told me I would need to post a 205 dollar cash bond and asked if I had the cash and when I said no he politely said:
"Please step out of the car".
When I did so it was followed up by:
"Please place your hands on the vehicle".
At which time I realized he was about to arrest me. Keep in mind that I had a two week beard growing, no shoes and two minor children in the car. I began to speak telling him that although i knew he was just doing his job I needed him to help me out a little and he told me that he had no options but to take me in and book me and let me post a credit card bond "at the station". The kids in the car looked horrified but were trying to be polite. I could see a bank about 1/2 mile away and suggested i could drive to the ATM:
"I cannot allow that sir. You are not authorized to drive in the State of Michigan."
I smiled.
"How about if you just give me a ride?"
"Once I put you in the squad car you are arrested." He responded.
I stuck my head in the window at the two 16 year olds and asked if either had ever driven a stick and they both indicated the negative but i made my final play:
"How about if I teach one of the kids to drive a stick and you follow me to the bank?"
"I do not think that would be safe sir."
I pleasingly looked at him and said "I need a little grace here officer. I am confident that I can get him to learn quickly and get to the bank and post that cash bond".
He grudgingly allowed it and I hopped in the passenger seat. In the drivers seat was a panicked young man named Jeff Schultie who after a few simple instructions performed brilliantly. I think he only killed the car once and was able not only to get us there but also negotiated a Michigan U turn in the process. I went to the ATM and got the cash. He wrote the ticket and gave me receipt and then told me that although I was not authorized to drive in the State of Michigan it might not be in every one's best interests to have Jeff drive all the way to Indiana and he suggested that Jeff get me out of his county. Jeff did and then gratefully surrendered the wheel but i cannot say enough about the effort. For me it was just a totally humiliating fathers day. On the other hand I didn't have to fly back from Argentina and face the press like the governor of California. I guess it was not that humiliating.

***

Two weeks ago I was up in Lansing Michigan giving a commencement address. That will be posted tomorrow.

WHAT I AM READING (With Apologies To Nick Hornby)

There is a magazine I read called The Believer (which I somewhat prematurely and optimistically labeled the new New Yorker) and one of my favorite columns in it has been written by Nick Hornby, the guy who wrote Hi Fidelity. The column was called “What I Have Been Reading” and the guy reads a lot and has turned me onto some good books. In fact some very good books. But Hornby is moving on from the column and the magazine so with imitation being the best form of flattery I give you the St. Louis Diner Review version of “What I Have Been reading”.

Michael Chabon: “Yiddish Policeman's Union”
Harper Collins 2007
416 Pages

Chabon is one of the writers that Hornby turned me on to. I think i did not think i would like him because it sounded like he had a French name and well... we hate those people. I like it when my instincts are wrong because you often find something new, and they were very wrong here.

Chabon invents a whole new world historically where after world war two when the state of Israel is started that the Arabs and Palestinians push the Jewish re-settlers into the ocean. The U.S. for reasons that are never quite clear through Secretary of State Seward offer the Jews a 50 year homeland in Alaska and 10s of thousands of Jews settle and prosper there. Like any ethnic group this band of wanderers has it’s share of normal people and crazies and the politics of Jewish Alaska are.... convoluted at best.

Our hero and narrator is a detective and he is living post divorce in a seedy hotel where someone else murdered. The investigation of the murder is complicated by the fact that the 50 years is up and most of the Jews are being forced to leave and those that stay are not necessarily welcome or being offered jobs in the new administration AND his ex wife has gotten the job as his boss.

The gentlemen who was killed also was expected at one point in his life to be the chosen one who would lead the Jews to their right place in the world and perhaps bring on Armageddon and the last days. I think Sarah Palin would have been in favor of this. Anyway, it is NOT a murder mystery but is a book deep in relationships and it is beautifully written if slightly long. This guy can just flat out write and like my earlier review of his book “No Map No Legend” this book is a highly recommended read.
Wikipedia has pretty good entry on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yiddish_Policemen's_Union
Among other things it tells me that the book is in pre-production for a film by the Coen Brothers.
*****
Will Self: “Liver”
Penguin Viking 2008
277 Pages

OK....I love this guy. It does not make me a bad person but it does make me think a little sickeningly about the things I find pleasure in. Self reminds me of Will Sheff of my favorite band Okkervil River. In a recent Paste Magazine Interview he said:
“What I’m hoping is that people walk away from the songs feeling … a subtler kind of violence,” Sheff says, “that they feel uncomfortable and like a lot of their feelings have been stirred up and they’ve been entertained—but in a way that made them feel a little sick.” read the whole thing at: http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2008/09/river-of-screams.html
I think Self goes for the same thing. This is actually not a novel but a collection of novellas which are tied together as near as I can tell by the following:

1. Alcoholism
2. Liver Maladies (some caused by Alcoholism).
3. The complexity of the human psyche
4. A Soho bar called “The Plantation Club”
The stories are in no small part, beautiful, depressing and creepy. The inhabitants (becuase they spend almost all their waking hours there) of the Plantation Club make you yearn for their demise, timely or untimely. One of Self’s gifts is to display peoples weaknesses and fragility while still making them obscenely unlikable. It is not at all important that the novellas have anything in common. All four of them are well written and compelling. I got a British Hardcover of this and it is beautifully bound with no dust jacker. Very nice.

