THIS WEEK IN LITERARY HISTORY Thomas Hardy gets wasted, sells his wife and child, and thinks, "This is an awesome idea for a novel." |
2 April 2008
Unless you avoid the news or human contact of any kind, you know that our nation’s leading investment bankers, ensconced in their wainscoted offices high above Manhattan, are having a bit of trouble in the liquidity department.
These Masters of the Universe made billions upon billions with investments like asset-backed securities and CDOs and currency swaps and interest rate options and hedging "swaptions" and other exotica that mere plebes like you and me will never truly understand. And then they basically fucked everything up.
Without going into too much detail, bankers become so arrogant that they forgot that investments entail this weird concept called "risk." They made tons of money investing in those subprime mortgage thingees everyone seems to be talking about, while forgetting that a big-payoff investment means big risk.
(If this sounds like a buncha mumbo jumbo, think of it this way. Bear Stearns and other investment banks shot up pure heroin, and got, really, really, really shitfaced. They loved getting high so much, they overdosed. Then the drug dealer came a-callin’ with an Uzi and six well-muscled friends, and made Bear Stearns an offer it couldn’t refuse.)
While skewering venal, bloated plutocrats is fun, there is actually a reason for it within the context of this blog. The greatest writers are like great investment bankers: they go for broke, they don’t hold back, and they score big or not at all.
Somebody’s screwed; it’s not the bank
In one way or another, my favorite novels and short stories throw caution to the wind. The writing itself may be restrained; the actual story may or may not be plausible; the dialog or characterizations will smack of the truth. However, in emotional or intellectual terms these writers take chances others couldn’t stomach. A great work of fiction does not fear risk but embraces it.
Think of just about any life-changing book that you’ve read, or look at the list of books on the right: one thing they all have in common is fearlessness. If Salman Rushdie hadn’t had the cajones to go over the top, "Midnight’s Children" would have been a snooze. If Thomas Pynchon hadn’t dared to be so ridiculously intellectual and hopelessly sophomoric, there would have never been "V.," much less "Gravity’s Rainbow." And if Margaret Atwood had not peered into the dark caverns of the soul, "Cat’s Eye" would have been a schlockfest.
But all of them bet the bank on a roll of the literary dice, and created great works of art. Timidity gets you nowhere.
Or consider this: before Rushdie wrote "Midnight’s Children," John Irving wrote "The World According to Garp," and Saul Bellow gave us "The Adventures of Augie March" (risky, messy and glorious all), they wrote books that are considered competitent, tightly written, and blandly cerebral. But you probably can’t name them.
Risk-taking — and ambition, it’s close cousin — are all-too-often in short supply these days. You see plenty of well-written, "small" works of fiction with small aims and small results. These are all fine and good, for what they’re worth. There’s a place for them on the bookshelf. But nobody ever wrote something that could change a reader’s life without swinging for the fences, throwing deep, shooting three-pointers, or whatever clichéd sports metaphor you choose.
You can even extend the metaphor to book . . . → Read More: Wall Street as (Writing) Metaphor
25 March 2008 Not long ago, in the spirit in which this great nation was founded, I asked for your vote. And you delivered. Thanks to you, we can change America!
Oh, wrong speech.
The votes have been tabulated for the What Will Bookfraud Read Next? poll, and in a landslide, the winner is The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. Brief History received 55 percent of the vote, while the next closest candidates only garnered 18 percent each. Granted, there were only 11 votes, and some of the "votes" were extended diatribes regarding my general stupidity that required interpretation worthy of a Joyce scholar to ascertain which book was actually selected.
I could have kept voting booths open, but exit polling was showing a diminishing interest in light of a far more pressing political matter, Governors With Boners. We have to keep our priorities straight, after all.
In all seriousness, I greatly apprecate all who bothered to vote and offer your opinions, especially those who gave detailed suggestions — even if your book didn’t "win," it’s gone on the list of must-reads.
I’ll read The Brief History of the Dead forthwith, and offer my semi-coherent thoughts on it when I’m done.
Thanks again.
Tweet
21 March 2008
You should write another novel if you’re going to get a new agent. Agents don’t want to represent a book that’s been rejected by so many places. —An agent telling Bookfraud last year he’s screwed
He can’t write genre fiction. He’s genetically predisposed not to do it — he doesn’t have the chops. If he tried to write a crime novel, for instance, it would be a disaster. –Bookfraud on Bookfraud
Always write an outline for your novel — it will serve as a guide you navigate the thicket of writing and rewriting. –From Yet Another Self-Help Book on Writing
GENRE NOVEL OUTLINE
I. First Part: The Money
A. Ch. 1: "What Is This?" a) A 10-year-old boy named Jim wakes up to find $12.4 billion in $10 bills tucked under his bed.
b) Sensing he will be capture by foreign agents, he promptly converts the money into Uruguayan pesos and buries it in his backyard.
c) His best friend Billy, also 10, finds out about the money, tasers Jim, and digs up the pesos.
B. Ch. 2: “On the Run” a) Billy changes his name to Ulysses P. Goldberg, buys a Cadillac Escalade, and heads to Mexico.
1. Short scene with haggling with car dealer; Ulysses asks for and finally gets the 60,000-mile powertrain warrantee 2. Before he leaves, says goodbye to his parents, his sister, his dog Freckles, and tries to set the house on fire, but only after taking his Pokemon cards.
b) On his way to Mexico, Billy/Ulysses stops at a diner and falls in love with a waitress named Edna St. Hubbins.
c) Edna lures Billy/Ulyssess to her trailer home with the lure of sex, but ties him up, takes the $12.4 billion in Uruguayan pesos, and drives the trailer home into the Grand Canyon, getting out before it goes over the cliff.
If the only Wang Chung song you know is running through your head, kill yourself now
C. Ch. 3: “Go Mental”
a)Billy/Ulyssess spends the next three weeks in a coma, then wakes up in a hospital having metamorphasized into a 54-year-old grandfather. He is permanently left with a Boston accent like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting and the song "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" by Wang Chung running constantly in his head.
b)Soon after Billy/Ulysses wakes up, Jim arrives at the hospital with his new friends Vito “The Pipefitter” Gallano and Johnny “The Cockroach” Palamanti, and ask politely about the money.
c) Jim threatens Billy if he doesn’t tell, but all Billy can say, “Pakh the cah in Havahd Yahd.”
1. Coma dream sequence: train going through a tunnel. 2. Coma dream sequence II: Billy turns into Judy Garland.
d) Jim, Vito, and Johnny The Cockroach force Billy on the road to find Edna.
D. Ch. 4: "Vile of Lesbos"
a) On their way to meet Edna, Vito and Johnny throw Jim and Billy out of the car. The mobsters use their GPS to find Edna but end up driving their Lincoln Town Car through a pool hall in Upper Skankton, Ohio.
b) Jim and Billy pick up a ride from an 18-wheeler driven by a Canadian named Gordie McGord, who says he’s a BIG Calgary Flames fan and asks the two if they’re a couple . . . → Read More: The Outline
18 March 2008 The polling places are still open for voting on which book I’ll read next. Be sure to weigh in on this pressing matter. As P. Diddy Dingdong Dog said (and South Park brilliantly parodied), Vote or Die!
