Joy Ray

Travoltas Mutter, and other mysteries

Being in a blogging frame of mind today, I would like to share my favorite chapter in a German textbook I once used.  It addresses, of course, the mysteries of John Travolta.  Note the Pynchonesque symbology utilized on the cover page.  What are we to make of this?

 

This is followed by an equally intriguing diagram that seems to outline some kind of clandestine cabal led by Travolta's mother, involving Reagan, Superman, Germany and Englewood New Jersey.  This can't be good!

 

Finally, a selection of doubtlessly coded phrases are provided, which if spoken in a precise order may persuade Travolta to share his hard-won secrets.

(Thanks to Mark Case, for mentioning "John Travolta" and "book" in the same Facebook post today and reminding me of this cherished tome.)

Salmon Rushdie: why was that.

I've been on a Salmon Rushdie kick lately, ever since picking up The Enchantress of Florence a couple of months ago on a whim, and discovering that he is truly an amazing storyteller. (Although it's a little hard to concentrate on his writing when I'm constantly thinking: he was married to Padma Lakshmi???)

The book I'm currently reading is the unfortunately-named Shalimar the Clown. In fact, the only part of this book that is worse than The Enchantress is the title. Well, and maybe the cover, which for some reason always reminds of the old joke, "I'm a frayed knot."

Shalimar, too, has a wonderful story, told from different points of view, spanning decades and locations from LA to Paris to Kashmir - but also resonates with Rushdie's palpable fury at what terrorism and nationalism and greed have cost the world. Our souls, our hearts, our hopes? All that and more. That lost Eden is represented by the country of Kashmir, portrayed prior to its becoming an object of desire and conquest for India and Pakistan alike as an integrated, tolerant society of artists, chefs and dancers.

Last night I came across two passages that just floored me. Here they are.

The first passage - which is really just one sentence, the final sentence in a longer diatribe - is talking about how the pandits (Hindus) of Kashmir were neglected by the Indian government as they fled from the threat of Pakistani brutality to refugee camps.

There was one bathroom per three hundred persons in many camps why was that and the medical dispensaries lacked basic first-aid materials why was that and thousands of the displaced died because of inadequate food and shelter why was that maybe five thousand deaths because of intense heat and humidity because of snake bites and gastroenteritis and dengue fever and stress diabetes and kidney ailments and tuberculosis and psychoneurosis and there was not a single health survey conducted by the government why was that and the pandits of Kashmir were left to rot in their slum camps, to rot while the army and the insurgency fought over the bloodied and broken valley, to dream of return, to die while dreaming of return, to die after the dream of return had died so that they could not even die dreaming of it, why was that why was that why was that why was that why was that why was that.

And just a few pages later, the second passage, which describes the Indian army's destruction of the idyllic Kashmiri village of Pachigam, and the Muslims that remain there. (Here, the "sarpanch" is the village elder, the former leader of the village's famed troupe of performers. And the "lazy-eyed woman" is his wife.)

Who lit that fire? Who burned that orchard? Who shot those brothers who laughed their whole lives long? Who killed the sarpanch? Who broke his hands? Who broke his arms? Who broke his ancient neck? Who shackled those men? Who made those men disappear? Who shot those boys? Who shot those girls? Who smashed that house? Who smashed that house? Who smashed that house? Who killed that youth? Who clubbed that grandmother? Who knifed that aunt? Who broke that old man's nose? Who broke that young girl's heart? Who killed that lover? Who shot his fiancee? Who burned the costumes? Who broke the swords? Who burned the library? Who burned the saffron field? Who slaughtered the animals? Who burned the beehives? Who poisoned the paddies? Who killed the children? Who whipped the parents? Who raped that lazy-eyed woman? Who raped that grey-haired lazy-eyed woman as she screamed about snake vengeance? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that dead woman? Who raped that dead woman again?

Please go read this book, and any other book of Rushdie's that you can get your hands on. Now I need to go finish reading - only 50 pages left to go!

Reading, again

I stopped reading fiction while I was writing the first draft of my novel.  Now that I'm in rewriting/editing mode, I've started reading again, pulling from the oddball assortment of English-language novels that are lying around our rented apartment.  This can be a hit or miss affair, as I've been finding out. 