!!!!!!!!

H.P. Lovecraft: “Call of the Cthulu”
Penguin Classics 1999
419 Pages

In reading Jonathan Lethem and Michael Chabon I became aware of the work of H.P. Lovecraft and what a powerful influence he has been on both of their work. Because I am a completist and like to find ways to spend idle hours I decided to check him out. Also becuase I am a Mountain Goats fan and they had a song that really kicked it on their last CD called “Lovecraft In Brooklyn”. The Mountain Goats song paints a bleak picture:

“woke up afraid of my own shadow
Like, Genuinely afraid
headed for the pawnshop
To buy myself a switchblade
Someday somethings coming
From way out beyond the stars
To kill us while we stand here
It will store our brains in mason jar
And then the girl behind the counter asks "How do you feel today?" and I say "I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn!"
----Mountain Goats “Love craft In Brooklyn” 2008.

I thought this was something I needed to do, to read, to explore. From my perspective I was clearly wrong. Lovecraft did not really write a lot of books. He was a pulp writer for magazines and that resulted in a lot of short stories and novellas. These have been put together in various collections all of which start with a short biography of the guy and other then the fact that he lived with his aunts, liked to write letters and hang out with Robert Howard (Conan The Barbarian Creator) he did not seem compelling. I did find out from the biography that he was almost paralyzed by xenophobia and when he lived in Brooklyn found himself totally alienated and despising the mass of society.... and especially minorities and strangers. Though this might have gotten him a cabinet position with the Bush administration it seems an unhappy life. Here is the Wiki on him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hp_lovecraft.

“Call of the Cthulu” is the main story in a group of novellas and never having read him before I was amazed at how relentlessly black all of his characters and prose are. There is no joy. There is not even a fake smile. His characters amble through these barren historical and imaginary landscapes and ultimately get to glimpse ultimate horror or ultimate evil before suffering grizzly death or a life a s a recluse from being scarred by what they found out.

It is not much different from being a lawyer.

You do not need to read Lovecraft’s stuff. better to read about him.

%%%%%%%

Ethan Canin: “America America”
Random House 2008
458 Pages

This was a beautiful book. Canin has long been a favorite of mine. I distinctly remember reading his book “Blue River” while I was taking the Missouri Bar Exam. The night before I was reading and finding comfort in his prose before spilling my guts on the exam the next day. My memory is of course totally suspect in that I took the Bar Exam in 1987 and the book was not published until 1995. So much for my bogus memories.

At that time Canin was new and had not really developed his style but since that time he has cranked out several books to universally critical acclaim. He is good and this book is just simply GREAT. It is a Richard Russo type effort set in upstate New York in a thriving, dying, thriving, dying town. A rich and political family adopts a lower class but hard working young man. He becomes acquainted with the ways of the rich, and their daughters. he gets sent to prep school and then to college while working around their house.

During this period, set in 1972 the family is supporting a Presidential Candidate who is running as a Democrat against Mc Govern, Muskie and Humphrey. It looks like he is going to win but there is a scandal and our narrators benefactors are right in the middle of it. Throughout the book as he benefits from the families largesse and connections there is always a sense that he is being used (and perhaps abused) in ways we do not understand.

He grows to be the local newspaper editor and attempts to adopt a protégé in much the same matter and the book is a retrospective as he tells her the story which begins looking back from the funeral of the politician. The book is heartwarming, heart wrenching and achingly well written. If you love the myth of American politics it is a must read, or if you just like someone who really knows his way around language and storycreft. Do not miss this one. It also would make a great gift for anyone you know who reads.

&&&&&&&&

Kurt Vonnegut: “Armageddon In Retrospective”
Putnam 2008
233 Pages

I continue to be very sad that this guy is dead. There is a picture of him on the back of the dust jacket taken by one of his kids or grandkids in front of a door and surrounded by some flowers with boat tennis shoes on. He looks simpatico.
The great thing about Vonnegut is that he was never simpatico. He was questioning, tortured, profoundly disillusioned with humanity and especially government institutions and yet.... he still found a way to love, raise a family and produce some beautiful, beautiful books. Even through disillusionment, depression and despair he always loved people, while seemingly despising what people, especially groups of people, especially groups of people organized as governments.

this book is really just a collection of his wartime writings. Vonnegut was a late arriver in Europe in WWII and was almost immediately captured by the retreating and declining german Army. He was put to work cleaning the streets of Dresden which the allies had left alone because it had no military factories but in the waning days of the war, for one reason or another the Allies, the U.S. decided to firebomb it and level it. He gives that experience the whole book in “Slaughterhouse Five” and his stories here all dance around it. His experiences in the war, as a prisoner, as a survivor of the firebombing and as a liberated prisoner are what make up these stories. All fiction heavily colored by his own experiences.

The stories are short and easy to read and are a sweet glimpse into a young author. the forward written by his son is as revealing as anything written about the man. Families and people are complex and beautiful. War sucks and is dehumanizing. Always. Simple messages by a sweet, brilliant, confused man.