With the latest brouhaha over the latest bogus memoir, the concept of the "unreliable narrator" has been percolating in my brain, which is a dangerous thing indeed, as it will likely spill over and burn someone unfortunate to read further.
Specifically, I speak of the unreliable narrator in literary fiction. Or rather, I speak of how people speak about the unreliable narrator in literary fiction. In MFA workshops.
I have heard such discussions far too many times. "You have an unreliable narrator, so I don’t trust what he says," you are likely to hear. It seems to be one of those criticisms, like "the story doesn’t start until page ___" or "the story doesn’t rise organically from the text," that a person will say when they really mean "I have no more idea what I’m saying than a talking shitstick."
Delving too far into the reliability of narrators can be like trying to ascertain the brainwaves of a teenager who gets drunk and drives his parents’ SUV into a ditch. Or, more recently, of a governor who goes online, launders money, and hires prostitutes. There’s really no point to it, unless you’re into literary theory.
It’s kind of interesting so much is made about narrators’ veracity. If the narrator is lying or is massaging the details, it means she’s lying for a reason. She may be delusional, psychotic, or have an agenda. There may be more at stake than what’s in the boundaries of the story. Then again, there may not be.
I first encountered this dillema in "Wuthering Heights," where Nelly Dean may or may not be telling the truth to Lockwood, who may or may not be telling the truth to us. I got caught lost in all the possible permutations of what this might mean to understanding Heathcliff, Catherine, Cathy, etc., that I forgot to enjoy the damn thing.
Another famous example of the unreliable narrator is "The Turn of the Screw," Henry James’s classic could-be-might-be ghost story that has the distinction of ruining literature for at least four generations of American high school students.
The problem is that when critiquing a work — you know, actually trying to help the writer make his or her story a better one — discussing if a narrator is reliable is about as fruitful as trying to figure out the artistry in "Who Let the Dogs Out." Knowing that a narrator is unreliable might help you better understand the narrator’s motives, or see the story in a new light. But I can’t remember one conversation about how an unreliable narrator affected the quality of the work or led to some suggestion to make it any better.
Kinbote’s a Zemblaniac
Let’s take one of the most unreliable narrators ever to hit the page of literary fiction. Charles Kinbote can’t be trusted. We figure this out after about three words. There probably is no Zembla, and some may argue that there’s no Charles Kinbote, either, that the author of the poem "Pale Fire," John Shade, also wrote the commentary that provides the primary narrative of the novel Pale . . . → Read More: A Rant on The Unreliable Narrator
14 March 2008
Now that the issues of fabulist memoirs, horndog governors, Hillary’s Nietschean Will to Power and Obama’s Wacko Spiritual Guide have received proper treatment, let’s get to something far more important: what book will I read next?
I’m close to finishing Sean Wilsey’s "Oh, the Glory of It All," a heartbreaking (and true) memoir of growing up with narcissistic parents who put the "fucked up" in "fucked up family." But with all my books in storage for another year, only a handful of slim volumes populate the bookshelves, encased in Ziploc bags (see above).
What’s more, Wife has gotten all medival on my ass, and has strongly suggested that we limit purchases of new books until the bedbug plague has been eliminated. With a paucity of choices, I should have a simple time making a decision, but oddly, it’s had the opposite effect: with limited resources and being too lazy to walk the five blocks to the library, I can’t decide what next to read.
So I’m going to let you do that for me.
Vote for one of the three texts below in the comments section. I’ll read whatever gets the most votes; if you feel strongly about something else, you can mount a write-in campaign, and I’ll beg Wife to let me buy a new book.
Then I’ll review it in this space with all the wit and wisdom you’ve come to expect from me, which is minimal.
THE CONTENDAHS
1. Ralph Ellison by Arnold Rampersad
Author of my favorite American novel of the 20th Century, Ralph Ellison has been an inspiration as a writer, if not a person. I’ve had this on the shelf for a bit, unread. The big question no one has ever adequately answered: after publishing "Invisible Man" to universal acclaim in the early 1950s, why couldn’t he finish another novel?
PROS: He lived a fascinating life, was a brilliant writer, and penned the novel that, more than any other, inspired me to want to write fiction.
CONS: After reading about his sudden ascent to fame and subsequent inability to finish another book, I may want to kill myself. I’ll probably get so depressed, I’ll quit after reading 100 pages.
2. Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris
It’s "The Office" meets "Catch-22" meets "The Brothers Karamatzov." Meets a novel.
PROS: The book has been called a brilliant debut with heart, humor, and compassion.
CONS: Ferris is half my age. Bastard. I’ll get pissed off at this fact, and probably quit after reading about 100 pages.
3. The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier.
I have no idea what this book is about, except it’s in the bag of books.
PROS: Could be a pleasant surprise. Nice blurbs. It’s nice to read a book without any expectations.
CONS: The clothing on cover reminds me of Keanu Reeves from "The Matrix" from the head down. Unable to shake that image, I’ll probably quit after reading 100 pages.
. . . → Read More: My Reading Fate Is in Your Hands
11 March 2008 Explain yourself in a book, and nobody can ask you questions at a stupid press conference, everybody will buy the thing, and unless you’re sloppy like Margaret Selzer or James Frey, nobody will ever figure out if you’re lying. . . . → Read More: I’m Here to Help, Mr. Spitzer
5 March 2008 Chapter 1: My mother _____________ (was a prostitute/shot up heroin/watched way too much reality TV), and I was abandoned at birth, and raised by a _____________ (bi-racial foster family South Central L.A./commune of gay hippies/pack of wolves). I wasn’t like other kids, and I hated _____________ (everything/church/Tater Tots).
Chapter 2: I suffered horrible abuse at the hands of _____________ (horny uncle Ted/horny Aunt Ida/Dr. Seuss). I started smoking Virginia Slims when I was 6, and by the age of _____________ (17/10/five), I was doing (drugs/dealing drugs/playing Tiddly Winks with drugs) while living my days in the service of (a street gang/my friend Leonard/Keanu Reeves).
Chapter 3: When I was _____________ (16/12/eight) I _____________ (gave birth/sired/won on "The Price Is Right!") a _____________ (baby/alien baby/alien baby named "Travis") who at birth _____________ (was addicted to pooping in his diaper/was born with a hammer in his hand/asked to read "A Million Little Pieces").
Chapter 4: Devastated, I sold him for _____________ (an 8-ball/for a gun to kill myself/for a three-year lease for a sweet-ass cherry red ‘Vette).
Chapter 5: Hounded by the authorities for my crime, I _____________ (went underground/slept at a homeless shelter/got a job at the Olive Garden where I won employee of the month of December for my exceptional “Hospitaliano!”). I lived this way _____________ (for seven years/for a week/for the fuck of it).
Chapter 6: But finally, I was arrested by _____________ (the police/the Gestapo in the Black Forest/Ed McMahon and the Publishers Clearing House Prize Patrol).
Chapter 7: In jail, I met a person named _____________ (Michael Vick/Martha Stewart/Jesus) who showed me _____________ (his scars from dogfighting/how to make a killer plum pudding/how to turn water into wine and rise from the dead).