Here, some of the hits and misses:

The Coffee Trader by David Liss

This is a financial intrigue set in Amsterdam in the 1600s.  If you'd like to learn about Dutch society during that time period, or the plight of Portuguese Jews during the Inquisition, it's a painless way to do so.  The writing is lively and the story isn't bad, although the ending is a bit of a disappointment and I struggled a bit to keep track of all the nuances of the financial plot.  Maybe that's just me....

Grade: B

Caravans by James A. Michener (in progress)

I haven't read anything by Michener before, and so far I am blown away.  This particular book is set in Afghanistan in the early 60's; the protagonist works for the US embassy in Kabul and has to find a missing American girl.  It combines the storytelling skills and historical detail of (my guilty pleasure) Wilbur Smith, but with fewer fruity adjectives.  Plus it's of course quite timely, given everything happening in Afghanistan these days.  Michener apparently wrote over 40 novels before he died so I'm looking forward to having a lot of other great books to read.

Grade: A

The Fan Club by Irving Wallace

The story involves 4 loser-ish guys who plan to kidnap a movie star sex symbol and have sex with her, because of course she would really love it.  The first 200 or so pages set up their pathetic lives and this scheme.  I started skimming about 30 pages in, to see if they would actually succeed.  The answer is yes - at which point there is a lovely and extremely long chapter that is basically Rape Porn. You get to experience, from the point of view of the actress, in vivid detail, what it's like to be raped by each of the four guys. It's so obviously sticky-page material, and wrong on so many levels, that reading this book basically produces the same feeling as staring at a fatal car accident.  Needless to say I did not finish reading this one.  I wish I never had read any of it.  Please.  Images.  Go.  Away.

Grade: F-

The Ambassadors by Henry James

I tried to read this one, I really did.  For nearly two chapters.  But let me just share a sample sentence and you will see the difficulties I encountered:

"He had none the less to confess to this friend that evening that he knew almost nothing about her, and it was a deficiency that Waymarsh, even with his memory refreshed by contact, by her prompt and lucid allusions and inquiries, by their having publicly partaken of dinner in her company, and by another stroll, to which she was not a stranger, out into the town to look at the cathedral by moonlight - it was a blank that the resident of Milrose, though admitting acquaintances with the Munsters, professed himself unable to fill."

That is ONE SENTENCE.  Good god, James.  EDIT!!!  Never mind the fact that at this point he still has not explained who "Waymarsh" is, let alone the Munsters and "the resident of Milrose". Never mind the fact that all the characters thus far are middle aged and overly mannered, and not particularly captivating.  I can't do it, I'm sorry, I just can't.

Grade: Huh?

======================================================

I will say that it's fun to be reading again.  I missed it so.

Rich Man, Poor Man, Mildly Confused Man Wondering What the Point Is

I just finished reading Rich Man, Poor Man by Irwin Shaw, in a deliciously crusty old hardcover version because it’s now out-of-print. This book reads like a more masculine Jackie Collins, sans serial killer. I intend that comment as praise because I happen to really get a kick out of Jackie (at least vintage Jackie, before the more recent and seriously out-of-touch Hollywood Kids and Lucky Santangelo crap). I mean, the first scene of Hollywood Wives, where a Beverly Hills matron awakes to see the poolboy pissing in her pool? Now that’s a great opening to a book!

But back to Irwin…

Rich Man, Poor Man is very long, and very detailed, and although pretty soap-y and sensationalistic is told with an intensity that made me feel that Shaw really has an important point to communicate. The only problem is that I am not 100% sure what the point is. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it’s something about how there are different ways to view the concepts of “rich” and “poor,” and a man may be better off as the captain of a charter yacht in the Mediterranean than as a very successful businessman. Yeah, okay. Did that point really need 600+ pages to make? What am I missing?

In looking him up on Wikipedia (yes, that’s how curious I became), I learned: “He was among those who signed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review … convictions … resulting from hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Falsely accused of being a communist … Shaw was placed on the Hollywood blacklist by the movie studio bosses. In 1951 he left the United States and went to Europe, where he lived for 25 years.”

So this is clearly a guy that is unafraid of social commentary. But, like life, the novel is sloppy and sprawling, with so many loose ends and barely-sketched characters that drift off to nowhere and disappear, that you can basically make any point you want about it. It’s in fact the polar opposite of The Magic Mountain, itself the literary equivalent of Phenomenal Transparency (with appreciation and apologies to Chris Payne).