Chapter 8: But I made my turnaround when I left _____________ (Attica/San Quentin/the prison known as Celine Dion’s Vegas show) and checked into _____________ (Hazleden/the Betty Ford clinic/Joe’s Rehab and Auto Repair). After _____________ (living on the streets 29 years/reading every book in the library/discovering my love of "The Dukes of Hazzard"), I enrolled at _____________ (Harvard/Yale/the Hair Club for Men).
Chapter 9: Then I decided to write this memoir at the urging of my _____________ (rehab counselor/psychologist/editor at Riverhead Books). Today, with the help of my friend _____________ (Margaret Seltzer/James Frey/JT LeRoy), I publish this memoir, in honor of my dead mother/father/editor.
Epilogue: To them, I owe _____________ (everything/nothing/public humiliation for the rest of my life).
Tweet . . . → Read More: Write Your Own Fake Memoir in 1 Minute
4 March 2008 Books are no longer “mere words.” Novels are no longer just maps of the writer’s imagination. . . . → Read More: Listen to This
25 February 2008
This picture was taken a couple of miles from my sister’s house in my hometown of Memphis when the tornadoes hit a few weeks ago. She (and her family) were untouched but shaken. My mother was going to the mall that evening where a tornado annihilated a Sears (see below), but decided to stay home, thank goodness.
It’s odd seeing one’s hometown hit like that. Growing up, there were endless tornado warnings and tornado watches and tornado cakes and whatever the hell the weathermen would say, but a tornado never, ever hit Memphis. It’s enough to make you believe in global warming, or Satan.
* * *
I want to tell Neil of the otherwise fabulous Citizen of the Month blog that a certain post of a few days ago has pretty much come close to ruining my life.
Thanks, Neil.
* * *
I’m not saying that the Oscars sucked, but when your best joke involves a Wii, you realize that mebee that those striking writers could have helped a little. Jon Stewart is my kinda dude: funny, Jewish, handsome-in-a-not-threatening way (just like me!). But fake news is more of his bag.
I think a team of evil clowns should host instead.
Dustin Hoffman: an evil clown, and he’s Jewish!
* * *
A great post from our friend Voix. It links to a site for the British Bacon Council or some such group. My favorite headline from the site: "Regional Competition Winners for Britain’s Best Birthday Banger."
I could never win, of course, since I’m American.
* * *
I voted for Barack Obama in the primaries. And once you go black…oh, never mind.
* * *
There was a story in the New York Times a few weeks back collecting the "Views of the Man in the Street" – more like "Old Fucks Sitting in a Diner, Complaining." The reporter went to a small town in Tennessee and wrote about what these old fucks in a diner (and others) thought of the candidates.
Generally, they had voted for Bush, but were disappointed in him. They didn’t like McCain. Hillary Clinton was the devil. Some of the greatest animus was directed towards Obama — one dude mentioned Obama’s middle name ("Hussein") and how the senator was probably in some mosque right at that moment, on the phone with Osama bin Laden, trying to figure out how to attack America and forcably convert us to Islam, etc. OK, maybe it wasn’t exactly like that, but you get the idea.
And when I read this, all I could think was the following: "Now I know why I had to move the hell out of that goddamned state."
* * *
Once, I ran into Harold Ford Jr., a former Congressman from Memphis who lost in a bid for the Senate, in an airport bathroom. (No, no, not like Larry Craig.) It was crowded, we were standing next to each other at the urinals, and I said, "Congressman Ford, I wish I still lived in Memphis, so I could vote for you for senator."
But, of course, I didn’t mean it. The part about living in Memphis.
He smiled and we . . . → Read More: Lazy Grab Bag of BS
22 February 2008 It’s Saturday night, and I’m in the bathroom of a hotel room, marooned.
Wife has retreated to the hotel bar, a place where she assures me she will not drink so many gin and tonics that Baby will get plastered the next time he breast feeds.
For his part, Baby is sleeping in a port-a-crib with the profile and feel of a prison cell: confined space, metal bars, and his very own prison bitch.
That bitch would be me, relegated to the bathroom as the rest of our temporary home stews in darkness to allow my young son to sleep, a state of consciousness that, I might add, he shows no sign of attaining at 7:30 p.m., if his screaming at 232 decibels is a sign.
And tomorrow, sweet Sunday, when I will go back to our place and mop every uncarpeted square inch of our home, so that I don’t inadvertently lick up the residue in a few days when I really lose it and drop to my hands and knees,barking like a cocker spaniel in heat.
Why, oh why do I subject myself to such indignities of the soul? Anybody who has glanced at this space in the last seven (!) months knows why: this afternoon, still suffering from a plague of bedbugs, Wife and I had the homestead sprayed with pesticides for the eighth time, a number that turned on its side becomes "infinity," which is beginning to seem like the amount of time it will take us to get rid of these beasties.
The exterminator (the third different one), a voluble fellow who unfortunately stank of a Union Carbide plant, was flummoxed he had to make a return visit from two weeks ago.
"I goddamn soaked the place the last time," he said, thus confirming my suspicion that bed bugs will survive a nuclear armageddon. It’s Saturday night, and I’m in the bathroom of a hotel room, marooned.
Wife has retreated to the hotel bar, a place where she assures me she will not drink so many gin and tonics that Baby will get plastered the next time he breast feeds.
For his part, Baby is sleeping in a port-a-crib with the profile and feel of a prison cell: confined space, metal bars, and his very own prison bitch.
That bitch would be me, relegated to the bathroom as the rest of our temporary home stews in darkness to allow my young son to sleep, a state of consciousness that, I might add, he shows no sign of attaining at 7:30 p.m., if his screaming at 232 decibels is a sign.
And tomorrow, sweet Sunday, when I will go back to our place and mop every uncarpeted square inch of our home, so that I don’t inadvertently lick up the residue in a few days when I really lose it and drop to my hands and knees,barking like a cocker spaniel in heat.
Why, oh why do I subject myself to such indignities of the soul? Anybody who has glanced at this space in the last seven (!) months knows why: this afternoon, still suffering from a plague of bedbugs, Wife and I had the homestead sprayed with pesticides for the eighth time, a number that turned on its side becomes "infinity," which is beginning to seem like the amount of . . . → Read More: Letters From a Marriott Jail, or The Last I Will Ever Write of This
15 February 2008 As usual in every political campaign, my special interest is being ignored in the Race for the White House ’08.
In all the brouhaha over superdelegates and Super Tuesday, a voluntary health care plan versus a mandated one, coded racism and uncoded tears, campaign rallies that resemble rock concerts and Rush Limbaugh’s head exploding, nobody has really broken down what the next president will mean for writers. Like me.
In literary terms, the three remaining candidates all have major advantages than George W. Bush:
–Clinton 2.0: has authored or co-authored several books, smart, organized, actually reads.
–Barack Obama: has authored two books, incredibly articulate, handsome, actually reads.
–McCain: authored or co-authored several books, white hair, no verbal filter, hot headed, hot wife, actually reads.
It is a rite of passage that any person running for president will have to write a book, or hire someone to do it for them. Still, from a writer’s perspective, any one of these candidates has a fine literary pedigree, So what if Hillary Clinton “wrote” Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids’ Letters to the First Pets ; at least we know she loves animals and has enough imagination not to name her dog “Spot.”
And big deal that Barack Obama is the author of a cookbook. Yes, a cookbook for African-American men. OK, he only wrote the foreward, but still.
Granted, I haven’t actually read It Takes a Village (Clinton) or The Audacity of Hope (Obama) or I’m a Military Hero, But Why I Still Favor This Insane Iraqi War Is a Mystery Even to Me(McCain), so I can’t accurately judge the quality of their work. It’s plain, however, that the one thing that unites these politicians-authors is that they favor non-fiction.
For those of this inclined towards those things fictitious — novels, plays, political speeches — it is an interesting thought experiment to imagine just who these candidates would be, if they did write novels and plays.
Not only are these categories random, but indicative of nothing. Feel free to add your own.
19TH CENTURY BRITISH NOVELIST
Clinton: George Eliot
Obama: Charles Dickens
McCain: Charlotte Bronte
PSYCHOTIC POET:
Clinton: The women in the poetry program at my grad school
Obama: Baudelaire
McCain: Sylvia Plath
DRUNK AND DRUNKER:
Clinton: Dorthy Parker
Obama: Charles Bukowski
McCain: Some knight in the 12th Century who came back from the Crusades, wrote about it, got plastered on mead, and choked on his own vomit
MODERNIST:
Clinton: T.S. Eliot
Obama: James Joyce
McCain: Samuel Beckett, Kafka, Inonesco (you get the picture)
FATALIST:
Clinton: Theodore Dreiser
Obama: Thomas Hardy
McCain: The guy who wrote that book about the ‘Nam!!!!!!!
I’m a handsome writer
POLE-UP-THE-BUTT MORALIST/PLAYWRIGHT:
Clinton: Ibsen
Obama: G.B. Shaw
McCain: That dude who wrote A Few Good Men
LOST GENERATION:
Clinton: Gertrude Stein
Obama: F. Scott Fitzgerald
McCain: Ernest Hemingway (and Hemingway, and Hemingway)
BLOOMSBURY:
Clinton: Virginia Woolf
Obama: E.M. Forster
McCain: Bloomswhatthefuck?
SHAKESPEARE CHARACTER
Clinton: Lady Macbeth (Ouch!)
Obama: Prince Hal (Double Ouch!)
McCain: Richard III (Triple Ouch!)
EXISTENTIALIST:
Clinton: Sartre
Obama: Camus
McCain: Kafka
If only she had known…
’60s AMERICAN POST-MODERNIST
Clinton: John Barth
Obama: Thomas Pynchon
McCain: In the 60s I was serving my country while you were in diapers and smokin’ weed in Hawaii, mister Obama!
MODERN HACKS:
Clinton: Tom Clancy
Obama: Jackie Collins
McCain: The love child of . . . → Read More: Writer-in-Chief
11 February 2008 Children keep you young, but first they make you old. –Anon.
Kids vomit frequently, particularly on their parents. –Bookfraud
Baby had his first illness a fortnight ago, and it was not pretty for neither child nor parents. In a display so revolting it would make sanitation worker blush, Baby made his stomach flu evident for all to see, and feel. Subsequently, Wife took ill exactly two days after Baby started throwing up. And precisely one hour after Wife got ill, I started heaving. It was, essentially, our own version of “2 Gals 1 Cupp[sic].” (Without the coprophagia).
As Baby sat listlessly while trying to comprehend why he was being forced to drink a nasty fluid called “Pedialyte,” his parents basically lost their minds. The mere thought of food made us sick. My body aged about 10 years: it felt as if gremlins were taking a jackhammer to every square inch of my body.
Oh, and the fucking bedbugs are still in the place. They decided to hold a parade through our apartment on the days we were ill.
This all went down three weeks ago, and although the nausea passed after three days and no food later, I’ve felt as energetic as a Patriots fan at about 11 p.m. after the Super Bowl. And last week, we had the apartment sprayed a seventh time for bed fucking bugs. The exterminator who basically carpet bombed the place. When he was finished, a slick sheen covered our floors. We spent the night at a hotel.
Today, Wife called me to say she’d been bitten (again) by a bedbug, after a few days of bliss. We’re going to have the place sprayed for an eighth time Saturday.
INSERT PRIMAL SCREAM HERE
My options are 1. Kill myself; 2. Run off with “Porsche,” who I met last night at Club Elegance (and boy, did we really hit it off when I gave her my credit card number!); 3. Kill myself; 4. Drink copious amounts of vodka; 5. Kill myself.
All good options indeed.
Tweet
19 January 2008 It is too easy to make fun of all things 1970s — it’s kind of like making fun of someone who is fat or unattractive and is altogether a form of self-loathing.
However, in my search for public service announcements (or “PSAs,” as us connoisseurs call them), I came upon the following tragic piece of video from the 1970s, a real PSA (or, perhaps, a sex-ed film) about teenage boys’ favorite activity:
There are so many things patently false about this scene that it makes me see the light for striking television and film writers: often denigrated, disowned, and under-appreciated, these paragons of verisimilitude would never have stood for the travesty above. I mean, Ricky isn’t upset. His mother isn’t upset. He doesn’t reach for the closest sharp object and slash it across his throat.
Ricky’s mom counsels him that he needs to “control these feelings,” which is tantamount to saying, “Don’t be horny and don’t masturbate,” advice young men have ignored for as long as they have had penises.
If you really wanted to keep teenage boys from doing what comes naturally, a professional writer — like those on strike — would pen the following:
The scene: Ricky is lying in bed, hands under covers. His eyes are shut and his teeth are gritted.
RICKY (moaning): Oh, Mrs. Tasty, Oh, yes, Mrs. Tasty. I want you Mrs. Tasty, I want to take you now, Mrs. Tasty…
Outside, Ricky’s mother hears something from her 13-year-old son’s room. She turns the knob, but is surprised to see that it’s locked.
CLUELESS 70s MOM: Ricky, why are you saying your English teacher’s name over and over? What’s that about taking her someplace? What is going on in there? You never lock your door!
RICKY: GO THE HELL AWAY!
C7M: Well, I never!
Seconds later, Ricky’s mother returns with a key. She quickly opens the door and lets herself in.
C7M: Now, listen here, Eric Miles Bonert, you never talk to your Mother like that…oh my goodness, what are you doing?
RICKY: AAAAAAAAAAAH! GET THE HELL OUT NOW!!!!!!!
C7M: Oh, you’re masturbating!
RICKY (hiding under covers): SHUT UP AND GET THE HELL OUT!!!!!
C7M (thoughtfully): So that would explain why you go straight to your room for a “nap” every day after school! And all those yellow stains on your undershirts and your socks. I couldn’t figure that out for the life of me! Do you want me to get you something to clean up with, so you won’t ruin your clothes?
RICKY: I HATE YOU! GO AWAY!
C7M: Alright then, if you’re going to be that way to me, fine. But I don’t understand why you feel like you need to submit to your urges.Mother leaves. Dissolve to a long shot of her talking on the telephone.