Probably the most interesting thing I read was from an Amazon review of the book by someone called J. Greenberg “Raving Lunatic” (his name, his punctuation) that deconstructs the name of wealthy interloper Teddy Boylan to suggest that he represents the devil – which is quite a valid and crafty little point. “Very interesting to me was the character of Teddy Boylan (Te DdyBoylan, The Diablo, The Devil)…. All three of the main characters are influenced by the Devil -- Gretchen sleeps with him, Rudy vows to emulate him, Tom utterly rejects him.” Well done, Mr. Lunatic! I should have payed more attention in my modern lit classes.

At any rate, give it a read if only for the cultural history of it all. As for me, I am now starting to feel like all of my reading is actually procrastination so might have to turn down the heat a little bit on that and start thinking about my own writing, seeing as how I'm at T minus 94 days to finish my own damn novel.

Later, at the bar...on the bar...behind the bar....

Did you ever live in a small town, even for a summer, or did you perhaps even stop at such a town on a road trip back in college? And if so, did you go into a bar and wonder if you were going to get beat up, and you didn’t, and so you kept coming back thinking that you were somehow fitting in as one of the smelly and horny and seriously alcoholic regulars? And the drunker they got, the more weird shit they said to you, and you thought to yourself: someone should write a book. Well, someone did – it’s called “later, at the bar” and the author boasts serious writing school credentials and a hefty resume writing for big-city magazines. But this book is so chock-full of picturesque hicks and barflies that it’s no surprise she self-admittedly spent some time bellied up to the bar, picking drunk brains for every bit of local color available. This book had its moments, but mostly I appreciate 2 things about it:

1) It for real made me want to stop drinking. I think the author might have felt that it makes drunks and drinking and bars seem somewhat bittersweet (reference the final line: “Say what you will about drunks,” Grace said out loud to the dark room around her, “but no one will love you like they can.” Theme, anyone?) But it was really kind of a horror novel after awhile. Wasted lives, unfulfilled dreams, oboy.

2) It also made me want to start writing little vignettes set in a little town I happen to be familiar with. And in fact I did start doing just that. Sometimes it’s the things that aren’t perfect that can actually be more inspirational, I guess. For instance, I love Alice Hoffman – but she’s so damn good it makes me want to throw down my pen, or keyboard, or whatever.

So thanks Rebecca Barry, for inspiring two positive impulses. And thanks Lisa G, for inspiring yet another blog post.

Dead Until Dark vs True Blood

   

As you may already know, I am really liking HBO's new series True Blood. So when I saw the first book that the series is based on in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport on Sunday, I had to buy it and see how the two compare.  The book is a fun read, and very similar to the series - with a few key differences that I won't get into lest it spoil anyone else's reading or viewing.  But I have come to the conclusion (with all apologies to Charlaine Harris) that I personally prefer the HBO series.  And so, while I could keep reading Ms. Harris' books and in so doing, spoil many of the plots of future seasons of True Blood, this will be my first and last Sookie Stackhouse read.

What in the world could possibly be going on in the &#$%@ Havana Room?

 

Lisa G has sent me yet another book, she claims in hopes that I will blog about it.  I will not disappoint!

The Havana Room by Colin Harrison was surprisingly well-written for a crime novel, more so than necessary given the genre (of which I am, of course, an aficionado). For instance, there is a section in the middle of the book where, for no apparent reason other than to possibly show off or indulge a flight of Pynchon-esque fancy, Harrison sums up the history of New York City into one extremely long comma-delineated sentence.  And it's really interesting and smart, if a little hard to read. 

Beyond that, the plot was good.  I didn't have everything figured out halfway through, which is always nice, and there were a lot of intersecting plot lines that all came together, plus some genuine heart*.

Now, on to what DIDN'T work, and that was the &#$%@ eponymous Havana Room, a secretive downstairs bar attached to the steakhouse in which our hero lurks.  You would think that based on the fact that this room is the freakin' TITLE of the book, and teased with humorless heavy breathing on the back cover ("...a secret place at the back of the restaurant, the Havana Room, where a man might find both evil and redemption..."), that it might actually be somehow critical to the plot.  As in, not just a location where some stuff happens to happen, but the MAIN place.  The place that, were it not for its existence, the plot could not even exist.