C7M: Really? Well, I had no idea that what was happening. That’s good news. I’ll be sure and tell him.
Back in his room, Ricky is freaked out, and has masturbated six more times. His mother enters without knocking.
RICKY: Go away. I told you never to come in here without my permission! I’m 13 already!
C7M: Just listen here, Eric Miles. I really was ignorant about this — I had no idea that you were going through such things. I’m just glad that you did it in . . . → Read More: Whack the Writer’s Strike
10 January 2008 It’s more suicidal than bipolar Finnish sheep herders drunk on vodka and Kierkegaard! There’s less hope there than at an Ibsen festival! It’s feels bleaker than a conference of failed, embittered scribes who think Cormac McCarthy is optimistic and Dostoyevsky’s characters are the happiest folk in the universe!
Are we talking about Romney campaign workers, Ohio State fans, or the celebrity-du-jour-meltdown (of which the latest suffer’s name is banned from this space)? No! We’re talking about the mind of the writer! Specifically, Bookfraud’s mind!
There’s a lot of bizzare crap-ola going in this man’s brain — but really, can you blame him? Take a plague of bed bugs going on six months, throw in depression that won’t quit, a literary agent harder to pin down than mercury and a baby who at 3 a.m. sounds like Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier, and you’ve got all the makings of a full-throttle mental breakdown!
To make matters worse, Bookfraud is writing about as often as a starving pit bull will ignore a raw T-bone, and what he does churn out is about as readable as Dan Brown in Sanskrit! And let me tell you, his brain is generating all of this mess — the negative thinking, the emotional meltdowns, the sudden urges to lick the sidewalk.
Bookfraud’s brain is not a pretty place to be these days, boys and girls, but I’m going to take you on a fully guided tour of the vast wasteland of his emotional state and the empty grottoes of his soul! Prepare for the most horrifying guided tour since Virgil led Dante through Hades!
Let’s start at the lower brain, the veritable “reptilian” state of the brain that controls heartbeat, breathing, and involuntary teenage boners. Bookfraud’s medulla is in bad shape — look at the Swiss-cheese like holes dotting its surface. It’s no wonder that he’s breathing like a 100-year-old stone accordion! And let’s hope that his blood pressure hasn’t skyrocketed to 500/1000!
Abandon all hope
Now, the midbrain. The midbrain links motor functions, eye and auditory control, and the power train a 1968 Dodge Dart. Thus, when Bookfraud sees an attractive femalian, his eyes bug out, his hands shake, and he starts hearing voices in his head — “Maybe you can do better, buddy! Maybe it’s a good time for a mid-life crisis after all, because there are so many hot 22-year-old blonde babes with enormous gazargons who want to sleep with you!”
Speaking of which, let’s take a look at the hypothalamus, where sexual reproduction is regulated. You may want to hide your children’s eyes for this one. Wow! That’s ugly! It looks like it’s been unused for months — cobwebs everywhere! It’s rotting from the core! I wouldn’t show that to a medical student unless I wanted him or her to quit school that very day.
Next on the tour is the cerebellum. Motor functions are controlled here, and the pink, red, blue, orange, and black spots are why Bookfraud is constantly dropping things, breaking them, and turning into a 43-year-old ball of venomous bile that sets such a great example for his young son!
But let’s get to main course — the mass of grey matter you’re all familiar with, the cerebrum, which tastes great on toast, by the way, or in a taco. The cerebrum is . . . → Read More: Hide the Children: A Tour of Bookfraud’s Brain
4 January 2008 Before I decided not to publish it, I had written a blog entry indicative of a man bereft of ideas: The Year in Review. Granted, it reviewed subject matter such as Chris “Leave Britney Alone!” Crocker (see below) and Dog Poop Girl (see above), which not only are stupid pop culture footnotes to the real business of 2007 like greed, death and destruction, but have no bearing on the world of writing fiction, which, in a galaxy far, far away, this blog was once dedicated to addressing.
I’ve written about four blog entries over the past four months (do the math), ostensibly because of the ongoing bed bug woes in my household. This ignores several inconvenient truths: one, I don’t fight bed bugs 24/7 (or 12/4, for that matter); and two, despite our bugs and Baby and stress and fights with Wife and lots of anguish, I still have time to play computer games or screw around online for trivial pursuits like Sudoku or important ones like porn.
Whether this poor production stems from fear or laziness, I will not speculate, but I will admit something to which I am loath to disclose: at times, I can be terribly, terrifyingly lazy. (Which makes good fodder for a blog entry in January, 2008: I resolve this year not to be a fat, stupid slug).
This is a deep-seated issue stemming from an abusive childhood. I probably read more than the average child, and was often stymied by certain verbiage in my books. When I would ask my father what a word meant — alight, cogitate, affectation – he always had the same damn answer: “Well, son, let’s ask a friend of mine — Mr. Webster. He has this book called ‘the dictionary.’” My father, thus being doubly didactic, would force me to actually look up the word in the dictionary. If that wasn’t abuse, I don’t know what was.
There were a couple of lessons to be learned here. My father not only wanted me to learn how to use the dictionary and expand my mind, but to learn to stop bugging the crap out of him to get definitions of stupid words. I got the latter but not the former, and it wasn’t until college that I could cogitate upon alighting an intellectual journey filled with affectation and pretension.
But I left Britney alone
Now, of those who know me well, you’re probably a bit surprised. You’re saying, “Why, all these years, I thought Bookfraud was the hardest working man alive! He just put me to shame. And it turns out he goofs off more than George Bush!”
Fear not, familiar fans and foes, fear not. There once was a time that I was the hardest workin’ man in no business. I had two jobs in college, and two jobs after college. When I got it down to one job, I came home every evening to write. I didn’t have a car, television or other distraction. If I were 15 years younger, I’d probably be more known in this space for my logorreah than my paucity of output.
But I’m 43, unpublished and unknown, and there are stretches in my life that I seriously contemplate not writing anything creative at all: no novel, no short stories, no blog, nada. For me to have considered . . . → Read More: I’m Wicked and I’m Lazy
12 December 2007 For all our viewers at home, I have an announcement. We have word from the pressbox — it’s official. Things have gotten ugly around here. –Imagined witticism by Bookfraud while announcing a Cubs game
Thought you’d gotten rid of me, didn’t you? Thought you’d seen the last of Bookfraud, that snarky, cynical, sarcastic, nasty bit of unpleasantness delivered to your computer screen once or twice a week? You didn’t think I was going to post again, and you celebrated by pulling down my statue in the square of your hometown, didn’t you?
Sorry to disappoint.
I thought it might come to pass, as well. If I can’t make it more plain, my life just sucks right now. Majorly, bitterly, totally sucks. The last thing I’ve been desirous of doing is sharing the suckiness with others, “others” being you unfortunates who have wandered here after Googling “Joshua Bell gy.”
If you have not suffered the plague of bedbugs, it is hard to convey just what kind of hell this has made my life — Wife’s especially. All of our possessions, clothing included, are in storage or packed in Hefty garbage bags. We have had to leave the apartment overnight six times for spraying. Our free time is taken up with cleaning, washing, and fighting.