Um, spoiler alert: it's NOT.  You could get rid of the Havana Room altogether and not even know it was missing.  I was thinking while I read the book: did his publisher make him add it on at the end to spice things up?  And oh, the unbearable and cheesy way in which it's used to build incidental suspense (incidental, that is, in that it's not related at all to the plot and is instead a quite lightweight sub-plot).  Our hero becomes aware of the Havana Room.  At long last, he wrangles an invite to go down there and see what illegalities are happening.  Just as the Show is about to start, he is called away on a pressing matter - and misses everything!  And no-one will tell him what happened!  When, o when, will his curiosity ever be satisfied?  Nevermind the murders and shaky land deals and manipulation and lies that constitute the rest of his daily existence.  The Havana Room...now THAT'S something to think about.  And let me just add that this 'suspense' is drawn out until page 200.

Someday perhaps I'll meet Colin Harrison and ask him why this was added.  Was it to increase the commercial appeal of the book through (falsely) suggesting some kind of dark sexual underworld, as I suspect?  Or was he just fascinated with the story of what ultimately is found to go on in the Havana Room, and looking for a chance to show off that particular bit of arcana?

Beyond this carping, however, a good read if you like The Crime.

* The "heart" mentioned above refers to an extremely exalted view of parenthood, especially fatherhood, which leads the author to write near the end of the novel, "People who don't have children often take violent exception to the idea that their lives are in any way existentially different from the lives of those who do have children, and to this I only laugh darkly to myself and think, Well yes, you may think that, but you are already dead, my friend."  Which as a someone without kids, is, well, a tad grating.

Best book club ever

Okay so I just have to gush about my frickin' book club.  It's the best.  This month we're reading Hide by Lisa Gardner. 

I came home today to find a mysterious envelope on my doorstep. 

With the following contents, yum.  Barbie in Aspic?  (If you read the book, it’ll all make sense to you.)

And right in time for  Halloween!  Can I say again how much I love my book club?

Angel Blanding

I discovered Alice Hoffman this spring, when I picked up her short story collection, Blackbird House, at an airport. I immediately became obsessed. I read The Third Angel, Skylight Confessions, and Here on Earth. I fell in love with her stories, adult fairytales with shades-of-gray lessons about love and hate and family, told in a wonderfully wise and magical voice. I bought books and gave them away to friends, unable to keep my fan-dom to myself. I stood in line for an hour at the LA Times Festival of Books to get her autograph and gush.

What’s great about discovering a writer when they are well into their career is that, as with Alice Hoffman, there are literally dozens of past books to read. For some reason I assumed that all of her books would be of a similar quality and approach. However, someone just gave me a beat-up old paperback copy of Angel Landing, published in 1980, and it’s much different from her other books (and not in a good way). I don’t know if this is because (a) it’s a fluke or (b) in 1980, she had yet to develop the voice and talent she has now. (I have some other old books of hers, so I’ll be finding out for myself.)

But for now I have been pondering what makes Angel Landing such a disappointment compared to the newer books that I love, considering that in some ways (setting, juxtaposition of past and present, self-destructive love) it’s not all that different.

1. It’s primarily written in first person. Everything else of hers that I’ve read has been in third person, and I think she does it better. It could also be this particular narrator that is offputting – she’s defensive, impulsive, and hostile.

2. Instead of Hoffman’s typical magical realism, it’s just a plain old quirky love story, occasionally embellished with clunky quasi-poetry. For instance, this passage where the narrator is walking with her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend:

When we rode over the wooden drawbridge which led to Dune Road I was racked with nerves and remorse.

“Maybe I should have stayed home,” I said.

But we had already crossed the bridge.

(Crossed the bridge of subtlety, I guess.)

3.The characters tend to be a little cartoonish – the gutsy and outspoken old maid aunt, the trust fund left-wing radical, the manipulative co-worker. In her recent books, she has figured out a way to move caricature beyond into archetype.

I guess the other thing I get from this is hope, however. Every writer starts somewhere, and the place you start isn’t necessarily the be-all-end-all of your career. Better to be a late bloomer than a one-hit wonder.

Freaked Out

My friend Lisa G just sent me a book called Out by Natsuo Kirino, which has to be one of the most disturbing and freaky books I have ever read.  It starts off a little slowly, describing the depressing lives of some miserable middle-aged Japanese women that work the night shift at a box lunch factory.  Then enter an ultra-creepy-yet-charismatic villain that you can’t help but feel compassion for, and some sushimi-sliced corpses, and it becomes impossible to put down.  So thank you Lisa G for keeping me up till 4AM reading.