We can’t have visitors, nor can we visit others’ homes. Wife is at home with Baby every weekday, and is stuck there. Taking him outside entails an elaborate procedure with bags and clothes and coverings that resembles brain transplant surgery.
You know things are bad when you watch someone on television lose their home and possessions in a act of Mother Nature, and say, “I guess things could be worse.”
Wife and I have not weathered this particularly well. Our tempers are short, our fights close to the surface. We disagree about how to handle the problem, which leads to low-grade arguments (can’t upset Baby) that resolve nothing. This is all compounded by the fact Wife is getting bitten but not me, creating a he said-she said tension about the prevalence of the problem.
I suffer from periodic bouts of depression, of which this condition of insects has just exacerbated to the knife-point of suicide. I find comfort in things predictable, reliable: music, sex, Jackie Chan movies, fried food, carbohydrates. But this feeling of dread (of which Wife suffers exponentially) won’t fade no matter how many bacon-double cheezeburgers I eat while watching “Drunken Master II” and enjoying the company of a comely, naked co-ed. (None of which is happening — cholesterol too high for a burger, all my tapes and DVDs are in storage, and…and…).
I loathe talking to friends, because I know bedbugs were all I’m going to talk about. And I’ve loathed the idea of blogging, because I knew bedbugs were all I was going to talk about.
If I were to summarize 2007, it veered from annus horribilis (surgery) to annus mirabilis (baby) back to annus horribilis (bedbugs). All in all, a pain in the annus.
Wow. I feel better already.
Tweet
3 November 2007 Long before the insects swarmed upon my life, tearing it apart, threatening my marriage, and temporarily removing my son from my life — that is, in the days before I didn’t think about throwing myself in front of a bus — a friend of Wife’s came out with a work of non-fiction that garnered some decent publicity.
This was the friend’s fourth book: he’s had two short-story collections and another work of non-fiction published to date, and has been pretty durn successful, by my estimation. He’s sold a good number of volumes, and, unlike most of us, makes a living through writing.
But not all is well in the land of Successful Writer: this writer’s latest book, according to his publisher, hasn’t moved enough copies before it was published. The publisher was worried before the book went on sale, or “pre-sales,” as she put it.
One can ascribe this sorry state of events to the Internet, in which “pre-sales” are logged and displayed on Amazon.com. Perhaps it’s simply a reflection of the desperate straits in which publishers find themselves. Or one can say that Wife’s friend is simply the victim of a short-sighted, unimaginative sluggo marketer whose whole modus operandi is sales, sales, sales (or, her whole m.o. is simply holding on to her job).
While I am tempted to launch venom at the sorry state of the publishing business, I will turn this entry into a rant about “pre-” and its growing use in the vernacular. (Because I feel like it.)
Prevent pre-boarding
“Pre-sales” sounds like something a business consultant devised after an afternoon of heavy drinking. Like that nefarious “pre-boarding” that you will hear at an airport gate, it incorrectly refers to the interregnum between an event “unofficially” happening and it actually happening. But you can’t sell something before you sell it, just as you can’t board a plane before you board it. It is all Zen, my child.
There are legitimate uses for this overused, abused prefix “pre-”. You can be a pre-law or pre-med major, since it’s a time when you’re not actually in law or medical school. You can make pre-game plans, do pre-interview preparation, or listen to the works of the late, great Jacqueline Du Pre.
But perhaps those geniuses of “pre-” are on to something. We should extend “pre-sales” to other areas of life besides books. It could open up a whole new realm of stupid, idiotic business-like words.
To wit:
Pre-driven cars: No, not a “pre-owned” car, or, in the old fashioned, quaint way of putting it, a “used car.” Pre-driven cars have new car smell, fresh tires, and an engine block as clean as a hospital floor. That’s because nobody’s driven it yet! Get it?
Pre-pre-owned clothes/furniture/CDs, etc.: “Pre-pre-owned” is the new “new.” “I want a new Armani suit, not some used suit I could find at the consignment store.” No, it’s “I want a pre-pre-owned Armani suit, not some pre-owned suit at the consignment store.” Get it? (The brilliance of this should be obvious by now).
Pre-eaten Hot, Hot, HOT Apple Pies at McDonalds’: You get to eat your lip melting, tongue scalding, mouth burning hot apple pies, not only before anyone else, but before anyone has actually tried eating one, ruined his or her vocal chords, thrown the pie to the floor, and you’ve . . . → Read More: Pre- This
19 October 2007 Editor’s Note: this blog entry was written, like, a month ago. It might still be relevant to about six people in this world. If I were current, I would be writing about Raymond Carver, not writing about someone who wrote about Raymond Carver (see below).
But then the bedbugs revolted against the exterminator’s poison, I fell into a state approaching depression, and hid in a cave. The bedbugs are still in my home, but I’ve left the cave. Or at least have stuck my toe out.
One of my all-time favorite literary takedowns was a full-bore, take-no-prisoners evisceration of Raymond Carver, once the resident patron saint of creative writing programs. The essay’s point — that Carver, through his unadorned and non-descriptive prose had ruined many an MFA student — was crouched in harsh but convincing language.
The writer of that essay was a fellow by the name of Melvin Jules Bukiet, and if the name isn’t familiar, the reason is that Bukiet hasn’t sold many books. He teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence, and, if my intelligence serves me correctly, he was correct in ascertaining that Mr. Carver’s banal language had produced a mini-generation of writers whose ambition was as flat as the “Carveresque” prose they proffered for workshop.
The reason I loved Bukiet’s essay was that he was goring a sacred cow, and his venom had the ring of authenticity to it. I never understood why other writers loved Raymond Carver; reportedly, they saw in the late man the genius of hidden truth. What’s not said, described, or done is more important than what is, according to his acolytes. His characters have a great secret to hide, or they have messed up relationships destroyed by booze and drugs. Or whatever.
That essay was in the Village Voice literary supplement, and clocked in at about 750 words. Now, Bukiet has penned an essay of greater length, though his prey is bigger: Brooklyn (N.Y.) writers.
Wonder this
He didn’t mean writers who live exclusively in the Borough of Kings (though most of them do), but the type of fiction being produced by Brooklyn’s leading literary lights, such as Paul Auster, Johnathan Safron Foer, and Myla Goldberg. The gist of the essay was “Brooklyn Books of Wonder” had become a species onto itself: cute, wondrous novels that divine suffering as a learning experience, when in fact, suffering just results in…suffering.
They often have juvenile protagonists and explicitly see the world through a child’s eyes (Thus, the wonder, power, & glory).
Bukiet makes it sound like a world of solipsistic, self-satisfied Brooklynites who are one part Derrida, one part Leo Buscaglia, and one part Wally Lamb. One would think that by just crossing the Brooklyn Bridge you’d wandered into Literary Wonder Oblivion.
Knowing several of the species of Brooklyn Writer myself — in geography if not temperament — the essay was indeed provocative and had many salient points, but wasn’t entirely convincing: a patina of personal disdain coats Bukiet’s words of wisdom, as if Dave Eggers had committed the literary equivalent of diddling Bukiet’s wife and was mocking the cuckold to boot.
Bukiet sets himself up way too easily for charges of professional jealousy, as it seems Foer sells more books in three hours than Bukiet has in his lifetime (not to mention money, or . . . → Read More: Son of Lolita
24 September 2007 A writer named Bookfraud lived a literary lifeNothing remotely maudlin or sappyHe had a beautiful boy and doting wifeBut he didn’t know he was so happy
They took a trip in July to a place with treesWithout knowing the danger of pestsIt seemed as if their biggest nuisance was fleasBut they took home some uninvited guests
Soon they were bitten on legs, arms and backIt left everyone in a foul moodBedbugs had started their evil attackAnd were sucking their blood for food
At first they worked hard, vowing to winBookfraud cleaned up every dayThey packed up their belongings in airtight binsThinking the bugs would soon be on their way
Oh, Bookfraud bagged his mattress and stored his booksEverything was covered with tagsHe’d become so obsessed he hadn’t noticed to lookThat his clothes and his life were in bags
But when the bites kept pinching their fleshBookfraud’s family was quickly distraughtEvery day the bedbugs would breed and refreshBookfraud could only exclaim, ‘My God, what has He wrought?’
‘I’m not writing, I’m not sleeping, my skin is a messIt’s as if I’m made of plasterThere is no solution to this mighty distressMy life has devolved into disaster.’
The road to insanity starts here
Bookfraud vacuumed and cleaned two hours a nightBut didn’t make any gainsHe had insomnia, aches, and migraines too bootHe was slowly going insane
Pest control came and sprayed with a stickThen Bookfraud was suddenly illin’The poison had made Bookfraud so sickHe had to take Amoxicillin
The exterminators came once, no twice, no thriceAs muscular as Barry Bonds a-juicin’But bedbugs are hardier and meaner than liceAnd just kept on reproducing
(Every treatment, Bookfraud had to sleep aloneWife and Baby lodged at an innThe man of the house was stuck by the phoneDrinking Coke-Cola, Orangina and gin)
In distress, Bookfraud tried to mendBut his efforts never left the stationHe tried writing, his ‘best friend’(And no, his ‘best friend’ wasn’t masturbation)
He attempted to blog but nothing came outHis brain and body were spentToo angry to weep, too tired to shoutHis literary ambitions were bent
He stopped looking at blogs and commenting tooEvery moment was dread and remorseOn the Day of Atonement he was a bad JewBookfraud ate and drank like a horse
His novel lies fallow, his agent is gone Worse than any literary critic or thugBookfraud’s too tired to consider if he’s been wrongedHis life ruined by a bug
Traitor to the cause
He doesn’t read booksThe shelves have been stripped cleanHe’s paranoid about funny looksThat brand him as stupid or obscene
Television and fried food became his siren callIt was all he felt like doingNow he’s climbing the wallsFeeling sorry for himself and stewing
So he awaits the end of the ordealHis lesson as loud as the din:Though still a bedbug Happy MealHe realizes how happy he’d been.
Tweet . . . → Read More: Ode to a Dying Blog
12 September 2007 In the underappreciated (and under-watched) movie “Idiocracy,” set 500 years in the future, corporations rule the planet, overlording a feeble-minded populace that believes the corporate pabulum served on their TV screens, letter for letter.
They suffer from garbage avalanches, watch the Masturbation Network (“Helping America with ‘baitin’ for 300 years!”) and a show called “Ow, My Balls!” Their crops do not grow because, instead of water, they are given Brawndo (“The Thirst Mutilator!”), a Gatorade-esque drink that has supplanted H2O. When the hero, who had been frozen since the 21st century, points out that crops need water to grow, the brainwashed populace says, repeating an ad slogan, “But Brawndo’s got what plants crave.”
The future in “Idiocracy” does not, conspicuously, have books. People are too stupid to read.
The Bookfraud household does not, conspicuously, have any books. We are smart enough to read, but am losing that ability in short order.
Our books — several hundred, if not more, I believe — are sitting in climate controlled bliss, in a storage unit, where they will reside for the next 16 months while we await any and all life forms residing inside of them to die. In other words, goddamn bedbugs can get inside books, and the only way to make sure they are dead is to pack away one’s volumes for a year and change.
This forced displacement has lowered my I.Q. a good 50 points. All the things that usually make me smarter — such as wearing my spectacles, which makes me look like a college professor — have done no good.
In place of the written word, I have been filling my few free hours with the spoken word and the moving image. Unfortunately, this does not mean I have been watching the work of Fellini or Godard, but sophisticated television fare like “Friday Night Smackdown!”
I’ve been reading newspapers and magazines, sure, and the occasional online essay. But nothing that resembles a narrative that lasts more than 10 pages, involves more than 10 characters, and has been published over 10 days ago.
The intellectual and moral complexity of fiction makes you smarter, if you think about it. I mean, think about the intellectual and moral complexity of the novel you’re reading.
Or, a brain without cells
It’s not just the braininess I miss. I miss picking up a volume by Nabokov and randomly picking a page, only to land on a passage of exquisite, lyrical genius. I miss hunkering down on the couch with a heavy book and getting lost. I miss thumbing my way through “Absalom, Absalom!” and trying to figure out what just the hell happened to Thomas Sutpen.
It’s not as if Wife and I hold a literary salon in the living room, or our lives are centered around the written word (though it’s close). But a life without books is incomplete. Like many writers, I was not the most popular fellow among my peers growing up, and I drew solace from books — science fiction in particular, as the genre traffics in fantastical, engaging universes far removed that the miserable one I inhabited.
Sad to admit, television and sports were the two other passions of my childhood, and if it is not a source of shame that I indulged what many young boys had as . . . → Read More: D-U-M-B, Everyone’s Accusing Me
4 September 2007 By any objective measure, I have been having what specialists like to call “an extremely crappy month.”
It is centered on the bedbug problem, which stubbornly continues despite several gallons of poison sprayed about our home. We’re being bitten nightly, and Wife and I are slowly but surely becoming sleep-deprived, insane, blood-sucked zombies.
The amount of pesticides at home means we cannot put Baby on the floor — our carpets have been taken for cleaning and storage, and there’s really nowhere else to put him. Naturally, Wife and I fear that leaving him in the crib and swing for long stretches will retard Baby’s development, turning us into worried, sleep-deprived, insane, blood-sucked zombies.
We are without books, our clothes are packed in Hefty garbage bags, and I (still) spend 90 minutes each night vacuuming the place. My exhaustion is so heavy that Uma Thurman could walk in wearing nothing but the book review and I wouldn’t notice. Last night, we woke up at 3 a.m. — not prompted by Baby — and jointly obsessed about bugs (that’s love!) until we fell asleep again at 5, whereupon Baby did wake us.
And now, this.
I can’t say I’m embarrassed to be a Michigan alum, just that I even give a damn about a fucking football game.
The only good that could come out of this is that Lloyd Carr’s tenure as Michigan coach will come to an end. That, and I have suddenly become a source of mirth to just about anyone who knows that I went to UofM.
Bastards.
Tweet
16 August 2007 I’m about to have a nervous breakdown, my head really hurts.–Black Flag, “Nervous Breakdown”
I lost my mind…I lost my mind…I lost my mind…gimme some skin. Gimmie some gin. I want some wine….I lost my mind.–The Ramones, “I Lost My Mind”
If your life has ever been circumscribed by an insect, please let me know. I need some empathy. I need some inspiration. I need help.
Over the past three weeks, bedbugs have defined my existence. I’ve had to leave my home overnight because of them, and Wife and Baby have had to leave for two weeks because of them. Every day is the same: return from work, vacuum two hours, bag my clothes and wash them, order takeout, eat, collapse.
I don’t read, I don’t write, I barely have energy to watch television. The solitary existence is not a bachelor’s paradise. Forget blogging, or blog lurking, or making comments to others’ blogs. People have probably given birth, died, or attended a Lindsey Lohan concert, if there is such a thing.
I’ve wanted to post something, but haven’t had the time, energy, or desire; perhaps this is a cop-out, but copping out is something I’m expert at doing. Tonight is a special night — after I’ve vacuumed and done laundry, I get to put on gloves and a mask and spray my apartment with chemicals skimmed off of a Superfund toxic waste dump. Then, I get to leave my place for an hour, wander the streets, return, and collapse.
Wife and Baby return tomorrow, so I hopefully gain some equilibrium. Otherwise, I’m durn close to throwing myself in front of a bus. Metaphorically speaking.
Tweet
10 July 2007
This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:• gay (17x)• hell (9x)• ass (8x)• crap (7x)• pain (6x)• steal (5x)• dead (3x)• hurt (2x)• limbs (1x)
I don’t know why “gay” constitutes an adult rating for my blog — after all, “gay” means “having or showing a merry, lively mood.”
“Hell” is mentioned in great literature. So is “ass,” “pain,” “steal,” “dead,” “hurt,” and “limbs.” (“Limbs” is a dirty word?) “Crap” I have no excuse for.
Perhaps it was when I called Thomas the Tank Engine a “fuck ass, suck ass piece of shit.”
Tweet
27 June 2007 Lo, for he shall not prove productive at the keyboard, so sayeth the Lord, for Bookfraud hath turned his back on his embrace of the Lord (of Writing) by incessant worship of the false gods of television and Sudoku, and it will be with a mighty hand that I shall deliver literary plagues upon his house. Bookfraud shall never publish, lo, for he hath been lazy under the guise of Baby taking up all his time.
Go forth, ye Bookfraud, and face the woe that has befallen your wicked house. For thou shall reap what thou has sowed, and yea, let word of your sloth spread forth throughout the world, and you shall be marked with “666,” the Number of the Beast, which also happens to be the total number of words you have written in the past year.
No, my Lord, forgive me, for I have seen the light. I have been saved. All because of Tina Brown.
Brown is no savior, but she is an inspiration. For I have been despairing that I would never be productive again — not that I would never write, but what emerged from my word processor would be unintelligible, unreadable slop. (Even worse than what I normally write.)
It’s been a rough couple of months. I can blame Baby and the intermittent sleep he bestows upon me. I can blame diaper duty, burping duty, clean up the spit duty. I can blame my job and the commute. There’s a lot of stuff I can blame.
There are some who might argue this would be no change, but having read reviews of Brown’s new “book,” I feel better. If Tina Brown can get her whaleturd of a book published, I have hope.
Not that I’ve actually read Brown’s account of Princess Diana and her days in (and out of) Buckingham Palace. Not that I actually intend to buy it. Not that I intend to even pick it up at Borders and run to the bathroom to wash my hands.
Tina Brown: Literary necrophiliac
It’s that I canceled The New Yorker and because of Diana — or, rather, Tina Brown and Diana.
When the Princess of Wales was killed in a car accident, the last place I had expected her to appear was in The New Yorker, that bastion of sophistication, wit, and great writers and reporters. But there she was, a drawing of the unfortunate un-Royal on the cover.
Inside, the accompanying story started (to the effect) “The last time I saw Diana, she was wearing a lime-green outfit with chiffon stuff…”
Of course, the author was New Yorker editor and all-around starfucker Tina Brown.
The same day I received that issue, I canceled my subscription.
Brown had taken the helm of the creaky old magazine a few years earlier, and injected some life into it with celebrity reportage and other types of features that really had no business being in The New Yorker. She did some good things, no doubt, notably getting rid of the deadwood in the place who hadn’t written for (sometimes) decades, and no longer paying for pieces by the word, which would result in 30,000-word stories about pothole repair or canned tuna.
But Brown generally ruined the magazine for me, and the Diana cover was the last straw. It wasn’t until . . . → Read More: Inspired
16 June 2007 Little One is about to turn eight weeks old, and I’m still waiting for things to get easier.
I’m awaiting the time when I can leave him unattended in his crib for more than five minutes; I await the time when his shrill cries last less than 30 minutes at a time. I await the time when I have enough energy to actually write.
I knew that having a baby would entail vast amounts of time. What I wasn’t counting on was how much of that time would be spent simply holding the bugger.
Wait. I can’t remember what I’m going to say next. Baby is gassy. Needs to be burped. Needs to throw up dinner on my new dress shirt.
Oh, yes, now I remember.
A baby is a helpless, insecure little person with a neediness that has no bottom (which sounds perilously close to the description of a writer). They need to be changed, fed, put to sleep, and held (if necessary) for hours on end, until that slight numbness grows into a pain that resembles a heated iron ingot implanted into the shoulder.
Now it’s time to write
This is nothing new to any one of you who is a parent, and is probably creating some well-deserved laughter amongst you. “Bookfraud, you fool. Did you really think you would be able to be a parent, hold down a job, and write, blog, or otherwise express yourself save for the quiet sobbing (that you hide from Baby) at 2:26 a.m. when he wakes up yet again for reasons unbeknownst to anyone save for a God that may or may not exist?”
Yes, dear reader, I did believe I could have it all: Baby, sleep, writing, a life. O fatal blow! O fatal ambition!
My son is not yet two months old, and it feels as if I have spent more time cleaning up baby faeces than writing. (Guess what? I felt correctly!) I knew that Baby would wreck my sleep and suck up free hours. What I wasn’t counting on was that it would suck up all of my free hours.
Now, all this bitching and moaning has a point, though I’m having trouble with what it might be. Baby just woke up from his nap. He’s crying louder than I did when the Cubs blew the 2003 playoffs.
Yes, the blog. I was asked to write a book review, and while I accepted (it’s always good to get your name in print, even if you don’t know what you’re talking about), it sucked away any and all time to write for blog or my own fiction, for that matter. I haven’t read nor commented on just about any other blog, for that matter.
Must be a pediatrician
(In fact, I just learned that the most excellent blog of Miss Snark, she of the wicked pen and opinion, went dark. Like, a month ago.)
OK. What was I saying. Baby was projectile crapping. Watch out, Wife, you’ll step in Lake Shit, where previously resided a bedroom floor. Oh, what. Yes. Blog.
Is it a blog if you only write twice a month, only to complain, and nobody sees it?
Just asking.
Tweet . . . → Read More: Lost in Diaperland
|
My Favorite BF Posts; Probably Not Yours
|
That’s What You Said